#but no yeah seriously let actors figure out their shit through straight characters | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

gleekto · 4 years ago

Text

Summary: College AU/Famous!Blaine and Fanboy!Kurt - Kurt POV

Kurt really doesn’t have time to figure out the dating world between being a freshman at prestigious theatre school, LAADA, and his active but secret blogging life in the Sing!Fandom. So what if Sing! ended last year? There are still fics to read and actors to follow. Especially the uber talented heartthrob lead, Blaine Anderson. He can act. He can sing. He can even dance. He’s gay. He’s out. And he’s only 24. Kurt is willing to twiddle his thumbs and click refresh until Blaine Anderson’s next project.

He just didn’t expect the next project to be on his roommate Rachel’s new TV show.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Even Better Than the Real Thing (4/15)

It takes Kurt until the following afternoon for the haze to lift and for his feet to land back down on the ground after spending the evening floating. He finally logs on to his tumblr and to the entirely unsurprising 13 messages, all anonymous, all asking him if he heard about whether his source met Blaine. He deletes all of them and clicks on his direct message from Mercedes last night.

From LimaBlaineFan to MercedesSing! : Guilty as charged. You found me out.

MercedesSing!: So let me get this straight - Your roommate and close friend is literally working with Blaine Anderson?!

LimaBlaineFan: He’s her love interest. They kiss.

MercedesSing!: Please don’t tell me you’re jealous because you know that’s all acting and you have suddenly gone from number one fanboy to real life acquaintance overnight and there are a good few hundred followers who would be intensely jealous of you if they knew.

LimaBlaineFan: They don’t. And they won’t. But no, I’m not jealous. Blaine is indeed gay, and you know, he doesn’t have a boyfriend right now. Was too difficult to meet someone while on a show like Sing!

MercedesSing!: He did not tell you that.

LimaBlaineFan: He did. And we commiserated about growing up in Ohio - two gay kids. We’re like peas and pod, Blaine Anderson and I.

MercedesSing!: Shut up. You had a heart to heart with Blaine Anderson.

LImaBlaineFan: Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But I can confirm that he is even more beautiful in real life.

MercedesSing!: This is nuts. I’m happy for you. Hell, I’m happy for me. Do you think he can hook me up with Jo Johnson for some music lessons? Kidding. No not really. Anyways. You met Blaine Anderson. And shit got real.

Kurt and Mercedes plot out just the right amount of info to post publicly on his blog from his “source”.

My source confirms that Blaine Anderson is a genuinely nice guy, but you’ve all heard that before. He did find out that Blaine sang in his high school Glee club, and oh, he’s single right now. Don’t get any ideas though, fandom, because Blaine knows there’s a difference between a fan and a friend. Anyways, sounds like Blaine Anderson was as cute as ever - oh and he was wearing cherry red shoes.

...

“Let’s go, Kurt. Off your laptop, put away your homework, we’re going to the cast open mic night.”

Kurt looks up over his computer skeptically. “Open mic night?”

“Oh come on. You don’t even have to perform if you don’t want to. And Blaine asked if you were coming-”

“He did? We talked for like five minutes. How does he even remember my name?” What.

“Yeah. I know it’s weird but I think you’re a good excuse not to have to be networking the whole night. For me too,” Rachel emphasizes. “Come on.”

Kurt nods his head from side to side, feigning indecision but of course he’s going. Blaine Anderson asked for him to come. Or asked if he was coming. Or whatever. He’s obviously going.

...

As he and Rachel are whisked into the Limelight - closed for a private event - by the security guard at the door, he’s sure he has accidentally fallen through a portal into the world of Sing!, with Blaine’s character, Roy Royson, up on stage as usual, serenading his on screen love interest with an unplugged version of an 80′s rock ballad. Today it’s Jack and Diane.

Only Roy Royson would be wearing a plaid flannel shirt and not a fitted red cardigan with tight dark blue jeans and a navy bowtie. And man, Blaine Anderson can rock a bowtie.

“He’s good, right?” Rachel gestures to Blaine on the stage, who sees them and gives a wink and smile. What a showman. “Talented.”

“He was on Sing!, Rachel. Not a shock that he can carry a tune,” Kurt shrugs. No way is he letting Rachel know how captivated he is. He’s seen Blaine as Roy perform on screen countless times and then on repeat, but something about seeing the real Blaine, all styled and a touch deliberately flamboyant but also very boyish singing classic 80′s rock, completely holding the live audience in his hands. He’s hard to look away from. By the time Kurt catches himself staring slightly open mouthed and manages to turn around to get a drink, Rachel already has a drink in hand and is sitting at a table with Jesse St. James and a few of the others he met the other week.

Kurt orders a ginger ale with one lime (can’t be caught drinking underage with the high profile cast), and turns towards Rachel’s table where Blaine is now conveniently sitting. Kurt would not have normally dared to sit beside him for fear of spilling his drink from shaky hands, or worse being tongue tied when being asked a mundane question, but it appears that the chair beside Blaine is the only empty one and Kurt is not sure if it’s a punishment or a reward. So it’s facing his fears or cozying up to the showrunner at a separate table. Awkward.

“Great performance,” Kurt starts as he sits down beside Blaine. “I can appreciate a strong stage presence despite the strange choice of music genre.”

Blaine looks up and his smile widens amusedly as he shifts his chair over to make more room. “Thank you,” Blaine nods and then leans in to Kurt’s ear. “Well, despite the choice of genre, I may have caught you staring.” Blaine winks. Did he just-

Kurt is mortified but Blaine just elbows him in the side and takes a sip of his beer. He was caught. But Blaine doesn’t appear to be mad, or embarrassed, or irritated - In fact, he seems happily entertained . Cocky bastard. “Well, my dad is a big Mellencamp fan, and I can’t say I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching a classic performance where the lead is in anything other than stone washed jeans and flannel.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Oh it’s a compliment.” Kurt turns to him. “I did try to do Mellencamp once in a Glee club assignment in my junior year - complete with the flannel. But somehow I couldn’t pull it off. My dad even called me out.”

Blaine laughs, eyes sparkling and staring right at him. Man, that eye contact. “Too forced?”

“Too straight,” Kurt answers and Blaine laughs again like Kurt is both funny and entertaining. “I think I got a lecture about not trying to be someone I’m not just to impress him. That he loves me just as I am blah blah blah.”

Blaine’s face turns serious. “That’s lucky.”

Kurt stares back. “I know.”

“So you were out?”

“Yeah. And maybe thanks to my dad and my Glee club, I survived Lima. But it wasn’t fun. Guess Lima’s just too narrow for all this fabulousness,” Kurt jokes, gesturing at today’s outfit - lime green tight army jeans with a purple button down and scarf. And of course a heart shaped broach.

“Lima’s loss,” Blaine says seriously, reaching out to touch Kurt’s arm. Kurt jumps and then Blaine’s hand is gone again. “Well, you’re in LA, now. The fun is only just beginning.” Kurt’s jaw drops slightly and he can feel himself staring at Blaine, again, and trying to stop being drawn to that impossible magnetism.

“Let’s go, Kurt! It’s our turn.” Luckily Rachel pulling at his arm against the magnetic force rescues him.

“What?”

“I signed us up, of course. Defying Gravity. Let’s go.” Kurt normally loves performing. Loves performing Broadway hits. Loves performing with Rachel. But performing in front of his celebrity crush - that was not on his agenda. “Come on!” She pulls him up on stage. Ah well. Good thing he’s a good actor. Game face is about to be in full force.

When they take their bows, the room full of appropriately enthusiastic applause, Kurt lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “That was great, Kurt!” Blaine seems genuinely excited. “You’re a countertenor - You have an amazing voice!” Kurt beams. He has an amazing voice.

Before he can second guess himself, Kurt turns to Blaine and whispers, “Thank you. And I assume your love of Broadway is why I caught you staring.”

Blaine laughs and chinks their glasses. “Guilty.”

...

When he gets home that night, high from all the performances, from the performing, from talking to Blaine Anderson again, he closes his door and screams silently into his pillow. He grabs his phone and texts Mercedes who is of course asleep in New York City.

Kurt: Mercedes, I’m back. We talked. Again. A lot. He kind of stared at me through my whole performance with Rachel. Which he admitted. And laughed. He even likes my voice. I think we’re friends. Like actually friends.

In the morning, Kurt wakes up to Mercedes’ reply.

Mercedes: Of course he likes your voice. You’re epic. And friends? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

#even better than the real thing #gleekto writes #took a few days but here is the next part!

37 notes · View notes

yikesharringrove · 5 years ago

Note

hello!! i was just wondering if there is anything like au’s, kinks etc. that you really don’t vibe with so that myself or anyone else won’t make you uncomfortable by asking you to write about it. much love 💕

Honestly, there’s not a lot I WON’T write. Even if it’s not something I’m into as a human (like kinks and stuff) I’ll still write it, even if it icks me out a little. honestly, my hard lines are like hard lines.

I also want to say who I’ll write. I’m a Harringrove blog, first and fucking FOREMOST, but I love Stommy, Keg Boys, and Buckleway, and would be down as hell to write Stonathan and Stoncy. ( I LOVE Jonathan, but I have trouble writing Nancy. Just can’t find her voice really.)

I’ll put them under the cut bc I’m gonna talk about stuff people may want to avoid, plus she’s LONG

So, I WILL NOT write incest. That includes Billy/Max bc in my brain and how I like to write them is as brother and sister, that they’ve fixed their relationship, so yes. Which leads me to...

I won’t write for any of the kids in a sexual context. Most of the actors are minors, are that makes me feel yucky to think about writing these characters that way. When I’m writing a sex scene between Billy and Steve, in the show, yeah they are teens and that IS underage, but you’re thinking of characters played by ADULTS. Joe Keery is like, almost thirty. He’s a GROWN MAN. That’s why I won’t write the kids like that. This includes writing kid/teen like Billy/Max of Steve/Dustin and aged up, because it just makes me feel weird picturing these real life CHILDREN somehow aged up in sexual situations.

As far as content, I’m okay with most things, including triggering topics. I try my best to give proper tags and warnings, and if it’s something I DON’T have experience with, I do A LOT of research for my fics. I’ve also gone through some serious shit and use writing as an outlet for it, so I don’t mind writing heavy topics. Things that trigger me specifically, are like super weird things (ex: the song Dancing Queen. Yeah. I fucking know. Used to love that song and now I can’t fucking listen to it) so I have the emotional energy to write pretty dark stuff.

I hate Karen Wheeler and fully refuse to write Karen/Billy (outside of like, Karen hit on Billy and it was grsss!) that’s BIG YIKES to me and their scenes made me v uncomfy. I don’t think I could write Billy/Hopper or Steve/Hopper either, they need him as a father, not a daddy.

I won’t write Harringrove as abusive. These two mean the WORLD to me, and tbh they’ve both dealt with enough abuse. Sometimes I’ll see dark fics where one of them is going through something and becomes abusive towards the other in some way, and that’s just not my jam in a pretty big way. I love fluff and softness for these two because they deserve it, and that’s what I write. Most of my angst has happy endings too.

