#but she only ended up trapping them via grief

[eliotquillon]

i reread stella and siena(aka 'boarding school girls'/'the temperley high series') by helen eve a few month ago and i cannot stop thinking abt them. stella having episodes of vertigo after siena killed herself and spending the rest of her life trying to recreate siena exactly so siena could live on through her only to die in the exact same clock tower.... syrena resorting to stealing all of stella's things because stella wanted to become siena and syrena wanted to keep her....the way siena told stella she should always have her hair down and in turn stella told syrena she should always be barefoot....the fact that jack desperately wanted to become his own person and wanted to go to university but ended up working for his dad anyway....these aren't perfect books by far but helen eve fucking cooked with the doomed narratives

[emsartwork]

Long post ahead!

So if a fairy's pallet changes, it most commonly happens around enchantix because of how inherently traumatic the concept of self sacrifice is.

Flora's colors would dull a little, nothing major but the pinks would look more "aged" as a mental reference to the black willow's time affiliation.

Musa's also are not a huge change, mostly a slight darkening as a symptom of the pain she went through when her wings were shattered (also might be a reflection of the darcy/stormy dynamic and how musa relates to both of them in different ways but she's not ready to unpack that teehee)

Tecna's is a more dramatic change due to the prolonged survival state she had to be in while trapped on Omega. She used her transformation to survive until she was able to scavenge parts to build a warming suit for herself which meant she drained her magic every transformation (via exploring and setting up a safe camp warmth bubble). Every transformation ended up lighter and lighter as a camouflage against the ice-snakes and the thawed prisoners. This would be a more permanent color change, probably only darkening a little as she healed, especially because tecna doesn't base her identity in being a fairy so it wouldn't cause her additional stress.

Stella's colors would mostly shift after earning Onyrix. Stella had the most negative reaction to her nemesis out of all the winx and the episode continued to effect her for several weeks after it was done. However, due to this episode, she did gain a much more balanced look at her sense of self worth, acknowledging that she has bad days and needs to treat herself with compassion instead of catastrophizing. In a way Stella's colors changed not because of trauma but because of growth.

Oh girliepop. Aisha's color change is a pure grief reaction to Nabu's death. It's not a permanent change, because Aisha would come to associate the darkened color with feeling shitty and the longer it stayed dark the more upset she would be (she had a few ups and downs color-wise along this timeline, its not strictly linear). It also wasn't a thing that happened to "her" like, Nabu dying was definitely traumatic, and similar to daphne who had grief involved in her color change, but daphne also underwent torture and other losses of autonomy that left lasting physical symptoms, which is why her color change was permanent.

Bloom has a few changes (because of course she does). Dark bloom dimmed her colors in season 2/3

Bloom's incomplete enchantix highly saturated her colors, and her complete enchantix settled into a slightly more blue tinged set which is permanent.

not so much an actual color change as an affliction, but I thought it would be fun to include. Fairies in core fatigue have scattered, shifting colors and design elements that bleed into each other.

[bizaar]

Cruel Summer Part 12

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 11k

warnings: swearing, horror adjacent descriptors, angst, super saccharine fluff

In a less than shocking turn of events, you’d ended up running from the cops because, at the end of the day, that is really the only possible way the clusterfuck of the interrogation in the Wheeler’s living room could have ended. 

And that’s not even the strangest thing that’s happened in the last hour, because Eddie and the others are trapped behind Watergate and in dire need of rescue… whatever that means. 

You’d discovered as much by speaking to them… through a Light Brite of all things. 

Your patience for this scenario was very swiftly growing thin before that happened, when all you’d had to try and wrap your head around was the fact that they were calling for your help via Morse code through a flickering light … because that makes sense. 

Worst still is how you couldn’t even dismiss that one as a fluke, considering you were the one to notice it.

You truly cannot wait for the world to start making sense again, and you have a sinking suspicion that you’re going to have to wait a very long time for that to happen. 

The Hawkins PD had spectacularly lost control of the room after the not-so-secret information of your relationship with Roane County’s Most Wanted came to light – no thanks at all to Erica, who has never been your biggest fan in the first place, so, really, you have to ask yourself why you’re even shocked that she would take the first chance presented to throw you under the bus.

In an effort to try and reign things back in, they’d decided to start one-on-one questioning, making the very poor decision, to begin with Max, which was likely to end the interviewing process before it even began. 

You wondered idly if they realized the gravity of their mistake as they led her into the other room and shut the door behind them. 

Thankfully, the spotlight gradually faded from you as the room dispersed into a plethora of individual huddles to discuss other things of evident import.

Suddenly it was like you weren’t even there, the closest thing to a status quo you have experienced since your parents moved away. It used to be a point of significant grief to you, moving through the world largely unseen and unheard by the people around you.

In your youth, it had always been your fondest wish to be the kind of person who lit up a room when you entered, you wanted to turn heads and have people look at you the way Dustin did, like you hung the moon. 

The closest you ever came to skirting that dream was the brief interval in High School when you were still attached to Carol Perkins, who put you into the proximity of the likes of Steve Harrington back when he was still King of Hawkins High.

You were never promoted to anything more than serving as Carol’s shadow,  an unwanted tag-along who people didn’t miss if you weren’t there.

It was one of the things that had made it so incandescently easy to slip unnoticed out of your put-together world and into Eddie’s, but here and now, you’ve never been more thankful to be ignored in your life. 

You’d almost even managed to steal away before Claudia Henderson caught you in the doorway, beside herself and blubbering, as is her natural state. She had a hundred and one questions for you, none of which she could properly vocalize as she dabbed at her nose with a crumpled tissue and went on and on about the state of her poor nerves.

Because you’ve never been the type of person to be unkind, particularly to someone who has been nothing but good to you, considering the circumstances, you did your best to assure her that things were not as dire as they seemed.

You told her that there was a completely rational explanation to all of this (though you failed to provide one) that you would rather cut off your own arm than even think about putting Dustin in danger, and yes you promise you are still coming to dinner next Wednesday like you always do. 

Every word of it was true, save for the last part, of course, considering you’re supposed to be halfway to Timbuktu with Eddie by next Wednesday.

How you’re going to manage that with no car, no money, and now no Eddie, you have no earthly idea. It strikes you with a miserable pang that suddenly you’re back at square one, no better off than you had been two days back, trudging up Kerley Street with Wayne’s money in your pocket and wondering just how in the hell you expected to conquer this Sysiphean hurdle. 

On a hope and a prayer, you suppose, though now you can’t even afford to skirt by on that considering the money had been stuffed into the pocket of the jacket you’d been liberated from in your struggle to be free of Jason and his toadies. 

It was your favorite jacket, and you wonder miserably what’s become of it.  

Life is a bitch and then you die, and that’s just the way of the world. 

This is a right mess, innit, Edward? 

Suddenly, as if answering the inane question of your inner dialogue, there came a subtle flickering of the overhead lamp in the foyer. The pulsing of the light was a violent thing, a sickly orange glow stabbing you in the eye and demanding your attention. 

Claudia Henderson was still sniffling in front of you, and if only for good manner’s sake, you tried to ignore it, but the blinking light was absolutely incessant. Try as you might, you could not stop looking at the damn thing. 

It was so pervasive that you’d ultimately had to excuse yourself from the room to casually go and investigate what you imagined could only be a failing lightbulb. 

You assume that you must have looked completely insane, standing beneath the lamp, glaring up at it and willing it to shut the fuck up, but perhaps more insane was just how familiar its nagging was. 

You couldn’t help but feel that you’d summoned it somehow, particularly so when you realized how bizarrely reminiscent the flashing bulb was of the way Eddie used to subtly prod you for your attention during the brief, ill-advised quarter you’d been seated next to him in eleventh-grade History class.

You hadn’t learned a damn thing in those few short months, nothing except that Eddie inexplicably knows the tiniest bit of Morse Code and will drum out call signs onto your leg when he’s bored.

Most commonly, it would be the same pitiful cry for help when Mrs. O’Donnell’s pedantic lessons about the Napoleonic wars became too much: dot dot dot - dash dash dash - dot dot dot… 

You tried to tell yourself that it wasn’t the exact sequence the light was flashing in, but the longer you stood and stared, the less you believed that.  

dot dot dot - dash dash dash - dot dot dot… 

Suddenly, you had a sneaking suspicion. A notion you knew could hold no water, but if it was even remotely possible how could you live with yourself if you ignored it? 

dot dot dot - dash dash dash - dot dot dot… 

You glanced carefully over your shoulder, making absolutely sure that no one was around to see, that no one would witness what you were about to do.

You knew you would have no way to explain it if someone asked, but you also knew you had to try.  

You turned your face up to the light and spoke to it in an almost inaudible whisper. 

“...Eddie?”

The light flared so brightly then that it left spots of color blooming across your vision, evidently answering you as the blinking became that much more incessant.

dotdotdotdashdashdashdotdotdotdotdotdotdashdashdashdotdotdotdotdotdotdashdashdashdotdotdot!

You gasped without really meaning to, clapping your hands over your mouth a moment too late in an attempt to muffle the sound. You stared at the light until the flashing colors completely overtook your vision and the pulsing was all you could see, then you blindly began twisting in manic circles, looking this time for someone, anyone to come and see what you were seeing.

No, not just anyone. Dustin. You needed Dustin to see what you were seeing.

You found him standing around the kitchen island huddled in tense conversation with the Sinclairs. You didn’t greet them as you made a beeline for the teen boy. He didn’t have the time to even finish saying your name before you seized him by the elbow and wrenched him back out into the foyer. 

“Come look at this–” You’d hissed, dragging him into the next room with Lucas and Erica quickly tailing behind.

You directed their attention to the lamp with a sharp jab of your finger and leveled Dustin with a tense look. 

“Am I crazy, or is that light speaking in Morse code?” 

Despite being thoroughly convinced it was Eddie somehow making that light flash from wherever he was, some tiny rational part of your brain still hoped that maybe Dustin would discount the flickering lamp as nothing more than a latent concussion from Jason Carver’s special brand of chivalry.  

You had to be crazy, right? Because lights don’t speak… right?

Still, it wouldn’t be the craziest thing any of you had ever heard that week, and as outlandish as it seemed, if there was even the slightest chance that it was Eddie calling for help, you couldn’t in good conscience ignore that, so you all sat and very carefully counted it out. 

Dot dot dot – dash dash dash - Dot. Dot. Motherfucking dot – blinking as clear as day, assaulting your senses just like the silly little rubber love taps of Eddie’s pencil against the meat of your thigh in Mrs. O’Donnell’s class.  

… S.O.S. …

You don’t know how he was doing it, you don’t even really care, you only know that if he put his mind to it, and was extremely fucking determined, he would find a way to make that light flash, to invade your space and make you understand in no uncertain terms that he needed your help. 

Then came the nonsense with Holly’s Lite Bright, which you had little hope of following as Dustin shouted questions into the ether and the screen lit up with vague swirling answers and symbols. 

You were right. It was Eddie. That much was evidently clear, and you still don’t exactly know how to feel about it.

Much less clear was the message being passed through to you, how the others had passed through the thing Dustin was calling Watergate and had been cut off.

Now they needed a Plan B, an alternate method to find their way back.

How Dustin gleaned all that information from a few dozen flashing bulbs is beyond you, though you suppose now it’s no different than how you’d decided in the first place that it was Eddie calling for help through more or less the same means. Still, it left you feeling like the odd man out, like there was some kind of vital prerequisite knowledge you were missing, as it was apparently not all that confusing to everyone else, frustratingly so. 

Lucas, Erica, and even Max, who had been absent during the entire lamp episode, processed the information about so-called gates and seemed to understand immediately what needed to be done.

To them it was simple: the others were trapped. They needed another gate, and they knew exactly where they needed to go to find it.  

No one apparently seemed to think it was important to explain to you what any of that meant.

They just kept repeating those same basic phrases and ushering you around with varying degrees of annoyance, as if you were completely on board with what needed to be done next and were just being willfully obtuse about the whole thing. 

The next thing you knew, you were perched on the back of Dustin’s bike while he peddled like a madman, the shouting voices of the parents at your back, imploring you to stop and growing quieter every second.

You swallowed any anxiety you felt about the impending doom that awaited you and armed with a plan you still weren’t exactly clear on, you made the speedy escape across town.

It didn’t take long for you to realize where you were headed. After all this time, you could have made the journey in your sleep: the Forest Hills trailer park.  

And here you find yourself back at the Munson trailer, which is probably the last place you’d expected to go in search of whatever gate it is Dustin keeps going on about. 

It’s a welcome sight, as always. Even under the circumstances, seeing the dingy tin siding and mismatched patio furniture feels more like coming home than your own home does. 

You can’t help but feel a pang of strident relief to see that not only is the police presence gone, but someone thought to shut the front door. 

You wouldn’t outright admit it, because you knew it was highly implausible, but once you’d realized your destination you’d spent the duration of the ride trying to wrestle down the irrational fear that somehow Chrissy’s body would still be lying there in the doorway like it had been the last time you were here. 

You knew rationally that it wouldn’t, cops don’t leave bodies lying around at crime scenes, but if you’ve learned anything from the past few days, it’s that you can’t depend upon rationality to prevail in this world.

Not anymore. 

The lights are on, though as you file up the steps behind the others like a gaggle of good little ducklings, you tell yourself that doesn’t expressly mean anyone is home. 

Dustin barges in, and you have to bite the inside of your mouth to stop yourself from telling him to knock as you cross the threshold and try to take some semblance of comfort in the cloying familiarity of the place. It’s difficult to do with no one home.

No Wayne sitting in his chair watching his shows through the snowy static of the rabbit-eared television.

No Eddie, shut away in his room with manic melodies rattling the door on its frame. 

You survey the room without really meaning to, turning in a slow circle to take stock of everything – all of Wayne’s knickknacks and keepsakes remain in their rightful place, thankfully spared from evidence impound.

With all the lights on, the room is bathed in that same amber glow that always comes in the evening, giving the place a cozy feeling, but you can’t help but suppress a shiver at how empty it all feels. 

How devoid of life.  

It strikes you with a sudden and potent spike of anxiety that you don’t know what has become of Wayne. Standing there in the living room, you can see every inch of the trailer, save for the bathroom tucked away down the hall and Eddie’s bedroom, the door of which stands ajar. 

When is a door not a door?

You resist the urge to go looking for him, knowing full well that if he were here, tucked away somewhere, the commotion of your arrival would have brought him out to investigate.   

You suddenly find yourself hoping beyond hope that, for lack of knowing what else to do and unwilling to just sit on his hands waiting for some kind of news – good or bad – Wayne simply went to work.

You know what he would say.

"Rent's due when it’s due. Rain or shine, bills gotta be paid. The world don’t stop for nobody, no matter what. Better to stay busy."   

It makes you sick to think of him worrying about Eddie with no hope of impending relief. How lonely it must be, working the factory floor, pretending everything is as it should be, meanwhile his nephew is in the wind?  

Still, it’s a better thing to consider than the alternative, that his coming to your rescue landed him in trouble and he’s not at the plant, but sitting in a cell at the Police Station.

You won’t let yourself consider that notion, if only because you don’t know what you would do if that were the case.      

You barely have time to consider the possibility of how you might intend to bail him out were that the case, as you finish your turn about the room and find your attention is yet again demanded by something in the ceiling.

This time it is not something so banal as a flickering light — you’d never get that lucky twice.

You noticed a lot of things that didn’t expressly belong when you’d stepped through the door of the trailer, stray lines of abandoned police tape floating in the breeze outside, chalky black debris of fingerprinting powder smeared across almost every flat surface in the room, but what you hadn’t noticed, was the angry red sore in the ceiling, throbbing and pulsing and glaring back at you like the Eye of Sauron set atop its perch at the fortress of Barad-dûr.

That seems… wrong. 

For a moment it’s all any of you can do but stare at it.

“What the hell is that?” Erica asks, voicing the sentiment everyone must surely be feeling and doing her best to sound tough despite the way you can feel her inching to move behind you in an attempt to hide from the thing. 

You let her do it without so much as a sideways glance, despite how you’re still pissed at her. 

“The gate.” Dustin says solemnly, “The one Vecna used Chrissy to open.”

The information causes your heart to seize with terror. All this talk of gates, of this elusive one and of the gate the other half of your party had gone in search of at the bottom of Lover’s Lake, you never thought this is what would be waiting for you. 

A fleshy open sore growing out of the drywall like an ulcer.

You don’t know what you’d been picturing this whole time, but it certainly hadn’t been that … and Vecna had used Chrissy to open it…

The notion causes a violent shudder to rip through your body. You still don’t know how you feel about this whole Vecna nonsense, but you’d seen what happened to Chrissy by way of Patrick’s demise.

It’s still close enough to send your heart skipping a few beats faster, just the one time had been enough to damn near ruin you, but Eddie had had to see it twice… 

Oh, Eddie… You think, briefly submitting to the despair of it, My poor, sweet Eddie… 

You swallow the feeling and your silent wish that he was here, standing by your side and sharing the horror of it all. You wish he was here, but you’re glad he isn’t, because for as bad as the brief sojourn to the Wheeler’s house had been, it would have been decidedly worse with him present.   

Still, if this thing really is the gate where you were meant to meet the rest of your party, then where are they? What are you meant to do now that you’ve found it?

You feel your stomach tighten with worry, standing in the trailer and wondering not for the first time that week where the hell Eddie could possibly be, hoping to God the answer doesn’t lie within that … thing. 

You’re vaguely aware of a conversation occurring around you, Lucas says something to your left, and Dustin answers to your right. You don’t acknowledge them, however.  

You’re too busy looking at the fleshy, pulsating sore in the ceiling, trying to quantify how something like that could come to exist in the real world, outside of all the horror movies and urban legends and your worst nightmares.

You’re so busy staring up at it, half afraid that if you take your eyes off of it, it’s going to move and snatch one of you up into its capacious maw like it’s the goddamn Blob or something worse, that you don’t notice when your charges come to a decision or see when Dustin retreats to the hall closet to retrieve the broom.

You don’t see him come trotting back into the room brandishing it like the spear he intends to use it as, and you don’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late. 

Suddenly, he’s standing directly below the thing, prodding at it experimentally with the long wooden handle.

Your heart leaps up into your throat, and before you can even open your mouth to protest such an obviously suicidal action, he thrusts up with as much force as he can muster and the broom pierces the fleshy veil with a sickening snap.

