#deborah is screeching

[gyubby99]

Lilly, trying to come out: Do you ever feel like kissing girls?

Gabriel: No

Lilly: What?

Gabriel, realizing what Lilly said: What?

[sapphicscholar]

Chapter Preview:

“Deborah!” Ava screams as loud as she can.

“Ava!” Ava can hear it this time. The sound of her own voice, the panic lacing through it.

“Just—just try to get to the exit!” Ava calls back.

The maze is suddenly a thousand times easier, and it’s a matter of a few quick turns before Ava is face to face with herself.

“Tell me this is a nightmare,” Ava’s body says.

Ava clears her throat and licks at her lips. She tastes Deborah’s lipstick and the sharp acidity of the lemonade. “Okay. Okay. So we’re in an X-file of our own. That’s fine. We’ll—we’ll go back through. Hand-in-hand this time. It’ll be fine.”

“Fine?” Deborah screeches. (And jesus, Ava needs to work on her pitch.) “Nothing about this is fine!”

Ava runs her fingers through her hair, feeling the slight tackiness of hairspray. “Our suspect is right downstairs. He’s gotta be able to help us, right?”

“He’ll help us from the inside of a jail cell,” Deborah growls, and it’s fucking weird seeing Deborah’s expressions on her own face.

[pub-lius]

I have some questions on the accuracy on TURN, specifically Tallboy’s rank (was he a an aid de camp?) and activities during the war (in show vs reality). I’ve also been hearing about “Laurens erasure” (or smth) in the show. I’m not really sure what that is and would love some clarification. Tysm!

This is another old ask, so anon, i hope you find this 😭

Benjamin Tallmadge entered the war as a lieutenant of a Connecticut six month regiment, but eventually became a captain of dragoons from which he was promoted to major. He was never an aide-de-camp, as his position appointed to him by Washington was director of military intelligence, which was not a position allotted to Washington for his staff by Congress, so it held no rank.

One thing I really liked about Turn’s portrayal of Tallmadge is that his activities during the war pretty much line up with all the information we have about him. In his memoir, he was very vague about his role in the army, but the Culper Spy Ring was obviously the most notable, and though Turn overplays its importance, the Ring was crucial to the victories we had against the British. And I really liked that they showed his involvement with Benedict Arnold’s treason, but they should have followed the storyline that Tallmadge, Hamilton, and the others involved gave detailed accounts of that are just as interesting and dramatic as what was portrayed but. Whatever.

I can talk about Laurens erasure for days. It was totally unnecessary to totally disregard Laurens throughout the Turn series, especially since he had a major impact on many of the events portrayed. All he gets is a brief mention after Yorktown, and it’s a false statement about his men being “decimated” or whatever at Yorktown, which didn’t happen. If you’re going to put Hamilton as an aide-de-camp in an amrev piece of media, Laurens should come with him. It’s a prime example of how obscure historical figures are further pushed into obscurity by media determining that their existence and sacrifices aren’t suited to the plot. History is personal, and needs to be treated as such. John Laurens, Deborah Sampson, John Glover, and countless others made incredible sacrifices to the cause out of the pure eagle screech patriotism, yet large corporations that make these shows write them out for the sake of glorifying their main characters, who are usually caricatures of the real people anyway (which is unavoidable). It’s one thing to not give a character screen time- it’s another to attribute the accomplishments of a historical figure to another person.

I hope this answers your questions and that the og anon is able to see this! Thank you for the ask!!

[nightmaretist]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Mansión Mexicana & surroundings PARTIES: Anita @gossipsnake and Inge @nightmaretist SUMMARY: Debbie is nowhere to be found. CONTENT: Mentions of child death (past).

The pair of mothers stepped over the threshold of Anita’s home, their hands carrying shopping bags of all supplies needed for their infant daughter. In this case, this didn’t include nappies and formula, but rather some separated body parts and an organ or two, freshly and locally acquired. Inge wasted little time moving deeper into the house, towards where Debbie was resting — she had gotten so big over the past few months and she was thrilled to see her again and show her what they’d gotten her.