As far as kinks, that’s my hardest line. Like I said, most shit I will write. There’s a lot of kinks I don’t know much about, or would never be interested in trying myself, but I don’t mind researching it to write it. How I actually write kink is to find articles written by people who participate in and enjoy that kink so I can get more of an understanding of it, what it feels like, and why they participate in it/enjoy it, and then usually watch some porn of it. (which is SO FUNNY bc I’m watching like, hardcore kinky porn squinting at the screen with my glasses on figuring out how I’m gonna write and describe stuff lmao) so most kinks I’m fine with putting in the hours. With a lot of kink stuff I feel as long as everyone participating in it is consenting and in a safe environment, then go right ahead! So I’m not weirded or grossed out by much.

HOWEVER. Kinks I won’t write: -Shit. Usually I’m pretty live and let live, scat play is GROSS. Straight up. Full offense meant. Kink shaming is intentional. -Age regression during sex. I’m okay with writing Daddy Kink, and I wouldn’t mind putting in more research to write age regression outside of sex, but I DO NOT want to write something where they are actively pretending one of the participants is a child. That feels kinda questionable to me. Along with this is diapers and things like that in any context. From research I HAVE put into daddy kink, it’s not about actually pretending the dom is your father, it’s more about being taken care of. I am fine with all that, but to have the sub be pretending to be a child just makes something in me feel off when it is in a sexual context. Again, I’d be down to put in the research if you want to request someone who lives as a little or in a state of age regression and have the other person take care of them like a child. It would be pure fluff. I just wanted to make that VERY clear. -Blood in kissing. You’ll see in a lot of Harringrove when Billy has a split lip and they kiss Steve can taste the blood or something, that makes me feel REAL ick. HOWEVER, I’m a big dumb slut for vampires, and am good to write that, or gore, or even some murder boyfriends, it’s just when someone gets blood that’s not there’s in their mouth that’s pretty yikes for me. -Petplay is fine but I don’t want like, actually anthropomorphic

Honestly, I think that’s like, it? I was seriously thinking of kinks that like, personally I would NEVER want to try but like, I would write them. I don’t care. \

One thing you may or may not have noticed is that I don’t use the F-slur. I spent a lot of my life dealing with a lot of internalized homophobia. I identify as queer, (I always write Steve how I feel, where I fall in love with people above being sexually attracted to just like, a gender as a whole and personally, I can’t have sex without emotional intimacy, but that’s more of a trauma thing) I come from a really conservative place and struggled a lot with my sexuality and thought because I do like guys and have feelings for guys, I’m just straight and pushed down all of my other feelings for people of other genders away. It was actually really recently, after I went to college in a liberal city and met all different kinds of queer people I realized that 1. I have had feelings for LOTS of different people throughout my life (I was deeply in love with my best friend in high school in a SUPER gay way and just kept pretending I wasn’t lol) and 2. I don’t have to label myself if I don’t feel comfortable with that. So I call myself queer. Because I considered myself straight, literally until I was like, nineteen, I always thought of the F-slur as the same way I do the N-slur. I believe the word can be reclaimed by people in the groups it was used to dehumanize, but since I felt I WASN’T part of the LGBT+ community, I never used it. Even now that I have accepted that part of myself, the word just still feels very wrong for me to use. I don’t mind reading it, and it’s used really often in Harringrove fics bc Neil LITERALLY says it in canon, but I just can’t bring myself to type it out, so I just don’t. That’s a SUPER weird side note, but that’s why you may see in stuff I’ll skirt around Neil or Billy saying it.

So basically, I’m comfortable writing most things. Sometimes, requests may take longer because I NEED to put more thought into it, or more research or I want to get it right, for example the one I just posted with nb Steve and trans Billy, I did a lot of research and read a lot of things written by trans and nb people about their experiences and feelings, etc. as I’m a cis person and didn’t want it to be insensitive or fetishy or just straight up BAD. But I LOVE writing so FUCKING much, I will put in the time and do research to see your head canons and thoughts come to life.

One thing that takes me FOREVER is historical type prompts. I’m BAD at history, like remembering stuff in general, so while I LOVE to take prompts set in different time periods, please know it’ll take me a thousand years to fill.

If you read all this, thank you, and I’m sorry for going on weird tangents about stuff, I’m kinda weird and my brain doesn’t move in one direction lol. Please keep putting in requests and letting me into your ideas! I love it!

#yikes talks #yikes writes #Things I Won't Write #yikes won't write

49 notes · View notes

elichorph · 4 years ago

Text

ok hi i’m back with a second character ...

the member of the yale's elite, they're twenty three and a grad student majoring in film & media studies. they are as amicable as they are histrionic.

stats:

full name: gordon minjun teller nicknames: goose. gordon is for business only age: twenty three birthday: june 13, 1997 chart: gemini sun / cancer moon / leo rising gender: cis male pronouns: he / him sexuality: bisexual & biromantic height: 6′1 hair color: blue (now blonde) tattoos: none piercings: nose stud (right side), earlobes (always have silver hoops in them)

PINTEREST BOARD

blackmail:

while the public believes that goose’s family retired and moved to another country, this was actually released as a coverup because they went missing. goose withheld information from the court about their last whereabouts which could have prevented it from becoming a cold case.

he was expelled from high school after vandalizing a statue on campus and his uncle paid the school to go back on their decision.

he lost a third of his inheritance money to a cult he briefly followed in his sophomore year of college while looking for guidance.

backstory:

tw: implied death

right at birth, goose was adopted into the teller family who were pretty well known. his father was a young ceo of an oil company in texas. goose’s family eventually became public figures and tabloid favorites after a long riveting love story between his father and mother, who belonged to opposing business families. it really was a quick rise and fall to fame, starting when it was revealed goose’s adoptive mom, grace, couldn’t have kids, he was in her arms not even a month after and right out of them thirteen years later when she disappeared and the family really was never to be heard of again.

but as the only adopted child into a family who had to keep their public image up, goose’s dreams of being a fun loving kid were crushed. really, it was strictly gordon - gordon on the tabloids, you’d see his baby face like aw thank god grace got to have a kid of her own <3 he was posted up at galas, listening to his dad speak about oil and shit every weekend and going back to his small private school every monday and it was just the same routine conditioning to keep the image of the teller family spotless and to hopefully get gOrDoN to become the next ceo.

that all kind of went to shit though when goose turned 14. his parents miraculously went missing (don’t ask me what happened i don’t even know) one night when he was tucked into bed. seriously, he woke up one morning and they were gone and suddenly there were police storming the house and he was being questioned and things weren’t routine or safe anymore. in order to still save face for the family though, news was quickly put out that the family went on a private vacation while the investigation went on privately. it was taken to court, people signed nda’s, and all little goose knew was that he his parents were going to a party that night and hadn’t told anybody else and he was too scared to tell anyone. at one point goose became the main suspect and he had to put his freshman year of high school on pause, but he was dismissed months after even though he hadn’t shared the detail that they went to a party. if he had shared it, they literally would’ve been found. eventually, there were no new leads, the case was declared cold, and an official statement was put out that the teller parents “retired” and “moved” to a different country that wouldn’t be disclosed and gOrDoN would be under the care of his uncle.

gordon was like mad though haha. even though he’d gotten his family’s entire inheritance as a fifteen year old and should’ve been happy that he was basically a millionaire, he wasn’t used to things not being in the same routine and actually having to make decisions for himself. newsflash, but goose can’t handle emotions really well and he got angry and well i don’t know if you’ve seen donnie darko where donnie literally put an axe through the statue’s head and spray painted “they made me do it” below the statue? but yeah, that. goose wasn’t slick though, got caught by security, and his uncle paid the school to let it slide and then sent goose to a boarding school in maruland.

he spent the last couple years of high school trying to figure out who he actually was outside of the tabloids and the teller name and image, and eventually got the hang of it by the time he enrolled at yale. he started going by goose instead of gordon, went into film instead of business like his family wanted him to and slowly started to blossom into the weirdo he is today <3 his dad was in the elites so he was able to secure a legacy spot and reluctantly said yes to joining. he was kinda quiet the first year, but now he’s all gungho to do charity events and make people happy and shit like that.

his sophomore year though he kinda doubted the path he was on and his naive ass got roped up into a cult. anyways, he ended up trusting them a lot and donated 1/3 of his family’s inheritance to the cult and kinda blew it. goose was acting hella weird around this time though, i imagine people around him could kinda sense he wasn’t like alright for a few months. anyways someone ended up giving him an intervention about acting kinda whack and he realized and thankfully was able to leave the cult pretty unscathed. but he is deeply, deeply ashamed about his time in the cult though.

personality:

he is one gigantic deranged baby. like he is baby, but he’s also kind of crazy. if goose feels any normal emotion, it instantly bass boosts and he feels it in full. goose genuinely is so sensitive, he’ll physically flinch if you say something merely mean to him because he was used to growing up so perfect that he really can’t take criticism. however, he’ll do his best to patch things up by saying some incomprehensible joke right there and then. the only exception to this is the tabloids. goose has become so immune to them that he will straight up troll them back on twitter because he just doesn’t give two shits.

he’s incredibly kind. so so so kind (not really gentle though). the type to remember your favorite candy bar and hand one to you on a random tuesday. he’ll remember your name even if you’ve only met once and even if you didn’t give him your name, he’ll look it up somehow just so he knows next time. he loves to make jokes all the time. none of them ever make sense, but they’re funny to him and he won’t apologize for it. and he’s LOUD. you probably can hear his cackles and snorts and dramatic screams even when you’re on the other side of campus. he’s just a kid in a candy store excited to finally enjoy life, especially now that things have seemed to settle down. even though he’ll probably have a whole breakdown and a half the first time the blackmailer mentions his name.

yes, he actually believes he’s being haunted by jfk. goose had a string of dreams about him and witnessed some doors opening and closing on their own around the same time, and he quickly jumped to the conclusion and never thought twice about it. another strange belief that goose has? that he’s friends with a ton of a-listers. even though it’s mainly jessica alba, he won’t hesitate to tweet at extremely famous actors and thank them for getting lunch with him even if they’ve never spoke. multiple management companies have his twitter handle blacklisted. while he currently has blue hair, it’s always quick to change. for how much he dyes it, it’s surprising that it doesn’t feel like hay. if goose feels a mental breakdown coming or simply is bored or needs attention, his hair color will do a straight 180. he hasn’t had a natural hair color since he enrolled at yale.

things that are very goose: beat up yellow high top converse, getting to know every person in existence, having memes plastered over his wall to make him smile after a long day, wearing fancy cologne to the grocery store because one cashier said he smelled good and he thinks it makes them happy to wear that, throwing a shoe across a crowd at a party, going to sulk in the bathroom or leave the party early when a song plays that brings up bad memories, keeping every movie stub, restaurant punch card, and lost button in a little scrapbook just because he wants to remember the good things in life, thinking the karate kid is the best movie to ever exist despite being five years into a film major.

wanted connections

since he doesn’t have any pre-established connections, here are some ones that could kinda be fun

someone who protects his naive ass <3

an ex or old one sided crush who hurt him so bad lmao. they really wouldn’t have to a lot to do that, but it would be juicy if they did

roommate? maybe? he lived in a really shitty apartment his first few years, maybe they convinced him to move out or moved in

or neighbors? like he will knock on their door 3 times a week with half burnt brownies to offer or because he doesn’t know where his tv remote is and needs help

someone who gave him the intervention about like “you’re acting weird are you okay” that indirectly got him to leave the cult and he feels like he’s forever indebted to them

someone who just despises goose and he doesn’t understand why and tries to make things better even though it just makes things worse

family friends? maybe? when he was in ct and his uncle didn’t let him come home with him during the holidays he would go to their house or something like that

gentle romance <3 maybe. Please

he’s their secret admirer and sends them gifts and flowers and writes them bad poems and recommends them shitty romance films

someone who takes advantage of how naive he is

anything <3 come 2 me or i will dm you or venmo you and force u to plot with me

#intro

5 notes · View notes

queen-of-deans-booty · 5 years ago

Text

Changing Channels: Part Two

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Word Count: 2,539

Warnings: typical supernatural violence, language, angst, blood, you know the usual

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Supernatural. All credit goes to their respective owners. Any and all comments on these are appreciated. I really want to hear what you guys think about this one!