You watch in horror as the thing tears open … inwardly, which is highly disturbing, and you scream, as is the only natural way to react to something like that.

Thankfully the sound is more or less masked by the harmonized screaming of the frightened teenagers around you.

Worst still is the way the noise echoes back at you as a group of disembodied voices answers, screaming from the other side of the gate, if that's what it actually is – it is yet another highly disturbing development that sends the lot of you scrambling backward, tripping over the odd piece of furniture – and each other– as you go.  

Max, Lucas, and Erica converge around you in a tight huddle – you can feel three sets of nervous hands fisting at your clothes and suddenly it’s like you’re all little kids again. Normally you would have made a mental note to tease them about it later, Erica, especially after such a violent betrayal at the Wheeler’s, but you’re too gripped in your own terror to even consider it, let alone realize that Dustin is not among your little fear huddle.

He’s still standing fixed to his spot below the thing, looking directly up into the gaping maw of the hole in Eddie’s ceiling. 

For a very long moment, no one dares to breathe – no one but Dustin, who is grinning ear to ear at whatever it is only he can see. 

“Dustin–” you hiss, swiping at him with a clawed hand. Your fingers brush the hem of his sleeve, but you don’t dare move to try and get a better grip on him, “Get away from that thing!”

He glances over to regard you in a way that is much too casual for your liking and, inexplicably, shakes his head.

“It’s fine,” He assures you, casually gesturing for you to approach, “Come see.” 

No. Your most primal instincts tell you, Absolutely not. 

Gate or not, something in the furthest reaches of your mind is telling you that thing is an Eater, whatever it is. If you get any closer it’s going to snap you up and swallow you whole. 

But Dustin is still there… it hasn’t eaten him.   

Every rational bone in your body is screaming at you to stay as far away from the hole in the ceiling as humanly possible. Still, the fact that Dustin remains unharmed causes the shutter of your mind to click over and awaken some patently unwise part of your lizard brain. 

You’re suddenly dangerously curious to know what is on the other side. 

You’ve seen enough horror movies to know it’s a patently bad idea, a surefire way to end up another tally on the kill count, but it’s not every day you happen upon a fleshy otherworldly portal growing in the ceiling of your ex-boyfriend’s home.

Dustin beckons again with a crook of his finger and you silently weigh your options. If nothing more, you can grab him and get him out of the way in the event that the thing is just playing possum… still, the urge is not entirely selfless. 

You can’t help yourself. You have to look. 

You edge forward, much to the alarm of the others who dig their fingers in tighter and silently will you not to move, all while doing absolutely nothing to stop you.

Together, you creep across the floor in millimeters, one tiny step after the other. It’s dark on the other side, but what little you can see is strangely familiar, if only in the gut-wrenching sense of the uncanny valley. You take another step, and another, features and fixtures coming into view, painting the scene of a room you know far too well. 

A room you’re currently standing in. 

Your brain creaks under the weight of what comes into focus as you move further and further, until finally, you come to find yourselves below the thing, staring up at the people looking down at you through the ceiling in a mind-bending mirror image.

For half a moment, you can feel your brain stall and begin to make crunchy sounds as it struggles to keep itself intact. 

It’s the Munson trailer, or at least some bizarro version of it that has been abandoned for at least ten or fifteen years. 

But how can that possibly be? 

Everything you can make out in the darkness is covered in thick layers of dust and grime, including the group of people standing huddled in the singular pool of light cast into their world from yours.

“...O-kay…” Max begins drolly beside you, “...What?” 

Out of everything you expected to find on the other side – which is not much considering you’d drawn a total blank in that department – you never considered you’d find the rest of your party on the other side.

That was perhaps stupid of you, but it feels like a fitting assessment, as you are starting to feel very stupid, staring up at the harrowed faces of Nancy, Steve, Eddie, and Robin all gawping back down at you … or maybe it’s up … you can’t say for certain which you think it is and it's starting to give you a headache.

Maddeningly, like they aren’t caught in a weird inverted interdimensional portal in the ceiling, everyone on the other side reacts with varying degrees of relief, laughing even. 

Dustin is just as inappropriately pleased with the outcome of his actions, offering you a smile and gesturing to the missing half of your party in a way that is just a little more casual than you’re comfortable with, considering the circumstances.

Oddly, you find that you’re not entirely sure why you’re so surprised. Dustin had called it a gate, after all.

And wasn’t that the plan from the start? Meet them on the other side and bring them through? It only then occurs to you how little you’d truly comprehended your so-called plan.

He’s grinning at you, everyone is grinning and laughing and calling back and forth to one another, and suddenly you feel like you’re going to scream.

You swallow the intent and open your mouth to speak calmly, quietly… it doesn’t work. 

“What the fuck.” You can’t stop yourself from saying – Dustin’s features drop. “Dustin?”

Part of you is well aware of just how shrill you’ve become, but it is summarily drowned out by the title scroll of your inner dialogue screaming unintelligibly at the Lovecraftian madness you’ve unceremoniously encountered. You’d always thought it was a lame cop-out, the hero who lost his mind at the sight of horrors he could not comprehend, things beyond description.

You can comprehend a lot, and it has always felt like nothing more than a cheap literary trope to avoid having to describe a monster. Yet suddenly here you are, desperately trying to hold the broken pieces of your brain together, failing to comprehend what you’re seeing right in front of you. 

You’re freaking out. You’re totally freaking out. 

Dustin seems to sense your dangerous proximity to madness, as he says your name, calmly and slowly, putting his hands out as he approaches, like you’re some kind of wild animal backed into a corner, and you would slug him if he were any closer.

“Don’t freak out, okay?”

“Don’t freak out?!” You mimic, willing yourself in vain to calm down. You gesture angrily to the gate, “Are you fucking kidding? Dustin–!” 

He doesn’t let you finish.

“This is all completely normal — trust me,” He assures you, speaking quickly and still using that stupid tone of voice that you imagine is meant to be calming. “We’ve all been through this before, right guys? Steve? Nancy?”

Before anyone can vouch for the truth of that statement, Eddie interjects from somewhere above you.

“Uh, yeah… hate to break it to you, Bud, but nothing about this is normal…” He deadpans.

Your head snaps up to regard his frizzy-haired form, splattered and smeared in dark grey muck and grime, looking very much like he’s just crawled through some kind of interdimensional crawl space. 

When your eyes meet, he presses his mouth into a tight line that you imagine is meant to be a smile and he waves awkwardly at you, like he isn’t quite sure what else to do.

For half a moment your heart seizes in something you can’t differentiate as fondness or panic as you try to decide whether or not the dark substance splattered across his hands is blood. 

“Eddie–!” You start, but the words get caught in your throat. 

“I know — I’ll fill you in later,” he huffs.

It does nothing to calm you. You can’t wait for later. You want to ask what’s happened, if he’s hurt, but your throat has slammed shut and try as you might you can’t make the sound come out, so you end up gaping stupidly up at him, working your jaw like a dying fish.

You can only imagine how goddamn foolish you must look, losing your shit in the middle of his living room. You’re supposed to be calm, level headed. Shit doesn’t phase you, you’re cool.

Dustin calls your name again, pulling your attention away from Eddie and back into the real world. Thankfully, you’re suddenly furious, and it’s more than grounding enough to hold your shit together. 

“Somebody had better tell me what the hell is going on,” You start, “And I mean right. Fucking. Now.”

Dustin heaves a long suffering sigh, one that garners a wide-eyed, incredulous look from you. Then he’s shaking his head like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” He says, gesturing to the portal. “That’s the Upsidedown.”

It just about damn near breaks your brain. The Upsidedown is real, which means Jane Hopper (who you know for a fact isn’t actually related to the late Chief), or El, or whatever Mike’s weird girlfriend’s name is, really does have superpowers, and this is all actually happening.

Oh, Jesus…

Your vision swims and goes spotty and for half a moment you feel suddenly like the trailer has been set adrift at sea. The floor roils beneath your feet and you moan pitifully, doubling over to brace your hands on your knees. 

“Uh oh…” someone says from above you. Maybe Robin, you think. 

“I think I’m gonna be sick.” You hum. 

It causes a collective dissenting hum to pass through both the upright and inverted versions of the room. You’re vaguely aware of Eddie calling to you from somewhere above you.

“Oh, shit – okay, sit down a put your head between your knees!” He says. 

“That never works,” Steve argues, and an instant commotion breaks out all around you.

It's overwhelming, though you suppose some part of you understands. 

Nobody wants to see you blow chunks all over your sneakers, least of all you, but then again you didn’t ask to have the curtain pulled back like that with not even the courtesy of being told to pay no mind to the man you found there. Oz is on the horizon with Kansas swiftly slipping out from under you.

The Wizard isn’t real, but the Upsidedown is, which means everything else you think you know is probably a lie. 

It’s totally cool and not scary at all, and you’re definitely not about to pass out. Nope, not at all…  

Once again, a unanimous decision is made without your input – they found the gate, and now they’ve got to bring the party through. Someone moves you to the side as the room breaks into a flurry of motion, and you watch miserably from the couch as you wait for your bout of hysteria to pass.

Eddie’s mattress is dragged out into the living room, and rude comments are made about the state of his laundry. You wonder idly when he last changed his sheets and distract yourself by assuming it was probably the last time you changed them. 

So, what… a year? Gross.

When prompted, you move aimlessly to the linen closet in the hall and begin retrieving bedsheets by the handful until the cupboard is bare. Then, you sit and help knot them together to form a makeshift rope.

It’s mindless work that you’re happy to do. As the elder Munson says: better to stay busy. 

When the rope is finished and passed through the ceiling to the other side only to hang in suspended animation between the two worlds, you decide that you’ve had quite enough of the Upsidedown for today and slip wordlessly away from the group. 

No one sees you go, and just like that you’re invisible again. Good, maybe if you’re lucky you can fade out of existence and escape the madness of everything that’s happened in the last half hour.

Down the hall and into the back bedroom, you pad across the threshold of Eddie’s door and sink down onto the exposed box spring, carefully tucking one foot beneath you and taking creature comfort in the familiarity of your surroundings as you do your best to center yourself.

Breathe in, breathe out. 

You try to tune out everything from the trailer beyond by turning your mind to Eddie’s room. You look hard at everything, all his posters and knickknacks, dirty laundry and papers, and Sweetheart, his prized possession in its rightful place backed by the mirror. 

Breathe in, breathe out. 

The image reflected in its surface shows you movement as someone arrives in the doorway, and you ready yourself to be moved as Lucas or Max or someone else comes looking for yet another thing needed in the ongoing rescue of the others. 

Breathe in, breathe out. 

No one asks you to move, but a strong, calloused hand curling around your shoulder draws you back to yourself. You don’t need to look to know who it is. Even without his reflection in the mirror or the heavy metal press of his rings, you know Eddie’s touch like nothing else in this world. 

“Sorry I’m late, Sweetheart.” He says softly, and you catch yourself wondering for half a moment whether he’s talking to you or the guitar. 

You have your answer as, slowly, you turn to regard him and follow his movement as he sinks down to sit beside you on the bed.

You watch Eddie watching you, taking in his grimy features, the damp ends of his hair where it has not completely dried yet. There is something black and viscous spattered across his hands, and his nail beds are crusted with dried blood from where you know he’s been picking at them. Nervous habit. 

It takes what feels like a very long moment for him to speak, and when he does, it almost feels like he has no idea what to say. You don’t blame him. What is there to say after all that madness?  

“You doin’ okay?” Eddie asks gently, his voice barely a whisper as he turns shy eyes up at you.

Part of you hates the way he’s clearly treating you with kid gloves like he isn’t sure just how fragile you are right now and he’s leery of pushing you over the edge, but the rest of you is just so unbelievably happy he’s back.

You would throw your arms around his neck and squeeze him until he tapped out if you could make yourself move.

Still, with Eddie here, somehow all of this nonsense seems slightly more palatable if only because you know he’s got to be as lost in all of this as you are.    

You offer him a lopsided shrug.

“Got your message,” You mumble, “Came running.” 

He breathes an airy laugh out through his nose.

“You always do.” 

You feel his hand slide down the length of your arm, never letting go as he pulls your hand into his lap and laces his fingers with yours. 

You hadn’t even realized that he was still touching you, and now you’re stuck staring at the point of contact, your hand in his.

You still can’t tell what the dried muck spread all over his hands is, you’re not certain anymore that it’s blood, but you’re also not certain it isn’t — you almost don’t hear Eddie calling your name.

Slowly, you lift your eyes to meet his and find him looking at you expectantly. 

You hadn’t heard what he’d said. 

“Are you okay?” He asks again when you force yourself to focus on him, brows knitting tightly over his eyes. 

You pull your shoulders up to your ears and briefly debate whether you ought to tell him the truth. 

No, you absolutely are the furthest thing from okay.

Everything you know is a lie and you’re pretty sure nothing is ever going to go back to being normal. Somehow you can’t manage it, as sitting there, looking at him, suddenly all you can feel is relief. Suddenly square one doesn’t seem so bad.

Slowly, you feel the corners of your lips begin to creep up. You reach across to brush his hair back from his forehead, tracing the dirty planes of his face before coming down to cup his jaw. He catches your hand and holds it there, turning in to press a chaste kiss to your palm. 

You smile and nod. 

“I’m okay,” You tell him, and start down the path to fooling yourself into believing it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Upsidedown was bad, but it wasn’t the worst thing Eddie has witnessed all day, because they’d all taken their turns climbing the rope to slip back into the real world and left it and all its hive-mind bullshit behind.

Watching Nancy slip into the catatonia of Vecna’s curse and tearing his room apart in a panic looking for the elusive “music” everyone was suddenly crying out for was an excursion in brief but blinding terror. Somehow – he doesn’t know how – she’d snapped out of it, rendering it, not the worst thing that has happened all day.  

Boosting his shitty neighbor’s Winnebago had been almost fun until Eddie realized that, inexplicably, he’d picked what was perhaps the worst getaway car in the history of mankind.

He’d picked it because it was a home as much as it was a vehicle, something they could all take a moment to breathe in, and because he knew how angry it would make the particular couple who owned the thing. He didn’t give a shit, he wanted a nap and a shower and to get as far away from the place that was supposed to be his home as fast as humanly possible.

Harrington was driving like a bat out of hell, and he was almost proud of him until noticed everyone getting thrown around, desperately trying to cling to any surface they could find. Eddie realized his mistake with a sickening start. 

Seatbelts. 

There were no goddamn seatbelts in the RV. 

Visions of car accidents and open-casket funerals nearly sent him over the edge and Eddie seized you by the back of your pants.

He pulled you firmly into place to sit in his lap where he could hold you in a constricting embrace and protect you from whatever kind of vehicular disaster they were surely headed for, all the while barking orders at everyone to sit the fuck down and hold on to something.

Despite the way it triggered violently sepia-toned memories of the last time he ever saw his mother alive, it still wasn’t the worst thing he’d witnessed all day.

No, all of that he could manage, compartmentalize alongside all the other crazy shit he was electing not to think about… but The War Zone? That was a beast in its own category. 

They’d rolled in expecting to find the parking lot empty like it has been every other time Eddie made the jaunt out to the Army Surplus store, for one reason or another, and yet they found the place teeming with life.

Everyone and their mother, it seemed, everyone Eddie has known his whole life, turned out to arm themselves to the teeth like they thought they were the cast of Red Dawn and the Russians were at the gate. 

If he didn’t know better he would have thought the good people of Hawkins were readying themselves for war. 

But it wasn’t the threat of war that had whipped them into a frothy bloodlust, only the lingering threat of a Munson among them. They were getting ready to hunt their newest boogeyman, root him out and string him up for all the world to see.

A warning to anyone who dared to be different in any capacity. 

They’d done the same with his father once upon a time, not that the bastard didn’t deserve it, but now they were getting ready to hunt him, and that was so much worse… 

Worse than the Upsidedown or the near miss with Nancy and Vecna, was the knowledge that this town hated him bad enough to arm themselves with bear traps and grenades.

It left Eddie feeling like he’d been wrenched out of himself and discarded, leaving nothing more than an empty shell devoid of any higher function than the primal urge to run. 

Every single person in this god-forsaken, nice little midwestern town, this backwater hell wants him dead… he’s never going to get out of Hawkins. 

He’ll die first. 

The sobering realization of the violence his neighbors are capable of weighs heavy like a cinder block tied to his ankle dragging him deeper and deeper into the darkness.

He can hardly breathe for the pressure it puts on him, and by the time they reach the field, Eddie is just about ready to spin out. 

The door swings open and he’s out of the RV before the wheels have even stopped rolling, gravel crunching underfoot and grass swaying as he stalks out into the field at a pace. He doesn’t know where he’s going, he just needs space, distance — quiet. 

Behind him, he’s vaguely aware of hearing Dustin calling after him, followed very quickly by your hushed,

“Let him go, Dustin …”

Thank God for that, he doesn’t think he can stand any semblance of human interaction right now. He can’t grin and bear it and pretend he’s okay, not when he’s ready to fly apart at the seams.

Eddie walks until he can’t hear the idle chatter of the group anymore, feeling something akin to a balloon swelling in his chest. He doesn’t know what will happen if it bursts.

He can’t breathe.

He doesn’t understand what he did to make those good people hate him so much. He’s never understood it, and suddenly he feels like he’s eleven years old again, walking down the interstate, wiping blood and tears on the sleeve of his suit jacket because nobody loves him, nobody is on his side and he wants to scream, hurl himself to the ground and rant and rail and cry about how unfair his stupid life is until he’s empty.

He doesn’t do any of that, though, he just stops and breathes deep the clean air.

It’s heavy with the smell of rain, wildflowers, and water and Eddie sinks to his knees and prays for the ground to open up and swallow him. Let him go back to the Earth, let him cease to exist.

After all, that’s what everybody wants, right? To wipe away any trace of him having ever existed? 

How cruel it was that his parents didn’t smother him in the crib, they could have saved everyone an awful lot of grief. 

Why else was he born if not to suffer, to feel all the hurt, and misery, and pain in the world? They ought to have ended his suffering before it even began. 

He wipes moodily at the breaking damn of his tears, streaking uncontrollably down his face, cutting rivets through the dirt caked into his skin, and he hates, hates, hates…

It’s not fair — it’s just not fucking fair. 

He doesn’t know how much time has passed before the gentle crunch of approaching footsteps reach him, growing gradually louder, and louder. 

