#but also if i DO successfully predict anything here i will be dancing about singing 'i was right'

[notasapleasure]

Wild hopes for Andor S2:

Oh, apparently blorbo *might* be in the trailer? Riding a speeder on Dantooine you say? Aughhhh don't toy with my emotions like this!!

So for posterity, before anything about s2 does actually become clear, my vague hopes/'if I got to write their story' headcanons for my Ferrix badasses are a jumble of the following:

I don't see them immediately going back to Ferrix, they're recognisable (Bix is known to the Empire, Wilmon will be known by association with Salman, Bee is known as Maarva's droid, they had an eye on Brasso as 'the big guy' even before he fucked shit up with the funerary brick...and I can't remember Jezzi doing anything specific but she'll have been seen round Maarva's home and funeral), and riot or not, I'd say the Empire will be in the mood to make an example of Ferrix rather than to go 'oops our bad we'll leave you in peace'. So it seems a bad idea for the fugitives to return there for their rebellion as soon as they've left.

On that ship we know there's a skilled electrician (Wilmon) and mechanic (Bix), and I've always presumed Brasso must know his way around a ship well enough to be able to take it apart, and that Jezzi has some similarly Ferrixian industrial skill. I thought it would be very sexy if they all got involved in making/repurposing tech for the rebellion. In my heart of hearts they're patching together the first fleet of X-Wings.

Orange. Ferrix orange (Brasso's felt jacket orange) and rebel pilot orange. And there's the shot of Cassian in an orange pilot's suit in the trailer. I just. I just have hopes. And dreams. And colour was so significant in Rogue One (the red of the force/rebellion...there was an awesome post on here pointing out way more examples than I'd noticed, but I always think of the lining of Jyn's vest). Maybe it's reclaiming Narkina orange, even? But the look of the Ferrix clothes reminds me so much of the OT aesthetic, I think that's got to be the more likely connection.

Bee? Kay? Do they meet? ಥ⁠‿⁠ಥ trying to suppress the thought 'what if Bee helps to make Kay possible?' but the thought has been thunk. (ETA: NOT into the theory that they're the same person that's not what I mean. I'm talking hardware donation. Wires and chips. Not personality)

Dantooine. Dantooine base. After all this time!!!! What Legends book did I first read about the base on Dantooine in?? idek but if I'd ever written the epic angsty plot follow-up to that one fic (only ever just one night) it would have involved the Ferrix gang making X-Wings work on Dantooine :') I have feelings about Brasso the wrecker learning to make things instead :))

It should go without saying that I want to see Bix channel her healing into getting stuff done and fucking up the Empire.

I guess my feeling is that if we're time-skipping over a five year period in a, what, 12 episode season? There's not time for a huge arc for all the Ferrix characters alongside everything else the show needs to cover. My cautious assumption is that this either means a load of them get killed off/sidelined early, or they're kept together in the same setting so their stories are interlinked, but presumably with focus remaining on Bix (and Bee). Dantooine/wherever the rebel base is beforehand/the move to Yavin struck me as a good place for this, where they can still be brought in and out of episodes through whatever time-skips happen because it's a place the title character is going to be coming and going from regularly, like Ferrix is in S1. Naturally it is a selfish thought to want to recreate the S1 dynamic :)) because I want my blorbo(s) to get to be relevant and a part of Cassian's life still, but if that suggestion about Brasso on a speeder on Dantooine in the trailer is remotely accurate then I will cry happy tears.

Who knows, if they get to survive, maybe all those heart-pulverising fics and fanarts about Cassian's (glass) stone being laid on Ferrix will find a place at the end of the series?

[setepenre-set]

Pleasant Is the Fairyland  (chapter 9)

Megamind/Roxanne

T rating, Labyrinth AU

The Goblin King Megamind is running out of time–he must take a consort. The King declares he will have no one but Roxanne Ritchi—and so Roxanne finds herself whirled away from her unfulfilling, ordinary life…to the Labyrinth, at the center of which is a secret, the King promises, if she can find it. A secret with the power to save a world, or to condemn it to Nothingness.

AO3  |  FFN

(links disabled so this will show up in the tumblr search tool. I’m going to reblog momentarily with the links; look for it in the notes)

____________________________________________________ 

The Goblin King’s eyes flickered open and Roxanne’s face swam into focus above him, her blue eyes looking down into his with an expression somewhere between concern and relief.

Disoriented as he was, it took him several moments to figure out what was happening. It wasn’t until he felt her legs shift very slightly beneath his shoulders, felt her hand slip beneath his neck to cradle the back of his head, that he realized his head was actually in her lap.