Feedback is the glue that holds my writing together.

Tags at the bottom

Looking at your surroundings, you bit your lip nervously. There was no murder at the old paper mill. The Trickster was behind all of this, you can just feel him around.

“Dude, what the hell,” Sam commented as you three began walking throughout the corridors.

“I don’t know.”

“No, seriously, what the hell.”

“I don’t know!”

“One theory. Any theory.”

“The Trickster trapped us in TV Land,” you voiced your thoughts.

“That's your theory? That's stupid,” Dean scoffed.

“You're the one who said we're on Dr. Sexy, MD,” you pointed out.

“Yeah, but TV land isn't TV Land. I mean there's actors and, and lights and crew members, you know? This looks real.”

“It can't be. Dean how can this possibly be real?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know,” Dean groaned.

A woman doctor passed by the three of you, and she smirked at Dean and Sam.

“Doctors.”

“There goes Dr. Wang. The sexy but arrogant heart surgeon,” Dean explained as he moved onto another person who was sitting on a gurney looking very sad until another woman doctor came up to him. “And there's Johnny Drake. Oh, he's not even alive, he's a ghost in the mind of her, the sexy yet neurotic doctor over there.”

“So, this show has ghosts? Why?” you asked.

“I don't know. It is compelling,” Dean shrugged.

“I thought you said you weren't a fan.”

“I'm not. I'm not,” Dean scoffed, looking the other way towards the elevators. His eyes widened at the man walking towards him, but he couldn’t seem to say anything intelligent.

“Oh boy,” he whispered.

“What is it?” you asked.

“It’s him.”

“Who?”

“It's him, it's Dr. Sexy,” he hissed just as Dr. Sexy approached the three of you.

“Doctor,” Dr. Palmer a.k.a Dr. Sexy, said as he looked at Dean.

“Doctor,” Dean looked down, hiding the obvious smile on his face.

He was such a fanboy in this moment, you almost forgot the assault that happened earlier.

“Doctor,” Dr. Palmer addressed you.

“Doctor?” you posed it as a question.

“Doctor,” Dr. Palmer finally addressed Sam.

However, the younger brother could only nod, and that caused the older one to smack him in the back from behind. Sam gave the fictional character a tight smile as he said it back.

“Doctor.”

“You want to give me one good reason why you defied my direct order to do the experimental face transplant on Mrs. Biehl?” Dr. Palmer asked Dean who was clearly confused, yet disappointed that he upset his fictional idol.

“One reason?” he asked, and the recipient nodded.

Dean looked down in half-shame, about to give an answer when he spotted the doctor’s shoes. His face went from panic to anger as he shoved Dr. Sexy into the wall.

“Dean!” you hissed.

“You're not Dr. Sexy,” he ignored your attempt to bring him back to sanity.

“You're crazy.”

“Really? Because I swore part of what makes Dr. Sexy, sexy, is the fact that he wears cowboy boots. Not tennis shoes.”

“Yeah, you’re not a fan,” Sam scoffed.

“It’s a guilty pleasure,” Dean argued without taking his eyes off the imposter.

You took a closer look at the doctor, and your eyes widened when you felt the energy pulsating from the being. This wasn’t a doctor, it was the Trickster.

“Call security,” Dr. Palmer said to the nearest person.

“I know who you are. You’re the Trickster,” you blurted out.

Dr. Palmer smirked in your direction as two female doctors and a security guard came rushing your way in a calm manner. Just like that, they and the other extras freeze-frame. Everyone except for you, Dean, Sam, and Dr. Palmer were able to move. Suddenly, Dr. Palmer morphs into the Trickster.

“You guys are getting better!”

“Get us the hell out of here,” Dean growled.

“Or what?” he asked, grabbing your boyfriend’s arm and twisted it. Dean winced in pain as he let go, and he took a step back to join you and his brother’s side. “Don't say you have wooden stakes, big guy.”

“That was you on the police scanner, right? This is a trick,” you observed.

“Hello? Trickster. Come on! I heard you three yahoos were in town. How could I resist?” he laughed.

“Where the hell are we?”

“Like it? It's all homemade. My own sets,” the Trickster raps on the window in a nearby door then indicated to the frozen extras, “my own actors... call it my own little idiot box.”

“How do we get out?” you asked.

“That, my friend, is the sixty-four-dollar question.”

“Whatever. We just, we need to talk to you. We need your help,” Sam tried his method that you discussed earlier.

“Hm, let me guess. You three muttonheads broke the world, and you want me to sweep up your mess.”

“Please. Just five minutes. Hear us out.”

“Sure. Tell you what. Survive the next twenty-four hours, we'll talk,” he grinned.

“Survive what?” you asked.

“The game!”

“What game?”

“You’re in it.”

“How do we play?”

“You’re playing it.”

“What are the rules?” you asked, raising your eyebrow in suspicion.

The Trickster matched your eyebrow game, grinned, then vanished in a burst of static. The extras unfroze and resumed their lives as if nothing happened.

“Oh, son of a bitch,” Dean groaned.

A blonde doctor pushed past the three of you, calling out Dr. Palmer’s name in a frenzy.

“Dr. Sexy? Dr. Sexy?”

“Come on,” you sighed, leading the group down the corridor after her.

“Oh, by the way, talking with monsters? Hell of a plan,” Dean antagonized his brother.

“Just, what do we do now?” Sam asked.

Before anyone had anything to say, the male doctor who slapped your ass from before came walking around the corner. When he saw you, you knew from the look in his eyes that he was gonna slap your ass once more. Before he had the chance to do it, you grabbed his arm, twisted it behind his back, and shoved him into the nearest wall.

“You even think about touching me, I’ll break your arm,” you threatened.

All the man could do is laugh as he shrugged out of your grasp.

“I love that fiery passion you have. Makes for a great night,” he grinned, winking at you as he left.

“What the fuck is going on? What are we doing here?” you asked loudly.

“You know what I'm doing? Leaving,” Dean declared.

He turned the corner only to come face to face with Dr. Piccolo, the woman who slapped Sam earlier. She reached up and tried to take another swig at him, but Sam was smart and dodged it easily.

“Lady, what the hell?”

“You are a brilliant, brilliant—”

“Yeah. A coward,” he interrupted her. “You already said that, but I got news for you. I am not a doctor.”

“Don't say that,” she choked up. “You are the finest cerebrovascular neurosurgeon I have ever met, and I have met plenty. So that girl died on your table. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't anybody's fault. Sometimes people just die.”

“I have no idea what you're saying to me.”

“You're afraid. You're afraid to operate again, and you're afraid to love,” she sobbed, leaving his side to run down the hallway in tears.

“Yeah, we're getting out of here,” Sam nodded.

“Hey, Doctor?” a man asked, stopping you in his tracks.

“Yeah?”

“My wife needs that face transplant.”

“Look, I’m sure you’re a very nice man, but none of this is real, okay? Your wife doesn’t need jack shit from me,” you snapped, continuing on your way.

“Hey, Doctor,” the man said once more with a look of agony on his face.

He lifted a gun to your chest and pulled the trigger, missing your heart by a few inches. Instead, the bullet went straight through your lower back. He escaped down the hall as your eyes widened in shock.

“Real,” you gasped as blood started to pool on your coat. “Dean, this is real.”

Gasping, you fell to the floor just as Sam and Dean realized what you were trying to say.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—hey! We need a doctor!” Dean yelled as he knelt by you.

Both him and Sam yelled around frantically for some help. Closing your eyes, you tried to use your magic to heal yourself, but something was wrong. It wasn’t working which was scary to you since you’ve become so dependent on it. When you opened your eyes, you weren’t in the hallway on the floor, but face down on an operating table, staring straight through the headrest at several pairs of white tennis shoes.

“What the hell is going on?” you asked.

“BP is eighty over fifty and dropping,” one of the nurses announced.

“Doctor,” a scrub nurse said, holding out a scalpel to one of the brothers.

“What?” Sam asked, exchanging glances with his brother.

“Fuck, do something. One of you,” you hissed from down below.

“We don’t know how to use any of this shit,” Sam whispered to you.

“Figure it out,” you snapped.

No one did anything for a while, and the nurses began looking at each other worriedly as you bled.

“Fuck this,” Dean muttered to himself before speaking up to the nurses. “I need a penknife, some dental floss, a sewing needle, and a fifth of whiskey.” Sam and the other nurses looked at him silently, not sure how to react. “Stat!”

As soon as the order was barked, the nurses scrambled to get the things that Dean requested. When he got everything he needed, he began sewing your skin up like he would do normally if one of you got a wound from hunting.

“We okay? How's it looking?” you asked when you didn’t feel anything else happening.

“Yeah, you’ll be fine, sweetheart. I’ll take care of you,” Dean grinned.

Even at this stage of your relationship, he still managed to make you blush like a schoolgirl. The tennis shoes in you view walked away, and you stared at the blue carpeting. There was a shift in the air, and you no longer heard the clanging of metal that is normal in an OR. Replacing that, clapping started erupting and lights started flashing. The blue floor transformed into two blue doors that opened.

No longer were you on an operating table but strapped to a machine that has a slot for a pole with two large balls at the end that were roughly the size of your chest. Sam and Dean were in a similar position, but they were standing in shoes glued to a platform with only one ball attached to a pole. A Japanese man come out of the doors you were staring at with two women trailing behind him.

“Let's play Nutty Cracker!” he yells, and the audience sheers. He says something in Japanese before pulling out cards from his jacket.

“Sam Winchester,” he said, speaking the question in Japanese. What was the name of the demon you chose over your own brother? You three didn’t understand a lick of what he was saying, but it didn’t matter to the man.

“Countdown!” he announced once he was finished.

The big countdown clock started ticking backwards from twenty.

“Uh, what am I supposed to say?” Sam asked you and Dean.

“You think I know?” Dean screeched.

“Uh, I don't—I don't understand Japanese,” Sam said to the host who only repeated the question in his native tongue. “Is he screwing with me? I—I can't speak Japanese.”

The screen behind him reached zero which sounded off a loud buzz. The host said something in Japanese, saying the answer in English.

“Ruby! I'm sorry, Sam Winchester.”

“Sorry? Sir? For what?” Sam asked in a panic.