After a moment Eddie feels a hand creep up between his shoulder blades and rest momentarily in the space there. He knows it’s you without even looking up from where he’s ripping up fistfuls of grass like a petulant child.

Who else would be it? Who else is brave enough to face the monster? 

You slowly come to circle around and sink down quietly to sit in the grass in front of him. You’re close enough that your knees are nearly touching, and the proximity is not enough.

Eddie wishes you would reach for him, wrap him up and hold him in your arms and tell him it’s going to be okay until he believes it. 

He wishes you would love him again like you used to. 

He wishes it were that easy. 

He doesn’t ask for it, because he doesn’t deserve it, and you don’t speak, you just watch and wait. 

Eddie can’t help but feel so slightly ashamed, of what he doesn’t rightly know – maybe for storming off like he did, maybe for this whole scenario, but he suddenly can’t meet your gaze and the idle wishing continues.

He wishes none of this had happened and he wishes more than anything that he’d swallowed his pride and just gone to your stupid graduation ceremony.

Maybe if he had you’d be a hundred miles away now, living together somewhere in a tiny little apartment, struggling to pay your bills, sharing every meal and every night and morning, living your lives blissfully removed from Hawkins and Chrissy Cunningham and Vecna and everything else that has come together to unceremoniously ruin Eddie’s life in the span of a week. 

He sniffs, wipes the back of his hand across his nose, and clears his throat to try and banish the bullshit emotion welling up inside of him.

He can’t place it: Fear? Anger? Frustration? Exhaustion? He doesn’t know what the feeling is, he only knows it’s big enough that if he’s not careful it’s going to swallow him whole. 

He thinks if he could trace it, he would find that it manifested the moment he walked into his living room and found Chrissy frozen to the spot. Though maybe sooner, maybe it started the afternoon he’d spent shamelessly flirting with her at the picnic table behind the school or the moment he tried to drink himself into oblivion last summer.

Maybe it started when he stood there and watched as you walked out of his life. 

He shouldn’t have let you go, and he’s sick with the notion.

You’re still watching him, waiting for him to speak. 

As always, Eddie is happy to indulge you – he furiously scrubs his hands over his face to try and banish any residual wetness from the tears that have, thankfully, since stopped. 

“Everybody in this goddamn town wants me dead.” he croaks – his voice is thick and creaky from disuse. 

You don’t miss a beat.

“And everybody in this goddamn town is going to have to go through me to get to you.” 

In spite of himself, Eddie can’t help the bitter snort of laughter that bubbles up in him.

After a moment, you nudge him with your knee.  

“Hey, I promised Wayne I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” you say, “and I’m not about to start breaking my promises … especially to Wayne.” 

Eddie hums thoughtfully, well aware of the consequences of such an unforgivable action. There’s not much in this world that is as terrible as getting caught under Wayne Munson’s disappointed gaze.

It makes him think of all the ways he’s let his uncle down in the last year, all the deeply tired sighs and sad eyes he’s had to endure because of the bad decisions Eddie can’t seem to stop making.

“Do you wanna hear something crazy?” He hums, quickly changing the subject for the sake of his own self-preservation - he doesn’t need to relive all the guilt he’s built up in disappointing his uncle on top of everything else presently weighing on him.

You nod. 

“Always.” 

“So… on the other side–” He gives you a knowing look, because he’s not about to start calling it the Upsidedown like it’s a normal place with a normal name. 

Thankfully your brows jump up toward your hairline and you roll your eyes - you are, in fact, picking up what he’s putting down. Good. 

Eddie continues. 

“They’ve got these bats, right? But, not like normal ones—” He pauses a moment to try and find a way to properly explain the most immediate threat waiting for you just below the surface, “Remember in Temple of Doom, all those establishing shots—?”

Your eyes flash with clarity and in an instant you’re nodding, finishing the thought for him. 

“Giant vampire bats.” You say, then pause like you’ve only just realized what it was you said, “Oh, great. So nothing too terrible…”

The sarcasm in your tone is thick enough to cut with a knife. 

Eddie shrugs.  

“I mean they damn near pulled Steve’s head off last time, but yeah, no big deal…”

You pull a face.  

“...I was wondering what happened there.” 

You gesture to your throat in emphasis – it had been hard to miss the dark bruises wringing Steve’s neck, but between what happened with Nancy, stealing the RV, and navigating the parking lot of the army surplus outlet, there had been almost no time to explain any of it. 

"Too bad," you continue, "It might have done something to reign that ego in..."

“He’s not so bad…” 

Eddie lets the words hang between you a moment before finally turning his eyes up to watch for your reaction.

Your expression is, for the moment, an unreadable thing if not tinged with the slightest hint of disbelief, so he continues.

“Steve apologized to me,” He clarifies, “For being an asshole back at school.”

It takes you a moment to react, but when you do, your brows come together in a pinched mask of strident disbelief.

“Bullshit.” 

It’s about as much as he’d thought you would say. Eddie lays a palm flat across his chest and raises the other, pantomiming the swearing of an oath.

“Hand to God, he pulled me aside for a gen-u-ine heart-to-heart... I guess facing your mortality like that tends to put things into perspective … not that I would know, I’ve never really been the 'learning lessons' type…”

You laugh, and it’s almost enough to banish all the bad feelings weighing heavy on Eddie’s heart. He bites the inside of his cheek to try and stifle the smile the sound of your laughter brings to the surface.  

“That must have been awkward.” You giggle. 

“Yeah, it was, but it was also really … I don’t know, it was nice.” Eddie shrugs, “You know, people aren’t exactly striving for accountability when it comes to the way they treat the town freak.” And then, “They’d rather just come after me with torches and pitchforks.”

The sentiment wipes the smile right off your face, and it might have sent a pang of regret lancing through Eddie’s midsection if it wasn’t so patently true.

It’s not like you can deny it, you saw the multitude of masses at The War Zone as clearly as he did. Good simple folk whipped into a tizzy over rumors, practically frothing at the mouth with a sudden and violent need for blood. 

His blood.  

Eddie watches the gears in your head turn as you work something over, trying to decide what to say. Only there is nothing to be said, so you make a hollow sound in the back of your throat and you let your gaze drift past him to fix wistfully on the scene beyond.

If he turned, he would see their party spread out, preparing themselves for the insurmountable task ahead, crafting weapons and armor and all the other fixings of battle.

They’ve got a plan to try and stop Vecna, to save Max from the curse, and to clear his name. It’s a very bad plan, in his opinion, an honest-to-God suicide mission, but he supposes if he’s going to die, he might as well do it on his own terms rather than waiting around for the angry mob to descend. 

It doesn’t scare him any less.

Despite his best efforts, his voice is trembling as he speaks. 

“... I can’t see the end of this…”  

You turn your attention back to him, but you don’t answer right away. You just stare at him like you’re trying to commit his features to memory, almost like you’re worried something is going to happen and you’re never going to see him again. 

Probably because you know how bad the plan to stop Vecna is and you’re all going to die the second you set foot back in the Upsidedown.  

“The end of what, Eds?” You finally hum.

“This.” He says, gesturing vaguely to the air, “The saga of all this … bullshit.”

“What do you mean?” 

For some reason, the wide-eyed innocence of your tone sets his teeth on edge. 

“I mean I’m scared, Sweetheart.” He presses, “I don’t know how I’m gonna – how any of us are gonna survive this.”

“...Oh.” You say quietly, and then like you have no idea what to say but you’re desperate to say something to try and provide some sort of comfort to him, “You know, it’s okay to be scared–”

He can’t help but scoff bitterly. 

“Don’t patronize me, okay–” He bites the words off before he can finish the thought. 

It would be so easy to get mean because you’re not the one everyone is gunning for, nobody wants to see your head on a pike, but none of that is your fault. 

There’s no sense in biting your head off over something neither of you has any power over.

Eddie sighs and tips his head forward before starting again.

“All the shit that’s happened?” He says, “It’s like it doesn’t even phase you.”

You roll your eyes and scoff like it’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard. 

“Oh, Eddie, come on. You think I’m not scared? I am barely holding it together,” 

He shakes his head.

“Well, you’re real damn good at hiding it because you could’ve fooled me.” 

“Only because I’ve had years of practice.” You huff. “Come on, what’s this really about?”

He hesitates because it feels stupid to admit what he’s thinking, but now that he’s started, he knows you’re not about to just let him drop the subject.

Anyway, it’s like you said, he’s justified in being scared. It’s not like you’re about to turn around and judge him for it, at least he hopes.

He takes a deep, steadying breath to try and center himself before explaining himself.   

“I’m not a hero, you know? I run at the first sign of danger, and I didn’t know that about myself until this week.” Eddie sniffs, “I spent all this time thinking I was pretty brave…  turns out I’m a fucking coward.”

“You are brave.” You insist, “Eddie, you’re the bravest person I know.”

It hits him like a bolt to the chest and suddenly there’s a knot in his throat, threatening to strangle him with emotion. 

Eddie lifts his hand to press the heel of his palm into his eye until it bursts with colors and stars, and he sniffles pitifully, willing himself not to get stupid and teary-eyed again. 

He’s just feeling sorry for himself, and it’s not a good look.    

“No, I’m not, But you? You’re a goddamn superhero, you know that? I don’t know how I got so lucky that you’re always riding in to save my ass, but… well, look, I think we both know I’m not the guy who lives to see the end of this movie.”

“This isn’t a movie.” You press.  

“No, I know that it’s just… I guess what I’m trying to say is … this is so fucked on so many levels, and you’re just… I mean you’re amazing. I’d be dead without you,”

Complimenting you is his default setting, he cannot help but do it, especially when it comes as a substitute for any kind of a straight answer, and you know this better than anyone.

You pull a face and he’s quick to continue before you can argue the point.

“You know it’s true." Eddie insists, "If it weren’t for you, I’d probably still be hiding under a tarp at Rick’s place… or worse..”

You have to know what he means, strung up by Jason Carver and his lackeys and everyone else in this town desperately gearing up for the hunt and their own brand of Good American Justice. You’d never let that happen. You’d burn Hawkins to the ground before you let anyone harm him… he still believes that, in spite of all his faculties telling him otherwise.

Eddie suddenly feels the weight of the situation it bearing down on him like it means to crush him, and it’s too much. He heaves out a shuddering breath and leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his hands. 

Immediately, he feels your reassuring touch, rubbing up and down the length of his calf. 

“Hey, listen to me. I  know you’re scared – I’m scared too– but we’re gonna figure this out–”

He drops his hands to hold yours in place at his knees and nods emphatically, quick to assure you that he’s okay and definitely not about to go to pieces. 

“I know,” He assures you, “I know, that’s not what I’m trying to say. There actually is a greater point to this pity party, I swear, I just – Jesus – I just have to find it again...”  

Eddie is painfully aware of how he has begun to ramble. He knows what he wants to say, but suddenly he can’t find the words.

He can almost hear Steve chastizing him for putting his foot in his mouth so spectacularly, urging him to just tell her how you feel.

The advice seemed so heartfelt and eloquent at the time, but under the heat of your gaze, Eddie’s intentions have slipped from his grasp.

He feels like he’s fourteen years old again and terrified of talking to pretty girls – shades of the way he used to feel around you before he knew you. 

You’re looking at him with so much patience and so much adoration, the way you did when he was a shy and stammering mess, before you’d finished dancing around each other in those first few tentative months.

It ties his tongue into knots and makes his throat feel like it’s closing up, and he has to clear his throat to try and keep his voice steady. 

It doesn’t work. 

“I guess what I’m trying to say is…” He trails off, heaves a defeated sigh, and shakes his head for how completely stupid he is sure he must sound, “...is that I don’t know what I’m trying to say… I’m just feeling sorry for myself…”

“Liar.” You say gently.

Eddie can’t help the airy chuckle that rises in him, he must not be as good a liar as he thinks he is, because you always manage to see through his bullshit.

A sticky silence blooms between the two of you, and after a long moment of nothing but birdsong and the grass moving in the breeze, you nudge his knee with yours again, drawing his attention. 

“Spit it out, Munson.” You prompt, giving him a curt nod. 

He would if he knew how.

He wants to tell you he loves you and that he’s sorry, but he’s said it so many times lately it’s started to lose all meaning, and with such diminishing returns he’s afraid to push it past the point of no return.

Eddie hesitates, suddenly worried about overstepping his bounds, but you’re looking at him and batting those pretty eyes so expectantly that he has to say something. 

“Whatever happens,” He begins slowly, “I want you to know I’m just so, so glad you came looking for me … even if you only did it for Wayne,”

You’re quiet for what feels like a very long time, long enough that Eddie starts to get nervous that he said the wrong thing.

You push up then, standing and brushing the dirt from your jeans before reaching down for his hand.

He gives it to you so quickly your palms clap together in a sound that rings out loudly across the field. 

Eddie lets you pull him to his feet and lets you help brush off the dirt and grass from his jeans. It’s almost intimate, the proximity, the gentle touching.

If he wanted to, he could fool himself and read further into it than he has any right to do, but then he turns and catches you standing there, watching him with a subtle smile spread across your face.

“What?” He asks. 

You shake your head.

“Nothing,” You say, “Just enjoying the show.”

It causes the moth in his stomach to kick up a ruckus, and he can’t help but stand a little stunned as you cross your arms over your chest and turn on your heel, starting back across the field toward the camper.

He knows he’s blushing.

He’s got to be, and he feels extremely stupid about it, watching you go, trying not to get too caught up in how he’s suddenly noticed the way your jeans hug your backside – are those the same jeans you were wearing before? 

Were they always that tight? 

Almost like you’d read his mind, you stop short after only a few paces and twist back around to face him. 

“I didn’t do it for Wayne, you know…” You call, matter of factly, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

It hits Eddie like a fist to the gut, and he does everything in his power not to hope… and yet… he nearly stumbles over his own feet in the rush to close the gap between you, the trek made all the more difficult by the nervous habit of wiping his palms down over the front of his jeans.

“You didn’t?” Eddie stammers, half breathless from the sudden burst of exertion and the hint of possibility hanging heavy in the air. 

You pull your shoulders up to your ears and tilt coquettishly forward, leaning into his space just as he makes those last few steps to you.  

“I did it for you, Dummy.” You whisper.

Oh shit, oh shit oh shit!

His tongue feels fat in his mouth and Eddie has to swallow hard against the way his throat suddenly feels dry.

He could kiss you so easily right now, all he has to do is lean forward.

He’s not sure you’d thank him for it, he has no idea where you stand these days, but, like always, he can’t help but give in to his impulses. 

Just as Eddie begins to lean in to meet you, you turn again and start back in the direction of the others once more 

“And I did it for me…” You say, shrugging, “Mostly I did it for me.” 

It’s enough to drive Eddie just a little bit crazy, and suddenly his heart is hammering in his chest. He shouldn’t hope for anything, because it’s the hope that kills you, so they say.

“Why?” He asks, lengthening his stride in order to fall into step with you.

In the distance, Dustin stands crouched over a pair of galvanized trashcan lids, hammering wicked-looking carpenter nails through their surface area, the sound rings out across the field like the ticking of a clock, counting the seconds as Eddie waits for you to answer.

You walk along, watching your feet as you go, and he thinks he can see the faintest hint of a smile quirking up the corners of your mouth. 

When you glance up at him from the edge of your vision, he can’t stop himself from grinning at you, not even if his life depended on it. 

You don’t answer, you just smile and keep walking. 

He knows why, at least he hopes he does. 

For half a moment he’s overwhelmed with the notion, with the white heat of your gaze. It’s too much, and he has to tear his eyes away for the sake of his own self-preservation… and to keep from stepping into a gopher hole and breaking an ankle.

Eddie glances bashfully down at his sneakers and reaches up to scratch at the stubble he knows must be shadowing his jawline – it’s been days since he showered and he’s suddenly painfully aware of it.

You giggle beside him in a way that feels secretive, conspiratorial even, like it’s a secret shared between you. He can’t help but smile. 

It has Eddie suddenly thinking back to the earliest days of your relationship. To nights laying on your bedroom floor, staring up at the sea of glow-in-the-dark stars, tripping the light fantastic with the dulcet tones of Knights in White Satin playing a soft soundtrack to the cosmos alit in your eyes. 

Your parents aren’t home, but when are they ever?

He can picture your lips, rosy and swollen for the soft languid kisses you’ve been trading for the better part of two hours. Your clothes and hair are in a state, pulled hopelessly out of shape where he’s been pawing at you to gain access to the most tender parts he craved, like some sort of depraved creature, starved for the taste of sweetest flesh.

He’s so incandescently happy he imagines he could sink into the floor, become a ghost and spend the rest of his days haunting these walls if only to always be near you.

He heaves a contented sigh into your mouth as you push forward to knock foreheads with him, ever so tenderly.

Another kiss, just one more… The faintest whisper of your lips graze his, the pads of your fingers trace the lines of his face, your body is pressed into perfect alignment with his, and he’s so caught in the anticipation of you, so drunk on the heady film of proximity that he almost misses it.

He feels those three words more than he hears them, like three bolts to the chest that hit home and sink beneath the surface to permanently embed themselves in the tender flesh of his heart. 

The first time you’d ever told him you loved him is a shining jewel in the collection of treasured memories that live in the secret spot behind his lungs, and he’s been chasing that high for days. 

“Yeah… well…” He mumbles, the memory breathing a little courage into him, enough daring to steal a glance back up at you where he is once again overwhelmed by the way you’re still gazing at him — echoes of the same way you’d looked at him that night if he was being really foolish.

But he was always a fool for you. 

“Well?” You prompt. 

“Well… maybe I need to hear you say it.” 

You stop short and level Eddie with a sly look when he comes to stand beside you.

“Do you?” You ask, turning your gaze up at him. 

The moth flutters against its bars and Eddie has to clear his throat to keep his voice steady.

“Yeah…” He says, nodding, “Yeah, I think I do.”   

The assault on his stomach turns violent when your face splits into a wide, playful grin then. You bite your lip in a failed attempt to stifle it and rock back on your heels.

Eddie feels a nostalgic warmth flood his chest cavity, swirling like the tide against his ribs – he knows that mischievous look very well, and he realizes with a start just how long it’s been since he’s seen it grace your features.

Too long.

If he’d had his wits about him, he might have known what was about to happen next. It would have given him time to reach out and grab you, hold you to the spot. 

“You’ll have to catch me first,” you purr. 

It takes him a moment too long to feed the sentence through the gears in his mind, and by the time Eddie realizes what’s happening, you’ve already turned tail and bolted across the field.  

