#but on the other hand it can explain why we never got any clue of his ability

[bsd-verse]

Okay so I have a new theory of Fyo's ability, hints specifically coming from chapter 107 and the Dead Apple, and I feel like it's better than my previous one (in terms of making sense) and which might be connected to what I'm going to explain. By the way, I'm not exactly sure if it's been said by another person, so feel free to tell me if this was made before.

❗️Spoiler warning in case.

So looking through the last panel of the newest chapter, we are soon to learn about what Fyodor's ability is or maybe his backstory. The fandom has been coming up with many different theories about his own. And now that we might get an answer finally, let's firstly take a look at this panel.

translation credit

We see Fyodor kind of pissed off in the first one, and later on Sigma says that his ability can activate via touching which we already know, so he asks what his ability is and after a second of studying him, he asks what he is. Interesting enough, to be honest a question I wasn't waiting for. So this leads to my new theory of,

What if Fyodor is half an ability?

Sigma didn't ask who he was, rather asked what he was. As you see, Sigma is created by the book and him asking this was intriguing. Maybe he sensed something about him.

My reasonings as why I think that, in my first theory (which I've tagged in the beginning) I talked about what his possible ability is and why he wants to get rid of ability users. Let's sum it up shortly, so according to my thinking, Fyodor's ability works like the name of it, he only can kill people and perhaps animals, which is a crime, and for the punishment part, he shows how terrible abilities and ability users can be. But he can't kill gifted people like him, I mean the other ability users. So in order to God to erase his sins, he has to get rid of everyone who has one, and even including himself. But with chapter 107's dropping, I feel like it'd slightly -maybe- make sense.

We see in Dead Apple that unlike some others, Fyodor's ability doesn't even fight with him nor he is like others. It's pretty chill and also finishes Fyodor's sentences as well.

And then he becomes one with his ability, as if it was his whole personality, his own self. It's like, as he said, his one self is crime and the other one is punishment. But why wouldn't it affect him? Maybe, it's because he has the whole control of it, perhaps because he isn't human or just halfly, it might be because that's what he is. His crime self can kill whoever he wants, apart from the ability users, and he might have another side as well. He is very smart, manipulative, can show these off to others. That can explain why he didn't get to do anything in Shibusawa's fog. He didn't need to fight himself, if he is half ability and has fully aware of it.

And let's say if it's correct, what would happen if Dazai touched him? I don't know if they ever had a physical contact but maybe? Would it create a singularity? Or maybe that's what Fyodor actually is? There are many questions for that tbh.

Anyways, that was all it. What are your thoughts? Share them with me!

[81folklore]

this is me trying - LECLERC

pairing: charles leclerc x small!singer!reader (fc: olivia rodrigo)

summary: after a twitter thread was made talking about the struggles you faced in a horrible way, you release a song you wrote with charles to talk about it

authors note: i am in no way saying olivia has struggled with or is dealing with anything mentioned in this story. this song means alot to me as someone who struggles with both addiction and my mental health so if im projecting..no one needs to know😁 i honestly have no clue how this is going to turn out but we will see. anything in bold italics is french

warnings: talks of addiction, depression, anxiety and suicide. alcohol addiction, drugs and self harm are all mentioned. the topics of this is me trying are mentioned, for obvious reasons but in a more personally focused way (if that makes sense). unwarrented hate (?). nothing really goes into detail but just regular warnings, please reach out to someone if you are struggling!!

authors note 2: i had to dust this one off and I HATE IT. its literally my least favorite work ive ever done so please feel free to keep scrolling😭😭 i just kept projecting by accident and it honestly kind of got out of hand. im also SO BAD with my wording so i have no clue if any of it sounds how i wanted it too!!

authors note 3: after reading it over i realised i never actually explained what i was talking about in the song thread so quickly, charles’ and yn split for a short period after yn started shutting him out, she spoke to someone (the stranger) who helped her start to extend the branches back out to charles and they got back together around 11 ish months before the song was released!! the fans never knew why they broke up, there was some speculation but most of it was dropped when they got back toegther

masterlist

yourusername

liked by charles_leclerc, arthur_leclerc and 2,457 others

good food, yummy people😋

view comments

arthur_leclerc: you mean good people yummy food right?

yourusername: suuure😁

charles_leclerc: beautiful girl

yourusername: love you!!

user7: what is charles doing in the 5th picture😭😭

yourusername: he dropped his airpod😭

user10: girl have you seen twitter…

user75: charles run as fast as you can

user2: there is no way charles knew he’d never be with someone like that💀

user10: what and he’d be with someone like you??

user6: wait what is happening in these comments what happened on twitter?

user7: someone made a thread ‘exposing’ yn but its just a bunch of bullshit that his fans are using because they dont like yn

yourusername

liked by pierregasly, charles_leclerc and 3,562 other

studio time with baeee💋💋

view comments

charles_leclerc: my favorite musician💐

charles_leclerc: i love you so much

yourusername: you mean the world to me charlie

pierregasly: kika wants to know if she can come next time

yourusername: tell her to text me so we can arrange it!!

user73: oh my god new music soon

user64: does this mean charles is on her new music?!

yourusername: maybeee

user64: GIRL DONT TEASE US LIKE THIS

user99: im so sorry about whats happening on twitter you dont deserve that

user2: yes she does

arthur_leclerc: can you tell charles to stop talking about your music when im not allowed to hear it, please🙏

yourusername: sorry arthur!! wanna come for a car ride and listen to it with us??

arthur_leclerc: please please please

user82: yn and charles taking arthur on a car ride to listen to her new song, oh what if i cried😭😭

arthur_leclerc added to their story

seen by yourusername, charles_leclerc and 86,289 others

*text in first picture reads: 🤍🤍* *text in second picture reads: so unbelievably proud of my sister*

yourusername

liked by charles_leclerc, sebastianvettel and 8,215 others

if you had told me a year ago that not only would i still be here but i would be releasing a song talking about the darkest times of my life with the love of my life by my side i would never have believed you.

throughout the past few months i have revisited times of my life i wish i could have left behind but ive learnt that accepting that this is a part of me now is important in my journey of moving forwards, and in moving forwards ive learnt that my struggles do not define me and i wont be embarrassed by things that have affected me

sometimes i wish i could go back and erase that part of my life, erase the way i felt, erase the way i treated the people i loved the most. but i cant, and i wont let people belittle me for that time anymore

if you have struggled in the past or are struggling today, you are not alone. its a cliche thing to say but i promise you at least one other person will be experiencing the feelings your feeling, you may not know them, you may never know them but you are not alone, you never have been and you never will be

you are not weak for struggling, you are not weak for finding ways to cope, no matter what they may be, you are not weak for shutting people out and you are not weak for reaching out for help, no matter how little you think you need it. you deserve help, no matter how small your problems may seem to you, you are worthy of being safe, you are worthy of being happy

i never thought i would release a song highlighting those times for me, but i wanted anyone whose been through these things to know that i love you and i will always love you; this is me trying out now on all platforms❤️‍🩹

view comments

arthur_leclerc: i am so so proud of you, you deserve all the happiness in the world

charles_leclerc: you mean the world to me, i am so proud of what you have achieved and i will be by your side forever and always

yourusername: charlie i hold so much love for you i feel like i may explode

user55: ive been struggling with an addiction for a while, i cannot express the way this song feels. just, thank you so much

yourusername: im right beind you darling, i believe in you❤️‍🩹

user81: i fear if i listen to this anywhere outside of the comfort of my room i will break down in tears

user93: 🩵🩵

user42: I😭JUST😭WANTED😭YOU😭TO😭KNOW😭THAT😭THIS😭IS😭ME😭TRYING😭

sebastianvettel: im so proud of you yn, come visit with charles soon sweetheart

yourusername: dropping everything and coming right now

lewishamilton: 💜💜

yourusername: hi lewis🤭🤭

user70: YN HELP😭😭 (just like me fr)

charles_leclerc and yourusername added to their stories

seen by pierregasly, sebastianvettel and 2,348,172 others

*text on first photo reads: i hold so much love for you🩷* *text on second photo reads: my bestest friend in the entire universe🩵*

[bugs013]

“You stayed?”

Spencer Reid x BAU!Reader

Not my pics

Warnings- basic criminal minds violence, blood, hospitalization, nightmares, mentions of suicide, mentions of making out, use of ‘Y/N’ but only a few times, i don’t think any pronouns were used but correct me if i’m wrong! Lmk if i missed anything!

A/N- this is my first time actually writing something so it’s not the best. I wrote this for my sister and she wouldn’t shut up about it so here it is lol. Also I’m dyslexic so if there are any mistakes then please let me know! (I reread it at least 3 times lmao) i’m open to criticism just don’t be too extreme pls lol

When you started at the BAU everyone seemed pretty nice except for one person, Spencer Reid, you weren’t sure why but for some reason you two just didn’t get along. As time went on nothing changed. The team tried to get you two to be friends but it never worked, everyone just got used to it, simple shaking their head or laughing when the two of you would glare at each other or make comments about each other’s ‘bad’ performances.

This case has been horrible, you’ve gotten so many leads but it keeps hitting dead ends, everyone was sitting around the table pissed until Spencer of course figured something out. He started writing on the board.

Morgan noticed first, his brows furrowed. “Whatcha got kid?”

At that everyones heads snap up at Reid and the board, why is he so stupidly smart?, there is silence for a moment as everyone shares some confused glances.

Spencer rambles on about where we will find the unsub and how, it took a minute to explain but soon enough everyone is up and heading to a house where supposedly the unsub will be.

You, Morgan and Rossi go in the back while JJ, Reid and Hotch go through the front. Everyone searches around but no one is in the house, that is until You and Spencer find a way to the basement, Spencer went down the creaky stairs but before you could even make it down two step’s Spencer was hit by the unsub, you point your gun at the man.

“Let me see your hands!”

He points a gun at his hostage’s head, holding her tightly with his free arm. “I’ll shoot!”

You glance over to see Reid was back up with his gun pointing at the unsub as well, geez that was fast.

“She is not who you think she is. You don’t want to kill her.” Spencer said to the man.

“She killed my girlfriend! She deserves to die!”

“She had nothing to do with it, she’s innocent. Lily killed herself Adrian. She was hurting herself.”

“Shut up! You’re lying!” The gun now pointed at Spencer and you can see that he’s about to pull the trigger, as soon as you hear the gun shot you quickly jumped in front of the bullet, you have no clue what came over you but all you know is the pain you felt in your shoulder was brutal. You hit the ground with a loud yelp, you look to your shoulder and see the blood oozing out. “Shit”

“Y/N!” Spencer shouts as he soon fell to his knees next to you.

But then you see the unsub running up the stairs and you push Spencer with you free hand, the other over your bleeding wound. “He’s getting away idiot.” But Spencer didn’t bother moving, besides the rest of the team already had the guy now. He shouts that you need an ambulance and the last thing you remember was Spencer shaking you and saying; “stay with me Y/N.” As your vision then went black.

~~~~

You wake up to the sound of machines beeping around you and the cool air of the hospital giving you chills, the thin blanket draped over you didn’t do much to warm you. You blink a few times as your vision slowly unblurs, then you realize someone was holding your hand, you squint to see who it was and when you realize it was Reid you squeeze his hand gently and his head pops up. “You’re awake?”

“You stayed?” He smiled softly. Then he glances at your interlocked hands, he clears his throat as he pulls his hand back awkwardly. Your brows furrowed and you chuckle weakly. “I don’t mind.”

His brows raised and he gives a bit of a confused look before then speaking again. “Why did you do that?” He asked. “Do what?” You ask, forgetting that you literally took a bullet for him some hours ago.

“Don’t be dumb.” He said before answering your question. “Jump in front of the bullet?”

“Ohh.” You shrug. “The team needs you…” His brows furrowed. “So? They need you too.” You shrug with one shoulder. “Yeah but without you half the cases would never get solved.” “That’s not true-” “Spencer. It’s true and you know it. We sat in that room for hours, days even, constantly hitting nothing but dead ends…until a little nerd finally figured it out and look, we got the guy-” You paused, you don’t remember if they actually got the guy. “Wait we did get him right?” Spencer chuckled softly as he nods. “Yeah, we got him.” You laugh softly. “Good.”

~~~~

It’s been about 4 weeks now since you had gotten shot and the whole time Spencer was by your side, while in the hospital and after. it was nice, but he was only doing it because he owed you, right? I mean you did save him from a bullet. You have basically fully healed now though.

Spencer is over at you apartment, you already told him you were fine on your own but he insisted on staying while you were hurt and he is still insisting to stay while you get over it all too. And while you did appreciate the help a lot you were starting to feel things you didn’t think you’d ever feel for him. The two of you are enemies, the only time you are ever civil is on the field. But now that you have actually spent some time together and got to know each other, you like him. You like him?

You yawned as you adjust your position on the couch, your eye lids were barely open when you heard Spencer speak. “Tired?” You nodded lazily. “Well i made some soup, you should eat before you go to sleep.” He says as he walks over to the couch. “Mmm, that sounds sooo good but ‘m sooo tired…” You said as you forced yourself to sit up. “It’s only 6:40, you can’t be that tired, can you?” You yawned and shrugged as you sat up. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.” He gives a bit of a confused look. “Oh, why didn’t you get sleep?” “Nightmares.” You say with another shrug. “Nightmares?” He asked and you nodded. “Do you want to talk about it?” You shook your head and got up, walking towards the kitchen. “Come on, food’s gonna get cold.” You say, ignoring the look of concern that filled his face. He’s worried but he can’t force you to talk so he just reluctantly follows you to the kitchen.

~~~~

Your were still drowsy as you put your bowl in the sink but the food did give you at least a little energy. “Y’know, I still don’t understand how you’re such a good cook, i can barely make grilled cheese without burning it.” You say with a little chuckle, Spencer has cooked some pretty delicious food throughout the past weeks and at first you told him he was a bad cook but then he stopped cooking so you had to tell the truth. He lets out a soft laugh as he followed behind, placing his bowl in the sink as well. “It’s easy, just read some cook books, watch some videos and try.” He said as the two of you make your way to the couch.

~~~~

You lay on the couch, your legs hang over the armrest giving Spencer enough room to sit on the other side, near your head. You were asleep, well that’s what Spencer thought at least but when he clicked off the TV and got up to leave he felt a hand on his own and heard your sleepy, quiet voice. “Don’t go…” His brows furrowed as he looked down at you for a moment. “It’s almost nine-” “please…” You interrupted and squeezed his hand lazily. He was sorta confused but then he sits back down. You put your head on his lap as you start to doze back off. “Thank you…”

Spencer fell asleep confused that night.

~~~~

The next morning you wake up to the smell of coffee and you smile, he really stayed? With a yawn and a stretch you got up and went to the kitchen, seeing Spencer with a book in hand, a random one from your bookshelf, you walk over to him. “Did you actually stay all night?” You ask as you lean against the counter, his back still facing you. He spun around at the sound of your voice, putting the book down on the counter and giving you an sweet yet awkward, soft smile. “Yeah, you wanted me to didn’t you? Besides you fell asleep on my lap so i kinda had no choice.” He shrugs a little and you chuckled. “You didn’t have to stay, you could’ve told me to move.” But he shook his head. “You were tired, i didn’t want to wake you up.” You shrugged but then your brows furrowed as you realized you didn’t wake up in the middle of the night like you have been. “Hey! y’know I didn’t have nightmares last night? I actually slept through the night.” You smiled, thankful that you finally got a full nights rest. “Really?” He says as he pours some coffee in a mug, handing it to you. “Yeah, that’s the first time in like a week.” You say, taking the coffee and saying a soft thank you as well. “Thank you for staying…i think that helped…” You looked down at the coffee in your hand as you spoke. Spencer smiles softly. “Oh, it’s no problem, although it would’ve been nice to at least have a blanket.” He joked, after all he was in an awkward position sitting on the couch without a blanket or pillow, but he was just happy you got to sleep well. You chuckled. “Ah, yeah sorry, the couch probably wasn’t very comfortable.” “It’s ok i’m just glad you got some sleep.”

