#cloud is a woobie

[demonstars]

Hi it's me lore anon (🌧️)

Ok oooh, ngl all my Greek mythology knowledge comes from pjo, another book series I read as a kid called goddess girls and one I read in high school called star-crossed (?) so I had to look up Antigone

I actually love that. I think it fits really well. Just the constant back and forth of who's dying before she eventually kills herself

To clear the air, although I'm a dream stan, I'm an inniter at heart and a huge c!tommy apologist so those are gonna be my biases, but honestly the evolution of c!dream is one of my favorite things in the lore

And then tommy recognizing that in the finale, it was such a brilliant moment of understanding on his part

People misreading Tommy's apology during the finale actually drives me nuts

I once mentioned on a server how people misread it so much and the answer I got was "well they should've considered it sounded"

Like, no. That's not how that works

Also glad I'm not bothering you lmao, I'll be here plenty 😁

i love cTommy so i understand but ummm yeah slight cDream bias here (BECAUSE i like the bullshit! and bastard tendencies! and the crimes!) so as long as that's okay we're gonna get along GREAT

gonna cut cause i dont wanna clog the dash

AND YESSSS IT'S SO FUCKING ANNOYING LIKE . I'M GENUINELY i have many a thought about the finally and how it was good for what the ccs wanted to do with their characters and how the reception of people that consider a proper finale is "killing the bad guy" (seriously, disney level of problem solution, did they want him to disappear in an ungraphic smoke and an implied death? what??). i genuinely

i'm a bit of a myths nerd like in General and antigone's history is just sooo deply ingrained in my brain with the idea that like, duty superceedes it all, which is something i think cdream has idk these two characters would understand each other (i was going to say except cdream didn't kill himself. and i mean he didn't STAY dead but he was willing to kill himself alright. i guess the difference is antigone didn't have no permadeath)

also if u wanna look up antigone's getting married to death monologue, i like it lots and i umm am normal about that and cdream lolol

[altocat]

There’s also a very good chance I WON’T like something about Sephiroth’s story and portrayal in Ever Crisis, either him being too woobie or him being too cold and sadistic. I’m speaking in general here.

Fan discourse is exhausting. Purists can be equally annoying to new fans who came in with different feelings and understandings towards the characters. I was brought in because of Crisis Core. Therefore, my interest in Sephiroth is due to what I felt during CRISIS CORE and not the OG. I liked tragic Seph. I liked watching him fall apart. I liked exploring his descent. It made me appreciate him as a villain in the OG that much more.

I don’t think giving Sephiroth a sympathetic leaning takes away from him as a villain because the past is well, the past. He’s the villain now. He’s done some truly unforgivable things and he’s too far gone now imo. But there’s a really annoying subset of FF7 “purists” who seem to just want “haha smirky sword man kills things” as if that’s all Sephiroth’s character actually is. When it wasn’t! Not even in the OG. We wouldn’t have gotten the entire inclusion of Lucrecia if that was the case.

It’s just exhausting, man. I’m a newcomer by two years. And the constant barrage of ship wars and gatekeeping can get really draining sometimes. I just want to have fun and feel things. I want to entertain people and be entertained by their content in turn. That’s all.

/rant over. I don’t like being negative, it’s stupid and pointless. And I know you guys deserve better than that. Back to fun stuff.

The Sephiroth Redemption Twitter Discourse is so stupid.

The EC stuff is CHILD Sephiroth, PRE-NIBELHEIM, PRE DESCENT INTO VILLAINY. It's NOT Sephiroth as he currently stands. It's NOT the Sephiroth being dictated in future installments. It's NOT the end-all, be-all of Sephiroth's current characterization. It's Sephiroth before he was corrupted. That's all. It's a look at a character during a DIFFERENT ERA of his life.

I really don't even know why people are mentioning a redemption arc at all. Could it be Square potentially setting up one in the future? Maybe. But we won't know that until later. Would it suck? Most likely. But it's not out yet so we can't rightfully pass that judgement. Either way, It's got nothing to do with EC.

Sephiroth is allowed to have depth before he became evil. Sephiroth is allowed to have been somewhere close to "good" once. Sephiroth is allowed to have pathos, complexity, and growth. There's nothing wrong with that. The fact that he started out this way and became what he was is part of his ARC as a CHARACTER. It takes a character from Point A and brings them to Point Z through character-shaping moments, altering their personality and psyche. You know, kind of like how people in the real world are shaped by events and memories. This doesn't mean he's about to be redeemed, we KNOW what happens to him and we KNOW it doesn't end well. We KNOW he turns into a monster. That hasn't changed.

Twitter I stg. A literal tar-pit. I'm not even gonna look when Rebirth comes out. I will likely have some beef about Sephiroth's characterization and writing somewhere down the road, be it in Ever Crisis or Rebirth or whatever. But context clues are everything. People like to get mad over nothing.

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

Wei Wuxian and Narrative Agency – Part One

For Xiantober Day One: Genius… albeit stretching the prompt so it refers to MXTX and MDZS itself, but at the end of the day it’s still about WWX – so no harm done!

(Part Two | Part Three | Full version on AO3)

The narrative is a very active player in MDZS’ story. How it presents information, what it chooses to show and omit, often reflects important facets of its themes and characters – Nie Huaisang, for instance, is so good at hiding behind his mask that not even the narrative can hold him accountable; the present day’s storyline as a murder mystery and the slow reveal of information about the past both prompt the reader to think critically about the truth of events, when the importance of thinking critically is an important theme; and the dangers not thinking critically (and instead basing conclusions on rumours without much evidence) are shown by tricking unquestioning readers into the very same trap the cultivation world falls into, as the information given by the title, summary and in-universe rumours – which contradicts how we see actually Wei Wuxian act – turns out to be false.

But nowhere do I love this trait more than in its treatment of Wei Wuxian – and, more specifically, in its way of emphasising his agency. We’re not just told how much his active choices define his character, and we’re not just shown this in-universe through his personality, worldview and the events he causes. I’d argue that this aspect goes a step further, and shapes the structure of the out-of-universe narrative as well.

There are two main ways this happens: one, in how the aspects of Wei Wuxian’s life that are shown and hidden directly tell us what’s important about his character (which is good writing but isn’t necessarily tied to this shaping of the narrative), which is what we’ll explore today; and two, how what’s shown and hidden reflects what Wei Wuxian himself prefers to dwell on, resulting in the narrative respecting his own thoughts and feelings on matters (which very much is tied to it). We’ll explore this at a later date.

But as for now – let’s explore my favourite aspect of MDZS.

(Here, narrative agency will be considered the ability of a character to meaningfully influence their events and the story they’re in.)

Tragedy, Circumstance, Choice

If we simply look at Wei Wuxian’s backstory in a vacuum, it seems almost typically tragic. His  parents died in circumstances beyond his control, he was left alone as a child with nobody to care for him, he was forced to grow up fending for himself on the streets, he was faced with abuse when he finally was taken in… as with all typical woobies, everything simply happened to him, and none of it was good. It’s just another example of the lack of agency being used for sympathy points, right?