The realization froze him in place and the overwhelming flood of sensation whited out his thoughts in a rush of warmth and softness. Her thumb stroked gently across the back of his neck, over the curve of where it met his neck and—

The Goblin King sat up so quickly that his forehead barely missed colliding with Roxanne’s, only her instinctive reflex of jerking her own head back saving him from yet another concussion.

He regretted sitting up immediately, as what felt like all the blood in his body rushed up to his head, making black-winged butterflies dance at the edges of his vision—sable wings fluttering and multiplying, fluttering and multiplying until they threatened to blot out the world. 

—Roxanne’s voice, saying—saying something—something that—

The roaring of his blood in his ears became the hurricane wind of the black butterfly wings. He swayed in place and—

Oh, no, thought the Goblin King as he fainted for the second time.

He woke up again with her shouting at him.

“—swear to god if you don’t stop being so stupid I’m—”

The Goblin King squinted up at her blearily. His head wasn’t in her lap this time, thank the seas and stars for small favors. Instead he was lying flat on his black on the cool grass, with Roxanne kneeling on the ground next to him, bent over him. There was more anger than relief and concern in her expression this time, and her eyes glittered with rage.

“—going to kill you myself, you careless—”

The Goblin King made a weak noise of protest and Roxanne planted one hand on the center of his chest, pinning him in place and holding him there on the cool grass.

“Do not even think,” she snapped, “about sitting up like that again.”

The Goblin King made another weak noise, eyes wide. Roxanne made a low, growling noise of frustration and pressed down with slightly more force. The Goblin King’s breath caught.

“You,” she said, “are going to stay here, and I—” she glared at him, “am going to pick some more grapes. And when you have eaten them, we can discuss—discuss, mind you—the possibility of you sitting up. Got that?”

“Ah?” the Goblin King managed, breathless still at the force of her, at the storm of her protective anger.

“Fantastic,” she said, with even more vicious emphasis.

She took her hand away and paused for a moment, as if she were just waiting for him to try to get up against her orders. The Goblin King, however, was too stunned to make any attempt of the kind. 

Having apparently satisfied herself of his complete capitulation, Roxanne then stood up, gave him one last sharp look of warning, and then turned away to yank down bunch after bunch of grapes from the tree above them with what seemed to him to be an excess of force. 

The Goblin King remained meekly where he was during her massacre of the grape clusters, and he made no protest when she knelt down beside him and began pulling grapes off the clusters one at a time and thrusting them towards his mouth. He opened his mouth to receive them more out of self-defense than hunger.

He’d never realized before that it was possible to feed someone grapes vengefully.

“You,” Roxanne said, shoving another grape into his mouth, “are an idiot. You’re not well; you do realize that, don’t you? Have you seen yourself in a mirror lately? The color of your skin?”

“—supposed to be like that,” he protested, voice weak.

“What, translucent?” she said sarcastically, her disbelief and impatience with his attempt at obfuscation clear. “Don’t deliberately misinterpret. I’m not talking about the fact that it’s blue. You look waxen. The dark circles under your eyes are so bad you look like you lost a fistfight and you weigh about as much as a housecat! Why don’t you take care of yourself?”

The Goblin King opened his mouth to protest again and she glared at him and pushed another grape into it before he could speak. 

“Carry some snacks around, for god’s sake,” she said. “These could have been toxic and I wouldn’t have known, since you were unconscious and I couldn’t ask you.”

“Not toxic,” he said, voice still dry and thready.

“Or enchanted,” she said.

“That either.”

“What a relief,” Roxanne said, spitting the words out like they were sharp things she’d like to stab him with.

He held out a hand as she started to feed him another grape. Roxanne narrowed her eyes at him, but she handed him the grape, watching him like a hawk. 

The Goblin King couldn’t stop his hand from shaking, but he managed, with great effort, not to drop the grape, and to successfully bring it up to his own mouth, place it between his lips, and chew. 

Roxanne gave a disapproving sniff, but she dropped the rest of the bunch on his chest and leaned back against the silvery bark of the nearest tree, devouring her own cluster of grapes as she watched him eat.

He’d meant, once he was finished eating the bunch of grapes, to sit up and prove to her how perfectly fine he was, but after he swallowed the last grape, he found he was too exhausted to even try. Instead he closed his eyes and sighed.

Just a moment of rest. Just a moment, and then he would get up and they would continue on their way. Just a—

He slept.

____________________________________________________

Roxanne saw the moment that the Goblin King slipped into sleep—slipped into sleep with a soft, relieved sigh, like someone slipping into a warm bath at the end of a very long and difficult day.

Which really only drove home how right she was about his general state of health—it hadn’t been anything like a long day, hadn’t even been a full one. And yet he looked exhausted. Beyond exhausted. Like someone losing a battle with a long-term terminal illness.

