#being sent to hell right alongside angel at the end of season two?

[winepresswrath]

Darla/Angelus is also great because the show has a competing designated OTP and they exist to serve as contrast and hateful competition to THE ship. they are soulless monsters even by the standards of soulless monsters, they literally make the other soulless monsters go "yikes... your relationship seems not good maybe." but they love each other so fucking much. the writers can't help it. they are constantly trying to find their way back to each other. the way she hits him over a head with a shovel and leaves him to an angry mob while he tries to say he doesn't mind dying if it's with her AND the way they coo about it to each other afterwards. the way she takes him back against her better judgement because she missed him so so much but then kicks him out again later because he still can't be who she needs him to be. that's just how they say i love you.

[walkerwords]

“The Savior Sessions” Part 1 of 33 - Negan x GN!Reader

IMAGE CREDIT: Gene Page/AMC

SERIES MASTERLIST

Summary: This will be a collection of conversations set before the events of season 9 in which the reader speaks with Negan while in his cell as they recount events and memories from their time in the Apocalypse as well as stories of his own. 

Word Count: 2417

Warning: None

Song I Wrote To: “Open Season” by Josef Salvat

Note: These are going to be smaller stories that I will be updating randomly. Each fic will be a conversation/situation about Negan in his cell in Alexandria. Some maybe very short, others not. I am still working on the other stories, but I wanted to post this as I work on those as well. Thank you for your kind words about my family, I really appreciate it.

------

“I just don’t know why you’re asking me to do this, Michonne.” 

You stood across from Alexandria’s head of security in her kitchen. Michonne meticulously cleaned her Katana as you spoke, remaining calm the entire time. When she had asked you to meet her today, you never imagined this would be the reason. 

“Gabriel is worried about his state of mind,” Michonne said, “He thinks somebody should be speaking with him on a regular basis.” 

“Isn’t that already Gabriel’s job?” you asked. “He’s always the one who’s down there.” Michonne sighed, sliding the blade back into its sheath.

“He believes that he can no longer get through to him and that they’ve become too familiar with each other,” Michonne said, placing her sword down and bracing her hands against the kitchen counter, “I also think we can benefit from it and I suppose he can as well.” You frowned. 

“You’re asking me to become Negan’s therapist,” you pointed out. “How is any of that beneficial?”

“Whether we like it or not, Negan did run an entire community unchallenged. He may have insight into this world that we don’t and I have started to think that perhaps keeping him so isolated isn’t doing anyone any good,” Michonne explained. “I am asking you because you don’t have a relationship with him. The two of you never interacted during the war and you made sure to stay out of his line of sight for most of it. You’re not a total stranger, but he doesn’t know you like he knows Gabriel, me, or even Aaron.”

“So, basically, you want someone he can’t push around by pushing their buttons,” you concluded and Michonne grimaced. 

“You were also a teacher, (Y/N),” said Michonne, “that is something you two have in common. Maybe that will get him to open up or at least… God, I don’t know what I want the outcome to be, but Rick wanted Negan to be a symbol for how we can grow as a society. I don’t know if he can ever be redeemed, but if he can even a small amount, then it may start with you.” 

“You pulled out your Rick card,” you said with a sigh, “not fair.” Michonne smiled with a shrug. 

“I knew it would come in handy someday,” she said and you finally gave in. 

“Okay, I will be the big bad wolf’s confidant, but if he tries anything or pisses me off to a degree that makes me want to commit murder, that’s on Gabriel,” you said with a wink and Michonne visibly relaxed. 

“Thank you, (Y/N),” she said, relieved. “I’m going to let you run it the way you want to, but try not to piss him off if you can.” You smiled at her brightly. 

“Oh, you know me, Michonne, something like that is inevitable.”

-----

When you arrived at the cell an hour later, you dismissed the guard who stood out front. 

If you were going to be talking to Negan to gain insight and trust, you didn’t see the need for a chaperone. As the guard left, you pushed open the heavy door and sealed it behind you. 

“Gabe, if you’re here to give me another life lesson, you can save it. I’m not in the mood,” Negan said in the darkness of his cell. You had never been this close to the man before. You had fought against the Saviors of course, but always at an outpost or in a larger fight. Rick had also used your talents with the sniper rifle and kept you up high most of the time. This whole situation was alien to you and while it was unnerving to be so near to a killer, you didn’t let that stop you from stepping out of the shadows. 

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not Father Gabriel,” you said, dragging a chair from the wall and centering it before the jail cell. Negan, who had been laying on his bed with his back to the door, slowly sat up and turned towards you.

In the cool light of the room, you could see him clearly now. His hair was shorter than the last time you had seen him which was when Rick had dragged him into this cell about five years before. He still had the stubble on his face, but the cocky grin that you had gotten used to seeing through your scope was nowhere to be seen. 

“Have we met?” he asked, tilting his head in curiosity. You shifted slightly in your seat, trying to get comfortable. 

“Not officially,” you told him. “I’m (Y/N).” Recognition dawned on his face then. 

“Yes,” he said, sitting forward on the edge of his cot, “Little Miss Grimes has mentioned you before.” It wasn’t news to you that he spoke to Judith. Most people knew that she visited Negan often. The only person who probably didn’t know was Michonne. Judith had confided in you that she wasn’t scared of the man and that all she wanted was for him to know he wasn’t some kind of wild animal. You now started to realize that her reasoning was exactly why you were here. “So what can I do for you, (Y/N)?”

“I’ve been sent by the overlords of Alexandria to be your new best friend,” you explained, crossing one leg over the other. 

“Is that right?” he asked, leaning forward. “Gabe get too bored with little ole me?” 

“I don’t know, I didn’t ask,” you told him, “but I am here as a favor for Michonne so how about we just accept the new normal?” Negan bowed his head slightly. 

“Well then, what exactly do the big shots upstairs want us to do? Compare breakup stories? Organize a block party?” 

“I see you haven’t lost your wit,” you pointed out, leaning back in your chair.  

“We all have our things, (Y/N),” he said, “I am curious, though,” he went on, “where were you when your people were trying to kill all of mine?” 

“Usually on a rooftop,” you explained, “Grimes always had me up high with the guns.” Negan seemed genuinely thrilled by the thought of that. 

“And you never got me in your cross-hairs and took a shot? Damn, that is incredibly terrifying.”

“I was never ordered to,” you told him. “I was more surveillance than an assassin.” 

“Either way, my men never saw you watchin’ me,” he said and it sounded like a compliment. The way Negan was looking at you reminded you of kids staring at a lion in a zoo. Ironic seeing how he was the one in the cage and not you. Every glance was out of curiosity and you thought you noticed a bit of gratitude in his eyes. Perhaps Michonne and Gabriel were right after all. The man just needed someone to talk to.

“Okay, how about this?” you said, after a moment of silence. He waited for you to continue. “You and I are just gonna talk. You can ask me anything you want and I’ll answer and hopefully, you will return the favor when I want to .” Negan raised a single brow. 

“It’s that simple?” he asked.

“Do you want it to be difficult?” you asked. “I think I could add some really brash and annoying terms to the arrangement if you want."

"You are a very strange person," Negan said.

"I'm going to take that as a compliment."

"As you should," Negan said with a cheeky grin. "However, I am curious about one thing. Don't you hate me?" You mulled over his words for a few seconds before shaking your head.

"Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in this world, but has not solved one yet," you quoted easily. Negan's eyes lit up.

"Morrison?"

"Angelou," you corrected.

"Ah," he said. "Wise woman. So what you're saying is that hating me isn't going to solve anything, am I right?"

"Pretty much," you agreed, crossing your arms.

"But I killed your people," he reminded you. Negan was clearly trying to put you off, but you had expected this. 

"And I killed your people," you said. "Do you hate me?" Negan scoffed, leaning back on his hands as he watched you through the bars.

"You're good," he complimented.

"You didn't answer my question," you said. Negan licked his lips before shaking his head.

"No, I don't hate you. Although, I don't even know you so that could change." This time you let out a quick laugh that was pure instinct at this point.

"Fair enough," you conceded.

"Alright, (Y/N), if you are so inclined to answer questions, answer me this: how did you end up with this merry bunch of survivors?" 

"Simple," you said, "I saved Carl Grimes from a Walker." Negan's face dropped at the mention of the late teenager. You knew about the soft spot Negan had for Carl. It wasn't a mystery, hell, Carl wouldn't have lived long after he attacked the Sanctuary if Negan didn't like him.

"You saved him?" Negan asked, pulling you from your memories.

"Yeah, I met Carl and his mom, Lori, shortly after everything happened," you began, "They, alongside other survivors, were camped at a quarry outside of Atlanta. I was on my own, trying to make it to the coast when I came across their campsite. I was wary of people, of course, but I knew I wouldn't make it far on my own. I stayed around the edge of camp for a while, just gettin' a feel for the people when Carl ran off when Lori wasn't looking. He was running around with another kid from the group." You paused, unsure if you should divulge much more, but Negan was staying entirely focused on your story.

"Carl was with Sophia...Carol's late daughter." Slight surprise entered Negan's eyes, but he remained quiet. You went on, "The two of them got turned around and then Carl being Carl, decided to run off alone without Sophia. He was near me when the Walker came out of the trees and grabbed him. I didn't really think at that moment. I just ran for the kid. I shot the Walker in the head and the next thing I know, I had a crossbow pointed at my back."

"Let me guess, Daryl?" Negan figured. 

"Damn right. Son of a bitch thought I was shooting at the kid, but luckily Carl spoke up and explained. They took me back to their camp and Lori insisted I stay so that's what I did."

"And here you are," Negan said, impressed.

"Here I am."

"That kid was pretty damn special," Negan said fondly. "This world really does take the good ones, don't it?"

"I always think that it would have been easier if a person had killed him instead of a Walker, you know? At least then we would have an enemy." 

"What, you don't think the Walkers are the enemy?" 

"They're just a part of the new world," you explained. "Can't really call them an enemy if they didn't intend to be here in the first place."

Negan was quiet again as your words sank in. In fact, you were surprised that he hadn't spoken over you whenever he got the chance. According to the rest of your friends and family, the man loved to hear himself talk. You stored that new observation away for later.

"In your opinion," Negan said slowly, "what kind of person classifies as an enemy, or rather, just evil?"

"I've seen darkness, Negan," you told him. "We all have and it was before we even heard your name. If you're trying to ask me if I think you’re evil, the answer is no, I don't. Most of us here like myself, Daryl, Michonne, we've all seen what happens when someone has lost all trace of humanity. Seen what they do to other human beings and trust me, those are the evil people of this screwed-up world. You haven't lost your humanity, Negan, and I pray you never will."

Negan leaned his forearms onto his knees, rubbing a calloused hand over his bearded face. Something had clicked inside his head, that much was apparent, but you weren't sure what.

Yet.

"Sounds like you've been through hell," Negan whispered.

"And back," you finished. "Multiple times."

"You gonna tell me that story? About the loss of humanity?" His question wasn't overly eager, instead, it was all curiosity and you were starting to think that was the main characteristic of the man who once called himself the "big bad wolf".

"One day," you nodded. "If you'll let me come back again."

"I get to decide?" he asked, intrigued.

"Yeah, no point in coming down here if you won't talk to me. That would be wasting both of our time."

"Then by all means, (Y/N), feel free to drop by," Negan said, spreading his arms wide in a welcome gesture. You rolled your eyes but nodded.

"If it means anything," you said as you stood from your seat and turned towards the door, "Carl once told me that you were the only person he always trusted to tell him the truth, and coming from him, that's a lot."

Negan looked at you for a long moment before bowing his head. "Thanks for that," he said softly. You gave him a small smile, one more out of understanding than anything. Whether people hated him or not, nobody could deny that he cared about Carl Grimes and that the teen's death had affected him as well.

"I'll see you tomorrow," you told him as you pushed open the heavy door and stepped into the sunlight. Negan didn't call you back as you climbed the steps and began walking home.

You watched as Alexandria spun on, unaware of the emotions that ran deep through you at the moment. Gabriel and Michonne had been right, after all, Negan needed to talk to another human being, but perhaps that was exactly what you needed as well and you had a feeling this was just the beginning of an odd relationship. 

TAGS: @thanossexual​

[weaselbeaselpants]

All you need to know about my sucky rewrite

Since the actual show’s getting greenlit here’s my sooperoriginal ideas of my reboot/rewrite/reimagine thing called “Happy hotELL”

The cast of “Happy hoteLL” are renamed versions of the Hazbin cast:

Charly, Vee (she’s nick-named “Vaggy” by Engel) Engel, Niftie, Hux, Alastair, Lord Satan and Lilian, Flim-Flam and JibJab, Karen Killjoy, Sir Pantsless.

The main villains would be human!archangels based on Estus Pirkle and Kirk Cameron.

The main demons under Charly all embody a deadly sin in how they ended up in hell: Engel = Wrath (hated himself and other people), Niftie = Envy (tormented people at school in order to impress a boy), Hux = Lust (stalked/objectified various women in his life), Vee = Pride (too proud to admit she made bad choices), and Alastar = Gluttony (for reasons already discussed here).

Setting

The “afterworld”, the setting our characters inhabit, is separated into three sections: HEAVEN which is where the Archangels rule and were “good” souls go; HELL, which is the main setting of the show and where the archangels swoop down to purge of all the “bad” souls that end up there; and LIMBO, a primordial pocket-dimension with no direct portal to through the other two worlds. Limbo turns out to be the place the archangels, the true rulers of Heaven, are hiding. The mortal or ‘human’ world is between Heaven and Hell and is accessed by similar means to how it is in Helluva Boss. 

Angels and demons which were never human are referred to as ARCHANGELS/OVERLORDS and CHERUBS/IMPS. Ascended/damned souls are those of people who’ve ended up in either Heaven or Hell.

Heaven and Hell both have class systems. Imps and Overlords and Cherubs and Archangels are SUPPOSED to rule over all the human souls in their care. But Heaven’s archangels have gone missing - abandoned their posts for the peaceful content of limbo - leaving human angels to rise up and over time dictate how Heaven is to be run and who gets redeemed....this is as bad as you think it is, as the human!archangels care only for their “purity” over everyone else and keep people who should be allowed into heaven out just for not being to their standards - like Vee. The Overlords of Hell are unaware of this and have been unknowingly doing the human!angels’ business for hundreds of years. 

>The implication that this system for disposing of evil souls has failed is made well before the second season twist because damned human souls (Alastair) have become overlords and exist in Hell without being purged as an open secret, even to Charly’s parents. The only reason the true Overlords oppose any of the human!Overlords’ reign is because it disrupts their order in Hell, not out of any sense of justice.

There is NO monotheistic deity in this world; angels and demons used to live in “pantheons”, aka tribes, across the earth where they created life and the ecosystems there as well - thusly, they became gods to the people of these regions too. Satan and Lilian are from what would come to be the Abrahamic angels. In time, other mythologies’ underworld counterparts - and even some benevolent gods - would have the power diminish on earth and they’d have to live in Hell if they didn’t want to be wiped out by the crusades the Archangel’s influence over humans. Understandably, a lot of non-Abrahamic angels and demons are NOT fond of this appropriation/erasure of their culture and want their own realm’s back, even trying to run their own redemption operation/afterlife control in secret or in limbo. (Imagine Charly meeting a Vivziepoped versions of Hades and Persephone or Oxhead and Horseface telling her to fuck off and her just being like “I KNEW someone had the same idea! I JUST KNEW IT! <3<3<3″)

ALL mortal souls are supposed to be sent to hell but a great many of them are KEPT from heaven because of the human!archangels. 

A demon is redeemed by either setting right a wrong they did in life or sacrificing their happiness for another. This is what happens to Vee at the end of the first season, which leaves Charly without a manager through season 2.

Satan’s backstory is a parody of Paradise Lost as he was the most beautiful angel in his pantheon before the others kicked him out. In revenge he took Lilian, their “first woman”, for his wife and rallied up an army which apparently ended with one mass-extinction event on earth.

There’s a section of Hell where demons who represent different vices/drugs live. It’s referred as “Viceland” and is treated like a kitty theme park.

Demons (overlord, imp, or damned-souls) can all be summoned by mortals who know their way with unholy magic. They’re summoned at really inconvenient times and for really worthless deeds and this would be a great source of comedy for the show and an excuse to get characters to the mortal realm.

Story

The first episode/pilot/episodes/minimovie/whatever would be basically the same as the pilot but with a few tweaks:

It shows a person dying, going to Hell, becoming a demon, and being purged (which the audience not quite knowing what just happened to him) with Engel happily takes the dead demon’s things once the dust clears. Then Charly and Vee’s limo pulls up to him and ask him if he’s interested in a “new gig”. Que title and credits.

Charly initially opens the hotel with the promise that it will be a place for vice and booze but lets it slip that it’s a front for rehabilitation. Once Engel’s story is picked up on by the network, Vee and Charly’s assistants (Flimflam and JibJab) attack Karen and destroy the news station.

It’s Engel - not Vee - who recognizes Alastair as the threat that he is - later it’s revealed that Engel was present during Alastair’s initial takeover and that his radio frequencies damaged Engel’s eye. Vee doesn’t believe him until she sees Alastair’s absorbtion powers, which is when she allows him to stay employed by the hotel to help take Alastair down.