~~~~

It’s been three days of Spencer staying at your apartment to help you sleep at night and the two of you have gotten pretty close, neither of you were really sure why but somehow him being there helped. It’s now 6 PM and you’re helping watching Spencer make dinner for the two of you. You were having a good time just chatting and laughing. At some point you turned on some music, when a song you like starts playing you smile as you took his hands into your own and make him dance with you. When the song ends the two of you were face to face. Both of you froze as you stare at each other for a moment and then slowly the gap between you closed and your lips met in a soft kiss. You felt like a swarm of butterflies had been let loose inside your stomach. Spencer slowly pulled away and both of your faces were flushed. “Um…” You felt like your heart stopped for a minute, ‘did he hate it? Did you ruin everything?’. You thought until you were snapped from your thoughts by his lips pressed back onto yours. Well there’s your answer. As you kiss back your hands go up to his hair while his hands cupped your cheeks holding your face to his. The kiss quickly grew more passionate as your tongues invaded each other’s mouth hungrily and his hands began to carefully roam your body.

Ping

Both yours and Spencer’s phone went off with a text from Garcia; duty calls!

You groan as you heard the devices, knowing it’s probably work. The two of you separate as you check your phones to see that of course it’s time for work. “Stupid job.” Spencer chuckled lightly as he pulled you in for one more gentle kiss before the two of you ate quickly then headed off to the BAU.

~~~~

(a little bonus cuteness)

On the jet ride back home you were exhausted, you end up falling asleep on Spencer’s shoulder and as Spencer carefully covered you with a blanket and kissed the top of your head JJ noticed, she furrowed her brows at Spencer and he gives a little smile then rest his head on yours and closed his eyes, soon falling asleep as well.

[perfectly-imperfect82]

Is that a kid? - Name

"Where's the munchkin?" Alana asked as soon as the door opened, Macca pushing pass Caitlin with Jordan right behind her

"In the living room" caitlin said following her friends there

Katie had you by your feet upside down as you giggled, you being gently dropped on to the couch once Katie saw the others

"Kiddo, want to meet some of our friends?" Katie asked, getting a nod in return as you sat on the couch with everyone joining you

"I'm aunty Alana"

"I'm aunty macca"

"Jordan" said with a wave

"Aunty Jordan" Katie said causing Jordan to smile widely as you waved back before climbing down from the couch to start playing with you stuff animals

"The girls went overboard with gifts for her" Caitlin said with a smile as they watched you play

“Munchkin, can I join you?” Macca asked, climbing down to the floor next to you. You nodding and handing her a stuff animal

"You never said, what's the muckins name?" Macca asked causing caitlin and Katie to share a look

"No clue" Caitlin said

"Have you really been calling her kid all week?" Alana asked shocked

"I don't see a problem with it" Katie said with smirk as Caitlin hit her

"There police can't match her to any missing kids or caseworkers so we don't have a name. We were hoping she would eventually say it" Caitlin defended

"And I'm not calling her Jane, for Jane doe" Katie said

"We need to figure out a name for her" Alana said

"We say random names and see if she answers" Jordan said

"She's not a pet!" Katie exclaimed

"Do you have a better plan?" Macca asked

"Fine" Caitlin said

"I'll start! Makenzie" Macca said hopefully, only to get no reaction

"Alana"

"Jordan"

As Katie and Caitlin just laughed as the hope left all there eyes from not sharing a name with you

"It was worth a shot" Macca said

"Now what"

"There's more names besides your guys" Katie said

"Sam"

"Bethany"

"Ashely"

"Leah"

"Emily" Jordan said and you turned around, all the girls eyes widening

"Could be a coincidence" Katie said as you turned back to your toys

"One way to find out" Macca said, "Emily" and once again you turned around

"Emily, is that your name?" Caitlin asked  causing you to smile

"Holy shit, it worked!"  Alanna said causing Caitlin to hit her

"Just because she isn't speaking now doesn't mean she won't repeat them later" Caitlin said

"Later problem, we got a name!" Katie exclaimed picking you up and kissing you check as Caitlin placed a kiss to your head, causing you to giggle

"I've got gifts to get my niece" Alana said looking things with Emily on it or E as Jordan and macca moved to the floor to play with you

"Whats her last name?" Alanna asked causing Caitlin and Katie to look at each other

"You can pick her middle name if foord goes first"  Caitlin said with a smirk

"In your dreams, McCabe is going first"

———————————————

You were sitting on the sideline bundled up, playing with your toys as the girls practiced. The girls smiling when you would clap for them when you thought they did something good

“Why do you guys keep saying your last name?” Viv asked confused after hearing it multiple times

"We can't decide whose last name to go first for the kiddo" Katie said

“Flip a coin” Jen said

“We aren’t flipping a corn to decide which name goes first” Caitlin said

"Why not let her decide?" Kyra asked causing them all to look confused

"She isn't going to understand what we are asking her to do" Caitlin said

"Doesn't mean she can't decide" Kyra said with a shrug

"How will she decide then?" Katie asked, only making Kyra smile brighten as she explained her plan and put it into action

Alessia was recording, knowing everyone would love to see this later

"Okay Emily, pick a piece of paper"  Kyra said holding the two papers in front of you, one with McCabe and one with Foord

"No pointing" Jen said grabbing Katie hand and Steph grabbing caitlin hand as you were glancing at Caitlin and Katie with an unsure look

"Grab one of the papers darling" Caitlin said giving you a reassuraning smile

The team looked on as you started reaching for one and grabbing it, causing the aussies to cheer at the one you grabbed

"Emily Foord-McCabe" Kyra said happily as Caitlin smiled brightly, picking you up and placing you in her hip as she littered kiss on you face, laughter escaping you

"Sorry babe, but she has chosen" Caitlin said Katie looked a little sad

"And her middle name?" Alessia asked looking at Katie

"London"

"It's where we met and where we found her. Seems fitting" Katie said looking at Caitlin who looked back with lovefilled eyes

"Aren't you a big softie" Leah said with a grin as Katie shares a chaste kiss with caitlin before placing a kiss to you cheek

"Emily London Foord-McCabe" Kyra said with a giant smile "I would prefer Kyra, but London is fitting" causing Steph to gently smack Kyra arm as everyone laughed

[tokoyamisstuff]

f! Reader | no warnings

They're all 100% meant to be girl dads. I can't explain why, it'd just be so cute. Literally the safest baby on earth.

Alucard

"I'd trade anything I have just for a child with your eyes."

Sis, that man is dead. 😭 I doubt even with his powers that's in his range of possibility.

No seriously, you'll probably voice your wish metaphorically, meaning it as a compliment, but it will throw him into a full blown existential crisis. He hates not being able to provide you with whatever you want, after all.

The suggestion alone wakes a desire in him that he never even thought about before. He'll secretly dwell in self-pity, fantasizing about what it'd be like.

At some point, he cannot bear that it'd stay a mere dream and suggest adoption.

Anderson

"Huh? *points to some orphans playing in the background* Don't we have enough already?"

Takes him a moment to understand the gravity of your words. Error. Brain stopped working.

Even if you're already long in a relationship/have been intimate with each other, he'll get adorably bashful at the thought. Is shocked how excited the thought of your belly growing round with his child makes him.

I don't think he's entirely opposed to the idea, but he honestly sees all of the orphans as his kids. There's already so many children without a family that need love and care out there, right?

Well, in the end the circumstances would easily allow it, and he's got enough experience. One more certainly won't hurt.

The Captain

...alright? Doesn't need to be told twice. He is the kind of guy that just goes along with everything his spouse says.

Not to sound indecent but he's a man on a mission, so prepare to be dragged into the next best place to fuck at any given time. Welp, that's how he found out he's got a breeding kink.

Gets even more clingy and openly affectionate than usual. Seriously, he can't wait until it finally happens, he might even be more thrilled than you are.

Walter

"My dear, you have no clue how much your words mean to me."

Delighted and overjoyed. It's been a great wish his entire life, but due to the course of his life he gave up on this naive hope years ago. To ever think he'd be given this chance, and with you of all people...he's truly blessed.

Would be prepared for every eventuality and literally carry you on his hands. You're used to being coddled by him, but this is some queen treatment right here.

His gratitude knows no limits. You'll forever be reminded of how much your family and your willingness to carry this child means to him.

Maxwell

"Wha- why? Am I not enough for you?"

Ugh. Children? He can barely tolerate dealing with people in general. Seriously, you should know him better than that.

Still, he's surprisingly cooperative. If you insist, guess it can't hurt as long as they turn out like you...

The closer the due-date however, the greater his panic and regret. Doesn't think he's cut out to be a father.

Definetly cries like a dog when holding his child for the first time. It's the most precious thing he's ever seen and he ends up being the most loving parent, thriving to give them everything he had lacked as a child himself.

Endlessly showers you in praise for gifting him this miracle, and having convinced him to the best decision of his life. This probably won't be the only child you'll have.

[demeterdefence]

kept meaning to make a post and kept FORGETTING to because i'm dumb but i cannot stop thinking of all the loose ends / introduced plots that got dropped without any warning and one that has been sticking out is persephone's "new" abilities after she "lost" her powers

we get a lackluster hint in episode 267, when apollo uses some random magic deus ex machina to "restore" persephone's powers. he starts bleeding from the nose and ears.

also apologies for the terrible quality, i forgot that lo went under daily pass and had to scour my own screenshots lmamdgjsf

it's not explained at the time whatsoever and in fact, the vagueness of the narrative kind of half-heartedly implies that it's an effect of ouranos' magic - it's also completely handwaved away, since no one bothers to ask why apollo is suddenly bleeding from the orifices and able to use persephone's powers.

it's not until persephone and hera decide to visit kronos in tartarus that persephone explains she somehow knew all along what this strange power was! she can apparently make a god rot from the inside!!!

it's not explained at ALL how she figured that out or like ... why she has that specific power. it is mentioned during the solstice where she creates winter that she can only make "decay," but that's a pretty obvious and visual thing - she's quite literally blistered the mortal realm in snow and ice, with all the plants dying on their physical surface.

important context, but other than persephone's attack on minthe, she is never seen using her powers on another person. her abilities are always on herself, or using plants / growth in some way. the fertility goddess nonsense does mean that hades and kronos are able to use her powers to strengthen themselves, but beyond that plot point being ridiculous, it's also something they don't just figure out overnight. kronos being able to escape control the underworld, and hades going godzilla mode during the trial, are clues used to eventually figure out what persephone's fertility goddess powers can do.

in regards to her new winter powers, persephone either figured it out somehow before the scene with apollo, or she figured it out after. with no explanation how.

moving from the how, we then get the last mention to this power, when persephone attempts to stop kronos

spoiler: it does not work. the power is never referenced again.

in terms of lore olympus' many crimes, it's a small thing, but it stands out to me as such a flailing attempt to write some wiggle room into the finale. rachel was struggling to get to the end, that much was obvious, and she was padding out the episodes as desperately as she could so that she could pull on any random thread and find a way to keep the plot moving. in better hands, this might have been a legitimately interesting power to explore for persephone! the goddess of spring, capable of rot, capable of such bone-deep destruction, and how she reconciles that with growth. it could have been a powerful juxtaposition, but it got abandoned as soon as rachel figured out how to give persephone her powers back. presumably, persephone still has this ability, but it is literally never brought up again. we have no idea if there was lasting damage to apollo, if it did anything in particular to kronos, what it can do to a god (the assumption is nothing, since both apollo and kronos seem just fine in their final scenes.)

it's just. amazing to go back and look through all the various strings rachel was knotting together, seeing stuff that might have been genuinely fascinating to explore in some other writer's hands! tiny little things like this, added up together to just be crapshoot after crapshoot. it's no surprise at all that rachel finished the last episode barely an hour before it went live. what a mess.

[googleitlol]

I want it to be known that every time I finish one of these, I let out the most gremlin, 'heeheeeheeheehee' you could possibly imagine.

Why don't we start off with a different POV? Find out what a certain monkey has been up to?

Dove Masterlist:

Storm

That little menace has Sun Wukong at his wit’s end.

The Monkey King flies east atop his cloud, with nothing to do but fume over this new obstacle as he makes his way to his destination. Sure, maybe he could have said something to the others about the disguised demon they found dangling from the tree. Maybe taking care of that brat quicker would have been the better solution, but the sage didn’t want to kill the demon outright and risk a painful headache in case his master didn’t give him a chance to explain. Still, the risk of that might have been worth it, seeing as that little imp took both his master and Dove. It irritated him, how the kid stuck to her like that.

Wukong and his brothers were lucky enough to meet some of the gods of the mountain, they were more than willing to tell them about Red Boy and where he lived. It’d be a lie to say the Monkey King wasn’t surprised to hear the boy is the son of his bond-brother, the Bull Demon King, he doesn’t remember his old friend living anywhere near here. If he gets the chance, he’ll have some words to share about his nuisance of a son.

He would have beaten that child easily if it were not for his obnoxious little trick. Just as Wukong was about to land a blow, the boy began to punch his own face! As if that wasn’t off-putting enough, fire began to shoot out of his face. The fire wouldn’t have bothered the sage all that much, but before it could even touch him, the smoke it emitted completely obscured his vision. He couldn’t find the entrance to the cave amidst the heavy fumes, much less the brat who went in for some cheap shots with his lance. Nephew or not, Wukong cannot wait to get his hands on that little terror.

The Bull Demon King really ought to teach that kid some respect, what was he even talking about? Evil urges?! The gall, ugh! What a– why would he–ugh! What does that boy take him for?! He has no clue what he’s talking about. That kid is the one who wants to eat them, he’s the one with evil urges! Wukong only wanted to protect his friends, it’s not that he wanted Dove to himself. What a ridiculous accusation!  How else is he meant to react when any of those idiots find themselves in danger?!

The king can’t stop himself from rolling his eyes. Damn, that comment really got to him. Why did the boy's words irritate him so much? Looking down at the terrain below as he rushes towards the ocean, he can’t help but sigh. He’d rather feel this annoyance, this irritation than what has really been prodding at his chest.  Every time Tripitaka has been kidnapped, he’s known he would get him back. Sure, there've been brief lapses of doubt, but they only ever lasted so briefly; the time he was blinded, or when those demon brothers trapped him under all those mountains. But whenever he had those moments of doubt, she was there to snap him out of it.

He hates the worry that has been building in his chest. She was right there, he nearly had her… close enough to feel her slip out of his grasp. Ugh, it’s infuriating!

At least after his fight with Red Boy, Sandy came up with the idea to ask Ao Guang for help. If that kid’s fire is the one thing that stopped them, then certainly the Eastern Dragon King will be able to help them extinguish those flames. It was strange, the boy’s fire. Despite not taking any of the flames head-on, Wukong could have sworn he felt their heat. It didn’t feel like any fire he’s ever been near. The heat… it almost hurt.

Perhaps he’s just overthinking this, there’s a lot of things he’s been feeling lately that make no sense to him. Besides, fire has never hurt before, not since gaining his immortality. No fire can truly burn him, not celestial nor earthly, he had to have imagined it.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. What is important now is getting the aid of Ao Guang so that he can save his master and Dove. Wukong can only hope those two can last on their own until he comes with reinforcements.

…Who is he kidding, he can almost see Dove fighting with every tooth and nail to get the monk and herself out of that cave.

~~~~

“You see, what I’m doing is focusing on your energy and giving you some of my own.” You kneel in front of Red Boy in that same room your burn was wrapped in. You hold the boy’s face in your hands gently, focused on taking care of his black eye.

The demon child is silent, leaning a bit into your healing hands while his attention stays entirely on you. “A little bit is enough to give you a little peace of mind, and if I need to, I can use some more to heal physical injuries.” Once you finish, you stand back to take a look at his face. It looks as though it was never injured in the first place.