She sat very still and watched him sleep as the last of the sunlight faded and night fell, as some unseen things in the branches of the trees, insects perhaps, or maybe birds, began to sing, sweet and soft, like glass and crystal chimes stirred by the night wind. 

She looked up, then, and watched the sky as the stars came out, strangely close and disconcertingly rainbow colored, jewel-toned and bright. The moon came out as well, came out after the stars, full, very full and very large, much larger than it should be. 

At first Roxanne thought the size of the moon the reason why she felt so unsettled looking at it, but then she realized that the surface of it looked different than the moon she was accustomed to—smoother, without any of the large, predictable dark patches her eyes kept searching for. And yet something about it seemed…oddly familiar—not a completely alien thing, but something ordinary that had been warped.

(the dark side of the moon)

As the unsettling moon rose higher in the sky, the leaves of the trees began to shine like moonlight themselves, a steady, silver-white glow that dappled the dark grass and the face of the Goblin King, illumination and shadow.

The night was cool, but not cold, and at last Roxanne stirred, shaking herself slightly, as if shaking off the spell of the moon’s silver fascination. She glanced back down at the Goblin King, still sleeping, and then she sighed and reached for the clasp at the base of his throat, the one that held his collar and cape in place. 

Clasp and cape and collar parted beneath her hands, silk and leather unfurling at her touch like the petals of a strange, dark flower.

She spread the material of the cape beneath him like a blanket and lay down beside him on it. He made another of those soft sighing noises as she curled up beside him, and turned his face  towards hers. 

Roxanne placed one hand on his chest, palm-down, where she was able to feel his heartbeat, able to feel the rise and fall of his breath.

 After a time, her eyes slid shut and she slept as well.

____________________________________________________

…to be continued.

____________________________________________________ 

Day four of my birthday week celebrations! I hope you all enjoyed the new chapter. Thank you to @displacerghost​ for beta reading this...and also for giving me a (more gentle) version of Roxanne's lecture to the Goblin King about his health. I know you can tell that's where I got the description of how vividly ill he looks, Ghost—thank you for seeing me...and for saving me, my love.

[bibliosexxual]

prince in training

~3k, rated T

Sterek ficlet inspired by this: “i grew up not knowing i was royal and now i guess i’m heir to a throne and you’re the guy who’s supposed to be teaching me how to be royal bc i suck at it and oops we made out” au

This is kind of Princess-Diaries-ish. I know that’s been done before in this fandom (and thank god it has—it’s awesome), but I couldn’t help myself. Yay for self-indulgence!

*

Stiles thought the most annoying thing about suddenly being a royal heir to a small eastern European kingdom he’s never heard of would be the hyper-aggressive paparazzi, but he was dead wrong.

The most annoying thing is actually Derek Hale, the guy Stiles’ grandmother hired to teach Stiles how not to screw this up.

“Princes don’t chew with their mouths open, Stiles.”

“Princes don’t shove an entire fistful of curly fries in their mouths, Stiles.”

“Princes don’t wear pink-and-green plaid shirts from Target, Stiles.”

“Princes don’t slouch.”

They don’t slump, either, or yawn or sneeze or cough in public, or fist-pump, or drive beat-up old blue Jeeps, or wear bright colors, or rock out to the radio, or do anything fun.

Derek is the most nitpicky person Stiles has ever met. He has rules about everything. Like how high Stiles should lift his glass for a toast at fancy parties, and in what order he should use his silverware—why are there so many different forks? WHY?!—and how he should sit in a chair. As if Stiles hasn’t successfully been sitting in chairs for his entire life already or anything.

On the one hand, it’s kind of funny to see Derek getting all huffy over a bunch of stuff that, in the grand scheme of things, is not important in the slightest. On the other hand, it’s not important in the slightest. Someone needs to get that memo to Derek, stat. He acts like Stiles using the wrong fork at a dinner party is a matter of national security.

Derek is always so proper, always going around in crisp, perfectly tailored suits and aviators and luscious wavy prince hair, looking like some kind of bodyguard or model or like he should be the prince, and it drives Stiles crazy.

Probably as much as Stiles’ everything drives Derek crazy in return, so… touché.

Then there are the dancing lessons, because apparently Stiles needs to be a Disney prince now. Yikes.

“I can already tell you this is a lost cause,” Stiles says when Derek marches him into the empty ballroom one night and hooks up his iPod to the speakers. “Wait. How am I supposed to learn how to dance if I don’t have anyone to practice with?”

Derek just raises his eyebrows and steps out onto the floor as the first champagne-gold notes of a waltz drift out over the speakers.

“Whoa, you and me?” Stiles says. “Seriously? Well, that’s just a disaster waiting to happen.”

Derek doesn’t disagree.