Alastair stresses the need for Charly to keep him working with her a secret, ESPECIALLY from her parents. He’s technically a criminal in hell and he convinces Charly that her parents will be impressed with her bad deed once the jig is up.

The rest of Season 1 would probably be Alastair setting up the hotel while the main cast of demons become more aquainted with each other and the different levels of Hell.The end of season 1 would feature Alastair double-crossing Charly and consuming the hotel in his likeness while it’s hosting a demon’s ball - in the hopes of getting enough souls to reignite his takeover. Vee, Engel, and Charly manage to escape the hotel and Charly overpowers and defeats Al by destroying his microphone - thus releasing all the souls he’s trapped, and then destroys his physical form.

Season 2 would start with a face reveal of Satan, Charly’s father, as he forces her to eat Alastair’s heart which will put him under her control. She does, but Alastair’s conscience manifests inside Charly’s head and mocks her ideas throughout the season. Also in the opening Vee would become and angel and ascends for Heaven, leaving Charly to manage the now very popular hotel alone until Engel rises up to become her #2.

Season 2 would be more explorative, with more stuff featuring the demon’s lives as humans, Charly’s role in Hell, and even Vee in Heaven. We’d learn more about the way Hell, Heaven and Limbo work as Charly manages to redeem a couple more damned souls. At the end of the season, the demons discover a dead cherub with a message from Vee begging Charly for help. Charly first attempts to pass through the hidden realm of Limbo to get to Heaven, but Hux runs off with their means to get there, so instead she vomits up Alastair, the only other demon who knows how to get to heaven, and he assists them on the condition that he be granted amnesty once they return to Hell. In the end, Charly and co. discover Heaven’s corrupted state and realize the Archangels are missing, Vee looses her wings but ascends into a fallenangel, and they all escape the bloodthirsty angels due to Lilian’s interference.

The Overlords of Hell prepare for a new war with Heaven and Charly’s parents send her to the mortal realm for her protection. In the mortal realm, Charly and the demons disguise themselves and their base of operation as a bed and breakfast. Charly has trouble reeling in the overexcited demons who are out of place in this new time while also keeping Alastair, who has stashed away with her, from trapping souls. 

Halfway through season 3 Engel and the other motel staff find out Alastair’s human identity, which he was desperate to hide, and bring his now elderly human daughter to him. This causes Alastair to freak out and consume the bed and breakfast. Once Charly brings him to, his physical takes on that of a baby deer but his psyche and abilities are completely nulled.

While this is going on Vee, Hux, and Charly’s parents have their own adventures in Limbo where they meet the Archangels who have no idea how corrupt Heaven has gotten in their absence. It’s only through Hux and Vee that the main group is finally all reuninted in Hell where the finale takes place :

Engel and Niftie ascend into fallenangels and alongside Vee lead a brigade against the angels who now want to wipe out all the demons; Charly guilt trips her parents and the Archangels into taking action and combining their power to dismantle the angel’s weapons; Alastair comes back and personally takes out the main human!archangel and himself by throwing them into the center of Hell; big stupid happy lesbian ending fartjoke.

end

Characters

Charly’s relationship dynamic to her parents is flipped: her father, Satan (he doesn’t like being called Lucifer) LOVES her. He shares a lot of her personality and at worst doesn’t take Charly seriously or cares about her ambitions. Lilian, Charly’s mother resents her daughter. Lilian was hoping her daughter would bring forth the apocalypse but Charly doesn’t want to do that. It’s implied Charly’s optimism and need to help people comes from her father’s days as an Archangel, and her mother especially hates the angels for casting her out, which leads to her resenting Charly.

This doesn’t stop Satan from being genuinely impressed with his daughter’s achievements and for Lilian to be be the panicked-parent when she learns that Charly has broken into Heaven at the end of season 2. 

The Royal Family is not actively malicious. They’re more like privileged jailers on the top of the Hell-foodchain. The most evil things about them are their apathy towards human atrocities (and their subjects pain, of course), their occasional bouts of sadism, and their genuine glee at the thought of destruction - namely the apocalypse, which Satan and Lilian speak fondly about like a married couple would their retirement plans.

After Charly shows her true form while taking out Alastair, the other Overlords and Imps (i.g. Karen and 666 News) start heaping praise on her out of fear that she’ll retaliate for all the mockery they made of her when she unveiled her plan. Charly is uncomfortable with this.

Engel is BAD at his pornstar/sexworker career. He tries to sell himself as a sass-master incubus but can’t achieve this status in the demon hierarchy because of his short fuse and violent nature.

Engel thinks he’s in hell because he’s gay and likes crossdressing. In reality it’s because he was a member of a crime family and a murderous gangster, named Anatole Slinkoff. The first people he killed were his father and brother as he was assisting a young-up-and-coming rival who would eventually become his boss.

Speaking of that boss, Anatole fell in love with him. On Anatole’s birthday he and the boss got drunk and he ended up confessing his feelings. The boss invited a sobered up Anatole back to his flat the following week and seemed to return his affections with a kiss...which was then followed by a fatal stabbing. Engel never got over the heartbreak/betrayal.

Engel starts off as a toxic enabling jackass who lives in denial and uses sex and drugs to cope with how unhappy he is with himself. In season 2 he becomes Charly’s #2 and builds a strong friendship with her. Also in season 2 Engel meets his father, brother, and mother who are also in hell for their crimes. His father and bro amazingly forgive him for killing them while Engel’s mother - a god-fearing woman who would beat Engel if she found him wears makeup or playing with dolls as a child - asks him for forgiveness, saying she’s the reason her family and he specifically ended up where he did. After Engel patches things up with them he tries to locate the souls of the people he killed and in the process finds out his old boss went to Heaven. At first Engel sets out to kill his boss and get revenge, but upon actually finding him living in fear in Limbo, he can’t bring himself to do so and instead chooses to just not forgive him.

Engel ascends/becomes a fallenangel in the final season when he meets an imp with a similar taste of humor and style. Rather than rush into a relationship as he’s done with every person he’s got with since he ended up in hell, Engel tells his new lover he wants to wait until he’s stable for a relationship, which triggers his transformation.

Molly doesn’t exist. Molly is instead the name of Engel’s feminine alterego and later the name Engel takes up as a fallenangel.

Vee, like Engel, also thinks she’s in hell for all the wrong reasons: She ran away from her controlling parents, thinking she could live on her own just fine. She could not. Instead she wound up turning to a life of crime and prostitution to support herself after a plethora of bad decisions and heartbreaks. When her parents sent word out all over the country, begging her to come back and that they were wrong, but she still refused. In the end one of her clients ended up strangling her. Her soul SHOULD have been one that went to Heaven but was barred off by the human!archangels for being a “thug”. Vee tried to get herself purged after her first few months in Hell, convinced that she deserved it, but Charly saved her and the blast instead only took out one of her eyes. Vee and her story are Charly’s main inspiration to open up the hotel.

Vee and Charly obviously have a romantic relationship from the start but Vee doesn’t see their love as anything serious. When Vee becomes an angel at the end of season 1/beginning of season 2, she rather cruelly leaves Charly without a second thought and discards their relationship is ‘passing sin’. It isn’t until she spends more time in Heaven, seeing the other angels’ being restricted (including her parents, who admit to actually being miserable in Heaven) and finding her rejection notice from the human!archangels that Vee realizes she does love Charly and that her redemption was always HER doing, not someone else’s.

Vee makes the unwise decision to confront the Archangels (whom she doesn’t know are actually human souls) about this treatment. They respond by locking Vee away and performing a “purification” on her which is like electroshock therapy. This sedates Vee into a mindless drone, much to the horror of the cherubs, angels, and eventually Charly and the gang.

Vee, in her purified state, doesn’t want to leave Heaven and go back to Hell. Charly, realizing the woman she loves is gone, tearfully tells her she won’t ask Vee to be anything she doesn’t want to be and that she loves her. This confession breaks through to the real Vee. Their happy reunion is cut short however by the human!archangels who rip off Vee’s wings, causing her and Charly to fall. It’s here though that Vee again ascends, this time into a fallenangel, and grows her own pair of wings and an angels’ weapon which she uses to kill Perkins, the head archangel and save the rest of the cast.

Throughout season 3, Vee and Charly’s parents turn the Happy Hotel into a refuge for human souls and imps while the angels and demons prepare for new spiritual warfare. Vee also tracks down Hux and multiple other “lost souls” in Limbo in her search for the Archangels.

Vee commands Hell’s army alongside Molly and Niftie in the show’s final climax and she gets a happy ending running a shanty motel in Limbo alongside Charly.

In life, Niftie was a teenager who tried to grow up too fast and gave up her hobbies and interests to impress her childhood friend (whom she was in love with). By following the lead of a more popular classmate, Niftie became a bully who ruled her school’s social status. Then she learned that her “teacher” had been in love with the same guy and he was returning her feelings - which drove Niftie into a rage and she tried killing the both of them on their senior prom night. She tried running them over with her car, putting the girl in the hospital, paralyzing the boy forever, and ruining her reputation at school (for saying she couldn’t drive when she did; not for the attempted murder). The boy she loved hated her, and the rest of the school bullied her until she gave in and took her own life in the bathroom.

The other demons are especially sympathetic towards Nifty. Charly finds it horrible that she end up in hell at such a young age. Hux is very protective of her. However, Niftie is more self-aware than she appears; she acts more childish than she actually is because she wishes she was still a kid, but does NOT like being treated like a literal child - especially by Charly and Engel. She only warms up to Charly when Hux abandons her and she’s forced to be an authority figure under Engel while the group stages things out in the mortal realm.

In the mortal realm, Niftie ends up coming across her old hishschool friend, now an old woman in a wheelchair, who believes it’s her fault everything ended the way it did. Niftie tells the lady not to feel guilty and instead apologizes to her - which ignites Niftie’s ascension into a fallenangel.

Hux was a moderately successful show magician. Heartbroken by being unable to woo a woman he loved with his success, he turned to drinking and took up relationships with women who worked under him  - all of these relationships were toxic and Hux would break their hearts and ruin their lives. When Hux arrived in Hell it was during a purge. He found his original sweetheart there but she, not him, was purged, cementing Hux’s views of redemption and justice...that there is NONE.

Hux is mostly apathetic and disbelieves along with everyone else in Charly’s plan UNTIL he finds out that one of the women he hurt escaped into Limbo. When the main cast tried to use their one passage to Limbo to get to Heaven in season 2, Hux takes the pass for himself.

In Season 3, Vee finds Hux enjoying his time in Limbo and calls him out for his selfishness. Hux introduces her to all the women he wronged, who DON’T forgive him, and also his new business in Limbo selling drinks that make people recall their past lives.

Together with Vee, Hux thinks up a plan to have the overcrowded souls of Hell and Heaven wait out the war in Limbo while simultaneously kicking out the Archangels so that they won’t notice the influx of souls in their realm.

Sir Pantsless is the show’s biggest buttmonkey and is constantly abused. He’s a tiny demon trying to ride off other Overlord’s success and who’s design is a wimpy, trying-to-hard version of Charly’s dad. In life, Sir Pantsless was a Victorian-era businessman who lived a long, happy life of abusing child-workers in factories and getting away with all his evil deeds. Charly’s dad even admits to keeping him out of the purge purposefully because he finds Pantsless’ pain amusing.

Themes and other stuff worth noting

If there’s a lesson I guess I’d try to push with the ending of this rewrite it would be, ironically, that neither Heaven nor Hell hold your true morality. It’s on you for making mistakes; it’s up to you to overcome them - you literally have to go through hell - to fix them! It also shouldn’t be up to Heaven and Hell how punishment/enlightenment works or why it’s worth anything.

This is NOT supposed to be an antireligion/antiChristian story. Not at ALL. It’s anti absolutism and anti religiousSUPREMACY story.  I know then that people will probably not want me basing this version of Heaven off Evangelicals, but like Viv, that’s the religion that closest for me to criticize. If I were Jewish or Hindu or Muslim I would so be about tearing their hypocrisies down....but I’m not. I know all about the injustices in those religions but I’m not comfortable tearing them a new one as a white Christian. My mother’s fam are recovering Christian Science-folk. Also, have you watched anything about Left Behind? It’s genuinely an eye opening experience when it comes to Americanized Christianity and even the lore of Hell and Demons in regards to the book of revelations.

Lotsa references to The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost with the implication that these works are fan fiction to the demons of actual events with Dante never even making it out of Hell because he was too prideful. (Charly’s father has two faces in his wings/comb which are constantly chewing parts of Dante like chewing gum).

I know Viv says she’s hoping to get Weird Al to voice Lucifer. Personally I think a better unlikely but TOTALLY FITTING devil would be mah man Martyn Jacques of The Tiger Lillies. They even have a circus motif!

Engel probably claims his name is supposed to be misspelled on purpose. In reality, it’s cause he was drunk when submitting his resume to be an incubus and made a typo for his new name.

Vee’s human name is Marianna Posada. GET IIIIIT.

Alastair’s human name is Edward Hastings. Edward being the name of the American Murder Song which inspired my Alastair, while Hastings is the last name of the man who helped doomed the Donner Party.

[hopesilverheart]

Hot chocolate with a dash of love

(read on ao3)

Pairing: Aline/Maia Rated: Gen Summary: “You’re absolutely ridiculous,” Alec sighed. “That girl even lets you make those disgusting holiday drinks you love so much, and I assure you it’s not because she likes them.”

“Hey! There’s nothing wrong with my drinks!” Aline threw a dishtowel at her friend. “And I guarantee you that she likes them, since she always asks for more. You can even ask her when she stops by today, if it’ll make you happy.”

“Oh, it would make me very happy,” Alec grinned. “I can’t wait to see where that conversation leads us.”

Or: Aline loves making coffee during the winter season; Maia loves buying coffee from her.

For the @malecdiscordserver Advent Calendar

“Oh god, what atrocity have you made this time?”

At the sound of Alec’s voice, Aline’s gaze snapped away from the drink she’d been preparing only to land on her best friend’s tired form. She almost winced in sympathy but figured she didn’t look much better, so any attempt at asking after him would only end with Alec turning the situation against her.

“Good morning to you too,” she said as cheerfully as she could manage – which was to say not much, given how drained she was from finals season. “This is the delicious peppermint mocha with eggnog foam, covered in candy cane sprinkles and mini marshmallows.”

At her description, Alec mock-gagged and skirted around her like the drink in her hands was the plague. Aline rolled her eyes at his antics but didn’t comment on his inability to appreciate holiday drinks; he wasn’t the only one who made fun of her tastes and she would much rather roast a rude customer than her best friend.

“Your coffee is already on the counter,” she piped up instead, grinning internally when Alec’s eyes lit up. She had known the man ever since the two of them were too little to walk, and it hadn’t taken her long to realise that the best way to his heart was through his favourite foods – or in this case, coffee. “And yes, I know I’m the most amazing best friend in the world. I hope you appreciate the efforts I put into it, because that stuff is ridiculously difficult to make.”

“That’s just because you’re terrible with the foam,” Alec snorted, sighing contentedly as he took a sip of his drink. “You should really let me deal with that, but I suppose I owe you a thank you for having this ready for me. How early did you even get here?”

“Simon made me take his graveyard shift,” Aline admitted defeatedly. “I should know better than to let his wide eyes fool me, but he mentioned something about his sister and there was no way I was going to refuse his offer. Remember that Christmas shift we were going to do together? Well, I hope you’re going to have a nice time with Simon.”

“No,” Alec gaped. “How the hell did you get him to accept Christmas of all days? His sister better have been in need of serious help because I refuse to be stuck with him for anything less than a matter of the utmost importance.”

“Oh please, don’t lie to yourself,” Aline nudged her friend playfully. “I know you secretly love having shifts with Si. He makes your drink perfectly and he mans the register every time you look like you’re about to murder someone. And of course, there’s the fact that he lets you sneak a break in whenever Magnus stops by. That boy is gold and you know it.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Alec mumbled, but Aline could see the fond smile tugging at his lips as he tied his apron with a flourish he’d undoubtedly gotten from his boyfriend. “Do you know when Lyds is taking over for you?”

“I told her not to get here before ten,” Aline shrugged as nonchalantly as possible, hoping Alec wouldn’t comment on-

“Ten, huh?” Her best friend raised his eyebrows, and Aline cursed internally. The man was too observant for his own good, sometimes. “Is that random, or does it perhaps have something to do with the pretty girl from my marketing class you seem to like so much?”

“Completely random,” Aline huffed. “I would never put in extra work just to see someone who I don’t even know. Besides, I’m pretty sure she only comes here to see you, since her lectures are on the other side of campus.”

“How on earth do you know that?” Alec laughed loudly, sounding genuinely surprised at the amount of information Aline had somehow managed to gather about the beautiful girl with warm eyes and curls she wanted to run her fingers through. “Even I don’t know where all of her lectures are, and I’m in three of her courses.”

“I talked to her,” Aline lied through her teeth.

In reality, she’d gotten answers through a fair amount of snooping, dubiously ethical social media research, and questions she’d carefully asked various Econ students who visited the coffee shop regularly. All in all, she’d put in more effort to find out about the other woman than she’d put in any of her papers that semester. It had been worth it, of course, but Alec didn’t need to know any of that.