“Hey–!” He shouts after you, the bright sound of your laughter ringing across the grass as you angle yourself toward Dustin.  

He chases you, and suddenly it’s just like old times, running rampant circles around each other, playing, shouting, and laughing, only this time with the added bonus of Dustin being thrown into the mix.

Once he gets over the initial shock of you using him as a human shield, shoving him between you and Eddie, he’s more than happy to join in your game. 

Were anyone to look over, they would surely be disgusted by the cloyingly saccharine display – the three of you wrestling in the grass like it’s just another spring afternoon and nothing could possibly be amiss in the world.  

[mooflettes]

Tbh, I think that Pecharunt used to be mischievous but never causing any real trouble. But after being banished, he became a lot more malicious and revenge driven. I’d say he needed the masks so that he can absorb them and be able to see where Terapogas is. Despite all this, he keeps his mischievous side as a facade, as a coping mechanism to forget about the physical and mental pain he has to constantly endure. Almost like a mask if you think about it.

I’d say that Pecharunt renamed itself to ‘Dokutaro’ or ‘Dokuwāro’ to sound more menacing.

Now, I really hope Pecharunt becomes the main antagonist on its own in this fic since most antagonists tend to be evil teams who sometimes controlled legendary Pokémon, in my opinion, it’s gotten a bit stale. So it’ll be interesting to see a Pokémon acting as an antagonist on its own and acting malicious (Pecharunt actually wants to KILL Millie).

So whatever Project Venus is, I can see Pecharunt sabotaging it and using it to its own benefits.

Now, for some headcanon powers, I think that he can release souls that he absorbed to have some kind of hive-mind. To make up his lack of combat skills, he’s a master at manipulating others and a master at psychological warfare. As he was able to manipulate Kieran to do what it wants but leave Kieran in the dust.

He would also kill his victims by manipulating them to kill themselves, since to him, it’s easier to absorb souls this way.

And, by psychological warfare, he does that again and again even at the end of the fic as before he unfused and everyone was celebrating, he used the last of his power to blast at Carmine as he knew that Kieran would save her. And that does happen. Carmine would be overwhelmed with guilt from that incident onwards. Since Kieran is now trapped in the timeline where the future paradox Pokémon live. Which is why I said this ending has a hollow victory, the protagonists won, but at what cost?

Kieran would break out of Pecharunt’s control later on by the protags, only to suffer later on again.

Since if I were to put in Pecharunt’s words when asked by the protagonists:

“The world has betrayed me, so why should I play fair?!”

(He can speak but choosing to Poké speak instead)

SORRY FOR RAMBLING ON AGAIN. I have some ideas but I think I gone a bit overboard. But again, you choose to use any of these ideas if you want!

WTF THIS ANSWER GOES HARD!!! I DONT THINK YOU REALIZE IT BUT YOURE A BIT ON THE NOSE WITH WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT PECHARUNT WOULD IN PROJECT VENUS! Ofc, I wanna keep the twists and turns surprises, so I can't rlly go in-depth with how right you might be or WHO "Project Venus" is.

But I do believe that Pecharunt could absorb souls and release them, or like the toxic chain, chain those souls to itself (Think of how Shinigami gets Yuma to follow her around in Rain Code)

But it is also parasitic, in which it infects itself onto a main host and then that host has most of its power, which it can inflict onto others via zombification, resurrection, etc!

I cant say who or what gets possessed in Project Venus other than the obvious, but I'll say that the idea will actualky be used in canon, soon.

About Carmine...she is HEAVILY GUILTY for how she treated her brother, and in the fic I plan for Carmine and other characters to have tender moments, as pokémon doesn't fully get to delve into the nitty-gritty of family issues like I want them to (ie. Grief, jealousy, tension, etc.) And we already see such an example with Millie and her mother

I wanna cover as many bases as I can without making Millie seem like a "woe is meee" type character. While she is our protag and she has her moments I want to allow her, and many others, to at least gave clarity

ALSO PLEASE DON'T APOLOGIZE! YOUR RAMBLES ARE MUCH APPRECIATED AND IT'S MOTIVATING ME TO WRITE AGAIN! I SHOULD REALLY GET TO WORK ON THE NEXT CHAPTER SOON TBH LOL BUT UT DOES MEAN BUNCHES YOU SHOW GREAT INTEREST!!!

[mizufae]

Different hooks for the sundry stranger things fics I want to write but probably never will unless I find a partner in crime because apparently writing is a fully collaborative activity for me:

Speculative season five action adventure wherein Hopper has brought that big sword back from Russia and Mike steals it and fucking tromps around slicing monsters in half like a real life paladin and Will faints because it’s 2 hot 2 handle but then a second later Mike trips over nothing at all and they both end up on the ground embarrassed

Meandering post-climax ponderings on hair symbolism that starts with Mike realizing Eddie is truly dead and chopping off his hair in a dramatic fit of teen mourning, eleven and hop growing their hair back together, will also chopping off his hair in sibling solidarity and it transforming from Mike’s grief to the three of them processing their traumas together via hair growth, Steve tutting at everyone as they all complain while it grows back through awkward stages, and Robin going through a very long manic panic phase. (Would need to do historical hair dye research)

The Sinclair parents being the only competent married people in town, helping out Max’s mom, who doesn’t want to accept because she is kinda racist, scenes about blackness and class status in a small town and the intersectionality of stigma

A whole thing where Karen Wheeler sends Ted off with Holly out of town asap and thinks she is going to go confront wtf is going on only she gets trapped or otherwise goes missing and Nancy and Mike think she is dead and fucking go off to rescue their mom and have sibling power duo scenes and they have fun bickering chemistry and rescue their mom who is alive and doing okay all things considered. Meanwhile Ted is like, inventing the internet so he can ask yahoo how to legally divest himself of a small child

A Labyrinth inspired plot wherein Holly gets kidnapped by Vecna and Mike has to embark on a scary journey to get her back and on the way discovers he is so super gay, at some point Henry shows up in tight pants

Dustin and Steve convince Joyce and Hop to read Claudia into all the secrets so they all pick their way over to Dustin’s house to find Claudia with a rifle and dozens of knives and also a meatloaf in the oven and she is like “Do you honestly think I don’t listen in on every walkie talkie conversation you boys have ever had???” because Dustin has to get his brains from somewhere

A Barb Lives AU where she gets away from the upsidedown pool in the nick of time and defends baby Will in season 1, who she knows because they are both constantly at the Wheeler’s house. And after they are both rescued they process their trauma together and Jonathan is like “how DARE you take my spot as older sibling” and Barb is like, “why don’t we kiss about it”

Joyce and Nancy 80s makeover montage

The party all go see Star Trek: The Voyage Home in theaters (1986) and they endure a friendship cataclysm as nobody can agree if it was amazing or if it sucked immensely

Steve and Eleven attending college together in their early thirties / late twenties to study childhood psychology

[corruptedsilence]

OOC: Since you were talking about Des, I've actually been wondering what (if anything) could be done for him and the other Artifacts.

Letting the angry little shit free is a BIG no-no, but keeping him inside something that can be stolen and change hands isn't good either. Locking him up in an actual prison would just make him hate people more and there's still the chance someone could find him.

For better or worse, he's part of this world @seraphvie​

That’s actually a really good question and honestly? I think it has to boil down to a few things that are, in my opinion, seemingly impossible to do:

1. Humanity and life itself has to get a better hold on their emotions. In my view the artifacts feed and live solely because people experience and feel the emotion that they have, as such their power and influence grows the more of the emotion they are associated is around/out of control. ie: For Des, the angrier people are, the more enraged and hatred they feel the stronger he gets in turn. It doesn’t help he to my canon has a natural aura that mortal beings+souls are effected by that make them feel an inclination to be more angry such as all wielders of the cane have. (As for soulless beings I don’t think his aura effects them)

Humans, animals, any living thing that can experience anger would need to get a better hold on regulating their emotions and not getting out of hand. This would significantly drain his ability and in turn the aura he can spread. But sadly this wouldn’t happen because you can’t expect all of life itself to be able to have a healthy relationship with their emotions since it’d only take 1 soul to ruin it for everyone.

Just as with every emotion you need regulation and healthy ways of experiencing the emotion and working through it. it’d be the same with Des and all the other artifacts. People need to get a better hold on their grief but like I said it isn’t feasably possible. Bottling them up into physical items, literally bottling up the universe’s grief in ticking time bombs would only cause more grief on an unimaginable scale once it’s let out.

2. Limited Freedom. @sweetestthrenody​ and I, my beautiful gf u///u, have thought of an idea of Nim and Eton that Nim basically helps invent a spell for Eton to be given *limited* freedom to interact with the real world but keeps his main core power within the shoes. This allows him the safety of any of the Empress’s soldiers that are still alive while still allowing him some kind of “freedom”. He can still do small things ofc on his own but he can’t cause catastrophic destruction with how power. It’s still mainly contained within the shoes but he has a more physical body that he is free to be more of himself in.

Of course another restriction is he can’t be too far away from the shoes/artifact still which is a downside but he isn’t 100% limited as he is being stuck inside it completely. I feel this could be the best way to more or less “rehabilitate” the artifacts into life by giving them limited freedoms via spells using their own magic in a way the artifacts themselves can’t use while trapped.

Kind of like how medications and things help limit your interaction with certain emotions but in the end you should still deal with those core emotions. Medications, depending on what it’s for of course, shouldn’t completely numb you or else it’s just another form of bottling your emotions. When it comes to more mood-regulating ones ofc. Only when you learn better coping mechanisms that you’re able to slowly get off of it if that’s possible for some (but i dont think the planet could handle any being fully freed. Earth got lucky with Brier since she didn’t want ot destroy the world but be accepted by it but even then she still fucked up the entirety of vampire kind). Even then I don’t think the artifacts could ever feasibly live their lives like they once had because the world can’t handle that much emotion especially having been stored in these artifacst for countless centuries and millenia even. If you think bottling up a decade or more of grief in you, think about that times as many people on the planet, over the span of hundreds of years. That’s what the artifacts have had to deal with fhewjkk

Both of these things together would allow Des, and the other artifacts, the ability to interact and gain freedom over time but for Des I don’t think he’ll ever be happy with it. This might work for Eton who is more of an inclination to bargaining the best situation he can get in my view, but Des and his delusional views of the world and himself as a god among mortals wouldn’t accept either of these terms and would constantly cause more issues. Sure, he might be with Eton in his limited freedom but he would always resent and be angered by not having complete freedom which he believes he deserves because the empress and life created him, so it’s not fair to bottle him up as if they aren’t responsible for what they created.

[hiduprakyat]

thank you @agentamethystelf for enabling me ily muah have some completed costume concepts of my best girl

this is part of the post-apocalyptic 18th century novel im writing for fun (and also to apply postmodernism and post-colonialsim from what i learned in critical theory class)

so. harriet branwell has two (2) friends in the entire world: her maid eliza, and her neighbour, george foster. her fathers family arrived in england for trade about a hundred years ago via the dutch from (dutch occupied) melaka (modern day peninsula malaysia) and settled down in hampshire, while her mother was a medical apprentice who left melaka to study in amsterdam (thanks colonisation on both counts!). her mother died in 1785 from consumption and shes been grieving since

the year is 1789, and theres been reports of giant rocks falling from the sky and wiping out whole towns across europe, but it hasnt hit england yet, so harriet goes book shopping with dad one fine morning. unfortunately its when the rocks hit england, and it hits their town. she gets separated from dad and trapped under rubble with george, and when they finally dig their way out of the debris, the whole town's been evacuated. while the rocks (theyre actually meteorites but they dont know it yet) have stopped, they realise that its not for good, theyll get pelted again soon and worse, its travelling up north. so they form a plan: they find a way to get to the cairngorms and take shelter in the caves

so they meet a lot of people on the way, whom they travel with and part ways from, until they meet a romani clan travelling to gateshead, who takes in people they run into on the way. harriet is convinced to join them when the leaders sons wife is also from melaka, and introduces herself as harriet branwell. and people start calling george mr branwell. its a very important plot point trust me. so begins harriet and georges journey up north, and the story mostly deals with grief and the discussion of colonialism as a solution to the apocalypse. theres a lot of discussion on gender roles and sexuality, and george hooks up with the leaders youngest son at some point and harriet makes fun of him

they make it to the cairngorms at the end, but they dont find out what happened to their families, and if theyre even still alive, but it's more of an exploration of grief, and how harriet, whose entire family only consisted of her father and eliza, deals with the loss of contact, on top of grieving her mother; compared to george, who had lived a perfectly charmed life before this, deals with losing his entire family (his parents, five siblings, three siblings-in-law, and seven nieces and nephews) all at once. most importantly we see some dumbass bisexuals be absolute disasters, even two hundred and thirty years ago

[sailormoonandme]

Usagi’s Evolution as a Healer Goddess

The other day I saw a post discussing the evolution of Usagi’s fuku and it occurred to me how Eternal Sailor Moon’s costume was her first Senshi uniform to ditch the tiara. 

That in turn led me to consider how that kind of makes Usagi weaker as it removes a very useful weapon for her. After all, if you include the movies, Usagi uses some variant of Moon Tiara Action in practically every season prior to Stars.

However, dwelling more upon it I realized how this tiny change was all too appropriate for Usagi’s character development.

Firstly, by supplanting the Tiara with her Moon planetary symbol, Eternal Sailor Moon more closely resembles both Queen Serenity, her own Princess Serenity form and her future self as Neo-Queen Serenity. 

Since all three are objectively more powerful than Usagi typically is as Sailor Moon I think the change emphasises how she has ‘levelled up’ in her Eternal form. When combined with the angel wings, Eternal Sailor Moon shifts Usagi visually closer to her future self as NQS, which in the anime is implied to be her most powerful incarnation.* It is almost as though the visual was communicating that the Divine Miracle Magic that she’d previously drawn upon as Princess Serenity in Classic-SuperS had now become ingrained in her standard Senshi form and thus was more accessible to her. 

It was in thinking of her previous efforts as Princess Serenity that I inevitably recalled her duel with Metalia/Beryl in episode 46 and realized that Eternal Sailor Moon was the first time since Classic that Usagi’s default attack was a healing  technique not a destructive one. 

Moon Healing Escalation was Usagi’s first healing technique but until Starlight Honeymoon Therapy Kiss (and it’s later upgrade, Silver Moon Crystal Power Kiss) it was also her only healing technique. 

Between regaining healing techniques and ditching her tiara/other destructive attacks/weapons, I think this represents her subtle growth in both her power and status. After all, it is a sad fact of life that it is easier to destroy something rather than fix it, thereby making the latter far more impressive.**

This skewing towards healing power rather than destructive power is also (arguably) thematically appropriate given the nature of Sailor Moon as a female power fantasy as (rightly or wrongly) the act of healing is typically coded as feminine. 

We can even take this further by examining things from the ‘opposite direction’ as it were.

Consider that in the climactic final episodes of Sailor Stars, Eternal Sailor Moon’s healing technique actually fails her when used against Galaxia. In later episodes, upon adopting her Princess Serenity form (complete with larger and more obviously angelic wings), she uses a sword to duel Galaxia.

Obviously a sword is, at least predominantly, an offensive weapon and can therefore be viewed as symbolic of aggression; let’s leave any Freudian or gendered interpretations alone for today. Her use of the sword is highly uncharacteristic (in the anime). Even her explicitly offencive weapons (like the Cutie Moon Rod or Spiral Moon Heart Rod) weren’t as clearly aggressive nor obviously violent. Desperate times calling for desperate measures? Perhaps, but we might also speculate it was her subconsciously reacting to grief. Not only can grief make you act in ways you wouldn’t normally, but a sword after all was a weapon wielded by her lover in his Prince Endymion incarnation. Her lover whom Usagi had just learned Galaxia had murdered. In other words, amidst her grief she reacts by going too hard in the other direction after healing her enemy proves ineffective.

However, when all is said and done the sword fails her.*** Ultimately is simply escalates the conflict by prompting Galaxia to become Chaos Galaxia and thereby make Usagi’s chances of victory all the slimmer. If we wished to stretch things, you could perhaps say that this is a commentary about how war and violence ultimately begets yet more war and violence.

Even if that is an over extrapolation though, it still served to emphasis the point that a sword is not befitting of Usagi, that she was doomed to lose if she continued to battle with destroying her enemy as the end goal.

In fact, her road to real victory begins when she not doesn’t attack Galaxia but makes it easier for herself to be attacked. In the end, Usagi doesn’t confront her most powerful enemy as the God-Queen of the future, the demi-goddess Princess of the distant past, the sailor-suited soldier of love and justice in the present, nor even a humble school girl.

She does it by literally stripping herself of all those things, of stripping herself of everything in fact.

Her weapons? Gone.

Her other items, like her Tiare? Gone.

Her comrades? Gone, and they’d be powerless against Galaxia anyway.

And finally, even her clothes? Gone!

Beyond the Silver Crystal (an outward visualization of her heart/soul) and the angel wings (symbolic of her role as a saviour) she is completely (but tastefully) naked.

Usagi visually and quite literally is more vulnerable  than she’s ever been, even more so than on her first night as Sailor Moon.

And yet this is Usagi at her actual most powerful.

It is her distilled to her absolute essence as a person, all other trappings removed. She’d just one person showing another they will categorically not harm them, that they bear them no malice and they have nothing to hide. That openness and compassion is what ultimately enables her to connect to the good within Galaxia and pull her away from the darkness that had corrupted her.

Usagi in this moment completely fulfilled her character arc.

·      In the Dark Kingdom arc Usagi destroys (or seals away depending upon your POV) Beryl/Metalia.

·      In the Hell Tree arc, Usagi resolves the over all plot via a healing technique (although it is functionally similar to a destructive attack). However, that only happens because the Hell Tree both instructs Usagi to do that and because it lets her. It is the equivalent of a sickly doctor instructing a nurse on what to do to make them better. The nurse might have the power but their agency as a healer is limited.

·      In the Black Moon arc, Usagi, with help, destroys Wiseman/Death Phantom. 

·      In the Death Busters arc, Usagi does save Hotaru and ‘purify’ her. However, like the Hell Tree, that was something Hotaru wanted. Additionally, her purification functioned as a way to heal the body of someone sick and who wanted to sacrifice themselves, not someone actually evil. The evil in question was Pharaoh 90 and it is presumed that Usagi destroyed him (although it might’ve been Hotaru or the pair of them together). 