You rise to your feet a bit too fast and take an unbalanced step back. You sway a bit, lightheaded but otherwise fine. Usually, you only use your gift like this in more dire circumstances, and you’re used to it taking more out of you than just this.

Still, Red Boy is quick to take your hand and guide you to sit down. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I just need a moment.” You reassure him, sitting back with a bit of a sigh. “Your injuries were pretty mild, but maybe you can restrain from punching yourself in the face anymore, alright?”

The boy quietly nods, frowning with this inquisitive look. “Is this why you said you couldn’t do it until your arm got better?” He asks with a hum.

You look away with a slight chuckle. “Ehh, that may have been an exaggeration. But generally, it’s easier for me to heal if my body isn’t busy trying to fix itself.”

Red Boy nods in understanding, his head tilting a bit in curiosity. “Well, if healing other people tires you out too much, can you take other people’s energy to make yourself better?”

“I, uh…” You hesitate, the question is a little uncomfortable. “…in theory, yes. That would involve putting another person at risk, though, so I wouldn’t even think of using it like that.” The idea of using the gift Guan Yin gave you to help people in such a way made your skin crawl, you wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

The boy’s brows furrow. “Why not? Father taught me that all my abilities have a use.” He argues, taking a seat next to you. “ I think that draining your enemies of their life would make things much easier for you and your monk friend.”

His reasoning makes you shake your head. “The easy way is not always the best route. Besides, I only fight to protect, and I can do that with my own strength and wit.” You smile, though your words are met with a disbelieving look.

“Do you really believe that?” He deadpans, apparently quite doubtful.

“I do.” You cross your arms, refusing to drop your smile.

Red Boy rolls his eyes with a scoff. “I think that’s nonsense. If you can make things easier for yourself, you should do it! The Samadhi Fire makes everything easier for me.”

“Really?” You hum, raising a brow to give him your own look of doubt. A fire you make when you punch yourself in the face doesn’t seem like the most practical power.

The boy’s eyes light up. “I’m not the best with my lance, but it doesn’t matter when I can just burn all my enemies to a crisp!” He looks down to his hands as he speaks, a mischievous grin crossing his face.

You frown for a moment, a little confused by his excitement. “I thought you said it’s difficult to control?”

“Oh, it is. Sometimes it just comes out when I get too mad.” He admits, glancing away as he rambles. “When I summon it, the fire just comes out of my face really fast– like my eyes and my mouth and stuff. I can’t really see where I’m shooting it, but as long as it hits whoever I’m fighting, it doesn’t really matter.”

“What if you’re fighting with an ally at your side? Or what if someone gets caught in the crossfire?” You question, which makes the boy look back at you for a moment. He goes to speak, but stumbles on his response before stopping himself.

You turn a bit to face the kid more. “I know the easy path feels– well, easy– but you should still work on controlling that fire of yours.”

Red Boy frowns, turning to look away from you with a grumble. “I know… it’s part of why Mother and Father sent me out here.” Oh?

He’s mentioned his parents a few times, but their lack of presence has definitely left you with questions. “They sent you here to learn how to control the Samadhi Fire?” You ask, leaning over a bit to see the troubled look on his face.

“I think I set a few too many fires at home. If I get too mad, it’s hard to stop the fire.” He confesses, bringing his knees close to his chest. “Plus, things are awkward right now and I don’t think they want me around.”

That makes you frown, why would he think that? You put a hand on his shoulder. “What makes you say that?”

Red Boy keeps his eyes wandering the room, his voice a bit annoyed. “Father left to live with some other woman, and Mother isn’t very happy about it.” He explains. “She said something about how Father forgot his manners and gave into his evil urges, like all men do.”

Oh. Oh, wow. That poor woman, this poor kid. “Mother said I could stay here for now so I can focus on training and getting better at controlling the Samadhi Fire, but I’m already good at that!” He pouts, looking back at you with an offended frown. “Yeah, I’m not really great, but I can control it enough!”

Wow, that was more than you were expecting. “Maybe so, but there is no such thing as too much practice. I am sure your mother would appreciate you keeping up with your training.” You offer him a small smile, it’s hard not to sympathise with the boy.

“Yeah, I know.” He groans, letting out a huff before resting his arms over his tucked knees.

“Make sure the next time you see her, she can see all the progress you’ve made.” You suggest. “I’m sure that would lift her spirits to see some improvement.”

Red Boy looks back at you, his brows furrowing at your words, thinking them over before cracking a little smile. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. Mother would like that.”

His response warms your heart a little. From how he’s spoken before, it’s clear he cares deeply for both his parents and what they think. It’s unfair to him to be in a situation like this, away from the both of them.

With a sigh, your gaze trails up to the ceiling. “You know, I never knew my own mother. She passed away when I was an infant, but my father was able to care for me. If I remember correctly, he had many duties in our village, but he mostly worked as a physician.”

“So being a healer runs in your family?” Red Boy hums, the question making you chuckle a bit.

You haven’t thought of it like that before. “Yes, I suppose it does.”

The boy hums, seemingly content as you lift a hand to massage your temple. You’re still feeling a bit light-headed, but you shouldn’t take too much longer. Part of you feels bad leaving the kid now, but your first priority is Tripitaka, and with your side of the deal done, there’s nothing stopping you from going back. You’ve already spent enough time here, but maybe you could check in on the boy after the journey is complete.

“I should be on my way now, Red Boy.” You sigh, glancing over to see the boy's look of disappointment.

Red Boy pouts a little. “Aw, already?”

“The others are still waiting for me.” You remind him. “I’ve spent enough time stalling our journey, and I still don’t know where Sun Wukong went off to.”

You go to stand, though you’re still a little shaky on your feet. Red Boy follows you to stand as well. “Are you sure? You still look drained.” He holds your arm to help steady yourself, the gesture sweet.

It’s funny to think he’s the same boy that wanted to eat Tripitaka and egged on Wukong. “It’s alright, I can rest properly once I’ve reunited with my friends.” You smile as he walks you to the cave opening, still holding onto your arm to help you. It’s like you’re an elderly woman he volunteered to assist.

When you get to the cave opening, you’re surprised to find the sun is nearly gone. Only a small trace of light remains in the west. It’s nearly night, did you really spend so long in the cave? It might be harder to find the others under the cover of night, but not impossible.

You step away from Red Boy, but he quickly tightens his hold on your arm. “The sun has set, you can’t go now!”

“They’re probably worried for me, Red Boy, I have to go.” You offer an apologetic look with a shrug, but he refuses to give in.

“But how will you find them in the dark? All the wild animals hunt at this time, it isn’t safe for you to wander through the mountain on your own.” He reasons, not giving you a chance to argue as he continues. “A-And you’re tired, too! Please, Miss, just stay here for another night? You said you would feel better after you rested, right? Mother would say a gentleman should never send a woman off on her own at night.”

You’re a little taken aback by his insistence, though you find his offer and reasoning cute. “I can even get you a fancy pillow, if you prefer to sleep as a dove!”

That gets you to laugh a bit. “It sounds like you’re being overly-sweet to get me to stay the night.”

“…Is it working?”

You shake your head in amusement, letting out a tired huff before looking out to the sky again. You’ve maybe got a half hour before the little light that’s left sinks into the horizon. With how far the flight was before, and with how tired you are now, you doubt you’d find them in time.

It wouldn’t be the end of the world if you rest here for the night, right? You have your weapons with you now, which definitely makes staying in a demon-filled cave feel a bit safer. You doubt Red Boy would have his demons do anything, and you can leave first thing in the morning. An insulated cave to protect from the wind is also a much nicer option compared to sleeping on the mountain in the open.

With a bit of a dramatic sigh, you look back at Red Boy. “Alright, I suppose I could stay the night.”

At your acceptance, the boy practically beams with excitement. “Great! Come, I can show you where the guest rooms are.” He drags you back in with a big smile, and you stumble a few times just to keep his pace as he runs through the halls. “My mother has some clothes she leaves here for when she visits, you can borrow her sleepwear if you want. I don’t think she’ll mind.”

Red Boy takes you to a nicely furnished bedroom before leaving you to rest. The minute your head makes contact with the pillow, your eyes begin to droop. It really has been a long day, as if getting pulled into a wind storm wasn’t exciting enough this morning. At least it’s all resolved now.

You’ll rest, wake up early, and find your friends. Hopefully Sun Wukong will be with them by then. Ha, to think the peach-loving sage was so concerned about you carrying Red Boy. It was a little rocky at first, but the kid isn’t so bad. He ended up being surprisingly sweet. You wish you could do more for him, he would definitely benefit from having someone around that wasn’t one of his soldiers. Someone to re-enforce those better habits of his and show him how not to do things like… well, like eating people.

As you drift off to sleep, you smile to yourself. You’re glad to have met the kid, but you can’t wait to see your friends in the morning…

.

.

.

.

.

.

You wake to the crack of thunder.

You jolt up in bed, your heart racing from the sudden wake-up call. Several thumping footsteps can be heard outside your room, people shouting to one another in a panic as more thunder rumbles from somewhere outside. You’re not sure what time it is, but however long you slept has you feeling more energised now. But maybe it’s more than just your well-needed rest doing that.

The noise outside puts you on high alert, and you quickly jump out of bed to see what’s going on. When you exit your room, you’re nearly trampled by a horde of demons running through the corridors, handing off weapons to one another and fixing their armour.

More thunder echoes through the cave as you manoeuvre around them in an attempt to get outside. It sounds like there’s an intense storm, but yesterday had been nothing but clear skies! You make it to the cave opening, only to nearly be blinded by a flash of lightning.

The sounds of metal clashing and angry shouts are almost entirely drowned out by the storm overhead. Rain pours down over the scorched land around the cave, soldiers in scaled armour meet Red Boy’s army with steel, there’s fire everywhere you look. What is happening?! That scaled armour… is this one of the dragon kings? Why would one of their armies be here? What is going on?!

There’s so much rain, the stream that ran down the mountain by the cave has grown into rushing rapids. Even in the heavy downpour of the storm, the fires only grow, as though the water fuelled them more than the air around them.

All that fire– where is Red Boy?! You run out of the cave, scanning for the boy before hearing a shout from above. Overtop the mountain, the vicious cloud of smoke shoots out an unending spiral of fire.

Acting quick, you begin to rush up the mountain to get closer to the boy, switching between avian and human form to avoid flying arrows and spears, Flying up steeper parts of the mountainside while running where you can. You nearly slip a few times, the rain leaving you drenched and the ground a slippery mess.

As you get closer, you finally see him. It isn’t Red Boy you spot, but Sun Wukong jumping out of the smoky fumes atop his own cloud. He’s breathing heavily, his staff held securely in his grasp as he narrows his eyes at the fire that shoots out from the smoke.

“Wukong!” You call out to him, the monkey demon immediately freezing when he hears your voice. His head whips down to where you stand, and in an instant he is at your side.

He  tucks his staff into his ear before wrapping you in an embrace. The demon lets out a heavy sigh as you feel his arms wrap around you, one holding you by the back of your head. “Thank goodness you’re alright, I thought I might’ve taken too long.” He mumbles into your shoulder before lifting his head up to face you. The worry on his face is almost palpable, and you feel something pull at your chest.

You hate to see when he gets so worried. “Where’s Master? I need to get the two of you out of here.” His hands drop down to yours as he looks out over the two armies.

“He’s not here.” You frown, and Wukong looks back at you in confusion. “I got him out yesterday, he’s with Pigsy and Sandy. I was going to leave in the morning– where have you been?!”

“I went to find help dealing with the demon brat after our last fight.” He explains, his brows furrowed. “Sandy thought of using water to put out his flames, but…” The two of you look out to the battlefield. All the fire Red Boy is creating is only spreading, reaching farther and farther out.

Red Boy screams, and you look up to see the spiral of fire growing larger as it shoots wildly through the air. Your eyes widen in realisation, the boy’s words echoing in your head. “He can’t stop it.”

You take dove form, taking off before you’re caught by your foot. “Where are you going?!” Wukong gives you a look of exasperation, his hold preventing you from going any further.

He lets go as you turn back. “I need to calm him down! At this rate, he’ll kill everyone beneath him!” You explain, throwing your arm up to gesture to the boy.

“You think I’m letting you near that thing?!” Wukong steps closer, taking your shoulders in his hands. His tail lashes out, reflecting his anger as you shoot him a glare.

What does he think he’s talking about? Let you? “I’m not asking for your permission! Wherever the others are, there’s nowhere they’ll be able to hide if his fire burns down the mountain!”

The Great Sage returns your glare, but you refuse to give into the look. You won’t argue with him on this, not when all these people could get hurt, not when that kid needs help.

His nose scrunches for a moment before grumbling something under his breath. He looks away and summons his cloud, letting go of your shoulders. “You’re the most stubborn woman I know.”

“I’m well aware.” You nod before returning to avian form, the two of you flying up to the boy as his fire blazes across the battlefield.

The closer you get, the more the two of you have to duck and weave to avoid being hit by the flames. It’s near-impossible to predict where he shoots it next, sometimes the fire flickering out before coming back even greater than before and accompanied by the boy’s cries.

You look for an opening. If it weren’t for the thick cover of smoke, you might be able to figure out how to grab the boy. You dodge out of the path of the spiral again, finding an opportunity as it moves away, and you make your move.

As swift as you can, you dive for the smoke. Your vision quickly becomes obscured, the fumes heavy and thick. You can barely breathe, but you can’t stop here. You listen out for Red Boy, following his voice to navigate through the smoke.

 “Dove, look out!” Just as you’re about to reach him, you hear Wukong hurtling towards you. You’re about to grab the kid, there’s no time to look back before you hear Sun Wukong scream. You crash into Red Boy, he’s hot to the touch, like blood boiling beneath the surface of his skin.

You use your gift to soothe him while whipping around to look for your friend. Where did he go?! That scream– he must have been hit. But he’s the Monkey King, how could it have hurt him like that? Where is he?!

As the boy calms, the fire begins to dissipate. The smoke clears and the two of you begin to fall out of the sky and towards the rushing water below. You turn back, holding the now unconscious Red Boy in your arms as you search the sky for Sun Wukong. “Wukong!” What happened? Where is he? Why can’t you see him?! “Wukong!”

The fires across the battlefield extinguish all at once, and through the downpour you finally spot his limp form– just for a moment before he crashes into the water rapids. Wukong vanishes beneath the waves and you prepare to go in after him, turning your back towards the water to shield Red Boy before making contact with it. You slam into the water, plunging down before getting pushed downstream. You fight to surface, holding Red Boy and your own head above water.

With the boy in your hold, it’s a struggle to stay afloat in the rapids, but you do your best to scan the waters for your friend. “Wukong! Wukong, wh–” You can barely speak, the water choking your speech as your head goes under.

Once you reach the surface again, you start to push yourself to the riverbank and back towards the cave. You see Red Boy’s men falling back, all rushing to get back into the cave while you inch closer to land. By the time you reach the edge of the water, you’re hardly able to pull Red Boy onto land.

Your head swivels to and fro, searching for any signs of your friend as you run back to the cave. Red Boy begins to come to as you make it up the steps of his home, coughing up water while you're swept into the horde of demons rushing to get back inside. Arrows fire with lightning tight on their heels, and in the chaos you’re pushed inside.

Red Boy looks around in a worried panic, and seeing that he’s conscious, you set him down on his feet. “Are you alright?” You ask, the boy nodding hesitantly, confused. “Stay here, okay?” You don’t give him the chance to respond, your heartbeat echoing in your ears so loudly you couldn’t even hear him if he did say anything.

That scream– how hurt is he? Did he surface after he fell into the water? You run out to the lip of the cave, pushing past soldiers to try and get a better look. Where is he, dammit, where is he?!

“Wukong! Sun Wukong!” You call out, your throat scratching in pain. There’s nothing, not even a body floating downstream, where could he be? 