“Whatever you say,” he smirked at her. “My point is that Maia – in case you somehow missed her name while the two of you were… talking – never stops by later than ten, which means there’s a good chance you’re trying to see her before you have to leave. As for why she comes here, I think we both know it has nothing to do with me. That girl is as gay as I am and you know it.”

“She could be bi, you know,” Aline pointed out, although she couldn’t deny the way her heart skipped a beat at the confirmation of what she’d been thinking for the past two months. It wasn’t that the girl – Maia – looked gay, but the way she stared at Aline… Well, some things were hard to ignore. “I just don’t want to get my hopes up.”

“You’re absolutely ridiculous,” Alec sighed. “That girl even lets you make those disgusting holiday drinks you love so much, and I assure you it’s not because she likes them.”

“Hey! There’s nothing wrong with my drinks!” Aline threw a dishtowel at her friend. “And I guarantee you that she likes them, since she always asks for more. You can even ask her when she stops by today, if it’ll make you happy.”

“Oh, it would make me very happy,” Alec grinned. “I can’t wait to see where that conversation leads us.”

Aline opened her mouth to answer but before her smart retort could slip past her lips, a customer entered the shop and marked the beginning of the morning rush. Nevertheless, Aline sent her best friend a sharp glance as she smiled pleasantly at the customer to take his order.

There was no way her favourite customer – and hypothetical crush, according to Alec – didn’t like her drinks. No way on earth.

***

It took two hours of working tirelessly alongside Alec but finally, the woman they’d both been waiting for stepped through the shop’s front doors, looking as pretty and bright as she always did.

Aline couldn’t quite remember when she’d first seen Maia, but she remembered exactly how she’d felt. She remembered her mouth going dry, her heart clenching at the sight of such a beautiful woman, and all her thoughts disappearing from her mind. She remembered Lydia nudging her in the ribs and staring at her expectantly as the angel stepped up to the counter, and she remembered fumbling over her words as she tried to take the girl’s order.

She’d been a disaster and seeing the woman back again the next day had been the most pleasant surprise of her first month back at uni. Ever since then, Maia had stopped by the shop almost every day of the week, even weekends, and all of Aline’s co-workers seemed to think she was the reason behind the increasingly frequent visits.

She got their point, she really did, but she still struggled to understand why a woman as stunning and confident as Maia would be interested in her. And if she was, why not just ask Aline out? It wasn’t like she was subtle with her – hypothetical – crush on the other woman.

After all, after over two months of seeing Maia up to six times a week, nothing had occurred between them beyond the occasional greeting when they crossed paths on campus.

“Good morning Alec! Good morning Aline!” Maia’s voice cut through Aline’s thoughts, bringing her attention back to the very woman she’d been thinking about. God, she was gorgeous. “How are you doing today?”

“Tired,” Aline admitted, biting back a yawn as the thought of her bed flashed in her mind. She felt like she hadn’t slept in years. “Simon had me covering his shift last night and early this morning, so I honestly feel like a zombie.”

“Why are you even here?” Maia’s eyebrows flew up. “I would have left this goddamn place as soon as possible if my friend had gotten me to cover his shift. Isn’t Lydia usually here around this time?”

“She is,” Aline answered, wondering why the woman even knew about their shifts. It wasn’t exactly common knowledge. “I just thought I’d pick up a few extra hours; a little more cash can never hurt, you know?”

“She’s lying.”

Until then, Aline had never really understood why people wanted to strangle their friends sometimes. Sure, Alec teased her more than anyone else and Lydia occasionally got on her nerves with her endless sources of knowledge, but she’d never wanted to physically hurt them before.

Right then, however, she could easily picture her hands around Alec’s neck. Anything to make him shut up, really.

“Am I?” Aline asked through gritted teeth, shooting Alec the deadliest glare she could manage and preening slightly when he backed off with raised hands. “That’s what I thought.”

When she looked back at Maia, the brunette looked like she was holding back a laugh, although her eyes were sparkling with an emotion Aline couldn’t quite put her finger on. Honestly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She’d made a fool of herself in front of Maia countless times already, and she wasn’t exactly eager to add another situation to her tally.

“Anything I need to know?” Maia finally asked.

“Alec’s just being his usual foolish self,” Aline replied unconvincingly – she could hear her voice trembling, for goodness sake. “Now, what did you want? Because as much as I despise that man, I also have a bet to win and I would love for you to prove my point.”

“And your point will be proven depending on the coffee I choose?” She sounded doubtful, but Aline didn’t let that bother her. She might not have been the best at flirting or navigating social interactions, but she could brew the best coffee out of all the workers at the shop and she was determined to show Alec that her drinks were fantastic. “I guess I’ll have whatever you feel like making, then.”

“That’s-” Aline cut herself off as she felt her cheeks turn red. It was very sweet of Maia, if she was being completely honest, but it also wouldn’t do much to convince Alec that the woman actually enjoyed her drinks. She couldn’t just force the beverage on Maia and call it a win; she needed the other woman to admit that she wanted one of her ‘sugary nightmares’. “That’s very kind of you, but it’s also not what this is about. If you could have any drink right now, within our limits, what would it be? What would you get if it were anyone other than me here.”

“Oh, well that’s a completely different question,” Maia sighed as though she was truly considering Aline’s question. “See, if it were you, I would get that hot chocolate topped with peppermint foam that you made the other day. If it were someone else, I’d probably ask for a basic vanilla drink because – and don’t tell the others I said this – they’re terrible at making holiday drinks.”

The tell-tale sound of plastic cups toppling over rang out behind Aline and it took all of her willpower for her not to grin victoriously as she turned back to check on Alec. Her best friend stuck his tongue out at her childishly, gesturing for her to get back to her own business. Aline was more than willing to oblige.

“My drinks are the best, then?” She asked sweetly. “And you’re not forcing yourself to drink them because of some strange obligation you feel towards me?”

“Obligation is the last thing I feel for you, Aline.”

Maia’s words had Aline freezing in her tracks, her ears burning as she lifted her gaze to meet Maia’s. Instead of looking mortified or amused, as Aline had assumed she would, she stared at the barista unashamedly, the glint in her eyes back with a vengeance.

This time, Aline thought she might have an idea what that was all about.

She took a deep breath, willing the last of her anxiety away the same way she had when she was younger and her mother had taken her along on business trips. She knew how to handle stressful situations; she’d been raised to handle them, even. If she could somehow make it through conversations with foreign politics who couldn’t have cared less about a little girl, she could make it through a casual talk with her crush.

Her not-so-hypothetical crush.

“Are you saying you didn’t start buying these ridiculously sweet drinks because you wanted to make me happy?” She raised her eyebrows disbelievingly. Whether or not Maia liked her drinks now, there was no doubt in Aline’s mind that no sane person would order her special beverages without some sort of hidden motive.

“Making you happy and feeling like I have to buy the drinks are far from the same things, you know?” Maia pointed out, a lopsided smile tugging at her lips. “But you’re right, that is why I started buying them. Before you start crooning in victory, Alec, I’ll have you know that I do enjoy her drinks! I’m pretty sure I get a sugar high every time I take a sip, but it’s completely worth it.”

“You’re insane!” Alec called over, muttering an apology to the customer behind Maia as he fumbled with yet another cup.

“You really don’t mind them?” Aline asked again. She knew her questions were starting to get redundant, but a girl was allowed to check before getting her hopes up, right?

“Aline, they’re delicious,” Maia rolled her eyes exasperatedly. “Is that enough for you? Or do you also need me to tell you that even if they were terrible, I would still buy them and pretend to enjoy them just to see the way you light up every time I order one.”

“Oh my god,” Aline blushed brightly. “That’s- Um- Yeah, thank you? Did you want your drink now?”

“That and maybe a date?” Maia suggested calmly, and Aline couldn’t help but wonder how she had managed to get those words out without stuttering, because her heart was pounding wildly and she could feel her hands sweating profusely.

Maia had been coming to the shop for months; what on earth had made her decide to ask Aline now, of all times? And why was she so- Sure? Confident? Alec had told Aline that the other woman never hesitated and always spoke her mind, but this still seemed very sudden.

She wasn’t exactly complaining, but she also hadn’t been prepared in the slightest. She’d thought that maybe – maybe – after a few more weeks of fumbling her way through conversations and flirting through poor puns as well as overly sweet drinks, Maia might show interest. She hadn’t expected it to be so soon.

Who knew wooing could be so fast? So easy?

(It didn’t feel easy, but it also didn’t feel half as difficult as Aline’s past relationships, so she would take what she could get.)

“She would love to go on a date with you,” Alec’s voice broke through her rambling thoughts.

At any other time, Aline would have reprimanded her friend for speaking in her place, but she honestly couldn’t be angry about it when she noticed the way Maia’s features had started losing their brightness and eagerness.

“Yes! Absolutely! I would love nothing more than that,” she blurted out before Maia could start freaking out – one of them was more than enough, she thought. “I’m sorry, I just- That was- I didn’t consider this option when I wondered how you might react to my question. I thought it was rather innocuous.”

“It was,” Maia shrugged. “But you’ve been making me special holiday drinks all month long, Alec was clearly implying that you didn’t pick this shift up just to make money, and my gaydar has never been wrong before, so I thought I might as well take the leap.”

“That was a good idea,” Aline nodded rapidly, ignoring Alec and Maia’s matching laughter. “A great idea, even.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Maia chuckled. “I’ll stop by tomorrow so we can figure out the details? I have to talk to my boss about my shifts for the week but I’d love to get this planned out as soon as possible.”

“Definitely,” Aline agreed, hoping she didn’t sound as smitten as she thought she did. “Tomorrow works for me. I work all morning.”

“I know,” Maia winked. “Now, about that drink?”

Alec groaned, but Aline beamed at the reminder of her favourite part of her job at the coffee shop.

Five minutes later, Maia was leaving the shop with a sweet drink made with love – and terrible coffee art that made her smile anyways – as well as Aline’s phone number tucked in her jacket pocket.

Alec could complain as much as he wanted, but he couldn’t deny that Aline’s ridiculous things had earned her the most wonderful thing in the world: a date and, with that, a chance at love.

[somegirlsnerdywords2]

Anime i’ve Watched

That begin with a A (Part 2)!

Yep this is how i’m going to bring over all the anime and manga i’ve watched and posted about on the old blog. It’s not so detailed but it will have to do. Anything new I watch or read from this point on will have their own posts.

Angel Beats!:

Genres: action, comedy, drama, school, supernatural

Synopsis:  Otonashi awakens only to learn he is dead. A rifle-toting girl named Yuri explains that they are in the afterlife, and Otonashi realizes the only thing he can remember about himself is his name. Yuri tells him that she leads the Shinda Sekai Sensen (Afterlife Battlefront) and wages war against a girl named Tenshi. Unable to believe Yuri's claims that Tenshi is evil, Otonashi attempts to speak with her, but the encounter doesn't go as he intended. Otonashi decides to join the SSS and battle Tenshi, but he finds himself oddly drawn to her. While trying to regain his memories and understand Tenshi, he gradually unravels the mysteries of the afterlife. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 10/10

Finished airing in 2010 with a total of 13 episodes. 

My Thoughts: A masterpiece and a classic. Now that I think about this one probably deserves a rewatch! Tragic and beautiful with one hell of an opening theme. This one really takes you for journey in 13 short episodes and it’s not one that you’ll soon forget.

Ani ni Tsukeru Kusuri wa Nai! (Please Take my Brother Away):

Genres: comedy, school, slice of life

Synopsis: Shi Miao simply cannot stand her lazy, stupid, and unreliable elder brother Shi Fen, who is one year above her at the same high school. Though the two siblings can only depend on each other, Shi Miao's violent tendencies combined with Shi Fen's knack for causing trouble cause them to fight constantly. And so, Shi Miao can only hope that someone might take her brother away—even though, when push comes to shove, Shi Fen always tries to do what he believes is best for his cute younger sister. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 9/10

Finished airing in 2017 with a total of 12, 3 minute episodes. 

My Thoughts: Three minute episodes of pure comedic bliss. A short and light anime that’s perfect if you’re looking for a bit of a pick me up series but don’t have a ton of time. Highly recommend. 

Ani ni Tsukeru Kusuri wa Nai! 2 (Please Take My Brother Away 2):

Genres: comedy, school, slice of life

Synopsis:  As always, Shi Miao is tired of her brother's ridiculous antics, and Shi Fen can only hope to escape the clutches of his violent sister. With their friends and classmates in tow, the two continue their dysfunctional relationship as reluctant but devoted siblings. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 9/10

Finished airing in 2018 with a total of 24, 3 minute episodes. 

My Thoughts: The hilarity continues, this time with a 24 episode run! A must watch for fans of the first season. 

Ao no Exorcist (Blue Exorcist):

Genres: action, demons, fantasy, shounen, supernatural

Synopsis:  Humans and demons are two sides of the same coin, as are Assiah and Gehenna, their respective worlds. The only way to travel between the realms is by the means of possession, like in ghost stories. However, Satan, the ruler of Gehenna, cannot find a suitable host to possess and therefore, remains imprisoned in his world. In a desperate attempt to conquer Assiah, he sends his son instead, intending for him to eventually grow into a vessel capable of possession by the demon king. Ao no Exorcist follows Rin Okumura who appears to be an ordinary, somewhat troublesome teenager—that is until one day he is ambushed by demons. His world turns upside down when he discovers that he is in fact the very son of Satan and that his demon father wishes for him to return so they can conquer Assiah together. Not wanting to join the king of Gehenna, Rin decides to begin training to become an exorcist so that he can fight to defend Assiah alongside his brother Yukio. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 7/10

Finished airing in 2011 with a total of 25 episodes. 

My Thoughts: Great look in terms of art/ animation/ character design. Great setting and premise but overall the series fell a bit short, in large part (my opinion only) because of the anime original ending. An ending that WAS ignored when they released a second season years later. I’d recommend this series for the simple fact that watching it would enable you to watch the second season which was much, much better! Pretty good opening theme though. 

Ao no Exorcist: Kyoto Fujouou-hen (Blue Exorcist: Kyoto Saga):

Genres: action, demons, supernatural, fantasy, shounen

Synopsis: The ExWire of True Cross Academy are beset with shock and fear in the aftermath of discovering that one of their own classmates, Rin Okumura, is the son of Satan. But for the moment, they have more pressing concerns than that of Rin's parentage: the left eye of the Impure King, a powerful demon, has been stolen from the academy's Deep Keep. After an attempt is made to steal the right eye in Kyoto as well, Rin and the other ExWires are sent to investigate the mystery behind the Impure King and the ultimate goal of the thief. While this mission has them cooperating for the time being, Rin has never felt more distant from his fellow exorcists. In his attempt to reconcile with them, he undergoes specialized training to control his dark power. However, when the right eye is stolen not long after their arrival, the unthinkable threat of a traitor amongst them leaves them in need of all the power they can get. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 9/10

Finished airing in 2017 with a total of 12 episodes. 

My Thoughts: Took years and a less than stellar anime original ending in the first season to get here but finally a second season came! Great art, music and story. An odd case where the second season is far better than the first and truly makes up for its predecessors missteps. If you decide to give this series a try be aware that what you’re really coming for is this gem of a second season and not the first! 

Aoharu x Kikanjuu:

Genres: action, comedy, sports, shounen

Synopsis: Hotaru Tachibana has a strong sense of justice and just cannot help confronting those who choose to perform malicious acts. Furthermore, Hotaru is actually a girl who likes to disguise herself as a boy. After hearing rumors that her best friend was tricked by the popular host of a local club, Hotaru seeks to punish the evildoer. Upon arriving at the club, however, she is challenged to a so-called "survival game" by the host Masamune Matsuoka, where the first person hit by the bullet of a toy gun will lose. After a destructive fight which results in Hotaru's loss, Masamune forces the young "boy" to join his survival game team named Toy Gun Gun, in order to repay the cost of the damages that "he" has caused inside the club. Although she is initially unhappy with this turn of events, Hotaru quickly begins to enjoy what survival games have to offer and is determined to pay off her debt, much to the dismay of Tooru Yukimura, the other member of Toy Gun Gun. As time goes on, Hotaru begins to develop a close friendship with the rest of the team and hopes to take part in realizing their dream of winning the Top Combat Game (TCG), a tournament to decide the best survival game team in Japan. Although Hotaru tries her best, there are just two little problems: she is absolutely terrible at the game, and Toy Gun Gun doesn't allow female members on their team! [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 9/10

Finished airing in 2015 with a total of 12 episodes.

My Thoughts: I freaking loved this anime when it came out... though I doubt i’d be quite as generous with the score now. Good chance I was distracted by the cute glasses wearing male character which would have heavily impacted my score. A strong female lead masquerading as a male, attractive male leads (both with glasses and not) and some killer theme music. Even if I wouldn’t rate it quite as highly now i’d still argue that it was a pretty decent anime. No where near perfect but a bit of fun. 