·      Forgive me for skipping the Dead Moon Circus arc as Chibiusa is the real protagonist there, and Usagi’s role is chiefly as a rescuer. It therefore doesn’t really apply, although the Nehelenia mini-arc from Stars is a different story. There, Usagi was a healer again, but she did it with the help of her loved ones and with the aid of her Tiare device. Nevertheless, we can see by this point Usagi’s capacity as a healer heroine had been gradually growing until we get to the battle with Galaxia.

By the end of series, Usagi has successfully healed Galaxia and it is neither with the aid of her comrades, nor with the power of a weapon or device, nor with any instructions from her ‘patient’ or any other third party.

Additionally, Galaxia (unlike Hotaru) wasn’t someone’s who was saved from a noble self-sacrifice or had a physical ailment that needs to be addressed. In Galaxia’s case, her very soul had lost it’s way and become corrupted. She had lost who she was supposed to be and her purpose in life had been perverted.****

When combined with how powerful Galaxia always was, how Chaos and the Star Seeds empowered her further, Usagi’s victory here cannot be understated.

Her ‘patient’ was more powerful than all her other adversaries, was in need of more healing than her other ‘patients’ and was more resistant to being healed. Not to mention, since she’d directly murdered her beloved friends (and indirectly aborted her future daughter), Usagi would’ve been forgiven for not  even trying to salvage Galaxia 

And yet, with no weapons, no backup and just the power of her heart and soul basically, Usagi succeeded. 

After Stars the idea that Usagi could heal the entire planet after a global catastrophe and reshape it into a fairy tale crystalline utopia was all too believable.

What’s healing one planet when her ability to empathise had already healed a whole galaxy?

Who needs a tiara to reduce evil to dust when you can simply convince evil to be good?

*This is arguably symbolized by baby Hotaru’s vision of NQS transforming into Eternal Sailor Moon in episode 1 of Stars.

In fact, we might argue that a low-key subplot running through all of Stars (both the Nehelenia and Galaxia portions of it) is gradually transitioning Usagi closer to the person she is destined to become as Neo-Queen Serenity, hence why the first episode features the most explicit reference to her fate as Queen since R. 

**Personally I am an atheist, but nevertheless I and others like me can grasp why  deities in most major religions through history weren’t simply capable of mass scale destruction, but also of essentially manipulating reality to create  things too.

By that same token, it’s little surprise that perhaps the widest spread religious figure in history was Jesus Christ who rarely (if ever) engaged in aggression or destructive acts, predominantly employing divine healing powers.

I suspect the attraction of such figures to human beings lies in the fact that on some level we know that, given the right time and resources, we mere mortals would be capable of destroying anything. Given time it’s all but certain we will develop the technology to even destroy planetary bodies. On the flipside, I think we also intuitively grasp that  reversing  such damage, of reattaching a limb, of stanching bleeding, etc, is far more difficult if not impossible. Hence we attributed the ability to do such things to larger than life Divine Entities.

*** Now that I think of it, it’s also poignant that Usagi tries and fails to defeat Galaxia with a sword when we take Sailor Uranus into consideration. 

Uranus is of course associated with her weapon, the Space Sword and, like Usagi, tried and failed to use such a weapon against Galaxia.

Giving Uranus a sword is symbolically appropriate given her role as the leader of the more aggressive branch of the Sailor Team. Having her fail against Galaxia and Usagi consequently fail by in some way ‘mimicking her tactics’ is equally symbolically appropriate. Not only because of their ideological conflict in Sailor Moon S but also their tensions in Sailor Stars itself. In both situations Usagi’s more open, less aggressive, ideology was ultimately proven correct. 

Thus in using a sword against Galaxia it represented how Usagi was always doomed to fail by taking the aggressive/destructive route and how she was arguably not being true to herself in that moment. 

****It’s not to dissimilar to Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker now that I think about it. 

[mittensmorgul]

So for the most part, I outright reject the finale. But I do think, in light of the whole "Jimmy was supposed to be in the bar, and Dean was disappointed by that because his perfect heaven would have Cas in it" just makes me all the more convinced that the final episode was some kind of djinn dream. Like.... There's no other explanation in my opinion. If Dean's perfect heaven was supposed to have Cas, and he tragically gets faked out by Jimmy (????? Why tf would jimmy be there anyway), it just proves that it's not ACTUALLY heaven. That, along with he El Sol beer he's drinking is all the evidence I need. I think after 15x19, Dean and Sam got whammied by some monster, and are stuck in a hallucination, and that's what we're seeing. (My headcanon is that it's actually The Empty doing it, because it knows if it doesn't keep Dean and Sam occupied and spinning in circles, they'll invade the Empty to save Cas. So its trying to prevent that) :)

Hello, anon friendo! I am gonna start by offering the socially distanced version of a high five, because yeah... There is just so much to unpack here, and you provided such a succinct and all-encompassing series of statements to start from. Thank you!

*flings open array of questionable suitcases*

First off, Congrats on having rejected the finale. I know a lot of folks are still struggling with that one, for many reasons. But you have hit upon so many of the points I’ve been trying to make about the finale since it aired. I’d just like to start with some of the assumptions I’ve heard from folks about the finale that make it impossible for me to consider it fully honestly canon. Because so much about it just makes no goshdang sense... like... not at all...

One of the biggest issues I have surrounding the reception of the finale in parts of fandom is that it portrayed a “happy ending.” The show itself spent the entire final season telling us that a gravestone marked Winchester was not and never would be a happy ending (thank you Becky Rosen-- words I never thought I’d say, but honestly and most sincerely meant). Let’s break this down a bit.

Starting from the assumption that “heaven was fixed” so that characters could have true free will there, making it satisfying in any way that Dean died so young and never got to truly experience happiness during life, I would like anyone who has adopted this attitude to then explain Kansas the band. I mean... explain that in any satisfactory canon-compliant way. (hint: you can’t. it makes zero sense in canon, if heaven is truly reformed and “happy” with everyone in possession of free will.)

Which brings me to Misha’s comments about Jimmy being in the Roadhouse. Why, if heaven were truly fixed, would Jimmy ever in a bazillion years attend a party for Dean Winchester? If Heaven were truly a “happy” ending for Dean, why introduce this element of eternal tragedy and heartbreak to his heaven experience? Why taunt him with the eternal loss of Cas-- even if you don’t think he reciprocated Cas’s romantic feelings, he was canonically the best friend Dean ever had, and being forced to exist forever in a place where he had everyone else he ever cared for except for Cas? Is frankly horrific.

How the actual fuck is that a happy ending, in any sense of the word?

How is this the sort of heaven that Dean would’ve made for himself before it was “fixed?” At least in the memorex heaven, he could’ve lived in oblivious peace with Cas, even if it was always just his own memories and not ~actually Cas~. I honestly think that would’ve been happier than the abject tragedy of what we did get, and what we would’ve gotten had the original script played out.

All of this kind of makes me wonder if they ever even actually defeated Chuck. Like... it feels more like Dean got pulled into the Empty at that moment with Cas and Billie, and everything else after that point was the Empty’s endless experience of sorrow and despair we knew it subject its charges to. So that’s one potential for what could’ve actually happened. I mean, everything about the finale was sorrow and despair, you know? Dean didn’t even get to enjoy his pie at a pie festival because Sam smashed in in his face. How is any of it happy, in any way?

Because if that was actually heaven, there wasn’t actually any free will (because why tf would Kansas the band have chosen to put on that concert? why tf would Jimmy have been there, just to torment Dean with the taunt of Cas returning to him only to have that hope snatched away again? It’s cruel. It’s, in fact, a source of intense despair).

The djinn theory could also work, and I’ve read some excellent fix-it fic using that as a premise. But that doesn’t really explain what happened to Jack (and Amara, since she was in there with them) after hoovering up Chuck’s power, you know? I think the simplest explanations in canon are that Chuck actually won via the unified power of Light and Dark being transferred into Jack and effectively using him as a vessel. With Sam and Dean convinced they’d won, they effectively stopped resisting Chuck’s story for them, and using Jack’s understanding of humanity and the Winchesters specifically, Chuck finally was able to implement a version of his story that the Winchesters would just waltz into without thinking it was supernaturally influenced at all. Going bigger and bigger with monsters and cosmic troubles hadn’t worked, but going so small Sam and Dean would barely even notice the influence-- even with the incongruous reappearance of a vampire that appeared in their lives once, for like two whole minutes 15 years ago, and an unsolved case from the journal from more than 30 years ago that John had never even linked to vampires at all.

At this point, I need to mention that I’m watching 10.23 as I type this up. An episode in which we confront the Mark, along with Death, and Dean’s despair, where he learns a version of the truth (but by no means the full truth, or even accurate truth in some respects) about Chuck’s Story, Amara/The Darkness, etc. That would unfold more fully over the next five seasons. And what was the case Dean took in this episode? Vampires. LOLOL omg this show is nothing if not horrifically consistent, yes?

So because of this, I went haring off through my own blog looking for a post I made a long time ago about the symbolism of how various monsters are used on this show (because again, consistency). I got sidetracked by other posts in my monsters tag, including this from after 15.09 aired, which feels particularly awfully relevant. This was my reaction to Chuck’s Story he showed Sam in that episode, about what the future would look like should he successfully trap Chuck with a Mark, and which... yeah is basically exactly thematically consistent with what we saw in the finale, right down to a cheesy twist on vampires. Read the whole post right here, but this is the part that reached up and punched me in the face:

this is how Dean personally reacts when he loses Cas. We know how he reacts when he loses anyone else– think about what he did when Charlie died. He went on a murder rampage against the Stynes for killing her. When Mary died he broke some furniture and went full bore toward both resurrecting her and stopping Jack. But without Cas, Dean loses the will to fight. Sam has… always been different. He referenced Jess in 15.04 to remind us of how he was after she died in the pilot episode. Just like John, he picked up the revenge mission and ran with it. But for Dean, Cas is different. Without Cas… Dean gives up.

Because... Dean gave up. Sure, he and Sam weren’t overrun by vampires in the end. Chuck knew they’d never stop fighting the monsters, one way or another. The only way to get Dean to give up is something Chuck hadn’t quite figured out yet... maybe not until after 15.17, after confronting Cas in the hallway of the bunker, after absorbing Amara’s power, knowledge, and perspective on Dean.

Chuck needed Dean to give up, and honestly? Pushing Billie to clear him off the table and send him (and Cas, that pesky angel who never did what he was told) to the Empty would’ve been a direct way to deal with that... pretty much akin to having one sibling locked in a cage forever, yes?

Also, still looking through my monsters tag, I’m reminded of 14.15, and still cannot differentiate the version of Heaven in 15.20 from what was done to the people of that town. This... is not... paradise. This is actively what Dean has been insisting is the OPPOSITE of paradise since like… 4.22… No ending where Dean was a “Stepford bitch in paradise” ever had the possibility of being “happy,” at the core of things, and this “fixed” version of Heaven just doesn’t hold up to any degree of inspection. Something is seriously wrong here. https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/183465650390/so-can-we-talk-about-this-monster-of-the-week-for

And since I was unable to find the post I wrote who knows how long ago about Monsters and how they’re symbolically used on Supernatural to represent larger themes in the episode, I’ll just attempt to sum up what Vampires have been used for. Revenge. Vampires are always, in some way connected to themes of revenge.

(and hooray, I found at least a post adjacent to the one I’ve spent the last four hours trying to find... https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/187207052080/i-obviously-did-not-think-this-through, where I mention that shapeshifters are about revealing hidden truths (mostly about Dean since most shapeshifters are connected to Dean), zombies are about grief and the inability to move past it.)

So why... why at the end of their road is the monster that comes after them-- literally FOR REVENGE for something that had never been blamed on Sam or Dean to begin with, from season 1, directly connected to John’s revenge mission and the first time they learned about the Colt AND the first time they learned in canon that Vampires were even real... like... this feels very specifically like some kind of layers-of-meta levels of shade on them, you know? Vampires are for revenge, so what vengeance exactly is being visited upon Sam and Dean in this episode? If not Chuck’s entire story for them itself?

So yeah, 100% agree, something is incredibly rotten in the finale. And I am sick to effing death of people trying to convince us that anything about this was “good” or “happy” or “satisfying” in any way. Or even “how it was always supposed to end” with Dean dead bloody, as if the entire back half of the series hadn’t been suggesting that a true win was the subversion of all of Chuck’s story for them, and Dean finally being able to have his chosen family all alive, happy, and chilling on a beach somewhere watching the sunset. Nothing will ever convince me that the ending portrayed in 15.20 wasn’t exactly how Chuck thought he “won,” rendering it entirely irrelevant to the rest of canon, unless all of canon was ultimately the tragedy we’d been encouraged to believe would be firmly defeated in the end.

Folks, you can’t have it both ways. 

[nuclearnerves]

INCOMING VAMPIRE AU THOUGHTS

Don't mind me I'm finally getting the ideas I had on this shit out so I can actually go forward with developing it as an AU. It's my usual mixup of fps protags, Gordon Guy and John, but I'm starting with Gordon as the Vampire and Guy as the Vampire Hunter.

absolute beast of a wall of text under the cut

What If Being A Vampire Literally Sucks All The Time Forever like chronic pain sucks. like THAT level of sucks. Like Here's what I was thinking of. Being a vampire isn't just "being alive forever but you need to drink human blood" It's like Oh man I have some lore you look at vampires and their main thing is that they're blood suckers right so lets start with a corpse dead body. cadaver. no longer with us. just some rotting meat. The brain needs oxygen as fuel. The blood supplies the oxygen through blood. The blood is pumped through the heart. The blood is made by your bone marrow. You die. Your heart stops beating Blood stops pumping Brain no longer has oxygen to think marrow stops making blood thats standard! Now, becoming undead, as a vampire, is a little more complicated. The long and short of it is: your body is FIGHTING ACTIVELY to be alive against all odds and wins every time (immortality), but it hurts the whole way

I have the gist of it. It's like. Your heart stops. By all means, you should be dead. but the magic kicks in, and you're still thinking. Your brain is still sending signals to your muscles to move. But using what oxygen to move? whats burning in you? You don't know but you know it's just enough to get to your next meal. So you ferociously eat something, and then find you can't swallow. You can't make saliva. You barely have the energy to chew, and once you DO get something in your stomach, it immediately comes back up. Why can't you feel your pulse? What's going on? You're out of options so you figure you might as well just lie down and die. You're too tired to keep going anyway. So you do, you lie down, and you close your eyes, and you quietly hope that death is as peaceful as sleep. You realize you've actually been moving around without breathing, which makes sense because you can barely flex your diaphragm for more than a shaky wheeze. How are you thinking with such little oxygen? But as you fade from consciousness, you can feel something in you, and it's so upset, it's crying, it's filled with grief, and you instantly can tell it's your skeleton. It's your bones. You're distraught down to your marrow. You're dying. You're dying! Your heart stopped and you have no more blood! You need blood! You need blood to move! To breathe! To think! You try to breath deep again for the voices in your bones, trying to comfort them, to sooth them with the repetitive motion in your lungs, trying to fill yourself with anything but grief, but they keep wailing. We make the blood, our creation, our child, what we put all of our work into is gone! gone! gone! We need it back! Anything! All of it! Find it! Bring it back to us! We're hungry! WE'RE HUNGRY!

and once you find yourself too exhausted to listen, to think, how badly you wish just to die already to cease hearing this wailing, you find your body moving without you. And it's hungry and it's searching and it's crawling on all fours and it misses its beautiful red life that made it feel so full before and it needs it back, and the next thing you know you're desperately grabbing anything with blood in it and shoving it in your mouth in a desperate attempt to sooth this cry for life, you don't want to die, you don't want to die, you worked so hard to keep up this body and craft it and LIVE with it and you're not going to go, and even when you try, even when you try to lay down and die, your body refuses, it takes the reigns, and it keeps up the work itself with or without your help. And it's not until your stomach is full and your teeth are stained and you feel a pulsating burning in your bones that you snap back awake, completely conscious, just fine. You're lucid, you don't feel any more pain. Everything around you is dead and drained and messy and your heart still isn't beating. but you can breathe now and holy shit you guess you literally need to kill to survive and the less you eat and the more you starve yourself the worse it gets when your body finally decides to take recourse.

my idea was like. "the vampires curse is actually stored in the bones, thats why the teeth get so sharp and also theres a connection between blood and bones with the creation via bone marrow" its literally like i was sitting there thinking "no no no, whats it like to be a vampire. what neurosis would you develop. How would you panic? What are common mistakes beginner vampires make" which, by the way, gordon is a beginner vampire

so now you gotta factor, what blood lasts for how long? how long can you go between meals? not only that, but what creatures satisfy the urge? How long can you go avoiding human blood? Does it work like drugs where you develop a resistance to the high, or is it like food where it will keep you moving until you eat again? How the fuck are you gonna get your hands on blood? Can you just eat raw meat? Does that count? and thats where im at lol

OKAY now. now thoughts on beginning scenes of vampire au

So my idea was this Doomguy is a vampire hunter independent and one of his buds says that some freak scared and almost attacked his daughter when she got too close to his old abandoned laboratory up the hill and hes like “he might be… you know… a problem. if you needed a lead” and guys like yeah i fuckin hate the undead ill kill this dude so he busts into old lab space and sees so many dead animals its actually mostly Bones and pelt that hes seeing piles of feathers etc so hes like yeah this is all telltale signs of vampire uhhh hes introduced to gordon SOMEHOW im not totally sure of the details but the working idea i have is guy falls into a trap gordon devised that restrains him suspended in wire or something and gordon like. limps/stumbles into the room and this dude looks haggard he’s breathing heavy, his cheeks are hollow, he’s bug-eyed and shaking while looking at this massive wall of meat in his trap and he bares a bunch of hideous teeth and grits them and looks like hes really struggling with somethin... Like if these dudes don't know each other then Gordon might give in and try to drain Guy, and Guy would absolutely do anything in his power to turn this new vampire into ash, im thinking the inclusion if g-man as a coven leader can fix both issues.

i like the idea of guy falling into gordons trap and gordon thinking about what to do with him before gman shows up and whisks gordon away for a “meeting” while complimenting him on his good work catching the most feared vampire hunter in the country and gman just leaving guy suspended in wires that he has to fight his way out of. Instant situation defuser.