“I’m going to step on your feet so much you won’t be able to walk the next day.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage to survive somehow,” Derek says with a wry little twist of his mouth. He holds out a hand. Stiles waits just long enough to let Derek know he isn’t the boss of him before he takes it and lets Derek lead him out to the middle of the floor.

It’s ridiculous. They’re the very definition of mismatched. Derek is impeccably dressed as always, tonight in a waistcoat and cravat. It makes Stiles look that much more casual by comparison in his sweatpants and favorite t-shirt, the one that says “Studmuffin” and hangs so big on him he could probably wear it as a dress, albeit a short dress, if he were so inclined.

“So how are we gonna do this?” Stiles asks. “Do I need to stick a rose stem between my teeth?”

Derek tries and fails to look annoyed; Stiles sees the smile before he tamps it down. “It’s not a tango, Stiles.”

“Okay, no roses, got it. So… Who’s the girl in this situation?”

Derek rolls his eyes at the wording but answers the question anyway. “I am, because you’re going to learn how to lead.”

“Doubtful,” Stiles mutters.

It feels less like dancing and more like awkward shuffling. He has to hold Derek’s hand and rest the other on Derek’s back, in the dip between his shoulder blades. It’s the first time they’ve ever actually touched, and Stiles can’t even properly enjoy it because he’s trying too hard to step when and where Derek tells him, head full of counting and trying to breathe and not fall over.

As predicted, he keeps stepping on Derek’s toes, and Derek keeps wincing.

It’s like all the dances Stiles ever had to do in middle school P.E., jerky and self-conscious and complete with the familiar sweaty palms and too little eye contact, at least on Stiles’ end. Stiles is never going to get this right. Waltzing is just not in his genetics.

Derek stops, hands sliding down to rest steady and warm on Stiles’ waist, and murmurs, “Breathe, Stiles.”

Stiles snarks, “I know, I’ve only been doing it my whole life,” but it does help, weirdly. It makes him realize just how long he’s been holding his breath, and how he’s been holding his body so tight and stiff that it’s no wonder he hasn’t been anywhere close to graceful so far. Conscious of it, he can do something about it, relaxing into Derek’s arms.

“Here,” Derek says, taking Stiles’ hand again, “I���ll lead for now, until you get the hang of it.”

Stiles is able to get out of his own head enough after that to follow where Derek leads him. He’s not sure how much time passes after that. There’s nothing in his mind but movement and the music and the rhythmic count of their steps, on and on and on, until Derek is drawing him in closer and they’re no longer simply moving in the same direction at roughly the same time; they’re actually moving together.

This feels like dancing. Flowing into the music and into each other’s space, natural as breathing, but something electric between them, too, a warm tension that sings through the dance.

They draw closer, closer. Derek tilts his head, just a little, and his nose brushes Stiles’, and holy fuck. Stiles is combusting.

At the last second, Stiles breaks away before he can embarrass himself. Well... more than usual, at least. “Okay, then,” he laughs, more than a little awkwardly. Stiles is always awkward, but this is capital-A Awkward. “So I can waltz now. Congratulations.”

“You know the basics,” Derek corrects, looking a little dazed. He drops his hands to his sides. “You’ll still need to learn at least a couple more advanced dances at some point.”

Stiles backs away across the ballroom to Derek’s iPod. Backs away, because he can’t look away. “Okay, fancy stuff later, got it. But enough for tonight. My turn now.” He turns away, finally, and pokes at the iPod. “You got anything good on here, or just more boring classical?”

“Wait, don’t—” Derek starts.

Stiles ignores him. A second later, he crows, “Michael Jackson! Yes!” It’s the first sign Stiles has ever found that Derek might not always have a stick up his ass.

He turns around just as “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” starts. The energy of the beat is freeing and shocking in the best way after the self-contained elegance of all the waltzes.

Derek is standing where Stiles left him in the middle of the ballroom, stock-still and distinctly pink-cheeked. It’s the first time Stiles has ever seen Derek flustered, or Derek blushing. Stiles is living.

He dances his way over, right into Derek’s space, making sure to make it as obscene as possible. He may not know what his feet are doing half the time, but this? This is easy, fun and flowing and goofy. Derek is just watching him, his lips parted a little, and it’s heady.

“C’mon, Derek,” he says tauntingly, sliding right up against Derek’s chest, going on pure instinct. “Show me what you got.”

Derek rolls his eyes and just… walks away. He’s even redder than before. Stiles can’t help but laugh. And keep dancing, of course.

So maybe this prince-in-training stuff isn’t always terrible.

*

Usually it is, though.

Like when Derek finally loses his cool one evening and snaps, “Can you take anything seriously for even one second?”

“Probably not,” Stiles says automatically.

Derek starts pacing, tight and controlled and frustrated. “You act like none of this matters, but your life isn’t just about you anymore and you need to get that through your head. You represent your entire country now, Stiles. You. You can’t keep blowing this off.”