Bolts of lightning strike at the cave, but you refuse to move. You’ve never seen him go limp before, did he lose consciousness? Surely he would have resurfaced by now if he was conscious, right? What if he can’t? Can he drown?! Sandy and Pigsy usually take care of any demons underwater, dammit! What happened to him?!

He’s been hit by fire before, he should have been fine! No, what if the rapids pushed him further downstream? What if he’s at the bottom of the river? You have to move, now!

You move to run out when another lightning bolt strikes, this time hitting the cave just overhead and breaking off chunks of rock that come crashing down. They fall just at your feet, and you step back to avoid them. You look up in time to see more following, just barely giving you the time to jump back and avoid being crushed. You slip on the wet stone floor, falling back and scooting away as more of the entrance caves in.

By the time it stops, the only source of light in the surrounding area are the torches that are posted on the walls. The thunder begins to quiet, but your heart refuses to slow as the reality of the situation sinks in. “No… no!” You jump to your feet and throw yourself at the rubble blocking the entrance.

You begin to dig at the blockage, your mind racing with worry. Wukong, he’s hurt! You can’t be stuck in here, he’s– how is it even possible for fire to hurt him?! Forty-nine days in the Trigram Furnace did nothing to him– not even the Jade Emperor could kill him with fire, how is this any different? He might still be in the river, he can’t drown, there’s no way– but you thought there was no way he could get burned!

You fall to your knees, your mind racking with different questions and thoughts on what just happened– what you have to do. What can you do? Before you can spiral any further, Red Boy steps up to you. His eyes are watering, wide and scared. “I– I’m sorry.” His voice is shaking, barely even able to get the words out.

“I was trying to stop, I was trying to! I tried closing my eyes b-but it hurt– it just wasn’t stopping!” Tears run down his face, and the trembling boy is enough to ground you for a moment. You pull the child into your arms as he sobs. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, I promise! They just attacked! I didn’t mean to use it, I swear!”

“It’s okay…” You mumble to the boy as you hold him close, rubbing his back in comfort. You can’t believe your own words, but it’s all you can think to say to him in the moment. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Sun Wukong, please be okay.

[letters-adressed-to-the-fire]

so this is why i think peter is the one looking in people's windows

A few days ago, I saw a swiftie on TikTok talking about how I look in people’s windows could be taken as the other perspective of the same story narrated in Peter, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. So, I decided to go in-depth and start a self-assigned quest to look for any clue that could interweave these two stories in a way that made sense.

I know this could sound a little absurd or could be taken as a stretch of some sort, but I believe, and I’m sure most of her fans would agree, that most of the beauty in Taylor’s writing comes from the countless different interpretations people bestow on her lyrics. I’m not asking you to take this analysis as absolute truth because I’m genuinely just having fun with it, and I hope you do too.

I’ll analyze “I look in people's windows” from Peter’s point of view and “peter” from the other character’s pov, whom we’ll call Wendy given the obvious parallelism to Peter Pan.

Well, the main and obvious connection is given by the “window” element. While Wendy is waiting for Peter by the window, Peter is looking for her from outside that window. If you look at this through very literal and rational eyes, I believe you’d think it doesn’t make sense that they were both looking for each other through the same window but never met again. So HERE is where I want to insert my interpretation.

There are two options I can think of that would explain the failed meeting. 

Peter intentionally avoided Wendy while still looking for her every day.

Every time they were looking for each other, it happened at different moments.

The first case presents a lot of questions, like, is the pledge to grow up what is stopping Peter because he knows he can’t do it? Or was he cruel enough to wait for Wendy to move on and then come back? Either way, the conclusion remains the same. In this scenario, Peter was a coward. If it was because he didn’t want to grow up, if it was because he just wanted Wendy to never move on, or if it was because he never gave her a real answer.

On the other hand, the second case talks about something that’s closer to a tragedy. They were always doomed by the narrative. While Wendy was waiting for him, Peter was looking for her, but Wendy never saw him—not when she waited or when Peter was looking for her. We would need to assume some things here tho. Either it all comes back to the first option and Peter had been avoiding her the entire time, or he thought she had already forgotten about him. The first option shows us, once again, that Peter is a coward, but the second one also tells us something important: he may be too scared to grow up, but he’s not selfish enough to stop her from moving on.

“Northbound I got carried away As you boarded your train South, south, south, south, south, south A feather taken by the wind blowing I'm afflicted by the not knowing so”

Based on this verse, we can design a new theory. He watched her leave and he was aching for her to come back to him. So he started looking for her in other people’s windows, wondering if one of them was gonna be her. Even when he had already said goodbye to her.

And here’s where another verse of peter will acquire significance:

“I thought it was just goodbye for now”

With both songs in mind, it sounds like he said goodbye to her, hoping they were gonna see each other again, but he also knew he had to let her go at the time and that he was condemned to miss her. But what Peter didn’t know was that Wendy was gonna go through the same thing, but she wouldn’t have the comfort of knowing what he did (wait for her).

“promises oceans deep, but never to keep”

This is why we get two completely different endings for both songs. While Peter is still addicted to the what-ifs, Wendy has turned off the light; the fantasies have expired for her. Wendy grew up; Peter didn’t. While I look in people's windows gives you the feeling of being running from house to house in a neighborhood you don’t recognize anymore, trying to fit into a routine you were used to in the past; peter reads like the last chapter of a book you’ll never touch again.

[pengugu09]

THEORY TIME😍🤩🤩😢 don't share this on other media's w/o permission or credits‼️

(for those who have patreon, don't ruin my delusional gyat)

Looking back at these deleted official art by vivinos:

2/3 of the characters in this picture have already experienced smth bad (which is death)

But I want to share my opinions on this one since it just, well- strike on my mind

The characters are divided with these hearts surrounding their name with their corresponding eye color

So I'm assuming the reason why Sua and Ivan are holding an apple is prolly because it's a visual representation of who they love.

💜SUA💜

Sua is holding the apple with tender care using both of her hands just like how she have her feelings for Mizi, she treasures their relationship so much that Sua looks stressed (at the picture) since she knows the bad things that the aliens are doing in their society unlike Mizi who has a supportive and non-abusive aliens/guardians and doesn't have a clue (yet) on the negative side of these alien invasion.

When it comes to the outfit, she's wearing a princess gown.. but with a cape(?) like a superhero cape one? Is that why they deleted it because it shows a sign about the ROMH Sua ver?

"My savior, pitiful lady. Make me your god, I can give you everything"

It also shows that Sua is Mizi's inspiration, savior, or even a hero the moment they met, and have that spark even grew while she admires her.

🖤IVAN🖤

Ivan is holding the apple carefree, even smiling in the picture, showing no signs of any negative feelings (stressed, upset, anger, etc.)

This is something like- how we view Ivan base on appearance yet never know what runs on his mind behind that smile, knowing that something negative may be happening but he still keeps his calm composure about it.

As for his outfit, a charming prince, simple design for someone who has good looks

(mb I don't have anything else to say😭)

🩶HYUNA🩶

Hyuna.

She's not holding any apple. Which means that she don't have any feelings for anyone (sorry Luka) but she's doing a gun sign instead, which is foreshadowing on her situation since she got shot on her right arm.

Now, as much as possible I don't want our queen Hyuna to die at the next round but I think there's a 50/50 possibility.

That picture at the top is a picture of dead characters, but Hyuna isn't dead(?) is this foreshadowing that Hyuna is next??? Aside from being shot at her arm, we'll never know what did Mizi and Hyuna do next since there primary goal there is to save the alien stage contestants, and it's smh delayed since they got into a trouble that they never expected to happen.

On her outfit, I don't know what style is this called my bad, but she got this purple coat, black fur, and a hat with a feather on it.

PURPLE COAT. PURPLE. She's wearing a color associated with someone. (I hope that this isn't just color theory, if it is I'm going to cry)

And that someone is no one else other than:

*drum rolls*

Luka has been associated with purple in a lot of scenes.

In my opinion, Luka has a part in Hyuna's life ofc, even though Hyuna doesn't have this romantic feelings for Luka, she still values him as a childhood friend but then their relationship as they grow up begins to be complicated. (I won't explain it any further since this might become a whole ahh fanfic with how much number of the words that I've typed out)

So, I think, that Luka will be involve when something bad happen to Hyuna, but I really hope nothing bad happens to her since she has a great potential on how the story plot will go.

[might edit to correct some minor spellings or grammar]

[thankskenpenders]

So I wrote a whole long thing about Amy's tarot cards, but what about, you know... the rest of the Sonic Frontiers DLC? The new alternate story route, the hours of new gameplay, all that?

Having now played it, I'm not sure Sonic has ever had this specific combination of good ideas that make the future of the series look bright, and execution that I fucking hate.

(Full spoilers ahead.)

The good

There's a lot to like here, conceptually.

First and foremost, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy are finally playable in a new mainline 3D Sonic game for the first time since 2006! Seventeen years! We've been begging for this for so very, very long. Nature is finally truly healing from the fallout of Sonic '06. Early on I hedged my bets and expected them to be locked to Cyber Space or something like that, assuming that there was no way they'd be fully playable in the Open Zone. But sure enough, while they're a bit limited compared to Sonic, they're still all full-blown characters with skill trees to unlock and lots of exploration to do.

We also got a more bombastic alternate final boss fight, after the first take on The End kind of underwhelmed. And it's obvious that Sonic Team has listened to our pleas to focus on the 3D platforming over the forced 2D sections, and to reduce the amount of automation in the level design. This update is chock full of Actual Platforming. Wow! I can only pray this means we never get an area as agonizing to explore as Chaos Island again.

Sure, there's still some jank - especially with Knuckles' movement, which is kinda rough. But if this is the stuff they're trying out so that they can refine it further for the next game, then I'm really excited.

On the other hand, good fucking lord is The Final Horizon tedious. And that tedium sapped most of the fun out of it for me.

The frustrating

The new scenario massively increases the difficulty over the base game, seemingly out of a desire to give the hardcore players who were posting speedrun videos and whatnot more of a challenge. It's the Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels of Sonic. This difficulty comes in many forms throughout your playtime, some worse than others, and continues to ramp up over time.

Rather than giving you a tutorial level, the new scenario dumps you directly into a remixed version of the final island and makes you do some fairly precise platforming with Amy, Knuckles, and Tails - new characters with new movesets that you won't have any experience with. You'll also need to find character-specific Koco that give you free levels, because Sonic's friends all start at level one and certain locked moves in their skill trees will be mandatory to progress. They don't even have Cyloop unlocked at the start. And because they're all low level, that means you'd better steer clear of the beefed-up bosses scattered around the map, which will absolutely annihilate Sonic's friends. (I honestly just avoided them and never bothered beating any of them, not even with my high-level Sonic. I have no idea if they're beatable with the others.)

None of this is explained to you particularly well. I spent my first few minutes with Amy wondering why the attack button did nothing, only to eventually think to check her skill tree and realize that I had to unlock her basic attack. If you don't bother to take the time to read through the skill trees, you'll very quickly find obstacles you have no way of getting past with no clues as to what exactly you're supposed to do.

Adding to this confusion is the fact that objective markers often tell you to go half a kilometer into the sky, and you'll have no idea how to get up there because all of the relevant platforms are out of your draw distance. Many objects seem to only pop in for me when I'm within about 60 meters of them, which isn't a long distance for a high-speed open world platformer like this. I was having this problem running the game with high graphics on PC, so I can only imagine how obnoxious it is on Switch. I'd frequently find myself poking around nearby clusters of platforming objects and praying that they'd lead me to a spring, rail, or cannon that would eventually point me in the direction of the floating objective marker.

There were always complaints about the art direction in Frontiers and the way it relies on floating rails and prefab platforms that are visually disconnected from the natural scenery of the islands, but it's even more dire here. The new platforming sections are dense and complex, but they seemingly didn't have the budget to change the topography of Ouranos Island at all, so it all takes the form of these prefabs. It very strongly gives the vibe of a Forge creation in Halo 3, back when there were no blank canvas maps and people just had to make "new maps" by jamming a bunch of shipping containers and barricades together in the sky above one of the default arenas.

I was still more or less having fun, though, despite the jank. It's a big creative swing, I told myself! They're trying stuff out! They're experimenting!

And then I hit the towers.

The towers are agonizing because they're SO close to being great. The logical part of my brain understands why some people love them, but god, I just fucking hate them. The platforming there IS cool! These layouts are cool! The individual challenges along the way are a bit tough, but totally doable. You know what's not cool? Making one mistake and slowly falling 800 meters all the way back down to the ground, forcing you to start over. Because none of these towers have checkpoints. For me, this one decision transforms what should have been a fun set of platforming challenges into a massive, unfun difficulty spike.

I enjoy some masocore platformers, but those are typically games with quick deaths and restarts like Celeste, Super Meat Boy, or VVVVVV. Hell, the Mario games tend to get way more difficult than the average Sonic game, and those are obviously all great. Quite frankly, unlike those games, Sonic Frontiers is nowhere near tight or polished enough to make this difficulty feel fair. Bits of jank that I could ignore in the base game due to its lower difficulty are now matters of life or death. Missing a jump because I boosted off an incline in a way the game didn't like for reasons I don't understand is not fun. Falling off a tower because the camera was pointing in the wrong direction while I was in midair and I couldn't see the next thing I was expected to homing attack is not fun.

And it's such a jarring spike when moving from the base game to the DLC that it feels like the game is suddenly quizzing me on skills it never bothered to instill in me. Maybe if you've spent the last year labbing out the movement tech in this game this is all a no brainer, but for the average returning player it's a kick in the dick.

I'm sure I could've beaten these towers normally if I gave them enough tries. They aren't the hardest thing in the world. But I very quickly decided I had better things to do with my life and turned on easy mode, which adds tons of extra springs and homing attack balloons to make all of the platforming piss easy. I wish there was a middle option between Only Up: Sonic Edition and this extreme hand holding, but when given the choice between the two I gladly picked baby mode. I just wanted to see the story.

(The new Cyber Space levels are also long, challenging, and devoid of checkpoints, not unlike the towers. But I only ever found the entrances to two of them. So I only did two. They're theoretically required, because they give you "Lookout Koco" that you need for... some reason? But in a rare act of mercy, Sonic Team put Cyloop treasure spots that give you free Lookout Koco all over the map.)

As I continued, so many little things started adding up to piss me off. Why do you only reveal like five tiny squares of the map at a time? I would've loved to find all the new 1-on-1 dialogue scenes, but not if I had to do dozens of hard mode versions of the stupid little puzzles and challenges to reveal the whole map. Why does every character need their own unique collectibles? What is this, Donkey Kong 64? Why can't I just grab this EXP for Amy when I find it as Tails? Why can I only manually swap characters by talking to an out-of-the-way NPC unlocked right before the final boss? Why is fast travel disabled? Why are the new vocal themes you hear when playing as Amy, Knuckles, and Tails so monotonous, with a single verse repeating over lo-fi beats ad nauseum? Why is the jukebox feature completely disabled throughout the DLC, even after rolling the credits? Why can't Tails homing attack? Why do I have to wrestle with the camera so much while also holding the jump button to fly as Knuckles and Tails? How many right thumbs do they think I have? Why is this animation for picking up animals in the Cyber Space levels so incredibly slow, and why can I still take damage while it's playing? Why does the stupid starfall event have to make it so hard to see what I'm doing when climbing these towers? Why does this shitty combat trial have a popup that makes it seem like I should be using the Cyloop when the actual strategy revolves around repeated parries? And on and on and on...

The story

What about the new story? Well, there sadly isn't much to chew on here. Most of the DLC has the cast running around and finding different macguffins for arbitrary reasons, as part of some sort of plan to divide up the work on the last island so that Sonic can go train with the spirits of the Ancients and harness the power of his cyber corruption. What the fuck is an Impact Form? I don't know, but Knuckles needs something to do, so go find one.