The host could only laugh just as the ball attached to Sam’s platform rushed up and whacks Sam in the crotch. Dean is clearly horrified, and Sam doubled over in pain as much as he could. The crowed cheers at this, but you were growing angry at the Trickster for doing this to you. Your eyes shined a bright blue in an attempt to save Sam some of the pain, but when you moved your hands up to use your magic, it shortened out and fluttered away in sparks.

What the fuck was going on?!

“Nutty Cracker!” The host yelled.

“Sam?” Dean asked. His brother makes an inarticulate noise in response. “You okay?”

Sam could only glare at his brother since he couldn’t seem to form the words on his own. Dean looked at his own platform, saw the ball, and began to panic.

“I can’t use my magic. Something is very wrong!” you urged.

The lights on the door began flashing which could only mean that someone or something was coming through those doors.

“What now?” Dean groaned.

The door opened to reveal Castiel, and the crowd cheered at his presence.

“Castiel?” you gasped.

“Is this another trick?” Sam asked once he gathered the nerve to.

“It's me. Uh, what are you doing here?”

“Us? What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you. You've been missing for days.”

“Get us the hell out of here, then!” you yelled.

“Let’s go,” he said, raising his arms to touch Sam and Dean on the forehead.

However, after taking two steps to you, he vanished in the same manner as the Trickster did on the set of Dr. Sexy MD.

“No, no, no, no,” the host tsk’d, and reached into his jacket pocket for more cards, “Mr. Trickster does not like pretty-boy angels. Dean Winchester.”

The host moved onto the next brother and asked a question in Japanese. Would your mother and father still be alive if your brother was never born?

“Countdown!”

“What do I do, what do I do?” Dean panicked when he saw the clock count down from twenty. “I don't wanna get hit in the nuts.”

“I don't know, I—I—I—wait!” Sam gasped.

His mouth began moving, but you weren’t really focusing on his words. Your blood began to boil at the games the Trickster was playing on the three of you. He doesn’t get to come into your life and start screwing with it. Your magic worked before, and with a little more concentration, you knew you would be able to use it to get out of these binds.

“Screw you, Trickster,” you glared, using every ounce of strength you had to get out of the binds.

The countdown reached zero, but before it had a chance to buzz, Dean pressed his button. Your magic bubbled up inside of you before tipping over the edge. Dean answered the question in Japanese just as the metal covering your chest blew up. The metal pieces flew all across the stage, and everyone stared at you in shock. Stepping off your platform, you glared at the host in anger.

“Tell the Trickster he can kiss my ass.”

“Dean Winchester! The Nutty Cracker Champion!” the host changed the subject, congratulating the winning brother.

“We play the roles to survive, but I wouldn’t advise doing that again,” Sam said to you.

“Yeah, I’d like to see him stop me,” you growled just as your eyes flashed bright blue.

Wanna get tagged? Add yourself to this document! If your tag doesn’t work, find out why!

@sing4mejensen @essie1876 @gh0stgurl @redsalv20 @superrandomnatural @scarletmeii @babypink224221 @gaveherhearttotheliontattoo @akshi8278 @a--1--1--3 @kendlemariee @miraclesoflove @earthtokace @teamfreewillsstuff @fandom-princess-forevermore @kiwihoee @jennazeise @phantomalchemist @posiemax @22sarah08 @tricksterdean @andi-mendes-barnes @put-my-favorite-record-on @countrygal17a

50 notes · View notes

ayankun · 4 years ago

Text

The Asset

so I’m making my mom watch Agents of SHIELD (obviously) and today we watched eps 1x03 - 1x06. That’s The Asset, Eye Spy, Girl in the Flower Dress, and FZZT.

THEN I ACCIDENTALLY SPENT LIKE FIVE HOURS DISSECTING MY LEAST FAVORITE EPISODE YOU’RE WELCOME

First off, full spoilers ahead, of course.

1x03 is, hands down, the worst episode of the series. PERIOD. I didn’t give it my full attention when I did my rewatch, because I remembered it well enough for some reason and the guy that plays Quinn looks too much but not enough like Tahmoh Penikett to seriously irritate me. DODGED A BULLET THERE.

Giving it your full attention does not do it any favors. I was physically discomfited, squirming in my seat and dropping snide remarks every 12 seconds. It’s bad, you guys.

First off, we have this guy, who is, for now in S1, the one and only “Agent Mack.”

THE SIMILARITIES ARE UNCANNY.

Then this big rig gets dropped like 50 feet and I’m supposed to believe that this guy strapped in the back only had his glasses knocked askew?

Ok then we go see what the team is up to, and lord, three episodes has not been enough time for Chloe or Brett to Figure Their Shit Out. They’re so awkward and dumb looking.

After a passable briefing scene, where we learn that Baldy McGlasses is a valuable asset (and beloved advisor to FitzSimmons) who was being transported with maximum security before being kidnapped, we get this wildly wild “we have to put something on the screen while exposition happens” shot:

Which cuts contemporaneously to

Thanks I hate it

Where did the atmospheric smoke go? Was that highway always there? What time of day is this supposed to be where the ambient light changes so drastically over a matter of seconds? They couldn’t have kept the camera on the left side of the lane marker?

But it gets worse because Simmons has a line and the coverage for this is basically just a matched jump cut over to the other half of the line up and back again.

I can’t stand it.

So Agent Mack survived the fall and is still on the scene of the accident. My mom was pretty incredulous that he was alive, and I was thinking it was too bad that he had to sit there for hours waiting to be debriefed instead of being taken to a hospital.

THEN there’s some FitzSimmons pratfall-adjacent sci-fi nonsense that my mom really got a kick out of. But I was too distracted by Iain’s decision to play Fitz as a douchebag so far this season so I wasn’t in the right mood to be impressed.

Ok then we go back to the lab to do some science on the MacGuffin, and I will admit my favorite part so far is Skye challenging Coulson on the existence of the truth serum, and Coulson plays it so Coulson-y it’s truly chef’s kiss.

BUT THEN May comes along and drops 100 pounds of print media for Skye to review (oh yeah, there’s a key subplot about there potentially being a mole inside SHIELD, which is how McGlasses got got) and MY MOM who REGULARLY prints out things like Facebook posts to keep for posterity rightly pointed out that they have high-tech on this plane like holograms and stuff, so printing out all this correspondence in order to go through it page by page makes 0% sense.

Also we never see it again.

OKAY THEN COULSON AND WARD ACCOST A COWBOY RIDING A HORSE THROUGH THE WOODS. Said cowboy also just happens to have the incriminating bag of gold on his person, which Coulson and Ward straight up steal. That’s it. That’s the whole concept for the scene. Coulson’s just parked his car along a narrow woodland path, just waiting for a cowboy to come riding along so he can accost him/steal his gold.

Check out how whack this scene-setting shot is, too. We have Coulson on the left, facing the Cowboy on the right. At this trajectory, you can see that Lola and the horse are basically pointed perpendicular to one another.

Yet cowboy pulls to a stop without banking and addresses something dead ahead of him.

Surprise! Coulson’s over there now and Lola and the horse are facing dead on.

To really drive this home, cowboy spends the rest of the scene on the left, addressing Coulson who remains on the right.

Anyway so yeah, this scene is about roughing up an innocent civilian for intel and then stealing his legally acquired wealth.

At least they can’t take the sky from him.

The purpose of the cowboy gold is that it’s directly traceable back to Quinn Worldwide, which is hilarious considering that one assumes the under-the-table transaction used this method of currency in order to not be easily traced.

Coulson name drops Quinn like he’s some off-brand Tony Stark that we should be impressed with, and we are immediately shown that Ian Quinn’s defining characteristic is that he has an assistant to hang up his cell phone calls for him. We are not impressed with Ian Quinn.

OKAY AND THEN WE GET THIS COMPLETE MIS-READ OF SCRIPT INTENT IN THIS SHOT

why why why why why why would you ignore a character’s line like that. Why are you choosing to TELL me that a man is tied up when it would be SO EASY to SHOW me.

Especially since the narrative so far is that McGlasses has been skillfully kidnapped by a very determined adversary, and this moment, this interaction, is where that assumption is proven erroneous. Quinn’s line is a very specific cue that we are meant to SEE that he’s restrained, per our expectations following a kidnapping, specifically to introduce the twist that Quinn is just that budget Tony Stark who actually has no malicious intentions towards his former colleague.

A super close close up of McGlasses fails to achieve that moment the script was hunting for. I’m feeling that the intent was to keep the focus on this dude because of the upcoming secondary twist where he is revealed to be the SHIELD mole who masterminded his own kidnapping, but this guy is So Bad at acting I don’t think keeping him front and center is ever going to pay off.

(ok I just checked and it turns out Ian Hart is a prolific English actor. this makes me feel like I ought to chalk it up to “difficulty emoting while doing a fake American accent” but guys this performance is so bad I’m really not willing to believe there’s a good excuse)

anyway it turns out Quinn’s good guy!

.....but then he’s on the wrong side of the shot all of a sudden for no good reason and HEY maybe this set up with the wide angle on the lab and a clear look at McGlasses’ physical situation within that environment would have been an alternative for, you know, maybe some sort of establishing shot? Maybe? No?

Also here let’s take a moment to let the “plot” really sink in. These two chuckleheads are former classmates and colleagues, even though one of them looks about 20 years older than the other, and Quinn discovered that “an asset” was being moved, “deduced” that the asset was McGlasses, and wanted to bring McGlasses in on his semi-nefarious science plan. So to avoid SHIELD interference in his schemey scheme, Quinn

kidnaps McGlasses directly from SHIELD custody,

in the showiest manner, not only using but LEAVING BEHIND the exact product at the core of his scheme,

and pays a local cowboy with easily traceable gold in exchange for just some regular backhoe to bust open the big rig transporting McGlasses, instead of, I don’t know, using his massive wealth and influence and in-house R&D products to not massively incriminate himself

He couldn’t have just invited McGlasses over without calling attention to himself?

There is the way that “the asset” was being “moved” makes it sound like McGlasses was on top secret lock down with no civilian rights or means of making/receiving contact with people like old colleagues. But this is never clarified, like, the only other thing we know about him is that he evidently advises classes at the Sci-Ops branch of the SHIELD academy.

ALSO we have yet to learn that McGlasses personally staged “being moved” and leaked the hints regarding the identity of “the asset” to Quinn just so that Quinn would do all these nonsense things he done. He couldn’t have just invited himself over???

Also the conversation they have at this point is real rough, with non-sequiturs, shambling exposition, and garbage jokes that wouldn’t float even if you didn’t have a log and a ham struggling to mimic human behavior.

Also Quinn bought the PRIME MINISTER OF MALTA’S old manor specifically because it has a huge underground lab???? What about Malta do I need to know about before this makes sense?

Let’s move on. FitzSkimmons have an only-mostly painful scene of exposition in which Iain is still having a hard time with the lines/characterization the Powers That Be are forcing Fitz to be at the moment. I’m going to say it. Season 1 Fitz is Utterly Unlikable.