[aion-rsa]

How Double Dragon’s Abobo Became a Beat em up Legend

https://ift.tt/2F8DPGk

In the late ’80s, video games started featuring over-the-top, meaty musclemen. Metro City had Mike Haggar, a shirtless former wrestler who became mayor and decided that being “tough on crime” meant ridding the streets of criminals with his bare hands, his girlfriend’s psycho boyfriend, and a ninja in Nikes. Circus strongman Karnov scoured the world for adventure and treasure, fighting all kinds of mythical monsters. Bald Bull was trying to dominate both the boxing ring and the arm-wrestling circuit. Gutsman was a jacked construction robot who was later rebuilt as a 40-foot-tall tank centaur.

And then there was Abobo, the gigantic antagonist from Double Dragon. He wasn’t THE antagonist. Hell, in the first game, you fight him within the first two minutes. Despite his low-level status, he’s still far more fondly remembered than the main Double Dragon bad guys like Willy and the Shadow Master. There’s just always been something about this random brute that’s made him special.

Abobo’s journey begins in the original Double Dragon, Technos’ 1987 arcade hit. The game’s story is very simple. A dystopian, lawless, post-nuclear war version of New York City has been overrun by a gang called the Black Warriors or Shadow Warriors or Black Shadow Warriors. (They kind of workshop that name from game to game.) Billy and Jimmy Lee are two martial arts brothers whose mutual friend Marian is captured by gang members. Off they go to lay out everyone in that gang with their bare fists and occasional barrel/whip/knife/baseball bat.

While the cannon fodder is mostly made up of normal-sized guys, out walks Abobo, who makes his entrance by punching his way through a brick wall. From the moment he appears on screen, it’s clear Abobo is meant to stand apart from the rest. He has longer reach, takes more hits, can’t be thrown, and is able to throw Billy and Jimmy like ragdolls. The only guy more dangerous than Abobo is Willy, the final boss, who brings a machine gun to a fist fight.

Weirdly, Abobo has various forms in the game. His initial form is as a bald, pale guy with a mustache. Soon after, we fight Jick, an Abobo clone who closely resembles Mr. T. Later, we face off against an Incredible Hulk version of Abobo. This is post-nuclear war, so I suppose this tracks.

But it was NES port that really delivered the ultimate form of Abobo, whose appearance was seriously altered for the 8-bit console. With orange-brown skin, Abobo is still bigger than everyone else, but also looks inhuman. He has a giant, bald head almost the size of his bulky torso, and a black arch on his face that is apparently a mustache merged with a frown! While the NES version had its own quasi-fighting game mode with everyone redrawn with a bigger and better sprite, Abobo looked exactly the same. You just can’t mess with perfection!

Abobo sort-of-but-not-really appeared in the sequel, 1988’s Double Dragon II: The Revenge. In a game filled with giant enemies, there was a guy named Bolo who looked exactly like Abobo, but with long, black hair. Actually, in retrospect, he looks a lot like Danny Trejo.

Huh.

Abobo sat out of the next few Double Dragon games, as the Lee brothers busied themselves fighting mummies and chubby clowns. But he returned in a very unexpected crossover: 1993’s Battletoads/Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team. The game featured a bizarre team-up between the Dark Queen from Battletoads and the Shadow Warriors. As Double Dragon didn’t have too many memorable boss characters that could stack up to the likes of a giant rat in a singlet, they went with what they could get.

As with the other bosses in the crossover gamer, Abobo was depicted as an absolute giant compared to the Lee Brothers and the Toads. He was also very generic-looking, appearing as a shirtless, bald guy with no ‘stache. Due to the sci-fi nature of the crossover, his storyline ended with him getting booted off a spaceship and sent spiraling through space itself.

1993 also gave us the Double Dragon animated series. Somehow, this thing ran for two seasons (26 episodes) and Abobo was there from the beginning. The first episode was a weird Saturday morning-style retelling of the NES game’s plot, down to Billy Lee having to fight his “evil” brother at the end. Abobo acted as a henchman, alongside a very colorful take on Willy.

In the cartoon, Abobo was a bald muscleman with blue skin, meaning he has the same mysterious complexion situation as Captain N’s King Hippo. Abobo was also strangely competent on the show, all things considered, although the only fighting he ever did was throw oil drums at Billy and miss every single time. He spent more of his time annoyed at Willy, who was depicted as a psychotic cowboy with a laser gun — one-half Yosemite Sam and one-half the Interrupter from Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

The second episode introduced the Shadow Master, who immediately showed disgust at his underlings’ failure by magically bonding Willy to a giant mural of punished souls. Abobo tried to run for it, but succumbed to the same fate. The two would remain in that mural for the rest of the series.

While there was a fighting game released based off of the Double Dragon cartoon, Abobo wasn’t part of the roster. It was just as well. Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls was a really bad game and Abobo had bigger things on the horizon.

Abobo was about to go Hollywood!

In 1994, Imperial Entertainment Group released the Double Dragon movie, a total cheesefest that couldn’t make back its $8 million budget. But Robert Patrick’s scenery-chewing main villain made the movie almost watchable. The story takes place in a version of Los Angeles that’s a cross between The Warriors and No Man’s Land from the Batman comics. Billy and Jimmy are teens who get roped into a plot that involves two dragon-shaped necklaces that form an all-power medallion when put together.

Initially, Nils Allen Stewart plays the gang leader Bo Abobo. As head of the Mohawk Gang, he’s there to act all intimidating in a goofy ’90s bully sort of way, but he really doesn’t actually do much. He takes part in a car chase and teases a fight scene, but nothing happens.

Then, the villain Koga Shuko transforms him into a literal steroid freak with some experimental machine. From there on out, Abobo is played by Henry Kingi in a bloated, rubber suit. Despite being a muscle golem at this point, Abobo STILL doesn’t actually fight anyone and is instead kidnapped by Power Corps.

Abobo eventually sees what he looks like in the mirror. Broken over what he’s been transformed into, he turns on Koga and…still doesn’t fight anyone. He just gives Power Corps some advice to help turn the tide against the bad guys. At the end of the movie, he asks the Lee Brothers if they could be buddies and recklessly drives their car.

Yeah, it’s…almost something. Not the awfulness of Super Mario Bros, but not the good-for-the-time quality of Mortal Kombat. It’s also not quite as fun-bad as the Street Fighter movie, but it does share one major similarity to it.

Much like Street Fighter, the Double Dragon movie had its own fighting game spinoff. Rather than a one-on-one fighter featuring digitized actors (which was the original idea until it wasn’t deemed viable for the deadline), Technos put together a Neo Geo animated fighter that isn’t so well-known these days due to how run-of-the-mill it was. It looked like your average SNK fighting game, with no real identity of its own. The game was released for arcade, Neo Geo CD, and PlayStation.

The 1995 fighting game was loosely based on the movie’s plot and featured some FMV clips. Showing up from the movie are Billy Lee, Jimmy Lee, Marian, Shuko, and Abobo. The rest of the roster is made up of original characters, though Technos did redesign Burnov, the Big Van Vader-looking boss character from Double Dragon II: The Revenge. Abobo more closely resembles his initial, more human-looking form from the movie, complete with mohawk, although he’s cartoonishly big in the game. Fortunately, he occasionally transforms into his blobby, tumor-like mutant form during certain moves and winposes.

His ending in the game features him eating a lot of meat at a restaurant, demanding to eat meat so rough that it’ll make his teeth bleed. Heh. And Roger Ebert said video games aren’t art.

Read more

Games

Double Dragon and Kunio-kun: Retro Bundle Coming Soon

By Rob Leane

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Double Dragon 4: Story & Multiplayer Modes Detailed

By Matthew Byrd

After the inexplicable crossover, animated series, failed movie, and fighting game tie-ins, Double Dragon as a franchise was finally spent. As the arcade scene died down in the late ’90s, the side-scrolling beat ‘em up disappeared for a time, and it would be a little while before nostalgia for it would kick in.

Fortunately, there was still some juice left in the fighting game genre, and in 2002 the Neo Geo had just enough time left before SNK’s hardware line was discontinued. The company Evoga developed what was, for a time, meant to be a Double Dragon fighting game, but ultimately the team wasn’t able to secure the rights and was forced to make the game with a knockoff cast of characters. The result was Rage of the Dragons, a tag-team fighting game featuring Billy Lewis, Jimmy Lewis, and Abubo…

Abubo does not have a tag partner and is instead a mid-boss so powerful that it takes two opponents to stop him. He’s depicted as a low-level mob boss with a ponytail, sunglasses, pink tank top, and overly-long, muscular arms. It’s a decent enough redesign of the original, but…Abubo? That’s the best they could come up with?

As for the official Double Dragon, it made its comeback a year later. Double Dragon Advance for the Game Boy Advance took the original arcade version, updated the graphics just enough, added more stages, enemies, and attacks, turning this installment into a souped-up take on the classic. This of course meant the return of the real Abobo!

2012 would be a banner year for the musclebound henchman. Since 2002, I-Mockery’s Roger Barr had been trying to develop an Abobo-based fangame, and in early 2012, the free-to-play masterpiece Abobo’s Big Adventure was released to the public and we were better for it.

Using 8-bit graphics, the game follows Abobo as he searches for his kidnapped son Aboboy. Each level is based on a different NES title and features a dizzying amount of Easter eggs. There’s a Double Dragon level, underwater Super Mario Bros. level, Urban Champ, Legend of Zelda, Balloon Fight, Pro Wrestling, Mega Man, Contra, and finally Punch-Out. The game is an absolute blast, especially for anyone who grew up with the NES and features such whacked out moments as:

Abobo mating with the mermaid from Goonies 2, which gives him a forcefield powerup made up of Abobo/mermaid hybrid babies, one of which begs for death!

An Abobo vs. Amazon wrestling match that includes the summoning of Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Roddy Piper, and Undertaker assists in the form of Pro Wrestling sprites.

Taking on Krang’s giant robot body with Kirby in the abdominal area.

An incredibly long and over-the-top ending that gets extremely and laughably violent. If you’ve ever wanted to see a muscular child drink blood from the Shredder’s dismembered arm, this game is for you!

In terms of OFFICIAL nostalgia, 2012 also saw the release of Double Dragon Neon for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (and later PC). Using 3D graphics, the game was a modern update of Double Dragon’s playstyle while playing up the 1980s aesthetic. It was a lot more ridiculous than the original series. In fact, it’s more in line with the Battletoads crossover since this game also lets you launch Abobo into the deep recesses of outer space to die.

This game also gave us the first – and, as of this writing, only – polygon Abobo. This time a towering, hunched over brute with lots of spiked armbands. All that AND the mustache!

But of those two 2012 releases, Abobo’s Big Adventure is surprisingly the better game in terms of its portrayal of the big man, as it solidified his status as nostalgic beat em up icon.

In 2017, Arc System Works put together Double Dragon IV for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Rather than emulate the arcade original’s aesthetic, the game took its art style from the NES games. That meant the return of the classic NES Abobo as not only a recurring enemy but an unlockable playable character. Double Dragon IV actually lets you play through the story mode as various enemy characters, but honestly, who else would you pick in that situation? Well, maybe Burnov.

Sadly, playing as Abobo in Double Dragon IV leads to a non-ending. I know you can’t improve on “Abobo punches Little Mac’s head off so hard it transcends time and space,” but at least TRY!

Around the same time, another game tried to play up Abobo’s ironic/iconic status. River City Ransom: Underground was released for the PC in early 2017. The River City Ransom series has always had ties to Double Dragon, but this high school brawler goes the extra mile by putting Abobo on a big pedestal. First off, he’s the school principal. If you attack any of your teachers, you’re sent to Principal Abobo’s office to suffer a serious slap on the wrist, shoulder, jaw, spine, etc. Sometimes he’ll even enter classrooms by punching holes through the brick walls, all while shirtless and talking like the Hulk.

Even better than that? Abobo’s not only the school principal but the Mayor of River City! No wonder everyone’s always kicking the shit out of each other! God bless Mayor Mike Haggar for being a true trendsetter.

The Double Dragon/River City connection only grew stronger when 2019 brought the absolutely must-play River City Girls. As the story goes, River City Ransom heroes Kunio and Riki have been kidnapped, so their badass girlfriends Misako and Kyoko go on a violent rampage to save them. Early in the game, while Misako and Kyoko fighting in a classroom, there’s a projector playing a short film about a boy learning about puberty.

It just so happens that the kid in the video is being taught by Abobo, who thanks puberty for his monstrous size and strength. This, my friends, is foreshadowing, as Abobo shows up later in the game as a boss.

Misako and Kyoko confront Abobo about their missing boyfriends, and Abobo admits that he isn’t sure whether or not he kidnapped them since he kidnaps a LOT of people. They throw down and we’re treated to the most powerful take on Abobo yet, considering the length of his life bar. Once defeated, Abobo admits that he has nothing to do with the missing boyfriends, but gives the heroes a lead by talking about his side job as security for an upcoming concert.

In 2020, Arc System Works released a collection for PS4 and Switch called Double Dragon & Kunio-Kun Retro Brawler Bundle. It collects 18 8-bit games, including the three NES Double Dragon games, River City Ransom, and all the old spinoffs from the River City Ransom universe. And who’s on the cover?

Yes, despite technically being in one game out of 18, and not even being the final boss of any of them, Abobo gets a major spot on the cover of this huge collection among the games’ hero characters. Finally, the world understands that Abobo is a star. Now we just need Abobo to appear in Guilty Gear Strive and then we’ll really be cooking.

The post How Double Dragon’s Abobo Became a Beat em up Legend appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[xwaywardhuntress]

Family Don’t End In Blood (Part Three)

Summary: Jack out of the box and the truth shall set you free.

Pairings: Dean x reader

Warnings: Season 14 finale spoilers. Swearing. Mentions of killing.

Word Count: 2200+

Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural. This is fanfiction only. Please do not redistribute my writings on other sites, horrible or not. Thanks!

Part One, Two

Y/N sent a text to Sam to let him and Dean know she was with Cas and they would be checking out another option to re-locate Jack again. The fact that Dean hadn’t called her multiple times to check in on her since she left meant his goal to stop Jack was consuming him or he was just being a stubborn Winchester upset with her as he knew she was upset with him.

Sam replied to her text: ‘Okay. We’ll be checking out Mirror Universe. Stay safe and call me if you two run into any trouble. Or call Dean too, even if he’s being stubborn right now.’

Y/N smiled at Sam’s text, he was always the more reasonable brother. Starting the engine of her car, Y/N looked over at the angel, “Alright, where too?”

“To hell.” Castiel stated very seriously. “Just head straight in that direction.” He pointed to the opposite side of the road that did not lead back to the bunker.

“Right. Taking the highway to hell. Literally.” Y/N scrunched her nose as she pressed on the gas pedal. Castiel didn’t have an exact address to go too, so instead he acted as a navigation system telling her when they would need to turn soon. Eventually, the Huntress and the angel found themselves in an alleyway with one door that looked like what underground gangs would use, the sliding peep-hole door included.

Getting out of the car, Y/N placed her hands in her jacket pocket as she looked at the old building, “So this is hell?” She frowned, nodding her head. “Not as bad as I thought it would be. Missing the whole hell’s fire, but I can’t complain.”

Cas narrowed his eyes at her, not amused by her sarcasm. “No, this is not hell. This is one of the doors to hell.”

“Exactly how many doors of hell are there?” Y/N asked her thoughts aloud as the angel ignored her and walked to the front of the door, knocking on it.

For a small moment, Y/N felt a wave of change hit her. It wasn’t a drastic change, but she had felt something nonetheless.

As the peep-hole slid open on the door, black eyes greeted the angel. “Can I help you, Castiel?” A female voice spoke.

“I’d like to enter hell to see the cage that Lucifer was trapped in without Y/N.” Cas replied, a bit surprised by his straightforwardness.

Y/N’s eyes widened at his sentence. “Hold it! You’re not going by yourself. Don’t try to pull a Dean on me now.”

Before Castiel could respond to Y/N, the female demon spoke, “No can do.” And then the peep-hole closed.

The angel looked behind him back at his friend, “I’m going into hell alone, Y/N.” He said firmly as he turned his attention back onto the door and gave it a harder knock.

The peep-hole opened again. “No angels allowed, sorry.” The female voice stated, closing the peep-hole yet again.

Castiel was beginning to get frustrated, but before he could knock again, Y/N had made her way beside him.

“Let me try. She said no angels allowed, but I’m sure I can work out a deal.” She winked, preparing to knock on the door.

Immediately, Castiel grabbed Y/N’s arm that was about to knock. “No. I told you I’m going alone. You can’t go in your current state.”

“What do you mean in my current state?” The Y/C/H haired huntress questioned. She could see on the angel’s face that he was struggling with something in his mind.

Before he could answer, another voice from behind the two interrupted, “Wow, you guys are so screwed.”

Both Y/N and Cas turned around only to find the one person they thought was long gone. Chuck.

“Chuck? What are y-“ She stopped as the realization hit her. If Chuck was here, then the current situation was Amara bad.

Cas walked towards the deity. “What are you doing here?”

“You called didn’t you?” Chuck answered smirking. “So here I am answering.”

“So it’s that bad?” Y/N couldn’t help but ask aloud, waiting for him to confirm her thoughts as to why he was here.

The higher being gave a sympathetic smile towards her, “Yeah, it’s bad.” He let out a sigh.

Castiel looked between Chuck and Y/N, not fully understanding what they were getting it. “What is bad?” The angel asked concerned.

“Jack.” Chuck responded.