It's a thin excuse plot meant to make you do platforming challenges around Ouranos Island, with little room for Ian to add any real flavor of his own, even though he certainly tries. Having Sonic meet the spirits of the Ancients who controlled the Titans, who are revealed to directly parallel the personalities of him and his friends, is kinda neat, I guess? It's something. The optional conversations seem to have some fun bits, including both conversations between the supporting cast and additional lore. But again, I only found a few of those because of how tedious filling out the map was.

The writing is also let down by the voice acting - or I guess the voice direction, because I know this cast can do better. Roger's voice continues to be weirdly, distractingly deep as Sonic, which was clearly something that was requested of him just for this game. (For a recent example of him going back to his regular Sonic voice, see this LEGO trailer.) The performances of Sonic's friends are also WILDLY mismatched. This is most clear when they start feeling the effects of the cyber corruption. Knuckles seems to be barely affected at all, Tails sounds like he's moderately hurt and low on energy, and Amy starts completely overselling her pain out of nowhere. The extremely strained performance makes it sound like Cindy's literally being tortured in the fucking booth. I have no idea what's going on over there.

The final challenges

People have debated whether or not things like the towers and the new Cyber Space levels are fair challenges. What's not up for debate is the fact that Master King Koco's Trial is complete and utter bullshit, and I can't believe they shipped this.

Before you can fight the new final boss, the game forces you to do a boss rush of the first three Titans - INCLUDING the pre-Super Sonic climbing sections - with a hard limit of 400 rings. For all three lengthy, heavily scripted fights. Back to back. You can't even cheese it with the leveling system, because you're forced to do this at level 1. This all but forces you to look up speedrun strats for the Super Sonic fights so that you don't run out of rings and fail the trial.

And the real kicker? They changed the parry just for this trial! Originally, you could just hold down the bumpers endlessly and Sonic would ready himself to parry the next attack, whenever that may hit. Now it requires you to do a "Perfect Parry" with specific timing. And you HAVE to hit those parries if you wanna clear this trial and get to the new ending. Miss a few and you're probably fucked. You just have to reset. Time to go through all those fights, all those climbing sequences, all those QTEs, and all those unskippable mid-fight cutscenes all over again. This is by far the most egregious example of the DLC deciding to quiz you on new skills that the base game never required of you, and it's one of the most absurdly unfair things I have ever seen in a Sonic game.

Easy mode does make this trial easier by making the timing window for Perfect Parries much more generous, but that's all the help you get. It's still easy to lose time failing to parry Wyvern's hard-to-read animations, or to lose rings by getting hit on the climb sections, or for things to just fuck up because these fights were always kinda jank. I gave it a few shots. I looked up guide videos. I tried the Quick Cyloop and stomp combo strat that seems all but mandatory. But I quickly decided that, again, this wasn't a worthwhile use of my time. It just sucks. And I really, REALLY didn't want to overwrite all my fond memories of these Titan fights, some of my favorite setpiece moments in any Sonic game, with memories of this shit ass boss rush.

So I cheated! And if you're on PC, you should too.

With the worst hurdle out of the way, I turned cheats back off and moved on to the new final boss. It was pretty cool. It's much flashier than the original fight against The End, that's for sure. It's still kinda annoying, and it requires you to do very specific shit without properly telegraphing it, but it's nowhere near as bad as the preceding challenges. I was hoping for one last new metalcore song to go with the new fight, which we sadly didn't get, but at least the new version of I'm Here is good.

The ending is... mostly the same, with a couple altered scenes that don't really change anything in the long run. But overall the new finale was pretty good. I just wish it hadn't been such a slog to get there.

Closing thoughts

Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon wants to be three things:

A patch that adds a new alternate ending that was probably supposed to be in the base game in the first place.

An experimental take on making Tails, Knuckles, and Amy playable again, presumably testing things for the next game. And...

An official Kaizo Sonic Frontiers mod for the sickos.

The thing is, the people showing up for #1 and #2, the main things that Sega hyped up about the update, are not necessarily going to be down for #3. If they had announced some uber-hard new Cyber Space levels for the arcade mode or whatever, I'd be like, neat! And then not play them. I would never touch Master King Koco's Trial if it was an optional challenge. I would leave that for the sickos. But instead, they made the hardest content mandatory for anyone who wants to see the new Good Ending where the final boss gets an actual budget.

I'm mostly left in a state of shock that it shipped like this. I cannot believe they playtested this and decided this was the state The Final Horizon should be released in. That this should be the note Frontiers ends on. That this should be how we remember those Titan fights. That this should be the lingering taste in our mouths as we wait however many years for the next 3D game.

Armchair devs always love to say that things would be "easy to fix," but like... there really would be easy fixes for the insane difficulty and general tedium here! Add a few more tutorial popups explaining what the game expects of you with Sonic's friends. Give the Cyber Space stages and the towers a couple checkpoints. Give the combat trials more generous time limits, especially on the lower difficulties. Remove half of the map puzzles, and make the ones that remain uncover twice as many squares. Skip the startup animation for Knuckles' glide. Let me turn on the goddamn jukebox. Since so much of this update was designed around fan feedback, I can only pray that Sonic Team is still listening, and that they tweak at least a few of these things with a balance patch.

But still, after those many, many paragraphs of complaining... this still somehow makes the future of 3D Sonic seem pretty promising?

Sonic's friends are FINALLY playable again, and the focus is back to proper 3D platforming, rather than railroading players into awkward forced 2D sections in what's otherwise an open world. These are the things that they hopefully want to carry over to the next game. The difficulty? Well, that's just because it's the postgame DLC that's supposed to be the toughest challenge in the game. It's just an unreasonably cruel one of those - an example of how designing and balancing for a vocal minority of your fanbase can really hurt your game. But Sonic Team is onto something here, and I hope that they can learn the right lessons from this expansion and not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[buckychristwrites]

When The Rain Gathers | Chapter Two | j.t.

↳  Pairing: Jamie Tartt x f!reader

↳ Word Count: 3.7k

↳  Summary: Pain hits like a downpour, but when a heartbreak from your past is what greets you at your new job at Nelson Road Stadium, it's more like a catastrophic tsunami.

↳  Warnings: Enemies to lovers, Discussion of parental abuse, fluff and angst.

Series Masterlist | Masterlist | Main Blog

“Fuck. Focus.”

Jamie paced outside of the door of your new office. The door was open, but the inside was completely bare save a desk, three chairs and a laptop. Due to the impending doom in his brain and the never-ending racing heart in his chest, he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. So, instead of waltzing into the changing room just moments before training was due to start, as he normally would, he was there an hour early, waiting for your arrival.

Hesitantly, he made his way into the empty office. Wherever he waited, he would feel like a shithead, so might as well feel like a shithead with his arse in a seat. It didn’t have any signs of you in it just yet, which made sitting there alone much easier to swallow. It wouldn’t be the same in the future, once the room was covered with your fingerprints and homey touches. He took the seat closest to the window. Heavy rain hit the glass and rooftop, making sure to echo throughout the entire building. It made him think of the drive in front of his mum’s house back home, and a little red car packed with luggage.

Blinking, he looked away.

“Jamie?”

He turned to find Dr. Fieldstone at the doorway. Her hand was on the frame as she stared at him.

“You alright, Doc?” He asked, shifting so he could comfortably face her. She took a glance around the room in obvious confusion.

“What are you doing here?” She asked. He took a glance around himself, realising how silly this must’ve looked. 

“Got an appointment this mornin’,” He said. It was a lie. But him feigning confusion was the only sort of explanation he could come up with. Sharon shook her head.

“Your appointment would be with me, but I don’t have you on my schedule.”

This made Jamie scrunch his face up in confusion.

“I thought…” He pointed to the desk. “I thought she…” Before he could continue with his thought, Sharon shook her head. It was like she read his mind. 

“Your appointments will continue with me,” She explained. “I was informed there’s a… conflict of interest.” She tilted her head to the side thoughtfully. 

He wondered how much you had told Sharon. Did she know everything? Did you tell her what he did? The kindness on her face suggested that she didn’t have a clue, but then again, it’s her job to pretend to be nice to him, wasn’t it?

He brought a hand to his face, running it across his forehead. Of course Sharon wasn’t being nice because it’s her job. That was just his mind running away from him. 

“Don’t get yourself worked up, Jamie,” She assured him. “We’re not allowed to treat people we know. It’s just not ethical. Nothing more than that.” He released his held breath. Giving him a knowing look, she leaned forward into the room, lowering her voice. “You can tell me why you think it’s about more than that at your appointment… tomorrow.” 

Oh man. She is good.

Dr. Fieldstone did not loiter, just gave him a final look before walking back to her office. Jamie remained seated as he ran a hand down his face. 

He tried to think of literally anything else, but when he looked outside at the rain again, all it did was bring back more memories of you. 

Every second that he was awake since the revelation yesterday, which had been a lot more time than he would’ve liked, he was on the brink of a complete mental breakdown. At this moment in your office, he found himself preemptively doing his grounding techniques. 

“I see and feel this desk,” He muttered to himself. He placed his other hand on the chair. “I feel this chair. I see a white wall. I see the…the rain…” 

What am I going to do without you?

“God dammit.” Resisting the urge to punch something, he ran his fingers through his hair. Maybe he should just go down to the changing room and get ready for training. Did this conversation really have to happen right now, this early morning? Maybe it could wait, at least until after training.

But it couldn’t. Jamie knew that well enough. It was already affecting him at home, keeping him up at night. Lord only knows how it would hurt him during training, if he didn’t get it out of the way. And if he fucked up on the pitch, Roy Kent would have his balls.

He knew the only way to move on was to open the door to communicate, and the only person to do it had to be the one who closed that door in the first place. Him.  

“Thank god me appointment is tomorrow,” Jamie muttered to himself as he grabbed his phone from his pocket, opening Instagram to pass the time.

“No, mum, I don’t have any appointments today,” You said into your phone speaker as you drove down the road. “It’s my first day. I think I’ll just be signing paperwork and going over policies. All that general stuff.” Behind you came a loud giggle, and when you glanced in the rearview, you caught Ivy hitting her hand against the window. She had always loved the rain, which she couldn’t have learned from you. The rain was your worst enemy.

“Did ya see Jamie Tartt?” Your mum asked, trying to sound casual. You stared out the windscreen, wondering why she would do this right now. All it did was force you to revisit the anger you had felt all of last night that she didn’t warn you of his place on the team. 

“Yes, I saw Jamie,” You sighed. 

“Did you kick him in the fuckin’ balls for me?”

This made you laugh. “No, unfortunately, my new boss who’s kind of scary was right there.” From the other side of the phone, you could hear her mutter something incoherent before she responded.

“Please do, when you get the chance, love.”

As you pulled into the car park of Nelson Road Stadium, Ivy let out another laugh. You could see the car of your babysitter waiting for you. 

“Alright, mum, I gotta go,” You said as you turned the car off. “Love you. I’ll phone later.”

“Love you, darlin’,” She said. “Give Ives a kissie from her nan.” 

“Will do.” Ending the call, you stuffed the phone in your pocket before grabbing your bag and climbing out of the car. When you opened the door to the backseat, Ivy was focused on the stuffed teddy on her lap. “Alright, love. Are you ready to go with the babysitter?” 

Ivy furiously shook her head. 

“No, please.”

You knew it would be hard. She had loved her babysitter back in the United States. Ivy wasn’t the type to become accustomed to strangers quickly, and you worried about the young girl behind you, who was climbing out of her car just as you undid Ivy’s seatbelts. 

“Thank you for meetin’ me here!” Shannon called to you as she shut the car door and made her way over. “My mum needed help with somethin’, and it was faster to meet you than to race home.” 

You glanced over towards her car, spotting the car seat that was similar to Ivy’s. A sigh of relief fell from your chest. At least you didn’t have to transfer the car seat over to her car.

“I should be thanking you,” You said as Ivy curled into your shoulder. “I know it’s last minute but I needed someone fast.” Shannon leaned her head towards Ivy, sending a wave her way. Though the toddler didn’t completely hide her face, she didn’t reciprocate the gesture, either. 

“Hello, Ivy,” She said delicately.

You set your daughter down on the cement. She pressed herself into your legs before looking up at the sky. For a moment, she seemed to forget the fear, her little hands reaching up as she smiled at the clouds. It was hard not to watch when she got like this. You had never seen any toddler behave like this about anything, so of course it would be yours who would have such a delightful, intense love for something.

“She loves the rain,” You explained to Shannon, who was looking at her in awe and confusion. “I’ve never met a toddler more obsessed.” 

Shannon kneeled down to Ivy’s level, her eyes warm and friendly. “I like the rain too. Would you like to be friends, Miss Ivy?” Ivy clearly was debating this, looking up at you for reassurance. You gave her a little nudge with a smile.

“I like Shannon,” You told her. “I think you’ll like her too. But you do have to go with her.” 

Ivy’s gaze found Shannon again as you guided her to the young girl. With all of the hesitation in the world, when Shannon offered her hand, Ivy took it but not before throwing you an unsure glance. 

“Maybe we can jump through puddles for a little bit before going back to the house!” Shannon suggested excitedly. “Would you like that?” Ivy’s eyes seemed to glaze over, and then she was jumping up and down in excitement. You sighed in relief as you kneeled down to say goodbye to your daughter. 

“I love you, babe,” You said to her, giving her a kiss and hug, which she lovingly returned. “Mummy’ll pick you up after work, okay?”

“Love you, mummy!” She shouted as you stood up. 

As Ivy turned to face Shannon, you grabbed a box of belongings for your office out of the backseat of your car. From what you could tell, as far as first meetings go, Ivy was doing incredibly well. Better than you had expected, considering the stress of the move and the new environment. Although, leaving her with babysitters never got any easier. You wished it were possible to just bring her to work with you. Having an adorable, therapy toddler would be perfect for the players.

Well. Except the one you wanted nowhere near her.

You gave them a quick wave before making your way inside. When you threw one last look over your shoulder, you found that Ivy had already found the largest puddle she could, jumping into it and sending water scattering. The anxiety in your chest was replaced with ease. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

The security guard waved you through without looking up from his computer. It was livelier this morning than it had been the previous day, with people shuffling down the hallways in packs. As you quickly walked in the direction that Rebecca had shown you to get to your office, you kept your head down. The first day jitters were hitting you hard at this moment. Sounds seemed to fade as you made your way up the stairway towards your office. The idea of being alone for even a moment before you started working with Sharon sounded just heavenly.

 You froze at the top of the steps, your eyes quickly spotting the presence waiting for you.

He was wearing a hat that boldly said I,COG. The brim covered his face as he looked down at his phone, but you knew it was him. You inhaled sharply before taking another step forward.

“Well, this isn’t quite the welcome wagon I had wanted.”

Jamie jumped out of the seat, his phone clattering to the floor. Without looking at him, you crossed into the room and rounded the desk, so you were on the opposite side as him. His eyes followed you the whole way, your chest burning in anxiety. This was the last thing you had expected, let alone wanted, to happen when you walked into Nelson Road Stadium that morning. You set the box of your things on your desk before letting your hands rest on your hips. 

“Fuck,” He muttered as he snatched his phone off the floor. The red in his cheeks and the disgruntled look on his face told you everything you needed to know. He was dreading this conversation just as much as you were. 

“What can I do for you?” Your voice was professional as you tried to put a wall up between yourself and him. Jamie stared at you before shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

“I just…Well…” He sighed. “I thought we should… talk.” 

You let out a prolonged “Oh…” with the corners of your mouth ticking upwards in a smile, but it wasn’t a kind one. The professionalism you had been forcing was quickly melting away. 

“A bit late for this talk,” You said, your eyes staring at the ceiling in thought. “Let’s see… about three years! Yeah, three years too late.” It was hard to keep your anger level down, as it was already boiling over in your chest. The heat that rose up your neck and into your cheeks was intense.

Jamie shook his head. “You have every right to be angry-“

“Well, thank fuck that I have your permission to be angry. No idea what I would do without it.”

Jamie’s hands gripped at the strap of his bag like he was holding on for dear life. You could see his nails were down to the nubs. You couldn’t help but wonder; When did he start biting them again? Pushing the thought away, you scolded yourself for caring.