…Except there’s one problem with that idea. We don’t actually see any of this.

It would’ve been easy to start the flashbacks during these times. We’re telling the story of Wei Wuxian in (largely) chronological order, and these are likely important experiences for him! But instead of starting in his street days, or evenat the moment Jiang Fengmian took him in*, we start at the lectures in the Cloud Recesses. That’s not even something mentioned in, and therefore something that’s able to disprove, the rumours at the start of the novel. So why is this the case? 

Well, there are multiple reasons – the main one being that MDZS is also Lan Wangji’s (and Wangxian’s) story, and having the flashbacks open with their first meeting is very satisfying. But I want to focus on something else.

This period doesn’t have to be shown, because what happens to Wei Wuxian, especially out of his control, isn’t what’s important about his character.

We’re not even at Lotus Pier here, where Wei Wuxian certainly has more agency than he would’ve had as a young child, but where the harm caused by Madame Yu is still completely out of his control. Here, he has agency! Though there are consequences, he is free to act, and what happens to him is a result of those actions and not of circumstance. Yes, he gets punished more than others who also take those same actions (due to classism); yes, it’s not his choice to be picked on by Lan Qiren in class (yet look how he responds, twisting the situation to his advantage and ending up tricking Lan Qiren into letting him leave, which is what he wanted to do. He is not at all helpless here!); yes, these choices have been influenced by his learned mindset from Madame Yu that punishment is arbitrary and will happen anyway, so you may as well do what you want regardless. But there is cause-and-effect here. It’s not circumstantial tragedy.

Therefore, instead of our first impression of past!Wei Wuxian being that of an unfortunate woobie, it’s of someone who has the freedom, ability and will to choose and act (and that’s after these initial tragic events have taken place). This is compounded by the fact that before we see any of his backstory, we get a similar impression of him in the present day.

If the purpose of his tragic past was to earn him sympathy points, to make us pity him due to how much he was influenced by events out of his control, this would’ve been a terrible way of going about it… and it’s this that betrays the true reason for its existence. Because now, the flashbacks instead show us how little these tragedies define who he is! From the very start, Wei Wuxian isn’t someone defined by circumstances out of his control, but rather by who he is as a person and by what choices he makes in the present day (which is both a mindset in-universe, and a nice little out-of-universe detail that lines up! Because out-of-universe, this means he’s not defined by sympathy points from a backstory, but rather by his great character writing… aka, by who he is as a person and what choices he makes). And this refusal to be defined by tragedy is a conscious choice on his part, too – but we’ll explore that more later. 

The important thing is that this idea of Wei Wuxian isn’t because of what exists in his past, it’s because of what parts of his past are shown to us (as well as what he chooses to do, with agency, in the present). 

Now, if this relationship between what’s displayed and what’s omitted was just a one-time thing, I might’ve considered it a cool detail or a nice way to establish a character, but not something the narrative is actively focusing on. But it’s a pattern that continues throughout the flashbacks. What, arguably, are the two other most important times in Wei Wuxian’s life where he doesn’t have enough agency to meaningfully influence his circumstances? His three months in the Burial Mounds (before escaping – he managed to assume some control of the circumstances but not enough to substantially reduce his suffering in his time there), and his loss and death during the First Siege. And we’re not shown either of them! We skip to when Wei Wuxian has emerged from the Burial Mounds and is torturing the Wens, or we skip to the present day – both times he has agency once more, because, again, what he’s like without it doesn’t matter enough to be shown. 

Furthermore, I’d argue this does actually contrast the other tragic events we see in Wei Wuxian’s later life. Things do go horribly wrong, but it’s either due to choices he knows the consequences of (see: rescuing the Wen Remnants in the first place), or instances where he still has some ability to act in the situation and influence it within the limitations. If he’d had no ability to influence circumstances at Qiongqi path, he would have died in the ambush; if he’d been unable to do that at Nightless City, he would’ve died then, too (of course Lan Wangji helped him escape as well). The attention drawn to him losing control of his actions in both instances is very interesting, but intentional or not, it’s still his actions influencing the plot. And that influence happens to be detrimental. The very ability to act and influence, at a base level,  is not taken away (though, of course, that doesn’t make these events any less tragic).

So, so far, the narrative seems to be telling us that the ability to act and choose is key to Wei Wuxian’s character. And it’s doing it through omitting his moments without agency in favour of instead showing us his moments with it. 

Let’s see if this is echoed in the text itself before we go further – because even with this pattern, nothing would end up mattering if Wei Wuxian’s agency wasn’t actually that important to the story itself. But thankfully it is, and that first impression we get of Wei Wuxian in the Cloud Recesses turns out to very much be accurate! Though there are defining circumstances out of his control that occur, such as the massacre of Lotus Pier, the majority of the important events of his life are due to his own choices. He didn’t happen to be forced to cease traditional cultivation and solely use guidao, didn’t happen to lose his Golden Core in a fight with Wen Zhuliu or due to some force in the Burial Mounds, it was his own choice to give it and his spiritual powers away. He didn’t tragically happen to get targeted by the cultivation world, it was a result of him acting on his morals and protecting the Wen remnants (a choice which he was fully aware of the implications of). He isn’t a protagonist to whom things simply occur, and that activeness and agency is my favourite thing about him. 

That’s not to say that the times Wei Wuxian doesn’t have agency, or feels like he doesn’t have any, don’t exist at all, either – but they are rare enough to have attention directly drawn to them in his internal narration:

Or else what could he do? He could do nothing. He was powerless. Lotus Pier had been destroyed, both Jiang FengMian and Madam Yu were gone, and Jiang Cheng had disappeared as well. He was the only one left, alone, with not even a sword in his hands. He didn’t know anything, he couldn’t do anything! For the first time, he discovered how little his power was. In front of something as large as the QishanWen Sect, it was the same as a mantis trying to stop a chariot. - Chapter 59, EXR translation

(And even in this circumstance, note that he still does force himself to act – to carry on searching for Jiang Cheng, to place his faith in Wen Ning – and does accomplish his goal (albeit with the help of others)! So even in dire situations, he isn’t simply passive. This is actually also the case with his time in the Burial Mounds, almost certainly the First Siege, and even his days on the streets as well (Chapter 20: he did actively fight with dogs to get food despite their danger and his growing fear of them, rather than just waiting and hoping to somehow receive some more). He can’t influence or immediately influence his circumstances, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.)