Guy ends up needing to take care of other monsters before going back to Gordon, and he DOES plan to go back to gordon, because no vampire is a good one, especially not one associated with the fucking head of a coven, but next time he sees Gordon, Gordon helps him out of a scrape by attacking and draining a combine who was going to take Guy out or something and escaping before Guy can catch him, or otherwise seeing Gordon do something good with his insane undead powers and like, the third time he meets up with him is when they can actually talk, and Gordons fuckin SO haggard, he’s not even fighting back and he’s even going as far as to say “just make sure theres nothing of me left when you’re done, I don’t want anyone else getting hurt”

Side Note: Guy has a bunch of scarring on his body from dealing with vampires, cops, ghosts, werewolves, anything violent that kills people. I'm playing with the inkling of an idea that he has Divine Blood in him, so that any time something undead bites him or tries to drink his blood, it burns. We'll see.

Side Note 2: now i really like the idea of the combine actually being an organized faction of vampire hunters that are WICKED crooked and exploit people for all their worth in exchange for their “safety” when they kill a vampire They’re essentially loansharks and Guy fucking hates them and hates the name theyve given to vampire hunting

Side Note 3: You've probably noticed that I haven't said anything about John yet! He's in this too. His species is a surprise but I need to get to him later I have an idea for where he came from (Cortana too)

I still need a good reason for Guy to not instantly kill this vampire, if not it's just gonna be "Gordon Freeman escapes the countrys best vampire hunter like a seventh time" every time they meet and they end up being rivals. And it gives Guy enough time to look past the whole "undead monster" thing and start looking at the "Oh this dude figured out how to fight his ridiculous craving for blood in a way more humane than most and is actually staying out of peoples way and keeping to himself. Guess he's not that big of a threat but I still need to keep an eye on him in case he loses it. Turns out he's got a family (Probably Alyx, Eli, Issac and Barney) who's been lookin for him and cares about him as well, don't wanna hurt them". I like the idea of them ending up needing to team up to take out undead together.

And that's what I got so far!!!

[jaskiersvalley]

Hi. I'm sorry to bother you. Can I request some domestic witchersexual Jaskier?? I just had to put my 6 year old doberman down because she had an autoimmune disease and wasn't getting better and I'm really sad and I have read most of the new fics on tumblr and AO3 but alot of it is whump or Angst and I can't deal with that right now.

I am so sorry to hear about your doberman! It’s never easy to lose a beloved pet. If there is anything beyond writing something to take your mind off things that I can do, please do drop me a line either via ask or DMs. This story turned a little less domestic with not all focus on Jaskier but...hopefully it still gives you the comfort you crave.

Rumours were rife. Witchers, already a dying breed, were disappearing without a trace. No body to recover, no contract to follow the trail of. One minute a witcher was travelling in his usual stomping grounds, the next, he was never seen again. It had Vesemir fretting. Just because he was responsible for Kaer Morhen didn’t mean he was blind and deaf to the stories that were rife. Strangely, despite the witchers disappearing, there wasn’t an abundance of creatures running rampant.

Of course Vesemir worried for his pups. He worried for all witchers but his own boys were special to him. When winter came and Lambert turned up, followed not long after by Eskel, Vesemir could almost relax. A crow from Geralt reassured him that his wolves were all okay and whatever was snatching witchers hadn’t been able to get to them. It didn’t take much to gently extract a promise of regular communication with them throughout the following year. Messages were regularly sent back, letting Vesemir know that the unseen enemy hadn’t snatched them. Yet.

Despite their best efforts, Eskel stopped writing. Even when Lambert and Geralt rushed to where he was last seen, there was no trace of him, nothing. That winter, Eskel didn’t return home and they mourned him.

If only Eskel had been enough for the monster that seemed to hunt witchers exclusively. However, Lambert made it down from Kaer Morhen in the spring and was never seen again. Vesemir tried to remind himself that this was a witcher’s life. Solitary, filled with loss, grief and there was no hope of a happy ending. At least he still had Geralt, the shining star of the Wolf School. Deep down, Vesemir found it fitting that Geralt would be the last one standing of his pups, even if Eskel had been his equal in all but fame.

Witchers didn’t travel together, there wasn’t enough work in any area to support one, let alone two witchers. But Vesemir didn’t want to be the last Wolf in existence and he didn’t want to lose Geralt. Not when they had both lost so much already. Kaer Morhen could lock its doors for one last time. It was already crumbling and Vesemir didn’t think he would be returning, not if he went out on the path, shadowing Geralt in a parallel path, occasionally meeting up.

If anything, contracts were more scarce than ever before despite there being fewer witchers. It made no sense and Vesemir couldn’t understand. There was no explanation for it but he trudged on, determined to do what he had been created for. If there were fewer witchers in the world, he would pick up the slack.

Camping was harsh, sleeping on the ground made Vesemir’s bones ache. It was a witcher’s lot in life to weather the discomforts, even in old age. In the morning, Vesemir packed up camp and trudged out onto the road. He and Geralt were heading towards Nilfgaard, an army always left necrophages in its wake so it was a guaranteed income. Somewhere in the distance, there was singing and the soft strum of lute drifting through the air. A fellow traveller, a happy one at that. Unintentionally, Vesemir slowed his steps and let the singer slowly catch up.

“Fine day,” the brightly coloured man called, bouncing along as he played. He definitely kept strange company, an elf who smiled indulgently.

“Made all the brighter by your cheer.” Even if Vesemir wasn’t a fan of the style of music, he could still be polite and appreciate the attitude if not the noise.

“Thank you, kind sir.” The bard took a bow. “I’m Jaskier, this is my friend Chireadan. Mind if we accompany you along this path for a while?”

A bit of company was always welcome, even if Vesemir used it to gather information rather than make friends. The two made for curious travellers, seemingly defenceless, not a sword or dagger between them. It had Vesemir wondering just how they had survived for so long.

Chatter turned from pleasant chitchat to current events to probing questions. It was such a subtle shift, Vesemir didn’t notice until he was being asked quite pointed questions about being a witcher.

“So in all your 300 and something years, you’d never been able to rest?”

Vesemir blinked. “Well, maintaining Kaer Morhen was as much of a break as any witcher could have.”

It only drew a hum from Jaskier. “So single-handedly being responsible for a large keep, repairing it, ensuring crops grow around it to keep four, five, maybe even six witcher bellied full over winter, thinning out the forktails so when your pups and stragglers return home they won’t have to fight as hard, that counts as a break, yes?”

When put like that...Vesemir shrugged it off He did what the world demanded of him, no more, no less. It didn’t seem to deter Jaskier.

“What about a true rest? If I could offer you something, would you take it?”

“No.” Because Vesemir couldn’t abandon Geralt. Not when it was just Geralt left. Even if the others had still been around, Vesemir couldn’t in good conscience leave them behind to live a harsh life with nobody to greet them home each year.

“If it’s Geralt you’re worried about, I promise it’s okay. He’ll be there too.”

Perhaps Vesemir should have been more alert and distrusting. An elf and a bard, unarmed and yet seemingly so at ease in the world. There had to be something more to them. But his medallion didn’t sing, didn’t hum, there wasn’t even the slightest bit of vibration to it. Human and elf. Nothing more. And yet.

“You’ve served your time. You can relax now,” Jaskier murmured softly, swaying closer and putting a hand on Vesemir’s back to guide him.

“Are you Death?”

The sharp, bright laugh suggested that Vesemir was wrong.

“If he is Death, what does that make me? I’m a healer by trade,” Chireadan chipped in. He had been quiet for most of their shared journey, smiling fondly and staring off into the distance, aloof like most elves. “Let us show you what we offer.”

They stopped in the middle of the dusty road with nobody around for miles. Jaskier fished something out of his pocket and, with a lot of fidgeting and even more cursing, a portal suddenly opened up. It was portable, contained chaos and Vesemir took a step back.

“It’s okay.” That was Geralt’s voice and he stepped out of a portal from behind Vesemir. “I fucking hate portals but you can trust that one.”

Whatever trickery this was, Vesemir didn’t trust it one bit. However, Geralt urged Roach through before turning to him with a lopsided smile. “Come home.”

With that, Geralt stepped into the portal and Vesemir reached for him, wanting to pull him back.

“What’s it going to be, my Lone Wolf?” Jaskier asked. Chireadan had stepped through the portal too, waving with a quiet “see you in a minute” which was just a little presumptuous.

Steeling himself, Vesemir gave in. He’d had enough, all the fighting, the loss, the grief, it was enough. Even if this was a trick, he realised there was no point in resisting. His pups were gone, Kaer Morhen wasn’t a place to live alone, contracts were more and more scarce. It was time to put down his swords and accept whatever was on the other side of the portal. Vesemir didn’t look back as he stepped through, feeling the world lurch around him.

The other side was bright, breezy and noisy. Water lapped at the shores of a beach and there was life bustling around him, laughter and...people shouting his name. Geralt stepped closer first and squeezed his shoulder.

“Welcome to The Island.”

Behind Vesemir, Jaskier had stepped through and the portal closed. More people were approaching. Ciri was running towards him like she was still a child. Behind her was- Vesemir’s breath hitched. There was Eskel and Lambert on either side of Jaskier. And Coen. And Aiden. Letho. Wolf, Cat, Griffin, Viper, Bear, all the schools’ surviving witchers, smiling, laughing and happy. It was beyond anything Vesemir had ever seen or even dared hope for.

“What?” He choked out.

“The world didn’t need us any more. And we didn’t need them,” Geralt explained. It wasn’t all witchers, there were a couple of sorceresses, elves and humans too. They all looked comfortable and happy.

“It all started with Eskel,” Jaskier said, an arm around the witcher in question’s waist. “An enchanted bear trap caught him out.” It explained why he limped probably. “It was just me at the time and the idea of a retirement retreat was barely a babe in my mind. But Triss helped heal him and I started travelling with Chireadan. Needed to make sure I could get every hurting witcher home.”

“Actually, Jaskier wanted a sex island,” Lambert butted in. Vesemir noted that he looked at peace, smiling without any of the bitterness he’d been weighed down by over the years. “Eskel couldn’t run. I didn’t want to run. Eventually Geralt let himself get caught. Like a stray cat Aiden turned up. Then Ciri dragged her friends with her. A Jaskier’s got a lot of love to give if they want it.”

Geralt smiled at the stunned look on Vesemir’s face. He clapped him on the shoulder.

“I said welcome to The Island earlier but what I actually meant was welcome home.”

[jonroxton]

can you talk about chlark beyond chloe? personally i think it's weird that the writers kept adding kisses and weird romantic moments without any pay off. i don't know much about the fandom back then but i think the writers were baiting fans since clark/chloe seems to be the second most popular ship after clex. second i personally think chloe would never be happy with clark or anyone tbh and she doesn't seem like the type of person who would have kids so the finale was weird to me.

this got looooong :)

0. it WAS weird, and the choice to never not once go for it with them was to the story's detriment. I'll get into it a little later on in this post.

Re: shipping in sv fandom. there was definitely drama (clana was HUGE when the show was airing and every ship was basically derailed by it lol) but I stayed in my clois lane with a small circle of fandom friends much like I do now. a good measure of clois fans were fans of lois and clark from other mediums, come to sv just for lois and clark, myself included. we were pretty insulated as a fandom even back then. I do remember seeing more Chlark after the S5 finale (when Chloe kisses him goodbye), but those dropped off after Jimmy was introduced right away in S6. The most drama I encountered was with Chloisers: Chloe fans who believed wholeheartedly that Chloe was Lois. They hated SV!Lois and were convinced she would die so Chloe could take her name and job and place by Clark's side, thus a Chlark endgame. this was a popular theory amongst that fandom even into s9, when the clois ball started to roll for true.

bait and switch

a lot of Chlark is rooted in this notion that chloe WOULD be the best thing for Clark, the ideal Lois, the true best friend, the human hand guiding him through Earth's troubles. she would be could be the BEST possible lois archetype for Clark. it's not a wrong interpretation. she was specifically written as a lois-and-lana-proxy (teenage lana is a reporter in some AUs and even some as an adult as a tv correspondent) and she's given many lois-ish traits (tenacious, secretly crushing on clark and in denial), but this interpretation is deeply flawed. first, because lois does eventually enter into the picture and she has her own defining traits that, when compared to chloe, make chloe seem much shallower than realized. secondly, within the complete context of the story, her position in the greater narrative is not as ~the one who got away, the way it did very early on in S1-S4, but one who clark tolerates.

they're friends because clark is forgiving and chloe has staying power. their friendship is riddled with insecurities and unknowns the characters create for themselves. their dynamic is defined by conflict, not resolutions. this is not made easy by the fact that chloe is such a strangely written character, but ultimately she is positioned as a counter to clark achieving his happiness. not a thematic narrative foil but an obstacle clark eventually relents to.

2. and it has been so from the get-go

S1 is the best season for them and the single season which actually considers Clark's side in this dynamic. everything about them later on can be explained with how they are in this season. and that's the problem. when they're 14 it's nice teen angst drama and works perfectly to establish the dynamic. when they're 24 it's at best a pattern, at worst regression. we expect certain behaviors, dismiss them too, when it's children, at least I do. clark and chloe never move beyond the dynamic they establish in s1 and early s2. in essence, clark and chloe remain children around each other. they have many discussions in the later seasons that make at least one appear petulant.

so S1 clark has just been told the greatest secret of his existence and he imprints on lana hard that same night (right AFTER jonathan tells him, he meets lana at the graveyard and talks to her for the first time EVER, a lot of childhood imprinting going on in SV). all of s1 follows clark's heartache over lana, watching her from afar and figuring out a way to be near her. this pain is exacerbated by the fact that he believes he caused her her greatest grief: the death of her parents via the meteor shower which he arrived in.

here the first beat of the chlark dynamic is established: chloe's job and passion – the wall of weird and her pursuing the meteor infected oddities of SV - directly affects clark in a negative way (he's suicidal for much of s1-s3). so her crush on him is countered with her unknowingly causing him great grief. om top of that: clark becomes part of this passion of hers and she eventually begins to pursue him as a story to be uncovered, very superman yes. here tho, it causes nothing but strife for them and paints chloe in an awful light (and clark too, highlighting his refusal to open up). I personally enjoy this aspect of them in s1. bc they're so young I give em a free pass and it's a good conflict playing around with old superman tropes, but it makes for a fraught friendship.

3. the second beat

is that neither chloe's crush on clark, nor his asking her to stop pursuing his truth, do anything to stay her. her tenaciousness becomes intrusiveness and inconsideration (many of her accomplishments irt the daily planet are directly bc she betrays clark). she simply will not listen to her friend and does not believe his livelihood and autonomy is worth losing a story over. this is literally the opposite of comics/live action lois lane, who in various versions drops the clark reveal story to protect him. this passion turns vindictive pretty early for chloe, who eventually pursues stories about clark out of jealousy and entitlement (against lana also).

4. the third beat

is that clark doesn't ever see chloe as romantic prospect except this time in s1. the tornado trapping lana pulls him away from any solidifying of the clark/chloe dynamic, and that's that. but we know clark was willing to go for it in early s2 when he apologizes to chloe about running off on her. it's chloe who decides not to go on with the relationship. clark is visibly confused, but also 15 so he can't see that chloe is putting on a brave front to protect herself from clark running off again. I liked this too as it's another play on superman tropes, but my sympathy for them stops here.

5. and stays here

these beats are the entirety of this dynamic. everything about chlark can be distilled down to their childhood. it's why I don't hate them completely, bc I have a lot of love for kids who hurt in such a way and that time is never easy. in s8 (I think its s8) when we get a flashback to when they meet as kids (more imprinting!). little tenacious cute chloe kisses insecure clark bc of the funny awkward tension, acknowledging it, and then immediately takes it back because they're better as friends. (also they’re like 11 lol)

every single romantic moment with them is undercut either by chloe herself, or by the presence of other storylines/romances the writers wanted to pursue. the lack of integrity in chloe and the lack of interest in clark, regardless of how sincere their connection or how messed up, is a central part of their dynamic that needs to be reconciled with their friendship. and its exhausting bc there is never a point they are ever truly comfortable around each other.

6. to a fault

knowing the secret doesn't change chloe's methods. it doesn't make chloe clark's great confidante. if anything, it complicates matters for both because their relationship then becomes about the greater good and clark's great destiny. everything chloe does becomes about that, which in theory sounds awesome, but is executed much the same way as s1!chlark: by reiterating behaviors that highlight the negative aspects of that loyalty and the negative aspects of their characters.

the single time they do actively examine what this loyalty means and how chloe's hero complex complicates things for chlark is with s8 and davis. she protects davis with the skills of subterfuge and secrecy she developed as clark's friend. and it costs her jimmy and a lot of her personal integrity as a character. tho ironically it makes chloe the strongest she's been as a character. this is the first time clark is forced to view chloe as an enemy and he never quite recovers from discovering the dark depths she’s willing to go to. 

it's an arc dealing with the established beats: how far chloe is willing to go for a kryptonian (very far), how much she's willing to do for him (A LOT and all of it illegal), and what it costs her (jimmy). it deals with her jealousy (always second choice) and her motivations (uncovering the truth). this great want that she struggled with for years is turned on its head and examined, revealing just how weird and dark her hero complex is because obviously davis is not clark. davis/chloe served to highlight more than any other arc how it's really too bad that clark never saw her that way, because she has so much love to give and when channeled, it's a great force. only it's a great force for evil. clark has to confront that it’s not just lex but his other closest friend who is willing to go so far. they backtrack hard in s9 and s10 but they keep this underlying wariness in clark towards Chloe throughout. it’s not anything new, but it’s no longer subtext that clark doesn’t fully trust chloe.

7. And that's the rub

in the end. chloe and clark have many storylines they're in together and chloe's important.... to develop clark and as a counter to clark. clark never instigates anything, not once, for 9 years! when the show did give us Moments TM, clark is reacting, not actively making choices to connect to her. if anything, clark is incredibly awkward about chloe when they become intimate. he doesn't seem to know what to do with her crushing on him (the elevator scene is a great one to show just how awkward chloe makes him feel). more than that. clark never tells her his secret. and later on, chloe doesn't tell him half the crazy wild shit she does to protect him bc she knows he would disapprove. I still hold that the only reason they work is bc clark is a forgiving character and would give her chance after chance after chance. that's the watsonian explanation, but the doylist explanation is that the writers just never cared to explore them beyond this point.