Part of you felt bad for the sarcasm, but you couldn’t help it. Before starting this line of work, you were the most sarcastic person there was, and seeing Jamie brought out parts of you that you hadn’t visited in a long time. 

It felt like you had jumped into one of your daydreams. The dreams of finally getting to tell Jamie off for the turmoil he caused. In some of them, you were angrier, throwing things and screaming in his face. In others, you were indifferent to him, examining your nails as he begged for forgiveness at your feet. Now that the moment was here, the reality was it felt like it was a combination of a lot of things. The biggest emotion you felt, however, was just pain. Simply looking at him caused your chest to ache. 

For Jamie, however, all he felt was guilt, and waves and waves of devastation. Simply looking at you reminded him of his past failures, of the man his father had turned him into. The man he had been working so hard to stop being. When he would dream of this moment, he never imagined you’d forgive him, so at least you were following the script.

“Can I just explain-“

“I don’t want an explanation,” You said firmly, waving your hand. “I just want to come in, do my job, and leave. I didn’t ask for any of this.” He glanced around the room as he carefully considered his next words. 

“Did- did ya know? That I play here?” He asked slowly. You had begun pulling papers out of the box when he spoke, and you dropped a pad of paper down quite loudly on top of the desk, causing Jamie to flinch. 

“Yeah, Jamie,” You said, rubbing one of your eyes with a fist. “I not only continued to follow your career after you fucking dropped off the face of my world, but I decided to uproot my entire life and move back here from the other side of the Earth and take a job at this football club specifically just because you play here. And I did all of that because I’m still hopelessly in love with you, and am trying to win you back.” 

Jamie cocked a head as he stared at you. Though he should've been focusing on your words, regardless of how malicious they were, he was trying to pinpoint what was so different about you. A long moment passed before he spoke again. 

“Your accent is different.” 

He could tell the statement caught you off guard, as your breath hitched in your throat. 

“The Americans got to me.” It sounded rehearsed, and he wondered how your proud Mancunian mum handled hearing you talk these days. 

The two of you stared at each other in stunned silence. His eyes wandered until something in the box on the desk caught his eye. A small figure with deep brown hair and familiar looking eyes. Taking a step forward, he reached for a picture frame that was on top. 

“Who’s-“

You snap the lid shut, almost catching the tips of his fingers.

“What right do you have to know?” You asked, your voice cold. “What right do you have to know anything about me anymore?” 

He heard it. The quiver in your voice. The falter in your hard exterior. It was disarming. This felt so much different than any other anger you had ever directed towards him. In all of the years he had known you, you had never shut him out like this before. He didn’t know how to take it.

He conceded. “I guess I don’t.” 

“Great,” You said with reformed confidence. “Glad we agree. Now get the fuck out of my office.” Without wasting another second, you turned away from him, as if your heart wasn’t drowning in devastation. Instead, you kept pretending that it was fire in your chest. 

He hovered as you began to unpack the box once more. When you set out the picture frame he had reached for, you had angled it so he couldn’t see who was in the photo. Briefly, he considered trying to look at it again, now that it was out in the open, but he didn’t. The last thing he wanted to do was make you angrier than you already were. Instead, he turned, and made his way out the door and down the stairs. 

The changing room was well and alive when Jamie entered. Laughter and conversation greeted him like an old friend. He made his way to his locker with his head down. Though some hellos were tossed his way, he didn’t return them. His head was spinning too much to speak.

“Oi.”

Jamie turned to find Roy Kent making his way towards him. He sat down on the bench next to where Jamie had set his bag down.

“Did you talk to her?” He kept his voice low to avoid the nosey teammates from overhearing. Jamie scratched his nose.

“Erm yeah. We talked.”

“And how did it go?” Roy sounded surprisingly curious, and, though anyone knew he would never admit it, concerned. 

Jamie shook his head before saying, “Fuckin’ awful, mate.” 

“I think it went as well as expected,” You said into your phone. In the heat of the moment after Jamie had left the room, you did the first thing you could think of to clear your head: Call your mum.

“Did ya…” She hesitated, and you knew whatever she was about to say next wouldn’t be something you liked. “Did ya tell him? About Ivy?” I sigh heavily, the breath forcing its way out of my chest.

“Of course not.”

“He needs to know, love,” Your mum said softly. “Is he a right prick? Of course. But he deserves to know that he’s her-“

“Don’t say it, please.” With your free hand, you rub one of your eyes. You smack it down against the wooden desk before speaking again. “I’ll tell him when I’m ready.” You heard her laugh softly, making you wonder if she was trying to hide it from you. 

“The longer ya wait, the harder it will be, d’ya know what I mean?” 

“Yes, mum.” There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and then you heard a sigh come through the phone.

“You need to call me more so you can start talkin’ like a Mancunian again,” She scolded. “Can’t stand this new pseudo-American accent on you.” You shook your head in annoyance.

“Okay, bye mum,” You said, hanging up before she could say anything else. The phone made a loud noise when you tossed it across your desk. Resting your head in your hands, you let out a loud sigh. The day was not starting how you would’ve liked. 

A gentle knock at the door forced you to look up. Sharon walked into the room with a laptop and a giant binder. Across the spine read “Policies and Procedures.” She was eyeing you, but you couldn’t read her expression. As easy as it was to read everyone else, you clocked Sharon as the type who could hide herself away very well.

“You ready to get started?” She asked, sitting down in the chair that Jamie had previously been sitting in. Inhaling deeply in an effort to appear calm, you nod. 

“Of course.”

Out of the binder, Sharon pulls a stack of papers. 

“These are just the standard tax forms and policy agreements.” 

Without audibly responding, you take the stack and begin to flip through them. The room was silent besides the rain that continued to fall. It was hard to focus, as Jamie’s face kept appearing in your mind. Rope in the fact that you were being watched by someone who could professionally read people, and the struggle was intensely real.

“So…” Sharon started in a casual voice. “You and Jamie Tartt.” 

You glanced up in surprise. It was entirely unexpected for her to bring up. Sharon had a knowing smile on her face, the epitome of innocence. She didn’t wait for you to respond before speaking again. 

“What’s the story there?”

You think about her question. To say something. To not say something. Without meaning to, your eyes fall on the photo of Ivy that now sat on your desk. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see Sharon following your gaze to the frame, though she couldn’t see who was pictured on the other side. 

“It’s a long one,��� You tell her as your eyes fall back to the paperwork. She leans back in the seat. 

“Well, I’d love to hear it sometime,” She said in her gentle tone, a hint of curiosity. “If the look on Jamie’s face this morning, or your demeanour right now are any indicator, I’d say it’s certainly an interesting one.”

~

TAGS

@oncasette, @shiptheship, @ajkdjdnkekemfxj, @breepboopbap, @sssatorus, @jelleeyfish, @puckyou-forpuckssake, @ricciardhoe3, @buckybarnex, @loveslide, @hopefulromances, @sokkigarden, @optimisticsandwichgladiator, @hanybunch, @skewedcherries, @pythagothug

[pass1onepr1ncess]

I need everyone to look me in the eye and explain to me with no bullshit why they think that Diavolo x Doppio is proship. Abusive and/or toxic? Potentially- still not proship. And I swear to God if your only reasoning for this is that they're alters in the same body and/or in the same system I need you to sit down right in front of me, better yet lay down and listen to me very carefully.

Being in the same body/system does not equate to being related in any way. I've seen people say that "Doppio and Diavolo are brothers!" No they're not. They're two alters in a system. Similarly, I've seen other people say that - and this is even stranger because where they got this from I have no clue- Diavolo is also Doppio's dad like he's Trish's. No, he's not. They're alters in a system. Even if we go based on canon and throw fanon and headcannons out the window, their relationship outside of being the Boss and his right-hand man is never specified. Literally all we have to go on is that Doppio is comforted by Diavolo's presence and that Diavolo refers to him almost exclusively with words of endearment. This could be platonic, sure. Familial? Possible, but highly unlikely.

I'm not saying that alters in a system can't be related. The alters that our brains cook up can be anything, and familial relationships between alters is a thing. But specifically in the case of Diavolo and Doppio, this is never stated. Therefore, while you are allowed to headcanon them as such, do not force that headcanon onto others when it's not true in the source media.

And if you think that DiaDop is proship because it's an in-system relationship, buddy do I have news for you. Alters have in-system relationships all the time. I, myself, am in an in-system relationship with the Sheila E in our system. Another friend of ours has an in-system relationship in their system. System friends that I knew before that we don't talk to anymore had in-system relationships, and I've seen other systems online talk about their own in-system relationships.

If your only problem with DiaDop is that they're in the same body/system, I can only assume you're a singlet and to that I say:

Fuck off. If you don't know enough about how systems work, you don't get to make that decision. Especially if the decision in question is accusing a harmless ship of being incestuous or pedophilic. Which- by the way- they're both adults! It would be a different story if one of them were underage even in the same system, but they are both grown ass adults! Even with the changes in their body between them fronting, Doppio is described to be a young adult!

And lastly, if your only other reason for accusing DiaDop of being proship is because you don't like it and have some need to justify that dislike? I think you need to do some introspection. I mean this in the best possible way, but if you feel like you have to justify your discomfort for something as small as a pairing of fictional characters, you might want to look in the mirror and ask yourself why that's the case. Especially if you're going to the lengths of accusing that fictional pairing of being proship.

This whole next bit is gonna be my personal thoughts- but might I just add that the whole thing of Doppio's comfort in Diavolo's presence or on "calls" with him and Diavolo calling him "My Sweet Doppio" and other such things really feels to me like implied romance. Especially in the only Jojo part (other than SBR) with canonical queer representation (SquaTizi and Sorlato), it's a bit hard to ignore, in my opinion!

Anyway, I've seen people be weird about DiaDop for a while now and I was just gonna hold my tongue, but the more I thought about why they would think that the more I realized that it's all singlets who just don't understands systems and assume they can talk for all of us. It pissed me off, so here I am.

If there's any reason to call DiaDop proship that I haven't debunked, please enlighten me. But otherwise? Shut up.

[randomwriteronline]

@cantankerouscanuck

Berix had never seen this much water before.

Or this many girls.

He couldn't quite decide which was more overwhelming.

He latched onto Nuparu's arm like a lifeline, looking around the essentially finished village nervously as if fearing that a pack of Vorox would jump out of the seaweed and brick huts at any moment. His Toa companion wasn't nearly as preoccupied as him as they made their way to the docks: he'd given the Agori a weird look when he'd first asked, in a sort of strangled voice, if it was true that the Ga-Matoran were all female, and hadn't understood his apprehension when he'd replied that yes, of course they were, what else did he expect? He'd only grown steadily more confused by Berix's short list of other possible options, and so the Gaquri had decided to just keep that strange tension he couldn't explain to himself.

One of the Matoran waved at them as they approached the port, recognizing the Toa who greeted her back. She must have been the one who'd sent Macku to ask for a mechanic - her boat had been damaged during fishing, and while repairing the hull had all in all been easy work, the engine kept sputtering to life for only a second before dying down with a pitiful lament.

She looked Berix up and down with a sort of mild curiosity: "Why's she here?"

The Gaquri's scales rattled with a tremble, almost turning indigo from the embarrassment: "I'm not a girl," he mumbled awkwardly, extremely quiet, as he tried to disappear behind Nuparu.

"Berix works with me," the Toa explained simply.

"And I'm not a girl."

"And he's not a girl."

"He's male?"

"Yes."

"Huh!" she exclaimed, hands on her hips: "Well, I'll be. Does that mean they've got females for all the other elements like we've got males for them instead?"

"They've got all genders in all elements."

"Is that so! Like the Skakdi?"

"Sort of. What was the problem?"

"Oh, yes! The engine, over there. We turned it over, in, out, sideways and upside down, but we've got no clue what's the matter with it. You used to be good with this sort of thing?"

"Still am," Nuparu replied, and with little fanfare walked to the side of the pier and plunked into the water.

Berix did not follow him.

The Matoran watched the Onu-Toa swim under the boat. After roughly two minutes, she gave the Gaquri a worried glance.

"He's - he's amphibious," he reassured her.

"Ah!" she sighed in relief. "Like you folks."

"Uh - I, hm, no, no, we're - we're not, ah, we can't, breathe. In the water, I mean."

"You can't?"

"N-no."

"But you're all fishy and stuff."

"W-well, you're - we're - uh - we, we can see, fine, in there because we've got these- there's little eyelids we can - we can see fine in there, b-but we can't breathe like fish."

"But you can swim well?"

"I'm, uh, I-"

"Turn on the engine," Nuparu's voice saved him as the inventor's head popped back out of the water: "I can't see anything weird with the propellers either. The problem might be a conjoined anomaly that happens upon ignition."

Berix shot him a grateful look as the nosy Water-maiden's focus was redirected away from him and she hurried to comply with the Toa's demand. His friend raised a thumbs up at him.

"By the way, do you know where Gali is?" he continued.

"Uh? Should be meditating down at the bay."

"Alright, thanks." then, pointing the Gaquri in the right direction: "You go on ahead, I'll handle this here and meet you halfway."

With a trembling smile and a little thumbs up of his own, Berix legged it as far away from the pier and the talkative sailors as he could, as fast as his legs could carry him.

A great chunk of the mountain the village stood at the feet of had fallen into the sea during the Mending, crumbling into a sort of rocky half circle that cut off the sandy beaches and turned them into a series of bigger and smaller ciffs surrounding the water. The Matoran and Agori had wasted no time carving paths into the sharp walls, be they smoothed trails or stairs of varied length: little constructions could be found alongside them - fishieries, solitary homes, even the skeleton of what looked like an astronomical observatory the works of which surveyed by an eccentric Ga-Matoran (Nixie, her name was) who kindly pointed him towards a track further down when he asked her for directions.

Gali sat crosslegged before the waves, as still as a statue. Seafoam sprayed her rhythmically, but it didn't seem to break her concentration in the slightest.

Berix hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

He cleared his throat; but it was too quiet, and she didn't hear him.

Grabbing as much courage as he could with both his hands, he took a deep breath and almost shouted: "Hello!"

The Toa shifted imperceptibly at first. After a moment more she broke her perfect posture and looked back in search for whoever had called out to her until her eyes met the young Gaquri's; at which point she squinted for a little before replying with a wave of her hand: "Hello. May I help you?"

He froze in place.

They exchanged a long glance for a while.

"I'm Berix," he cawed out.

"Ah!" she exclaimed in sudden recognition, pointing at him: "Yes! Kiina's brother! I know you, we've met!" and before he knew it she'd climbed all the way up to him with a jovial glint in her eyes that made her mask look as though she was smiling. "I'm sorry, I still struggle telling Agori from one another when you folks are out of your armor. I guess it's even worse for you, what with our masks..."

"I- i-it's a little, a little bit, yeah, not the easiest, really," he nodded with a sort of tinny nervous laugh, suddenly aware of how much larger than him she was now that she was standing so close, enveloping him completely in her shadow.

Her eyes gleamed in a friendly manner: "Is there something you need my help with?"

There was, yes - technically, but yes.

Unfortunately, his body was refusing to let him speak his request into existence as hard as it could.

His scales rattled as he trembled fiercely, feeling weaker and weaker at the knees; he struggled to produce even just a single phoneme under her shining gaze, fingers twisting around the fabric of his clothes so fast that he almost tore it at the seams.

His throat unclogged only when she began to make a gentle sound, like another question, and in a sudden hurry to avoid that he wheezed: "I can't swim."

Gali blinked.

"I mean-" he corrected hastily, "I mean, I can dive and come back up and not drown and sort of, sort of move in the water, you know, but I can't- I'm not, really, that good, at actually - yes, I mean, you know, because I - there's, was, a desert and not - they're not, really, known, for having much, uh, much water, right?, right, s-so it's not that I, that I d-don't know how to- well I don't know how to swim, b-but I can float and dive and- and, and--"

"Then you came to the right Toa," she interrupted him. "I'll be glad to teach you."