Overall, although they do influence him, Wei Wuxian is very much who he is in spite of his circumstances, not because of them. We’re shown the importance of his agency both in-universe by the major impacts his choices have on himself and the plot, as well as by narrative presentation – important periods where he lacks the ability to meaningfully influence anything are often mentioned but not directly shown, which suggests that such moments and circumstances aren’t as important to understanding Wei Wuxian’s character as moments where he does have this agency are. And I’d argue this works very well. Depending on the version of the story you consume, you may end up having different interpretations as to how much circumstances were at play nearer the end of his life – but nobody comes out of MDZS thinking about Wei Wuxian, the poor bearer of yet another generically tragic backstory.

(Part Two | Part Three | Full version on AO3)

—

*We are shown this moment in more detail in Chapter 23… but even then, it’s through the framing of Wei Wuxian remembering Jiang Yanli’s narration, not through a flashback proper or even him remembering the experience itself!

[tavina-writes]

well now I'm curious about your beefs with till the end of the moon lol

Nonny, where do I even begin. Okay I'll begin with saying that @autumnslantern has probably written about this with more eloquence than I ever have and ever will, here, because Lantern is good at essay analyzing and I just shriek my frustrations like "cactus plant shrieks at clouds" into the void of my tumblr blog.

But I think the primary issue for me about TTEOTM isn't even the plot inconsistencies or the "fans of a thing that is not very good do not acknowledge that it's not very good" because neither of those two things bother me. Neither plot nor "it's not very good objectively" have ever deterred me from my love of a thing. I have watched some supremely badly created cdramas and come away feeling completely fulfilled in an iddy way and I grew up watching 80s cdramas so it doesn't matter to me if a show is camp or pretty or however.

BUT I think the reason I get bothered by TTEOTM is because I, okay, one I think I hyped it up for myself too much by going on spring planting back home when it was coming out so I was like "I WILL SAVE THIS, TO SAVOR IT ALL IN ONE GO! when I get back!!! :DDD" and also I consistently feel like I'm Charlie Brown and the Lucy-esque show writers will never let me kick the football.

My id can neither be fulfilled by the sad woobie meow meow who snaps and does murder, nor can it be fulfilled by the tragically burdened correct but suffering about it hero because this drama flip flops back and forth between these two things in a way that is just. really difficult for me to enjoy personally. Adding this to the plot and pacing difficulties as well as some of the ????? decisions in the editing room makes this very difficult for me to like.

Either TTJ is "suffers more than Jesus and is correct and good about it" or he's "tragically deranged and learns to love the world through the power of a principled bae" both of which are things I I adore and would eat with a spoon but this particular combination of "he suffers more than Jesus and is correct and good about it BUT he's also a deranged murder man who does very few actual murders and has to learn what love and goodness is through the....bae who never really expresses a lot of feelings about the world tbqh" kind of leaves me a bit twisting in the wind of "but. why though." and if I stop to ask "but why though" in a xianxia drama that's just not a good sign! I personally just didn't vibe with it.

I mean I vibed with some parts of it. I really wish there were more parts of it I vibed with. I really WANTED to vibe with more of it. But some part of me still feels like Charlie Brown being denied the ability to kick the football you know.

[tickletorso]

Ho, ho, ho, it is I, your most secret santa, here to deliver tidings of joy and, hopefully, either Rumple or Belle tied up. I hope you and your loved ones are well and getting ready for the joys of december. Here things are hectic, as they always are during this time of the year, but I'm excited. Let's get down to business, though, shall we? I wanted to ask you more about your prompt. Did you have anything specific in mind when you thought about it? A specific interpretation or a way in which it would influence the plot. And what about preferences? Do you prefer FTL or SB? Any characters you love and wanna see pop up? Any you hate? Any non-rumbelle dynamics that you enjoy? All of this will help me think about a prompt so all answers are very welcome! Looking forward to getting to know you through this process!

Seasons greetings to you my secret santa! This holiday season is particularly chaotic for me and my family because we just moved to Prague four months ago! Basically starting from scratch to celebrate - finding places for cheap but good decorations, learning traditional ways they celebrate and figuring out how to incorporate them with our own traditions. It’s overwhelming, exciting, and hard work. So I signed up for Secret Santa this year as a familiar and comforting present to myself. But as you said, down to business —— I leave the prompt interpretation entirely in your creative hands. Please feel free to do anything you want with it. Even if I have to squint to see how it fulfills the prompt, that’s ok with me! I tend to prefer SB over FTL but I don’t feel strongly about it. I can’t stand Zelena and the Blue Fairy. I love the Ariel and Belle friendship and Belle/Ruby friendship. I love Gold having a friend (poor lonely wooby) whether it’s Gold/Regina, Gold/Jefferson, or Gold/David. As for non-Rumbelle relationships hmmmm I always like to see Ruby and Dorothy because I wanted to see more of them on the show. And I’m a sucker for Leroy and Astrid. They’re like watching a rainbow cuddle a storm cloud and it makes my heart pop.

[nekropsii]

just wanna say ive been rereading hs with some friends, n got to openbound, which prompted a deepdive into cronus' character (bc i used to enjoy him in the kinda.. wooby way back then..) and ive scrolled thru so many of ur cronus and mituna essays. i really really enjoy your thought processes SO MUCH, and i have to agree with just about every single one. i love how much thought youve put into these silly fucking guys. makes my brain feel very pleased with all the information ive just took in

Thank you so much, this means a lot!! It always makes me really happy to hear that people enjoy what I have to say, lol!!

Posting incredibly niche content is definitely a grind of its own, but it absolutely pays off... A lot of the speculative posts about the Alpha Trolls are... Outdated at best. Meaning, made during the original run of the comic, in the midst of the excited crowd. And they never quite have good enough information... Hype and noise cloud your better judgment. Active development doesn't give you much time to think.

I could go on about this more, but I'll leave it at that for now. Again, thank you so much for the kind words, and have a nice day!!

[sarah-skylark]

Thank you. I’ve been frustrated by some of the fandom hypocrisy but have been around fandoms for long enough to know the favorite actors or characters get the benefit of the doubt and the passes.

Especially the apology dance scene. The amount of posts really going after aziraphale, calling him emotionally manipulative, a bully, or or abusive is a bit ridiculous, makes Crowley seem very wishy-washy-woobie, and completely ignores the fact that it’s the first time Crowley’s done it! And if you point out aziraphale lists off with increasing frustration all the times he has had to do it, so therefore all this could apply to Crowley too, they tell you Aziraphale had to do it because he’s always wrong and Crowley is always on the right side of things, and in this particular year case he performs the dance while still in the right but he’s afraid of aziraphales anger/tantrum etc. and it’s like -

1) What show are you watching 2) you may need to step back and see if a personal bias against Michael sheen or a Fanon version of aziraphale that doesn’t actually exist on screen, OR a tendency to excuse David Tennant or Crowley from any wrongdoing is clouding your judgement

Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship dynamic fascinates me and what fascinates me even more is how people perceive them, partly because I seem to have a much more optimistic view of their dynamic than a lot of what I read suggests they do.