Y/N couldn’t help but start to debate with herself inside her head. Could Jack really be the status of Amara bad? The nephilim was only over a year old and had gone through so much already. Personally, she couldn’t blame him for the things he thought was right or wrong as he should’ve been a baby to begin with and then learning the right from wrong over many years of growth.

“We’ll need the whole gang if we’re going to deal with Jack.” Chuck stated and within a blink of an eye, Castiel and Y/N found themselves with the writer in an office setting. An office setting that was in chaos.

“What the hell is happening here?” Y/N asked as she watched the chaos unfolding.

“The power of truth. Jack wished for everyone to tell the truth from now on. See, this is why people need to lie. It’s good. It keeps the peace.” Chuck answered as he began walking alongside the walls of the office area towards one of the conference rooms.

Y/N and Cas followed behind him before he stopped in front of a specific door. He gestured for Cas to knock. When the door opened, a pair of surprised green eyes followed. One by one, the three of them walked by the older Winchester to enter the conference room in which Sam sat at a table behind a computer screen. When it came to Y/N’s turn to pass, they both shared a look. Y/N’s face showed disappointment while Dean’s face showed a mixture of relief and concern.

Chuck had taken a seat across from the gang. Y/N made her way beside Sam to see what he had been looking up and Castiel remained by the door by Dean.

Once the door shut, Dean immediately turned to Chuck, “Where have you been?”

Chuck brought out a guitar and began strumming it. “Funny story, it reminds me of a song.” He began playing a tune when he felt the guitar gripped away from him.

It was Dean. Out of frustration, the older Winchester took the guitar and started smashing it against the ground. When he seemed to get most of his frustration out of his system, Dean looked back over at Chuck. “Answer the damn question!” He shouted.

“DON’T.” Chuck rebuffed pointing a finger at Dean.

Everyone in the room felt the authority that came with that single word. Y/N could almost see Dean gulp as he was the focus of that energy. For a moment, silence filled the conference room. No one wanted to speak up after Chuck spoke.

The deity let out a sigh eventually, “Sorry about that. How about we go to a more comfortable space?” Within a blink of an eye, the group found themselves back at the bunker. “Now that’s better.”

Everyone in the room all looked at each other, still in silence. Sam was still seated, just at the war room table now. Everyone else still stood at the same distances.

“C’ mon guys, it’s all good.” Chuck smiled. “Alright, I’ve been everywhere and nowhere, to the edge of the universe and beyond, to answer your earlier question.” He looked over at Dean.

“What about Amara? Weren’t you two off on a therapeutic sibling trip or something?” Y/N decided to speak out, which caused Dean to look over at her and the rest of the room to feel a bit more relaxed compared to earlier.

“I’ve always liked you, Y/N. You’ll do great.” Chuck praised her, sending her a wink.

The last part of his comment confused her as she raised an eyebrow. She’d do great for what? Her eyes caught Dean’s as he seemed to be staring at her till Chuck spoke again.

“Amara’s been good. We’re doing much better. She doesn’t want to kill me anymore, for one. She’s in Reno. Saw Bruce Springsteen live, it was great. Was going to see him again, but then all this happened.” Chuck rambled as he turned on the radio from where he sat. The radio spat out secrets and confirmed conspiracies theories, such as the Queen of England really being a lizard. Chuck turned it back off after not too long as he stood up from his seat. “Look, I’m all for free will, but when things get really bad, that’s when I’ll step in. Like now.”

“Can you fix it?” Y/N asked

“Oh, the stop lying part? Sure.” Chuck snapped his fingers. “There, fixed.”

For a quick second, Y/N felt another wave of change hit her, similar to what she had felt earlier with Castiel. Had it been the power of truth that she had felt come and go? But how? And why?

“Really?” Sam finally found his voice to speak.

“I’m god, Sam. Yeah, really.” Chuck bragged as he continued talking, “I can’t fix one thing and that’s where you all come in.” He placed his hands together in front of him.

Finally, Dean spoke, “Jack.”

Chuck nodded his head, “That’s right.”

“What exactly can we do to stop him? We tried putting him in the Ma’lak box and he blew right out of that.” Dean described the events not too long ago.

“That Ma’lak box was created by you, not by me, Dean.” Chuck stated as he gestured at the table that Sam had been sitting at. “That should solve our problems.”

When everyone looked at the table, there was a gun.

“I don’t understand. I called you so you could restore Jack’s soul back.” Castiel blurted out, realizing where the conversation was going to go with the appearance of this new weapon.

“Look, souls are tricky.” Chuck rubbed the back of his head. “Jack’s soul is long gone and creating a new one, it’s complicated.”

In Y/N’s opinion, it almost sounded like Chuck was just being lazy and finding the easy way out, which right now Dean wouldn’t question the consequences as long as it meant getting rid of what he currently thought was the monster. She noticed Dean took the initiative to check out this new weapon.

When he found no bullets, he looked over at Chuck with a questioning look. “It’s empty.”

“This doesn’t so much fire bullets as it sends a wave of multi-dimensional energy across a perfectly balanced quantum link between whoever shooting it and whoever they’re shooting at.” The deity explained.

“A life for a life.” Sam muttered aloud.

“Are you serious right now?!” Y/N couldn’t help but interrupt. She had already been expecting that they were all going to lose Jack from the direction this conversation was going, a thought that saddened her deeply. Now she needed to expect to lose Dean? The huntress knew the moment the gun appeared on the table and Dean was the first to grab it, he would volunteer himself to use it on Jack, consequences or no consequences.

“Existence is all about balance, right?” Dark and light, good and evil, chocolate and peanut butter…” Chuck tried to explain.

Sam was also annoyed by this revelation of the results of this new weapon. “Ugh, yeah, ok, Chuck. The point, please?”

“Right…Look, I know it’s not perfect, and I’d do it myself, but, you know, if I bite it, then existence also kind of bites it, so one of you have to do it. Sorry.” The creator shrugged. “I promise It’ll work. It’s in your guy’s blood to save the world.”

Castiel made his way over by Dean as the older Winchester carried the weapon, “Dean, there has to be another way.”

“Well, there’s not. Now I know you don’t like it and I don’t really care. Cause you just heard it from God himself that this...” Dean responded as his eyes were glued to the gun. “…is the only thing that can kill Jack.”

Y/N made her way to stand by Castiel and Dean as well. “Cas’s right. We don’t need to take this route. When we were dealing with Michael, Billie had told you there was only one option, but look at how that turned out! We got rid of Michael and you’re not at the bottom of some ocean. Hell, it’s thanks to Jack that Michael is gone!”

As she spoke, she could see the frustration building up within Dean. He had already made his decision. It was a lost cause to persuade him otherwise.

“If you both can’t get on board with this, then walk away now.” Dean suggested as he cocked the gun.

The angel took the older Winchester’s words to heart and walked away, leaving the bunker.

Y/N, on the other hand, fisted her hands together and then released one as she slapped Dean across the face. “You’re dead to me already.” She spat as she turned and headed to their shared room.

The room fell silent again as she left.

The younger Winchester looked at his older brother who didn’t seem too phased by what had just happened. Despite wanting to leave as Cas and Y/N did, Sam didn’t. He knew the same thing Y/N did, Dean would sacrifice himself to kill Jack. Right now, Sam might’ve been the only person left willing to try to talk Dean out of it.

Without any eyes on him, Chuck grinned at the current situation.

Next: Part Four

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[eturni]

Day 20 - Reindeer

Prompt from @drawlight‘s advent calender prompt list https://drawlight.tumblr.com/post/188869931294/aziraphale-crowley-for-half-an-hour-youve-been

Today is reindeer, featuring Sapmi (Lapland) the northern lights and two supernatural beings very much in love.

Crowley was bundled up in four layers of brightly coloured clothing and still slightly shivering against the cold. Aziraphale watched from a respectable distance as he spoke animatedly with one of the locals. Unsurprisingly the demon had made friends whilst he was out here in the middle of what was basically the Arctic by another name.

He smiled fondly as a couple of children rushed around his legs, using them as a makeshift barrier between each other before being sent skittering off by the adult. He really didn’t think Crowley was even consciously aware of the absent hand that brushed snow from one of the children’s hair as she rushed past.

There was more talking, leaning in and posturing on Crowley’s part alongside some occasional gestures in the angel’s direction. At one point he thought he saw Crowley pointedly look at the man over the tops of his sunglasses.

He clutched at the mistletoe in his hand. He had sought out Crowley here. He had offered up peace for the season. Whatever temptation Crowley was attempting to wind around the man it was not his to interfere with now.

It didn’t stop him almost tying the poor sprig in knots with nervous fingers.

He caught himself almost breathing a sigh of relief when Crowley turned to him. He might have if the demon wasn’t smirking. Whatever was happening Crowley was far too satisfied with himself and that had a way of putting Aziraphale on edge and setting his unnecessary heart at a tripping beat. He didn’t have time to worry about that too much as Crowley beckoned him over.

“Angel, got a surprise for you.” The grin, if possible, got wider, a slight tilt to Crowley’s head that was impossibly endearing and ought not look so at home on a demon’s face.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be telling me much about it then… or why you were trying to influence this gentleman here?”

“Mmm? No miracles here, you know that.”

Aziraphale nodded slowly but fidgeted with the ends of his clothing regardless. “Perhaps not but you looked at him like… Well- I suppose I just haven’t seen you not using your glasses in a rather long time.” He admitted, a little of the bluster leaving him.

There was the soft sound of bells and an even cantering and Aziraphale turned to see the man walking back with a couple of reindeer hitched onto a sled. Crowley’s slightly sheepish look didn’t move.

Read the rest on AO3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/21638803/chapters/52226071 or:

“Little play on his good nature. And the human penchant for being superstitious.” He shrugged a shoulder, moving off to look at the reindeer in the eye. It reared back a little, nervous, and Aziraphale moved in to soothe it automatically. He patted at the great, muscular neck with firm pats of his hand and was gratified to see a calm pass over it.

He tutted when he caught the creature’s eyes. There was a soft, almost golden sheen to the brown there when Aziraphale looked close enough. Perhaps yellow. It was difficult to catch in the near darkness of the Sapmi lands but it was most definitely there.

“Crowley, what exactly did you-”

“Come on angel, it’s almost night.” The demon rolled his eyes, gesturing towards the sled and moving to get on himself.

Aziraphale wanted to argue but the poor creature was already getting agitated with a demon looming behind and he knew it would cause such a fuss if he didn’t move soon. With a long-suffering sigh he stepped up beside Crowley and took the reins with a set to his mouth that dared the other to challenge him. “How can you even tell, Crowley? It’s completely dark regardless. I hope you can properly direct me to where we’re going.”

The demon scoffed at that and shook his head. “With all this snow? The moon’ll be enough when it’s up. Not my fault they get no sun this time of year. Design flaw if you ask me but the planet’s weren’t <i>my</i> doing.”

This successfully dragged Aziraphale into an argument around ineffability and reasons for these things, Crowley and Aziraphale knew from the way Crowley started to relax that he thought Aziraphale had forgotten.

Silly boy.

“So why exactly did you feel the need to show off your eyes for the privilege of taking me off somewhere even more secluded than the sub-arctic?”

“Ngk.” Crowley declared intelligently, straightening up all angles and tense muscles once again. “I- Well- Easy, it was just easy is all.”

“Yes...” Aziraphale nodded doubtfully. “Easy. Because of the superstitions.”

“Well, not superstitions exactly, just- I’m taking you off with me angel.” He shrugged a single shoulder as if that was explanation enough.

Aziraphale waited patiently. Waited as Crowley tried to change the subject. Waited until he finally sighed and gave in, much to the angel’s delight. “Look, when it gets to the spring their eyes go blue is all. Like, proper heaven not hiding in your corporation blue, it’s a little freaky. Told him it was serendipity or fate or something. Old friend hunting me down here Weird eye stuff. Lapped it right up. That and a promise to make it look like Stallo came in the night. Though I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that I’m not actually supposed to drink anyone’s blood.”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow at this but there had been so many stranger things in human rituals and traditions that he let it pass by like snow under reindeer hooves.

“I suppose that’s rather poetic in it’s way. But why reindeer at all? Why go away from the village? Is there a chance hell are nearby?” He could feel his own hand, the one between them, tight on the sprig of mistletoe like a talisman until Crowley shook his head.

There was that smirk again and Aziraphale relaxed just marginally. He was pleased with himself and if Crowley was relaxed they were as safe as they ever could be. “You’ll see. Patience is one of those angelic virtues, yeah?”

It didn’t take long for Aziraphale to start to see splashes of green over the snow. It looked like light and indeed he did realise that he was seeing more. That there was some sort of light on the horizon. For a wild moment Aziraphale’s mind raced to aliens before remembering the actual facts of the planet he called home.

His mind barely caught up to remind him of the magneto-sphere and solar flares and the divine protection of earth when they crested a ridge.

The breath he didn’t need caught in his throat. He made some sort of sound but was too lost in the beauty of what was above him to even care.

The sky was alight in greens and blues that rushed over one another in twisting patterns. They moved in slow, shifting, serpentine shapes and brushed against the heavens in a way that made him ache to be up there too.

If he looked closely enough he could see the greater shape of the fall and shift of the light; could see how it was pressed and made by the radioactive flares trying their best to pulse across the surface of the planet against anything that would stand in the way.

“It’s beautiful.” He breathed softly, hot prickles behind his eyes and, oh, how he wished the other angels could understand half of the beauty down here at earth’s level.

There was a vague hum of assent from Crowley, so obviously self-satisfied.

Aziraphale watched in rapt attention as a whip-line of bright green light slowly diverged like the start of a lightning fractal. It remained two, diverging from the centre line and draping across the perpetual night-sky like a huge set of protective wings, glorious and ethereal over the entire earth below.

There was a place in his chest that expanded like he could reach the sky from here. There was a pull of muscle at his back singing in sympathy with the sky; at the need to be up there too. Instead he took a deep breath and turned to Crowley with a smile that was as much water as brightness.

Only to find the other staring at him unabashedly and with that wonderful thing in his eyes that they didn’t talk about.

His own smile turned fond as he let out a slightly wet chuckle. He placed his hand on the front of the sled, just far enough over that the tips of his fingers could graze absently over Crowley’s hand. There were only the reindeer out here to see them, after all. He didn’t miss the slight flush it brought to the demon’s cheeks.

“Well, colour me surprised my dear. It may actually be better than trimming up at home. Truly stunning.”

“Yeah, the view’s not half bad at all angel.” Crowley grinned back, all warmth and softness despite the light casting the hollows and lines of him into sharp relief.

“No, not at all.” He agreed, lights, reindeer and everything else all but forgotten as his hand slid just a little further to press warm and true atop Crowley’s own.

[luciferiswriting]

Winged 5 #6

Title: A Step Forward.

Author: luciferiswriting

Characters: Angel!Reader, Lucifer, Chuck (God), Dean, Sam

Words: 2,881

Warnings: Season 11 spoilers, slight abusive, angst?

Tags: @evyiione  @molethemollie  @archer-whovian-violinist  @supernatural2202

Summary: Facing the challenge of getting a father and a son to talk to each other seems to be a bit of struggle, but at least feelings get out and about, right?

A/N: Italics – flashback/memory

Masterlist

“Lucifer! What happened!?” I yelled over the crowd of angels, as I tried to push my way to the front, only to be stopped by the guards that held the crowds back. “Let me through! Lucifer!” I screamed as they pushed him through the doors. As soon as he was out of sight, angels were ordered to go back to their business, but I couldn’t leave without knowing. Lucifer was my friend.

“Why can’t I see him?” I questioned the guard.

“Because Lucifer has been sent to be exiled. Orders contain no visitors are allowed other than those who are authorised.” He stated, not even looking at me.

“Who’s orders?” I probed for more information.

“God’s.”

I wandered the bunker’s halls aimlessly, memories taking the chance to fill the emptiness in my head. Memories of the day I lost everyone. And only now, was the opportunity of getting back everyone I had ever loved, a possibility. A long shot, but I knew of hope. My brothers and sisters might not know any emotion, but it is one thing I did know of, and have known since my days of being a fledgling. It’s how I got into most of my troubles.

Coming out of one memory, I noticed I had made my way to the kitchen, leaning against the entry way I noticed I could hear the faint music that Lucifer was blasting. God was making pancakes, whilst the Winchesters sat at the table behind him. Earlier hadn’t gone too well between Lucifer and him, hence the current result.

“Talk to him.” Sam urged, trying to get the two celestial beings to sort things out.

“Won’t do any good.”

“Why not?” Sam questioned further.

“Because I can’t give him what he wants.” God admitted.

“And what’s that?” Dean questioned

“What everyone wants. My sister, my children, you humans – an apology. A big, wet “I’m sorry”.” God answered.

“Well, so give it to him. It’s not like he’s asking for a weapon, or for Hell, or for Heaven. He’s asking for words.” Dean stated as if it was the most obvious and simple thing.

“He can’t say he’s sorry if he isn’t.” I joined in on their conversation, causing God to sigh as he turned around, whilst Sam and Dean glanced back at me. I walked forward to stand in between the two brothers but behind as God placed a plate of pancakes in front of them both.