However, this rant has given me the opportunity to 1) stand corrected and 2) appreciate this understated joke:

She’s still on page 1 of 1 billion LOLOLOLOL

The other nice thing to come out of this scene is the casual validation that the public school system may not be right for everyone, and that being a high school drop out does not mean you can’t also be an intelligent self-starter who finds value and satisfaction in picking up a trade skill on your own. *coughs in Robbie Reyes*

UGH but then we go back to McWooden and Bargain Ham. Their story is UNINTERESTING and their performances are HARD TO STOMACH. Also it ends on a mirror of the shot we started with (so there is some evidence of intelligent design at play here after all)

But this framing makes me so uncomfortable like, I’ve shipped for less don’t put weird ideas in my head that no one wants least of all me--

Ok. We’re a third of the way through. It doesn’t stop getting worse.

So here’s the correct way to reposition your characters if you want to change up the eye lines without making it super jarring! The start of this scene is actually really textbook-nice, just look:

The pre-mission planning is already in full swing, but we follow Skye, the outsider on the outside, approaching the scene with some amount of hesitation.

She starts on the right, facing left, and crosses across the path of the camera as it follows her towards the meeting, ending up on its left while the folks currently giving lines are framed over her right shoulder. Your eye line and sense of positioning has fluidly followed hers, and this makes sense.

From this establishing shot, we do a real nice punch in on Coulson as he’s speaking, using a really action smooth cut as he does a bit of business with his hand.

We’re still coming into this scene from Skye’s POV, and this shot reflects that -- close enough to focus on the important action, but distant enough to show Skye’s current position (literally and figuratively) relative to the rest of the team.

The reverse shot is ... fine. It’s fine. I don’t like that she’s framed on the right hand side of the screen (exactly where Coulson was a split second ago), but the eye lines still match up and it does give the impression that the camera is the avatar of the audience and we just turned on the spot to look at her as she quietly invites herself to this scene and starts putting that big beautiful brain of hers to work.

Then we leave her to it! Feel the difference this cut has, emotionally, from the last time we looked over at Coulson:

We’ve left Skye’s aloof POV and now we’re all up in his biz. This framing tells us he’s no longer the subject of Skye’s contemplation and has gone back to being a character of the TV screen doing TV character things.

The remainder of this scene holds onto that “normal” shot-reverse-shot framing of the team as they give their opinions and work through the plan.

This laudable result of thoughtful camera work is almost instantly ruined by Fitz yammering on about using a brave little monkey to do their serious spy business and HOLY COW Iain does his best with the dreck he’s been given but there is no universe in which I will find this type of dialogue acceptable.

The valuable plot point here is that Skye is finding her footing on the team, doing hacky stuff on her phone and putting herself out there as -- wait for it -- an asset to Coulson. Ward responds to this with bafflement, being generally supportive of her known abilities while also being doubtful that she’s a complete package, and turning to Coulson for advice on how to round her training out.

This results in yet another JARRING AF transition (read: there’s no transition) from Ward and Coulson’s heart to heart to Ward pointing a gun at Skye at some indeterminate amount of time later.

Look we haven’t even had time to ingest Coulson’s line yet and BAM we’re here.

This scene’s fine. It’s doing double duty and that’s admirable. Triple duty, even. Many duties are being performed in this scene. We have

fledgling Skyeward

the introduction to the gun-manipulation maneuver Skye will use later on

Skye’s irreverence butting heads with Ward’s need for brass-tacks

at least one solid joke at Ward’s expense

Ward valuing Skye’s er, assets -- I’M TALKING COMPUTER SCIENCE YA PERVS

a very competent conversational segue into Ward’s Whole Deal, wherein we are introduced to the concept of his childhood trauma (lolol and man does Brett just fail to deliver these lines in any sort of a way that inspires human empathy wowowo he’s so bad in this one)

a callback to an earlier conversation as well as a set up for a future joke

SKYE STEALING WARD’S GUN FROM OUT OF HIS PANTS A++++

Now we go into pre-heist plan-walkthrough mode, and it’s so boring and lifeless that Skye’s actual summary line is “Plan, green, drop, walk ... pie.” To be honest, she got more out of the discussion than I did.

May has an interesting character moment where she’s complaining about going into the field and then immediately regrets it because she was never going to be sent in, but that means Coulson’s going in instead and that worries her. I keep thinking back on this season as being unfocused, but that’s because I forget that the sales pitch for this entire shebang is “we killed Coulson in Avengers but now here’s a show where he’s the lead because everyone loves him so much” and the subsequent focus of the inaugural season is everyone’s burning curiosity to find out how they undid his murder.

Aside from the sci-fi/Marvel/generic spy show gimmick of the week, these early episodes never fail to prioritize the interpersonal dynamic of their team while simultaneously teasing out the Coulson mystery with these nice little regular hits.

I let it keep playing while I was typing, and we flew over some whatever business where Skye goes to Quinn’s party, and Coulson and Ward land their little raft on the beach, and the other kids are watching from the Bus and FITZ IS AGAIN TERRIBLE

I feel you, Jemma.

(Also, am I wrong in hearing him give in and say “boobs?” The Netflix subtitles have it as “oops” but that can’t be it.)

Anyway so Skye’s busy using her Assets to win Quinn over, and Chloe’s shining moment in this scene is the delivery of the drivers test joke.

Back to stuff that’s gratingly awful, we’re supposedly on Malta, right? And you know how Hollywood generally and the spy show/movie genre specifically tries to stretch their location budgets by putting on color filters to “evoke” distant lands?

We go from the above, washed out and unfiltered, to this sepia-toned nonsense:

This is supposed to be taking place basically right outside. Why not just keep the filter on for the interior scenes, too? There’s plenty of searing Maltese light coming in through that wall of windows.

(They must have had a hard time on location for the manor shoots, though, it’s just as washed out in the earlier scene set outdoors that I didn’t show you because it was boring but I’m showing you know because it’s not even the same color filter as the Coulson/Ward shots

)

((Also, yeah, I get it. You can’t fly to Malta for a day for a television shoot. But how many people are you fooling when you put the Santa Monica mountains in the backdrop of every exterior shot?))

So we go back and forth between these high-grain-low-saturation beachfront stuff to these holy angelic light of judgement shots and I hate it.

Like, why choose to shoot against this nuclear-blast light? It’s not doing your actors any favors.

Especially when you’re ALSO choosing to depict that same “natural” light with a whole different palette and then continue to give us the opportunity to compare and contrast.

Also I hate the Ward/Coulson business because it’s just generic spy stuff where some guards come out of nowhere and I guess maybe it’s implied that their cute boat was found but it could just as easily be that it was explicitly stated that there were guard patrols and I forgot.

But then they fight and defeat the guards in literally under 8 seconds and that’s that. End of stakes.

The character moment that validates this trivial obstacle is that Coulson tries to do something with a gun and finds that May’s concerns weren’t entirely unfounded. He’s a little rusty.

Also Ward’s response to this is to chuck the gun into the laser wall and I don’t know why. In any case, the energy from both of them in this screenshot really resonates with me.

So then Skye Does The Thing with her Assets and if you’ll let me be picky again about plot holes, why does the wireless access MacGuffin need to have an interface for Skye to check that the connection is possible, and THEN have that connection activated by LITERALLY dropping it on the table. They couldn’t have set it to auto-scan and then tell her through her earpiece to stay still when the connection activated itself?

Whatever. Success! Immediately followed by ... INEXPLICABLE OBSTACLE

WHO, praytell, is on the other end of that walkie talkie? Because the downed man is the man you see. Typically, it would be like a survivor of the scuffle who radios for backup, but here we see the scene of the scuffle and some unknown unseen ADDITIONAL MAN who I guess is just spying on them from somewhere and radioing still more unseen men?

Instantly hearing this news, the Unseen begin a sniper assault on Coulson and Ward, and we get to see their bullets getting evaporated by the laser wall. Remember those guards walking along the sea cliff towards the sign? There’s no place for the snipers to be sniping from, unless they have some kind of invisible floating island.

This scenario is made even more hilarious once Fitz brings down the laser wall and Coulson and Ward dive through like they think they some kind of James Bonds and then the wall goes back up and the snipers keep sniping.

Why aren’t the guards on the inside of the perimeter of the compound which they guard? This laser fence is now protecting the intruders. Minor design flaw.

Anywho, Quinn is still talking about how he doesn’t trust SHIELD and SHIELD doesn’t trust him, so it’s like, what are we supposed to believe about this guy anyway? Why did Coulson introduce him as bargain bin Tony Stark if he was known to be bargain bin Justin Hammer all along?

So now that snipers have failed to snipe the intruders, some Seen Guards come to alert Quinn so he breaks the wireless MacGuffin and turns a gun on Skye. (Just sayin, if it had been some secret device that was still in her bag, she’d have plausible deniability)

I think, at this point, I have two conclusions

Team Coulson has no extraction plan for getting McGlasses out of the compound since they don’t have a Plan B to get back through the laser wall, no firepower to use on the Seen Guards, and no available land-or-sea getaway vehicles.

There was never any sort of extraction plan for Skye even if the laser wall and the Seen Guards were not an obstacle.

Here’s where it gets the messiest.

Coulson busts in on McGlasses but is told no rescue is required.

AT THAT SAME TIME

May has just popped open a tablet over in some room by herself, evidently disinterested in whatever FitzSimmons is probably doing right now in light of this drastic turn of events, and she’s randomly googling up on the SHIELD leak mentioned earlier, only to discover that it was MCGLASSES ALL ALONG.

Keeps a cool head, our May.

Yeah, we know, we .. he ... he just said ... you know what? We didn’t actually care, though? Who the mole was or that it was McGlasses. We certainly didn’t spend the last half hour watching May diligently tracking down some breadcrumb trail of clues to get to this dramatic reveal, only to find out a second too late. We didn’t even see her checking up that Skye had/didn’t have this angle covered.

Did she print out the contents of the four-foot binder as some sort of eco-terrorist cruel joke since she was just planning on spending three seconds on the computer to complete the same task?

Ok so Coulson misinterprets McGlasses’ decline of his rescue operation as collaboration with Quinn until May clues him in. We then go to commercials and come back and have to go over all this info again just in case we didn’t follow that super exciting double-cross the first two times.

At which point we figure out where all the pre-production time was sunk -- somebody had to spend a lot of effort envisioning how they were going to do the wacky-gravity scenes. My feeling is that fun challenges like that are what stand out to people who are working on a thing, and sometimes the prestige of “pulling that off” can overshadow the need to pay attention to other, less exciting aspects of filmmaking, like making sure your eye lines stay coherent in a scene or that your color gradings aren’t super distracting.

Anyway I do really like the load-bearing scene where Quinn threatens Skye at gunpoint because it is one of those many examples this season has of laying ground work for and paying off character moments.

Skye’s flip and smart and completely not ready for this level of field action, but she remembers her training, remembers how earnestly Ward wanted her to be ready for this defining moment, and gets the gun!

That “nOPE” when she can’t shoot the man is also Classic Skye and we Love Her For It.

Anyway oh yeah, McGlasses reveals his master plan to get kidnapped, so that he could get on site and ruin Quinn’s everything because he’s a Bad Justin Hammer. His performance is SO PAINFUL and his reasoning has yet to make sense. Coulson doesn’t ask “why did you have to be kidnapped to get in, though” but he does ask “why didn’t you try reasoning with him” as if that were the question we needed an answer to.