With that in mind I started trying to unpick how I see their dynamic and why and what I ended up with was a series of rambles on various aspects, including confidence, trust, silliness and what they ask of each other. This one is about what they ask of each other and why their relationship isn't some weird one-sided thing where Crowley gives Aziraphale everything he could possibly want or ask for.

I see a lot of posts and things suggesting Crowley always rolls over and does anything Aziraphale asks of him. I don’t know to what extent most people really believe this or if it’s just a fun joke (and I’m not saying that’s bad, I think it’s a fun joke too, I love reading all that stuff and it makes me laugh). The point I wanted to make here though is that I don’t think it’s true and also why I don’t think it’s true.

Everything from here on out is my opinion, but I won’t keep stating that in order to make it more easily readable, just take it as a given. If your opinion is different that’s absolutely fine, I love that we can all see this stuff in different ways depending on our experiences and personalities, it’s why the fandom is so fun. (It’s also why my opinion on so many things in season two ricochets wildly from one theory to another).

So back to Crowley and Aziraphale – I don’t think Aziraphale walks all over Crowley, or certainly not to the extent that people sometimes think he does. Also Crowley doesn’t and wouldn’t allow himself to be walked all over anyway. Why is this even relevant? Because I’ve seen people say that in the final 15 minutes Aziraphale finally asked Crowley to do something that pushed him over the edge and that Aziraphale was shocked when Crowley didn’t roll over and do it because Crowley always does what Aziraphale asks. This isn’t at all true for a start, but also this view tends to include a second assumption, which is that their relationship is one-sided and Aziraphale never does anything for Crowley, that he dismisses him and takes him for granted, which also is not true in a lot of ways. I think it’s a fundamental misinterpretation of their relationship dynamic.  

First of all why can Crowley’s actions be interpreted as just rolling over and doing whatever Aziraphale wants? Well, the answer to that is three-fold – firstly Crowley is a genuinely unselfish in many ways, he does things for people because that’s the way he is, it doesn’t make him a pushover, it just makes him nice. Secondly he loves Aziraphale deeply. Whether he knows it or not doesn’t matter, he cares for Aziraphale and wants him to be happy. This isn’t the same as being a complete doormat, it’s simply compromising with the person you are in a relationship with and occasionally prioritising them over yourself. Both these things come together in the third thing, which is that Crowley’s love language is acts of service – he enjoys doing nice things for Aziraphale, he enjoys rescuing him, or going along with him and letting him have his own way, so why not do it? The point is he’s never railroaded into it by Aziraphale, it’s always a deliberate choice. He is literally saying, I will do this thing for you because I love you and I enjoy making you happy and this is something I feel I can give to you.

How does Aziraphale see this behaviour?

Well that’s a tricky one, because in many ways Aziraphale is the more complex character, not least because he changes the most over the course of their history together. Is there a slight element of him taking Crowley for granted in some of their interactions, especially in season two? Possibly, but mostly I don’t think that’s it at all. When someone gives you things because their love language is acts of service you develop a (mostly sub-conscious) confidence in that relationship dynamic and if you also have confidence in yourself (which Aziraphale absolutely does – I’ll write more on this another time) then when you want something you ask for things. You ask not because you learn to expect, but because you think you’re worthy of asking and you think that your relationship is strong enough to stand up to the ask. I ask my husband for things all the time, sometimes they’re things I know he’ll give me – these are easy asks (I don’t just mean physical objects, I also mean acts of service such as helping me with something), sometimes though I’ll ask for things knowing he probably won’t give me that thing or without having a clue what his answer will be – these are harder asks, the sort you don’t do early on in relationships because they might break it either in one go or over time. Sometimes a hard ask results in me getting what I want, sometimes it results in a bit of back and forth before I get what I want, sometimes I get a no and I’m temporarily annoyed or upset, sometimes I get a no and I accept it because I knew it was the most likely outcome.

The point is that I ask, and so does Aziraphale. You ask because you have confidence that you are worthy of the ask and also that your relationship is strong enough to bear the request, even if the answer is no. Can a no still be annoying or upsetting? Yes absolutely. Can a no still be wrong on the part of the other person? Also yes. The point is that sometimes the no isn’t wrong and it doesn’t necessarily break the relationship. By the time season two comes along Aziraphale is confident enough in his relationship with Crowley to feel it can bear the weight of him asking.

So what happens when he asks? Does Crowley roll over?

Well no, he doesn’t. One big example of this is right at the beginning of the series, in episode one. Here Aziraphale makes a massive ask of Crowley and he knows it’s a big ask. Even before he tells Crowley what the problem is he’s aware of the possibility of a no. “Is it something I can help you with?” Crowley sayss, and Aziraphale merely shrugs. It’s not because Nina is there, she’s gone by that point. It’s also not because he doesn’t have faith in Crowley’s ability to help him, he always has faith in Crowley’s abilities (this is a whole other thing on trust). What he’s doubting is whether Crowley will help him. It’s why they’re meeting in the café, not the bookshop. He wants to break this one to Crowley a bit at a time – there’s a problem and I need help. I want your help, it’s why I called you, but you aren’t going to like it and I’m not even sure whether you will help so I’m establishing that I need help first, rather than showing you Gabriel immediately, so that you aren’t completely surprised when I present the whole problem to you.

Once they go to the bookshop and Crowley is confronted with Gabriel he offers the help he feels able to give by saying that he’ll drive Gabriel somewhere and dump him. He’s stating his willingness to help (which is important later), but for now he’ll only help in one specific way. What he isn’t willing to do is any more than that, not even for Aziraphale.

Help me take care of Gabriel. Help me sort this mess out, Aziraphale says, and what does Crowley say? No. Absolutely not. You’re on your own with this one. Even after Aziraphale practically begs him for help, complete with puppy dog eyes and the magic word, “I’d love you to help me,” Crowley still says no. That is not the reply of someone who lets themselves be walked all over or who rolls over every time the angel they’re in love with flutters their eyelashes.

Okay so what about the fact that he returns? Well, the stakes have been raised: for a start Aziraphale is now directly in danger, which alters the balance in favour of helping him, and remember he was already willing to help, he said as much, but he was previously only willing to help in one way. Now that’s changed. Doing things you wouldn’t normally do for someone you love when the stakes are raised is a perfectly normal rection in a relationship and does not indicate an unhealthy dynamic. Crowley has now realised that getting rid of Gabriel is no longer an option - his preferred plan (dumping Gabriel somewhere) will no longer work, so the only choice is now Aziraphale’s plan of keeping him in the bookshop and taking care of him.

This is why he returns.

A quick note on the call

Just backtracking a bit here – when Aziraphale calls Crowley to ask him for help Crowley agrees to be over in two minutes. It’s instant, no questions asked and at first glance looks like Aziraphale calls and Crowley comes running just because. But nope. Later we are very clearly told that Crowley knows something is wrong the moment he picks up the phone and Aziraphale starts speaking, “This was your ‘Something’s Wrong’ voice.” Crowley already knows there’s a problem and what do you do when your closest friend calls you and tells you about a problem? You try to help. Whether that’s advice, comfort, physically going around to help out or whatever the situation calls for. Of course Crowley says he’ll be there in two minutes, he doesn’t exactly have anything else on and his friend has just indirectly told him something is wrong. He’d be a pretty shitty person/entity if he didn’t agree to drop round and try to help.