“What he wants an apology for, I did it for humanity. For the world.” God stated

“So you say.” I muttered, but he chose to ignore me. However, I didn’t miss the quick glance I got from Dean.

“Look Lucifer wants what everybody wants: Amara gone. Okay? Let’s just give him a little time to cool off.” God finished off by taking a drink from his mug that had ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ to which I scowled at.

“Okay, well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but a little time is not something that we have. The end is frickin’ nigh.” Dean exclaimed, which caused God to nod his head in thought, but then looked up to me and asked.

“Want some pancakes?” causing me to scrunch my face further.

“Are they coming with a side of angel poison?” I mocked.

“I’m trying Y/N.” God sighed as gave me defeated look, too which I scoffed and shook my head.

“I’ll go talk to Lucifer. But I’m not doing it for you.” I pointed at him to emphasize my point, before leaving the kitchen. As I turned the corner I could hear Dean speak.

“She seems to have a bone or two to pick with you as well.”

“She’s always had something to say, that’s for sure. Lucifer will listen to her.” God murmured back.

As I made my way down the halls, the music grew louder and louder until I found the door it came from. The door was locked shut with an archangel’s grace, not even I could overpower it. I hesitated, just looking at the door, then collecting myself, I knocked on the door softly with three chaps and then placed my palm against the door, whilst resting my head against it.

“Lucifer?” I asked timidly through the door. “Let me in.” The music was turned down a bit, still loud but not vibrating the door as it previously was.

“Why should I?” I could hear the venom dripping from his words.

“It’s just me Luce.” I whispered, knowing he would hear. “Only me.” I said even quieter, but earned the soft click of the door unlocking. Hesitantly I pushed the door open and slipped in and shut the door fully behind me, as I noticed I was being watched from the end of the corridor. As soon as the door shut I felt the door lock in place by the overpowering grace. I turned round and saw Lucifer sitting on the edge of the bed with his arms crossed over his chest. His trench coat discarded behind him.

I took in every feature of him, and simply to put it, the vessel did not suit him. The scowl upon his face looked out of place on this vessel.

“Is there a reason you’re here?” He asked impatiently.

“Do I need a reason to be here?” I questioned back. He stood up, taking steps closer to me.

“It’s not like you kept in touch.” He spat at me.

“It’s not like I had a choice.” I murmured, embarrassed of my lack of confidence around the angel. He continued to study me, taking in everything.

“Your vessel suits you. Looks just like the troublemaker I once knew.” He picked up the conversation, trying to gage a reaction from me. I gave a slow nod in recognition of the compliment.

“Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for you. It’s weird seeing you wear my brother…” I managed to gain eye contact. “Is… Is he still in there?” I asked worried about how two celestials could share a vessel. I didn’t think it was possible.

“He sits and watches television in the kitchen bunker. The only place for good reception apparently.” He answers. I simply nod, looking back down to the ground. To which he tentatively raises a hand to my chin and gently lifting my gaze to meet his.

“Why didn’t you just hold your tongue? None of this would have happened if you had just waited for me.” I whimpered.

“To then only have you in my position? To have things a whole lot worse than they are? To maybe even, have you dead, out of reach forever?” A hint of small emotion in his words. “I’d do everything the same, if I had to.” He finished, slowly removing his hand from my chin to tuck a stray hair behind my ear and then pressed his forehead against mine, closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply. “I’d do it for you.” He whispered so quietly I nearly missed it.

“Why?” I questioned him, but he only stepped away and faced the back wall, returning to his stiff manner. His walls went up as quick as his demeanour had changed.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does Lucifer.” I proceed to move closer and place a hand on his arm as I move myself to be in front of him. His eyes watching my movements. “Everything matters. Tell me.” I probed. His eyes flickered between mine for a small time before, he let out a breath and closed his eyes once again.

“Because, you’re my only friend.” He opened his eyes, showing that he felt exposed as he looked at me. A familiar warmth spread through me as he said them very familiar words, I pulled him into a hug, my arms wrapping around his neck.

“And you are mine.” I replied whispering into his ear. Cautiously he wrapped his arms around my waste and returned the hug. “How much would you do for me?” I asked after a bit, but still hugging him. He pulled back to look me in the eye.

“Anything.” He said absolute, but then furrowed his brows as he asked me why.

“Talk to him.”

“Talk to who?” irritation flooded his eyes as he asked me, I tilted my head. He already knew who I meant. His arms suddenly left me as he took a step back and growled a no.

“Lucifer. Just talk to him. Tell him how you feel. Now is your chance to get through to him.” I push.

“And you think he’ll actually listen!?” He yelled.

“Make him listen!” I yelled back. He glared at me, looking confused and betrayed.

“He’s got into your head somehow. He’s converted you to his side.” He seethed.

“I’m asking you to talk to him, for your own benefit! Never think, that I would change to his side. After everything that has happened!” I fumed. How dare he think I was trying to manipulate him for his Father’s benefit?

“Oh, now you bring up everything that’s happened?” He mocked me. “Fine. Let’s talk about everything that’s happened. You seriously think I don’t know what you’ve been up to all these eons?” he taunted. “You think I don’t know you’ve always been in contact with Daddy!?” He took threatening steps towards me, but I stood my ground.

“Oh I suppose you think I planned all of this alongside him. Huh? That I planned for you to kill Gabriel! That I planned your fall back into the cage!?” I shouted. “I even planned you getting taken by Amara and her putting your work to shame.” I shouted in his face, causing him to grab me by throat and pin me against the wall, inches away from the floor.

“You whore!” he hissed. “I bet you even let him fuck you. Didn’t you!? ADMIT IT!!!” He screamed in my face. With all the energy I could, I swung my leg and hit him where it hurt him the most, causing him to stumble backwards and drop me in the process. I forced myself up, catching my breath. Looking at him I seethed.

“I’m not asking you to talk to him, because he asked me to.” I glared. “I’m asking you to fix your relationship with him for your own benefit. Because you need him, more than you care to admit, but it’s obvious to everyone.” Hesitating for a mere second I took slow steps towards him and crouched to his level on the floor. “In fact. If there wasn’t bigger things at stake, I wouldn’t even be asking this of you, because of everything he let happen to you, but unfortunately the Darkness is a threat to us all. And the only way we have any chance of defeating her, is if you and Dad, sort your mess out. Otherwise we might as well just let her know where we are right now.”

Lucifer sat there, breathing heavily, staring at me with seriousness, over the passing time he realised. What was said earlier, was out of anger and we both knew that, but he knew I was right about him talking with God. Eventually, he agreed to talk with him, but made it clear he wasn’t happy about it as he followed me through the halls to the telescope room. As we entered God sat in one of the two chairs as the Winchester’s leaned against the wall in conversation, however that had stopped as we entered.

The Winchesters looked at me in concern, but I ignored them as I glanced over my shoulder to Lucifer with a scowl, to which he approached the other chair begrudgingly and took a seat, sending glares to God as he done so. Nothing was said as they stared at each other. I could see the Winchester’s felt awkward, and with an aggravated sigh I approached the space between them, looking at both of them as they continued to stare towards each other.

“One of you is going to have to speak first.” I growled lowly, fed up with it all.

“Chuck, you did say you’d talk.” Dean stuttered, trying to help move things along, but still nothing was said.

“Him first.” Lucifer rested his leg on his other, placing his hands in the middle of his lap. “I’m the one who’s owed an explanation.” He continued, but only received a sigh from God as if he expected Lucifer to say that.

“Okay, let’ try ‘I feel’ statements.” Dean suggested, both me and Sam gave Dean a questioning look to which he replied “Doctor Phil” furthermore I raised an eyebrow. He didn’t seem to be the type of person to watch something like that, more action and gore maybe. The brothers then moved over to the steps that led to the telescope, taking a seat as they gestured for the two to make a start on their… statements.

“I am… sorry? That you feel that I betrayed you.” God started but gave a quick sceptical look to the brothers before continuing. “That I acted without cause.” Lucifer started to shake his head, as I furrowed in anger and confusion of where he was going with this. “I’m sorry that you can’t see you gave me no choice.” He finished and turned to the boys. “I’m good” he shrugged. I couldn’t help but look at God bewildered by what he had just said. He thought they were acceptable statements?

“You heard that, right?” Lucifer had asked the Winchester’s

“We all know that you are God, but could you maybe be a little less ‘Lordly’?” Sam asked lightly to God.

“But I am – I am the Lord.” God said as if everything was obvious.

“Wow.” I muttered, shaking my head at the same time Lucifer spoke “There he goes.” Rubbing his hands, eyes wide.

“I did what I had to do!” God exclaimed. “To create the world, I had to lock Amara away. And when the mark corrupted you, and I saw you posed a threat to humankind, I did the same with you.”

“No, you betrayed me. You gave me the Mark to lock her away, and when it changed me – when it did what the Mark inevitably does – you threw me away.” Lucifer stated.

“No, son. The Mark… You always cast a jaundiced glance at human. The Mark didn’t change you. It just made you more of what you already were.” God argued back.

“What I was, was your son. Your child.” Lucifer leaned forward, the anger coming off him was growing more and more.

“Why should I put you first above all others?” God demanded, his own anger fighting against Lucifer’s. My eyes grew wide with fear, but Lucifer leaned back and turned to face the Winchester’s.

“You have any idea what it’s like to argue with your father when your father is God?” he chuckled. Sam held the look of a kicked puppy whilst Dean still seemed serious, but both of them seemed to understand where Lucifer was coming from. “Everything is a tautology with you. Everything is, ‘because I told you so.’ Everything’s ‘It had to be done.’” Lucifer finished looking back at God.

“Pretty sure that’s all fathers.” Dean put in. I looked to him with a glare.

“Okay, fine” Lucifer moved in his seat. “Big picture, as God. You did what you had to do. But little picture? You sucked at being a dad.”

“Okay, maybe I didn’t handle everything perfectly. But tell me: could I have kept humankind safe with you on the board?” Lucifer glared back at our father, hurt and anger never was a good mix, especially for Lucifer. “I know about your little bid to replace me with the angels. Okay, ‘New God,’ what would you have done about you?” He finished. Anger grew through me at the last statement.

“That is not the point.” I hissed glaring at him, only to receive the exact same expression of anger and disappointment he wore with Lucifer.

“I can’t believe I’m actually about to say this, but… Lucifer is right.” Same piped up, all attention was focused on him as he continued. “All he wants is an apology, and you’re too concerned about being right to give him. But apologies aren’t always about being right. Sometimes they’re just about apologizing.”

“Yeah, and the great thing about apologies is you don’t even have mean ‘em. Y’know, I lie and tell Sam I’m sorry all the time.” Dean added, to which Sam glared at him.

“Not helping the situation.” I told him as he mutters a ‘sorry’.

“See? That’s. Heh.” Dean brightened, but shrunk as he got to the end.

“Right, that’s enough.” God waved his hand, and suddenly I was standing beside a chess table with Sam and Dean occupying the two chairs. Sam and Dean looked around confused and slightly disoriented.

“You’re clearly not very good with words are you, Dean?” I asked the Winchester, he looked at me with his confused expression, whilst Sam stood up to look over the banister.

Dean didn’t answer, just threw me a glare before he stood up to join his brother. Rolling my eyes I looked over the chess board, but glanced over to the Winchester’s when I heard Dean speak.

“So… We good?”

[shirtlesssammy]

The End: 5x04 Recap

Welcome to the episode that launched a thousand fanworks! There’s so much hinted and untold story between the present and future in this episode. It’s no wonder it’s a favorite for many people to rewatch, and a popular platform from which to launch stories.

Now:

The brothers are still on their own paths towards the apocalypse, and Dean, done with his super platonic buddy time with Cas, pulls up to a motel to crash for the night. A street preacher pesters Dean about God’s plan. Once in his motel room, Dean chats with Cas about the Colt. Cas has a lead on the gun but Dean needs to sleep. Cas is suspicious. God, he’s cute here.

Dean’s phone rings again. This time it’s Sam. Sam is Lucifer’s vessel. Dean acts indifferent and jaded to their current reality. Sam wants back in. Dean gives Sam his sob story of how they don’t work together - they’re weaker when they’re together; they’re better off apart. He says goodbye to his brother, and any hope of stopping the apocalypse.

The next morning, Dean awakens to a spring mattress under him, no cell coverage, and an eerily empty post-apocalyptic world.

Dean wanders the streets which are dirty, derelict, and devoid of humans. In an alleyway, he finds a little girl and asks, “Are you hurt?”

She’s hurt, but more like hurt in the brain hurt, and she lunges at Dean like a rabid zombie. Dean punches the little girl (and we cheered.) It’s only then that he sees the words “Croatoan” spray painted on a wall.

Just then the local Croatoan street gang makes an appearance. Dean takes off with them in hot pursuit. Dean runs into a fence, his fate seemingly sealed, but unknown forces appear and open gunfire, blasting “Do You Love Me”. (I love this moment - it’s disjointed but so perfect. Dean is completely clueless at this point -- we we are as well. The music and bullets set this odd tone of military bravado in a topsy-turvy world.) Dean escapes through the fence and sees a quarantine sign:

It’s so weird to think that this episode is 3 years in the past! This show! May it last forever!

Dean hotwires a car and as he’s traveling down the road, Zachariah joins him for a little tête-à-tête. Zach gives Dean the low down on the state of the world in 2014 (not as bad as 2017, amirite?). He also tells Dean he’s going to make him marinate in this hellish nightmare for 3 days. He’s going to learn why he needs to say ‘yes’ to Michael.

Dean heads to Bobby’s. It’s dark and deserted, and he finds Bobby’s wheelchair with bullet holes. He jimmies open the fireplace safe and finds a picture of a group of men - Bobby and Cas included - at a Camp Chitaqua. Dean makes it to camp in the blink of a commercial break, and quickly sees the rusted shell of the Impala. “Oh, Baby, no.” He walks to the third lead inanimate object that drove him from point A to point B, and is knocked out from behind - by himself! Dun-dun-dun!

Dean comes to, chained to a post, with Future!Dean watching him, gun trained on him.

Future!Dean wants an explanation - Dean tells him that Zachariah sent him 5 years into the future. Future!Dean demands our Dean to tell him something only he would know. Dean confesses his time with Rhonda Hurley and her infamous pink, satiny panties. Like, this is possibly the most intimate thing we will ever know about Dean. Much has been made of this moment from us, but at this time, between the two Deans, Future!Dean now knows he’s dealing with himself, and all that comes with it. He tells Dean about the spread of the Croatoan virus, and how the world fell apart once the virus spread two years prior. And he tells Dean, “Heavyweight showdown in Detroit. From what I understand, Sam didn’t make it.” They hadn’t talked in 5 years.

Future!Dean needs to make a Target run, so Dean is going to stay nice and hidden away from the gen pop at Camp Chitaqua. Future!Dean should know himself better, as Dean works himself free with minimal effort.

As a newly free Dean wanders the camp, Chuck finds who he thinks is the camp leader and informs Dean of the camp’s dwindling toilet paper supply, and ponders what they should do before wondering if Dean is supposed to be on a mission. Dean gets to dodge that tricky question, but doesn’t dodge a blow from Risa. It appears he spent the night with Jane, despite his “connection” with Risa. And apropos of nothing, Dean asks if Cas is around. Interesting segue, Dean. Chuck will never guess your train of thought because they all know of your “connection” with Cas already.

Dean heads to Cas’s cabin and finds End!Cas in all his drug fueled, hippy-dippy, orgy-leading, non-labelled beauty. I’m hard pressed to choose a favorite version of Cas, but this is the version I find most interesting. Dean’s a bit nonplussed.

Cas picks up that Dean isn’t the Dean from his time (How does he do that if he’s human now. Insert <we just don’t know gif>) Dean asks for his angelic help, but Cas laughs. “What are you, stoned?” Dean wonders.

“Generally, yeah.” Oh Endverse!Cas, never change.

Future!Dean and his errand crew make it back to camp. They break open the celebratory brewskies (ok, there’s still beer in End!verse? How bad can it be?) Future!Dean then pops a bullet in his fellow comrade’s head before Dean’s warning can prevent it. The others in the crew now see two Deans and Future!Dean admits, “it’s a pretty messed up situation we got going.” (I love the meta on this statement being about Dean and Cas. I mean, the camera does pan and focus on Cas after all.)

Dean and Future!Dean face off in the privacy of the meeting cabin. Future!Dean reveals that Yeager was infected with the Croatoan virus and he’d just performed a mercy killing. In fact, Future!Dean contends, his men were probably more freaked out by the Dean double than by Yeager’s death.

Dean apologizes for interfering in his leadership of the camp and they share a drink while Future!Dean reveals details about the mission they’d just been on. He pulls out the Colt from his duffel bag. After five years of searching, he’s finally ready to kill the Devil.

In the planning cabin the head honchos (Future!Dean, Risa, and Castiel) confer about the attack plan. They’re going to bust into Lucifer’s compound and kill him. Risa is particularly snippy and Future!Dean asks if everything’s okay. Dean helpfully says, “We were in Jane's cabin last night. And, apparently, we and...Risa have a connection.”

Yeah.

Future!Dean pushes the attack plan because he knows the whereabouts of Lucifer. He tortured it out of a demon just last week.