8. and what was beyond that point?

they would've been a great counter to lexana in S6 and early clana (clark finally having a gf who knows). it’s playing the clark/Chloe as a straight lois/clark proxy before actually pursuing lois and clark. it could’ve been the precursor to davis and caused an even more personal conflict! the kiss at the end of s5 was their chance. they could've written chlark devolving much the same way lexana did in s6 (or not). but again. the writers never went that far and clearly never wanted to. it kept chlark forever in this stage of childhood friendship always on the brink of collapsing, tittering either way. it's also tough to speculate bc clark's just not into her. in fact he becomes more and more wary of her, to the point where he believes she can do horrible things, and he's right. the stories continually make their methods complete opposite.

they go out of their way to show chloe realizing how happy clark is with lois. and even play a joke on the fandom by literally turning her into lois and seeing the sparks between her friends. it's almost... cruel but it does serve to show how clark is when he's smitten and he's never looked at chloe that way except during the dance when they were kids. other unrequited dynamics have at least some spark from the desired, but nil from clark. clark is into chloe in late s1, but she shuts him down, and when he seems to be into her again (damn that s5 kiss was a good one lol), she shuts him down again. it's just a weird writing choice all around, and that they kept nuggets of it throughout the show is the thing I cringe at most whenever I rewatch.

9. bait and switch 2

with hindsight it is definitely ship baiting and that sucks for that dynamic bc without it their friendship would’ve been the stronger, or at least not full of so much negativity. all it did was remind everyone that chloe’s been duped since she was a kid and that clark is both stupid and strange for never noticing and letting her get away with shit just bc she’s the most loyal. I don’t ship them and even I get frustrated lol

[wolfstarflowerpottstarchaser]

An Introduction to the Marauders Tragedy For New Fans Part 2: Sirius Black

Sirius Black was born to Walburga and Orion Black

He also had a brother one year below him, Regulus

Sirius noted they were not close but Regulus was the “better son”

The House of Black were a notably pure-blood family who were advocates for pure-blood elitism and hated muggles and muggle-born

They were so pro-pure-blood, in fact, that they often married within their bloodline to keep the family “pure” (side note: Walburga and Orion were second cousins which is nasty and illegal in muggle law) and disowned squib and “blood traitor” children

Sirius rejected these ideals from a young age, much to the dismay (putting it lightly) of his parents

While not much is known specifically about Sirius’s home life, many feel it is implied that he suffered emotional abuse, especially from his mother who it is suggested he holds particular hatred toward

Sirius did not get along with his family for the most part with the exception of his cousin Andromeda (sister of Narcissa and Bellatrix)

However, when she married the muggle-born wizard Ted Tonks, she was disowned from the family and he rarely saw her, making him feel isolated

In 1971, Sirius joined Hogwarts and was Sorted into Gryffindor house, the first in his family not to make Slytherin house

This further ostracised him from his family and caused more issues for his home life

Silver lining: he met fellow Gryffindors, Remus, James and Peter

Over time, Sirius became really popular and was noted to be very handsome and intelligent

By sixteen, Sirius’s home life had become so unbearable that he ran away and moved in with the Potters

James’s parents, Fleamont and Euphemia, loved Sirius and took him in as their own

Following Sirius’s choice to move in with a “blood traitor” family, his mother removed him from the family tree, officially disowning his as her son forever

Like the other Marauders, Sirius joined the Order immediately after finishing school

In 1979, Regulus died

Sirius believed that Regulus had been killed because he became a Death Eater, but was too cowardly for it and thus executed

In truth (though no one would know until 1997) Regulus had, at sixteen, discovered the truth about Voldemort’s horcruxes and had died tragically after trying to destroy one

Sirius never knew this and died believing his little brother to have died a Death Eater

Fast forward and he’s James’s best man, and the Godfather to his son, Harry

Euphemia and Fleamont, the only parental figures who had ever loved and cared for him, died shortly after the wedding

The war was more brutal than ever. Everyone was tense. People were under the imperious curse. Brothers betrayed brothers. Families were slaughtered.

This took a toll on Sirius and, when they discovered a ‘rat’ in the Order, he grew suspicious of Remus Lupin

This one mistake would result in murder, wrongful imprisonment, and a child being orphaned

The prophecy was (partly) known by Voldemort who swore to kill Harry Potter, believing him to be his downfall

James and Lily went into hiding and asked Sirius to be their Secret Keeper

Here’s what ‘secret keeper’ means -

James and Lily could choose ONE person as their “secret keeper” and would tell them where they were hiding. As long as the SK told no one, it would be impossible for anyone else to find them. Even if Voldemort pressed his face up against the window, he would not be able to see them unless the SK told him specifically where to go

This is where Sirius’s mistake came in...

Sirius declined the offer to be SK as he said everyone knew they were the closest and he was sure to be the first person interrogated

Instead, he suggested they let everyone believe that he was the SK, but to ask someone else

At this point, he (wrongly) mistrusted Remus, so suggested they use Peter who was (unbeknownst to them) the real spy in the Order

On Halloween night 1981, Sirius went to visit Peter and felt some was wrong when he was not there

He went to Godric’s Hollow and found that Voldemort had killed an unarmed James and Lily but failed to kill Harry

He saw the lifeless body of the man he considered a brother, and a woman he considered a great friend, and his crying orphaned son...

...and he blamed himself entirely

Despite the guilt and grief, his first instinct was to protect Harry and, as his Godfather, immediately intended to adopt him and care for him

At this point, Hagrid arrived to take Harry away to which Sirius fought, declaring himself as Harry’s guardian

Hagrid told him that Dumbledore had arrangements for him and (since everyone trusts Dumbledore for some reason) Sirius finally handed him over

He set off to confront Peter who had betrayed them and indirectly murdered James and Lily who had loved him

Despite what many believe, Peter was not dim witted. In fact, he outsmart Sirius and framed him for the murder of himself and twelve muggles

Before faking his death, Peter shouted that Sirius had betrayed and killed the Potters, framing him for his own crimes

Sirius was captured and given no trial

Despite having access to veritaserum (truth potion) no effort was made to question Sirius and he was sent to life imprisonment

Adding insult to injury, while Sirius was imprisoned for the murder of two of his closet friends, the true criminal Peter was awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class

Everyone, even Sirius’s last friend Remus, believed that it had been Sirius who committed the heinous crime

He spent twelve years in Azkaban in solidarity confinement with dementors who are the embodiment of depression

During this time, he kept sane by focusing on his innocence

In 1993, Sirius discovered that Peter (in animagus form) was with Harry at Hogwarts, and he immediately escaped to go to Hogwarts

Immediately.

To clarify, Sirius had the ability to leave Azkaban at any point over the previous twelve years, but he stayed willingly

He voluntarily tortured himself for twelve years as he blamed James and Lily’s deaths on himself

After a year of hiding and trying to confront Peter and talk to Harry, Sirius was finally successful and even Remus realised he was innocent!

He was about to be proven innocent, and would be able to adopt Harry who still lived with the abusive Dursleys

End of story! Happy ending!

Ha, I wish

So everything was going well and it seemed like Sirius was going to be proven innocent

Until a series of unfortunate events (see Remus Lupin) happened and Peter escaped, and so did his chance of freedom

Snape, who still hated him, would not listen to Remus, Sirius or the Golden Trio, and was visibly delighted to announce Sirius would have his soul sucked from his body (extremely painful) via the Dementor’s Kiss

He escaped with help, but had to remain in hiding and thus could not adopt Harry - something that devastated both of them

Sirius rejoined the Order in 1995, but was unable to leave the house due to being the most Undesirable (wanted) Wizard in the UK

He fell into a visible depression and felt useless

Before Harry’s fifth year, he gave him a present, but Harry never opened it

In 1996, Voldemort tricked Harry into believing he was torturing Sirius in the Department of Mysteries

Due to a variety of unlucky circumstances, Harry was unable to contact Sirius and left to go protect him, walking right into Voldemort’s trap

Sirius, along with other Order members, went to the Department of Mysteries to help Harry

He was shot with an unknown spell by his cousin, Bellatrix, and subsequently fell through the Veil in the Death Chamber, killing him

After Sirius’s death, Harry found the present he had never opened and decided to look at it

It was a two-way communicating mirror which would work similar to muggle video chat, meaning Harry had a way to contact Sirius and never would have gone to the Ministry and thus Sirius would not have died

This also means Sirius spent his last year waiting for Harry to talk to him, but was instead lonely

[mewtonian-physics]

my ranking of the alex rider original series (stormbreaker through scorpia rising) from ‘book i least enjoy rereading’ to ‘book i most enjoy rereading’ let’s goooo

spoilers for all 9 books under the cut

9. Ark Angel

...He went to space. He went to space. Also the entire plot could have been avoided if Drevin had actually bothered to provide a photograph of his son. I’m sure he had one. I still like this book but it’s literally so insane that I just don’t know what to do with it. 

It is however really funny that Webber just goes and gives a speech insulting this super high-profile ecoterrorist group and acts like it’s no big deal and then they kill him. Shock of shocks.

8. Skeleton Key

Okay, points to this book for terrifying the shit out of me. God damn it does that shark scene scare me. Also, points for making me feel a little bit bad for a man who wants to nuke his own country because he thinks it will fix the place up. I’m still not entirely sure how that’s supposed to work, but that’s probably a good thing. I feel like understanding his thought process would say bad things about me. Still, I actually did feel sorry for him, if only a little. Dude was clearly mentally unstable and I doubt his son’s death helped at all. I also got sad about what happened to Carver and Troy. (Yeah, yeah, I’m a cringe fail American who has the American release. So sue me.) What a nightmare that must’ve been to endure... Otherwise, though, I’m not super into this book. The opening is just kind of meh and the way it leads into the rest of the plot seems a little bit unbelievable. Also, this might be an unpopular opinion, but Sabina annoys me. I would not get along with her at all and I can’t imagine her as a girlfriend. Skeleton Key does, however, absolutely excel at the emotional scenes. 

Also, why are all the spy agencies so comfortable with sending in a 14-year-old? Especially when they outright admit that the other attempts have all died horribly? Bureaucracy’s a bitch.

7. Point Blank

Boo, Dr. Grief! Boo! We hate your white supremacy! I’m so glad you got a snowmobile to the face, you deserved it. (Perks of books written by Jewish people--we aren’t afraid to give the neo-Nazis an unpleasant death.) Anyway, this book definitely isn’t bad, but I wouldn’t really say it stands out in the series. It definitely does hammer home the point of just how trapped Alex is, since MI6 isn’t going to just let him go after one mission, and let’s face it, the plot with the clones is creepy as hell, if highly improbable. But I’m largely just here to see the neo-Nazi get snowmobiled. That’s right, I just completely changed the definition of a pre-established word. I’m a rebel.

Also, I hate Fiona Friend so much and overall think she just didn’t need to be in the book, but the line about ‘I’d rather kiss the horse’ made me laugh so hard. Alex, you sass.

6. Snakehead

Okay, let’s talk about how genius the plan in this book is. I love it! I love how Yu wants to kill the people involved in the peace conference without making them into martyrs, so he comes up with this whole elaborate plan to stage a natural disaster. It’s incredible. This dude was thinking so far ahead. And he would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling kid... But anyway, I don’t see a lot of books where the villain really acknowledges that killing their enemies could just cause more problems for them via turning them into martyrs for a cause. Also, the way he’s so polite and soft-spoken while also being a complete monster... This book genuinely gives me chills. Extra bonus points for the part in the hospital, the absolute nightmare of having all your organs slowly removed and sold off and everyone around you is being so nice about it? ‘Oh, don’t worry, Alex, it won’t be so bad. Here, take your medicine. Do you need anything?’ Literally just. What the fuck. 

Also Ash can fucking fight me. You put your own godson in horrible danger on purpose! You killed your best friend! Bastard. 

...And just in case the book wasn’t disturbing enough, Yu’s fate at the end lives in my mind rent-free and I think about it on a concerningly regular basis considering that the chances of that happening to me are so low they’re practically in the negatives. Damn you, Horowitz.

I would also be remiss if I did not mention just how much I love the tagline ‘once bitten, twice spy’.

5. Crocodile Tears

Ah yes, the book that kickstarted my drift away from the church... I kid, of course. I drifted away from the church for completely separate reasons. But Desmond McCain is always going to scare the shit out of me. The ability to kill countless innocent people while blissfully quoting Bible verses (that he takes wildly out of context and uses for his own self-serving means) is... well, I could actually say a lot about what that reminds me of, but I’m here to rate books, not religion. Moving on. This book has some really stellar antagonists, and the plot is chilling in a way that feels a lot more realistic than most of the other books. Even if some of it is a bit farfetched (sabotaging a nuclear power plant? Really?), the idea of using disasters for your own profit... well. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on why that is so believable. The Poison Dome is also a really cool and chilling scene--even Alex, who has the luck of the devil, can’t get out of that one unscathed. Further scares come in with the fate of Harold Bulman--imagine having your entire existence wiped and your identity changed while you were asleep! The breakdown he has over it is almost enough to make me feel sorry for him, even though he was ready to exploit a teenager and make his life a living hell just to turn a profit. Note the word almost.

Also. The opening makes me cry. Specifically the line talking about how Ravi’s kids would ‘never meet Mickey Mouse’. I lose my goddamn mind every single time I read it. That little personal touch turns the scene from a statistic to a tragedy. Once again: Damn you, Horowitz.

4. Stormbreaker

Yeah, this one gets the special cover shot. And why not? What we are looking at here is the birth of a legend. Move the fuck over, James Bond, Alex Rider is on the scene now. Anyway, yeah, this book is pretty damn spectacular. It has its stumbles, but as the first book in a series, that’s to be expected. Still, it pulls you in from quite literally the first line and keeps you going right up until the end. (If you came here from my post of memes, you know how much the line ‘Killing is for grownups, and you’re still a child’ destroys me.) It has the debut of much-beloved characters such as, of course, Alex--but also Jack Starbright, and of course, the best MI6 agent of them all, which is to say Smithers. Hell, even Yassen Gregorovich, especially once you get through Russian Roulette... Man, that was a rough one. 

Seriously, though. This is a really good book. The scene with the Portuguese man-o’-war still gives me the chills to think about. (Have you ever looked up pictures of those things? They’re beautiful, but holy shit will they make you regret being born. Nature is funny like that.) 

We also get the introduction of, of course, Alex’s patented sass (his response to Sayle saying he relates to the man-o’-war is HILARIOUS) and we get the inherent humor of Alex screwing up an alias one time and then just going by Alex for the rest of the series so he doesn’t do that again. Really, kid, I know you’re not a trained spy or anything but did you never play pretend growing up? Ever? You can’t pretend your name is Felix for a little while? That sounds like a you problem.

3. Scorpia Rising

I distinctly remember when this book came out, actually. I was on vacation at the time, and I remember my brother annoying the hell out of the poor workers at a bookstore we frequented there to see if/when they were going to get it in. They did, finally, and we bought it immediately, and I was of course absolutely desperate to read it. He got to read it first, though. -_-

This is a great book, an absolute emotional rollercoaster all the way through. The way Blunt tricks Alex back into service by staging a shooting was exactly the kind of cold, brutal behavior I’d expect from him. Seeing Julius come back was shocking, but very exciting, too. And Razim makes an incredibly chilling villain, with his absolute disregard for human life and his desire to measure pain. Also, seeing Smithers’s house was so much fun. Smithers in this book was just really fun in general, but he’s really fun in every book, so... nothing unusual there. But also, I want an unwelcome mat. Please?

2. Eagle Strike

‘But Penny,’ you might ask, ‘why is this book so high on your list? It has so much of Sabina in it, and you said she annoys you.’ That is true. What does not annoy me, however, is basically the entire rest of the book. I love the tense opening, and then reading through Alex’s real-life ‘playthrough’ of Feathered Serpent is still one of my favorite scenes. Cray is absolutely incredible as a villain, with the way that he truly believes in his cause--which is undoubtedly a good one! Yet the extremes to which he will go for that cause, and the fact that he very nearly succeeds, are what elevate him to one of the most dangerous villains in the series. That scene with Charlie Roper and the nickels is something I can never seem to stop thinking about. Actually, I think about it basically whenever I think about large amounts of money paid in small increments... 

Also, I really enjoy how he gets into the whole plot in the first place, and I really enjoy Smithers saying ‘ah, fuck it’ and helping him out anyway. Go, Smithers. You once again prove me right in saying that you’re the coolest adult in MI6.

The revelation that Yassen knew Alex’s father is one that absolutely blew my mind first time around. The way his life was threaded into the lives of the Rider family--he worked with John Rider, was saved by him, killed Ian Rider, and then died for refusing to kill Alex Rider--wow. Wow. It gets to me. It really gets to me. This book is a masterpiece. I heard that it’s going to be what the second season of the TV series is based off of, and I’m so hyped for that. We love to see it, we really do.

1. Scorpia

I don’t believe anyone who says this book didn’t get to them at all. I just think they are lying. I don’t think it’s humanly possible to not be affected by this book. God. Just thinking about it reminds me of why I don’t think it’s possible. I mean, come on. We get all this backstory about Alex’s parents, we get tricked along with him into thinking MI6 killed his father, then bam, that was a lie, and Alex may have just fucked himself over big time. Also, that plot is terrifying! (And I bet anti-vaxxers had a field day with it, huh.) Julia Rothman is a really great antagonist, one of the only ones who didn’t go and explain her plan in great detail to Alex--the fact that she didn’t actually being a plot point was something I personally found pretty clever. In general, this book is... I tend to hate when people say they ‘can’t put it down’ because it’s usually an obvious exaggeration, but that really is how I feel reading it.

And again. If that ending didn’t get to you... Well, I just think you are lying.

[aspiestvmusings]

My wildest WandaVision Theory

SPOILERS for WandaVision..thoughout season 1 + several MCU films

This is the wildes theory I have had, I think. And I am 99% ertain this cannot be correct. But then again, I expect some surprise twists, so...

In this theory I focus on some things/details/facts from the MCU (and coming films) & some comics details & ignore others. And even though they like to use the comics as the building blocks for their films & shows, they do also change things up, so I do not expect them to follow the “comics canon” hence I’m prepared for surprises:

What we know of the MCU:

Infinity War events takes place in 2018. Wanda & Vision have had a secret relationship for two years by this time. And though many are wondering “when did he/they buy the property & how does that fit into all of their story”, I personally found that those “flashback” memory scenes filled the missing pieces from the puzzle grom past films. And it fits perfectly. With the “what if I don’t go back” scene, etc. I suspect that Vision bought that plot before the events of Infinity War. And Wanda was given the envelope along with other of his belongings after she returned from the Blip. The “love persevering” scene showed us how they connected & fell in love...while watching TV (he learned to be human also through the sitcoms & though her & she learned to not be so afraid of her “weirdness” thanks to him).