Also it turns out FitzSimmons has been pretty chill this whole time since their agents lost their extraction plan (well, they’re smart, they probably knew all along that there wasn’t one) and are just puttering around the lab working on what looks like their regular day-to-day science, talking excitedly about gravitonium rather than panicking that the whole plan’s gone to shit.

Unflappable.

COME ON PEOPLE the mission wasn’t “throw McGlasses into the gravitonium and do high-fives” it was “rescue McGlasses from Quinn’s grasp.” From the way that this plays out, there is 0% indication that their initial plan was ever expected to succeed.

WE DON’T EVEN SEE HOW THEY GET OUT OF THERE, WE JUST LOOK AT SOME MCGRAVITONIUM AND THEN SEE COULSON ON THE BUS INSTRUCTING THE CONTAINMENT FACILITY ON HOW IT SHOULD BE HANDLED.

Oh well, the gratuitous plot is disposed with after this point.

In the denouement, we get to see May and Coulson interact over his experience in the field and her experience being stuck watching him in the field. She’s finally ready for combat, but strictly for his sake. And he’s at the point where he’s ready and willing to take her up on her offer instead of trying to prove that he’s everything he was before he died.

Following that, we get some Skyeward with some really gross romantic comedy type music. Bear, you’re better than this!! But the scene is nice, Chloe really brings it (almost brings too much) and Brett is there to support her.

It’s a really on-the-nose admission from Skye that her allegiances lie with SHIELD, but its an organic continuation of that bit from earlier where she wandered all up on their meeting, the outsider, and pushed her way into the heart of it. She wants this. She wants to feel like she belongs here. And now she’s been trusted with some opportunities and tools to prove it!

This early in the season, we’re still doubtful that she’s on the up and up, what with that Rising Tide plot thread hanging so loose and tantalizing over our heads. Due to the potential of a storyline revolving around her betrayal, there are a lot of fun little moments in the next few episodes where Ward gets to say some betrayal-related stuff that is absolutely excellent in retrospect.

I was watching some old interviews and while it is very clear Brett did not know the fate of his character in advance, it’s also distinctly implied that no one knew and the arc of the season may have developed episode by episode. That’s so nutty to me, considering how strong the structure of the season is, how there are so many satisfying call backs and payoffs later on.

I think I’m more likely to applaud a well-plotted narrative, in which foreshadowing and a deliberate order of events slowly unravel to great effect. But I can definitely appreciate the ability to force the illusion of the same by being crafty and attentive and not letting any usable threads go to waste.

Ultimately, whether by design or by providence, Season 1 is successful in pulling it all together. It’s just that episodes like this one don’t really inspire you to believe that that outcome is likely, or even possible. Episodes like this one cause a person to give up watching halfway through the season and walk away for years until cajoled into giving it another shot because “it got good somehow.”

But what this season has, every episode, especially ones like this one, is a pronounced, chaotic, relentless prioritization of Character over Plot. What is this show about? Who cares. That’s the wrong question. This show could have been about anything, and these early episodes are all too aware of it. What kind of story can you tell when every option is on the table and no one knows what to expect from you?

You find that story, step by step, episode by episode, through the eyes of your characters. The forward motion of the story isn’t “how did Coulson come back to life” but “what is life going to be like for him now?” It’s not “will Skye betray the team” it’s “what does she want and what is she willing to do to get it?”

Posing and answering these character questions generates the Story of Agents of SHIELD. Plots be damned. Remember how at one point in this episode, our heroes robbed a cowboy at gunpoint? Yeah. Me either.

And I can’t agree more with this approach. In my experience, PWP works best when its about the characters.

#agents of shield #aos

3 notes · View notes

eisforeidolon · 5 years ago

Text

Episode: Ouroboros

Ouroboros is a fitting title for this episode. Not because it has a snake-creature. Not because of the symbolism of unity or the cycle of life and death. No, in the sense that it's such a clear, contained example of how Dabbernatural is eating itself to death through the writers' absolute incompetence at telling a compelling, coherent story. Or perhaps it’s in the sense of being a never-ending circle of making the same exact mistake over again: Supernatural is the Winchesters' story; making them incompetent fools to highlight your nonentity OCs is always going to read badly to a large portion of your audience.

It starts out okay. The previously seems really overlong here and I do have to wonder if they think our memories of what’s previously happened are as shit as theirs. The episode itself, however, begins well enough with a mysterious cold open involving a MotW who has really creepy new powers. Okay, cool!

Except instead of actually being hunted by Sam and Dean, literally everybody is along on this fucking hunt. Remember when Sam and Dean were allowed to be competent enough to track and kill a MotW themselves, because the writers knew they were meant to be clever, resourceful, and good at their job? Best hunters in the world? LOL.

Now not only do they have to drag Castiel and Jack along, fucking Rowena has joined the Hunters R Us club. Like, I love Rowena, but COME ON. Which doesn't even address how later in the episode, Sam can't even do his own fucking research – they call it out to fucking Maggie! Then Sam & Dean and Jack & Cas ALL get their asses absolutely handed to them … by some random one off MotW that we're not told any reason to expect has major fighting skills. Unlike all the things they've beaten which literally did. COME THE FUCK ON.

What do the Winchesters actually get to accomplish in this episode of their own goddamn show other than exist onscreen to con us into watching the Dabbernatural Gary Stu drama hour?

Blah blah blah, interlude of characters reminding us about Dean having Michael in his head interspersed with oh no, poor sad beige woobie still has magic consumption. [Insert totes concerned hand-wringing here, or don't, because LOL, so over it.] The most charitable thing I can say about it is that presumably Dean talks to Castiel about the box plan again here because Castiel will actually go through with it, unlike Sam.

Also, I'm not a vet or any kind of medical professional, but when they needed to get some antivenom, my immediate thought was, “Wait, what kind?” I figured maybe I was wrong because surely the writers would do the bare minimum of research, but apparently not, as Wikipedia does seem to corroborate that “the specific antivenom needed depends on the species involved”. Pretty sure that their local vet's office doesn't have Gorgon antivenom. Even if Rowena’s magic is involved, if she can just make it magically the right thing, why on Earth would they actually even need any kind of antivenom in the first place? Or not at least talk about getting a specific kind so it doesn’t look like they’ve got no idea what they’re on about? As such, I can’t see this as anything but the writers yet again not bothering to put in the basic minimum of care to explain how this thing that obviously shouldn't work will now work for reasons.

I did genuinely like Sam and Rowena's playacting in the vet office, that was great! Even Jack getting turned into a dog to lift the non-magical magical cure-all antivenom was fun. As well as Rowena chiding Sam about how what they're doing with Jack is doing exactly what she would – as she was until recently a villain. (Although again, putting aside why, if Rowena is their fucking hunting buddy buddy now, why exactly they aren't telling her what's up with Jack. Seriously, why?) Unsurprising that what I think actually works briefly in this episode is the character interactions powered by the skill and charisma of the actors, not anything the writers are doing.

Which brings us back to what Dabb didn't learn from Wayward: making the Winchesters (and Cas) entirely incompetent and helpless to facilitate ludicrously endowed super!kids like Jack stealing the show is insulting enough when it happens with the Gorgon, but it is straight out infuriating as the end of the whole AU!Michael arc. Seriously, I do not get this fetish of his.

Before getting more into that, as an aside, does it matter if Cas can breathe? I don't mean that in a “Die, Cas, die!” way, either. I mean, he's literally an angel in a human suit, even if he's paralyzed by the thing's venom (which I'll accept that the creature can't see him but its venom still works on him because the body is more or less human {sort of, considering it's been turned into a specially constructed vessel made to break all the angel rules for reasons [to not have a supposed good guy holding a human soul permanently hostage and that whole dumb special-vessels-lol-what Lucifer interlude]}) does it really matter? Especially in that moment? Like, if he's angel enough that the monster can't see him, he should be angel enough that mundane damage to a vessel should be nothing more than an inconvenience. Castiel is exactly as human or angels as the writers need in at any given second.

Speaking of which - Jack freaking out over it is another instance where he's dumb as an infant or competent as a trained adult from second-to-fucking-second to facilitate what passes for a plot, because Dabb & Co. apparently got bored and decided they'd rather go back to another round of What's Wrong With Jack, You Should Totally Care! rather than actually write a coherent story around AU!Michael. This infant/adult thing comes up again during the conversation with Cas about humans ultimately dying where Jack suddenly doesn't get death. Even though we had that whole. long. thing. about Jack wanting to know about his mother and talking to that therapist and her parents about her and seeing her in heaven? Yet now we're back to LOL what is death?? Maybe angels or part angels are literally incapable of learning anything. It would explain a lot about both Jack and Cas in recent years.

Also, I take back the points I mentally rewarded at the beginning of the episode for actually involving a new monster taken from mythology. It was at this point when we see that Jack kept the snake that I recalled spoilers about what happens to it and I became suspicious that literally the only reason they went to the trouble was to give Jack a pet that wasn’t cuddly enough that the audience would turn on him if he does something to it. I don’t mind planning ahead, but when the monster hunt was such a manufactured clusterfuck of stupid and the ultimate purpose of it seems this transparent? Sigh.

Oh noes, what if Dean doesn't wake up!? Well, for one thing, he'd be spared continuing to exist in this shitty parody of the SPN universe, so, I'm kinda thinking that might actually be a win...

Speaking of the writers just railroading the characters in random directions to get wherever they want to go regardless? Cas's ability to heal is useless again, because of course it is. Somehow a physical head wound is complicated by archangel possession, because sure, why the fuck not? Remember when angel powers weren't a fucking joke, as useful as a knife without the blade? Honestly, I might even accept that another angel was unable to do anything to a human who was playing vessel to a different angel if this wasn’t just one more in a string of so. fucking. many. instances of angel powers transparently and ludicrously existing or not exactly where the “plot” decrees they do.

Likewise, Rowena, the totally most powerful witch ever? Shrug, she can do nothing. Except, it turns out, get handed an idiot ball to make this railroading keep going on the same dumb track. Welcome to the club, Rowena, enjoy being half as competent as ever you were (or less!) now that you're an ally. Again, vessel rules? What vessel rules? Any old archangel can just pop into any old person they want to, don'tchaknow? Not to mention how goddamn fucking stupid Rowena would have to be to let Michael in so he “doesn't harm anyone in the bunker”. Are you fucking kidding me? The only thing letting him possess her is going to do is give him immediate faster access inside the bunker without any chance to prepare for his attempting to kill all the people he definitely intends to kill. Not to mention that they turned Rowena from completely self-involved to brainlessly selfless in this episode, suddenly, because because as if nothing exists in-between. This literally happens because the show decided it was bored and uninterested in Michael after half-heartedly playing with the character for half a season so it chopped everyone's brains out, including their own, to make him go away. I just cannot see any other explanation for Rowena both being that dead stupid and conveniently being able to house Michael.

The only worthwhile thing in this episode is the good riddance to bad rubbish of all the AU!hunters in the bunker finally getting wiped out. That the show actually expects me to be in any way upset by a bunch of people who don't even fucking have names and just keep milling around in the background taking up space biting it? Aside, from, of course, another Dabbernatural-style cardboard sue like Maggie who went from not even knowing how to hold a weapon to being the goddamn leader in a handful of episodes? Presumably because the Winchesters are? Yeah, no.