Classic Dialogue Alert

Cas: Our fearless leader, I'm afraid, is all too well schooled in the art of getting to the truth.

Dean: Torture? Oh, so, we're torturing again. No, that's good. Classy.

Cas: [laughs]

Future!Dean: [bitchface]

Cas: What? I like past you.

Oh, you guys. This. Scene. People have written hundreds of thousands of words about Castiel’s familiar sass, and Future!Dean’s harsh despair. Fans have wallowed in the agony of Dean’s fall into darkness and Castiel following him - always following him. Cas may be bitter and damaged but he’s still loyally fighting, regardless. Excuse me. I need to go lie down.

Risa and Castiel head off to assemble the assault team while Dean stays behind with Future!Dean. Dean wants to know why he’s going on the offensive with the team. What if he’s killed? Won’t that kill future him too? Future!Dean believes Zachariah is going to protect him and, under pressure, tells Dean about Sam.

“Sam? I thought he was dead,” Dean says.

“Sam didn’t die in Detroit. He said yes.” Future!Dean drops the truth bomb with a snarl. “You need to see it. The whole damn thing so you can do it different.” And Future!Dean’s proposal? Say “yes” to Michael as soon as Dean gets home. He didn’t say yes to Michael, confident that he’d find a better way. But once the world started going to shit and he tried to say yes he discovered that the angels had retreated back to Heaven and humanity was on their own. He begs Dean to learn from his mistakes and say yes. “But you won’t,” he concludes in despair. “‘Cause I didn’t.”

(“There is no free will,” I weep from my pool of tears on the floor.)

Cut to Dean heading toward the trucks alongside Chuck. Chuck advises Dean to hoard toilet paper like it’s gold. This is always the part of The End I have trouble with now because with Season 11 canon layered on top of it, we have God just hanging out at Camp Chitaqua. He might as well be propped up on a chair eating out of a bag of popcorn and watching the fireworks at the end of the world. It always makes me hate Chuck a little bit, whereas before the God revelation he was considerably more sympathetic to me. I suppose I rewatch and mourn the loss of that neurotic, mostly innocent pulp writer. I do like to think that Chuck’s presence might be what kept Camp Chitaqua a safe haven for so many years. They assumed they were lucky but Chuck was doing a little under-the-table god magic in order to live a more comfortable life. (Natasha: Kicks Chuck in the shins anyway.)

Dean drives with Cas to Lucifer’s compound. Cas pops amphetamines and offers some to Dean. “It's the perfect antidote to that absinthe,” he says.

Uh...Dean would really like to know why Cas is suddenly a drug-saturated hippy. Cas tells him that he went mortal. When the angels left Earth and sealed themselves into Heaven his mojo just drained away.

Cas: I'm practically human. I mean, Dean, I'm all but useless. Last year, broke my foot, laid up for two months.

Dean: So, you're human. Well, welcome to the club.

Cas: Thanks. Except I used to belong to a much better club. And now I'm powerless. I'm hapless, I'm hopeless. I mean, why the hell not bury myself in women and decadence, right? It's the end, baby. That's what decadence is for. Why not bang a few gongs before the lights go out? But then that's just how I roll.

BRB. Just going to be curled up here on the floor for a while, processing and mentally wrapping Cas in a blanket.

Future!Dean lays out the plan. They’re going to storm the facility and shoot the Devil. So...it’s pretty straightforward.

For science

Dean pulls Future!Dean aside and calls him out on the plan beneath the plan. It turns out that most of the team are heading through the front door to kill demons in a big ambush but Dean and Future!Dean are going to sneak around the back to get the jump on Lucifer. Dean’s horrified at this. Is Future!Dean really going to sacrifice his friends so callously? And CAS? Yes, yes he is. Future!Dean bops Dean unconscious before he can tell everyone they’re signed up to be sacrificial lambs.

Dean wakes to the stutter of distant gunfire in the compound. He runs up and sees muzzle  flashes in the windows. Dean rounds a corner and finds his future self in a rose garden. Future!Dean lies on the ground, the Colt just out of reach, and Lucifer’s foot on his neck. As Dean watches, Lucifer (in Sam’s body) snaps Future!Dean’s neck.

Dean’s defiant.

Dean: Go ahead. Kill me.

Lucifer: Kill you? Don't you think that would be a little...redundant?

Samifer apologizes for skeeving out Dean by speaking to him in Sam’s shape. Dean gives Samifer his best bitchface.

Lucifer seems to take offense at Dean’s low opinion of his devilish plan. He’s got a mission, after all.

Lucifer: You know why God cast me down? Because I loved him. More than anything. And then God created you. The little hairless apes.

Dean: You’re the same brand of cockroach I've been squashing my whole life. An ugly, evil, belly-to-the-ground, supernatural piece of crap. The only difference between them and you is the size of your ego.

Dean tells Samifer that he’d better kill him now, in the future, because if he ever gets back to his own time then he’ll find a way to kill him.

Lucifer is unbothered by Dean’s vow to kill him. “Whatever you do, you will always end up here. Whatever choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up—here.” Dean doesn’t want to believe it but a single man tear is still threatening to slip down his face.

Zachariah zaps Dean back to the past just in time. He corners Dean in his motel room and strongly encourages him to say yes to Michael. When Dean still hesitates, he threatens grave injury to Dean once again.

Dean still says no because he is our precious, sweet, strong bean. He learned a lesson from Zachariah’s little future peek...just not the lesson Zach wanted to impart.

Just when Zachariah is closing in, Cas zaps Dean to meet him by the side of the road. They had an appointment, after all.

Under the shelter of Castiel’s gaze, Dean calls Sam and invites him to meet. At their meeting behind some secluded railroad tracks, Dean offers Sam the demon blade and a spot in the Impala once again. He apologizes and admits that he was wrong to push Sam away. “Maybe we are each other's Achilles heel. Maybe they'll find a way to use us against each other, I don't know. I just know we're all we've got. More than that. We keep each other human.”

Sam thanks him and the brothers vow to deny the dark future Zachariah projected and make their own future.

Natasha: Lifts head from floor and wipes tears from face. “Good episode, guys. Good episode.”

The Quotes

You know, it's kind of funny. Talking to a messenger of God on a cellphone. It's, you know, like watching a Hell's Angel ride a moped.

I thought I smelled your stink on this Back to the Future crap.

Rhonda Hurley. We were, uh, nineteen. She made us try on her panties. They were pink. And satiny. And you know what? We kind of liked it.

I got a camp full of twitchy trauma survivors out there with an apocalypse hanging over their head. The last thing they need to see is a version of The Parent Trap.

Why not go get washed up for the orgy?

I thought you'd gotten over trying to label me.

Not gonna lie to you. Me and him? Pretty messed up situation we got going.

You ever get back there, you hoard toilet paper. You understand me? Hoard it. Hoard it like it's made of gold. 'Cause it is.

Okay, if you don't like, uh, 'reckless', I could use 'insouciant', maybe.

[sueboohscorner]

#Shadowhunters-Season 1 Wrap Up

Clary Fray, 18, finds out she is a Shadowhunter-half human, half angel hybrid-who fight and kill demons to protect the humans. She is gets help from a group of Shadowhunters, Jace, Alec and Isabelle, to help search for her mother who was kidnapped by Valentine-who we later find out is her father and the leader of the Circle. 

On this journey for the search of her mother, Clary is faced with many obstacles. Facing off with a Memory Demon-risking the loss of her forgotten memories, in order to save Jace, her best friend, Simon, being kidnapped by vampire and later turning into one, being hunted by Valentine, and demons who work for him as well. On this quest, she is on the search for not only her mother, but also for the Mortal Cup. 

Being hunted down, attacked, and being told the most dangerous man in the Shadow World is your father takes its toll.  

When she was trying to look for answers of her past, she went back to her apartment. Alec not too far behind, just because Jace asked him to keep an eye on her. Can we say, overprotective much?  

Once they get to her apartment, she finds a box she was looking for that had the initials "JC" on it. What can those possibly mean? 

While Alec was patrolling the outside, Clary and Simon, who accompanied them on this non-risky quest, and they were taken by Alaric and some other men. We know that they are werewolves, but Clary and Simon don't. 

Once they are at the hideout, she is told that if she doesn't give them the Mortal Cup, Simon would die. Obviously, Clary would not let her best friend get hurt. She lies to the werewolves and gives them a fake location for the cup, since she herself doesn't know where it is either. 

Luke then finds Clary in a shipping container, where she was locked in by the Alpha of Luke's pack. Clary still doesn't know that Luke is a werewolf, or that he is actually trying to protect her. 

While trying to keep her safe, Jace and Alec show up, and Jace being the overprotective loverboy that he is, knocks Luke out and takes Clary with him to save Simon. 

While trying to flee from the hideout, they are confronted by the Alpha and they notice that one werewolf in particular is trying to protect them. This werewolf challenges the Alpha, and ends up killing him. After killing the Alpha, the werewolves go back to their human form. Clary recognizes most of these people, but mostly one in particular. The werewolf that saved them, was Luke. 

Clary was shocked at this new realization, and Luke told her that he promised her mom that he would protect her. Clary then realizes that Luke has been on her side the whole time.  

Luke, pertaining injuries of his fight against the Alpha, is trying maintain consciousness. With the help of Simon and Jace, Clary takes Luke to Magnus' apartment. Magnus then heals him up, and Luke is finally able to give Clary the background story of her father and her mother. 

Clary then learns that she had a brother who apparently died in a fire that Valentine caused, in order to hide from everyone. Clary then realizes that she has the ability to take and put stuff into a surface. Making something third dimensional into two dimensional. Once she realized this, she connected the dots and knew where to look for the cup. 

Telling both Magnus and Jace where the cup was, a tarot card that belonged to a now deceased Dot, Luke stepped in and told her that he has them in his office at the police station. 

Clary and Jace are now at the precinct, ready to go look for the cup. There were some minor set backs in this mission-Luke being charged with murder, downworlders in the precinct, and demons hunting them.  

At last, with the help of Alec and Isabelle, Clary was finally able to get the cup. Confronted by a shape shifting demon,  who was disguised as Jace, Clary sent it straight back to hell.  

When arriving at the Institute, she tells Jace everything that happened after she got the cup, facing off with shax demons, a shape shifter that looked just like him, and Jace asked her how did she know it wasn't him. She told him she just payed attention to the details. Right then, the first Clace kiss occured. Yay!!!!!

The next couple of episode were pretty much repeated things, Valentine still trying to retrieve the cup, Clary looking for her mother, Simon believes he is turning into a vampire, Alec proposes to Lydia Branwell,......wait, what?!?!?!  

Yes, you heard correctly, Alec proposes to Lydia Branwell, in order to help restore the honor to his family name. 

I sense a disturbance in Malecdise.... 

I am getting a bit ahead of myself though. Before this infamous proposal, Simon became a vampire, Clary and Jace were told by Valentine that they were siblings, and now shipping Clace is starting to get awkward. 

Go incest???? 

Anyways, at the wedding, before Lydia places the rune of marriage on Alec, Magnus storms in, and everything is silent. We know what this means.....Malec!!!!!! 

Yes, we were right! Alec finally makes his own decision, and followed his heart. He grabbed that beautiful, glittery warlock and kissed him right on the lips. 

This being the official way of how Alec came out to not only his parents, but to every other Shadowhunter.  

Let there be Malec!!!!!! 

Jace and Clary are still on weird feelings of whether they are actually related, or not.  

If you read the books, you know the outcome 😉.  

Before Lydia left for Idris after the wedding, she was meant to take the cup with her as well. That is until Hodge betrayed his fellow Shadowhunters because he was selfish, and couldn't handle the punishment he was given for being part of Valentine's crusade in the old days. He later gives Valentine the cup, giving him the ability to make his new army of Shadowhunters.  

So now, Clary has her mother but not the spellbook that contains the antidote for the potion her mother took. Finally narrowing down the location of the spellbook with the help of Magnus, they go and find Camille Belcourt. 

At last they have the spellbook, but then Valentine shows up and had to ruin everything. Jace then arrives apparently ready to save the day, but Valentine threatens to kill all of his friends, unless he joins him.  

Jace, knowing there is no other way, accepts Valentine's offer. While Jace is heading towards the portal, Clary tries to run after him, but Alec stops her telling her that if she goes through a portal without knowing where to go, she could be stuck in limbo forever.  

Now Clary is longing for Jace, brother and sister-wise or boyfriend and girlfriend-wise? Hmm... 

Once everyone is back at the Institute, Magnus is now ready to wake Jocelyn up, and he does. Jocelyn is now awake, and hopefully ready to shed some light on the Clace brother-sister dilemma we have going on. We shall see in season 2.  

The season ends with Jace now aboard on Valentine's ship, alongside Valentine and his new army of Shadowhunters.  

Dun dun dun........ 

[shg11]

The UNs Philip Alston is an expert on deprivation and he wants to know why 41m Americans are living in poverty. The Guardian joined him on a special two-week mission into the dark heart of the worlds richest nation

Los Angeles, California, 5 December

You got a choice to make, man. You could go straight on to heaven. Or you could turn right, into that.

We are in Los Angeles, in the heart of one of Americas wealthiest cities, and General Dogon, dressed in black, is our tour guide. Alongside him strolls another tall man, grey-haired and sprucely decked out in jeans and suit jacket. Professor Philip Alston is an Australian academic with a formal title: UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

General Dogon, himself a veteran of these Skid Row streets, strides along, stepping over a dead rat without comment and skirting round a body wrapped in a worn orange blanket lying on the sidewalk.

The two men carry on for block after block after block of tatty tents and improvised tarpaulin shelters. Men and women are gathered outside the structures, squatting or sleeping, some in groups, most alone like extras in a low-budget dystopian movie.

We come to an intersection, which is when General Dogon stops and presents his guest with the choice. He points straight ahead to the end of the street, where the glistening skyscrapers of downtown LA rise up in a promise of divine riches.

Heaven.

Then he turns to the right, revealing the black power tattoo on his neck, and leads our gaze back into Skid Row bang in the center of LAs downtown. That way lies 50 blocks of concentrated human humiliation. A nightmare in plain view, in the city of dreams.

Alston turns right.

Philip Alston in downtown LA. Photograph: Dan Tuffs for the Guardian

So begins a two-week journey into the dark side of the American Dream. The spotlight of the UN monitor, an independent arbiter of human rights standards across the globe, has fallen on this occasion on the US, culminating on Friday with the release of his initial report in Washington.

His fact-finding mission into the richest nation the world has ever known has led him to investigate the tragedy at its core: the 41 million people who officially live in poverty.

Of those, nine million have zero cash income they do not receive a cent in sustenance.

Alstons epic journey has taken him from coast to coast, deprivation to deprivation. Starting in LA and San Francisco, sweeping through the Deep South, traveling on to the colonial stain of Puerto Rico then back to the stricken coal country of West Virginia, he has explored the collateral damage of Americas reliance on private enterprise to the exclusion of public help.

The Guardian had unprecedented access to the UN envoy, following him as he crossed the country, attending all his main stops and witnessing the extreme poverty he is investigating firsthand.

Think of it as payback time. As the UN special rapporteur himself put it: Washington is very keen for me to point out the poverty and human rights failings in other countries. This time Im in the US.

David Busch, who is currently homeless on Venice beach, in Los Angeles. Photograph: Dan Tuffs for the Guardian

The tour comes at a critical moment for America and the world. It began on the day that Republicans in the US Senate voted for sweeping tax cuts that will deliver a bonanza for the super wealthy while in time raising taxes on many lower-income families. The changes will exacerbate wealth inequality that is already the most extreme in any industrialized nation, with three men Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet owning as much as half of the entire American people.

A few days into the UN visit, Republican leaders took a giant leap further. They announced plans to slash key social programs in what amounts to an assault on the already threadbare welfare state.

Look up! Look at those banks, the cranes, the luxury condos going up, exclaimed General Dogon, who used to be homeless on Skid Row and now works as a local activist with Lacan. Down here, theres nothing. You see the tents back to back, theres no place for folks to go.

California made a suitable starting point for the UN visit. It epitomizes both the vast wealth generated in the tech boom for the 0.001%, and the resulting surge in housing costs that has sent homelessness soaring. Los Angeles, the city with by far the largest population of street dwellers in the country, is grappling with crisis numbers that increased 25% this past year to 55,000.

Ressy Finley, 41, was busy sterilizing the white bucket she uses to slop out in her tent in which she has lived on and off for more than a decade. She keeps her living area, a mass of worn mattresses and blankets and a few motley possessions, as clean as she can in a losing battle against rats and cockroaches. She also endures waves of bed bugs, and has large welts on her shoulder to prove it.

She receives no formal income, and what she makes on recycling bottles and cans is no way enough to afford the average rents of $1,400 a month for a tiny one-bedroom. A friend brings her food every couple of days, the rest of the time she relies on nearby missions.

She cried twice in the course of our short conversation, once when she recalled how her infant son was taken from her arms by social workers because of her drug habit (he is now 14; she has never seen him again). The second time was when she alluded to the sexual abuse that set her as a child on the path towards drugs and homelessness.

Given all that, its remarkable how positive Finley remains. What does she think of the American Dream, the idea that everyone can make it if they try hard enough? She replies instantly: I know Im going to make it.