Her arm slipped under his armpits and lifted him up to rest against her chest plate in one swift motion, keeping a tight hold on him so that he wouldn't risk slipping; helping herself with her tools, she jumped back down the small cliffs until she was at the edge of the water, and plopped the both of them into it with a little hop, Berix's head never coming even close to being submerged.

He clung hard around her neck with his arms when the frigid sea met his scales, shivering with a harsh whimper and curling up against her. He could feel what little weight he had try to drag him down, he was certain of it.

A wide hand pat his spine: "You've got nothing to fear," Gali reassured him. "I'm right here with you, and my mask will let you breathe underwater so long as I'm close by."

"How- how, how does it do that?" he asked, "D-did you test it?"

"Yes, don't worry! Just don't go too far."

Before the sight of the endless ocean and the rockus of the waves crashing into the stone, Berix swallowed a little trembling frightened laugh and tightened his grip around her: "Who's leaving?"

Gali swam slowly forward, carrying him along much like a river drags a sleeping otter that hadn't secured its hold onto a nearby plant.

Once she was far enough from the shore she turned to face the sky and began prying the scaled limbs from her shoulders; the young Gaquri, predictably, replied to her action by clinging onto her with all of his strength and shot her a wide eyed stare filled with terror.

"You'll never learn anything if you just stick to me," she argued.

"Maybe I don't mind that!"

The way she squinted doubtfully at him reminded him of Kiina.

Without any warning, she dipped a little further down, submerging herself completely. Berix immediately let go of her to pull himself through the surface, gasping for air as though he'd dived for hours and flailing his arms wildly to keep himself afloat; steady palms grasped the sides of his chest and helped him remain out in the dry air while Gali took her time coming back up.

"There!" she concluded mischievously. "That wasn't so bad, was it? Now we can start making some real progress."

He blew a raspberry at her face, making her cackle.

"Start by kicking your feet instead of splashing around aimlessly like that," she instructed: "Gently - take a look at my legs if you need to. Steady little kicks with both feet, like you're getting a pebble out of the way - not too strong, and keep that going."

She observed him carefully as he tried to follow her words. Her hands moved to hold his arms, then his forearms, then his palms; he panicked a little when she left him completely, but aside from a quick dip and a lot of frightened sputtering she found himself more than satisfied with how he was handling the situation.

The praise bubbling in her throat was however stopped by a quick frightened shriek as the Gaquri leaped onto her, scrambling for cover.

Beady orange eyes peeked from the waves to stare intently at them, the tips of large grey teeth barely visible through the water as its blue maw huffed in their direction...

"Kiriri!" the Toa exclaimed.

The massive beast pumped its thin front legs at her in greeting.

Berix could only watch flabbergasted as she gently caressed the mechanical creature's head, talking to it as though it were a harmless Scarabax beetle: "I was about to rip your mask right off again! Is this the way to show up, scaring us like that?"

The animal gurgled something in response, perfectly happy with its choice of introduction.

"You're lucky Kotu loves you to bits."

"You know this? Thing?" the Gaquri wheezed.

She laughed a little: "Kiriri and I go way back," she nodded. "I fought him off once and he's been the sweetest Tarakava on Aqua Magna ever since. Though like his caretaker, he dabbled in pranks a bit too ofted for most beings' liking..."

"A-a-and he's, is he dangerous? Does, does he eat fish, o-or meat, or, or meat with scales on it, or-"

"He enjoys algae and other water plants," the Toa reassured him. Struck by a mischievous vein, she smirked: "Maybe let's keep him away from your head."

She couldn't hold back a giggle as the poor young thing hurriedly grabbed the lichens growing out from under his scales like hair and tried his hardest to pull them away from the sharp maw sniffing at him curiously.

Many smaller pairs of black eyes also poked through the waters with curious sounds, agitating their little white tusks towards Gali with a certain familiarity.

"And what are these?!" Berix wailed as he tried to lodge himself into her armor.

"Don't scream like that, these are no threat either!" she laughed: "They're Waikiru! Some of the most mellow Rahi I've ever met. Give me your hand, I'll let them get to know you."

He whimpered as she held his palm out towards the creatures: almost immediately they were piling up to take a better look, grazing him with their massive teeth but never hurting him, just honking and barking softly. One even brushed its neck against his fingers as if asking for scritches, prompting Kiriri to push his big snout between them to get a pat as well - making him grumble a little disappointedly when the organic being pulled back away from him.

Gali nudged Berix to extend his arm again with a stern look. Despite his better judgement, he complied.

He wasn't particularly fond of animals. Their smells, their sounds, the weird way they moved and conveyed their thoughts - it was all terribly overwhelming and unpredictable, too dangerous. They were always too big or too small, and so far the only ones he'd been able to stomach had been Click and (for only a few minutes) the Rock Steed he'd somehow managed to ride during the attack against the Skrall.

But Kiriri's snout was metal, protodermis - caked in brine and scratched, but immediately distinguishable. It was fairly smooth and cold, just like a shield, or a mask: the top of his head had the hard edges of a variety of vehicle parts he had worked with during the years, and the rumbling noises that denoted his pleasant mood were awfully similar to those of a well oiled machine toiling away at its job, steady and functioning just right.

The Waikiru were rougher, with more dents and harsher textures, but all the same just as mechanical, just as familar; their barks had a tinny quality to them, their honks were more rubbery. Their flippers waded through the water with the quick precise movements of automated paddles.

"They're not so bad, right?" Gali's voice reached him.

Her hand was near him (he could feel the movement in the water, the way it gently disturbed the smaller lichens growing across his body) but wasn't sustaining him. He had been so caught up in petting the Rahi that he hadn't even noticed she'd slowly let go of him.

Berix gave her a small, wobbly smile: "They're different," he replied. "From- from the other ones, I mean. The ones from here, I mean, from Spherus Magna."

"Well, they seem to like you well enough," the Toa noted with a smile: "Maybe they could swim with us."

"With, with us?"

"Why not? You'd have someone else to latch onto for a change."

"Hey!"

Her laugh held no malice: "Come on," she grinned as she kicked her feet just enough to splash a few droplets on his face, heading a little further into the open waters, "Who knows if they won't teach you a thing or two themselves."

Kiriri and the herd followed along, gently pulling the Gaquri with them as he held onto the large reptile.

They swam a while - at least an hour or so. Berix had no idea one could spend so much time in the water. It felt profoundly unnatural in a way; in another, it felt like home in a way Bara Magna couldn't. At the end of the lesson he could paddle fairly fine, and even somewhat imitate a Waikuru's gait.

Gali noticed Nuparu first as he waved from the cliffs.

She replied to his greeting with a friendly shout, turning the focus of Rahi and young man alike back to shore.

"I didn't know he was here," she noted.

"Oh, he- for, we got a, uh, a Matoran needed a repair and so he, we, we came over," the Gaquri answered quickly; he waved back to let his fellow tinkerer know he was looking right at him.

The Onu-Toa brought his hands to the mouth of his mask and made a strange gesture, as if a cone were expanding from it.

Berix tried to reply with both arms, but what little weight he had wasn't quite enough to keep him afloat and almost caused him to sink into the waves. He climbed carefully onto Kiriri to stabilize himself and finally managed to show both thumbs down.

Nuparu gave him two thumbs up; he smacked a hand on his own head, made a swinging motion downwards twice, and pointed off to the side.

"What language are you two speaking?" Gali whispered, more than a little baffled.

"Oh, it's - you know, when there's welding and hammering and- and all that stuff, it gets, it gets hard to hear, when you talk," the kid explained as he gave the other thumbs up. "He said he's - he'll be helping the, uh, with the observatory."

She made a sort of strange drawn-out knowing clicking sound as she watched the other Toa make his way back up the cliff, soon disappearing from sight - whether because he was just that quick or from activating his Volitak, it was hard to tell: "We should get back to shore too. I think about an hour and a half of swimming is more than enough for a first lesson."

Berix paddled most of the way there, and was very proud of it.

A couple Waikiru nudged him up the rocks with their heads as the rest of the herd honked encouragingly, accompanied by Kiriri's deep gurgling goodbye. The Gaquri's clothes were sopping wet, dripping all over the cliffside as if aching to jump away into the sea again; strangely, the drenched fabric didn't feel so bad.

Gali smiled, still in the water: "See you, then. I'll be glad to swim with you again."

She watched him nod, mumble something like a goodbye.

Then he stood still.

He played with his fingers a while, scratching at his scales with newfound nervousness, shifting from one foot to the other. He seemed to be debating something with himself, whimpering and hissing under his breath far too fast for her to keep up.

At last he made his decision: he shut his eyes, sucked in a big breath, stiffened his spine, clenched and unclenched his fists, and pointed a trembling finger at the now sumbfounded Toa.

With as unwavering a voice as he could muster, he stated: "I know you're having sex with my sister."

Gali blinked: "Yes," she replied, a bit puzzled, "Should I stop?"

Berix sputtered a little (he had expected a variety of things, but not that) before regaining some amount of countenance and managing to continue on his line of thought: "Well, it's - you... You better treat her right. Or I, I will challenge you in the arena about it. And I'll kick you ass."

The Ga-Toa continued to watch him.

She extended her hand and grasped the Gaquri's wrist with a deathly serious expression. He flinched hard, but held as still as he could.

"I promise you, upon my honor as protector of Mata Nui," she spoke solemnly: "So long as I live, I will respect and care for Kiina with all of myself, and give her the best sex she's ever had."

Berix wheezed loudly, unable to find a more suitable answer.

He nodded very stiffly, shaking her hand; she made the same motion as him with a satisfied look.

"I," he stammered: "I- uh, it's, I'm, know that she can just - do, that, on her own of course- challenging you, I mean, she'd, she'd p-probably be better than me at fighting too, but you know, she- she's m-my sister and I- I-"

Gali snickered: "Don't worry, I get it," she reassured him: "I'd fight off anybody who threatened my siblings' well-being no matter the disadvantage too."

She let go of him and leaped backwards, landing with a splash amongst the Waikiru.

He watched her mask reemerge several bio away; she waved goodbye back at him with a wide smile before disappearing beneath the waves again with the rest of the herd.

The Gaquri stood before the sea.

A wave rocked against the shore a little softer.

The gentle sound snapped him out of his daze, and he hurriedly climbed back up the cliffs towards the observatory.

Nuparu was knee deep in some kind of argument with Nixie regarding the actual use for astrology and whether or not it was more interesting and-or worth putting effort into studying than astronomy when Berix finally arrived. The Ga-Matoran continued to chew his audio processor off even when his attention had very clearly turned elsewhere - though she was quick to turn around and blabber on to the rest of the construction crew, who seemed much less intent on arguing with her statements than the inventor was and simply enjoyed some chattering during work.

"So?" Nuparu asked genuinely curious: "How did it go?"

His friend, dripping water everywhere, straightened his shoulders for what felt like the first time in his life: "Good! I think. Pretty good."

He bounced on his heels and clicked his tongue.

"I even learned how to swim."

[nerdieforpedro]

One Failed Search - Security Log Drabbles

Part of the Secret Springs Creative Shenanigans

Frankie Morales x Chloé Thomas (plus size AFAB OFC)

My entire masterlist and blog are for readers 18+ MDNI. I do not consent to my work being used in AI, recommended on TikTok, borrowed or plagiarized.

Summary: Lieutenant Chloé Thomas is trying to investigate Frankie Morales - the Harvey Air pilot that she can barely find information on. It does not go well, or perhaps it did?

Warnings: Jokes and puns, fluff, food reference, very bad nicknames, an angry and flexible York, implied smut? (That came early), double M’s, our pilot being a menace, lots of ass and sass, a sprinkle of Spanish, anxiety, crime listings

Word Count: over 2.3k (Drabble? I mean, it’s what I told myself originally.)

Notes: I decided to make it a personal log because that made me giggle the most, I apologize in advance @secretelephanttattoo but you do have two M’s so we’ll call it even. Possible guest mentions (they didn’t ask and neither did I but I thought of them and then stuck cute things in the graphic so here we are) of @goodwithcheese @maggiemayhemnj and @tinytinymenace

You’ll find yourselves. 😎 ❤️❤️❤️

Thanks to @megamindsecretlair and @soft-persephone for listening to me babble about it. @angelofsmalldeath-codeine & @fhatbhabiee for the Spanish. I may use what I asked later.

Main Masterlist/ Frankie Morales Masterlist

My name Chloé Thomas - head of Top Flight Security for the Secret Springs resort. I would write this out but the thought of annoying York with the sound of my voice delights me greatly. I’m starting my little bit of fun now. That's funny because my code name used to be siren because…wait.

Anyway, I’ve just finished messaging York again about final preparations for security of the Secret Springs resort. He is still refusing the red short-shorts, I told him that the guys work out to stay fit, why can’t they show it off a little? We might even want to think about a calendar at some point, this was a joke, but Dave got mad. I told him he could put a pair to sport around for his Lady Gouda Cheese and he promptly messaged me back in all caps, “DO NOT MENTION HER AT ALL. I WILL NOT HAVE YOU GIVING HER IDEAS!!!” He used all sorts of angry emojis but I know that he’d do it for her. He also said not to call her that nickname but it’s a fancy cheese. I think. She also has a thing about ties and leather jackets. I never gave her ideas. He blames me, but she tells me what she has him do. I didn’t know York was that flexible. Good for him I say, also it explains why he doesn’t want anyone touching his neck.

Everyone has their kinks. Mine seems to be voices and hands. A strange combination. I also found another one - broad men.

Correction - this is about one such man. The pilot of this charter plane for Harvey Air. I swear it was only because I couldn’t find any information on him other than his name, his date of birth, nationality and current address. It sounds like plenty but I’m usually able to see past work history, convictions or court cases, financials and such. He has none. It’s all blacked out. Dave said he vetted him but it’s still strange. The mayor’s Pooka Shells (her main squeeze Marcus Pike) and Silver Rim (her second squeeze Marcus Moreno - they’re still workshopping his code name. She said she would let me know the final one. Gotta tell the difference between those Marcus’s) both vouch for this man.

It makes me more curious, which is why I spoke very kindly to the flight attendant and she let me slide by into the cockpit. I think she was too busy trying to flirt with a man who had been wearing a flannel shirt but took it off and now he’s in a white t-shirt. We haven’t taken off yet and the pilot isn’t here so I poke around, maybe there’s a clue.

I’m caught red handed, bent over laying on my stomach over the seat because I’m too damn short, trying to reach a small duffle bag next to the pilot’s chair. “Can I help you Miss? And careful standing up, you might give me more of a show than you already are.”

I freeze, embarrassed that I’m not only caught but might have my ass out. Mayor El said, ‘Wear a dress, you’ll look pretty in pink.’ I mean, yes I do and I love how I look in fuchsia but I don’t want to show the man my cheeky undies, no matter how much I like that they’re peach and match my bralette. I lean back and put a hand carefully on the control panel? I forgot to ask him what it’s actually called. I don’t stand up yet because I feel a little too much air on the back of my thighs and it feels like he could already see my drawers or will be soon.

“I’m going to reach under your arms and lift you up. That alright Miss?” The pilot asks and I agree. I’m horrified, how he’s going to be touching me and feeling my arms. He might not even be able to and then we’re both going to be on the floor in this cramped space and might delay the flight. God I’m going to hear about this from the Mayor, York and everyone. His tone thus far has been one of concern, I’m not sure why, I was trying to go through his stuff. To be honest, I kinda just want to lie here and not face him, I’ve never had a good poker face and I’ll likely have my mouth open from his resonant voice. My body is a different type of tense now.

Surprisingly, I’m up on my feet while I’m still working out how I’m going to get off the floor when we both fall. We did not. His hands are sitting underneath my arms for a few moments before he retracts them. I turn to face him and it’s horrible. Just the worst possible outcome.