So what about the apology dance?

This whole interaction, that many people say indicates how under the thumb he is actually shows us the exact opposite. What’s the first thing Crowley says when Aziraphale asks him to do the dance? “I don’t do the dance.” This tells us a hell of a lot about their relationship dynamic up to this point – for a start Aziraphale has clearly done the dance before, at Crowley’s request, and he lists off the occasions. The dance is silly and slightly demeaning and Aziraphale has done it several times for Crowley, whilst Crowley has never done it, yet somehow we read this whole scene as Crowley being the whipped one? Um. No. Also heavily implied in Crowley’s, “I don’t do the dance” statement is, You’ve asked me to do this before, I’ve always said no because I don’t want to. You’ve always accepted my no before and I want (expect!) you to accept it this time.

But this time Aziraphale doesn’t accept the no. Just like Crowley wouldn’t go along with his plan earlier, Aziraphale now won’t go along with Crowley’s no. Clearly he has done so in the past, but this time their dynamics are different. They’ve been much more open about their friendship for the past four years, they’ve both accepted that they are at least close friends, if not more. They’ve saved the world together and saved each other. They both acknowledge they “carved (this existence) out for ourselves” and that brings strength to their relationship. Now that Aziraphale has more confidence in what they are to each other, he takes that confidence and tests the limits of what Crowley will do for him, to push them more towards equality. Why should he always be the one to do the dance? Crowley responds by acquiescing not because he would just roll over and do anything for Aziraphale but because he recognises three things. Firstly that Aziraphale is pushing and that this is new and that this means something to him in the context of their relationship, secondly because he reluctantly accepts Aziraphale’s point that it isn’t really fair that he never does it, and finally because the request for him to do the dance isn’t about him refusing to help (Aziraphale was never certain he would), it’s about the fact that he’s broken Aziraphale’s trust by refusing to help (which is a slightly and very subtly different thing). To illustrate this, right before Crowley does the dance, just after he says “fine,” he gets this very brief, soft look on his face – this is him acknowledging to himself that Aziraphale deserves this dance, that he loves the angel and that he’s doing this because of both those things – he could have continued to insist on a no, he clearly has before, but this time he chooses not to.

I will do this thing for you because I love you and I enjoy making you happy and this is something I feel I can give to you.

All right, what about the car thing?

What about it? Lending your car to the person you love is very normal. Ok so the car means more to Crowley than a normal car does to us, but the point still stands. Aziraphale is making a reasonable request here. Does he expect a yes? Absolutely, because he also knows it’s a reasonable request given where their relationship is. Does he flirt to get his own way? Hell, yes. Does Crowley know exactly what Aziraphale is playing at? Also a hell yes. And Crowley totally plays up to it, he’s not as opposed to it as he claims. He’s playing up his “no” and his grumpiness for effect, to encourage Aziraphale’s silly flirtiness. Look at the difference between this no and the no he gave Aziraphale earlier. There’s no anger here, there’s no real sense that he thinks Aziraphale is asking too much, he’s playing a role in their relationship and they’ve both played this game before. Look at that little slap of the hand, which Aziraphale responds to equally playfully. The game even continues after Muriel turns up at the shop, when it’s already quite clear that Crowley is going to let Aziraphale use the car (he’s already taking the plants out). Even in the back-room Crowley still teasingly grumbles about trains whilst Aziraphale smiles flirtily, and Crowley playfully withholds the car keys when Muriel interrupts them. They both know Aziraphale is going to end up with them, there’s no point to him not directly handing them over in spite of the interruption, it’s just an excuse to tease Aziraphale back. I mean, look at him – he spends the rest of the conversation wiggling his hips, grinning smugly and confidently handling the Muriel problem by talking about love. Aziraphale’s very overt reaction tells you all you need to know about the dynamic of this one.

Two can play at this flirting game, angel.

But he follows him around like a little puppy!

Well, yes and no. Sure he follows him around whilst he goes around asking all the shopkeepers to the meeting, but he does that because it’s fun for him. He’s curious, Aziraphale is acting oddly, doing something he’s never done before and Crowley wants to know what it is. He’s always found him fascinating – what silly and ridiculous thing is the angel up to now?

Also wanting to hang out with the person you are in love with isn’t at all strange or a sign you are in some sort of weird relationship where only one of you calls the shots. It’s normal. Crowley knows Aziraphale has a tendency to be silly or do unexpected things and he wants to watch him do them and also flirt with him whilst he’s doing them. Looking grumpy and reacting to Aziraphale’s silliness with disbelief is how Crowley flirts-without-flirting. Both of them know, understand and like that dynamic, and he has that role not because he’s unhealthy levels enthralled with everything Aziraphale does but because of the levels of trust they have spent millennia establishing.

What Crowley doesn’t do is wait around for Aziraphale. Look at the scene where Aziraphale daydreams about Job. In that scene he’s aware Aziraphale has something else to show him (the record clue), but he doesn’t stick around whilst Aziraphale ignores him. He could have sat down somewhere in the shop and waited – he’s got an eternity, waiting an hour or so is no big deal, but waiting around like that would suggest he really is a doormat, just waiting for the next time Aziraphale shows him any attention. He doesn’t do that, instead he goes off and does… well, something. There’s a lot of speculation over what it is, but whether he goes off to read Pride and Prejudice or just wanders off to find something more interesting to look at than the back of Aziraphale’s head, he’s clearly saying here that he has a life outside of whatever Aziraphale wants to do.

Also side note - you know what else he doesn’t do for Aziraphale? Adjust his driving style. Aziraphale clearly hates it, it makes him nervous and he even asks Crowley to change several times whilst they’re in the car together, but Crowley never does. This is how I am angel, accept it or don’t, but this is the line and I’m not changing this for you. Related to this is his refusal to accept Aziraphale altering the Bentley. Aziraphale tries to persuade him, “But it’s pretty,” and Crowley really isn’t having it. It’s another hard line and he’s not going to let Aziraphale cross it.

Anything else?

There’s a few other examples that I’ve seen listed in the, “Crowley does whatever Aziraphale says/wants” evidence piles. Things like Aziraphale assuming he’s going to get the drinks in the pub. Well, someone has to get them, and it makes perfect sense that they both assume it’s Crowley here because he’s the one more comfortable with pubs. Having a role that you take on within certain situations in a relationship is healthy and normal, imagine how exhausting it would be to debate who is going to do every little thing all of the time.