A 41-year-old woman living on the sidewalk in Skid Row going to make it?

Sure I will, so long as I keep the faith.

What does making it mean to her?

I want to be a writer, a poet, an entrepreneur, a therapist.

Ressy Finley, who lives in a tent on 6th Street in Downtown LA. Photograph: Dan Tuffs for the Guardian

Robert Chambers occupies the next patch of sidewalk along from Finleys. Hes created an area around his tent out of wooden pallets, what passes in Skid Row for a cottage garden.

He has a sign up saying Homeless Writers Coalition, the name of a group he runs to give homeless people dignity against what he calls the animalistic aspects of their lives. Hes referring not least to the lack of public bathrooms that forces people to relieve themselves on the streets.

LA authorities have promised to provide more access to toilets, a critical issue given the deadly outbreak of Hepatitis A that began in San Diego and is spreading on the west coast claiming 21 lives mainly through lack of sanitation in homeless encampments. At night local parks and amenities are closed specifically to keep homeless people out.

Skid Row has had the use of nine toilets at night for 1,800 street-faring people. Thats a ratio well below that mandated by the UN in its camps for Syrian refugees.

Its inhuman actually, and eventually in the end you will acquire animalistic psychology, Chambers said.

He has been living on the streets for almost a year, having violated his parole terms for drug possession and in turn being turfed out of his low-cost apartment. Theres no help for him now, he said, no question of making it.

The safety net? It has too many holes in it for me.

Of all the people who crossed paths with the UN monitor, Chambers was the most dismissive of the American Dream. People dont realize its never getting better, theres no recovery for people like us. Im 67, I have a heart condition, I shouldnt be out here. I might not be too much longer.

That was a lot of bad karma to absorb on day one, and it rattled even as seasoned a student of hardship as Alston. As UN special rapporteur, hes reported on dire poverty and its impact on human rights in Saudi Arabia and China among other places. But Skid Row?

I was feeling pretty depressed, he told the Guardian later. The endless drumbeat of horror stories. At a certain point you do wonder what can anyone do about this, let alone me.

And then he took a flight up to San Francisco, to the Tenderloin district where homeless people congregate, and walked into St Boniface church.

What he saw there was an analgesic for his soul.

San Francisco, California, 6 December

The Gubbio project at St Boniface in San Francisco. The church opens its doors every weekday at 6am to allow homeless people to rest until 3pm. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

About 70 homeless people were quietly sleeping in pews at the back of the church, as they are allowed to do every weekday morning, with worshippers praying harmoniously in front of them. The church welcomes them in as part of the Catholic concept of extending the helping hand.

I found the church surprisingly uplifting, Alston said. It was such a simple scene and such an obvious idea. It struck me Christianity, what the hell is it about if its not this?

It was a rare drop of altruism on the west coast, competing against a sea of hostility. More than 500 anti-homeless laws have been passed in Californian cities in recent years. At a federal level, Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon who Donald Trump appointed US housing secretary, is decimating government spending on affordable housing.

Perhaps the most telling detail: apart from St Boniface and its sister church, no other place of worship in San Francisco welcomes homeless people. In fact, many have begun, even at this season of goodwill, to lock their doors to all comers simply so as to exclude homeless people.

As Tiny Gray-Garcia, herself on the streets, described it to Alston, there is a prevailing attitude that she and her peers have to contend with every day. She called it the violence of looking away.

Coy Catley, 63, in her homeless box made of cardboard sheets on a sidewalk of Tenderloin, San Francisco. Photograph: Ed Pilkington for the Guardian

That cruel streak the violence of looking away has been a feature of American life since the nations founding. The casting off the yoke of overweening government (the British monarchy) came to be equated in the minds of many Americans with states rights and the individualistic idea of making it on your own a view that is fine for those fortunate enough to do so, less happy if youre born on the wrong side of the tracks.

Countering that has been the conviction that society must protect its own against the vagaries of hunger or unemployment that informed Franklin Roosevelts New Deal and the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson. But in recent times the prevailing winds have blown strongly in the youre on your own, buddy direction. Ronald Reagan set the trend with his 1980s tax cuts, followed by Bill Clinton, whose 1996 decision to scrap welfare payments for low-income families is still punishing millions of Americans.

The cumulative attack has left struggling families, including the 15 million children who are officially in poverty, with dramatically less support than in any other industrialized economy. Now they face perhaps the greatest threat of all.

As Alston himself has written in an essay on Trumps populism and the aggressive challenge it poses to human rights: These are extraordinarily dangerous times. Almost anything seems possible.

Lowndes County, Alabama, 9 December

Aaron Thigpen discusses the poor sewage conditions in Butler County. Improper treatment has put the population at risk of diseases long believed to be extinct in the US. Photograph: Bob Miller for the Guardian

Trumps undermining of human rights, combined with the Republican threat to pare back welfare programs next year in order to pay for some of the tax cuts for the rich they are rushing through Congress, will hurt African Americans disproportionately.

Black people are 13% of the US population, but 23% of those officially in poverty and 39% of the homeless.

The racial element of Americas poverty crisis is seen nowhere more clearly than in the Deep South, where the open wounds of slavery continue to bleed. The UN special rapporteur chose as his next stop the Black Belt, the term that originally referred to the rich dark soil that exists in a band across Alabama but over time came to describe its majority African American population.

The link between soil type and demographics was not coincidental. Cotton was found to thrive in this fertile land, and that in turn spawned a trade in slaves to pick the crop. Their descendants still live in the Black Belt, still mired in poverty among the worst in the union.

You can trace the history of Americas shame, from slave times to the present day, in a set of simple graphs. The first shows the cotton-friendly soil of the Black Belt, then the slave population, followed by modern black residence and todays extreme poverty they all occupy the exact same half-moon across Alabama.

There are numerous ways you could parse the present parlous state of Alabamas black community. Perhaps the starkest is the fact that in the Black Belt so many families still have no access to sanitation. Thousands of people continue to live among open sewers of the sort normally associated with the developing world.

The crisis was revealed by the Guardian earlier this year to have led to an ongoing endemic of hookworm, an intestinal parasite that is transmitted through human waste. It is found in Africa and South Asia, but had been assumed eradicated in the US years ago.

Yet here the worm still is, sucking the blood of poor people, in the home state of Trumps US attorney general Jeff Sessions.

A disease of the developing world thriving in the worlds richest country.

The open sewerage problem is especially acute in Lowndes County, a majority black community that was an epicenter of the civil rights movement having been the setting of Martin Luther Kings Selma to Montgomery voting rights march in 1965.

Philp Alston talks to a resident. Many families in Butler and Lowndes counties choose to live with open sewer systems made from PVC pipe. Photograph: Bob Miller for the Guardian

Despite its proud history, Catherine Flowers estimates that 70% of households in the area either straight pipe their waste directly onto open ground, or have defective septic tanks incapable of dealing with heavy rains.

When her group, Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise (Acre), pressed local authorities to do something about it, officials invested $6m in extending waste treatment systems to primarily white-owned businesses while bypassing overwhelmingly black households.

Thats a glaring example of injustice, Flowers said. People who cannot afford their own systems are left to their own devices while businesses who do have the money are given public services.

Walter, a Lowndes County resident who asked not to give his last name for fear that his water supply would be cut off as a reprisal for speaking out, lives with the daily consequences of such public neglect. You get a good hard rain and it backs up into the house.

Thats a polite way of saying that sewage gurgles up into his kitchen sink, hand basin and bath, filling the house with a sickly-sweet stench.

Given these circumstances, what does he think of the ideology that anyone can make it if they try?

I suppose they could if they had the chance, Walter said. He paused, then added: Folks arent given the chance.

Had he been born white, would his sewerage problems have been fixed by now?

After another pause, he said: Not being racist, but yeah, they would.

Round the back of Walters house the true iniquity of the situation reveals itself. The yard is laced with small channels running from neighboring houses along which dark liquid flows. It congregates in viscous pools directly underneath the mobile home in which Walters son, daughter-in-law and 16-year-old granddaughter live.

It is the ultimate image of the lot of Alabamas impoverished rural black community. As American citizens they are as fully entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Its just that they are surrounded by pools of excrement.

This week, the Black Belt bit back. On Tuesday a new line was added to that simple graphic, showing exactly the same half-moon across Alabama except this time it was not black but blue.

blue belt south

It depicted the army of African American voters who turned out against the odds to send Doug Jones to the US Senate, the first Democrat from Alabama to do so in a generation. It delivered a bloody nose to his opponent, the alleged child molester Roy Moore, and his puppetmasters Steve Bannon and Donald Trump.

It was arguably the most important expression of black political muscle in the region since Kings 1965 march. If the previous entries in the graphic could be labeled soil, slavery and poverty, this one should be captioned empowerment.

Guayama, Puerto Rico, 10 December

So how does Alston view the role of UN rapporteur and his visit? His full report on the US will be released next May before being presented to the UN human rights council in Geneva.

Nobody expects much to come of that: the world body has no teeth with which to enforce good behavior on recalcitrant governments. But Alston hopes that his visit will have an impact by shaming the US into reflecting on its values.

My role is to hold governments to account, he said. If the US administration doesnt want to talk about the right to housing, healthcare or food, then there are still basic human rights standards that have to be met. Its my job to point that out.

Alstons previous investigations into extreme poverty in places like Mauritania pulled no punches. We can expect the same tough love when it comes to his analysis of Puerto Rico, the next stop on his journey into Americas dark side.

Three months after Maria, the devastation wrought by the hurricane has been well documented. It tore 70,000 homes to shreds, brought industry to a standstill and caused a total blackout of the island that continues to cause havoc.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/15/america-extreme-poverty-un-special-rapporteur

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

Kevin Shattenkirk and the Oilers’ greatest need (Trending Topics)

When the Oilers traded Taylor Hall for defensive help, then drafted Jesse Puljujarvi and signed Milan Lucic, there was a feeling that Hall’s lost offense would be replaced by committee.

Well, it hasn’t really happened, has it? Adam Larsson has fewer points than Zack Kassian, Puljujarvi couldn’t get reliable ice time and got sent to the AHL (frankly it’s for the best), and Milan Lucic is having something of a nightmarish campaign.

Lucic currently sits at just 11 goals and 31 points despite spending a huge chunk of his 5-on-5 minutes with Connor McDavid and getting nearly three minutes of power play time per game (third-most among Edmonton forwards). This after a 20-goal season in Los Angeles a year ago and, of course, all that ice time with a kid who’s turned Patrick Maroon into a 30-goal threat.

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Maybe you chalk it up to bad luck. After all, Lucic is only shooting 9.5 percent right now, well below his career average of 14.3 percent. It’s the first time he’s had less than double-digit shooting success since the lockout-shortened season when he showed up out of shape and scored seven goals in 46 games. The only other time he wasn’t getting the puck in the net as effectively was his rookie year in 2007-08.

But the thing with the Lucic contract was that yeah, it was long and probably too much money, but he was projecting as a very productive player in getting ice time with McDavid. That hasn’t come to pass, and the reasons why are the reasons you could have guessed anyway. He’s a bigger, slower player who plays a heavy game and rarely misses time, on the wrong side of his prime. He was being asked to basically be a skilled enforcer for a child whose game involves cruising around the ice like a water bug, making dazzling plays at a thousand miles an hour. It was always likely to be some sort of a stylistic clash, but the assumption was that as long as Lucic could get to the net — like, say, Connor Sheary does for Sidney Crosby — then he was going to get his goals and earn his contract. That hasn’t happened.

The wonderful Jonathan Willis covers Lucic’s problems scoring in-depth over at Oilers Nation and that’s worth exploring, but I really think a lot of those issues arise from the fact that this marriage always had a potentially unhealthy pallor to it.

That inability to keep up is very obviously part of the problem. Lucic is shooting the puck from farther out than he has in four seasons. His average shot distance is nearly 31 feet, which is fairly high. It’s currently the fourth-longest in his career. And that’s while playing with McDavid, who generates chances near the net at an absurd rate. Conversely, Maroon’s average shot distance dropped four and a half feet from last season to this one (currently about 23 feet, 3 inches, last year almost 28). One cannot imagine his ascension to serving alongside McDavid is merely coincidental here. The difference between a 23-foot shot and a 31-foot shot may not sound like much, but those eight feet move you from roughly the second hashmark to almost the top of the faceoff circle.

The bigger problem was the idea that Lucic, being closer to 29 than 28 at this point, was on that seven-year contract. The Oilers were supposed to be able to milk the added value over the first two or maybe three years of the deal as Lucic approached his age-30 or age-31 seasons, so that when he inevitably started to break down, Peter Chiarelli could at least say, “Well, we got those productive seasons out of him on the front end.” They weren’t supposed to suffer like this. Not this early, anyway. As Lucic hit his mid-30s? Sure, you expect some decline. But not now, not before his 29th birthday.

It leaves Edmonton in a bit of an interesting position. Maroon, who’s extremely cheap at $1.5 million this year and next, seems to now be McDavid’s semi-permanent left wing, presumably right up until he isn’t. Jordan Eberle, who is likewise not producing that much despite plenty of minutes with McDavid (just 32 points), is the natural right wing there. That drops Lucic down to a second-line role, which is a potentially inefficient use of $6 million, but as long as he’s producing in slightly more sheltered minutes perhaps the Oilers don’t mind so much.

And let’s put it this way, if you’re going 1-2-3 down the middle with McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, you’re doing alright for yourself regardless of who’s on the wings. Throw those lines in a blender and you’re going to be competitive most nights with a former No. 1 pick (who himself is a solid 1b or great No. 2 in this league) is your third pivot over the boards.

There’s a perception that the Oilers are a one-line team. McDavid is in on a huge percentage of their goals, as you’d expect. That number, in all situations, is 81 of 158, which is about 51 percent. And for to really hammer home how special the kid is, he’s also only been on for 42 of Edmonton’s 144 against, just over 29 percent. The Oilers are therefore plus-39 with McDavid on, and minus-25 when he’s off. So you see where it comes from. But I don’t think that’s entirely fair.

The obvious issue of getting dramatically outscored comes largely because guys like Lucic and Eberle aren’t carrying the water you’d hope. But neither was Puljujarvi effective as a sort of Voltron-like replacement with Lucic, so he’s just getting minutes in the American league and apparently doing just fine down there (5-6-11 in 15 games as an 18-year-old ain’t bad at all). And Benoit Pouliot has been even worse this year with just 5-5-10 in 51 games. Nugent-Hopkins is only at 11-15-26, and he’s sixth on the team in scoring.

A huge part of the problem is that Larsson isn’t what the Oilers clearly thought he was. Is he a solid middle-pairing defenseman who can’t push the play? Yeah. Is that valuable? Yeah.

Is that what they must have thought they were paying for when they gave up an offensive dynamo in Taylor Hall? You’d really hope not.

It would be nice if Lucic and the other veteran forwards could score. It would be nice if Puljujarvi could be effective. But what the Oilers need more than anything is a defender who can get the puck up the ice consistently. They have a pretty good blue line overall, but if you don’t have a guy like that, you’re always going to struggle.

It doesn’t even have to be a really good, top-pairing puck-mover like Kevin Shattenkirk (whom Chiarelli should move heaven and earth to acquire), but a solid middle-pairing guy who can just help you get the puck out of your own zone on a consistent basis while McDavid is off the ice is going to help immensely.

That’s the thing: You can put McDavid on the ice with just about anyone (anyone who isn’t Milan Lucic, at least) and he’s going to move you up one or two zones every single time. Only a handful of players have been on the ice for more goals per 60. His per-60 relative goals number is fourth-highest in the league. The kid is amazing. Give him the Hart in June, no questions asked.

And in the meantime, Chiarelli can do his generational talent and the rest of the team a favor and give up as much as he needs to in an attempt to acquire someone who can just lug the puck. There are plenty of them out there and a lot of them are undervalued. Doesn’t have to be a guy who fits the Larsson profile of young, somewhat cheap, and under contract for years to come.

Obtaining a stopgap in their mid- or late 20s until you can develop someone as good or better than him goes a long way for the club. And thanks to the Lucic contract, and the age of some older vets on the roster (Pouliot and Sekera are both ostensibly useful players on the wrong side of 30), the time for the Oilers to get meaningfully competitive is right now. McDavid is about to be the most expensive player in the league and some of the other younger players on the roster are likewise going to see their entry-level or bridge deals expire within a few years.

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Then it becomes harder to keep everyone. How many teams have had to be ripped down because of cap considerations like this, with or without championships? Half the Oilers roster is under the age of 25, and around 26 is when guys start getting expensive.

It’s not that it’s win-now for the Oilers. But it’s sure as hell win-soon. And because this roster really doesn’t have a lot of problems when everything is going right (i.e. shooting percentages for higher-end players normalize), Chiarelli’s job is easy. Get a No. 2 or 3 puck-mover. Give up whatever you need to give up to make it happen, draft picks, prospects, whatever combination required.

The reported asking price for Shattenkirk is a first and a high-end prospect. And if that’s the only thing standing between this team and actual, unadulterated dominance of an admittedly weak division, then I don’t see what the problem is.

You go out and you get a player like that, then you get to sit back watch this team cruise through the regular season and a few playoff rounds before the hard decisions come.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

All stats via Corsica unless otherwise stated.

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