Even though when he actually had his powers it wasn't a foregone conclusion that Jack could effectively take on Michael? Now that Jack doesn't have his powers, suddenly he can burn up his soul and just completely overpower Michael with the total McGuffiness of his existence for reasons. If doing that is so powerful, and we’re stuck with this retcon about divisible souls, why can’t any old angel just burn out their vessel’s soul to get super-powered magic? If the powers that any individual or item has have no logical consistency, and every new idea that pops into what passes for the writer’s brains is introduced as TEH MOST POWERFUL EVAH? No conflict over supernatural powers in this show can have any legitimate narrative weight. If the audience can’t adequately gauge the threat, it all becomes a muddle of random events that happen rather than a coherent story we can actually invest in caring about.

Look, I’m not saying that no Supernatural plot before the current era was resolved by McGuffins or random powers. The issue here is the general issue with their use in Dabb’s era. Jack doesn't have to work for it. He doesn't have to figure out some complicated way to boost his powers to make it work against the most powerful archangel. There’s no buildup for us to invest in. There’s no sense of the characters actually working at an obstacle and earning a victory. He's just suddenly handed this level of power to make it happen right now, at this arbitrary moment, because the show decided it was done with this arc now and could not be fucking bothered. It makes no sense with anything we’ve been shown about the characters' powers, it makes no sense for the story actually feeling like the characters are meaningfully accomplishing anything by their legitimate merits. It sure as fuck makes no sense for the lore. That whole thing with Billy's books they've been harping on and on about as TEH ONLY WAY? Which Rowena even calls back to this episode? Nah, nevermind, tossed out the fucking window without even a goddamn handwave.

Seriously, the Michael arc is not resolved here because the Winchesters outsmarted destiny again, or that they found some way to cleverly subvert it. It’s not even that they worked to find a solution and finally the work paid off by them coming across something suspiciously perfect. It’s that they waffled around for several episodes being dramatic and making literally no progress until Dabb & Co. arbitrarily and literally handed the power to end the arc to their pet joke fake!Winchester “son” because they did not care. And yet they expect us in the audience to continue to care, even though I can not think of any other development in any other professional media I have ever consumed that was as unsatisfying and honestly infuriating as this pile of haphazard bullshit.

#negativity for ts #anti dabb #writer incompetence #what the fuck even was this episode?#long post #spn 14x14 #spn season 14

13 notes · View notes

stark-web-warriors · 6 years ago

Text

Ditching the Welcome Wagon t.h.

Pairing: Tom Holland x Reader

Word Count: 1,907

So… I had a weird dream last night about being a student escort for Tom Holland on my University campus, and he was bored out of his mind and wasn’t having any of it, so we decided to ditch the welcome wagon and get into a bunch of mischief, so I decided to turn it into a little imagine for y’all.

When you heard that Tom Holland would be visiting your university, out of all the colleges in the US, you were more than surprised. You chose your college because you liked it, but it was strange to think Marvel thought it was Peter Parker’s style enough to send the actor there for research. Then you got the email that asked you to be his student escort, and you flipped. The school had decided with the volunteer work and academic standing you’d upheld you’d be a good fit to show him the school. Sure, you did it for incoming freshmen all the time, but Tom Holland was a whole different story.

You were barely able to introduce yourself as his escort in the midst of the welcome wagon the University put on. Even the University president was there, and you’d never seen him attend anything. He was just this nebulous, Big-Brother type figure. You followed along the President and several other high standing figures from the University as they gave Tom and his security detail the official tour of the University. You even noticed the President flipping through index cards he’d hidden up his sleeve as he explained the history of the old buildings and boasted statistics.

You had thought it would be exciting to escort Tom Holland on campus, but a week of this seemed like it might just be not worth it. It was boring when they forced you to do it as a freshman and it was boring now. Tom didn’t even speak, just kind of stood there looking like he had a frog in his mouth, nodding along. No one even asked the guy a question, just kept shoving information at him. You would have liked to mention this suggestion, but you knew from the school paper that the President wasn’t all that responsive to feedback.

The next day it was the same story. They introduced him to the football coach, which was an awkward encounter to see. Tom shook the man’s hand but didn’t really have much interest in what he had to say. It was American football, and no one seemed to care that the actor didn’t show much interest in the sport. The empty stadium made you uncomfortable. you didn’t like it that much when it was full, but seeing thousands of empty plastic seats in the obtrusive stadium lighting was just depressing.

What was more depressing was the football game they forced you to go to. The team had never been good, and they, of course, lost horribly. No entertaining question of whether or not they’d pull through, just a bunch of sad sacks getting pummeled on the field. It was embarrassing that this cookie-cutter crap was what they were showing Tom, and even more, it had been the most boring two days of your life.

The third day you’d been picking up some groceries for a reception-type meeting with some of the high-level professors. You showed up at the event venue on campus with a plastic bag full of fruit trays and cheese in your right hand. As you were setting the pieces on the long table, the President showed up in a frenzy. He was ranting to one of the bodyguards that had been with Tom the whole week. You thought it was strange but finished setting the table as you were told to do.

As the room started to fill in with professors, you began to feel rather claustrophobic. It was very full and very loud. Seeing as the guest of the hour was not there, you decided it wouldn’t hurt to slip away for a moment. You took the plastic bag from the groceries and popped a small snack from the brunch table into it. Sneaking down the hall, you decided to mindlessly explore parts of the building you’d never been to before. You’d always wondered what the upper levels looked like anyway.

As you wandered the vacant halls you peered at door labels. It was mostly offices of high ranking individuals, but some conference rooms here or there. You turned a corner and saw a dead end at the farthest reach of the hallway. Curious you made your way to the final door, a door to a conference room, and decided to peek your way in. Upon opening the door, you observed the far wall, made up of mostly windows. The room was completely lit by the mid-morning sunlight and through the high-level windows you could see the beautiful city-scape. You walked into the room, and so close to the window that your nose almost touched it to be fully consumed by the gorgeous skyline. You were only brought back to reality by a sudden touch on your shoulder. Startled, you jumped back and swung the grocery bag at the source, only to be met with a hysterical Tom Holland.

The boy was laughing so hard he had to hold his knees to stay upright. “What were you planning to with a grocery bag?” The actor cried in a high pitched voice through his intense laughing fit.

“I don’t know!” you defended. “You snuck up on me, I just swung what I had!” The boy continued to laugh, and you began to find it rather peculiar how humored he was at such a small thing. If he was so easily entertained, then the University staff were screwing up more than you’d even thought. Even as his student escort, this was the first time you got to actually talk to the guy.

As his giggling died down, Tom sighed, “Oh, that is the most interesting thing that has happened since I got here, let me tell you…” You knew he wasn’t exaggerating. He’d not shown more than one expression the whole time he’d been on campus. Just constant boredom. “Tell me, what do you do around here for fun?” Tom asked before clarifying, “Honestly. None of this establishment shit.”

You smiled a bit as your instinctive answer came to mind, mostly because it was so dumb and random. “I like to stand on the bridge and throw things into the river,” you offered.

“What?” the actor asked as he scrunched up his nose is surprised confusion. You found this very adorable.

“Not like trash or anything!” you explained hurriedly. “Snow. Like snowballs and such. I just like seeing how far I can throw them, and watching the water splash up and make a big rainbow.”

“It’s Spring. There’s no snow,” the actor pointed out disappointedly.

“There’s also no way we’re doing that. You’re supposed to be downstairs right now,” you mentioned, trying to stay in good standing with the heads of the University.

“Yeah, there’s no way I’m going to that,” Tom mentioned casually as he began to wander aimlessly around the room. “Think of it this way, if I’m meant to play a college-aged Peter Parker, I need to see what the students actually do, not what the university wants you to think is the typical college lifestyle.” He had a point. None of this was helping him with character research the way he’d intended it. After hearing no response from you he pushed in an almost child-like way, “Come on, please ditch with me?”

“There’s a security detail waiting for you downstairs that I think might care about you being MIA,” you tried one last time.

“I got away from them this morning, didn’t I?” Tom incentivized.

“You do realize they’re not your babysitters, right? You’re a celebrity and I’m pretty sure they’re just making sure you don’t get stampeded by adoring women,” you argued half-heartedly. You knew, in addition to keeping him safe, they were still a part of the system keeping him from having any fun. You felt like such a pushover as you sighed and admitted, “We can probably sneak past them if we use the tunnels.”

“And if they do find us, you can always hit them with your grocery bag,” Tom teased before sprinting toward the door.

“You’re still not over that, huh?” You sighed before chasing after him.

There may not have been snow, but after the two of you came up from the tunnels, halfway across campus from where you were, you stopped at a vending machine and picked up a bottle of Dasani. So far, if Tom had been noticed, no one had approached him. After all, he did look like just another college student. The two of you excitedly sprinted to the middle of the bridge and looked over the railing at the ferocious river hundreds of feet below.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” you asked seriously, looking straight into the eyes of the guy you’d only just met.

“Only if you do it with me,” he acted back as though he were diffusing a bomb in an action movie. Dramatically, Tom de-capped the bottle of Dasani and held it out to you. You playfully placed your hand below his on the bottle like it were life or death. “On the count of three,” he commanded before taking a deep breath. “One… Two… THREE!” The two of you quickly tipped up the bottle and watched the snake of water taking forever to fall apart in the air before limply falling into the flow of the river. “We did it!” Tom shouted, holding up a hand for a high five.

The two of you whooped and cheered while jumping around, attracting the attention of students passing by, who were probably just trying to get to class. It was so dumb, but it was fun to make a big deal out of it. For the first time in days, you were really enjoying yourself. Suddenly Tom stopped in his tracks and yelled, “Shit!” You looked over your shoulder to see one of his security escorts at the end of the bridge, but before you could say anything more, tom had grabbed your hand and pulled you along. The two of you sprinted across the bridge to the opposite bank like kids running away from their parents. It was ridiculous and yet exhilarating.

You saw a familiar building nearby that you knew to be confusing, and thankfully, you and Tom had a head-start. “In here!” You shouted, hurrying in the door. You let go of his hand and hit the elevator button to open the doors, then pressed the button for the highest floor before running out and whisking away Tom’s hand to drag him down the stairs. The sound of you two stomping was deafeningly loud, but you hoped you could reach the bottom before the guy would even enter the building. You got to the basement and ran through the tunnels you knew would be there, only stopping when you’d reached an empty study room off a couple tangental, underground halls. The two of you fell with hands to your knees as you panted.

“What was that,” the boy asked between heaving breaths, “with the elevator?”

“Oh, that building. It’s one building, but the classrooms are all separated, so you can only get from one place to another through the basement,” you explained. “So I figured if he thought we went up, then he’d hit a dead end up there.”

“Brilliant,” Tom breathed. “What next?” You smiled at the endless possibilities of what adventurous mischief the two of you would get up to this week.

#tom holland x reader #tom holland #tom holland headcanon #tom holland fanfiction #spiderman headcanon #spiderman imagine #peter parker headcanon #peter parker imagine #peter parker oneshot #tom holland oneshot #spiderman oneshot #peter parker x reader #peter parker one shot #peter parker one-shot #tom holland one shot #tom holland one-shot #imagine

72 notes · View notes

lunawings · 5 years ago

Text

King of Prism SSS episode 8 commentary (Yu)

So, in my opinion, I think the episodes we’ve seen up until now could be more or less enjoyed to the fullest by newcomers and/or people who haven’t seen Rainbow Live.

But from here on out, there is a notable change. And I really mean from here on out: Episodes 8 - 12 basically require having seen Pretty Rhythm Rainbow Live to be fully understood I think.

So if you watched this episode and thought wait.... why did they just skip over Yu’s backstory like that!?!

Two words: Rainbow Live.

Anyway let’s get started.

I’m surprised the subber knew the correct spelling to ViviC Heart Session. That takes.... research!? ....Wait, it’s in the credits. Still, that’s some non-linear translation.

Also I kinda wonder when and where ViviC Heart Session came from in canon. Yeah it’s the Pride the Hero ending, but there is a whole story on how they made and performed Dramatic Love for the Christmas concert, but nothing on ViviC Heart Session as far as I know.

If you’re wondering why they’re all acting so weird, there have already been not one but TWO different story arcs in the Prism Rush Main Story about Yu ambitiously deciding to write songs and biting off way more than he could chew ahah....

They know.

So this kinda dates this episode? Sort of? Despite the way it seems in episode 1, clearly the Prism One doesn’t take place right after it was announced ahah.

The way Yu says this line makes me think it’s probably been a month or so already.

So maybe it was announced in July-August (episode 1 takes place in “summer”), and happened in September-October, something like that?

So like literally JUST as I was thinking to myself “wow the subs have really gotten better in this episode....” THIS had to happen... How dare you translate Taiga’s “IT’S A FESTIVAL” as “party time”................

Oh well. Honestly though, aside from this, this episode has the best subs so far, BY FAR.

Been wondering for months how they would sub MUGEN HABUUUUUU because I had no idea how I would do it myself ahah.

Although they don’t state it explicitly, it’s pretty clear this episode takes place in Okinawa. Among many other things, I think it’s the only place in Japan with habu.

I may or may not have thought way too hard for too long about how Taiga and Kakeru ended up in this boat together.

I mean I would like to think Taiga chose Kakeru as his partner in good faith that they could work well together.

BUT KAKERU ISN’T EVEN ROWING COME ON

HE’S JUST ENJOYING THE VIEW

THE VIEW BEING TAIGA IF YOU DIDN’T GET MY DRIFT

I suppose it could have been random pairs, but Shin and Leo also ended up together and that seems not random ahah. Speaking of which...

When I saw this episode for the first time I saw it as a 3-pack with Leo’s episode coming right before (the theatrical Part 3). So I had just gone though Leo’s episode for the first time and all the baggage that came with it less than 10 minutes earlier.

And needless to say I was VERY MUCH NOT OVER IT AND EXPERIENCING VERY HIGH EMOTIONS ABOUT LEO

So during this scene I was like like

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

MY SONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

SAVE HIMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

It actually took me until at least my second or third viewing to catch Kakeru trying to take a selfie with Taiga in the background there and I lost my shit.

BTW I just want to mention that ViviC Heart Session was made for this episode. Well yes I know it wasn’t literally made for this episode, but it’s always sounded tropical for me and it just could not be more perfect.

I have been wondering for months what Taiga says here and I’m still not sure. (Not that I think this subtitle is wrong, but I mean I can’t make out the Japanese he uses. I just know folks in the theater laugh about it. Or they could just be laughing at Taiga’s method of escaping from Yu.)

Me at cheering: “IT’S SHIN. PICK UP.”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

I wonder if like, they all got together and tried to figure out who Yu was least likely to hang up on.

But seriously though

WHO COULD EVER HANG UP ON SHIN

YOU MONSTER

I said once that Jin was the best voicework in SSS, but Taiga man I dunno. Taiga is up there too. This scream is just so..... BRILLIANT..........

My reaction here changes from “OMG TAIGA ARE YOU OK” to just laughing hysterically. Sometimes in the same showing. Taiga I’m sorry.

My new desktop background.

Seriously this episode is just SO BEAUTIFUL.

Such a simple plot, but such amazing atmosphere and visuals that really take it SO MUCH FURTHER.

If I stopped to take screenshots of everything I thought looked amazing this post would never end. So just know I’m definitely thinking it. Just goddamn.

For a long time I wondered how and why Minato found about about this.

But then I realized it actually makes a lot of sense.

So remember in my last post when I talked about my theory that Minato and Yu probably joined Edel Rose at the same time? Well, when Yu met Leo, basically the first thing he did was brag about knowing Over the Rainbow. So he probably did the same to Minato, and/or Minato just noticed him being way too friendly with Kouji.

Considering Minato entered Edel Rose FOR KOUJI there is no way he wouldn’t notice that and wonder about it.

So one day he probably worked up the courage to ask Kouji about it, and.....

Oh boy.

BTW if you’re thinking huh? Yu’s family was separated? What?

See: The Ito/Kouji plot in Rainbow Live. (And bring tissues.)

Just the comparison of how fast he picks up here. Even though the first thing he does is complain to her it’s like.... HALF A SECOND from when he sees it’s Ito to when he answers omg.....

So I kinda questioned this subtitle here. Because the literal Japanese is just him saying “IT’S LATE!”

So I always thought he meant it like “Do you know what time it is!?”

But then I thought about it some more. And I remembered the Rose Party 2018 event, where the voice actors played a game where they all decided new aspects of the characters. And one of the things that were tasked with deciding (at the afternoon performance I believe) was what Yu does every night before he goes to bed. And one of the answers was “discusses life problems with Ito”.

So, maybe Ito does call Yu every night so he had been waiting on a call from her for a while....

And if so, in that context this subtitle is spot on.

You win, Crunchyroll.

Cheering audience: “THAT WAY”

Yu was so impressive Kakeru stopped taking pictures of Taiga for a full minute.

DID I MENTION THIS EPISODE IS FUCKING BEAUTIFUL

But so like. As soon as they started heading up the hill. Like practically from when they called his name, I was like..... Yu’s gonna cry.

So then it was many long, long seconds of anticipation.....

until finally this.....

And I was not disappointed.

Of all the beautiful things in this episode, I think the most beautiful thing may just be Yu’s crying animation here. He’s such a beautiful crier.

I love this scene so much. It brings me so much joy. Because he’s not crying because he’s hurt or sad.

He’s crying because he realized he has friends.

HE’S CRYING BECAUSE HE HAS FRIENDS

YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

You know, I didn’t even realize Taiga was hiding behind Kakeru until someone in the stream pointed it out.

Am I an asshole because this is Yu’s episode but most of my favorite moments involve Taiga/Kakeru.

HUG HIM

HUG HIMMMMMM

OH MY GAWD I have NEVER so desperately wanted to reach through the screen and hug an anime character

Also Leo always cries when anyone else is crying.

I spent so much time looking at Kakeru and Minato that I didn’t even realize Taiga too..... They’re BOTH sleeping on top of Minato omg.....

Also I can’t help but laugh that Leo is the big spoon on Shin. But it doesn’t surprise me. If you read Prism Rush stuff, Leo aggressively cuddling Shin in his sleep is nothing new.

Damn but. Okay so like, another way in which seeing this episode right after Leo’s influenced me is, during Leo’s episode I kept thinking about what PriPara coords were closest to the outfits that the boys were wearing and how I was totally gonna record arcade videos with them.

And then we get to this and I was like OH MAN I can’t wait until that outfit comes out so I can put it on my character.... then I was like.... WAIT.....

And I realized this is basically the only idol anime I watch currently where I can’t have the clothes and I was like......... ahhhh.... not fair..........

Seriously though it is kind of odd. For me anyhow.

But also because they don’t have to worry about an arcade game for King of Prism, they have a lot more freedom. Like in a show like this, usually all the important coords that season will all uniformly have wings or holograms or otherwise follow some kind of a theme.

But with this it’s like... WHATEVER. Give Yu a huge floaty cross?? SURE WHY NOT!!!! ahah......

PRISM LIIIIVE

Okay so I know this animation is straight from Rainbow Live.

But this lightning guitar here, it’s a recolor of Sara’s guitar from PriChan isn’t it?

And if it is, this’s the first/only specifically PriChan (not PriPara) reference I know of in SSS.

So I guess the Prism System doesn’t score Prism Lives for boys yet, huh....?

So one Prism Live + one jump = this.

But I suppose you could also argue that although Yu’s show was super personal and meaningful to him, he really didn’t do much for the audience did he? (The in-universe audience I mean, as it did plenty for me haha.) It was a rather street-style show in that aspect when you think about it.

Oh well, I guess no matter what someone has to be last................................

Ah man anyway this episode.

So when I saw it for the first time, it actually didn’t leave that much of an impression on me. But that’s because it was a bit overshadowed by how EXTREMELY EMOTIONALLY DISTRAUGHT I was from Leo’s episode, and then I ended up leaving the theater thinking about the um, surprise that’s gonna happen next week in Alexander’s episode. So this episode kinda fell by the wayside.

I was actually kinda jealous of how much you guys in the stream were freaking out about it. It really made me wish I had the chance to see it independently without the influence of Leo and Alexander. There are definitely advantages to watching these week-to-week instead of in odd bunches.

Because the more I watched it, the more I really REALLY liked it, and now I think it’s probably my third favorite character episode after Taiga’s and Leo’s. (Or maybe even second. I keep flip-flopping.)

I was also a bit blindsided by how this episode didn’t really follow the normal formula. Since they skipped over Yu’s backstory, they had time for other things. They had time for, dare I say it... “filler”? By that I mean, time to focus on just the boys being boys. Although it’s something we get a lot of on Prism Rush, I realized it’s something we have been severely lacking in the movies and anime. Another big difference between this series and typical Pretty Series/Aikatsu-type anime (other than not being able to have the coords......) is the lack of filler, and I realized how truly valuable it can be. This episode is just such a jewel.

So in between last week and this week I picked up a magazine (spoon 2Di vol. 50) with director commentary, and this was the last episode he commented on.

He said this episode is about Yu going through his “rebellious phase”, which he never had the chance to have when he was younger since his family split up during such an important part of his childhood and he felt he had to be strong for his mom and all that.

So instead he goes through it with his Edel Rose family.

GAAAAAH

Probably my favorite thing about Yu is how we’re able to see him gradually grow and change more than any other character I think.

Who would have though that little boy we met in Hokkaido would get this far......

So next up is Alexander’s episode and um....

You may have noticed me talking significantly less about that episode that I have about others. And there’s a reason for that. And it’s not because I have nothing to say about it......

The events in Alexander’s episode basically set off a continuity train until the end of the series. IMHO it doesn’t matter what order you watch episodes 2-8 in, but from here on out it’s definitely all connected.

So basically what I’m trying to get at is.... um.... g..... get emotionally ready for some future cliffhangers. I’m sorry.

Also, your last chance to properly prepare by watching Rainbow Live.... you won’t be disappointed, I promise.......

#king of prism #kinpri #yu suzuno #king of prism sss #king of prism shiny seven stars

29 notes · View notes

petersquips · 6 years ago