“Great,” Stiles mutters, throwing down the napkin he’s supposed to be learning how to fold. They’ve been doing these lessons for months now, and he can tell Derek still thinks he’s hopeless. Stiles, meanwhile, thinks Derek is unfairly hot, and too good at everything for his own good, or for Stiles’ sanity. Stiles is utterly fed up with everything. “Really, Derek. That’s so motivational. I always wanted to be an international failure at a job I never even signed up for. Great to know I’m succeeding.”

“You’re failing because you’re not even trying.” Derek stalks to the door. “Call me if you actually want my help someday,” he bites out, and then he’s gone, slamming the door behind him.

“Princes don’t slam doors,” Stiles mutters sulkily, but… okay, he can concede Derek might have a point.

Or. Well. He will concede it in the future, just as soon as he can find it in himself to forgive Derek for being such a jerk.

*

It takes him about a week, and then he caves, mostly because he really, really secretly misses snarking with Derek and purposefully pissing him off and making him laugh in equal measures.

“I’m ready to make an effort,” he says when he finally breaks down and makes the phone call.

“Good,” is all Derek says.

He sounds like he believes Stiles, which is good, because Stiles does mean it. He does make an effort, after that.

For sure, he still thinks there are more important things in life than whether he eats his salad with the right fork, but, well, he can also kind of see Derek’s point. Stiles needs a way to show people that he respects his country and his responsibilities as a prince. That even though he’s still young, he can do this. He won’t let his country down. Acting suitably princely is the solution, or at least a significant part of it.

It goes well. The headlines after every royal event are all praise for Stiles’ charms, as Stiles proudly reminds Derek at every opportunity. Derek reluctantly agrees Stiles is making progress. He might make a halfway decent prince after all.

Then there’s the night Stiles breaks his winning streak. The night he sneaks out, fed up with it all and a little drunk, the night he’s photographed at a party on the beach, shirtless, making out with a random guy.

(The guy is Jackson from Stiles’ high school, not that the newspapers have been able to figure that out yet. He’s been a lifelong jerk to Stiles and he’s only in it for the publicity, and the worst part is that Stiles knows that he’s only in it for the publicity, but he still lets Jackson do it, because no one that hot has ever wanted to make out with him. Scratch that, no one period has ever wanted to make out with him.)

(It’s not exactly a high point for Stiles’ self esteem.)

Stiles refuses to be sorry about it. Unlike some people (*cough* Derek *cough*), he can’t be perfect all the time.

The next morning Stiles wakes up to a newspaper thwacking down on his face and Derek growling above him, “What is this? What were you thinking, Stiles?”

And that’s how Stiles ends up arguing with Derek at 7 a.m., while in nothing but his Spider-Man boxers and bedhead, about whether he’s still allowed to have a fucking life after princehood. About whether he’s still allowed to be a dumb kid once in a while.

Derek is fuming. “It’s a scandal, don’t you realize that? Or are you too boneheaded to have absorbed anything I’ve been trying to teach you for the past year?”

“Oh,” Stiles says, “so princes can’t like boys, is that it? Is that the lesson of the day?”

“No,” Derek snaps, “but they should damn well learn some discretion if they do.”

Stiles storms out of his own bedroom.

As grand gestures go, it could have been more dramatic, but in his defense, he’s not firing on all cylinders before eight in the morning.

*

The whole “Stiles Stilinski Is Bisexual” media frenzy dies down after about a week and a half, buried under a flurry of new headlines about some British actress’s pregnancy scare.

Stiles is a bit worried about how his grandmother’ll take it. As it turns out: very well. “I had my dalliances when I was your age, before I met your grandfather,” she says with a wink. “I completely understand.”

The only one who doesn’t seem able to let it go is Derek.

“I already said I wouldn’t do it again,” Stiles says, exasperated. They’re in the palace gardens, practicing waving in a suitably dignified and princely way to the multitudes, which in this case are Stiles’ grandmother’s prize roses. “What more do you want from me?”

“I’m not asking for... celibacy. You can do it again,” Derek says from between gritted teeth. “As many times as you like. Just don’t get photographed this time. Tell your boyfriend he needs to be more discrete.”

“Okay, wow.” Stiles stops dead on the gravel path. “There’s an egregious error that needs to be corrected here. He’s not my boyfriend.” As if. “He’s nobody.”

“Not the point. I don’t care what he is,” Derek growls, and Stiles’ eyes widen, because…

“Holy shit, that was a lie. You’re lying.” He can always tell; every time, Derek gets this shifty expression so obvious it can be read from space and clenches his fists at his sides. “You’re lying and you totally do care.” There’s a buzzy, giddy excitement rushing up to Stiles’ head all of a sudden, and his mouth is going on before he’s quite caught up. “Oh my god, it bothered you, didn’t it? And not just in an it’s-a-scandal way. It bothered you seeing me kissing Jackson. Thinking he was my boyfriend.”

“That’s irrelevant. It isn’t my place to—” Derek starts stiffly, all red-faced and staring determinedly, dutifully, professionally straight ahead instead of looking Stiles in the eye.

Stiles doesn’t let him finish; he grabs Derek by the lapels of his leather jacket and pushes, and Derek just goes with it, probably mostly because he wasn’t expecting it.

Stiles walks them backwards, behind the nearest hedge. He doesn’t care if the whole world knows he likes Derek—he’d happily shout it to a whole football field of paparazzi—but this, their first kiss, should be theirs, and if the last few months have taught Stiles anything, it’s that there could be photographers anywhere. You never know with this royalty business.

So Stiles shoves, and Derek lets himself be shoved, and Stiles doesn’t hesitate. He’s been hesitating too much lately. He just slides his hands up to cradle Derek’s jaw, stubble prickling under his palms, and kisses him full on the mouth.

For all Derek’s talk about professionalism, he switches gears from standing frozen under Stiles’ hands to kissing him back with impressive speed and enthusiasm.

But he’s also the one to pull back, finally, panting against Stiles’ mouth. “Stiles, fuck. We can’t. The queen would never appr—”

“I wouldn’t what?” asks an amused voice right behind them.

Stiles peers over Derek’s shoulder. “Oh. Grandma. Hi.”

Derek scrambles out from behind the hedge, straightening up so fast Stiles half expects him to get whiplash, and coughs, “Your Majesty!” all adorably alarmed and blushy. “I, um, we… we were just...”

Stiles’ grandmother cackles in a very un-queenly, very Stilinski way. “About time,” she says approvingly. “Past time, actually. I thought for sure the waltz lessons would do the trick.”

“The waltz lessons certainly helped,” Stiles says. He shoots Derek a smug look and helpfully picks a leaf out of his hair. “You were saying, Derek?”

Derek sighs and takes Stiles’ hand.

*

For Stiles’ eighteenth birthday, there’s a royal ball.

Stiles waltzes, and sips champagne, and charms the pants off all the people he’s supposed to be charming the pants off of, and through it all, he’s scanning the sea of faces for a familiar set of broody eyebrows, for the one person he wants to see most at this thing.

The night is starting to wind down when “Thriller” comes on, and Stiles is already grinning before he even sees Derek coming toward him through the crowd.

“May I have this dance?” he asks, stopping in front of Stiles.

“Hell yes, you may,” Stiles says grandly.

Derek snorts.

Stiles takes his offered hand without further ado and tugs him out onto the dance floor.

It turns out Derek can dance to Michael Jackson. Epically, and in front of a whole ballroom full of the most important people in this country and several others besides. Stiles is in love.

(end)

[helloworlddemo1122-yahoopar-blog]

From Script to Screen: How 'The Good Place' Gets Away With Constant Reinvention (Exclusive)

The scenes you remember from your favorite television shows don’t often start out that way. From conception to the page to the small screen, changes are made for creative, budgetary and/or time constraints that you’re often not aware of. In the From Script to Screen series, we break down a pivotal scene from the current TV season with the people who put pen to paper, to give us an exclusive inside look at how an original idea transforms into a memorable TV moment.

The Good Place continues to redefine what it means to be a TV comedy. What started out as a sardonically upbeat show about a woman, Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), who wakes up in the afterlife, discovers she was placed in a heaven-like utopia called "The Good Place" by mistake, and is forced to her to hide her morally corrupt behavior by attempting to become a better person, has turned into the ultimate case study in reinvention. Since the first season, the beloved NBC series has cycled through twist upon twist upon twist, some more spectacular and unbelievable than others, posing creative quandaries about what lies ahead. In a time when surprises are few and far between, as audiences become attuned to seeking out plot points and story clues, The Good Place remains a lone outlier in getting away with the near impossible: pulling off the greatest TV reset.

Created by Michael Schur (brainchild behind Parks and Recreation and half the creative team on Brooklyn Nine-Nine), the half-hour series has consistently revamped itself as it has gone along, with literal worlds left behind and initial ideas abandoned. Just consider The Good Place's freshman finale, which produced one of the best world-upending twists in recent TV memory that radically shifted the show's course.Up until that point, Eleanor and friends believed they were inhabitants of The Good Place and were thoroughly shocked (much like viewers were) when the architect of the neighborhood, Michael (Ted Danson), wickedly revealed that they weren't in "heaven" at all but the dreaded Bad Place this entire time. Psych! The finale revelation reset The Good Place for all intents and purposes; whatever ideas that were had about the endgame now was completely thrown out the window. As a result, the sophomore season's early episodes were spent regurgitating, to a degree, the new normal for Eleanor and Co. It wasn't until the third episode, the Groundhog Day-inspired installment titled "Dance Dance Resolution," that propelled the story forward in a wholly unexpected direction.

“We, as the writers, are constantly trying to surprise our audience, which hopefully has been happening throughout the show so far. And sometimes, that means playing a long game," supervising producer and writer Megan Amram tells ET. "I think a lot of people saw the first episode of the season, which was an hour-long two-parter, and thought, 'Oh, so they're going to kind of do season one again? They've rebooted it and now we're going to see how they react to their new environment.' Then my episode comes along and immediately, we blow up everything and say no, that's not what this season is going to be about. The season is going to be about something that, hopefully, you did not see coming and totally out of left field. We love [making people think] that we're going to do something predictable and then doing something completely different."

Tahani (Jameela Jalil), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Eleanor (Kristen Bell) and Jason (Manny Jacinto) discover they're in The Bad Place during Michael's run of failed reboots.

NBC

The nine-minute opening of episode three, the season's creative pivot point, shows Michael's attempts to successfully create a faux-"Good Place" for Eleanor and her motley crew reach astronomical levels thanks to Eleanor solving The Bad Place riddle nearly every time. On Michael's 802nd reboot, they confront him about his ruse, leaving him to present them with a game-changing proposal: Bring me into your group and I'll take you to the real Good Place. Ding. The reboot-heavy sequence was an idea that was more than a year in the making -- the origins of it stemming from the end of season one. "We thought it would be so much fun if Michael gets progressively more and more frustrated with them as they start figuring out what's going on," explains Amram, who wrote the episode.

While some of the reboots were joint collaborations in the writers' room, Amram -- who half-jokingly calls herself one of the show's "crazier" writers and is known for the memorable storefront food puns (see: The Pesto's Yet to Come, Biscotti Pippen, Beignet and the Jets) -- estimates about half of them were "weird versions" she thought of herself. "The first [attempt] that you see is one where we wanted to mimic the entire season one journey. You have a lot of similar beats in it, as what you saw over the entire course of season one because that would be the clearest way to start off the episode," Amram says. "Obviously, the more and more you go on, the shorter the cuts become, the crazier the stories appear to be."

See Amram's annotated script pages below.

NBC

NBC

NBC

Examples of standout kooky moments from the sequence featured a brief but strange snapshot of a creepy clown appearing to stalk the main foursome as they hid behind a glass door ("You're like, 'What did Michael do? How did this happen that there's a clown seemingly stalking our main characters?'" Amram says) and when Michael presents a glowing obelisk to the group ("At one point, we were going to have the obelisk have lines or there was going to be backstory that the obelisk was pregnant," she recalls, "which is absolutely insane").

Another attempt saw Michael dressed in sweats, drinking away his sorrows as he laments his inability to successfully fool Eleanor, who happened to be sitting in his office listening to his inadvertent confession. "That one, in particular, is very near and dear to my heart," Amram says with a chuckle. "I gave Michael a lot of lines that I feel like I say when I’ve had a couple of drinks: ‘Ugh, my thighs and my problem area…’" Initially, the Groundhog Day sequence was twice as long as what made it to air; Amram revealed that there was much more meat to that specific scene. "After he sees Eleanor there, he ended up getting up and doing Lady Gaga karaoke in the corner. If we could have an entire episode with drunk Michael crying and singing karaoke, I would’ve loved that, but there wasn’t enough time.”

Part of the puzzle of The Good Place is balancing the zany, absurdist comedy ("There is nothing too crazy anymore," Amram notes) with surprising developments, the latter of which may seem effortless to the casual viewer but is extremely difficult to execute on a consistent level. So how do The Good Place writers achieve this on a week-to-week basis? 

"In the writers’ room when we brainstorm, especially when we’re plotting out an overarching plan for the season, we like to say, ‘If I were just a viewer watching, what are the first 10 things that I would think was going to happen?' and we list out what seems obvious," Amram reveals. "Then you can go, ‘OK, so we’re not going to do any of those. We’re going to keep moving the plot as quickly as possible,’ something that is a very difficult part of writing the show but also very satisfying. We burn through plot very quickly, so we’re constantly thinking of new ways to mess with the worlds and new ways to surprise people. I think a lot of people thought that it was going to take a whole season for Eleanor to admit to Michael that she was a mistake. Then we did that in episode seven. And then, 'Oh my god, where do we go from here?' We’ll keep going at this pace until we run out of ideas in two weeks.”

Amram acknowledges that the show is extremely serialized and can get "weird" at times, but at the end of the day, it's equally important to dole out key pieces of intel every episode -- even if it doesn't seem like the payoff will be immediate. "We try to make sure that every episode feels like you're learning a very exciting piece of information by the end of it," Amram sums up, declining to tease what the finale entails. "I really cannot say anything, but I think it will be more fun that way," pausing for a moment as if debating whether or not to offer up a nugget. "It's definitely not random. We think through every little thing very long and hard, but it just keeps going at a fast pace. I promise you it will be more fun if I don't tell you anything."

The season finale of The Good Place airs Thursday, Feb. 1 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.

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[dogjaws2]

Orange Peel

the strange thing about drawing or painting or shooting photography or dancing or singing is that you are basically operating under a pretext that states "other people will want to see this, or hear this or read this" that has always been the hardest part for me, about art work. i even hate the word art, or artist. i hate it. i feel like it immediately implies that i care about what you think. that i think you need to pay specific attention to me, and what im doing. that artwork only exists if there is an audience. and so i tend not to refer to anything i make as art, and i will never call myself an artist. i see a bed of soil, with rows of green plants. they could be flowers un bloomed, or they could just be weeds, i honestly cannot tell the difference sometimes. but they are growing, and they are green. all about the same height. someone has clearly intended to plant these in this fashion. the brown dirt looks soft, and dry, but not too dry. the green streams of leaves that rise above the dirt are flimsy, but collected and the fact that they are in these rows makes me think now yes, yes they must be flowers that have not yet bloomed. and so again, here we have a bed of dirt, and rows of green on top that someone has taken the care to prepare and water and feed and whatever else one must do in order to successfully grow some rows of green things. what i have failed to mention is that there is also a foreign object laying in the corner of the 'garden'. it is an orange peel. it is bright. this orange must have been eaten within the last day or two. this orange peel is my favourite thing to look at within this vicinity of dirt. and i am fascinated by just how well the colour of it feels on my eyes. it is entirely possible that i could have put an orange peel here, to look at. but there is absolutely no way i would have enjoyed it as much. i feel like if art could be anything, it should be a perspective that appreciates an intentional observation. finding a way to see the beauty or the magic of something that was never intended to be beautiful or magic. i feel like it is a skill you hone your entire life, and so that when things become difficult you can open your eyes and use them like telescopes to see past the bullshit and focus on tiny little orange peels. the harder i try to draw or paint, or write about this sort of thing, the further away i get from actually wanting to draw or paint or write about this sort of thing. almost like i want to keep it a secret. like i could jinx this realization if i say it out loud. so perspective is what i'm after. i'm after a consciousness that will allow me to see art anywhere, and to not have to explain it. so then art is a reaction to a piece of intentional creativity. what is the reaction to the natural existence of creativity. i like the idea of using my own life as a sort of a calculator for this. and so when i see something orange, it triggers my memory bank to search for orange. it allows me to have unique experience, operating solely on the basis of my nostalgias, and my realities. when someone else sees this orange, a different thought process is triggered. a process that may go no further than recognizing it as a piece of garbage. it is of no importance to that person and so they pay it no attention. and so now we each look at the mona lisa. we have both been told this is a beautiful painting, that it is indeed a master piece. but we both feel completely different about it. when someone asks us what we think about it, we both reply with, its magnificent. but that magnificence differs. we only reacted similarly to it because we were taught that was the proper conclusion. if you had no idea what the mona lisa was, or who leonardo da vinci was, or what the renaissance was, would you still marvel at the mona lisa? in this age? i highly doubt it. this appreciation has to be taught. the admiration you feel for certain things is not always a natural reaction and i think its extremely important to recognize the difference between allowing yourself to feel something organically and reacting how you think you should. and so my memories and my nostalgias and my realities have led me to this exact moment in time where i feel like this orange peel is interesting. i can only see it, but in my mind i can smell it and taste it. i flashback to the last time i drank orange juice, i can see images of oranges hanging on trees in my head, i think of big breakfasts, i think of mimosas, and all within the first few seconds of seeing that orange peel. it is a reaction that i enjoy, and it is completely individual. nobody else living or dead will ever experience the sight of that orange peel that way that i just did. nobody ever. some may have similar memories of oranges yes of course, but the perspective is completely unique. why oh why would you ever want to a predictable reaction to something you have created. what does that do. i have made this thing, now look at it. tell me what you feel when you look at it. its magnificent. oh thank god. a sigh of relief. my hopes and dreams had all hung in there momentarily as i awaited for audience to react. who is this audience other than myself, which is worth my effort. i will forever adore my own perspectives, and while i acknowledge that it may be a lonelier endeavour, it is important to me that i stay true to this philosophy. that i never allow myself to confuse an organic feeling, with some rehearsed reaction.