In the first series the coat cleaning is another example often cited, but this is something Crowley is perfectly happy to do. Aziraphale is flirting, which is delightful, and he’s not being asked to do anything difficult or dangerous. I will do this thing for you because I love you and I enjoy making you happy and this is something I feel I can give to you, which is totally different from, you always ask, I always give, and you always take.

What about Aziraphale. When does he give?

All the damn time. We just don’t notice it as much because Crowley asks different things of him. His love language is acts of service towards others, but he doesn’t really ask or require them in return. Sometimes he gets them from Aziraphale anyway (Holy water anyone?) Also notably in the Globe Theatre when he’s clearly the one pushing the Arrangement, and Aziraphale more or less agrees to do his work for him (“That doesn’t sound like hard work”) even before he’s asked, before they’ve gone through their little dance of Crowley pushing and Aziraphale supposedly-reluctantly agreeing.

The other things Aziraphale gives Crowley are much more nuanced, and much less measurable to us as the audience, but he gives them constantly, or more or less constantly, throughout their relationship. He gives him acceptance (although he occasionally partially withdraws it, such as in the bandstand scene), his silliness (which is more important than it first appears), a safe space (not just the bookshop, but also a safe space for Crowley to air his real views without fear of consequence, which is important irrespective of whether or not he persuades Aziraphale to agree with him), his physicality (by 1826 he’s really in Crowley’s space so much of the time) and most importantly he gives Crowley himself. Crowley constantly pushes Aziraphale to grow as a person, it’s one of the original reasons he entertains developing a friendship with him. What he asks of Aziraphale is for Aziraphale to think – really think – about what he believes. And Aziraphale does so, but only for Crowley. Humans have constantly questioned religious beliefs throughout history, they’ve written books, made speeches and even had wars over religious doctrine and the problems, inconsistencies and absurdities within it. Crowley is saying nothing to Aziraphale that he won’t already have indirectly heard from humans and dismissed or ignored. But when Crowley says it, he thinks and he changes. That’s what Crowley asks of Aziraphale and it’s what Aziraphale gives him.

What was the point of all this waffle?

Well, honestly there isn’t much of one. Only that their relationship is much more balanced than some suggest and I think I just wanted to spell that out. It also has an implication for the final 15 minutes. There’s no way Aziraphale goes into that with some sort of fake confidence that he can persuade Crowley to follow him to heaven simply because Crowley always follows him – Crowley doesn’t, he has very clear limits that he enforces with Aziraphale and Aziraphale knows this. He might feel confident for other reasons (such as thinking Crowley will be happy to be an angel again) or something else entirely different might be happening (so many theories!) but I’m pretty sure it’s nothing to do with thinking Crowley always does what he asks, because he very clearly doesn’t.

It's also why Crowley waits around afterwards to watch Aziraphale leave. It’s a way indirectly of saying one final time, I love you and I enjoy making you happy… but this is something I cannot give to you.

[marzipanandminutiae]

just read the first-draft screenplay of CPeak, and I have to say

I’m really glad it was altered as heavily as it ended up being

Thomas and Lucille were far less fleshed-out as characters, Lucille in particular. the whole child abuse thing is absent; there’s no real explanation of why she’s so possessive of him beyond “She’s EEEEEEEVIL!!!” although there are clear seeds of the heart that their relationship would eventually develop- Thomas tells Edith near the end that Lucille is part of him, and that they can’t be without each other. but anything else- the whole iconic “The horror was for love” monologue -is missing

it’s also much more of a morality tale, with Edith’s voiceover at the end mentioning “damnation for the real monsters of Crimson Peak.” which. yeah. I’ve talked so much about loving the ambiguity of Gothic romance that you can imagine I’m not fond of the moralizing

other small details that were different include:

Edith is 22, Thomas is 38, and Lucille is 40

Lucille is blonde (could have been a neat iconography reversal, I’ll admit)

Edith is from Boston, not Buffalo. which led to the interesting bit of dialogue about the party being held in Roxbury, while the Cushing home was in the Back Bay. I had a bit of a chuckle at that, because it’s hard to imagine a wealthy and fashionable Boston family living in Roxbury in 1900

Bidwell Parkway and Masten Park don’t seem to have any grand Victorian mansions in evidence, either, though, when I poke around on Google Earth. so at least in the first draft, they got ONE fancy neighborhood right?

I also have to wonder what the actual Cushing family- a prominent “Boston Brahmin” clan whose name I see on museum donor lists sometimes -would have thought of the character being associated with them. I doubt Del Toro realized the connection, since he got the name from actor Peter Cushing

The Sharpes’ family home is called Cloud Top. -10 points for atmosphere

The mining is for iron, not clay. no blood-clay. I Weep.

Lucille ties Edith to the bed at one point. I think this definitely should have been left in, for Very Important Artistic Reasons

Enola was a German woman named Eleanor Schott. Finlay had been trying to learn German to impress her

Baby Sharpe was a girl, named Mary. It’s explicitly stated that one of the siblings “mercy-killed” her, though not which one

The butterfly motif- and Lucille’s interest in lepidopterology -are absent

There’s a GREAT moment, which I think would have shut up the Helpless Woobie Thomas crowd nicely, where he argues that Edith should live because she’s innocent, and Lucille shouts, “THEY WERE ALL INNOCENT!”

yeah. yeah, they were. that’s a really good point, Lucille- why don’t we examine that a bit further, and what it means vis a vis Thomas not crying halt to the Bluebeard scheme sooner?

The dog is female

Thomas’ ghost never shows up. instead, the ghosts of the wives and Carter Cushing distract Lucille- more intentionally than Thomas’ does in the final movie -and Edith clocks her with the shovel

there’s more, but those were the most salient points in my mind. so yeah. ultimately, I’m glad we got what we got: a story with more emotional depth, peopled by more complex characters

[minecraftfan11onscratch]

Connie Howlite Maheswaran AU - Just some extra fun and not-so-fun lil’ details

While White Diamond never allowed herself to show many emotions, as her disguise Howlite, she allowed herself to be more genuinely patient, emotive, and even compassionate, and began to feel genuine towards her self-rebellion as she allowed herself to know about the issues of her own Empire (based on the actual Howlite in crystal healing being about calming stress and emotions and promoting knowledge, awareness and emotional expression). Although she needed the first push of Pink Pearl to change, she slowly began to change on her own.

Howlite was majorly greyish-and-white, but still had the pink, luminiscent blush of her original self that now she wasn’t as ashamed of. It passed down to Connie, but it’s more notable when she’s on her Gem half mode.

Howlite’s powers besides the light-based structure generating staff are the cloud manipulation, mimicking another Gem’s power, and making a link with someone else’s mind. Her growing empathy and acceptance of the pink side of her spectrum allowed herself to gain healing and ressurection powers, although they are a bit harder to tap onto than Pink’s.