Wanda had to kill Vision in 2018, then see Thanos reverse time & bring back Vision only to kill him again...”for good”. Then she got Snapped (dusted).

When she returned “10 seconds later” she learned that 5 years had passed, and it was 2023. She didn’t find Vision next to her. But she had no time to process the Snap, Blip & losing Vision, because she was immediately thrown into the Endgame fight. (where she almost killed Thanos...until Tony used the ultimate “misdirection” trick and helped them defeat Thanos & his army for good.) Then shortly after she went to Tony’s funeral, where she had that lakeside talk with Hawkeye about those they lost (I still say that they were talking about Nat & Vision, because those are the losses that affected them the deepest personally, cause they were the closest to them)

Then a few days/weeks after that (just a few weeks after the Blip/she returned), and after she had been caught up on the 5 years she missed, and she was given his belongings, she went to SWORD to get him back/so that she could bury him (give him a goodbye ceremony). Then she created the hex out of her grief, when she was denied a proper goodbye to her soulmate (that whole things was, no doubt, a show put on by Hayward...that was made obvious in ep 8: and I’m still unsure about the colours: The “just died” Vision in IW turned basically gray, the “taken into parts” Vision on the disply tables was almost normal tone purple”, & the “brought back online” White Vision a week later was all white...with a “Tony’s triangle-shaped arc reactor element” instead of the Mind Stone in his head. The colours & small timeframe confuse me a bit).

Then she has been living in this “fantasy reality” for the past week or so...in real-world-time. Everything we’ve seen in WV has happened during a week or so in real world time. And for her everything from Scotland to WestView has happened in less than a month.

While creating the hex (from her red magic), she also created a Vision 2.0 (we have now been explained that she can create things “out of nothing”, not just transform them as Jimmy-Darcy-Monica suspected) from  her “yellow magic” I might be wrong, but I think the IW blast (and possibly the Sokovia experiment blast) not only awakened & heightened the superpowers in her, but that she was also blasted with the energy of the Mind Stone...the same one that gave vision life originally. So that mindstone energy has been “inside her” ever since & she “transformed it” into the new Vision. The Vision from her memories. and I think that just like her kids, Vision is “real” (how else can Hayward track the vibranium decay signature)...aka she created both Vibranium, and possibly a new Mind Stone even (though it is possibly he is powered by her magic alone & the stone is just accessory), but this Vision in this form cannot survive outside the hex.

We know that they brought up (via Darcy & Visions talk) that Vision is a mixture of many things. Part Jarvis. Part Ultron. Part Mind Stone. Part Tony & Bruce, and not only... We know that Vision has evolved thoughout his existance. And he wants to be/do good, and wants to be more human. But this Vision does not remember anything prior the hex because he was “rebooted”, so he does not have real memories of their time prior this really. And while he acts like her Vision, the hex Vision is not her old Vision either, really. Just one part of what made him him, and that made them connect.

We know that Shuri was able to download some of Vision’s conciousness/memories & would have been able to remove the Time Stone and still have had him live..if she’d had more time.

We know that Hayward has had Vision’s body (physical form) for a while, and he’s been trying to bring him back to life...for the purpose of using him as  weapon against “threats”. We saw that thanks to getting access to Wanda’s magic powers he was able to bring his re-assambled White Vision (colourless, soulless, empty shell...without a soul) back online...to life. What I want to know from finale is how did SWORD got  hold of The Visions body & what is that “iron man” arch reactor (triangle) in his forehead? Cause they have changed the design, a bit. 

Why wasn’t he still in Wakanda (the vibranium he's made of belongs to them), or with Avengers (Tony was gone when he died, but he returned 3 months later & though the team has been busy lately, why was it not with them? I guess V. was transported there sometime during first two years after Snap, when Maria was still running SWORD, cause Tony/Avengers kinda trusted her. And he stayed there even after... Tony was one of the few who saw Vision as “human”, he was kind of one of his “kids”, so I think this is one of the reasons he didn’t want to hold onto the body himself. But he also understood that Vision had evolved, and that Wanda was the his “next of kin”, not him, so he was holding onto the body until she returned, cause I think he was sure/had hope they’d undo the snap. And I guess he trusted Sword/Maria, because he “trusted” Fury, hence he probably decided to let them hold onto the body. Unless Hayward used tricks to get a hold of it once he took over, since Avengers/others were probably focused on “Thanos”, so no time to deal with government baddies. Also, maybe based on the Sokovia accords the vibranium in Vision’s body belongs to the government, not Tony, hence he let them keep the shell? Cause based in Haywards comments they've had the body longer than past weeks... after Tony died. )

And we can be 100% certain that in the Finale the two Visions will fight each other. [sidenote: Paul Bettany is the best! I love his “inside joke” of getting to act with an actor he’s always wanted to have a scene with...himself...as Two different versions of Vision. It’s the best!] The questions remain: will both die...from Wanda’s hands and/or due to the hex collapsing? Will one die (hex-vision) leaving us with just the empty body without the soul (until in some future film they are able to unite the two). Or will they both kinda surive aka will they merge into one, and we will get our old Vision kinda back already?

I am also almost certain that White Vision in WV finale will be voiced by the same man, who voiced Ultron...that would be such a “shock” to hear. (only RDJ being the voice would be as worthy of an inside joke...cause originaly Paul voiced his/Tony’s AI, Jarvis & now he’d voice Paul’s/Vision’s AI...so opposite, but not as “shocking”)

I do not think both the Twins & Vision will survive. I doubt they’ll give Wanda a happy ending... like the sircoms she watched as a kid. So one has to “die”. Since they made it a big deal to show the twins manifest their powers...at age 10 (10 = X), just like their mom, Wanda did first...at age 10 (X = X gene), and there will definitely be X-men & mutants in the future of MCU, I don’t think they'd get rid of the kids after laying the groundwork (Billy & Tommy will definitely get access to their powers & help mom & dad fight the bad guys), so I’m leaning towards the kids surviving. Because she did not just create them, she gave birth to them, so I’d say they can/will survive outside the hex. As Monica put it: Wanda’s kids are real. And even if the sitcom reality looks fake, everything there is real (as real as possible...she actually created the materials & all)

One possible happy, but sad ending would be that both survive: Twins, who stay with her & Vision, who will not be her Vision anymore, but the empty shell. And since she “can’t feel him” in the new form anymore, that’s the sad part. That even though he, too, survives, he’s not hers anymore.

But there is another possibility...that the Twins won’t make it (and they’ll be reborn somehere later... or Wanda doesn’t know they survived, and re-united with their parents...just like in Parent Trap...). But Vision will survive..either as his old self or as just a shell. And that’s the unhappy ending... she gets Vision back, but not her Vision, not The Vision. And she has to help him evolve... it’ll take time for him to “have emotions”. But the twist will be that Wanda was and is pregnant IRL actually.

I am basing this on the timeline we have.

Because the events of WandaVision take place in 2023 (sometime in summer-autumn) & Spiderman 2: Far From Home takes place 8 months after the Blip & 7-8 months after WandaVision. Now...since it’s literally been just a few weeks since Infinity War for Wanda....what if she is actually pregnant? What if she was prior to the Snap? That would make her story here even more heartbreaking - sad, but also happy. Cause based on FFH we know the world is slowly healing from the events, but it’s not in full chaos, so there has to be a “pause” between now & then. Otherwise...Peter/SpiderMan would probably have been more sure about multiverse & there would be more chaos or something than we see in FFH?

And... the events of Spiderman 3 & Dr. Strange 2 will most likely take place right after FFH, so about 8 months from now, and we saw how everything “glitched” when she was giving birth inside the hex. So what if all hell breaks free when she does that in real reality then? And that’s what sets the multiverse events rolling in the upcoming films? Cause why is it happening 8+ months from the Blip/WV/now, not right away. It seems that she won’t be ripping open the multiverse just yet. If she were, wouldn’t Peter/Spiderman have had inside info of it being certain [he seems to not be in FFH, when he talks to the Fake Mysterio] Why will it happen only about 8 months from now? What’s the delay?

I know...crazy wild theory. But I’m just trying to look at the timeline here. Cause either she’ll just spend the next months recovering and/or practicing her new-found skills (her mom did not teach Agatha, but Dr. Strange will guide Wanda on her journey to learn to understand & use & control her powerful abilities) and hence the “calm before the storm” time. Or there’s another reason. And the timeline would fit. Though it could be 8 months simply because the FFH events had to take place during summr vacation... But the kinda calm state of the universe & the specific 8 months “timejump” in FFH makes me suspicious.

FFH also tells us that to the knowledge of general public the fallen Avengers include Tony, Nat, and Vision. But also Cap. So... either Old Cap dies soon of old age/somehow OR the informtion released to the public is not completely accurate. If it’s the first, then Vision cannot make it alive from WV (but could be resurrected at some future time, cause Wanda can create the soul, SWORD has the original body, and Shuri has some of his old database, so...) If it’s the latter then either it’s not the same Vision anymore, but a different one or they’ll just keep him a secret so that other Hayward’s won’t come after him to use him as a weapon. Until the show started I presumed that Vision is gone, for certain.

 But...he’s not a regualar human, he’s part machine, so he is one of those characters they can bring back...even if in a different form. (question is: will they & would they.. would Wanda/Avengers do that...if it goes against The Visions living will? They could & would, I think..if the fate of the universe depended on it..if they needed him on their team)

Because...as they said in WV...it’s all for/because of the children... 

And I know... he is a synthezoid (essentially a robot/machine). But... that’s the thing. In this magical universe the laws of our regular world don’t seem to appy (or rather: tech is so advanced it seems like magic?) at times. The thing is...he is not juyst a robot, an android. He is part machine, part human. And weve seen he’s evolved...beound what “parents” (Tony & co) thought was possible & what Vision himself thought was possible. He got distracted during a missio, because he developed feelings (at age 2 years or so). He’s been shown to be able to feel, cry (produce tears). So..who knows... maybe he can also procreate... with the help of Wandas magic (who can make anything she wants happen...). Even though logic tells me it’s not possible, and his tears etc are synthetic, and he’s kind of a  different species...then I’ve decided that the laws of the world as I know don’t have to apply exactly...in this world. 

I mean...the MCU has a character whose mother is a human woman & father is a planet (in human form). Hence I’ve accepted that what I know to be impossible could be possible in this MCU fantasy universe. Hence I don’t question how or why could Wanda & Vision have offspring...for real. 

THE END

PS. Once again...this does not fit the comics. This is not the simplest route. But it’s one of the wild theories I’ve had. And I wanted to share it. Even if I don’t think that it could become canon. If it were based on comics, then Billy & Tommy would be reclaimed by Agatha’s master & we’d know how & why all this...

[popculturebuffet]

House of Mouse: “Goofy’s Valentine’s Date” Review

Come on in mouskeeteers! It’s Valentine’s Season here on popculturebuffet, and while I may be single, I do love a good romance story. I find them sweet, sometimes hilaroius, and endearing when done right. And the bane of my existance when done wrong, but we’ll be getting to smidgen of that too. Point is I may not be getting any romantic love this season but I can sure celebrate it. So for the next two weeks we’ll be diving deep first into some ending with one heck of a closer. 

So for our opening act since i’ve been going on in to the House of Mouse a lot lately, and since I NEARLY missed this one if not for Kevin, we’re going to be looking in on my boy Goofy as he grapples with being lonely and Daisy misguidedly tries to help him. Blind dates with a manquin and Mortimer hitting on women to predictable and justified results insues under the cut. 

So as usual for house of mouse we’re chunking this up by segment. Let’s go. 

Donald’s Valentine’s Dollar: Easily the segment of the night and the best House of Mouse short i’ve seen in a rewatch so far. The short is simple but awesome: Donald has only a dollar to spend for V-Day, and wants to buy daisy a tiny but sweet box of chocolates, but his dollar blows away in the wind and he chases after it. And that’s.. it that’s our premise. But it leads into fast paced looney tunes style shenanigans with donald zipping up and down kites and later taking goofy’s broken one and putting it on like wings Arthur Everest styles and taking after it. Also the nephews show up and dick around with their kites because their douchebags in some shorts. Also donald tries to punch a whale.. well a whale kite but still let it be said there’s a short where donald tries to punch what he thinks is a sky whale. And that is wonderful.  The climax is also really sweet, as Donald gets the dolalr, after another briliant sequence where they play hide and seek in the clouds, only to find it sold out and himself dejected waiting for her thinking she’ll be mad.. only for her to present him with the very gift he was going to give her and the two to share a look. 

It’s cute enough on it’s own but after SEVEAL weeks of having to put up with the  three cabs version it’s NICE to have a Daisy back whose not an overly demanding monster from some stygian hole in the sky. Not much else to say about this one. I’ts just REALLY good and I could easily recommend checking it out on it’s own. 

Mickey Saves Minnie: The Stairs This is one of those short segments from Mouseworks that lasts about a minute and is off a simple recurring premise, in this case Mickey saving Minnie from some sort of bizzare fortress of pete’s.. in this case THE STAIRS!

I said STAIRS. In this case Gimmicked stairs with all kinds of traps: boxing gloves, giant balls...

And giant slinkies. I knew one day they’d grow big and kill us all but they all laughed at me.. well whose laughing now.. well still them because Mickey gets past them easily. Pete turns the stairs into a slide but mickey rebounds by pure luck via slinky and uses one of the boxing gloves to win, minnie kisses him and this was real fun. Nothing really deep to go into just a fun few minutes of my life i’m glad i’m not getting back. Speaking of wishing I had minutes of my life back....

Pluto’s Arrow Error: Well this one’s messed up. Look Love Potion plots genuinely ONLY work when the writer knows that giving someone something to make you fall in love with them is inehrently messed up. It worked in Buffy because Xander did so for vengance after Cordellia broke up with him, which granted she did REALLY hurt him but it’s still a bit of overkill. However while it ends up backfiing and making every OTHER girl in school into him, and psyotically so as the episode goes on, he never indulges, as he KNOWS it’s wrong and not under their power or choice. Basically it was one long deconstuction of this nonsense. 

My point is unless it’s used to deconstruct this type of plot or for some shenanigans, Love Potion plots are inherently creepy at best and rapey at worst. So naturally we get one with Pluto trying to make a dog who dosen’t know him love him instead of trying to woo her, and accidently making her bodyguard/boyfirend I guess chase after him for 2 minutes while he’s tinted pink. And yes i know he’s a dog, but he’s an intellegent dog who should knwo this is bad and never gets called out on it and his punshiment.. is one long gay joke. 

So yeah while not the worst love potion plot i’ve probably seen, or love magic or what have you, I could make a list of those and might some day, it is still pretty uncomfortable and easily a dead spot in an otherwise pretty enjoyable episode. 

Goofy’s Valentine’s Date: And fitting it’s accompanying shorts, the good ones anyway, this is a simple plot with funny gags. It’s valentin’es day at the house of mouse and Mickey encourages everyone to kiss their sweeties. So we get Aladdin and Jasmine, AWWWW always shipped those two so adorable, a toy soldier and some other toy from a work im unfamiliar iwth and Timon turns down Pumba. Come on man, who are you trying to kid me or the censors? 

But Goofy’s depressed since he dosent have a sweetie and Daisy feels bad for the poor guy while Minnie tells her “not to meddle”. 

Minnie from a buisness standpoint, he’s crying while reading the menu and clealry not in great mental shape. Setting him up with someone or even just talking to him will help with that. And from a human being standpoint... your being a cruel ass to NOT help him in any way shape or form. The guys a fucking widower. He’s probably been lonely for some time and more focused on raising max. And since no one knows where Peg is he dosen’t have a lot options now he is ready to date again. It’s not MEDDLING to help a clearly lonely person whose gotten over his grief move on, it’s just called basic human decency. I expect that from cablleros daisy Min not you. 

So Daisy does end up meddling, in part because she thinks it’s shuffling around coins, and sets him up with a secret admirer.. without actually getting him one. 

So Minnie does agree to help and they.. put him in a blindfold and have him date a manquin. In front of the entire restraunt. I have no words.. since this is pretty funny and Goofy’s shenanigans while blindfolded, because it’s a BLIND date.

Also sidebar it’s very weird that she DID set Lincoln up with a blind date once but didn’t pull this gag. Point is it’s some funny stuff including Gus, in his first apperance on this blog seriously how’d it take so long, eating the shakes he orders since Goofy can’t see. 

Tying into the resolution to this is Moritmer, who spends the episode as you’d expect.. hitting on various characters. He hits on the wicked step sisters, whose cat attacks him, he hits on the lady gargoyle from huncback and her two friends rightfully beat his ass, he hits on madam mim who set shim on fire and he hits on the queen of hearts who somehow DOSEN’T cut off his head, and you know is married, and does launch him into goofy spoiling the ruse. Honestly I found this funny both because Moritmer is objectively hilarious and because the show DIDN’T take his side at all or give him anyone, and he suffered consequences for sleazly hitting on women. He also called himself a wonder man. No sir the only wonder men are these guys. 

And if your wondering about the secod one there was a whole song about it. 

Your welcome. So Goofy’s dejected until after Pluto’s cartoon where it turns out he had a secret admirer after all. it’s clarabelle! Awww.. and Daisy says “Well it’s better than a manquin” what a supportive friend you are. And she’s STILL better than cabs Daisy. Point is happy ending pulled sorta out of their ass, as she showed up earlier but sitll it woudl’ve been easy to have Clarabelle chime in during their scheme or something and have Minnie set them up to fix it. Or Donald or Mickey. Donald was absent outside of the short. That’s not fair. But overall not a bad wraparound, ending is a huge copout and feels like not much, but i’m starting to think that’s usual for season 1. I do KINDA ship the two, but usually I prefer her with horace or him with Peg Pete. Yeah you heard me and you cant unhear it and frankly I don’t want you to. We also get a funny add about the Queen of Hearts valentine’s service.  Overall not a bad episode. Fun gags, a cute premsie and only one really terrble short. Check it out this valentein’s and hopefully disney will have this show up on plus by next valentine’s. Until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure.