#but i doubt the star god has any empathy

[fuzzy-set]

Spoilers for the "betrayal" ending

Ok so I did the unspeakable, and everyone died except Pasqal. But how did he survive? If my ending slides did not bug out, the Star God seems to kill everyone, but the slide here implies that it let Pasqal go? And who put him in prison? I have so many questions lol.

[destinygoldenstar]

🌟I Hate Ally Now🌟 - Total Drama Viewer Reacts to Disventure Camp Season 3 Episode 15 “Weight Off Your Shoulders”

Okay, so last episode was... yeah.

And I really appreciate the support since that. Cause, idk, most of you thought I was having a heart attack from all the TikTok or something.

No. I'm fine.

Sorry I ignored the warnings though.

Here's the thing though. Since I started watching the show, not hearing any names, I heard the general consensus being that the Final 6-7 of All Stars was a horrible one, and one of the worst Final 6's in the entire show, Total Drama included.

NOT TRUE.

At least in my opinion. I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS.

Riya and Jake are my two favorite characters in not only the season, but of the whole show. That has not changed at all. They're awesome. They make the season for me.

Even though Grett was a bit flanderized, she's still really likeable. I still like her. She's also winning be back over slowly.

And Aiden, Alec, and Connor, I like them. I like all three of these guys much more than in their original seasons, actually. Not my favorites, but I still like them and find them interesting.

So no, the problem is NOT that 'everyone in this final group is terrible'.

The problem is that there's ONE character in it that is so horribly written and horrendously unlikeable and inconsistent that she is single handedly dragging everything down.

When she's NOT on screen, I'm actually having a really good time.

When she's on screen, my heart drops and I groan, and I'm just waiting to cut away from her so we can get back to actually good characters.

"Oh really Golden? You think it's fair to blame only ONE character?"

YES. IN THIS INSTANCE.

Disagree with me, that's fine. But that is my stance right now.

Sorry to the Ally stans, but uh... I'm not sorry for my opinion.

And I guarantee you that this episode will NOT be as bad as the last one. So I'm gonna prove that right now.

"Ally, realizing she needs to play a little dirty,"

By little, you mean A TRUCKLOAD OF DIRT?!??!

"Oh yeah, and Connor cried."

XD

THE LACK OF CARE.

That was the one of only two good things about last episode. That, and Grett and Gabby being wholesome together.

#JUSTICEFORGABBY

HASHTAG JUSTICE FOR OLIVER GETTING SHOVED OUT OF A PLANE.

*Gets Robin Retirement Ad*

WHY IS THE EPISODE TELLING ME TO RETIRE?!?!?

OH GODDAMMIT WE'RE STARTING WITH ALLYSON!!!!

Maybe that's why they're telling me to retire XD

I have given this woman so many chances. I am not one to jump to conclusions about a character. I'm one to give the benefit of the doubt first. Which I have done this whole time.

And I'm doing it again. APOLOGIZE FOR THE BEAR.

Or at least show an OUNCE of remorse for it.

"Pilates! You guys want to join?"

THAT'S YOGA.

THAT'S THE TRIANGLE POSE.

I've played Wii Fit to know that.

GET IT RIGHT.

Also "HEY DUDE WHO I LEFT FOR DEAD AND HAVE EXPRESSED MULTIPLE TIMES THAT I LOATHE YOUR GUTS, WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO YOGA WITH ME???" 😄

THAT'S NOT HOW THAT WORKS.

"Back home, I'm always in front of a monitor. Can't believe I've spent a month... literally touching grass!"

That's both depressingly real and really concerning.

How do you know yoga then?

Do you also know the Wii??

Doesn't change my opinion on you, but that'd be pretty based.

"Uh, no thanks. Aiden and I just went for a stroll."

Wow, he's actually being nice about it.

The improvement is off the charts.

"Poor guy."

"Wow, where was this empathy when you left me for bear food?"

Okay, thank you. Bringing that up.

Cause that was beyond fucked up.

"Can this not be about you for once?"

*FLABBERGASTED*

WHAT THE FUCK, LADY?!?!?!

"I don't like that you LEFT ME TO DIE."😠

"OH MY GOD, YOU'RE SUCH A SELFISH BRAT!!" 🙄

LIKE, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?

THAT'S THE WORST RESPONSE YOU COULD'VE GIVEN!

EVEN A SHIT EXCUSE WOULD'VE BEEN BETTER!

"I was getting help!" or "I wasn't thinking straight!" or "I'M SORRY."

EVEN IF IT WOULD BE INSINCERE, IT'S BETTER THAN THIS.

"Yeah Jake, getting left for dead is YOUR FAULT. And you're SELFISH for being upset that I did that to you!"

Asshole. Actual asshole.

AND YOU WONDER WHY NO ONE WANTS TO HANG OUT WITH YOU?!

Riya has more remorse for her actions than you do.

"With Jake and Ally not getting along and Connor being in the state he is, it might be time to look out for myself."

It's almost like you shouldn't have come out about the kiss.

Hey Riya, thank god, I need to be away from the other girl.

What are you doing to that coconut?

"For my next showing, I will SLICE the coconuts of the island AND DRINK IT ALL!! NO MERCY FOR THE COCONUTS!!"

NO RIYA THEN THEY'LL ALL BE EXTINCT! THAT'S... well I hate coconuts so that's not that bad... uh...

NO RIYA THINK OF THE COCONUTS!!

"Why is this so hard?"

Honey. It's a coconut.

"Oh Alec, I need a big strong man to open this coconut!"

XD

The flirt XD

She really cares for her relationship with Alec, huh?

"Pay attention to ME."

"What's wrong?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Oh yeah, he feels bad...

Does he care more about him or her?

"It's about Connor?"

"What if my ex wife was right about me?"

Oh, yeah. I didn't think of that.

I mean, you DID kiss another girl on National TV. So...

"Let's stay focused, okay? Is Grett still with us?"

Oh so you're gonna ignore Alec's feelings...

I can understand though since Gabby is gone, she'd be paranoid.

"You check in on Grett while I try flipping one of the heroes to our side."

She's way ahead of him.

She's so good at this game, omg.

She foresaw this EXACT situation and thought ahead of time.

"I not only do my next showings, but I also have the schedule of the showing after that, and the showing after that, and the showing after that, and the showing after that-"

NO RIYA YOU CAN'T READ THE SCRIPT!!

"I always thought getting carried away by emotions was for weak people."

It's human, but... he's not wrong.

"But I'm starting to question if I should be ignoring these feelings."

OOOOOOOOHHHHHH

Alec learns to be more emotional and vulnerable...

"Didn't think anyone was here. I'll go."

Aw...

HEY!

HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY

NO

NO

BAD RIYA

(I say as though she's not bad usually)

I mean MAYBE she thinks Alec's still willing?

Uh, does not change the fact that she's doing this to spite Connor.

"That was fun. Come catch me later, okay Alec?"

Bad Riya.

BAD RIYA.

She's a villain. You're supposed to hate her. So it's not as bad as when James did it and it was swept under the rug.

So it makes sense for her to do this, it's in line with her motives, it's not bad writing in any way, it's just really uncomfortable.

BUT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE UNCOMFTORABLE.

DISCOMFORT DOES NOT EQUAL BAD.

So... you know, poor Alec. Bad Riya. (Affectionate)

"Connor has been a thorn in my side the whole game. I need to find a way to keep his morale low so he's easier to boot."

YEP.

Makes sense to me. What did I say?

"You're working out?"

"You bet! Wanna work out?"

Why are you working out???

I understand warm ups and yoga, but working out?

You're gonna exhaust yourself before the challenge. I don't think that's a good idea when your food supply is limited.

"No thanks."

"Have you ever done a pull up?"

WHOA WHOA GIRL

SHE JUST SAID NO THANK YOU

Stop with the intrusion.

"Well if you want to give it a go-"

"I SAID NO!!"

HOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFF....

"I don't like working out in front of people."

I can understand that.

"But it's just me."

YOU'RE A PERSON.

Unless you're implying you don't count as a person. Which is hilarious.

Allyson, if she says no, she says no, please don't be so pushy.

"We're on TV in front of millions of people, and they can be... quite cruel."

AW GRETT ❤️

"Oh, I completely understand how you feel!"

OH SHUT UP!!!

"After my season, everyone would say I was a waste of a casting slot."

OH HERE WE FUCKING GO.

COMPLETELY IGNORE GRETT'S FEELINGS AND TALK ABOUT YOU.

What did you say a couple of episodes ago?

"All Jake does is talk about himself and his problems!"

WHEN YOU DO THE EXACT SAME FUCKING ASS THING!!! IF NOT MORE SO!!!

"Fuck YOUR feelings, they're so miniscule to MY feelings! What about MY feelings!! I HAVE INTERNET HATE IN MY FEED!!!!" 😭

At least for Jake, it's a FLAW, or portrayed as such. And even he knows when to lay off and focus on the other person. Example, literally last episode.

SHE SAW THIS TOO.

I GUESS THAT DOESN'T MATTER THOUGH.

"I see! People would say my appearance made them sick and vomit!"

OH MY GOD

"They'd make photoshopped pictures of me with a pig tail and nose, saying I DON'T DESERVE TO LIVE. We really are the same, aren't we?!"

I'M SHOCKED.

BUT ALSO, CALL HER OUT GRETT!!!!!👏

I'm telling you, the hate comments thing SHOULD have been GRETT'S plotline. NOT Allyson's. Not only is it much more fitting, but IN A SINGLE SCENE, we have MORE context as to what those comments are and what Grett is going through THAN WE HAVE WITH ALLYSON THIS ENTIRE SEASON.

"Waste of a casting slot"

THAT'S IT?! REALLY?!?!

GRETT GETS ACTUAL VILE DEATH THREATS.

I've been waiting all this time for her to elaborate on what those hate comments are, or what she means when she says 'it'll ruin my career'. But we're FIFTEEN EPISODES IN, AND WE HAVE HAD NO ELABORATION.

It's just 'VAGUE HATE COMMENTS ARE HATEFUL.'

And you wonder why I'm not invested at all with her struggles?

"I didn't mean to put down what Grett had to go through."

OH, SO YOU FEEL REMORSE FOR THIS, BUT NOT MURDER?!

YEAH. OKAY.

WHAT A CONSISTENT CHARACTER /s

"Am I really just being dramatic?"

😒

NOW you're asking that?

Stan Grett. She destroyed her. 👑

"All I did was train and avoid carbs, and all I have to show for it are these comments saying, 'You're still not as skinny as so and so.' I'm tired of it! Why did I ever cater to those stupid online trolls?!"

👑

FUCKING LOVE GRETT.

Again, THIS IS SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING.

I WISH THIS WAS GRETT'S PLOTLINE, BECAUSE IT'S SO MUCH MORE COMPELLING THAN HER ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH YUL.

THIS IS SO GOOD!!!

And depressingly real. I've had friends who go through the same thing.

"I'm sure many of you have been wondering when it'd come in, but I've hidden an immunity totem somewhere at your camp."

😮

IDOL?!?!??!?

IDOL?!?!??!?!?!

I DIDN'T THINK THEY WERE COMING BACK!!!!!

OH MY GOD IT'S ON!!!! IT'S SO ON!!!!

BRING BACK THE STEALING IDOLS RUNNING GAG!!!!!🎉

OH MY GOD THEY ENDED UP DOING YOGA TOGETHER IN THE END.

See Allyson? NO ONE HATES YOU.

Unless you deserve a callout.

"So... are we just-?"

*Books it*

XD

Yeah I would do the same thing.

Also "OH NO, HE STUBBED MY TOE! OH HE'S SO HORRIBLE!!!"

Ignore how happy you three seemed before this.

Don't you care about your game?

"We need to stay loyal to each other?"

"Loyalty is a funny thing, isn't it?"

What?

"You saw how Yul treated me. Why didn't you say anything, Alec?"

Oh.

Yeah that's justified.

"Grett, that's not fair, I did say something."

Not in front of her. She doesn't know this.

"You let him get away with treating me like trash all season, and even voted with him on his last day."

I understand being really upset about this. I do.

But don't screw your game over just because you're upset.

"You and Riya are no better than Yul."

True.

But I hate Yul, so...

"So, you left him to die?"

OH GREAT. SHE'S GONNA PRAISE IT.

"Now you're thinking like me!"

"You said to stop caring what the public thinks, right?"

AGAIN, NO REMORSE. JUST EXCUSES.

ALLY, SHE IS SO OBVIOUSLY EVIL. SHE'S PUBLIC ABOUT IT!

HER WHOLE PUBLIC IMAGE IS BEING EVIL!!!

HOW DOES THIS NOT REGISTER IN YOUR BRAIN?!?!?

"I have to say, I'm impressed, Ally."

Goddammit.

Slay Riya.

Fuck Ally.

"Should I be? Jake trusted me and I ran. Isn't that... cowardly?"

...well I got the remorse I wanted.

But it's about her BEING SCARED, NOT THAT SHE TRIED TO KILL HIM.

THAT'S VERY CONTRADICTORY. SHE LITERALLY CONFESSED SHE DID IT ON PURPOSE.

THAT'S NOT BEING A 'COWARD', THAT'S BEING A SOCIOPATH.

"Hell no! His fault for falling for it. You played it smart, girl."

At least it's a villain saying it. Thank god...

"Thanks Riya."

I hate you.

🫢

I FINALLY FUCKING SAID IT!!!!!!

I HATE HER!!!!!!

TOOK ME FIFTEEN EPISODES!!! BUT I'M HERE NOW!!!

MY CHARACTER ARC IS COMPLETE, AND I AM AN ALLY HATER NOW!! 🎉

Why are you two looking in the water?

Is that a thing? Have idols been found in the water in Survivor?

(I don't mean 'next to', I mean ACTUALLY in the water)

"Also, why are we searching in the water?"

XD

SHARING A BRAIN CELL.

"Well, I-I was thinking, if I were an immunity totem, where would I hide?"

...

WITH THE FISHES, OBVIOUSLY.

FISHES EAT IDOLS FOR BREAKFAST.

FOOD CHAIN. COME ON.

"You made him feel better last night. Keep working your magic!"

"I don't want to do it."

"Even though Jake and I have been... okay, I still don't trust him."

Why?

"If I'm gonna start making my own moves outside the heroes, I can't have him knowing if I find the totem."

I mean... fair enough I guess?

I MEAN, IDOLS TEND TO GET STOLEN AROUND HERE.

"We need your help."

"Did you not hear me? I said I wanted to be alone."

I say this as motivation, slap him.

😂😂😂

THE FUCKING RECORD SCRATCH TOO!!!!

😂😂😂

OKAY, THAT WAS JUST FUNNY CAUSE HE INSTANTLY DID WHAT I SAID.

😂👏

ADD THAT ONE TO THE "GOLDEN PREDICTIONS" COMPILATION.

"You fought to get this far. Don't let it all be a waste."

YEAH!!!

"I just feel guilty..."

"NEVER let guilt rule your life!"

👏

OH MY GOSH YES!!!! YEESSS!!!!

OH I LOVE YOU!!!!!

"I don't know what came over me."

XD

Callout.

"An entity called Golden possessed me and told me to slap him... that was weird."

"I guess ol Ashley's teachings finally rubbed off on me!"

That's so sweet and awesome.

But don't ever do that accent again.

"I spent hours looking for this thing,"

How long as it been?

It only feels like an hour or half an hour.

OH MY GOD XD

Thank god there's no bird on that tree, they'd knock it over and STEAL THAT IDOL.

God it feels so good to make idol stealing jokes again. It's been so long.

Even though it's probably not appropriate at all. Screw it. That's become a meme throughout these reactions.

Why'd you stop climbing?

You can't reach it?

...why're you walking away?

WHY'D YOU STOP?

"I can't do it."

Oh...

At least they established it before this scene. So it makes sense.

"I know where the totem is."

...WHY are you telling YOUR ENEMIES?

"I'll let you take the totem as a sign of trust."

WHY?

They're your enemies.

You're just giving them two advantages instead of one.

Then they're just gonna use this to vote you off.

"How can we trust you?"

"It's either that or have fun fumbling around for hours."

I mean...I guess it's better than letting Alec or Riya have it.

"It's in that tree."

XD

THE SHOT.

"See that's the thing, I'll let you have it... IF YOU CAN GET IT! MWAHAHAAHAHA!!!"

"GOOD LUCK BITCHES!!!"

"Best of luck."

XD

WHEN DID GRETT GET AWESOME AGAIN?!?!

SHE CAN BE HER OWN CHARACTER AGAIN!!

THIS IS THE GRETT I KNOW AND LOVE! 👑

Oh.

"I did a bit of rock climbing back in my day."

"BACK IN MY DAY, ROCKS AND TREES WERE THE SAME!"

Okay the rock music backing him up 🎸

YAAAAAYY!!!!

"Someone order a cheeseburger with a side of... totem?"

Grett comes over and snatches it from him XD

"I found it first! YOINK!!!"

IDOL STEALING DAY!!!

"I spent all my search time flipping Ally!"

XD

"GODDAMMIT WHY DID I CHOOSE TO HANG OUT WITH THAT INSECURE NUSIENCE?!?!"

Me too Riya. Me too.

"Who would have thought at the beginning of the season that motherflipping Connor would have the idol?"

Just say motherfucking, it's okay.

AWWWWWWWWW❤️

"Jake trusting me? I never thought I'd see the day."

I KNOW.

Oh.

I thought we were done with her.

"I told you to never call this number again."

No you didn't.

"Oh Trevor, I thought you were my dealer."

Oh okay.

"Turns out, jobs are hard to come by when your boss fires you on national television."

You didn't think that through, did you?

"Krystal always takes what she wants, like the snake she is."

AYO DON'T DISS KRYSTAL LIKE THAT.

SHE'S JUST PRIVILEGED. THAT'S ALL.

Also, I'm sorry, but she was your boss, and you were legitimately breaking rules. GETTING FIRED IS YOUR FAULT.

"Like she took Derek..."

GET OVER IT.

DEREK IS NOT INTO YOU THAT WAY!!

TAKE A HINT!

"What do you say, Trevor, to a little... payback?"

...

Say it with me: I DON'T GIVE A FUCK.

I DON'T CARE ABOUT THIS PLOTLINE!!! I'M SORRY!! I DON'T!!

"Today's challenge will test your endurance as well as your honesty."

Op. Welp. Riya's losing XD

"DAMMIT! MY WEAKNESS!!!"

"Unless you want the prize money to be fifty cents we're done with VR."

Awww :(

Okay, I get it...

This is ALREADY LEAGUES of a better challenge than last time.

I actually like the sound of this one.

"However, if the person you asked tells the truth, you will receive the heavy weight instead."

Oh, okay.

So it's a risk.

So just don't lie.

And ask really offensive questions.

"So, who do you think's dropping out first?"

Riya.

I SAY THAT AS A RIYA STAN.

"Grett, what's your favorite food?"

Oh come on. Ask something more brutal.

"Tomato quinoa salad with low fat dressing."

...alright.

*LIE*

WHAT?!

WHY WOULD YOU LIE ABOUT THAT?! THAT'S THE EASIEST THING TO ANSWER!!!

GRETT. COME ON!!!

"I hate this show."

Hate watchers nitpicking be like ^

"Aiden, who do you prefer? Jake or Ally?"

Easy.

"Who do I prefer? What the hell does that even mean?"

"Just answer the question."

No, clarify. What do you mean by that?

She could mean "Prefer to PUNCH IN THE FACE" for all you know!

"I... prefer Jake."

The right answer.

*TRUTH*

NICE!!

"Aiden chose Jake over me!"

OH QUIT YOUR CRYING. READ THE ROOM.

"How am I less liked than Jake?!"

"Wow, where was this empathy when you left me for bear food?"

Okay, thank you. Bringing that up.

Cause that was beyond fucked up.

"Can this not be about you for once?"

I HAVE NO IDEA. IT'S A TOTAL MYSTERY /s

NO WAIT I JUST REALIZED WHY ALLYSON IS SO OUT OF CHARACTER!

SHE'S JUST DIET JAKE! HER PERSONALITY WAS CHANGED TO BE DIET JAKE!

WHINY, IMPULSIVE, PETTY, CONSTANTLY TALKING ABOUT THEIR PROBLEMS, HOLDING GRUDGES WITH PEOPLE, AND GULLIBLE TO A SIN.

She's just Jake, but with NONE of the sympathetic backstory, NONE of the good reasoning for why they'd realistically fall for deception, NONE of the actual valid reasons to hate certain people, NONE of the character development, NONE of the emotional depth and remorse for her poor actions, NONE of the moments where she sheds actual positive traits (unless you count being a quirky gamer as a positive trait), AND ALL THESE TRAITS BEING DIALED UP TO ELEVEN.

And like.... ACTUAL Jake is right there. I get wanting a flawed character, but make them consistent and make it make sense, especially when you have an actual well written flawed character in the same room.

This is basically exactly who all the hardcore Jake haters SAY Jake is. (And I've gotten comments of such and seen the comments. One of the first things I knew about the show before I watched it was that everyone hated Jake.)

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HER CHARACTER IN SEASON TWO? I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

"Alec, did you ever love your son?"

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OH THAT'S A BRUTAL ONE!!!!

"Of course I love my son!"

*LIE*

🫢

HOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO.....

(under my desk)

....hohohohohoho....

I mean... no one's surprised.

STILL.

"I choose Jake. Do you ever feel like you're using people to trauma dump?"

Um... DUH?

This isn't as brutal as you think it is.

But it's still very clearly spiteful of you.

"I... do."

*TRUTH*

That's not very hard to answer.

Everyone does it!

YOU do it too, Allyson!

Don't act like this is a negative.

WHY ARE YOU SURPRISED?!

"Listen, I'm an open book now, Ally. You can't get in my head!"

Okay Jake's winning this.

He's one of the most brutally honest people here.

This challenge was MADE for him!

"Aiden, after getting rejected from Season 1, did you dye your hair black and white to appeal to the casting directors?"

Didn't he already confess this in Season 2?

"Oh... course not."

*LIE*

BUDDY.

YOU'VE ALREADY CONFESSED THIS.

I'm very surprised Aiden didn't just get crushed and die.

"Alec, at the start of the season, when you were helping me move on from Riya, was all that genuine?"

Ooooooohhh. Good one.

"Yes!"

*TRUTH*

OH MY GOD.

I kinda knew it, but OH MY GOD.

"Oh thank god! Thought this thing was broken."

XD

"Riya, are you really proud of being called the villain of TV?"

OF COURSE SHE IS.

"For my next showing, I have ALL the truths to give on how PROUD of my role I am! I made them in the little form called truth bombs! Have one! I'm giving them out!"

NO RIYA THEY'RE EXPLOSIVE!!

"You better believe it!"

*TRUTH*

Surprising no one.

Knew it.

Sorry bud.

"Ally, did you agree to date Hunter only because that would make you look better to fans?"

I mean... I'd believe Season 3 Allyson doing that tbh.

"Fuck off Jake! No!"

*TRUTH*

Fair enough.

"Jake is a piece of garbage!"

YOU'RE A PIECE OF GARBAGE!

DIDN'T YOU JUST ASK A DIRTY QUESTION TOWARDS HIM A COUPLE MINUTES AGO?!?!?

THAT'S THE GAME, ALLYSON!!!!

READ THE FUCKING ROOM!!!

"Wow, that might be the most heated on yet."

I think the one about Alec not loving his son was far more heated than that one.

But that's just my opinion.

So, by Allyson's logic, Grett is a piece of garbage because she asked if Alec loved his son. Alec is a piece of garbage because he asked Aiden about his appearance.

We can do this all day.

"Jake, did you only befriend Aiden for kicking his boyfriend out?"

Oof.

"RIYA IS A PIECE OF GARBAGE!!!!"

"Maybe at first I did, but I guess I'm genuinely starting to appreciate him."

*TRUTH*

AWWWWWW ❤️

I love it!

"Connor, so do you still have feelings for Riya?"

Oh shit.

"GRETT IS A PIECE OF GARBAGE!!!!"

"Never in million years!"

*LIE*

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH

OH SHIT.

I kinda knew it though...

How much do these weigh? I'm curious.

If they said it, I don't remember it.

"At this point, a lot of you should be hurting."

MEANWHILE CONNOR IS DYING IN THE BACKGROUND WHILE EVERYONE ELSE IS FINE.

"We might be seeing rapid dropouts."

😂😂😂

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

*CRYING OF LAUGHTER*

RIGHT AFTER SHE SAID THAT-

😂😂😂

THAT WAS-

😂

THAT WAS SO OUT OF NOWHERE!!!!!!

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I NEED A MINUTE!!!

I'M SO SORRY.

THAT WAS FUNNIER THAN THAT HAD ANY RIGHT TO BE.

"We should be seeing rapid dropo-"

*Drops DEAD*

"-well shit I'm a jinx."

DCAS Episode 15 is a great tragedy where seven lost their lives to the rapid dropouts.

"Riya, were you really trying to relate to me, or did you just want my extra vote?"

Oh there you go.

"Ally, I've been where you are."

*TRUTH*

OH.

SHE DIDN'T ANSWER THE QUESTION THOUGH.

THAT'S STILL INTERESTING. SHE ACTUALLY DOES RELATE TO HER... SHIT...

OH THAT SAYS A LOT AS TO WHY SHE CHOSE HER.

"I am so good at this game!"

Yes you are.

"My acting has gotten so great, I can fool lie detectors now."

...

I think you're lying to yourself.

I don't believe you could do that.

YEAH. NO.

THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR RIYA TO DO.

SO UNLESS IT'S BROKEN, IT DETECTED THAT SHE GENUINELY DOES RELATE TO ALLYSON.

SO RIYA IS LYING TO HERSELF, BECAUSE SHE DOES NOT WANT TO CONFESS HER VULNERABILITY, UNLESS IT'S CONVENIENT.

That's what's going on here. NOT that she successfully fooled the lie detector.

Writers, I see what you did here if this was intentional. Very clever.

"I honestly deserve ten more Emmys for that."

XD

But the fact that she's so egotistical that she thinks she actually did this. Quite funny.

"When I took you out on that first date, after your success, did you consider leaving Hollywood for me?"

"Why-ever would you think that? I'm the wood in Hollywood."

OH GOD...

SHE'S ACTUALLY STUMBLED THERE.

"As if! I'd never choose you over my career, asshole."

*LIE*

YO.

I WAS RIGHT.

HOLY SHIT...

All she really wants in the end is to be loved...

Also "CONNOR IS A PIECE OF GARBAGE!!!!"

NOOOOOO QUEEEN!!!!!!!!

Told you she'd be early though. But she lasted longer than I thought.

"He's a threat! He knows too much about me! I want him gone tonight!!"

But in the end of it all, she can't allow herself to be vulnerable. She thinks she'll lose everything.

"Grett, where're you feeling it?"

"KRYSTAL IS A PIECE OF GARBAGE!!!!"

"Those are a hundred twenty pounds you're holding up."

WHAT?!?!?!??!?!?

I DON'T BELIEVE THAT!!!!

HANG ON. MATH.

...

NO SHE ACTUALLY DOES ONLY HAVE ONE. THAT'S NOT AN ANIMATION ERROR.

HOLY SHIT, THAT'S INSANE THAT THEY'RE THAT HEAVY.

I'm a weak bastard. I would've dropped first one!

"I've never been able to hold up so much!"

Awwwwww look at you girlie!👏

Strong queen! 👑

Okay Connor just gave up.

"Grett, when you broke up with Yul, was that... hard for you?"

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

THE IDEA THAT DITCHING YUL TO A CURB WOULD BE DIFFICULT.

"No."

*LIE*

IT'S BROKEN!!!!!!

HER LIE DETECTOR HELMET THINGY IS BROKEN!!!!!!

OH SHE'S STILL GOT IT THOUGH!

"Jake, do you feel like you deserve Tom's affection even if he's not giving it to you?"

"GRETT IS A PIECE OF GARBAGE!!!!"

HOLY SHIT THAT ONE'S JUST AS BAD AS THE HUNTER ONE.

Ayo why is nobody calling out Grett though??? She's so clearly a piece of garbage for this /s

"I... I do."

*TRUTH*

Daaaaaaaawwww 💔

"So it's all down to us. Me and the biggest dick on the field."

Well yeah, cause you're a woman so you don't have a dick.

XD

I'M SO SORRY!!!! I'M SO SORRY FOR THAT!!!!!

GOSH I'M GONNA GET CANCELLED FOR THAT JOKE, AREN'T I?!

"Seriously, how can someone like him over me?!"

ARE YOU DEAF?!

READ THE FUCKING ROOM!! EVERYONE IS DOING IT!!

YOU'RE DOING IT!!

SHUT UP!!!

I hope Jake wins. That would be awesome.

"Jake, if Ashley were here, do you think she'd be proud of how you're acting?"

...

"ALLY IS A PIECE OF GARBAGE!!!!"

Oh, so YOU can ask very invasive questions about someone's relationships for the sake of the game. BUT HE CAN'T?!?!

YOU DAMN HYPOCRITE.

"I do!"

*pause*

Come on.

COME ON.

*TRUTH*

YEEEEESSSS!!!!!

"What?!"

GET FUCKED!!!!

FALL!!! FALL!!! FALL!!! FALL!!!

YEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS!!!!! 👏

(Also what is this in the corner of this shot? Anyone else see that?)

"With that, Jake wins immunity!"

OH THE SMILE ON MY FACE!!!!

YEEEEEEESSSS JAKE!!!! 👏🎉

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW MY GOOOOOODDDDDDD!!!!!!

OH IT'S SO SWEET!!!!! AWWWW!!!!

THIS IS THE GOOD ENDING, HONESTLY.

Op, XD

🎵"Our friendship goes beyond your average kind of bond"🎵

🎵"But not because we're gay!" "No not because we're gay!"🎵

🎵"We're close but not that way. The only man that I love is my dad!"🎵

"I guess Lake was right. Everyone really does deserve a second chance."

Yes. They do.

"Golden, you didn't give Ally a chance."

I GAVE HER FIFTEEN CHANCES.

You gotta give up at some point, alright?

"Are you officially switching sides?"

"I don't know. Now that Jake won immunity, what's the point?"

I already know her answer.

She's fucking STUPID.

One, THEY'RE SO OBVIOUSLY EVIL.

But even ignoring that, SHE'S NOT EVEN DOING THIS FOR HER GAME! SHE'S DOING THIS SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE SHE HATES JAKE SO MUCH, FUCK THE GAME!

You know, going completely off of your own personal biases and emotions and hatred towards somebody was portrayed as a NEGATIVE in Jake's case.

But for her, it's actually gonna work!

Again, NO CONSEQUENCES. DOESN'T MAKE ME LIKE HER AT ALL.

Switching is a TERRIBLE idea. Riya, Alec, and Grett are three VERY strong competitors and have proven such all game. And Allyson is just a liability. An outsider. They will ABSOLUTELY dump her when it's convenient and they don't need her anymore.

Compare that to the non-villain's strongest member being Connor. Aside from that, Jake and Aiden are really not much of threats at all. Jake only won immunity because that challenge appealed to his character.

Even JAKE knew that Alec was full of shit when he tried to recruit him in the alliance. IMMEDIATELY saw through it and said no.

I THINK THE SHOW HAS IT MIXED UP ON WHO 'THE NAIVE ONE' IS.

"It'll hurt Jake regardless."

"I'll think about it."

Yeah.

The ONLY thing she cares about is "How do I hurt Jake?"

THAT'S ALL SHE CARES ABOUT.

Idk, it sounds like a mindset a bully would have.

"You're fishing right now?"

"Gives me a moment of peace."

"So that I can make the fish rest in peace instead."

"Boy, this place sure is quiet without Yul and Gabby, huh?"

DO NOT PUT THOSE TWO ON THE SAME FOOTING!!

THE DISRESPECT!

"I never had feelings for Riya."

"So then why did you kiss her? What? Just your unbelievable rizz?!"

"These last couple years, I haven't been with anyone. You saw the lie detector. We were drunk and I made a mistake. When I voted you out-"

"Oh yeah, it was 'for my own good'."

Yeah... makes sense to me.

He's lonely. He's desolate.

Desolate people crave attention far hungrier than those who aren't.

"Alec, when people have problems, they talk it out like adults."

Wish that was true. But it depends on the person if they can understand that.

"It's all I know, okay?! I drove Cheryll away because every fucking time we argue I walk away. I act like things don't bother me, Connor, but inside... I'm terrified of confrontation. It's who I'll always be..."

Alec.

I am SO SORRY I dismissed you in Season One.

You are actually GREAT.

THIS EXPLAINS SO MUCH, OH MY GOD...

This was really the puzzle piece I needed to properly understand him.

"I never meant to hurt you."

"But I do!"

OH MY GOD-

*RIYA JUMPSCARE*

GIRL, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!??!

"SAVING THE FISHES!!! WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE I'M DOING!?!?! HE WILL HURT NO FISH ANY LONGER!!!!"

"Riya, what the hell?!"

"Why are you talking to the enemy?!"

"He's not my enemy!"

I get it from a character standpoint.

BUT OH MY GOD. YOU'RE GONNA LOSE ALEC.

"Awwww, enjoying your bath?"

"I have salts if you want them. Fish flavored."

"So this is how you treat me, after everything?"

"You're pathetic. I never needed you, Connor."

...

I feel like I shouldn't be here and I walked in on something.

"Just know this, Riya. I'm not here for you anymore. I'm here for me."

👏

THERE YOU GO, CONNOR!!!!

"May the best man win."

"Um, I'm a woman. Fuck you."

"Ugh, the best WOMAN will win."

XD

I feel like I'm responsible for her shit sometimes.

"Someone like Riya cannot be allowed to win this game."

Yeah, well, watch her actually win.

I know she won't. But you know. It's one of my dream realities.

She wins, but she loses everything else because everybody hates her. The money rings hollow. She realizes what she actually wanted all along too late. And now she's stuck in an endless loop of evil behavior forever because it's all she'll ever know to succeed with.

I think the theme in this season is "Working towards being the best version of yourself."

You see this with Jake, Aiden, Connor, Grett, and Alec. All these guys have arcs where they're going through inner struggles and either trying to be the best version of themself they want to be, or they're realizing they want to be a better version of themself than they already are because they are capable of it. Giving in to your negatives (not the same as trying to erase them) is what will drive you to a sad, miserable life, where you're stuck in the endless loop of making the same mistakes over and over again. But that's not what any of them want to be.

The money? Who cares? It rings hollow because it's not gonna buy your heart or a healthier life. YOU have to do that. The money is BAIT.

You can also see this with Gabby, Tom, and Ellie.

But Riya? SHE'S THE ANTI-THEME.

She REFUSES to acknowledge her positives, as to her, that is a WEAKNESS. It's a detriment. She's been raised, and trained by the show, to believe that winning the game, and the money, is EVERYTHING, and WILL solve all her problems. When in actuality, that drive only blinds her to what she actually wants all along, which is companionship and to belong somewhere where she can be herself. But she feels like she can't because "The industry wants her to be evil." So she does whatever evil thing she can to pursue her game.

In doing that, she ignores any lesson she could learn, and she chooses to remain in the endless loop of fucking up every single relationship she forms for the sake of winning the money and the game and maintaining her status as "The Villain Of TV."

And that's the very thing that will be her downfall. That's WHY while I wouldn't mind her losing, her winning the money makes way too much sense to me as THE most logical conclusion to her arc. The ULTIMATE consequence to her actions that ruins her life... is obtaining the very thing she sought out to get.

She's not just going everything wrong. SHE IS EVERYTHING WRONG.

I think that's really cool. That's also a reason WHY I love her character. And love THIS. She is SO compelling and interesting to me.

"I'm sorry about earlier-"

"Water under the bridge."

MURDER is okay.

Being pushy when you're oblivious is not.

"What if I told you, I'm not comfortable moving forward with them?"

Oh?

"The lines are getting faded, Ally. There are no heroes and villains anymore. Just winners and losers."

I mean, fair, if you want to be the secret force that controls this game.

Go for the more powerful people, then. Turn on Riya and Alec. Or Connor. He's a strong one.

"I'll vote the way you want tonight as long as you repay the favor down the line."

So...

Two. Two. THREE.

YOU STILL GIVE THE NON-VILLAINS THE MAJORITY.

"I'm starting to feel like myself again!"

YAY GRETT!!!!

"Never thought I'd write your name down, but hopefully this is the night you regret everything."

"Keep hoping. I'll turn it to despair."

This is gonna be all over the place.

"If you have the immunity totem and would like to play it, now would be the time to do so."

You might want to.

Dammit.

'RIYA'

AH FUCK! XD

I SAY AS THOUGH I DIDN'T SEE.

OH I'M ABOUT TO GET CRUSHED.

'AIDEN'

WHAT?!??!

SHE CHOSE AIDEN?!?!?!

Why AIDEN? Why not CONNOR? He's the bigger threat of the three.

Fuck you Allyson, going off your emotions instead of playing the game.

'RIYA'

'AIDEN'

FUCK. ME.

Two other random votes, probably Connor, and then one Riya.

'RIYA'

Wait, so...

Who did Riya and Alec vote then? Does it matter?

'AIDEN'

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!??!!?

FUCK.

YOU.

YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHO I'M SAYING THAT TO.

I'M SO MAD AT HER.

I SAW IT COMING AND I'M SOMEHOW STILL PISSED THE FUCK OFF AT HER.

"The lines are getting faded, there are no heroes and villains anymore" MY ASS.

JOINS THE VILLAINS.

AT LEAST GRETT IS ACTUALLY TRYING TO PLAY THE GAME.

ALLYSON?!??! SHE ONLY DID THIS BECAUSE AIDEN DIDN'T LIKE THAT SHE LEFT A GUY TO DIE.

THIS IS NOT STRATEGIC. THIS IS PETTY.

AND SHE COMPLETELY GETS AWAY WITH IT, THAT'S WHAT'S REALLY PISSING ME OFF HERE.

"WHO FLIPPED?!?!?"

"ALLY!!!"

YEAH THEY KNOW!!!! THEY KNOW!!!! INSTANTLY!!!!

"I had to do what's best for me."

HOW IS THIS 'BEST' FOR YOU?!?!

YOU PUT YOURSELF IN A VERY TERRIBLE POSITION!!!

YOU MADE ONE SIDE HATE YOU, AND JOINED ANOTHER SIDE PUBLICALLY KNOWN FOR BEING STRONG AND DECEPTIVE, AND CANNOT BE TRUSTED!!!

THIS IS 'WORST' FOR YOU, ACTUALLY.

YOUR MOVE DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE.

"HOW IS THIS GOOD FOR ANY OF US?!"

THANK YOU!!!!

IT'S GOOD FOR NOBODY!!!!

"Judge me all you want."

GLADLY.

YOU FUCKING SUCK AND I HATE YOU.

AND I'M NOT GONNA BE NICE ABOUT IT ANYMORE.

I'M DONE. WE'RE OVER THAT.

"Wait, did Aiden have the totem? Did we flush it?"

XD

THAT'S ALL SHE CARES ABOUT XD

"BUT THE IDOL! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO STEAL IT?!?"

"UP. YOURS. RIYA!!!"

(I HAD to make that line big)

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFFF

THAT was good. XD

Oh that was deserved.

"I'm so sorry Aiden!"

"Hey, it's neither of you guys fault."

Yeah, WE KNOW WHO THAT IS.

"Thanks for not turning on me."

THE JAB.

"I know we haven't exactly been best friends this game, but-"

"Stop. I'm not in the mood for a mushy goodbye."

Awwww

"Where's the Jake I know? The toxic jealous one?"

XD

👏

OH THAT'S GOOD.

"TOXIC?! JEALOUS?! Oh screw you!"

"There he is!"

XD

Oh my heart ❤️

It's so cute

YAAAAAAAYYYY!!!! 👏🎉

OH THAT'S SO SATISFYING!!!!!

AFTER EVERYTHING, THEY'RE BESTIES IN THE END!! I LOVE IT!!!!

"I wanted Connor gone, but Ally only agreed to work with us if she got to choose who goes."

YEAH.

"Ally just so happened to pick the same thing Riya and Alec did, she's not working with them" MY ASS. THEY LITERALLY SAY IT.

"Jake is lucky he had immunity. Tonight would've been his night."

SHUT THE FUCK UP LADY. NO ONE LIKES YOU!!

"Ally is not going off of her own personal biases and hatred towards Jake. She's doing this for game reasons." MY ASS. SHE LITERALLY SAYS IT.

I JUST WANT THIS GIRL TO SHUT UP NOW.

...oh?

OH GRETT. AWWWWWW

OH THE BRANCH.

"This is stupid..."

NO DON'T GO AWAY, DO IT!!!

COME ON! DO IT!!!

YEEEESSSS!!!! GRETT!!!!! ❤️

🥹

XD

YEAH! FUCK THE WORLD!!!!

🥹❤️

THAT was BEAUTIFUL.

Grett, I love you again. SO MUCH.

MY QUEEN IS BACK!!! I'M SO HAPPY!!!

Again, there is REALLY GOOD STUFF HERE.

5/6 of this group are REALLY GOOD AND INTERESTING AND COMPELLING.

JUST IGNORE THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.

Just take what I said at the beginning.

Riya and Jake are my two favorite characters in not only the season, but of the whole show. That has not changed at all. They're awesome. They make the season for me.

Even though Grett was a bit flanderized, she's still really likeable. I still like her. She's also winning be back over slowly.

And Aiden, Alec, and Connor, I like them. I like all three of these guys much more than in their original seasons, actually. Not my favorites, but I still like them and find them interesting.

So no, the problem is NOT that 'everyone in this final group is terrible'.

The problem is that there's ONE character in it that is so horribly written and horrendously unlikeable and inconsistent that she is single handedly dragging everything down.

When she's NOT on screen, I'm actually having a really good time.

When she's on screen, my heart drops and I groan, and I'm just waiting to cut away from her so we can get back to actually good characters.

GOD I HATE HOW ALLYSON AMBER IS WRITTEN.

AND THERE ARE SO MANY REASONS WHY, IT'S INSANE.

If you guys want, I can make a full essay post on WHY Ally is the worst character of Disventure Camp All Stars.

Think of it like this: I hate Yul MORE.

BUT, at the very least, Yul is SUPPOSED to be hated.

ALLY IS NOT.

YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO FEEL BAD FOR HER.

So, though Yul is still my LEAST FAVORITE character in Disventure Camp. OBJECTIVELY SPEAKING,

All Stars Ally is worse.

YEAH. THAT'S HOW BAD I THINK IT IS.

She's not even the FUN kind to hate. She's just MISERABLE.

And NO, I will NOT take this back. I've given her so many chances, so many benefits of the doubt, I waited SO LONG for her to win be over.

But no. I've given her so many chances, and she has BLOWN EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.

I'M DONE.

I AM DONE HEARING THIS OUT. IT'S BAD.

I DO NOT CARE what comes after this with her. I'm sure it's important, but it will NOT change my opinion on her.

She could be the best character ever after this, and I won't care because it will NOT undo any of THIS.

Even if they fully elaborate what exactly Ally's hate comments are, or reveal it as something extremely horrible, or give her any other depressing sympathetic backstory, or completely rewrite her character to just be her Season 2 self, or even get over her hatred towards Jake,

I DON'T CARE. IT'S TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE.

YOU SHOULD HAVE REVEALED IT SOONER. BECAUSE NOW I DON'T CARE.

But when she's NOT on screen, THIS IS GREAT. I'm enjoying everything else here.

Alec and Connor are significantly more interesting and compelling than they were in their seasons to me.

Grett is FINALLY regaining everything I loved about her character in Season 1, and you know what? This might actually be HER BEST EPISODE IN THE ENTIRE SERIES.

And Jake and Riya, you already know how I feel about them. I LOVE THEM. THEY MAKE THE SEASON FOR ME.

If my predictions, which were already proven wrong, were about my own personal biases, Jake and Riya would be my Final Two pick. FOR SURE. There's no if whats or buts about that.

But I'm not dumb enough to actually predict that just off of 'I like their characters the best so I want it'.

...okay I kind of am.

Yeah... I don't know what to say. THIS IS SO FAR NOT THAT BAD. I got told that Episode 14 onward is back to back garbage episodes. I'M SO FAR NOT ON THAT BOAT.

Which is kinda shocking since I hated Episode 14.

THIS IS NOT THAT BAD. IT'S JUST ONE ELEMENT THAT IS THAT BAD.

***

Okay, so uh, I usually not react to the Patreon shoutouts. I just skip them. But I got a request to watch this one, so... let me just see what you want me to see so bad.

Right now it's just a Galaxy Ultra Phone Ad.

The lip sync is a bit off.

"'WD Broskay', good luck on your next Iron Man."

Okay?

"'Riya is a parasite. Move on Connor.'"

XD

That person I'm assuming is a Riya hater.

Respect though.

"'We need a villain winner'... alright..."

XD

THAT'S ME.

Not actually me, BUT THAT'S ME.

"'Keith is eloping with Tom'."

AYO

JAKE'S NOT GONNA BE HAPPY.

"'Ally's Only Fans'"

Respect your opinion. But not me.

"Somebody should probably tell Hunter."

Hunter I'm so sorry.

"'James be my sugar daddy'... back off he's mine."

XD

AIDEN, YOOOOOOOOOOO

What, is THAT what you guys wanted to show me? This?

"'Yul has a micro penis'."

😂👏

Okay no, THAT was what you wanted to show me!

THE CALLOUT!!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!

I love that I now know there's people who hate Yul as much as I do XD

"'I'm gonna kidnap Tom.'"

WHAT ARE THESE NAMES?!?!?

"'Poison Ivy' I'm more of a Harley Quinn fan myself."

Ooh, something new we know about Aiden. He's a DC guy.

THE OTHER DC.

"'Don from Pokemon BITCH'"

Aggressive.

"'Connor is a flop, move on Riya.'"

XD

WE GOT THE OPPOSITE GOING ON HERE!!

Well which is it?

They both need to move on if you ask me.

"'Yul's secret side chick' hey, bestie, move on."

ME TOO AIDEN.

I'M CONCERNED FOR THAT PERSON.

"'Yul shut the fuck up and admit you're dating Kai'."

NO

NOOO

NOOOOOOO

NO HE'S NOT!!

"Hey that's mean. Kai's too good to date that asshole."

XD

Why is Aiden so savage in this?

"'Skibidi sigma dub wat wiz'... I feel so incredibly sorry for your generation."

😂

THAT'S GOING IN MY FOLDER. I'M SAVING THAT ONE.

THAT IS HOW I FEEL. I FEEL SO SORRY FOR THIS GENERATION.

"'Aiden's GF' Awkward..."

Hey you can be poly.

"And for those happy that I'm finally out of the game, congratulations, your prediction finally came true after twelve episodes."

OKAY. THAT'S BASED.

ROASTING THE AIDEN HATERS. LOVE IT.

I am NOT an Aiden hater. Idk where any of you get that from. I made a tier list when I finished Season 2. I LIKE HIM. He's not my favorite or anything, BUT I LIKE HIM.

Okay I see why you wanted me to watch that just to see that. Do not expect me to go through all these segments though, unless there's something you really REALLY think I should see.

[deathandrainbows1]

The Snail

A Fanfic starring my friend Bella (@percyjackson-post) and The Snail (you know the one)

"Snail... It doesn't have to be like this. I know it's all you've ever known and all you can do but..."

She reached out to the malignant snail slowly inching towards her. Menacingly slow. If there's even a shred of empathy in those beady black eyes atop those antenna, she can't see it. She slowly withdraws her hand in resignation, head down.

"It doesn't have to be like this! Just... Just talk to me... Please?" For the first time in her long, long life she raised her voice at the snail not in anger, or desperate pleading for her life but... Something else. A shred of empathy. Something to show that it was more than just the killing machine it was made to me.

And for the first time, the snail paused, looked up at her to meet her eyes. They've both lived long lives and God only knows what Bella has done to keep the cursed mustelid away from herself, the kind of horrors its endured, yet still it kept finding her. Sometimes maybe years, decades, or even centuries later, but it always Found her. The relationship they had was built off nothing but pure hatred, the fear of a god reduced to mere prey on one side and the mindless pursuit of an entity designed for one sole duty on the other. Yet after all this time, maybe, just maybe there was hope. Some hope to for once just... Communicate.

Carefully, keeping her eyes on the snail, Bella pushed a keyboard towards it, wary of any sudden movements that it couldn't possibly make, but who knew what this thing was capable of. Rarely did she let it stay in her presence long enough to check.

After a long pause, the snail started moving again, and Bella's breath caught in her throat. Was it gonna be just another disappointment? Was it even possible to reason with this thing? Doubt began to creep in as Bella *almost* edged away, but she realised that for once the snail wasn't moving towards her. Slowly but surely, it crawled to the keyboard, leaving its slimy trail across the table as it did.

"Fine." Was all it said. Maybe it was all it could manage with it's muscle, slimy body.

Bella felt dumbstruck. It really couldn't have been so simple could it? After all these centuries, all they had to do was just... Talk? She still couldn't shake off the feeling that this was just another ploy of the murderous mustelid to end her life, and probably its own by extension but... She'd made the plea in trust. She couldn't throw that away now, so instead, she nodded.

"Maybe... We can make a deal? Set some terms and conditions? You can live with me and... I dunno. We'll decide together when we want to end this." She asked, tentative, but for once, hopeful. It was odd, it wasn't an emotion she'd felt in a long time. The last time was when she'd launched the snail into space, but that had disintegrated eventually when she once again saw the creature stalking towards from a distance down the street. The fear of the snail had been a constant since then, as constant as her need to breathe, Or think, because as long as she could form conscious thought, the nagging paranoia that the snail might just be around the corner was always there. That feeling of knowing that no matter what she did, it was only a matter of time before it was there again, approaching her, silent as the reaper and just as persistent.

Now, that there was a chance, a real chance to escape that fear? She could almost cry. And she almost did when the snail slid across the keyboard to type.

"OK"

It was as if the burden of several centuries had finally lifted off her shoulders- and in some ways, it was.

Tears coalescing at the edges of her eyes, she nodded again with a smile at the snail who just looked on at her, the once seemingly unending malice it radiated now just replaced with a sense of quiet exhaustion. The years had taken their toll on it too, immortal or not, it was still cursed with intelligence. Even if it was just for one, accursed purpose. Sometimes it wished whichever malevolent deity had given it form hadn't made it immune to the reprieve insanity too, or made it so sentient that it knew that the reprieve was there. Just not for it. Never for it. The thought of rest after these centuries of torment... The snail shuddered.

Together, the unlikely pair began discussing their deal to once and for all, settle this rivalry and finally set aside the hostility to choose their fate- by their own choice this time.

[ponyonn]

pressure oc info dump!! this oc’s entire existence is for self ship/ oc x canon content so if that’s not ur style then u gotta escape while u still can

(for the sake of convenience while reading, Yonnie is solely referred to with she/her pronouns throughout this post.)

tl;dr - she’s the daughter of an Urbanshade employee who’s trying to unlock the secret ending of Pressure, which you get by making out with a computer really hard (and sebastian maybe).

Yonnie’s dad (Malcolm Polaris) raised her with the sole purpose of having her become a scientist like him in order to work with him at Urbanshade. unfortunately, he ended up committing a bigger sin than any of the ones he had committed during his 10+ years working for Urbanshade: he conceived a theater kid 🤯

Malcolm persists in his goal despite Yonnie’s lack of interest in science. he personally homeschools her throughout her entire life, purposefully keeps her isolated from other people her age, and takes her on as an intern/assistant at the Hadal Blacksite when she’s 23 (so in like. 2022). she isnt allowed near the more hostile monsters, but she still expresses frequent disapproval to her dad about the things she does see (or hears about secondhand). although Yonnie sticks by her complaints, she simultaneously feels like a disappointment for not being interested and doubting her dad.

she’s still working at the Hadal Blacksite by the time Sebastian breaches containment. Yonnie and her dad are able to evacuate, but this event is pretty much the last straw for Yonnie. she’s essentially like “hey. maybe this whole situation is kind of deserved? like maybe this is just one of many consequences that Urbanshade needs to start facing in order to atone for the more. uh. morally grim things we’ve done. and we have a LOT to atone for.”

and Malcolm is like “god you have just been one big waste of time huh. just a consistently ungrateful, consistently disappointing mess. you think we have something to atone for? you wanna make peace with the monsters? then get in a sub, go back down there, and do it yourself — because god knows nobody else is going with you.”

and then Yonnie, fueled by the desire to feel like shes doing something good for someone for once in her life (mixed with regret for problems that she technically didn’t even cause), actually does go back down. nobody is tracking her. everyone fully expects her to die, including her dad. the expendable protocol engages as normal.

Yonnie wanders around for a bit before encountering Painter. he’s the only sentient, non-hostile, responsive entity that she’s come across so far, so she offers him an escape. she says she could bring him back up to the surface and let him go free. Painter tells her about the promise he made with Sebastian and says that if he leaves with her, Sebastian has to be allowed to come too. Yonnie is like “they will gun Sebastian down the millisecond he breaks the water’s surface so. probably not. but i just want yall to be free, so i guess i can help you with your plan!”

she meets up with Sebastian, who doesn’t kill her on sight despite the fact that she’s an Urbanshade employee because they’ve actually met before! plot twist 🤯 they spoke briefly after she had become an employee, and Yonnie’s sense of basic fucking human decency and empathy really left a mark on Sebastian (although he’s still kind of cautious around her) 🥹🫶🏽 truly riveting. Sebastian agrees to let Yonnie help him out. since Yonnie isnt a prisoner, she isnt required to follow a navi-path and therefore wont be penalized (e.g. executed) for going off course, so she has access to areas that expendables dont. with this advantage, Yonnie is able to gather up more data for Sebastian than an expendable would. she also collects supplies for him to sell in his shop. time goes on, everybody bonds, yap yap yap.

Yonnie and Painter’s ship tag is #❥browse her history !!

Yonnie and Sebastian’s ship tag is #❥stars as bait !!

one of these. is probably gonna have far more content than the other. at least until i get used to drawing Sebastian.

[zettatoad]

rating every kirby villain-turned-ally by how evil they are after becoming an ally

dedede: gotta start with the classic. if he were an actual king i might have to judge him for the sins of his ancestors but since he's consistently called a "self-proclaimed king" he's fine. he probably just found an abandoned castle and went "woah... my castle now" and then the waddle dees went "wait we have a king? that's so awesome i'm gonna follow this guy forever." anyways he's a rival and a selfish hedonist but not actually evil. arguably not ever evil but that's a philosophical debate i'm not going to get into. while not the first to help, and still sometimes a troublemaker, he's a dependable companion when it counts

meta knight: look he was attacking dreamland in revenge of meta knight for, reasons??? because he thought they were too lazy??? kind of a lame reason meta knight. the point is he counts. meta knight spends most of his time as an honorable fight seeker, like if vegeta was never evil and his goku was a baby, but he'll step up to the plate when it's time to protect the planet or whatever. he is certified Not Evil. a reliable ally whenever he shows up

dyna blade: that's right, dyna blade counts too. as we all know dyna blade was just trying to feed her kids in super star. beyond that, i believe birds are like ghosts and just sort of do things arbitrarily. rating: Not Ever Evil

marx: okay this freaking guy. i don't think marx has changed literally at all after being beaten by kirby. like in star allies he's still got his powers. the only lesson he learned is to not pull any shenanigans while kirby's around. he is probably waiting for a villain to actually defeat kirby so he can swoop in and steal all their power, and every time kirby beats some horrible god he goes "wow~ you're such a great hero, kirby~!" while being more mad than anyone has ever been

shadow kirby: hold on i'm checking the wikirby page because i needed a refresher on his lore and was reminded that he was never actually a villain in the first place. he was always helping out. my bad

dark meta knight: okay i gotta show everyone this image before i begin my analysis

look at him. he is full fist gripping that crayon. he is holding it like a child would. he's drawing his cool badass epic sword. he's having fun. he seems like he's a threatening villain ("what if meta knight were evil... that would be so sick and twisted") but really he does not know a single thing. it's gap moe

this may be controversial but my rating is: he was never actually evil in the first place. like, he was serving dark mind, and might have had some influence in turning sectonia evil and huge (maybe??? possibly???), but he is not evil. i think he's more like that one image where he doesn't have empathy and goes into a dissociative state and commits atrocities. this of course does not imply that he is good. but the potential is there

daroach: on one hand, daroach was kind of never actually evil, since all he did was steal a slice of cake and get mind controlled. on the other hand, he IS the leader of a gang of thieves, and stealing is sort of evil. like marx, he has clearly learned not to get on kirby's bad side and will help out on occasion. but if kirby needs to grab a treasure i doubt daroach would hesitate to take it first. all in all: not a good guy exactly but in the grand scheme of kirby villains, he's pretty small-scale. not much to worry about. he can't even destroy a planet

bandana waddle dee: thought i was done talking about characters who briefly opposed kirby during super star? think again. this guy's pretty much just loyal to dedede with all that entails but he seems to have a better relationship with kirby than his king does. a nice guy who likes to help out. we all love him

magolor: i've 100% completed the magolor epilogue and minimal spoilers here but that basically confirms that he's still a little bastard. like he seems to have gone "wait, losing all your friends because you betrayed them sucks," and if you want to get speculative he could have been influenced by the master crown a bit since before KRtD's opening and that might have upped his evil rating for that game. outside of that he learned nothing. he just decided that selling gem apples and running theme parks would be more fun. he loves making an attraction where close friends throw explosives at each other. his continued pseudovillainy is of course obvious, given that he has performed the most dastardly deed of all kirby characters: Selling Real-World Microtransactions. perhaps it would be better if he got defeated once and for all but unfortunately evil wizards give kirbies lots of enrichment. unless he teams up with marx and ends up in some sort of betray-off, we're stuck with him. to be clear i think he's awesome except the microtransactions

taranza: on one hand, even in triple deluxe he wasn't exactly evil, he just wanted to help out his huge, evil friend. on the other hand, kirby did kind of kill his friend. like there were some circumstances there but it'd be understandable if there was some resentment

claycia: does it count if she was only a villain because she was mind controlled and is only an ally during the final boss fight and ending of her game? i'm going to say yes because i've already included bandana waddle dee. obviously if you were being mind controlled you probably were never evil in the first place. but we don't know much about claycia's inner life. it could go either way

hold on i was on claycia's wikirby page and i noticed that drawcia shows up alongside her in some illustrations: i've played it pretty fast and loose with my criteria but i'm going to say this doesn't count as being a villain-turned-ally. documenting my process

^one of the images in question. sectonia is also there and not only has she also never been on kirby's side in a video game, i'm pretty sure she died. so this is debatably canon at best

back to your regularly scheduled programming, it's susie: susie is like. still a capitalist. i had to review her star allies pause screens and apparently she wants to bring back her dad's evil company and keep doing colonialism? like come on susie don't be this dumb. don't make kirby take you to the guillotine

addendum: kirby-polis pointed out in the tags that the original japanese star allies pause screens do not reference mechanizing planets which opens the much more sensible possibility that she went "i want to make this company be how it was before my dad got thralled by a big evil computer." but said original pause screen text also quotes her saying "i will exterminate the uncivilized." which is... questionable at best. updated verdict: susie will be spared for now but she maybe still has some learning to do

the three mage-sisters and hyness: i guess technically hyness hasn't helped kirby out yet but he's part of the package. we do not get a great deal of insight on what the lower-end believers of their religion are like so i'm optimistic about the possibility that the whole "reviving an ancient god of destruction" incident will result in religious reforms, where the sisters take on leadership positions while hyness is reduced to having more of a figurehead role where he can't revive any more ancient gods of destruction. but they might not do that and instead continue being a weird evil cult. hard to say

the beast pack: the beast pack was only being evil because their leader was mind controlled, and presumably they would feel a great debt to kirby for saving both him and their planet. but they're also a rowdy bunch. i wouldn't be surprised if they went and caused a ruckus

elfilin: hey, wait a minute! you're not a villain! you're just a little guy! you don't belong in this list! get out of here, you scamp!

[terreisa]

I would like to take a moment to talk about Andor.

First, let me preface this by saying that while I’m a fan of Star Wars I’m definitely not an uber fan. I haven’t watched any of the animated shows, I haven’t read the books or the comics. I’ve pretty much just kept it to the Skywalker Saga films (plus Solo and Rogue One) and the live-action Disney+ series that have been released. Second, there are much better analyses and deep dives on the themes of the show out there and this is definitely not that. This is just me putting my thoughts out into the ether because my usual cadre of nerds either aren’t watching it or are several episodes behind which is annoying when it’s all I want to talk about.

Okay, here we go:

I think Andor is the best piece of Star Wars media that’s been released in recent years.

Don’t get me wrong, I love The Mandalorian. Go through my archives and there’s no doubt about that.  It’s a great story that’s full of drama and humor and deep emotion but it hinges on a pretty big conceit. Without Grogu there is no show or at least not one that has pulled in as many viewers as it has. There’s also the fact that it still tentatively ties itself to the Skywalker Saga, which is a thing for someone else to unpack. Same with Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, they had a built in hook to grab those viewers, though with varying degrees of success.

Andor doesn’t have that. It’s main character is a man that clearly operated in a morally grey area whose fate had already been shown to audiences six years ago. I was excited to watch the show mostly because Rogue One is my favorite Star Wars movie and I loved how Diego Luna played Cassian. That we were getting his backstory was interesting but as with the other shows I was going to watch it regardless because it was expanding the universe, which always interests me.

But dear god, what we got and are getting is so much more. The themes of morality and the cost of rebellion along commentaries on the state and actions of humanity and the tightening fist of fascism woven into the plot elevate the show to a whole different level. Not to mention that it expands the universe on so many different facets it almost boggles the mind how rich and complex this one show is making the galaxy that’s far far away.

Saying that, let me share why I decided to write this:

I work at a grocery store and the other day I was ringing up a woman's groceries and my Star Wars super fan co-worker was bagging for me. She had a Mandalorian bag and we asked if she enjoyed the show, which she did, and if she was watching Andor, which she was. She then proceeded to say that Book of Boba Fett was her favorite of the shows because it was fun and funny and Andor was boring and had no story. My co-worker and I were flabbergasted, and he'd only watched the first four eps of Andor at that point. When I told my sister the story later she said that maybe the woman only liked positive stories, ones that made her feel good and didn't dig too much into deeper themes.

That, I realized, was exactly what sets Andor apart and raises it above the other series and films that I'd seen. There are no dazzling, elegant lightsaber fights, the fights are chaotic and exact a heavy toll. There's no jokey levity from droids or side characters. The show is unflinchingly bleak and any victory, small or large, is tempered by the harsh reality of swift retaliation from the Empire. An entity that has always been known to be evil but through the lack of empathy, expanding overreach and harsher punishments, and the continual implied violence against innocents showcased in the series shows the depths of their atrocities in a way that can't be ignored or shoved aside. Even the barest thread of hope is hard to come by but it's there even in the smallest act of rebellion.

The biggest thing that sets Andor apart is that we know exactly how it ends. This story doesn't have a traditional happy ending. Cassian's fate is sealed, we are merely watching as he walks the path towards his inevitable death. And somehow it doesn't detract from the series at all, it makes his struggles much more compelling and tragic.

All this and I haven't even touched on the brilliance of Luthen and Mon Mothma's own underground moves against the Empire.

This show goes beyond every expectation I had for it and elevated it into a completely different stratosphere for the Star Wars universe. After I finish each new episode I'm practically vibrating with amazement at how each one is better than the last.

Andor is a feat of storytelling that I will shout about from rooftops whether people are listening or not for a long time coming.

[opinated-user]

A weird side-effect of murder being her go-to solution to all problems is that it made her videos boring to me even when I was a fan. Whatever the problem is, whatever the villain did, whatever the scale of the issue at hand is, she always recommends killing people. That's dull as tar. As I've grown out of LO's 12-16 year old core demographic and gotten into other media, I've figure out why: Lily never has murder have any negative repercussions. In a good story, the murder can have far-reaching fallout (see also: most Star Wars tie-in and Expanded Universe materials as well as all of Star Trek Deep Space Nine), would be too likely to be caught and if we do it we're going to have to put in a lot of work not to get caught (most good crime dramas), is necessary but God it's going to haunt me (again, Star Trek Deep Space Nine) or my favorite variation, it was an accident and arguably necessary but my guilt will haunt me for the next forty years (a fanfic I've been reading).

LO isn't smart enough or creative enough to write any of that, and I have serious doubts she can feel guilt, regret or empathy enough to understand why anyone would have any issue murdering, so she can't write a scene where people have thoughts about what they did. She can't write introspection or complex thoughts, can't write most forms of interpersonal relationships beyond 'person my OC fucks', 'person who gives my OC things', and 'person my OC kills'. She doesn't know how to write people interacting, write them displaying emotions or write them thinking in a way that feels real. I thought maybe this was just my being bitter that yet another YouTuber turned out to be a TERF and a sexual predator, but then I read The Sith Resurgence with the intention of seeing if actually she was a good writer and her claim of being a ghostwriter for hire was legit. I thought I'd just misremembered her writing being bad.

If anything, I misremembered it as not being as shitty as it actually is. Take this example from TSR:

When she returned, the two continued to talk as they ate. Topics ranged from the First Order to ways to upgrade the Fury to be a more reliable, modern ship. As they spoke, Aliana found herself quite liking Rey. It was rare she got to converse with someone on such a personal level, where it almost seemed like they were friends. Usually it was potential employers and security she mostly spoke to. Maz Kanata maybe, but that old pirate seemed more like an elder than anything else.

This is dull as shit. It doesn't give us anything in the way of insight into who these people are or how they interact or what kind of dynamic they have. You could replace their names with any other Star Wars characters because there's so little individual personality there. A good writer would have it go like this:

When she returned, the two continued to talk as they ate, hesitantly at first, then with growing ease. Rey had a wealth of knowledge on ships and upgrades that Aliana was surprised to find in someone so young, and her eyes lit up as she spoke about it. That same light dimmed considerably when the First Order came up. Her smile faded to become a flat, unexpressive flat line of pursed lips instead, shoulders tensing, and Aliana was struck by a desire to change the subject. She wanted Rey to feel at ease around her. She felt like they'd been moving towards talking like friends, something she got about as little of as Jakku got rain. She would never admit it, not even to herself, but she needed that. Maybe Rey needed it, too. Maybe that was why the conversation bounced back and continued despite the gaff, Aliana hastily changing the topic to First Order ships and then onto tech in general again. Seeing Rey relax and smile again filled Aliana with a sense of satisfaction she couldn't quite explain. She wanted to see Rey smile.

And then there's this unemotional garbage later:

Han sighed and shrugged. “Yeah. We got a Sith on our side now. I know, I never thought I’d live to see the day. But do you know what that means? It means I know that you aren’t lost yet. You can still turn away from this Ben. You can come home. This isn't a death sentence for you.”

HE'S TALKING TO HIS SON WHO JOINED A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. Use an adjective, a modifier, a descriptor of body language, give us something! This is a pivotal moment and he's written with all the seriousness of someone discussing his Fantasy Football team. A better writer would do something like this:

Han sighed and shrugged. He was aiming for his usual casual, devil-may-care attitude, but something about it was off. The hair he insisted was silver looked white in the stark lighting, every wrinkle standing out and the deep shadows doing nothing to hide the bags under his eyes. He straightened up to look at his son but couldn't quite manage it fully. For all that he was a legend in stories, here and now he was just a man, just a father, and when he placed a hand on Kylo's shoulder Aliana half-expected him to pull the other man into a hug. Han's eyes stayed off the dark Sith garb and glinting metal of the lightsaber. Instead he looked only at Kylo's face, at those dark eyes that mirrored Leia's.

"Yeah. We've got a Sith on our side now - never thought I'd see the day, but I used to think the Force itself was just an old fairytale. Impossible things keep happening. You know," he chuckled, an old, tired sound, "your mother and I getting together, that was the most impossible thing. She's a better woman than I deserve. And you," he squeezed Kylo's shoulder, smiling tiredly, "you're a better kid than I deserve. But it's not over. You can come home. I can do better. We can be like we used to be, before the Force and Snoke and training drove this wedge inbetween us." He stepped closer, shoulders slumping as he admitted in a voice just above a whisper, "We've missed you so much, Ben, your mother and I. Please come home."

This is why Lily shouldn't make murder her solution to everything. Do I care if the Han of the first excerpt dies? Does he? He's not acting like it, he's not acting like Han, and he's not acting like a dad who's trying to talk his son out of a terrorist organization. He sounds bored in the original, emotionally uninvested, and as a result there's no intensity to a scene where a man is trying to rescue his son from what is functionally a fascist cult-esque terrorist group.

And when Han dies, it takes up three sentences' worth of space. Three. Sentences.

I've written longer joke fanfic snippets in texts to friends. I've seen longer rewrites of that moment on Reddit. It should be a haunting moment for Aliana, witnessing someone murder their parent who loves them dearly, should be a moment where Han gently reaches out and touches Ben's face as in canon and conveys without words that he's not angry, that he'll never hate him, and we should see the confusion in Ben's face afterwards because he can't process his own actions or the unconditional acceptance they were met with.

Lily is not a good enough writer to write fanfic that is not slice of life. She doesn't understand how people work enough to think 'how would a man feel about trying to rescue his son from a terrorist organization? how would the man in the organization feel about the attempted rescue? how would someone feel watching this tragic death in real time?' and that's really damning because I am literally a full decade younger than Lily but I know enough to ask these things. I'm 20 and I understand that 'then A did this. then B died, one sentence of emotions I assure you he was feeling, one sentence of another person's reaction, the end' is shit writing. She writes like a child. I'm in my university's Creative Writing Club and no one there writes on this basic of a level. These are things so basic everyone in my Intro to Fiction Writing class already knew before being told.

A good writer can make the lack of empathy in a murderer engaging (The Secret History by Donna Tartt does this very well with Henry Winters, who is so self-absorbed and devoid of empathy that he navigates the aftermath of the murder uncomfortably well, making his friends deeply uneasy) but Lily doesn't do that. Kylo? "She couldn’t feel unease or conflict from Kylo Ren. But hatred. Deception. Bloodlust." to quote from this grammar-free trainwreck. Thank you for telling the reader that rather than showing us, I guess? Why bother writing those emotions when you could list them - but setting aside that laziness, I'm not made uncomfortable by this murder in the slightest. It's cruel, sure, but we don't have any physical descriptors giving us a mental image of Kylo, so it feels more like stage directions or what'd be in a script rather than a fic. The Secret History opens on Henry Winters casually looking at the body of his best friend who he's murdered and, satisfied that it looks like an accident, turning, putting his hands in his pockets and walking away, humming some old song he'd had stuck in his head. That conveys a lack of empathy, a callousness that's unsettling, and implies a hatred or dislike, drawing the reader in, because we want to know what the hell the deceased did that his death doesn't strike Richard, our POV character, as a thing he can't live with. You instantly want to know more about this very fucked up friend group and how shit escalated to this point.

I don't want to know more about Lily Orchard's rendition of Kylo Ren, because I already know there isn't anything more. There isn't anything more to her Han, her Kylo, her Aliana - they are all exactly one thing and have no hidden depths to them. They're so straightforward that they lack the capacity to surprise or intrigue the audience in any way. Because she refuses to change a single beat from canon and is instead glued to it, there's also no capacity for events to surprise you. This isn't like the game Elsinore where Shakespeare's Hamlet is the basis but the game gives you options to explore what-ifs to the effect of, 'what if these two characters who never spoke in canon interacted?' or 'what if this character who wasn't here was?' or even just 'what if a character refused to get into a fight they got into in canon?' because all of that is too complicated for Lily to puzzle out. "And then me, I mean Aliana, was there in the movie and she got mad when Han died and fought the bad guy" is as complicated as she can get, which is just not interesting. My 6 and 8 year old nieces have played that out with sticks in the woods pretending to be Kylo and their own OC. She is doing less than the bare minimum, she's doing the same thing actual children are... at the age of 30.

Could she be a ghost writer? For kids' books, maybe. Flat characters who have a handful of tropes that they embody with no further depth to them can fly there, if you're writing for the 8 and under crowd. But honestly, I think she should stick to that and never aim any higher. She just doesn't have the capacity to write people, feelings, thoughts, interactions, relationships, original ideas, stakes, or conflicts that most people do.

And honestly even putting her on the level of kids' writers feeling like a disservice to kids' writers. R.L. Stine at least had more diversity in his works, and Animorphs runs circles around LO's work any day of the week. (Bruce Coville's work also has more canonically queer characters and had NB rep in the 90's (while LO can't manage it in 2022) despite being widely-circulated kids' lit.)

I'm so tempted to make posts roasting Lily's shitty writing. But TL;DR this isn't just bad, this is some of the dullest murder in history and I applaud her for making murder boring.

i never believed on the ghost writing gig and i can't imagine LO actually writing anything for children without adding some of her signature creepy elements into it. but regardless i agree with you. one of the worst aspects of LO's literature is how boring it is. things happens, characters are doing things, conflict is happening and yet somehow it all feels so flat and uninteresting, as if nothing is actually happening.

[lucky-clover-gazette]

Top 5 novels(or series)? 👀

i miss being a bookseller and talking about books irl so this ask makes me super happy! also this is going to be long and i apologize in advance

beauty queens by libba bray

my favorite book of all time. i read it WAY too young, like in 2011 at age 12, and it massively influenced my awareness of the world, personal philosophy, sense of humor, and creative identity. beauty queens is an ahead-of-its-time ya satire novel about teenage girls getting stuck on a deserted island and going feral (positive connotation).

it features a well-balanced main cast of about a dozen diverse young women, including the first trans character i ever encountered (because i read the book pretty young, it's actually how i found people can be trans at all). while this character's execution does include a few now-questionable tropes, she's written in incredibly good faith and i am so grateful for her being in this book. beauty queens also introduced me to perspectives from women of color, disabled women, and women from religious communities that i hadn't really gotten the chance to encounter in my bubble of a hometown. while the author is admittedly a cis white straight woman, she pours so much empathy and love and nuance into each individual beauty queen, and especially for 2011 i think she did a really good job.

in addition to All That Deep Meaningful Stuff, the book is like a james bond parody with a villain clearly meant to be sarah palin set in a hyper-capitalist satirization of america, characterized by super weird and out-of-the-box "commercial breaks." i describe it in my review as "weird, campy, tropey, and over-the-top," and warn that, "if you take everything very seriously, you will have trouble with this book."

my general creative philosophy is that art is at its best and most meaningful when you have no doubt anyone else could have made it. libba bray knows exactly what she wants to write, and she fucking does that, even if some people won't understand or enjoy it. the world is a better place because this book exists, which is true of everything on this list--but this deeply weird novel, seemingly lost to time, is my all-time favorite for a reason.

sharp objects by gillian flynn

gillian flynn is my favorite AUTHOR of all time. she wrote gone girl, sharp objects, and another lesser-known novel called dark places. sharp objects is a hard one to gush about without spoilers and/or triggers, but oh my god it is a masterpiece. its final line is my favorite final line in any media, ever. i am a huge lover of the domestic thriller genre, and while gone girl is more domestic thriller than sharp objects, i think this one is the better BOOK. huge trigger warning for self-harm if the title and cover aren't enough of a hint, but hoooo boy this book is the best kind of brutal

the illuminae files trilogy by jay kristoff & amie kaufman

these sci-fi ya thrillers are told entirely through transcripts, message logs, and other "found evidence" in a dossier meant to expose an evil corporation. the characters are clever and interesting, the conflict is layered, and there's some awesome space-horror a la alien movie. there's a love story and philosophical musings and wise-cracking idiot teenagers who i adore. there's a deranged ai and beautiful page layouts and the quote, "you have me. until the last star in the galaxy dies, you have me." these are great books for people who can't stand large chunks of prose, appreciators of comics and mixed-media storytelling, and the AUDIOBOOKS are like full-on radioplays with voice actors and sfx. all three novel hold their own while still feeling cohesive when read sequentially. so unique and so freaking cool

no exit by taylor adams

idiot college art student gets snowed in at a rest stop, realizes that someone is in the middle of trafficking a child and has to a) figure out who it is and b) stop them. this thriller is gory and fast-paced and darkly comedic and does the whole cat-and-mouse hero and villain thing that always lives in my head rent-free. it's gleefully violent and reminds me of films like kill bill and american psycho. i can't and won't spoil more but this book is so fun to read, especially if you enjoy media that doesn't take itself too seriously. the movie adaptation sucks and i'll be mad about it forever, especially because taylor adams comes from a screenwriting background and i doubt they let him touch the script. there's a thematically-relevant garfield clock and nail gun used several times as a murder weapon. in my storygraph review of this book, i summed up my love for it pretty well: "Sometimes a book just speaks to you. Probably not great that this one does it for me, but at least I had so much fun."

the stepford wives by ira levin

people discuss the stepford wives as a Cultural Concept, but i wish more people actually read the novella. it's really freaking good as a work of horror and satire. it's short, too. i've been dreaming up a stage adaptation for years.

other honorable mentions: the hunger games trilogy you know who wrote it, solutions and other problems by allie brosh, anya's ghost by vera brosgol, all of mary oliver's poetry, never saw me coming by vera kurian, in a dark dark wood by ruth ware, dead to her by sarah pinborough, annie on my mind by nancy garden

[a-flickering-soul]

EverymanHYBRID And Deer In Media: In Five Parts (click for individual comparisons)

Deer are both a symbol of fragile purity and the untamable wild–here, we examine deer in the context of man, where deer come to represent the urge within us to abandon the conscious ego for the subconscious id. The deer is a symbol, too, of rebirth, of transformation, of shedding and regrowing its weapons each year. To kill, to be reborn, to choose to be monstrous through our proximity to humanity. Is there not something pure in surrendering to animal instinct? If deer are the twin themes of innocence and wildness, then we in turn are the juxtaposition of humanity and monstrousness–our actions made monstrous by the attempt to temper them with humanity.

(transcript, analysis, and sources below cut)

1: The Secret History & EverymanHYBRID--Bodies

The Secret History, on the killing of a man in a hallucinatory bacchanal:

"'Henry,' I said at last. 'Good God.' "He raised an eyebrow. 'Really, it was more upsetting than you can realize,' he said. 'Once I hit a deer with my car. It was a beautiful creature and to see it struggling, blood everywhere, legs broken ... And this was even more distressing but at least I thought it was over. I never dreamed we'd hear anything else about it.'"

EverymanHYBRID, "Ryan and the SEVENTRIALSOFHABIT":

A shot of a deer's dead body at the side of the road at night, looking crumpled and not quite right. The captions read: "Jeff: It's a fucking deer, dude. (Evan: See it?) Yeah. Something cut its belly open. (Evan: It cut its belly open the wrong way.)"

Parallels drawn:

Consider this one an amuse-bouche. Henry draws comparisons between a man he killed to a deer he accidentally hit with a car, mildly naming the incident ‘distressing’. There is a lack of human empathy, of guilt over killing a fellow man. In comparison, Jeff, Evan, and Vinnie at this point in the EMH plotline have not yet become hunter or hunted–they have not yet been warped by their roles in this iteration and can acknowledge the upsetting nature of the events that befall them. Henry has tasted that amoral nature and is less human for it, more visibly willing to shed that veneer of attempting to care about other people. Jeff, Evan, and Vinnie have not yet reached that point.

2: “Whoso List to Hunt”, EverymanHYBRID, and The Secret History--The Chase

"Whoso List to Hunt", on hunting a fabled white hind:

"I am of them that farthest cometh behind./ Yet may I by no means my wearied mind/ Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore/ Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,/ Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind./ Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,/ As well as I may spend his time in vain. And graven with diamonds in letters plain/ There is written, her fair neck round about:/ Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,/ and wild to hold, though I seem tame."

EverymanHYBRID, "Slushpops and Surprises”

A shot of white text on a black page, "[Enter the tragic hero and his unattainable companion.]"

The Secret History, on hallucinations experienced during the bacchanal (bold for emphasis):

“‘Camilla said that during part of it, she’d believed she was a deer; and that was odd, too, because the rest of us remember chasing a deer through the woods, for miles it seemed. Actually it was miles. I know that for a fact. Apparently we ran and ran and ran, because when we came to ourselves we had no idea where we were.’”

EverymanHYBRID, “December & early January”:

A shot of Vinnie, hand covering his face in shock, as he sits and listens to Jessa’s last voicemail before she went missing. Jeff can be seen in the background, listening in silence. The captions read “[Jessa’s voice, recorded]: Steph, that thing you were talking about, I saw it...he’s real, he’s right here. What the hell does he want? I think he’s following me.”

Parallels drawn:

The deer symbolizes wild nature, something that man cannot obtain, touch, or capture without abandoning something of his own humanity. Similarly, deer represent the unattainable prey. Noli me tangere, says Caesar’s unattainable deer– touch me not, no matter how hard you may attempt to catch me. Jessa of EMH is deemed the unattainable companion and Jeff’s driving force to discover the truth behind the situation they’ve been placed in–it is Jessa, dangled in front of him after she goes missing, that leads Jeff down the path that inevitably leads to his own death after uncovering too much. The deer is to be chased, to be hunted, and never captured. Camilla from The Secret History believed herself to be a deer during the same hallucinatory bacchanal that cost a man his life, and led her brother and friends on a chase spanning miles. Jessa was hunted by an unknowable force, then used as bait to draw her partner down the path to his own death. Unattainability, the shape of something fleeing in front of you, elicits a powerful reaction to follow, to hunt, to chase. Jessa fell victim to that reaction. Camilla, and the white hind, did not.

3: The Myth of Diana and Actaeon, EverymanHYBRID, and The Secret History--Madness

The Diana and Actaeon Fountain at the Caserta Royal Palace:

The detail of the fountain shown depicts the pivotal scene in the myth of Actaeon and Artemis, where Actaeon, mid-transformation into a stag, is killed for the slight of viewing the goddess Artemis nude.The sculpture shows the transformation in no mercy, plain in its depiction of Actaeon’s pain and terror, and the simple ferocity of the hounds that surround him.

EverymanHYBRID, “May & June”:

A shot of Jeff, blood spattered across him, speaking with a shocked and angry tone. The captions read, “Jeff: Why were we doing that? That was...that’s not what we were looking for. We knew damned well that wasn’t what we were trying to kill. (Vince: Close enough.) It was a deer! It was a fucking deer! I tried to pull you off, you tried to punch me in the fucking face!”

The Secret History, on the Greeks’ view of beauty and terror (bold for emphasis):

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful to souls like the Greeks or to our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripedes speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, ‘more like deer than human being’.”

Parallels drawn:

Most depictions of Actaeon, sculpture or painting, usually show him with antlers or a deer lower body, leaving his head and face a recognizable human shape. However, the sculptor here decided to subvert expectations and leave his body human, giving Actaeon the animal head of a stag. The loss of control and the descent from human to animal is not glorified or made palatable by the mere addition of a crown of antlers--there is only the one constant, fear, that follows him all the way down. Madness may be defined as a loss of control, and there may be something beautiful and terrifying in feeling your sanity slip through your own fingers. Jeff, Evan, and Vinnie are overtaken by brief, inexplicable madness and tear apart a deer as they come dangerously close to uncovering exactly who and what is hunting them. They skate close to seeing soemthing they shouldn't see. It is only Jeff who looks up, shocked by the blood on his hands, and voices his fear. Vinnie, apathetic, lets it go. But Evan, houndlike and irrational, defends his kill.

4: EverymanHYBRID & Hannibal--Warnings and Temptation

EverymanHYBRID, “May & June”:

A shot of Evan, spattered heavily with blood, standing with shoulders caved in protectively. His left hand is raised to his mouth, with his hair covering his eyes, and he is licking the blood off of his fingers.

“Shot Through The Hart, and Hannibal’s To Blame” (bold for emphasis):

“In my post about ravens, I talked about how it’s not always easy to tell what the Ravenstag really means. Is it evidence of the Hannibalesque elements of Will’s soul? Or a warning of those parts growing within him? Does the Ravenstag urge Will forward on his journey, or warn him of what’s to come?”

Hannibal, Season 1, Episode 1 “Aperitif”:

A shot of the Ravenstag, staring directly into the camera with one hoof up, as if to approach. There are black feathers interwoven with its pelt and its eyes have an uncanny shine.

Parallels drawn:

On a naturalistic note, deer are skittish creatures. They have thin legs and a sleek body, made for running. A small head and big eyes, placed wide-set to see coming predators. Keen ears. They are ready at any moment to sense danger, warn others, and flee. When a deer does not move, it is either safe or sizing up its options, either accepting where it is or preparing to run. Deer, staring directly at the viewer, come as a sympathetic warning to flee or, in its dark eyes and firm stance, a temptation. Me tangere, they say. Come closer. We are one and the same. In Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal, the commanding presence of the Ravenstag serves as both a warning and a beckoning temptation to turn his feet down the darker path. It is otherworldly, black-furred and feathered, and yet a warning of events rooted in the real world--does Will understand what danger he is in upon meeting Hannibal and take the warning, or will he ignore it, sensing that same darkness in himself, that same potential for corruption? In EverymanHYBRID, it is that same killing of a deer that hints at that same potential for darkness growing inside Evan. He licks at his fingers, animalistic, fully ignoring his own Ravenstag warning signs for the delight of the hunt. Is he Evan anymore? Or is something else growing inside him?

5: EverymanHYBRID & Hannibal--Predator and Prey, or the Final Act

EverymanHybrid, “:D”:

A shot of HABIT, looking up a set of stairs with one foot on the bottom step. In one hand down by his side, he is holding a knife. His posture is tilted forward, poised, ready to spring into action, like that of a hunter.

“Shot Through The Hart, and Hannibal’s To Blame” (bold for emphasis):

“The idea of deer as symbols of rebirth also stands out to me. Hannibal is a series obsessed with becoming and transformation. People start one way, and are reborn as something completely other by the end of the show. There’s even a character sewn up into a deceased pregnant horse in the hopes that when she’s released, she will be literally reborn as something different. It’s thus a neat fit, this significance of deer with the themes of the show.”

EverymanHYBRID, “:D”:

A shot of Jeff, looking up and to the side with an expression of caution and fear. His eyes are unnerved, squinting as, from offscreen, HABIT’s hand plays idly with his hat.

Parallels drawn:

The first and final incarnation of the deer is, of course, prey. Beyond and before any symbolism of innocence and wildness and warnings, deer are prey animals, to be hunted and devoured. And yet, in keeping with the concept of contrasting symbolism, deer are not helpless. Yearly, they shed and regrow their antlers in a transformation of horn and blood. At the climax of EverymanHYBRID, the final reveal, the final transformation, comes to fruition. HABIT, formerly Evan, takes its place as the Hunter, the archetypal predator, with Jeff shown most prominently as the Prey. Jeff’s luck has run its course, with him in the chair as the sacrificial prey-victim to fall to HABIT’s knife. HABIT, reborn, reiterated, made incarnate through Evan’s unwilling transformation, is poised to start the hunt. This is the big reveal, the crux of the transformation, Actaeon caught mid-transfiguration and the bloody sloughing-off of velvet humanity to reveal perfect and gleaming antlers. This is what it comes down to, time and time again. The hunter and the hunted. The wilderness embraced and the wilderness captured, and the monstrosity in that act.

Works Cited

Callimachus. Actaeon and Artemis. C. 220 BC

Fuller, Bryan. “Apetirif.” Hannibal, season 1, episode 1, NBC, 4 Apr. 2013.

Koval, J., Caffarello, V., &; Jennings, E. (Directors). (2011, July 12). May & June [Video file].

Koval, J., Caffarello, V., &; Jennings, E. (Directors). (2012, October 9). :D [Video file].

Tartt, Donna. The Secret History. Penguin, 2006.

Uhminuh. “Shot Through the Hart, and Hannibal's to Blame.” Read the Rude, Wordpress, 19 July 2020.

Wyatt, Thomas. “Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind.” c. 1530.

Honorary mention to this fanart by @/rrhaes that started this whole spiral

[romulanfucker]

can we hear your picard opinions please we need to esplode star trek tumblr from the inside out

>:3

well imo picard is the most boring and narratively least interesting captain in all of star trek and i really do not give two shits about him.

i found him to be the most archetypal (even more than kirk, though much of that has to do with the fact that the rest of the tos cast is equally archetypal, while many of the tng characters still Are archetypes but have more chances to depart those roles and bring a little bit of depth u know?) and I also hated the archetype that he Was

like, part of the charm of tos is that in the end everything turns out fine and the day is always saved, and i appreciate that tng didn't want to take the darker turn that say, ds9 or disco did. but they also Did want to up the stakes, make it more tense, more daring and less sitcom-y, but in their attempt to balance those two things it ended up giving picard a narrative god complex that bores the hell out of me.

like it just happens sooooooo much that the enterprise is in dire straights and it seems completely hopeless and option A and option B have both failed and picard will whip option C out of his ass because he's the most brilliant person in the world and he never has to face the consequences of a lose/lose decision and he never suffers lasting consequences or is haunted by his failures.

and like ... Yeah most of the cast doesn't change all that much when they get traumatized and i'm not necessarily trying to critique the fact that picard doesn't have a lot of character growth but its like ..... he doesn't even make any enemies. like nobody hates him. he Always manages to get in the good graces of both sides of every conflict and its bland and boring and the attempt to make the show more high stakes doesn't even work because i Know picard's gonna fix everything and its just a matter of waiting for him to flex his huge brain meat so i can roll my eyes.

and the thing that pisses me off the Most is how everyone on the crew like worships the ground picard walks on for it. Everyone is like JEAN LUC PICARD IS THE BEST MAN IVE EVER MET IN MY LIFE AND ID GIVE HIM MY FIRSTBORN IF HED TAKE IT. like we get ittttttt all the writers are stroking their own egos thinking theyre picard types when theyre all barclays. (as a side note - this is one of the reasons I enjoyed pulaski's character so much. she was one of the few people to tell picard to his face 'youre not special tough guy. go get surgery before i make you').

like sisko and janeway and archer are constantly hounded by tough decisions theyve made that come back to bite them in the ass. kirk has a level of humility and doubt and guilt within episodes even if the structure of tos doens't let it carry over much. Even freeman - in a show that is meant to be More lighthearted than tng was trying to be - has her struggles connecting with her crew and being taken seriously in the grander starfleet scheme. (i havent watched disco so i cant speak to that all that much.) they're all Human People that excel as captains bc of their empathy and their willingness to make hard choices to protect their crew, while picard is elevated to a status above everyone else because he somehow is SO good at captaining that he finds a way to skirt around all the hard decisions every time and dazzle us.

tldr; picard was a failure of the writers to make a more tense show while still ultimately maintaining the sitcom structure that resulted in him being a walking deus ex machina that pisses me the fuck off

[star-trekkin-across-theuniverse]

Worthy (pt6)

A/N: once again - just keep poking me until I start tagging you if you want tagged. @rampant-salamander​, @bolontiku​

...

I looked from Tony to Thor and back to Tony.

“I don’t understand your question,” I responded, and threw back the drink. To hell with being moderate. I was pretty sure I was about to lose my dream job on my second day, I may as well go out with a bang.

“Ella, there has to be something special about you to allow you to lift that hammer,” Tony spoke slowly. That was probably a bad thing. I suspected slow speech meant a really active brain. I was now a mystery that needed to be solved.

“There is nothing special about me at all,” I argued.

“You can lift Mjolnir. That is special.” Thor was like a sage who spoke in riddles.

“But being able to lift Mjolnir isn’t what makes me special enough to lift it. That’s a redundancy.” I, like Tony, was slipping into scientific method in order to try to sort things out.

“Do you have Aesir blood, Ella?” Thor asked.

“My family is from Washington. By way of Wisconsin,” I replied. Tony snorted and Thor shot him a dirty look.

“Before this Wisconsin?” He pressed. The way he said Wisconsin made it sound unfamiliar and strange.

“Norway and England.”

“Norway. That is where the Northmen resided.” Thor looked thoughtful. “In the time of the Vikings, the Aesir traveled on Midgard much more frequently than they do now.”

“Are you suggesting that some ancestor of mine got knocked up by a god?” I could feel my eyebrow rising. Tony smothered a smirk behind his hand. My tone was lost on Thor.

“We are not gods, Ella,” Thor corrected. “And I am unfamiliar with knocked up. What I suggest is that your ancestor was impregnated by an Aesir.”

“But in order to lift your hammer, wouldn’t it have to be you that got this mystery ancestor pregnant? I’d have to be your descendent?” I could feel the blood draining from my face. It would be just my luck that the hottest guy I’d ever seen would be related to me. Thor’s smile was mischievous.

“Not necessarily. I would have discovered offspring of mine on Midgard by now, and I know left none. But I think it reasonable to consider you may have Aesir blood in your veins,” he explained. “Which makes you very special indeed.”

“Can everyone in Asgard lift your hammer?” I asked. Thor shook his head.

“None but I.”

“Then I don’t buy it. I keep telling people, I’m nothing special.” I was getting frustrated with the scrutiny. I never thought I would be desperate for a cute guy to stop paying attention to me, but in that moment, I would have given anything to be able to just go hide in obscurity in the lab, building my washing machine.

“But that’s where you’re wrong, Ella,” Tony interrupted. I’d nearly forgotten he was there, Thor had such powerful bearing. I didn’t think it was possible to lose track of Tony Stark, but I guess in the presence of not-actually-gods… “You are something special. That’s why Pepper and I lept on your application like we did. How did you make it through university with such a bad self image?”

“I don’t have a bad self image. I know I’m a fucking amazing engineer. I just fail to see a correlation between my ability to understand math and build things and my purported mystical ability to lift a magic hammer,” I snapped. I turned back to Thor. “You’re sure no one else can lift it?” Thor glanced at Tony, almost as though he was looking for approval. Tony gave a slight nod.

“I believe that Captain Rogers would be able to lift it, should he have the opportunity. But that remains untested,” Thor admitted. I sighed.

“Of course. He’s a legit hero. Full of righteousness and honour and nobility.” My tone was more sarcastic than I’d intended.

“Yes, intangible and arbitrary measures of worthiness. Who is to say you don’t meet the parameters in some way?” Thor shot back. I looked into my empty glass, wishing it were still full.

“Did you not see me level that d-bag in the elevator?”

“Tis nothing I would not have done myself, and yet I am still worthy,” Thor shrugged. Pepper had walked in at some point during the conversation, and Tony turned to her expectantly. She sighed and blinked slowly.

“We’ve had a discussion about appropriate professional behaviour. He is aware that if there are any further incidents he will lose his internship.” Pepper reached out for the glass of wine Tony was offering her.

“It’s a bit of a PR nightmare if we lose a second intern in as many days, Pep,” Tony commented.

“It’s a worse nightmare if, right as we’re rolling out a gender equality program and girl’s STEM mentorship program, the media gets ahold of information about how we’re allowing someone guilty of sexual harassment to remain in a prestigious and competitive internship,” she retorted. He pursed his lips and paused. After a moment he nodded in agreement.

“What do I know? You’re the boss.” His acquiescence was met with laughter from Pepper.

“What do you know, Tony? How many times did you attend the SHIELD seminar again?” She choked on her wine. “Trust me. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s a smart guy, and I’d like to think he’ll be respectful from now on.” Tony responded with some other comment and I slumped back into my seat, watching the show. If you didn’t know they were stupidly in love with one another, you might assume they were on the verge of war. But I think Tony liked to goad Pepper, and she rose to the bait. Not because she was gullible though. At least, I didn’t think it was because she was easily duped. I think she rose to the bait because it was how they clicked together. I looked away from them and over to Thor, who was sitting back on the couch, completely relaxed. The hammer was propped up beside him, handle leaning against the bolster. It was uncanny how powerful he looked, even in jeans and a t-shirt. I relaxed a little and just enjoyed looking at him, taking in the contours of his biceps, and the definition of the veins in his hands. There was a lot of him to look at, and it was all very pleasing to the eye. At least, everything I’d seen thus far.

I didn’t realize how overt I was being until he smirked. He turned to look at me, and nodded.

“Is it not considered poor manners on Midgard to stare at others?” There was a teasing tone to his voice, but I blinked and looked away, feeling my cheeks colour.

There was really no way for me to deny that I was staring at him. The only blank wall in the entire place was right behind him. I couldn’t even beg being distracted by some of the weird art that seemed to be all over the building. 

“I, uh, well,” I stammered. “I was looking at the hammer?” It sounded like bullshit, even to me. I heard a stifled laugh from Tony and shot him a filthy look. I pushed myself to my feet and glanced at Pepper. “If you don’t need me, Pepper, I’m going to try to catch up with Angela. I have some things I need to pick up for my suite.”

“You can order anything you need from distribution,” Tony offered.

“Except, apparently, towels bigger than a postage stamp,” I retorted. My ears were burning and I was having a really hard time not looking over to see if Thor was following the conversation. He probably was as there was no one else for him to pay attention to.

“You are aware there’s varying sizes of towel?” Tony’s tone was sarcastic. I rolled my eyes.

“Not that this is really a conversation I feel I want to have with my boss, but I grabbed the biggest one. It still barely covered me.” I was ready to pray for a hole to open in the floor and swallow me.

“Well, you’re not exactly supposed to be lounging around in your tow –“

“I wasn’t!” I interrupted. “I was just getting out of the shower when Thor showed up and I didn’t have time to be getting fully dressed before I answered the door, and then the towel slipped and oh my god I cannot believe I’m telling you all this.” I took a deep breath and looked back to Pepper. “Can I go? Please?”

“Let me walk you to the elevator,” she offered and led the way. As we walked away, I heard Tony clear his throat.

“You’ve seen her naked already, you sly dog?”

“That is enough, Stark. How you have lived so many years on this realm and not noticed how modest some of your women are, I have no idea. But you embarrassed her. Like many Midgardians, she lacks comfort with the physical form.” Thor’s words were a chastisement, and I somehow felt even more embarrassed about him having seen me naked. Because now, not only was I naked in front of the freaking Norse god of thunder, but also he took more notice of what a prude I am than that I was naked. I leaned against the wall and banged my head against it.

“That’s not how you call the elevator,” Pepper teased. “I know we all collectively keep telling you to relax, but, yeah. Relax. If Tony is already giving you a hard time, he’s assimilating you into his world as a permanent fixture. This will be something you laugh about in future years.” Her eyes were warm with empathy and it was so reassuring.

“You seriously need to do something about the towel situation, Pepper.” I stepped onto the elevator and pushed the button for my floor. Once the doors shut, I texted Angela to see how far she’d got without me. I didn’t have to wait long. I was swiping my passcard to get into my room when she stepped off the elevator.

“So, towels? Maybe a beer?” She followed me into my apartment.

“Yes. To both.”

XXX

For whatever reason, I expected getting beer with Angela would be more Sex-in-the-City than it was. She pulled me into a quiet bar after we’d found appropriate towels, and we ordered wings from the kitchen and beer.

“So I did some research today while you were meeting with Markus,” she volunteered over a heap of wing bones. I made a noise that was easily interpretable as curiosity and she continued. “I might have hacked some of Tony’s files about that hammer. Thor wasn’t kidding around when he said you shouldn’t be able to lift it. It was apparently forged in the heart of a dying star, of some crazy space-metal. And the Odin enchanted it so only Thor could lift it. Which is clearly a broken enchantment because apparently you can lift it too.”

“It says right on it that if you’re worthy, you can lift it,” I corrected her with my mouth full.

“Obviously it doesn’t take table manners into consideration!” She laughed. I hung my head in mock-shame, but made sure my mouth was clear before I spoke again.

“I don’t know how it determines worthiness. Honestly, isn’t that a little creepy? Is the hammer sentient? Does it consider the merits of each individual that touches it in that split second between grabbing it and trying to lift it? Or does Odin have some sort of approval system for worthiness, and he gets interrupted from whatever it is he’s doing to approve people in that same fraction of an instant?” I pondered.

“Way to ruin magic with science,” she groaned.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. That’s Clarke’s Third Law. The other two are pretty good too,” I shrugged.

“Oh, that was a kill shot! Come on, let me have some sort of fantasy about the mystical powers of the damn hammer, Ella!” Angela threw her hands up in frustration. I smiled and nodded.

“Of course. The hammer is mystical and powerful and absolutely should not be questioned,” I acceded. Angela swatted at me and flagged the waitress over for another round. I felt myself relaxing and forgetting about the overwhelming stress of the past couple of days as we decompressed over a second beer. When Angela dropped me back at the tower, I realized she may very well live on-site as well, but I was tired and had a bit of a beer buzz and forgot to ask before stumbling through my door and crashing on the sofa.

[captaincravatthecapricious]

Reluctant hurt/comfort?  Why yes!

Both Tim and Jon have a bad time after the Buried.  

cw fever, illness, vomit mention, suicidal ideation, grief. Also as a note, the night I wrote this was a hard one, and the day after was worse and this might reflect that.  I don't think this is one I can go back through and comb for more cws, so hopefully that is warning enough.  Stay safe, and enjoy something that was very cathartic to write.

The day after the Buried, it doesn’t even occur to Tim that he should be hungry.  He hasn’t needed to eat in so long that he simply forgets.  Just downs glass after glass of water in the break room after a shower that lasts far longer than the meager supply of hot water.  He can’t be fucked that Daisy and Jon still need to wash the muck off.  At least Daisy has somewhere to go, Basira is hovering around, ready to ferry her out of this hell archive.  

Of course, it’s his own fault that he doesn’t have a flat.  

He supposes he owes Jon.  Or something.  

He doesn’t care.  

He’s still angry.  And tired and filthy and depressed.  The only thing the buried did was keep him from dying.  Hell of a suicide watch to be on.  

Sometimes when he closed his eyes down there, he could believe it was Jon or Martin lying on him.  Keeping his fingers from itching to do harm…  Well, almost, anyhow.  

After that, he sleeps.  And sleeps.  

And, well, after that.  He feels like shit.  

Complete shit. 

When he was a teen with soup for brains, Danny got sick.  A bad flu, but he couldn’t keep anything down for three days.  Three days of foisting broths and lucozade on his brother with little success.  Should have been taken to hospital, by all rights, but their mother didn’t really believe in the whole modern medicine thing, and well.  Dad was away, so Tim couldn’t even get Danny to an adult who could help, even if he didn’t give a damn.  It had been awful.  

He really thought his little brother was dying.  Cracked and dry lips, fever so high that he wasn’t coherent.  Three days he sat vigil.  Praying to a god he barely believed in.  

A fever that scooped out his brother until he was praying for a breathing corpse.  Giving oblations of thin liquid.  

On the third day, his eyes opened and he stroked Tim’s hand, as Tim shook with exhaustion by his bedside.  He had to be propped up to sip at his broth, but it was far better than trickling it down his unconscious baby brother’s throat.  

Pure helplessness.  Both in empathy for his brother, who was probably having a worse time than Tim, and because he was next to useless.  

Three days and Tim can’t keep down food.  Gave up trying.  Just shivers on the cot, gazing nearly sightlessly at the ceiling, muscles too wasted to move.  He doesn’t know if anyone notices that he’s gone.  He hasn’t heard any word from Martin.  Basira and Daisy fucked off days ago, as far as Tim can reckon.  Then again, he doesn’t have so much as a working phone.  He doesn’t even know if it’s been three days or thirty.  

His skin feels hot and tight.  Like the Buried is taking a new approach to suffocating him.  A dreadful thirst clawing at him, but he doesn’t have the strength to stand and get water anymore.  Barely could limp his way there before the lack of food and probable fever stole what little he had left.  

Is this just some divine punishment for prodding too hard at the forces of evil in the universe?  

He’d finally come to terms with the abstract and incidental nature of these things, but he can’t help the hazy imagining that he deserves this.  

Failed to keep his brother safe, for all his bedside bargaining and promises made to the wind on long walks after his brother disappeared.  All the broken promises betwixt his savior and himself.  Bitter words corroding promises that could have been harder than diamond.  

It was his fault.  Couldn’t hold up his end, and he deserves this dreadful heat and the foul desert of his mouth.  His body generating his own funeral pyre.  

He wishes he could bring himself to care.  But all he’s known since Jon betrayed him has been anger and dissent disinterest.  

There is an ache at his very core.  

He lies there, on the cot.  Tangled in the sheets.  Bone dry.  Dry as parched soil.  For he has no moisture to spare for sweat.  His own body out of anything that could bring his temperature down.  

Finding Tim isn’t easy.  Jon’s body betrays him after the Buried.  Months of uneasy sleep, and days of pressure on all the wrong parts of him leave him poorly put together and his joints slipping apart at the slightest provocation.  He spends days on the floor of his office, in too much pain to move, too dizzy to stand, and running a fever from the pain in his squashed and shitty joints.  

His own fault, but a small price to pay for Tim and Daisy.  

He would have stayed there if it meant getting them back.  

One less monster.  

Of course the Eye doesn’t let him die.  Aren’t humans supposed to die if they don’t drink water for three days?  

He spends most of his time passing out when he tries to stand.  

And he can’t bring himself to care.  He’s so tired.  Too tired.  

He didn’t expect anyone to come after him.  Certainly not Tim.  Not after everything.  

Well maybe he hoped.  

(He did).  

(Damn his… well it isn’t optimism.  Damn his longing for someone to give a shit if he vanishes for days.  He should know by now that no one is coming.  No one ever does.)  

Groggy and foggy and battered.  

He’s tired.  He needs a proper mattress for just one night, but he can’t even get off the floor.  Just lays in the remnants of mud, waiting to whither like the corpse he is, one just hasn’t stopped breathing yet (again).  

But something draws him upright, more or less.  Clinging to the walls, bracing his stilted journey on aching limbs.  

It’s probably the Eye.  Probably the Eye, or maybe Jon’s piercing curiosity, control slackened by fever, peering though a hairline fracture in the door of his mind.  

He all but crawls to the cot, securing a half empty water bottle from somewhere he probably should be worried about, but he arrives to find Tim burning away before him as his own vision swims dangerously.  

A face in front of his.  Features obscure and unreadable.  He can read the worry in those eyes.  Even in the half light.  

Tim couldn’t hear Jon in the Buried.  His hearing aids long since ran out of life.  All for the best, for the singing of the coffin in the rain will haunt his dreams (not only in a spooky way) for the rest of his life.  

Only knew it was Jon by Jon guiding his (Tim’s)  hand with too thin and gentle and burned fingers to his (Jon’s) mouth.  So Tim could read his lips by feel.  An imprecise thing, but better than nothing.  

Filthy fingers against dry and dusty lips.  Almost like a kiss.  Perhaps more intimate.  

The face hovers closer.  Thin and careful fingers soothing his brow.  

Pressing water to his lips.  Mouthing words that are lost to Tim.  And even if they reached him, he knows he wouldn’t understand them.  

Is this Danny before him?  Would he know his own brother?  After all these years?  After the Stranger chewed him up and regurgitated …whatever.  Is he lost as much as Sasha had been?  Like she’d been?  

And what good would knowing that do?  He would rather keep the memories he has, doesn’t want to know the creeping uncertainties that plague him when he closes his eyes.  

He supposes that the advantage of the Buried is that it keeps the mind off things that aren’t the slow process of returning stone to stone in a way that obliterates everything in between.  Everything but fear.  

Not Danny, but Jon, Tim discovers.  Pulled awake by uneasy stomach, and panicked breath, to find Jon fluttering out of consciousness by his side.  

He wants to be put out that they are flush with each other, but …but they were closer still in the choking darkness with air thick with the soil that Tim swears he can feel coating his internal organs.  

He’s drifting off again when he hears Jon gasp awake, looking nearly as unwell as Tim feels.  

The small figure curled at his back is not his brother.  But he feels as warm and as fragile as Danny did when he sat his vigil.  Counting the seconds between breaths.  His heart stuttering when they lagged and caught in his raw throat in the muted hours between sunset and sunrise.  The hours that Tim feared if he stopped willing the next breath to happen, they wouldn’t.  

But Jon is hardly human.  His pulse is jittery and uneven.  Each breath just a little more strained than they should be.  Likely matching Tim’s own.  

Some distant part of him… the distant part that can feel Jon’s pulse when the rest of him is floating away, untethered to a body too light and empty without topsoil and rich loam to brace him into and against the earth… worries that his own furnace of a temperature is too high and will roast Jon.  

Another equally distant part of him is annoyed that Jon dares to share this pyre of internal heat with him.  …If this is how he goes out, he wishes he saw the stars when he still had any strength.  

Tim wakes again to cool water against his tongue.  

Jon is mumbling to himself fervently.  And Tim can recognize that look.  That fear.  That determination.  The will of someone breathing for someone else.  Holding their life-force steady in the mind.  Knowing to let it faulter is a death sentence.  With wild certainty that is bounded in something beyond reason, for when you are willing another person to breathe, you are often beyond the reach of science.  

And Tim wonders who Jon could possibly be breathing for, because there is no universe in the extensive multiverse that Jon would ever will the life into someone who has spewed such hateful things and led another fragile being he swore to protect to his death.  

And yet…

Tim exhales deeply.  Sliding into what looks to be a restful sleep for the first time in uncounted months.  Watching the rise and fall of his chest look more natural and less like an afterthought, what little strength Jon had found, abandons him.  And he curls himself around Tim.  A small and fragile and dusty shield.  And is asleep in an instant.  Knowing without a doubt that Tim will sleep comfortably through the night, and if anything changes, Jon will know.  Both in body and from beyond the waterlogged door in his mind.  

[elejahfanfic]

Fanfiction

And so it is Christmas

Part 5

Elijah Mikaelson x reader

ft. Klaroline, Kennett

AU story_human_no vampires

a/n:There  will be great mad Mikaelson chaos and lots of love… i.e. Elijah falling for Y/N…cookie baking, etc.

well, actually_absolute christmas fluff… ho-ho-ho

_also this just blew into such a long ch again_ thanks for reading. xoxo

🎅

In the Mikaelson Mansion

Esther looked at the happy bunch mucking around in the kitchen. She loved the holiday season. It always brought a strange kind of warmth to the house.

"Everyone is very high spirited" the butler said,"this idea to have them participate in making the buiscuits was marvellous"

"Wasn't it just" Esther said, now looking at Klaus and Caroline cutely talking to one another, him complimenting the blonde on her artistic streak.

"I find it quite unusual that Elijah left Caroline behind and went out with Kol"  Esther remarked.

"There have been developments" the butler said.

"What do you mean?"  Esther now looked at the man with puzzled eyes.

"Master Elijah and Ms Forbes are no longer together. Prior to Miss Rebekah's trip to New York, they put an end to their relationship. Not that it was any serious relationship as such."

Esther raised an inquisitive eye-brow at the butler, and told him to follow her to the drawing room to speak more privately.

The butler has always been the source of gossip and knew all that was going on, as Rebekah could not keep anything to herself. He now told the Mistress of the house all about Elijah falling for Dr Y/L/N/

Now, Esther, having found out the latest going ons said, "Well, that explains Elijah's great interest in the Fundraiser. But isn't Dr Y/L/N seeing Klaus?"

"No. I found out from Master Kol that Dr Y/L/N and Master Klaus - just hooked up once- these are his exact words."

"I understood that there was more. He frequently is seen going to the Y/L/N Lake house." Esther said.

"Ahm, I have that information, too."  the butler said.

"We have to find out what exactly is going on. I do not wish any of my sons to get hurt. It is not the first time they get entagled with a woman. Remember how things went with Rayna Cruz."

"Yes, I do."  Jefferson recalled the stress that went off the brother's back in New Orleans, when they both had a crash on the beautiful blonde.

"She left them both heartbroken,"  Esther said, "and that fight - over her. I didn't want this to happen again."

"It will not. They are way more mature now, and Master Klaus is now much calmer."

"Yes. But still - a woman can stir up things- no matter what age a man is"

"Dr Y/L/N doesn't appear to be a woman that would string two men along."  the butler said.

"No. I think I will still have a word with her."

"Is this wise, Ma'am?"

Esther sighed. "Not really, but I cannot have a repetition of what we had years ago. And it being the reason Elijah moved to New York. It broke my heart having him so far away."

"But they have made up and they have been so very supportive of each other. Master Klaus met Aurora and - all was forgotten."

"Yes,"  Esther said and now took a deep breath looking at the faithful butler, "I have heard that Rayna had a child."

Jefferson looked at the woman a tad bit stunned. It seemed he didn't know all.

"What are you suggesting, Ma'am?

"That maybe - there somewhere Elijah might have a son."  Esther now said.

"Oh! Are you sure?"

"No. By the time I got this probable news - Rayna left New Orleans to - god knows where"

"But - if the child was Master Elijah's, I am sure she would come to you and said something. Ask for money. She was daring enough"

“True.” Esther said. “I wish he finds someone he can start a family with and be happy.”

“Maybe Christmas will work its magic this year.” Jefferson said.

“Well, let’s hope so.” Esther curled up a little smile.

🎅🎄

Elsewhere- the Y/L/N House

"Because of you"  Elijah said looking at Y/N in a very sincere manner.

"Me?" Y/N looked back at the man wide-eyed.

She was not expecting this answer. Or maybe she did.

"Yes. And I know that we hardly know each other- and I - this is now going to come out wrong - but ever since that evening volunteering in the shelter - I can't stop thinking about you"  Elijah said, twisting the truth a bit, as in fact, he could not stop thinking about her since he saw her at the boutique.

"Oh" Y/N let out followed by a gulp. For some strange reasin she froze, though she wanted to say that she also had him on her mind eversince she saw him at the boutique.

As there was no other response coming from Y/N, Elijah, slipping ‘Right’ and got up, "Ahm- I better go"

Y/N now got up as well, and for an unexplained reason said, "Ok"

Like a lost soul, Elijah looked for his coat jacket. Having found it in the living room, he took it and  put it on, thanking Y/N in the process for the pie.

Y/N nodded a little saying, "You're welcome"

Elijah nodded back, everything inside of him very jumbled up he turned and walked to the door.

"Wait" Y/N suddenly said.

🎅

Meanwhile, at the Mystic Falls Ice Rink

"Hey"  Klaus greeted Kol, who had just arrived at the Ice rink with Bonnie, "Elijah is not answering his phone."

"He is still busy making pies" Kol replied, "where are the others?"

"Bex and Stefan have this dinner thing with his uncle, and Hope went with Caroline to get some ice-skates cuz she doesn't have any - here" Klaus explained now looking at Bonnie, "isn't it time you introduced your girfriend"

"Yeah" Kol said somewhat confused, "this my other older brother - Klaus - the nuisance"

Bonnie now extended her hand to Klaus saying,"Hello. It's weird that we never met and you are at the School board and Hope is attending my chemistry class this year."

"I meant to come to see you regarding Hope. She is telling me that you chose her for the State Chemistry Olympiad? She is Middle School- is she that good? "

"Yes. She is very talented. Quite an over-achiever." Bonnie said.

"I don't know where she gets it from"  Kol now said with a teasing smirk.

Klaus would now hrow something clever back at his brother, but Hope and Caroline now joinrd them. More greetings and more introduction followed. Soon they all got inside the rink.

Kol showed off his ice-skating skills to Bonnie, who was pretty impressed. Bonnie was not skating since college and felt pretty rusty.

"How come you are so good at this?"  Bonnie wondered.

"Well I lived here for five years now. I also played for Mystic High Hockey team. We moved here five years ago."

"Wow." Bonnie said, "I must say I amazed."

"I also had a band." Kol said.

"What else don't I know?"  Bonnie asked.

"I was bad in chemistry." Kol said cutely.

"Ah, nevermind. I still like you." Bonnie now kissed her man.

Not far from them, Caroline skated up to Klaus, who actually just stood at rink's fence, totally lost in Caroline exhibiting her figure skating skills.

As she now came up to him, he was all stars in his eyes at her-

"Tell me why are you a lawyer?"

"Ah, because - my dad thought it would have been a more solid career"

"You are serious?"

"I was the US. Collegiate Figure skating champion."  Caroline said.

"Really?"

"Yes. But, this is where I started. This is where my mom brought me to skate when I was five years old - and"  Caroline now inhaled deeply, her eyes watering.

"Hey, what's wrong?"  Klaus now said concerned.

"Nothing. Just great memories. I didn't think I would be back here or skate here ever again."

"You lived here? When?"

"Till my mom died. And then I went to live with my dad in New York."  Caroline replied, "Thanks for - this was a great idea. And - sorry if me coming down made things awkward- now that Elijah and I - broke up."

"Our family does awkward well. So you are all right."  Klaus said.

"I don't know. Even though Elijah and I said we would be friends - I feel like I am intruding."

"I am for one am glad you are intruding - I mean- ahm- you are not intruding at all. You saved me from getting  the  whole cookie baking and  you did such great job helping Hope, and Rebekah for that matter. You should yake credit for all the baking that was done today. I can only imagine what it would be like if you didn't step in."

"I guess, your cook would have to do it all."

"Yes, and we would never stop hearing mother tell us that we could have done better."  Klaus said.

"I doubt that. She is lovely." Caroline said.

"Yes, mother is the best."

"I miss my mom so much." Caroline now said.

"I am sorry." Klaus now said with great empathy in his voice.

The song that now came on made Caroline take Klaus suddenly by the hands and said, "You are skating now"

"What? No, no, no. I am not like Kol."

"It is not that hard. I got you. You will be fine." Caroline reassured Klaus, who, strangely let himself go.

✨

At Y/L/N House

"Wait!"  Y/N said again and shot over to Elijah, and wihtout hesitation drew his lips to hers, like catching a dream that was about to disappear. She made their lips, mouth, tongue flow in the beautiful rhythm of what their heartbeats played, like tiny bells echoing like the shooting stars up in the skies. Easing out of it, heads leaning on one another now, both trying to gain some breath back, they stood silent for a moment, her thumbs lightly streaming up and down the side of the neck, while his hands got lost in the tangle of her her, dropping on her shoulders. If he spoke, he thought, this sweet enchantment would be broken. And yet, the first word shimmered out, "Y/N”

"Elijah" Y/N smiled a little, her cheeks feeling flush, "I don't know - what's happening - I mean- I know - but I never thought that - it all came out of nowhere"

"It has - and I - I just couldn't keep it to myself anymore. I tried not to feel - because I was with someone else- and you"

"Because I was with your brother" Y/N took a deep breath, "this never happened to me - I am not someone who goes from one guy to the next - let alone brothers- and has crazy drunken one night stand"

"Please - I didn't mean to upset you"

"You didn't upset me - I am - just such a hot mess - if you know what I mean"  Y/N said raising her look at him, "I also coudn't stop thinking about you"

Elijah lips curled a happy smile up now, the corner of his eyes  catching the mistletoe hanging right over them. Y/N looked up as well. They were standing right under the lush evergreen beaming down at them.

With their eyes now dropping on one another again, Elijah gently pulled her to him into a sweet, deep, long kiss.

_to be continued🎄🎅🤶

[aboveallarescuer]

How Dany assesses the counsel she receives and makes her own choices - The way from the Red Waste to Vaes Tolorro

This will be a series of posts meant to show that Dany is open to receiving advice and criticism, but that she doesn’t act solely based on what other people tell her to do. On the opposite, GRRM makes great effort to write a Dany who most often merges different viewpoints and/or finds her own solutions to the problems she’s facing. I won’t include every single decision she ever made (e.g. her decisions at court are often made without counsel and her execution of the ritual to hatch the dragon eggs was already exhaustively and deftly analyzed by other people), but there will be plenty of instances in this series that will prove my point nonetheless. The metas will always have four items: in which chapters the events mentioned take place; what advice she receives and from whom; what were her actions; the verdict (whether she followed other people’s advice, ignored/rejected them or did both at the same time).

Chapter (s):

ACOK Daenerys I

The advice Dany receives:

Jorah and Rakharo advise Dany to avoid any route that any other khal took.

Jorah says that, while it's uncertain that they will survive by moving forward through the Red Waste, it's certain that they will die if they try to go back.

Jhiqui and Irri advise Dany to not enter the city because of the evil ghosts that inhabit it.

 Dany's actions:

As I said in my meta about the relationship between Dany and the prophecies, Dany thinks it's best to follow the comet both because it's her only viable alternative and because there would only be despair left if she didn't believe that it meant something. As she lays out, all the other paths would compromise her small group:

She dare not turn north onto the vast ocean of grass they called the Dothraki sea. The first khalasar they met would swallow up her ragged band, slaying the warriors and slaving the rest. The lands of the Lamb Men south of the river were likewise closed to them. They were too few to defend themselves even against that unwarlike folk, and the Lhazareen had small reason to love them. (ACOK Daenerys I)

By the way, it's noteworthy that Dany was able to assess her situation and think of all these implications on her own. And I do believe she did it on her own, considering that the author explicitly recognizes when the ideas come from other people:

She might have struck downriver for the ports at Meereen and Yunkai and Astapor, but Rakharo warned her that Pono’s khalasar had ridden that way, driving thousands of captives before them to sell in the flesh marts that festered like open sores on the shores of Slaver’s Bay.

“Why should I fear Pono?” Dany objected. “He was Drogo’s ko, and always spoke me gently.” 

“Ko Pono spoke you gently,” Ser Jorah Mormont said. “Khal Pono will kill you.[”] (ACOK Daenerys I)

And this leads us to an interesting exchange between Dany and Jorah. As I said before, there are lots of instances to infer that she says things she does not necessarily believe in to obtain his respect, and this is one of them. First, he says that she and her hundred warriors won't stand a chance against Pono's ten thousand warriors. In her mind, Dany is quite conscious of her vulnerabilities, for she knows she doesn't even have a hundred warriors:

No, Dany thought. I have four. The rest are women, old sick men and boys whose hair has never been braided.

But instead of revealing these insecurities, Dany declares:

“I have the dragons,” she pointed out.

Which then leads Jorah to reply that they won't help her that much, since they are still hatchlings; in fact, they may be liabilities at this point since everyone will want to possess them. Dany fiercely says that they are hers and no one will take them from her while she lives. She is putting on a facade here, and admirably so. As the last Targaryen, khaleesi and now Mother of Dragons (as they started to call her), she is their leader and the one who must organize them to work towards a single purpose. To be in that position means being firm and reliable when no one else could be:

“We follow the comet,” Dany told her khalasar. Once it was said, no word was raised against it. They had been Drogo’s people, but they were hers now. The Unburnt, they called her, and Mother of Dragons. Her word was their law.

~

They are not strong, she told herself, so I must be their strength. I must show no fear, no weakness, no doubt. However frightened my heart, when they look upon my face they must see only Drogo’s queen. She felt older than her fourteen years. If ever she had truly been a girl, that time was done. 

~

Dany kissed him lightly on the cheek. It heartened her to see him smile. I must be strong for him as well, she thought grimly. A knight he may be, but I am the blood of the dragon. 

Like I said before, while Viserys used the expression "the blood of the dragon" to be ostentatious and coerce others into doing whatever he wanted, Dany reclaims it to restrain her emotions so she can be the kind of leader who "belongs to her people, not herself". The use of that phrase is also reminiscent of her duty not being only towards the living, but also the dead, whom she doesn't fail to mention:

Her father had been slain before she was born, and her splendid brother Rhaegar as well. Her mother had died bringing her into the world while the storm screamed outside. Gentle Ser Willem Darry, who must have loved her after a fashion, had been taken by a wasting sickness when she was very young. Her brother Viserys, Khal Drogo who was her sun-and-stars, even her unborn son, the gods had claimed them all. They will not have my dragons, Dany vowed. They will not. (ACOK Daenerys II)

Dany is being very protective of her dragons for two reasons:

She loves them as she would love her human children and considers them family.

They are also the means for her to successfully claim her father's throne. Only then she will honor all of these people that the gods claimed. That is also why she won't admit defeat in Qarth when all hope seems lost - she has the dragons and a shot at doing justice for her ancestors and carrying out their legacy, so she will not look back and be lost.

Because Dany's leadership style is rooted in empathy and accountability, she never takes advantage of her position:

Dany hungered and thirsted with the rest of them. The milk in her breasts dried up, her nipples cracked and bled, and the flesh fell away from her day by day until she was lean and hard as a stick[.]

Another leader might have taken most of the food or water for themselves, but that's not what Dany chooses to do. She "must know the sufferings of her people", after all, even more so when she is unable to help them the way she wished she could. The trauma of seeing so many of her people perish will later inform her attempts to bring peace (untenable as it was) as quickly as possible to Meereen in ASOS and ADWD.

Wine gave out first, and soon thereafter the clotted mare’s milk the horselords loved better than mead. Then their stores of flatbread and dried meat were exhausted as well. Their hunters found no game, and only the flesh of their dead horses filled their bellies. Death followed death. Weak children, wrinkled old women, the sick and the stupid and the heedless, the cruel land claimed them all. Doreah grew gaunt and hollow-eyed, and her soft golden hair turned brittle as straw.

~

[H]er khalasar withered and died. Around them the land turned ever more desolate. Even devilgrass grew scant; horses dropped in their tracks, leaving so few that some of her people must trudge along on foot.

~

Dany looked at the horizon with despair. They had lost a third of their number, and still the waste stretched before them, bleak and red and endless.

Even here, Dany does the best she can to alleviate their pain. She respects and follows their customs:

Three days into the march, the first man died. A toothless oldster with cloudy blue eyes, he fell exhausted from his saddle and could not rise again. An hour later he was done. [...] Dany bid them kill the weakest of their dying horses, so the dead man might go mounted into the night lands.

~

Two nights later, it was an infant girl who perished. Her mother’s anguished wailing lasted all day, but there was nothing to be done. The child had been too young to ride, poor thing. Not for her the endless black grasses of the night lands; she must be born again. 

She also feels a lot of gratitude for Doreah and strives to make her death a little less agonizing:

Doreah took a fever and grew worse with every league they crossed. Her lips and hands broke with blood blisters, her hair came out in clumps, and one evenfall she lacked the strength to mount her horse. Jhogo said they must leave her or bind her to her saddle, but Dany remembered a night on the Dothraki sea, when the Lysene girl had taught her secrets so that Drogo might love her more. She gave Doreah water from her own skin, cooled her brow with a damp cloth, and held her hand until she died, shivering. Only then would she permit the khalasar to press on. 

Later in ADWD, during a feast where people start bringing up the names of the combatants in the upcoming duels at Daznak's Pit, Dany feels complicit in their imminent deaths. She remembers Doreah as an example of someone who died under her protection. More than that: in Dany's mind, Doreah is proof that "[n]o queen has clean hands" because that's how guilty Dany feels about what happened:

Much of the talk about the table was of the matches to be fought upon the morrow. Barsena Blackhair was going to face a boar, his tusks against her dagger. Khrazz was fighting, as was the Spotted Cat. And in the day's final pairing, Goghor the Giant would go against Belaquo Bonebreaker. One would be dead before the sun went down. No queen has clean hands, Dany told herself. She thought of Doreah, of Quaro, of Eroeh … of a little girl she had never met, whose name had been Hazzea. (ADWD Daenerys VIII)

I want to cry.

Also, even if in vain, Dany's proactive (though failed) efforts to find resources in the Red Waste should not be overlooked, for it's still admirable that she took them without anyone even suggesting:

Dany sent outriders ranging ahead of the column, but they found neither wells nor springs, only bitter pools, shallow and stagnant, shrinking in the hot sun.

And neither should Dany's discovery of how to feed the dragons. While Viserys gave her the knowledge, she was the one who retained it in her memory, guessed that it might work and applied it:

Such little things, she thought as she fed them by hand, or rather, tried to feed them, for the dragons would not eat. They would hiss and spit at each bloody morsel of horsemeat, steam rising from their nostrils, yet they would not take the food ... until Dany recalled something Viserys had told her when they were children. 

Only dragons and men eat cooked meat, he had said.

When she had her handmaids char the horsemeat black, the dragons ripped at it eagerly, their heads striking like snakes. 

Eventually, Dany and her khalasar arrive at the abandoned city that would later be named Vaes Tolorro. She is the one who takes precautions at first:

They made camp before the remnants of a gutted palace, on a windswept plaza where devilgrass grew between the paving stones. Dany sent out men to search the ruins. Some went reluctantly, yet they went ...

But then, after finding out that the place has figs, fruit trees, vines and water, she decides to enter it, stay, rest and be practical rather than leave it because of superstitions:

... and one scarred old man returned a brief time later, hopping and grinning, his hands overflowing with figs. Other searchers returned with tales of other fruit trees, hidden behind closed doors in secret gardens. Aggo showed her a courtyard overgrown with twisting vines and tiny green grapes, and Jhogo discovered a well where the water was pure and cold. Yet they found bones too, the skulls of the unburied dead, bleached and broken. “Ghosts,” Irri muttered. “Terrible ghosts. We must not stay here, Khaleesi, this is their place.”

“I fear no ghosts. Dragons are more powerful than ghosts.” And figs are more important.

She takes note of the resources available to her ("food and water here to sustain them, and enough grass for the horses to regain their strength") and gets her people to work on the different tasks she finds for them:

Dany gave him charge of a dozen of her strongest men, and set them to pulling up the plaza to get to the earth beneath. If devilgrass could grow between the paving stones, other grasses would grow when the stones were gone. They had wells enough, no lack of water. Given seed, they could make the plaza bloom.

~

Dany thanked him and told him to see to the repair of the gates. If enemies had crossed the waste to destroy these cities in ancient days, they might well come again. “If so, we must be ready,” she declared.

In these two cases, we have explicit cases of Dany concocting ideas to improve Vaes Tolorro's facility, namely by improving its lawn and fortifying it. Not only that, but we also find out that, under Dany's leadership, her whole khalasar is now taking action and making the place better in the ways they can help:

Women harvested fruit from the gardens of the dead. Men groomed their mounts and mended saddles, stirrups, and shoes. Children wandered the twisty alleys and found old bronze coins and bits of purple glass and stone flagons with handles carved like snakes. One woman was stung by a red scorpion, but hers was the only death. The horses began to put on some flesh. Dany tended Ser Jorah’s wound herself, and it began to heal.

This is all great setup for when Dany becomes Queen of Meereen and handles large-scale projects to improve the city's economy and infrastructure.

However, even though Dany thinks it "pleasant" to stay in Vaes Tolorro, she's aware that she must eventually leave, and she doesn't want to do so without being fairly sure of where she's going. With that in mind, she makes the clever decision to send her bloodriders in different directions so that, hopefully, one might find a path that's not as arduous as the one they had to face:

The next morn, she summoned her bloodriders. “Blood of my blood,” she told the three of them, “I have need of you. Each of you is to choose three horses, the hardiest and healthiest that remain to us. Load as much water and food as your mounts can bear, and ride forth for me. Aggo shall strike southwest, Rakharo due south. Jhogo, you are to follow shierak qiya on southeast.”

“What shall we seek, Khaleesi?” asked Jhogo.

“Whatever there is,” Dany answered. “Seek for other cities, living and dead. Seek for caravans and people. Seek for rivers and lakes and the great salt sea. Find how far this waste extends before us, and what lies on the other side. When I leave this place, I do not mean to strike out blind again. I will know where I am bound, and how best to get there.”

And this decision pays off when Jhogo returns with the three strangers who will guide Dany to Qarth.

Aside from the beginning when Dany ponders which direction to take, neither Ser Jorah nor her bloodriders are ever mentioned as part of Dany's decisionmaking. Instead, GRRM takes pain to make Dany's reasoning and actions her own, while also showcasing her selfless nature. ACOK Daenerys I is a chapter that highlights the authorial intent to portray Daenerys Targaryen as an intelligent, capable and principled leader.

 Verdict:

From the Red Waste to Vaes Tolorro, Jorah and Rakharo advise Dany about where not to go (though it must be said that she had already made most of the assessment on her own). Besides that, every single action that Dany takes is of her own volition and without the influence of anyone's help. She:

Exhibits emotional intelligence by acting as a leader who drives her group.

Tries to find resources in the Red Waste. 

Attempts to ease the khalasar's pain by taking part in their customs and giving Doreah a less painful death.

Decides to remain in Vaes Tolorro despite superstitions.

Takes note of the resources that she has in her disposal.

Gives her people several different tasks to improve the city; thanks to her guidance, some possibly started to do different activities on their own.

Sends her bloodriders in different directions to find one that isn't as taxing as the previous one.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 259: Jakku General Hospital

Previously on BnHA: We chilled with Hawks and Twice, who filled us in on the various different facets of Pliff’s plan to fuck over the world. For starters there are like a dozen new bad guys who are each heading different Pliff regiments, just in case anyone forgot that this is a literal army we’re dealing with here. Hawks also reminded us of the fact that Twice can clone basically any one of the bad guys as many times as he wants now, so that’s a nicely terrifying thought to sit and mull over. We learned that once Tomura is done powering up, the villains intend to attack all over the country simultaneously and basically destroy society as we know it. Oh and also kill all the heroes of course. But I think we already knew that. Anyway, so the one bright side in all of this is that Twice naively let it slip to Hawks where Tomura was currently undergoing his Frankenstein procedure. And so the chapter ended with basically all of the heroes in Japan launching a surprise attack in the mountains of Kyoto, while the kids waited on standby to help with the evacuations. And I know that doesn’t sound very safe, but... well... shit.

Today on BnHA: A quiet morning in the Kyoto suburb of Jakku. All is peaceful -- or so it seems. Little does the elderly CEO of Jakku General Hospital (a stand-up citizen, philanthropist, and caretaker of orphans all across the country) know that lying in wait just outside his doors is a group of wicked and immoral HEROES ready to -- okay lol you know what, I can’t. Not sure what I was really going for there anyway. So! Meanwhile in the woods outside the ol’ villain hotel, a second group of heroes led by Edgeshot and featuring several child heroes in training, including KAMINARI WHO WAS LITERALLY JUST BORN YESTERDAY AND SHOULD BE AT HOME IN HIS NURSERY WATCHING PAW PATROL AND NOT OUT HERE IN THE WOODS WHERE HE IS IN TERRIBLE DANGER, is gathered and ready to attack the League’s main forces. So things kick off with Death Arms apprehending the traitorous Slidin’ Go, while elsewhere the heroes bust into Jakku General Hospital to capture Ujiko. Show of hands, who here thinks this is going to go smoothly? ...Yep. Yeah. That’s what I thought.

okay guys, before we get started I’m gonna answer a couple of relevant asks from last week. first:

I’m almost hesitant to talk about this, because I’m paranoid that Viz and co. could pounce on these sites again at any moment, and so I feel like this sort of thing is better left to private messages and discord servers. but I guess one little mention of it won’t hurt. so the site currently doing the scanlations is readheroacademia.com, which has been around for a while. and there are several other sites which also host the new chapters and have all of the old chapters archived as well. kissmanga is a big one which I know a lot of people use, but my personal favorite is readmha.com (idk, I just feel like its layout is... cleaner? if that makes any sense)

also do keep in mind that all of these sites are pretty ad-heavy, so I wouldn’t recommend visiting without a good adblocker at the ready (I generally use Chrome on both desktop and mobile, and have uBlock Origin and Disable HTML5 Autoplay enabled on my desktop browser). that being said, I’ve never had any issues myself

good question! I was actually thinking about doing a weekly follow-up post on Sundays after the official Viz translation comes out, but obviously I did not end up doing that last week lol. so now I’m thinking it might be easier for me to just post any subsequent thoughts/remarks in the following week’s chapter recap, since I’m already committed to doing those anyway and so it makes it harder to flake out

so that said, my one follow-up thought about chapter 258 is that the fan scanlation seems to have mistranslated that whole “AFO’s resurgence” part. in Viz’s version Hawks was instead saying that the PLF’s plans would “throw the world into chaos and enthrone Shigaraki atop the rubble.” and he then referred to Tomura as the second coming of All for One. sooooo, pretty much exactly the opposite of the other translation lol. this is a big blow to my continued effort to search for evidence that AFO is gonna come back and be the final villain, but I am still not deterred. we will continue to fight on until AFO either actually dies, or does come back like I keep predicting he will! please try to work with me a little better here, AFO

one other thing, instead of “New World Movement”, Viz used the same “Vanguard Action” regiment name that was used during the forest training camp arc. Caleb said that the wording (“kaibyaku koudou”) was exactly the same. so I’ll be using that too moving forward. I guess that means that Pliff is still on the menu though, pity

anyway so let’s get started now

so it’s a house... no, holy shit, wait, it’s the house!

THE NEW TODOROKI HOUSE OH MY GOD. ahhhhh lol what the fuck is this. Todofeels coming up to slap me in the face out of nowhere?! here I thought we were gonna just dive right into the Shigaraki raid and the resulting carnage

I’m... not really sure how I feel about this? like, right now I’m not trusting anything Horikoshi does lol. “quiet beginnings” you say? this is just a sneaky new way to bring me more pain. isn’t it

(ETA: I guess “quiet beginnings” also summarizes the other activities of this chapter pretty well. also is that Natsuo’s girlfriend??! at first I thought it was Rei, but those look like quirk-related ears? so Natsu then really is living his best college life huh.)

oh hey everyone it’s a brand new character!

(ETA: wait, is he actually quirkless? or is that just another LIE. you big LIAR.)

I’m so curious what the kanji is for this latest name. can’t wait for Caleb to enlighten us. I wonder if it’s “shi” as in “death”, just like with Tomura/AFO’s name. and no idea at all what “Maruta” means. basically I just want to know if there’s some pun or something, since yet again he’s obviously using a fake alias here

(ETA: so someone informed me in an anon ask that this is a reference to Unit 731, which was a Japanese unit that undertook lethal human experimentation during WWII. basically the people who conducted the experiments referred to their human subjects as “logs” to dehumanize them. and the Japanese word for log is, you guessed it, maruta. so that’s an extremely powerful and disturbing association for this name, and it’s obvious now why Horikoshi went with it.

that said, the anon said that some people were really upset by this name choice, and while I guess I can understand that, I also think that’s kind of the point, though? like, it’s supposed to be horrifying. anyone with a human conscience and any kind of empathy whatsoever should be horrified. and atrocities like that shouldn’t be forgotten, and I actually think that for someone born and raised and living in Japan like Horikoshi to be making a reference to this is fairly ballsy. because my understanding is that, like a lot of Japan’s other war crimes, it was more or less hushed up by the government afterwards, and isn’t really taught in schools or mentioned in history textbooks other than in passing. so while I can understand people maybe finding it disrespectful, I don’t think it was meant as such. it seems to me that if anything, Horikoshi wants people to look into it and be educated about it. and again, obviously he’s associating it here with easily the most reprehensible and morally sickening character in the entire series, which is fitting I think. anyway so those are my thoughts on that.)

anyway, guess what guys? looks like we’ve got ourselves another Star Wars reference! let’s just hope this particular Jakku doesn’t wind up as wrecked as its namesake when all’s said and done. it’s gonna be a loooooong day

you guys. Maruta is such a nice guy

he’s a philanthropist! and he runs orphanages all over the country! wow! what a great person!! and nursing homes as well, where residents presumably die on the regular (of old age and other natural causes no doubt), at which point they are presumably cremated, and I wonder who runs the cremation facilities? I’m sure whoever it is is definitely on the up-and-up

and “quirk-based community healthcare.” I wonder if they’re selective about who they treat based on what their quirks are. all the better to make sure people with particularly strong and/or unique quirks get the specialized treatment they need!

anyway. see, this is more like what I expected. some super dark shit, and finally some answers to a few long-established questions as well, but not without a price. that price being the churning feeling in my gut right now lol. oh man. well I just ate, so that might have something to do with it. but I tell ya, nothing makes you vaguely queasy like trying your best not to think about a massive conspiracy to kidnap and torture innocent children in the pursuit of ultimate power! so anyways I sure do hate this!

fffff like, really hate it. I HATE IT SO MUCH

[reluctantly goes ahead and slides AFO down one notch on my list of people I need to see die the most] well there it is. we have a new champion

so now we’re cutting to a hero briefing!

y’all is that THE SHERIFF. PLEASE. IT’S BEEN SO LONG. BUDDY I MISSED YA

so Nao says he had one of his guys go undercover to investigate, and they found that this hospital’s blueprints included a giant suspicious unlabeled place that nobody knows anything the fuck about

oh my god. you guys. forget Tomura, could that also be where they’re keeping the Noumus?? omg. omg omg omg. omgggggggggggg. omg

-- AHHHHHHHHHH

IF THE NEXT PANEL ISN’T JUST A CHORUS OF EVERYONE IN THE ROOM ALL SAYING “WHAT THE FUCK” SIMULTANEOUSLY, I’M GONNA DEMAND SOME ANSWERS, BECAUSE LET ME TELL YOU, HAVING ALREADY KNOWN ALL ABOUT POOR JOHN-KUN AND ALL THIS FUCKED UP SHIT MYSELF, I STILL AUDIBLY SWORE OUT LOUD. AND YOU KNOW WHAT? I’M GONNA DO IT AGAIN TOO, BECAUSE WHAT THE FUCK

come on, is Pixie Bob the only one of you here with normal human reactions or what?!

RIGHT?! YOU ALL ARE LOOKING AT A TINY MOUND OF FLESH WITH VEINY BULGING EYES JUST OGGLING BLANKLY OUT FROM ITS EXPOSED BRAINS. NOT TO MENTION IT’S GOT TWO OF WHAT VAGUELY RESEMBLE EARS, BUT WHAT I’M PRETTY SURE ARE ACTUALLY NOSES?? AND A SEVERED SPINAL CORD TAIL DANGLING OUT FROM BEHIND. ALL OF WHICH IS PLASTERED TOGETHER LIKE A LUMPY MOLD OF CLAY ATOP TWO CHILD-SIZED LEGS, which are wearing fucking sneakers, with fucking velcro and shit. fuck. fuck

lol Nao

oh yes, not difficult at all. I’m sure he’ll come along real quietly. hey, let me know how that one works out, okay

“we have the trauma of Hosu and Kamino still haunting us.” thanks for that reminder. gonna have another city to add to that list real soon aren’t we. preemptive r.i.p. Jakku

oh man you guys. can you feel this tension building up

interesting how he says “destiny.” I wonder if that’s the actual dialogue. at any rate this overconfidence is terrifying and I would really like for you all to stop jinxing shit my dudes

-- WHAT DID I JUST SAY

holy shit. please tell me this is a separate group from the Endeavor group we saw at the end of the last chapter

but that doesn’t make any sense though, because this group has Midnight and Kamui, two of their deadliest and most efficient capture specialists. not to mention Edgeshot the literal ninja who can break into anywhere. so this really should be the vanguard here based on what I’m seeing, but if that’s the case why are the eighteen-year-old Tamaki and the sixteen-year-old Toadette right there with them?? can we not, you guys. can we not

fucking shit. at least they’ve got Ms. Joke there too to back them up. if we actually get to see her quirk in action I can die happy. and so, presumably, will the villains

so the “hospital team” (is that the Endeavor team??) said they’re gonna eliminate the villains’ warping ability, which presumably means John-kun. do they even know it’s him that does it?? they don’t seem to actually know who Ujiko fucking is so I have my doubts?

on the bright side though, it seems like this Midnight team is actually going to be raiding the mansion, and won’t be involved in the hospital raid. but on the less bright side, the mansion is arguably almost as dangerous. :/ that’s where Twice is!! and probably most of the League! but at least they don’t have a dozen Noumus in the basement just waiting to be unleashed

god. people, if we don’t get moving on this action soon I am going to give myself a damn heart attack. this is way too much suspense for a chill Friday night

son of a bitch that guy behind Toadette is Honenuki, I just realized. what the fuck, U.A. ?? “hey kids! guess what! we’re going on a field trip!!” ...

-- NO!!!!!!

IT WILL NOT BE ALL RIGHT!! DON’T YOU LIE TO THEM!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!! Tamaki, fine, okay, he’s experienced, and arguably more powerful than half the people there. Toadette, she’s just a kid, but she also tried to kill Tokoyami back during the joint training arc and I’m still not sure how I feel about that so whatever! Honenuki is probably the most responsible person in this entire group so fine. Tokoyami needs to be there to have a lot of angst about Hawks

but Kaminari. Kaminari fucking Denki. no. no, sir. excuse the fuck out of me. how fucking dare you. he is a five-year-old boy in the body of a high-voltage adolescent. and he’s maybe, just maybe, more powerful than anyone else in this fucking group but that still doesn’t give you the right to put this little baby boy RIGHT ON THE FRONT FUCKING LINES!! holy shit! HIS BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS!! I DON’T LIKE ANY OF THIS

OH MY GOD

RIGHT?!?!? omg omg omg omg omg

he’s literally wailing “I miss class 1-A” so loudly that it’s echoing all the way through the forest. see now that’s why you DON’T TAKE KAMINARI WITH YOU ON YOUR SECRET STEALTH ATTACK MISSION!! would somebody please point me towards whoever’s fucking idea this was so that I can go kick their fucking ass please and thank you

and here are the rest of them oh my god

Momo, Mina, Jirou, and Kiri at the forefront. okay, fine. this, I do like

so Edgeshot says they’ve surrounded the villains on all sides. man, no wonder they’re so worried about their warping capabilities. this is basically their one chance to capture all the bad guys in one fell swoop. I guess it makes more sense why all their capture specialists are in Edgeshot’s group, then

now I’m starting to wonder exactly what task lies in store for the Wonder Trio’s group, though? because they said evacuation, but is that really all there is to it? it’s no secret that Bakugou, Deku, and Todoroki are the three strongest interns they have. so you’re really expecting me to believe that they put baby Denki there on the front lines and yet plan on keeping their heaviest hitters in reserve? Nao is there more to this plan that you’re not telling us

oh shit Endeavor wants to know where his adopted chicken son is at

it genuinely does warm my heart to see Endeavor worrying about Hawks. I’m glad Hawks has at least one person out there who actually gives a shit about him. even if that person is mister father of the year here. the plot thickens

I wonder if Enji would actually die to save Hawks, if it came to that. which I’m not saying it would. but we all know some fucking shit is about to go down so I’m just having these thoughts here okay!

Nao always looks so tired nowadays. man

so he clearly does know who Endeavor’s talking about, though. one of these days I’d like to get a clearer understanding of what exactly Naomasa’s rank is and how high he is in terms of clearance, because the idea that he’s actually privy to more information than the number one fucking hero is kind of bonkers to me, ngl. this guy is literally just a detective, right?? not even a commissioner or anything. and yet he’s involved in everything. I used to suspect that he might be the traitor lol, and while I’m pretty sure by now that’s not the case, I’m still curious as to exactly what his deal is. does he even have a quirk?? anyways

so now Endeavor is hmphing and stomping off, and meanwhile there are some closeups of Mic and Aizawa

is that a whistle. do you guys think Mic could literally kill a man with his voice. shit. why do I kind of want to see it happen

as for Endeavor, I wonder if he was the one who made sure that his son and his friends weren’t on the front lines with the rest of them. sometimes it’s good to have some influence in these things

looooooool as if on cue

well. that sure doesn’t sound like he intends to keep them out of harm’s way. does he really have that much faith in them??

serious question, why exactly are all of the heroes seemingly so confident that this is going to work? it scares me because it makes me feel like in spite of Hawk’s intel they still don’t have a clue what they’re truly up against

so now we’re cutting to some random street somewhere and WOULD YOU LOOK WHO IT FUCKING IS

Slidin’ Go Suck An Egg. oh how I hate this man

look at him

I hate his stupid face!

OH SHIT

TRAFFIC CONE MAN, ARE YOU FINALLY GOING TO REDEEM YOURSELF FOR NOT RESCUING KACCHAN ON THAT DAY TWO YEARS AGO BECAUSE YOU WERE AFRAID OF A LITTLE SLUDGE? BECAUSE I’M HERE FOR IT! IF YOU WANT TO JUST GO AHEAD AND SNAP HIS NECK, I WILL TURN THE OTHER WAY AND ACT LIKE I DIDN’T SEE, I PROMISE

wow, Burnin’s team really is just evacuating people

I mean they’re obviously going to run into a Noumu, and just like that they’ll be in more danger than anyone, but at least for now it really does seem like the minds behind this raid wanted to keep them relatively out of danger. so yeah, for now I’m gonna chalk that up to Endeavor’s influence that they’re here rather than in the forest with the rest of their class

and here comes the hospital team!

well that answers my question about Nao’s rank. so he’s not even a chief. that really is fucking ridiculous but whatever

and why do I feel like this poor undercover subordinate is mere seconds away from becoming the first casualty in what I think is about to become the most violently snafued situation we’ve seen in this manga to date. like this shit is going to make Kamino look like the fucking state fair. fuck

...

I really wish I could believe that he was about to go down and it really was going to be just that easy

HERE WE GO!!

(ETA: so then they do know that he’s the guy who made the Noumu? including the one that nearly took him out in Kyushu? and they’re still acting like this is going to be a walk in the park? ?? what??)

knock knock, who’s there, JUSTICE

YESSSSSSS

(ETA: sure hope Endeavor’s light here doesn’t go summoning any darkness. welp.)

YOU’RE UNDER ARREST FOR CRIMES OF BEING TOO HORRIBLE TO EVEN FUCKING CONTEMPLATE, LET ALONE JOKE ABOUT! YOU SON OF A BITCH, GET FUCKED

oh my god. we’re really just gonna end it like that. well I guess next chapter we can all play a fun game of “let’s all count the pages until everything goes horribly wrong.” won’t that be a laugh. 10 to 1 the Noumu really are in the secret room and they’re all gonna be set loose by next week’s cliffhanger. remind me to have “Into the Trap” by John Williams cued up and ready to go lol

[lizzy-frizzle]

Bragging Rights

Lizzy and Sadu discuss recent events

(There’s one instance of implied transphobia)

Sadu and Lizzy sits at the dining table eating a meal, as normal. Lizzy shifts her eyes away from Sadu anytime she tries to look at her.

“You’re hiding something.” Sadu says accusingly. She squints her eyes, and stops chewing mid bite.

Lizzy retorts, “Nuh-uh! I...Just….Ok, so, promise not to be mad.”

Sadu’s eyes narrow further. She chomps down hard on the animal’s cooked leg, nearly biting through bone.

Lizzy sighs, “So, you know how you told me to not fight any more inter-dimensional immortal beings? Especially if it could kill me?”

Sadu slowly puts the food down, and slowly responds, “...Yes...”

“Well, I kinda...” Lizzy pauses as she senses the aether gathering around Sadu, “I’m fine now! It’s ok! Nothing bad happened!” “Elizabeth.” Sadu starts, “What did you fight?”

“I may have fought another ascian.” Lizzy admits, looking downcast at her plate, “He may have tried to send me to an eternal gaol of darkness.”

Sadu starts to reach for her staff.

“But I got out! I’m here anyway.” Sadu remains unchanged, “Anyway, I mention this because I learned something about myself.”

Sadu tilts her head, shoulders relaxing slightly, “Go on.”

“So, I told you about Emet-Selch, the convocation, right?” Lizzy continues, “I was one of them. Apparently, I was the Shepherd to the stars, uh, named ‘Azem’, an-” “Azim?! Like the God that Magnai believes himself to be?” Sadu stands up hurriedly, “NO WAY. I HAVE TO RUB IT IN HIS FACE THAT NOT ONLY IS HE NOT, BUT THAT I MARRIED THE REAL REINCARNATION OF HER.”

Sadu rushes out the door, muttering about the Dusk Mother not liking men. Lizzy follows her, eventually catching up and offers to fly her there.

“You’re pregnant Sadu, please try to take it easy.” Lizzy gently reminds her.

Sadu’s hand instinctively reaches for her child, “I know, but I HAVE to do this to HIM.” she pauses, “I will allow you to fly me there.”

Lizzy allows her wife to do this slight on her mortal enemy.

~~The Dawn Throne~~

It’s late into the afternoon when they arrive.

Lizzy attempts to dissuade her wife again, “You know I said ‘Az-em’ not ‘Az-im’ right?”

Sadu waves off the clarification, “You would have me believe that The Dawn Father, the representation of the Sun, named Azim, and this Azem, a traveler and shepherd to the stars, are different people?” she continues, “One could argue that the Sun does indeed shepherd the stars, and travels across the sky.” she punctuates this thought with shaking her head, “No, I believe these two people are one in the same, and that the Dawn Father is actually the Dawn mother.”

She laughs, “At any rate, it’s better.”

Her confidence astounds everyone at the Dawn Throne as Sadu Dotharl marches straight up to Magnai on his throne.

The large auri man rolls his eyes at the intrusion, and begins, “You taunt my grace wi-” “-I CARE NOT!” Sadu shouts, “Khagan, tell this False Little Sun the truth!”

The room grows dead silent in the wake of the announcement. The Oronir waiting for Magnai’s reaction.

[Oh jeez, she must be serious if she’s invoking my official title.] Lizzy squirms under the intense scrutiny.

Sadu gestures to Lizzy, forcing Lizzy to announce to all of these warriors something she would really rather not say, “A-As per Dotharl believe in the soul inhabiting life after life,” Lizzy tries her best Leader Voice, which is to say, not all that intimidating, “And through recent events involving preventing a calamity. It has been revealed that the soul that lies in me is none other than Azem, the Traveler and Shepherd to the Stars.”

Some light murmurs occur among the Oronir. Lizzy decides to put her hands on her hips, partially to remind everyone of her daggers, another in preparation to defend her and her wife if the worst happens.

Magnai stands up, angry, “Do the Dotharl then claim that not only am I not the Dawn Father incarnate, but also that this...this OUTSIDER is? And that SHE is HE?”

Sadu interprets the statement differently than Magnai probably intended, and immediately begins casting a fire related spell, “EXCUSE. ME?!”

Her temper flared, with a spell to match, explodes next to Magnai, causing everyone to draw their weapons. Lizzy included.

“Calm down, Sadu,” Lizzy calls out, “I’M SURE HE DIDN’T MEAN IT.” she loudly hints to Magnai.

But Sadu is already in the middle of casting another spell.

Magnai puts his axe away, and starts, in a calm manner, “I did not mean to imply any disrespect.”

Sadu launches the spell. Lizzy uses shukuchi to position herself in front of her and blocks the hit with a dagger. She looks into Sadu’s eyes, seething rage swirling inside.

“Sadu...” Lizzy tries again.

Sadu’s eyes flicker for a moment, then her brow furrows again, “Tell. HER. You. Are. Sorry.” Lizzy senses aether swirling around her staff, “Or. I. Will. Make. You. Sorry.”

Magnai must sense it too, cause he immediately puts his hand in the air, “Enough. You’ll have your way Dotharl. Khagan, I’m sorry.”

Sadu calms down. Not a lot, but she’s not going to kill anyone at this point. She puts her staff back, and everyone relaxes slightly, “Anyway. It’s important for you to know. The REAL Azim got me pregnant.”

The shock on Magnai’s face is no doubt what Sadu came here for. However Lizzy feels her face become flushed, “SADU. WHY?”

Mortified, Lizzy begs the gods above to end this day.

Magnai sits on his throne, too shocked to respond.

Sadu grins wickedly, and begins laughing, “How does it feel Little Sun?!”

Lizzy pleads with Sadu in her mind, [Sadu...please...I’m dying...stop]

With Lizzy as red as a tomato, she picks up Sadu, and walks out of the throne chamber. Sadu not sparing a chance to make a taunting face at Magnai as she gets carried out.

~~In the sky above the steppe~~ “You didn’t HAVE to do that.” Lizzy says sternly.

Sadu’s smile refuses to leave her face, “But did you SEE his face?? I wouldn’t trade the world to be able to do that again!”

Lizzy shakes her head.

Sadu continues, “Anyway, I love seeing how flustered you get too, so it was a 2-for-1.” she wraps her arms tightly around Lizzy’s stomach, and nuzzles her head into her back. She can’t see, but she knows this flusters her further.

“A-ah, Anyway!” Lizzy fumbles her words through the surprise hug, “We should tell Meeps about the pregnancy.”

Sadu picks her head up, “The miqo’te that was at our wedding?”

“Yes, She’s...probably not doing too hot I imagine. She could use some good news.” Lizzy frowns, “When I saw her, figured it wasn’t the BEST time to bring it up.”

Sadu rests her head back on her wife’s back, “Alright, Operation Cheer Up Meeps-y”

~~Meeps’ House~~

Lizzy knocked twice, and waited. Sadu shifts anxiously behind her.

“Are...you nervous?” Lizzy asks.

Sadu nods, “I’m a bit far from what I consider home, meeting one of your god-killing friends. Surely you can understand the apprehension.”

“It’s just unusual for you.” Lizzy responds, then she smiles, “is the pregnancy starting to affect you?”

Offended, Sadu lightly jabs Lizzy’s shoulder, “I’m the Mighty Khatun of the Dotharl. A little pregnancy won’t impact me!” her voice doesn’t sound quite as rock solid.

Lizzy just sighs, and holds Sadu’s hand, “It’s ok, hun.”

With her free hand, she knocks again.

Sadu takes a deep breath.

Asahi opens the door, “Hell-oh! Lizzy, and Sadu, welcome. Meeps...isn’t accepting compan-”

“Can I talk to her please?” Lizzy gives her best puppy dog eyes, “It’s super important, and I think it’ll cheer her up!”

Lizzy laces her words with her a chipperness that Sadu swears leaves her with a cavity.

Asahi stares at the couple. He shrugs, and sighs as he gestures for them to come in, “You can try.”

Lizzy let’s out a happy, “Thank you!” and walks inside, Sadu in tow.

He closes the door behind them, and points to the stairs, “She’s up in the bedroom, good luck...”

The two climb the stairs, and knock on the presumed bedroom door. Lizzy doesn’t wait for a response before opening it, however.

“Meeps?” Lizzy squeaks out.

The bedroom is dark, lit by a pair of candles on the bedside tables

The figure under the blankets remains silent.

Lizzy moves to the side of the bed, and sits down. She gestures for Sadu to do the same, “Hey, you know, Sadu is here with me.” She gives Sadu a look.

“Hey,” Sadu utters, feeling wholly uncomfortable with the situation.

Lizzy speaks again, “I’m sorry, I know it hurts. I don’t know what it’s like, or what you’re going through. But we’re here.”

Meeps doesn’t react.

Lizzy continues, “We have some really fantastic news.”

Instead of saying anything further, Lizzy gently lowers the covers from Meeps, and grabs her hand. The hand feels damp from endless tears. She moves the hand to Sadu’s stomach.

“What?” Meeps says, then her eyes widen, “O-OH!” She sits up and faces the couple.

Lizzy notices how red her eyes look. She lets a face of empathy reflect and tries to switch to a happy face, “Sadu’s pregnant,” she says with finality.

A weak smile spreads across her face, “That’s awesome.” she tries to muster. Her voice sounds more ragged this time, “Have you decided on a name?”

Sadu answers, “We don’t decide on a name until after they’re born.”

Meeps reflects on the information after a nod, “Ah, right, I forgot for a moment. I hope a brave warrior’s soul finds its way then.”

Sadu smiles back at her.

“Though, I did convince Sadu that if they’re a Raen, we’ll be naming her Alice.” Lizzy adds, “After my mom that adopted me.”

The sentiment makes Meeps tear up once more. Lizzy hugs her, rubbing her back in an effort to comfort her.

Meeps chokes back the tears, for a moment, “I think that’s a great name.”

Lizzy takes the moment, “Hey, I’m sure you haven’t eaten in a while.” she gets off the bed, “Why don’t we go downstairs, and have Asahi cook some dinner.”

Sadu chimes in, “Lizzy, it’s near midnight.”

Defensively, Lizzy responds, “So? Dinner is when you say it is, and I’m hungry.”

Meeps stays silent for a moment, then gets out of bed, “Ok, let’s go eat.”

“Thank you,” Lizzy says, “I know it’s hard.”