Pink Pearl’s broken eye was not caused by Pink Diamond, as she was switched by White right before it could happen. It is still psychological in nature, but it’s now a manifestation of the trauma of losing so many companions in the war, and having to bottle up her time with White Diamond due to her last command. Being able to finally tell the truth behind White’s shattering and Connie being able to heal the Corrupted Gems indirectly helps her eye heal until it’s usable again.

Spessartite usually summons her scythe by her right hand back gem; unless if her eyeball gem is exposed. Then she does it ala how Eyeball Ruby did it in Bubbled.

Before being bested by Amethyst, Jasper’s answer to nearly everything was to use violence, a minor leftover from Homeworld conditioning. It was when she was defeated by Amethyst, a “defective” Quartz that more than made up for it with cunning and trickery, that she began to change her tune.

Aquamarine’s crystal ball prison was capable of showing imagery not unlike the mirror Lapis was trapped in.

Villain!Nephrite is sort-of laughable like Peridot, but in a woobie-like way. As she’s nearly defenseless until she figures out her acid powers, and even when she tries to sound scary/intimidating, she can’t.

Aquamarine and Nephrite are huge fans of the movie The Amazes: Era of Nitron, a meta parody of The Avengers: Age of Ultron that Connie presents to the latter. Nephrite herself initially tries to mimic the Amazes a bit to grow more brave.

Nephrite reunited with her crew after the reunion of Earth and Homeworld.

Zircon became one of the official lawyers of Little Hometown after peace was made between Homeworld and Earth.

Softball/Our Pearl began to develop cracks in the jaw area after the events of Change Your Mind. Like Pink Pearl, it’s a manifestation of trauma; this time, over the stress and anger over being Pink Diamond’s Pearl and never being able to communicate about it, until fusing with Pink Pearl provided a complete picture of her Diamonds.

Pink Diamond’s flower-looking aura is capable of making everyone feel perpetually happy and jokeful, at the cost of inhibiting all emotions (credit to this anon for the idea!). Softball/Our Pearl was under it all the time, which meant the stress and anger over serving Pink (plus her issues of being used by Pink’s body-snatching ability) was processed in later, and Blue, Yellow, and the Comet Gems being under it makes them not take the situation seriously, which leaves Connie vulnerable to the dilemma of “is she really Connie, or a White/Howlite vessel?” that Pink unwittingly puts under her.

The final confrontation differs a bit once Steven unwillingly becomes part of the playtime of the happiness-possessed Comet Gems and Diamonds. Due to her lack of experience with the aura, Softball/Our Pearl is unwittingly released from the happiness emotion control and every traumatic thing she went through comes crashing over her mind, now that she doesn’t have perpetual happiness. She’s tired of working for Pink, and wants to go back to her White Diamond. Pink, who herself is denying the demise of her mother/grandmother figure but refusing to show it, bets with Softball that White will be free if the Gem is released from “the poor little human” but is proven wrong when it produces another Connie. As Gem Connie makes barriers to stop everyone from interrupting her reunion with her human half, both Softball/Our Pearl and Pink have to confront White is gone. The shattering of Pink’s false happiness breaks the aura on the rest of the Gems, and allows Connie to reach out to her.

After her confrontation with Connie, Pink learned that bottling her negative emotions and replacing them with fake happiness did more damage than anything, and she’s becoming more honest with herself and everyone. Not only she unlocks the powers she canonically acquired as Rose, but her aura now makes her feel what other Gems are feeling deep down, allowing her and said Gems to understand the latter more.

Pink Diamond and Pink Spinel became stronger friends than before, due to their awareness of their flaws and development to be more mature. While White Spinel will never reunite with her Diamond, she’s more than jolly about it.

[carbonateddelusion]

mm. Might delete later, but here's a little poem. It's very personal to me

I wonder what you would think

Sitting on a cloud above

Drinking slushies

When you see

A creature

An animal

Not born

By the time

Of your passing

Playing with blankie

Your woobie, comfort item

Unaware of its significance

Digging her claws and teeth in

Seven years on

From you

She is playing

A memory maybe

Only allowed by your absence.

[butwhatifidothis]

I just realized this fic is never gonna fuckin end... like it was bad enough when it was just a woobie Edelgard retelling of White Clouds but now there are all these timelines and Cap feels the need to show why every single permutation of recruits are so miserable on SS and AM and VW and incredibly happy and achieving personal growth on CF... it is never gonna end

I won't go so far as to say that much. CF gives the fic a set end to aim for, one I doubt Cap'n is going to deviate from: Dimitri's gonna die, Rhea's gonna die (or, at best, be stripped of any and all power and exiled - this is also the best result for Dimitri), Edelgard's gonna be ruler, yada yada. Maybe Edelgard'll abscond from being a ruler after a few years so that she can be an uwu pure lil' bean with her uwu innocent angel of a teacher in a cottage somewhere, but there is an end in sight. It's just that the journey getting there is going to be unnecessarily long because, like you said, Cap'n feels the need to go over exactly why almost every single character would have been better off being stepped on by Edelgard instead of being their own characters via nonsensical timeline shenanigans

[clawsnoir]

I hope you don't mind me sharing a slightly different opinion here. It's definitely disheartening for characters this complex to be interacted with like this and I've complained about it all before, but with many of the people doing this I find that they genuinely do get the themes and, most importantly, possess media literacy. Like, if you wanted to have a serious talk with someone who does this (and I have with many) then you'd get a pretty productive conversation out of bunches of them. So I've personally never had much of a problem with people doing that kind of thing (excluding what's happening with Selina because it *does* stem from racism) because they're able to get it and they do, but they interact with this material and its characters in a way that is much less complex or serious. Like I said it's made me curse at the clouds before lmao but yeah, based on my own experiences with those that do it I've stopped seeing it as *that* much of an issue, as long as it's differentiated, because I've been shown that beyond the femboy Bruce Waynes there's a fair amount of comprehension. Again, I'm hoping I haven't overstepped here at any point, and I'm not sure about what your experiences with some of these guys entail, just wanted to share something a little different!

I see where you're coming from, beloved, I really do, but I have had conversations with these people and oftentimes I have come away feeling like we watched two completely different films. 🙂

There's nothing wrong with engaging with the text in a less serious manner, and honestly I think fandom would be a miserable place if it was solely based around analysis and meta. But it does become a problem when 90% of fandom content is so totally disconnected from the source material that it may as well be original content.

The minimization and erasure of Selina is a symptom of this problem, not something that's merely coincidental. Propping up Eddie at the expense of Selina is racist. Pretending like Bruce and Selina's romance isn't the central dynamic of the entire movie is racist. Every single one of these people I have interacted with genuinely acts as though Selina doesn't exist.

Again, I truly do not care if these people are creating woobie content, it just frustrates me that the content is dominating the tags and the creative fandom output. But I appreciate you sharing your opinion with me and I'm glad you've had interactions with people who actually do possess some media literacy <3

[altocat]

Even if it really was cloud inserting himself as Zack, seeing sephiroth being nice to cloud was like an out of body experience.