One of his large hands is on his chin. He’s wearing a hat that says, ‘Standard Heating Oil’ and it’s covering onyx curls that frame his face and circle the back of his neck. Stroking the scruff on his cheeks, he asked me a question and I could only respond, “Run that by me again please.” His eyes are the color of my favorite flavor - chocolate. Damn it all to hell. His scant file did not have a photo, he is a beautiful man who has a slight scowl on his face.

He sighs and repeats, “I said I’m the pilot and is there a reason you’re in my seat trying to get my bag?” Very good question. Important question. At this point, I should have gave it a moment and then responded but I did not. Because, well I am me.

“I didn’t know pilots came that broad or strong. What do they feed you? Sure it isn’t some deluxe hearting oil?” There have been many moments in life where I have wanted to hide under a blanket or lock myself in a room. This is a whole new level and I need to be in a padded room. The only blessing is that instead of kicking me out of the cockpit, he laughs. I’m not embarrassed, I’m way past that. Who needs shame when his entire face has brightened? Good thing my emotions tend to change quickly.

The booming sound of his laugh coupled with him throwing his head back and holding his chest, enables me to have a small grin. I’ve made him laugh, I might be able to distract him a bit more. Slowly, I move toward the door and at his side. Frankie steps past me and picks up his bag. It has his wallet, a guide book to the Secret Springs, cell phone and a water bottle. “Am I cleared Lieutenant?” His question makes my eyebrows raise, he has a shit-eating grin. “I know you’re in charge of security. Both Marcus’s told me.” Pooka Shells and Chrome Rim or Silver Dollar - whatever the Mayor actually calls him, I’ll shake the both of them when I get there.

“I see. So they told you my title, did they tell you my name Francisco?” I cross my arms and lean my weight back on my right leg. A stance I use when I’m trying to seem pissed, really I’m hiding my shock. Apparently, I truly am easy to read and he puts the bag down and his hands up. Messing me, I might be a bit pissed now.

“Surprisingly, they did not. Said you’d get mad if they mentioned it. They weren’t supposed to know your name is but it was…teased out of the Mayor. Not sure which one did it.” My hands are over my face. Dammit Mayor���.bad enough they know and they can get information out of you. It should be fine, maybe. That’s something I’ll need to follow up on.

“Just, not everyone needs to know. We’re going to have plain clothes guards to ensure safety at the resort. I’ll go back to my seat now. Sorry for trying to look through your things. I don’t like unknowns. Your file was scant and even though the double M’s, York and the Mayor said things were fine-“

“You trust but verify. Understandable. More people should. Well lieutenant,” Morales crosses his arms and takes a step toward me. “You’re welcome to sit in here with me. I can fly this bird without your help, but you seem interesting company teniente (Lieutenant).” His sizable palm pats the backrest of the co-pilot’s seat and snort. Why did I snort?! I avoid that even when I laugh really hard. Dangerous, but I sat down anyway. I was invited after all.

The flight over is smooth as butter, with the exception of a spot of turbulence and landing the plane, I didn’t notice the time go by accept it was too short. And that Frankie mutters while on the ascent and descent and it nearly has me arching my back in my seat. Thankfully I did have a silver of composure and fiddled with my headphones. All the guests are off the plane so I exit with Frankie and the flight attendant who is despondent that Surly Flannel (I didn’t call him this to his face. His resting face is a disapproving glare) has not agreed to see her after disembarking. Instead, he meets a woman who’s holding a boom box and they laugh about a flower. I didn’t get to hear what kind.

The Mayor competes her speech with one Marcus on each side, everyone is excited and there don’t seem to be any reports of thief, violence or the like so far. People are just having fun. It’s nice and peaceful. Where do I go now? I’m in this pretty dress with no where to go for the afternoon.

I mill around the security HQ and decide to explore in the evening when it’s cooled off a bit.

But of course the pilot finds me. “You still on duty lieutenant?” He’d been wearing a simple red shirt and cargo pants with fifty pockets on them earlier. Now he was on a white tank almost silk looking shirt with pink shorts that hit just above his knee. If they were a little higher, I’d be able to see a bit more thigh…

“Always on duty. Are you enjoying yourself so far Francisco?” I ask mainly to distract myself and focus on his face instead of looking down at his shorts. I was transparent about it so I’m sure he noticed. I need to be away from him, I’m just going to keep raking over his body with my eyes and it’s not right. But also…it’s not fair that he looks and smells amazing.

“Yup. Scrounging up people for the bar and the games.” The bar part fits, picturing him pouring drinks and shaking that silver mix cup thing with his arms flexing, biceps curling that devilish grin on his face. I meant to exhale but didn’t open my mouth and just hummed. I can normally present like a sane person, he makes my brain short circuit.

This is the first time I’ve seen Frankie react besides laughing. Humming is pretty weird and I’ve only met him today. “Why games at the bar? The drunk people should be enough to handle.” It sounds like a horrible combination and ripe for problems. I don’t need to go to this bar or any bar with him.

He shifts his weight and tilts his head. Then holds his hand out, “Come see teniente (lieutenant). Judge for yourself.” I shouldn’t have taken this hand, more like I couldn’t help it. I’m weak against that grin of his. Morales has charmed many a person with curling lips like that.

Now Frankie is pouring the drinks and I’m on the outskirts of a twister game that is all giggles and ass. There’s a darts game going on in the corner, a lady keeps trying to start karaoke but three of the other local shop owners keep unplugging her microphone. There one man with a scar on over his eye, shirtless and has a woman and her dog who has an adorable rainbow collar on and curls almost as fluffy as Frankie’s sitting in his lap as he drinks out of a chalice.

Where did he get a chalice? Should there be darts over there? Who brought a karaoke machine in here? Why do the twister people have no pants? Like all have nice asses but everything is overwhelming and the two blueberry mint juleps I’ve had are not helping.

Squeezing through a row of cheeks I’m not sure how I ended up in the middle of, I am back at the bar and Frankie has his hand resting in the palm of his hand. “Teniente (Lieutenant), you ever relax? You seem on edge. Have some fun and maybe another drink.” I ordered a mojito this time, change it up a bit. The bar stool I had to hop up on so my feet are hanging. Seeing the bartending pilot at eye level has me clear my throat and swallowing my own spit. My mouth is watering. I need to grip something and there’s only the bar counter. My hands flat against the surface keeps me from floating away.

“Like I said, I’m still on duty. Water please after this drink.” He pours me some on ice to have after my mojito. I remember drinking it. There was some sort of music and he was holding my hand or was holding his. Then my hand was on his chest. I think we were dancing and he switched out with someone so he could come from behind the bar.

I awoke in a room that wasn’t mine and was able to make it back in time for the morning security briefing with the double M’s, York and the Mayor. It did not help that I was wearing the same dress from yesterday. There were lingering looks, but no one asked.

Thankfully, York has agreed to wipe the video if I never mention red shorts again. It’s a great loss, but I concede. Hanging over a concrete barrier is never a good look, thankfully Frankie helped me down, but what was I trying to do? Was it that bad that I blocked it out?

Ending day one log:

Violence - None

Public intoxication - Three (sadly I was one of them)

Public Nudity - Five (not as many as I expected)

Destruction of Property - One (I don’t remember that either)

Injuries: Minor = six, Major = none

Chloé’s well-being: took majors blows but might recover TBD

Security Log Two

[veny-many]

I got an idea that Plo undercovering to clone slavery market place with Wolffe because I wanted.

Jedi Order had received worrying news that many Clone troopers are lost in underworld, and some body of them found in sewer, with the evidence of many abuse and torture.

Jedi suspected Clone abduction and slavery, but it was not easy to find any clue of the criminals, and yet numbers of the victims is rising everyday.

Plo Koon was one of the Jedi who was tasked to track down the slavery, and he was so concerned about abducted Clones, since he had many experience about trafficking and slavery from the time when he was working as a seeker. Jedi knew he had experience, and slightly not-so-concerned about him.

Plo: I will serve the Order, Masters.(quietly leaves room)

Mace: ...He will going to use that lightning.

Obi-wan: What lightning?

Yoda: Strong assurance, indeed I have.

Of course the tracking of the slavery was not easy task. They ran away fast, and performed act quickly. With no evidence or clue.

One day, Wolffe talked to Plo, about the new plan he made for hunting.

Wolffe: General, I want to propose you to undercover the role as a slaver.

Plo: I am not satisfied about the plan, but there's no time for more consideration.

Wolffe: Thank you sir. Don't worry, I will be by your side as a slave.

Plo: No need to thank wait what!?

Wolffe plan is like this: Him, as a lost clone, will be sold to slavery, and Plo will act as a slaver who abducted Clone and want to sell him. Since Clones all have same faces, and Kel-Dor are not easy to tell apart by their appearance for other sentients, it sill be easy to undercover without suspect.

Plo of course horrified by the plan. He didn't wanted to act as a criminal, but if that's a duty he will, but letting his man to be abducted to criminals? He tried to convince Wolffe, but he was so determined for his brothers.

Wolffe: I know it is very difficult and disturbing role for you, General. And I am deeply sorry for proposing this.

Plo: There should be other way-

Wolffe: But the troopers were missing in every day, even in our battalion had a missing brothers, we don't even know if he is still alive or dead, or worse.

Wolffe: I want to make sure for my troopers to be safe. At least safe from one thing, the thing that no other than Jedi had concerned about. Please General, if this succeeds, we can make great progress for the hunting.

Plo: ...

Comet: (suddenly appeared) But why you, Commander? We are Clones too, it is too risky to let you go when there's a risk about losing Clone Commander.

Boost: Yes, we can go there, you don't have too...

Wolffe: No.

Sinker: But...

Wolffe: No. Never. I would not let my mans to go in danger under my command.

Plo: (heart broken in million pieces and still calmly collecting them) I will make sure you will be safe, Wolffe.

...and how do I end this... um...

So... few days later, there was a sudden lightning in underworld's sewer, and some fried(but alive) slavers founded, Corries arrested them(with some punches), and many lost Clones came back to their brothers, and Wolffe never shut down his mouth while he was proudly announcing Fox(having headaches) about how his General awesomely took care of those assholes with bare hand and lightning, in the bedside he was recovering from abuse of slavery.

Plo calmly explained about the act at the sewer, with no regrets, and Councils were like "yes we knew you would fry them, you had history"

And Wolffe got banned from cookie store in 104th battalion's kitchen because of his reckless plan and making his brothers worried.

Wolffe: I found our brothers and this is how you treating me!?

Comet: Yes. I would never forgive you for making us worried.

Boost: And all of the cookies will be mine. Yummy!

Sinker: Hey, give me that jar Boost!

Wildfire: Cookies? COOKIES!!

Warthog: MINE MINE MINE

Wolffe: (witnessing his brothers' mess at kitchen with headache by the number)

Plo: (making notes about getting troopers more cookies)

[gaywatch]

So I started watching the first episode of The Sign, right? I'd had it on my computer for a couple/few days and couldn't immediately remember what it was actually about, but I knew it was a new Thai BL genre mashup thing I'd seen on my dash and that's good enough for me.

A team of special agents infiltrate a big warehouse/facility place at night. Okay. Cool. There are bombs and a hostage? Sure. One guy tells other guys what to do, so he must be the leader, and he tells a few guys to focus on the bombs and the others to find the hostage. They encounter bad guys when they get inside, and some of the fight choreo is cool and some of it is absurd, but I'm just happy to be seeing an action-oriented BL series and I've seen worse crimes committed by a low budget, no big deal.

But it's been a few minutes into the first episode now, and I'm starting to wonder a few things. We have stakes, technically: there are bombs and a hostage--it would be bad if the bombs went off while the team was inside because they would get hurt or killed, and by default we don't want to see a hostage harmed.

But we have no context. At all. I'm five minutes in and I know nothing. Who's the hostage? Who are the bad guys? What do the bad guys want? Why do I care? I'm assuming this is like some quick action-y beginning and we'll cut to a main character at some point to see the "real" first scene of the show, but now it's been like seven minutes and we're still here in this warehouse place. If the special ops team are supposed to be the cast, I haven't heard a single scrap of dialogue that wasn't about the task at hand. I haven't even seen anyone's face yet.

Tagging @bengiyo, @lurkingshan 'cause they were interested in a side comment I made about this in some tags.

Even when they finally start to pull up their masks and talk, it's all immediate business (which is somewhat understandable given they're in danger but we're still lacking important context). Who am I rooting for? Who are these dudes? Why is this one sequence taking over ten minutes without giving me anything or anyone to latch onto? Are they assuming I read a blurb on the premise of the show and then immediately hit play? Because that's a cardinal sin--you never assume that everyone who watches your show or reads your book will know the premise, even in this day and age. You always lay in the necessary exposition/context to immediately anchor the audience into the premise and main character (or cast). (The only time you can assume everyone already knows at least the broad strokes of a concept is in fanfiction, but even then there could still be changes you made that you need to clue people in on from the get go. )

Then Tharn got his first premonition about Phaya, and I was like 'ohhhh, this is a story about a guy with some form of precognition who's in some sort of special forces. I wish they could have brought this up ten minutes ago, but okay.'

And finally, the big reveal: it's all a test! They're trainees, not officers! Well, that certainly explains why we got zero context all this time, because they didn't want to give away The Trick. Except it didn't feel like a clever rug pull at all. Worrying that the audience will clue in to what's going on doesn't mean you get to just Not Tell Them. You mislead them instead. The team could have easily rattled off the necessary details and context about the mission--after the training reveal, we would have chalked it up to practice mission prep. And with no context or reason to care about anything, I sat there for fifteen minutes only to be told that I didn't have to care anyway because it was all staged.

I would have taken any context, even something super cliche and ham fisted. "Okay boys, remember: our old mission commander is being held hostage in there and they'll kill him unless we hand over their psychotic leader. It took us weeks to track them down to this warehouse, and if they escape again it's game over. Don't let me down!" or something, anything for me to latch onto besides Dudes Doing Things. It's okay to mislead the audience, in fact you pretty much have to in order to pull the well worn "it was all an exercise" trick in the first place.

And fifteen minutes to pull all that off was a rather astonishing waste of screen time. The opening scene in the 2009 reboot of Star Trek establishes a handful of characters, makes you care about them, takes them through an amazing high stakes action sequence, and has you in tears at the end as we watch a guy we've only known for a few minutes sacrifice himself to save what's left of the crew as the film's protagonist--his son--is literally born, and it does all of that in almost half the time.

Compare that to The Sign, where in fifteen minutes we know: dudes in black fight things, one guy has premonitions, and actually they're trainees. No complexity, emotional stakes, or context beyond that. I was floored.

But what really made my jaw drop came after that.

A first episode has a lot of heavy lifting to do. You're introducing a world, a cast, promising the type of fun that's to be had, kickstarting the central relationships, etc etc. One of the most fundamental aspects to all this set up is to let us know why the main character/cast is here, what they're trying to do, and why it matters if they fail. And the entire first episode of the sign doesn't have that. At all. Period.

Oh, we're introduced to characters, the harsh training, Tharn's gift, Tharn and Phaya's initial dynamic, but once again we're given no context or emotionally relevant exposition. Who are these dudes? Why are they training? Why do they care about becoming special ops? What's their motivation? Goals? Obstacles in the way of that goal? Motive/Goal/Obstacle is the engine of story, and we're not given a single one until--and this is what blew my mind--almost halfway through the second episode.

In episode two we finally get a line from Tharn's bff about how if Tharn doesn't get onto the special ops team he won't be able to investigate his dad's (parents? can't remember) mysterious death.

A goal! A reason to care about Tharn's training! Emotional investment! Except it's coming way, way, wayyyyyyyyyyy too late. We should have known about this in the first five minutes of episode one. They should've found another fake hostage, Tharn should've lifted his mask and said "shit, if we fail this I'll never have what I need to find out how dad died." THANK YOU, now I have a reason to care.

I was shocked at such a massive oversight, like I'm gonna remember it as a cautionary example for a long time 'cause that's just wild to me.