Seph was still a pretty chill guy. He even compliments trooper!Cloud. He doesn't come off as unsettling until a bit later imo. But that's partly because I just see him as woobie cat man and not...you know, Sephiroth.

[theskyexists]

What can I say, the RTD Specials were shit.

[bottlepiecemuses]

Oda Knows How To Make A Cloud A Woobie!

Seriously, I want to hug this little puff of vapor. 

[thornescratch]

🖊🌙 😐📝

What time of day do you prefer to write? Why?

Late at night, more out of necessity than preference. It’s when I have the least amount of interruptions. Also, it’s a proven fact that the words flow best and hardest when you need to be sleeping or getting ready for bed. It’s just how it works in the universal scheme of things.

What embarrasses you most about your own writing?

When I realize that I’m projecting too much on a character or situation and making it obvious. Like, there are some tropes I don’t mind revisiting over and over, but I get twitchy when I realize, Oops, that’s my issue, not Character X���s, and it’s less realistic they’d feel that way. Or when I catch myself reusing a description or phrase too often. I need to stop limning people in gold; I do it way too often. Or focusing on sweat in weird places during sex scenes. Though, it’s my experience that you do always notice the sweat during sexytimes.

Sometimes it embarrasses me how appealing I find some really OOC or over the top trashy stuff, but everyone’s got their favorite woobie and tropes, so I’ve stopped feeling bad about that.

What is one growth area you have for your writing?

Pacing. I do outline, but for a couple of my stories that were written for exchanges, you can tell where I hit deadline and had to just get it done instead of having a few more scenes or length that might have improved it. (Or, conversely, I should have been more brutal and cut shit that I liked but which ultimately wasn’t necessary. But then again, it’s fanfic.)

Also, uh, just finishing shit. And feeling less silly about it. I don’t like posting WIPs because I like to finish them first, but then I get interested in something else or I think it’s not good enough to post, and it languishes on my hard drive for years.

Post a snippet from a current WIP.

Again, not sure what fandom you're from, so let's go back to hockey since I have it open right now.

"Hey, hi, so like, O and Backy turned into chickens, it's not my fault," Willy said, standing on his front step with a large cardboard box in his arms.

"It's his fault," Burky said from somewhere behind Willy.

"Totally Whip fault," someone else—Kuzy? said, also from behind Willy, who took up a lot of space on a normal basis and even more so when he was apparently hauling boxes around. One arm poked out from behind him and waved wildly, and then there was an unmistakable giggle, so it was definitely Kuzy. "Batya, let us in."

"Fuck you, it's not!" Willy said, and then hoisted the cardboard box up slightly. The box peeped at Brooks loudly, and he jerked back in surprise. "Here, let us in, lemme just explain," Willy added, and then Brooks had three—no, four, no, five, Djoos and Orlov were apparently quietly lurking at the back of the pack as well—teammates stampeding into his house like they were trying to outrun the cloud of youthful indiscretion that Brooks could just fucking see hanging over them.

"Curse my slow door-slamming skills," he said to his now-empty front step, and then closed the door and took a deep breath in order to prepare for whatever the hell was going on.

Most of them were all in his kitchen. Willy had put the box down on the kitchen table and he and Burky were in his pantry; Kuzy was looking in his fridge; he didn't see Djoos; and Snarls, bless his heart, was the only one being polite and standing near one of the chairs, clearly waiting for permission to sit down. Brooks made a mental note to tell Ovi about it, since Ovi believed in positive reinforcement when it came to nurturing the kids, and would probably buy Dima a new car or something.

The box on the table was still peeping. Before Brooks could deal with that, it was drowned out by an even louder noise, which was apparently directly related to Kuzy pawing through his vegetable crisper drawer.

"Batya! It's terrible!" Kuzy said, leaning out of the fridge and brandishing an eggplant at him.

"All of his crackers are wholegrain stuff," Burky called out from the pantry, muffled. "He doesn't have any chips."

"He's got two bags of Skinny Pop, though," Willy added. "Original and White Cheddar."

"Everything so healthy," Kuzy said, making a face. "It's terrible but I guess also good. I know we make best choice to come here."

Brooks took the eggplant away from Kuzy and slapped it against his palm once with a pleasantly solid noise. It had some good heft. "The last person who isn't sitting down at the table quietly in the next fifteen seconds gets to explain to Barry why they have to go on LTIR because someone beat them senseless with an eggplant."

"Like, a real eggplant, or is this a dick joke," Willy said, leaning out of the pantry before his eyes went wide. "Oh."

Kuzy was already opening his mouth with that glint in his eye again, so Brooks pointed the eggplant at him. "Sit. Down. Where's Juicer?"

"I was using the bathroom, please don't hit me," Djoos said meekly, slipping back into the kitchen and sitting down immediately, hands folded on top of the table neatly like a good little d-man. Brooks made another mental note to let Nicky know. Nicky had his own nurturing system for the kids, though that usually ran along the lines of a series of slightly less murderous than usual glares that he used for those currently in his favor.

"Can we bring some Skinny Pop?" Burky asked. "Actually, can we bring both bags?"

"I mean, actually you wouldn't really need to explain so much—" Willy said, and then Burky wiggled past him out of the narrow pantry doors with a bag stowed under each arm, and dove for the table, yelling out, "Hit him, Batya, hit him!"

"Hey!" Willy said indignantly, rushing after him and almost knocking Kuzy over in the process.

There was a briefly chaotic interval like a particularly violent game of musical chairs, but it ended with everyone sitting down in a chair, even if Burky and Djoos were sharing one. Less sharing, maybe, than Burky getting physically dumped out of two chairs in quick succession by Willy and Dima, and then Burky climbing into Djoos's lap, planting himself there, and winding his arms around Djoos's neck despite Djoos's wide-eyed expression of panic, but Brooks decided he couldn't afford to be too particular about it, and Djoos was just going to have to learn to desensitize himself to Burky-induced boners and personal space issues.

The box was still peeping.

Brooks eyed all of them, trying to decide who he had the best chance of getting the story out of the quickest, and then decided that he might as well give up on that and picked Willy, since he had a distinctly guilty expression that was only slightly marred by how he was currently shoving a double handful of Brooks's Skinny Pop into his mouth. "Willy. Explain. And no one else talk until I say they can."

Willy swallowed and licked his lips. "Okay, so. Magic."

After a minute when nothing else seemed to be forthcoming, Brooks cleared his throat. "That's it? That's all you got?"

Willy glanced around the table where all of his teammates were successfully avoiding his gaze (Kuzy and Dima were both pretending to read the nutritional info on the back of the popcorn bag; Burky was actually hiding his face against Djoos's neck; accordingly, Djoos's panic looked like it had ratcheted up by several degrees, and he was staring off into the middle distance with a muscle twitching in his cheek) and when it seemed obvious that no help was forthcoming, he shrugged. "Kinda?"