But when she and her co parent reached the room assigned to their darling child, they found nothing. There was no hungry clicking sound. No wide eyes observing them, no wriggling body covered in quills. Inge dropped her bags and let out a sound of dismay, “Where is she?” She looked at Anita, wondering if she had moved her. A trail of bristles and goo lay in the room however, leading towards the window the pair had left open. She rushed towards it, letting out a screech into Seven Peaks.

_ 

Anita had grown used to having Inge and Deborah around over the past few months. More than just used to it, in fact, she had grown to truly cherish them as the two most important women in her life. So many of the things Anita used to do on her own she now had a partner for, including killing strange humans for food. She wasn’t sure there was any sight more beautiful than watching Inge clean up organs to feed to their sweet child. It was the closest thing to domestic bliss that felt attainable to the lamia. 

But she should have known better than to think that bliss could last. Chills started at her spine and spread throughout Anita’s entire body when she heard the noise Inge made, followed by the question about where Debbie was. She saw Inge go to the window but refused to let her mind consider that reality. Instead, Anita began to tear the room apart. Throwing the pillows, blankets, toys, baskets of clothes about, “She’s in here. She’s in here.” 

Her efforts were useless. The trail of goo was obvious - the goo went up over the window, down the pane on the other end. “Deborah just went out for some fresh air, no? Just like her mami, can’t get enough of nature.” There was a panic in Antia’s eyes as she looked towards Inge, though, her face revealing what she knew to be true but could not stand to say aloud. 

_ 

The increase of murder and the handling of body parts did not bother her. Whatever thoughts about Rhett and his toes, feet and leg might rise to the surface to ruin it for her were suppressed by the blissful baby haze Debbie had put her in and Inge enjoyed supplying her baby her food. Besides, it was not much different than plucking a chicken or preparing a turkey, now was it?  

It was a labor of love, one she intended to do for many years. Eighteen, at least, if not more … perhaps Debbie would always need their help with food, the way a dog did. Not that she was a dog and to compare her as one would be immeasurably cruel as dogs were the worst type of animal. Regardless, this was something she was committed to. She and Anita, co parenting for years, dedicating their precious time to their darling child. 

But she was gone. The window was open, there was a trail leading towards it and Anita was panicking the way she was. She pulled herself back from the window, looking at the lamia. Inge noted that there were tears in her eyes. “Were we too late? Too late to feed her? She must — of course she likes nature. We have to go.” She picked up one of the bags and walked promptly out of the room, back out of the house and into the surrounding woods. The tears were on her cheeks now. 

She distantly remembered losing Vera in crowds. At town festivals or at the local market. Worse, in Amsterdam. There was no panic quite like it. It was back, now. She walked into the woods, certain that Anita was with her, and screamed: “Debbie!” 

_ 

Where Anita felt hesitation, Inge seemed to spring into action - rushing out towards the back door to follow the trail of breadcrumbs that Deborah had left leading away from the house. Trusting that Inge had more experience, that she knew what she was doing, Anita followed not too far behind. There was a terror in the other woman’s eyes that Anita knew, even without being able to see her own, wasn’t reflected in hers. 

Maybe it was the animalistic side of her. Deborah was their child, undoubtedly, but like the two of them she was not human. Unlike Anita, unlike Debbie - Inge had been, once upon a time. “I’ve taken her out in the woods plenty of times. She knows the area out here.” In attempting to calm her partner down, Anita also opted to let her eyes shift so she could scan the area for the heat signature of their daughter. “I can’t see her.” She paused, trying to keep everything calm, “Yet. I can’t see her yet.” 

They pushed forward in through where Anita’s yard ended and the tree cover began, the path left by Deborah beginning to get more unpredictable. If Anita hadn’t known better she might have thought that the winding tracks were an intentional attempt to throw them off her scent. But she knew better. Debbie wasn’t just some creature she studied - this was her family. “She’s quite fast. Have you noticed? We should find some activities to sign her up for once we get back home - keep her active. Find a way to channel this into something she can excel at.” 

—

Anita was trying to be rational and Inge could not really grasp it. She’d raised Vera in a small town where kids stayed out until late and usually nothing happened, but Debbie was still an infant, wasn’t she? Besides, sometimes things did happen. Sometimes there were bad men out there, or cruel children. In these woods, there were hunters, who would probably want to strike down Debbie for her strong appetite.

“But she has never gone out alone!” There was something really desperate to her voice, a want to believe Anita’s optimism but a mother’s biggest fear was overtaking her. It wasn’t often that she was this easily put in distress, but it was different when it came to Debbie. Her head was spinning. 

It was hard to keep track indeed and she looked into the woods, longing for nighttime so she could be more mobile and faster at this search. Such was what she called it now, a search. “She is very fast. Why would she — she should not be fast leaving her bedroom, though. We should have closed the window. She’s —” She shook her head and opened her mouth wider, “Debbie!!!”

_ 

It was clear that the words she had been offering in the form of comfort were not doing their job, so Anita elected to be quiet for the time being, focused on listening for subtle coos or the delicate gnawing on limbs that might point them in the direction of Debbie. The forest was large, undoubtedly, but they had not been gone for that long and she was still rather small - it didn’t make sense why Anita couldn’t sense her yet. 

They were following the seemingly unintentional trail of bristles and goo left in Deb’s wake, the two of them calling out her name at varying octaves and decibels, but there was no response. There was no sign of her other than the trail they were blindly following. As the pair traveled deeper into the woods, desperate thoughts that had never crossed Anita’s mind before began to consume her. The pit in her stomach made her think of her own mother; did she ever feel this way, not knowing where her daughter was or if she was safe? 

“What if we’ve gone the wrong way? What if this path isn’t even her path?” Saying those words aloud led to another horrid thought, one that rushed out of her brain to her lips with urgency. “Do you think that her real -” Anita stopped herself, both from finishing her sentence and in her tracks, as she turned towards Inge, her eyes desperate despite their dryness. 

_ 

The further they walked into the woods, the more desperate Inge was starting to feel. How could Debbie have gotten out and gotten this far? She had not been very mobile before, which was explainable due to her small size. Besides, she always expected her mothers to come and bring her food — if they didn’t, she tended to get literally snippy. And yet there was no trace of her. 

Tears had burst into her eyes and then started streaming, making her throat constrict as she kept shouting that name. She had lost a child before, she could not go through it again — it was against all laws of nature (even if she herself was against the laws of nature too, according to some). “I … I don’t know, the woods are so large and she … what if she’s back at the house, Anita?” 

At the suggestion that the creature who had laid the egg that had held their darling Debbie had found her, she looked at Anita with a blazing gaze. “No. She has two real mothers, right here. Don’t –” Inge shook her head, trudging on further into the woods. “She would not leave us for whatever put her on this earth. We took care of her when no one else did. We took her in. She would not — How could she just leave?”

_ 

Inge was right and Anita was already mad at herself for thinking the thought. Had she not learned by now that real family had nothing to do with biology? “Fuck. Yeah. I didn’t mean …” she sighed as her sentence trailed off, unsure of what exactly she did mean. “Maybe she left to try and find us? Maybe we were taking too long. She knows we go out into the woods together, so she just - she went searching for us.” The longer it took to find her, the longer Anita tried to rationalize everything, the more helpless she began to feel. 

But then, as if it were a literal glimmer of hope on the horizon, she spotted a familiar heat signature in a familiar size. “Deborah!” She yelled out, and began sprinting towards what she could only imagine had to be their daughter. She had studied that heat signature diligently, never imagining she would need to identify it across a field in this context. But instead of turning and heading towards Anita as she called out her name, it seemed that Deborah picked up her pace in the opposite direction. 

Anita didn’t let that deter her as she kept running as fast as her stupid human legs would allow. “I think I can see her! She’s not too far over that hill!” She called out behind her, sure that Inge would be following - sure that their little family would be reunited in mere moments. 

–

That beautiful silhouette was finally in her line of sight again and Inge felt something inside her release, like a balloon being burst. She wanted to fall down and weep, but instead there was still some distance to cross between herself and Deborah, so along with Anita she picked up her pace, running as fast as she could. (This was admittedly not very fast.) 

Her voice was starting to feel hoarse from the shouting but that didn’t stop her from shouting again and again, Deborah’s name and all its nicknames seemingly the only words she knew. It made no sense, that she was not heading towards them — she had to be starving by now, right? Inge and Anita ran up to the hill, looking down the slope at Debbie’s grown body, worming away from them.

“Where is she going? Debbie!” The caterpillar-esque creature looked at them over her … well, she didn’t exactly have shoulders, but she turned her head and looked ahead. “Come back!” She stomped her foot, crossing her arms. “Young lady, we will count to three and if you’re not here by then — one, two —” Usually this worked, usually it was between the dead space between two and three that a child would come skittering back. But Debbie kept on moving. Inge did not dare say three.

_ 

As she reached the peak of the hill, the closest Anita had been to Deborah since she had left, she was met with the harsh reality that she had feared. Their daughter hadn’t been lost. She did not come running back to them once they all came into view. As Inge began to count with the seasoned tone of a mother who had done this countless times before, Anita simply dropped down and let her knees hit the grass below her. 

“She’s too much like me,” Anita muttered to herself, now overcome with thoughts wondering if that meant that she was too much like her own mother. Maybe that is the true cycle of life: girls rebel against their mothers only to turn into women that are just like their mothers. The ache in the pit of her stomach began to radiate out through the rest of her body until it became unbearable. But the good thing about snakes is that their stomachs are much larger than human stomachs are, so their stomachs can contain much more ache within them. 

And with that thought Anita knew she needed to transform - she could not handle these weak emotions in this weak shell of a body. Before she ran away from what she was feeling, she stood back up and turned to Inge. Before she transformed into who she really was she needed to prove to herself who she wasn’t - she wasn’t her mother. Placing a hand on Inge’s shoulder before deciding to pull her co-parent, her partner, into an embrace, she said softly, “One day she will want to come home… and the door will always be open for her.” 

_ 

Debbie was proving to be a stubborn and disobedient child. She was like Vera, in that way, who had moved out the second she turned eighteen and wanted independence from her parents more than anything. But Debbie hadn't been that way before today, she'd been a little forceful and definitely demanding, but always glad to see her mothers (as long as they delivered fresh meat). Inge never said three, because she knew that Debbie would not come even if she did. 

It seemed they were both busy comparing, Anita seeing herself in their daughter — which Inge understood more than she'd like to admit. Though she had not yet seen a mirror image of herself in Debbie, she had felt that way about Vera. Whether her mother had felt that way about her she'd never known, but maybe it was an inevitability of being a mother or a daughter. She did not know what to say in response to Anita's assessment and so she was glad for the embrace rooting her into place in stead. 

Debbie kept hobbling on and Inge felt her eyes burn, tears slipping from them when she squeezed them shut. Anita's hair tickled her face. She thought of the hospital, the funeral, the goodbye between herself and her first daughter. Was this her curse, then? To be a mother who lost her children? “I hope she does,” she said, but what even was home to a nomad like her? To a woman who refused to be rooted in place? Vera had hated how flighty she was and yet for her she had not changed, so whether she would for Debbie was hard to know. Eventually, in a small voice, she added as a final note, “But for now, we have to let her go.” 

[blackacre13]

hi hi, so from that fic where Lou gets Debs a collar, could you do something where the crew is over and someone finds the collar just lying about, and everyone thinks they got a dog but then realise its for Deb 🙈 bonus for "over it" Tams reaction. <3

“Why am I always the last to know?”

“What’re you last to know about?” Constance asked. She was currently laying upside down with her legs thrown over the back of the couch, trying and failing to catch cheese balls in her mouth that Nine was purposely chucking towards her forehead instead.

“Just…I don’t know. Things!” Amita grumbled. “Lou and Deb’s engagement. When Rose and Daph started dating. That time you actually used your Metro card instead of jumping the turnstile!”

“You’re not the last to know,”

Tammy rolled her eyes. “This group just assumes that once one of us knows we all know.”

“Alright,” Amita nodded, slapping something down on the coffee table. A simple black dog collar with gold trim. “Well then, since when did we all know that they have a dog?”

“A dog?” Constance shot up. “Where is it? Can I walk it? Dude. Can we teach it tricks?”

“Who has a dog?” Rose asked sleepily.

“Lou and Debbie,” Amita exhaled. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“They don’t have a dog,” Tammy rolled her eyes. “Have you seen a dog?”

“That’s my point!” Amita flung herself on the couch. “But. Wait. Nobody’s seen it?”

“Nope,” Nine shook her head, finally eating a cheese puff herself. “No dog far as I know.”

“Would Lou even like a dog?” Rose pondered aloud.

“Lou is a dog,” Tammy provided unhelpfully.

“Oh Deb is def a cat!” Constance piped up.

“So would a cat who’s marrying a dog want another dog?” Rose asked.

“I don’t like this conversation,” Amita hmphed. “But nobody knew? Swear?”

“Nobody knew, Mita,” Tammy promised her. “But I feel like we’d have to know, right? I mean one of us would have seen it. Or heard it. It’s a whole dog. They’re not quiet. And they can’t hide it forever without feeding and bathing and walking it. Maybe they’re planning on getting a dog?”

“If Deb was planning anything, even just picking some shit, there’s be plans everywhere. Come on. You know this by now,” Nine pointed out.

The door swung open, rattling against the wall before it was thrown shut again.

“What did I miss?” Daphne asked, propping her sunglasses on her head.

“Lou and Debbie got a dog.”

“Today?” Daphne asked, making a sour face at the cheese ball container that Nine held out to her.

“No. They just have one,” Amita exhaled. “And none of us knew.”

“That’s impossible,” Daphne declared. “There’s eight people in and out of this loft. One of us would have heard or seen it. And thanks to Debbie’s stupid loft contract addendum thanks to Constance’s secret lizard, they would have to tell us about a dog. And. We’d have to vote on it. Majority loft rules. No dog.”

“No dog?” Amita checked. “So then why in the world would they—“

“Check the inside,” Daphne smirked deviously as Tammy let out a strangled choking sound before tucking her head inside her lap.

“Property of Lou Miller?” Amita read. “That’s not really helpful. You need like the owner name yeah but also the address and the phone number in case the dog gets out.”

“Again. There’s no dog,” Daphne grinned.

“DEBORAH ELISE OCEAN!” Tammy screeched.

There were a few giggles and curses from upstairs and then the sound of things being knocked around.

“Find something?” Debbie called down before snorting and breaking into a fit of giggles.

“Oh my god,” Amita spoke, looking nauseous. “It’s a collar. It’s a sex collar. It’s some bdsm shit. You two are our parents damnit.”

“Come explain yourself!” Tammy screeched. “And hide your sex shit better.”

“You read the collar,” Debbie yelled back. “It’s not mine. The collar belongs to Lou and therefore I—“

“LOUISE ANNETTE MILLER, I SWEAR TO GOD—“ Tammy screeched, marching towards the stairs in a rage as Amita sent the collar sailing after her.

[disneyanddisneyships]

@gyubby99 okay i couldn't help it.

Warnings: mentions of r*pe, bad parenting, toxicity.

I'd also like to put a disclaimer, clearly the time in this isn't Canon, so don't come for me.

This is and Alastor x OC fanfic.

"Are you sure about this, darling?" Alastor asked Aponi as she put down the telephone after calling two people.

"Yep. I've forgiven them and I want them to know it. I wanna be the bigger person," Aponi replied.

"If they try anything, they die," Vaggie muttered.

"They won't. Not with you guys here," Aponi replied.

"They'd better hope they dont," Angel Dust replied.

"Guys calm down. If Aponi trusts it, then it's her choice," Charlie interrupted.

"Exactly. Plus who's gonna hurt me with the protection of the radio demon, and daughter of hell on my side? I'm gonna be fine," Aponi stated.

There was a knock on the door.

"They're here," Husk stated as he took a drink of beer.

"Thanks captain obvious," Angel taunted.

Charlie opened the door, and in walked Aponi's Mother. As well as Aponi's ex.

"Jason. Mother. Thanks for coming. You guys can have a seat," Aponi stated as she gestured to the hotel couch.

"Ya know. From the call I thought maybe you wanted me back," Jason stated with a smirk as he sat down.

Alastor smiled widely as his expression got dark.

Jason must've noticed because his expression shown fear and he sat up straighter, as if on edge.

"I thought you called because you needed money. Or some decent clothes that aren't from a brothel," her mother started.

"Hey! Those are made of strong materials!" Angel Dust defended. "And they were gifts!" He finished.

"I called you two here because I want you to know that I forgive you," Aponi stated.

Absolute silence.

"Forgive me? For what, Lilly? Giving you a good life only for you to destroy it by running off with... a pig," her mother taunted, looking at Jason with the last word.

"You've always been such a bitch, Deborah," Jason snorted.

"Says the lowlife who raped my daughter," Aponi's mother replied.

"Oh my fucking God it was one time!" Jason yelled.

"She killed herself over it!" Vaggie shouted right back.

And that's when the whole room filled with arguing.

Aponi walked over to Alastor and sighed.

"I should've made them leave the room, huh?" Aponi asked.

"On the contrary, darling. I quite like this chaos," Alastor smirked.

He turned to see Aponi looking at him sternly.

"Yes, my dear," he muttered before sending of a high screeching noise, courtesy of his microphone.

The arguing stopped as everyone turned to Aponi and Alastor.

"As a matter of fact mother, I forgive you for manipulating me. For kicking me out when I told you Jason and I were leaving when school ended. For not talking to me, For not loving me the way you should've. I forgive you. I dont know why you did what you did, but I cant change the past and honestly I'm tired of holding onto the anger," Aponi explained.

Her mother looked down and nodded.

"I.... thank you, Lilly," She murmured before sitting down.

"And.. Jason.... what you did.... it was the hardest thing to get over. And it took 70 years for me to get over it, but I finally did. There's no excuse for what happened. But I love myself enough now to know that I don't wanna give that moment power over my life AND death. I forgive you," Aponi stated.

"Lilly.... despite my time in hell... when I found you when you died? I.... I'm sorry..... after that I tried so hard to be sober.... but I died before it could happen. I am sorry," Jason apologized.

Aponi let out a Breath and smiled, tears in her eyes.

The room lit up with white light.

"What's happening?" Vaggie asked as she looked up to the roof to see what looked like a portal to heaven.

Aponi looked around, everyone's eyes were on her.

"What?" She asked before looking at herself. She gasped. She was covered in a white glow.

"I was right," Charlie muttered as a smile grew on her face.

Alastor's eyes widened as he looked at Aponi.

She started walking toward the portal before she was stopped by a hand.

"Lilly, darling,... Don't forget me," Alastor stated as he looked at her, a small smile on his face threatening to break, his eyes filling with tears, a rare sight that only Aponi had ever seen.

"Forget you? Alastor, my love.. I'd have to die a billion times over before I'd even start to do that," Aponi replied with a smile.

Alastor pulled her in and kissed her.

Everyone in the room stared wide eyed.

He had never done that in public. And yet here he was, the radio demon himself, kissing the love of his death in front of the whole room of other demons.

The glow on Aponi grew brighter until it dissapeared, taking her with it.

When everyone's eyes adjusted to the darkness again, there was Alastor sitting on the floor numbly.

"I was right," Charlie muttered before laughing. "I WAS RIGHT!" She yelled before going over to the phone to call her dad.

"She's.... just gone?" Angel Dust asked.

Alastor stood up, his smile still on his face, as wide as ever.

"Yes I believe she is! I will be retiring to my room for a while, my friends," He stated joyfully before quickly shuffling out of the room.

"He's hurtin' isn't he?" Angel asked.

"More than he ever has before," Husk replied.

"She... what just happened?" Aponi's mother asked.

"Her last step must've been forgiveness," Vaggie replied. "Shes tried for 70 years to redeem herself, and the second she let go of all the hate she had for you two....." Vaggie trailed off with a smile.

"Shes in heaven?" Jason asked.

"Yep," Angel replied.

Meanwhile alastor walked into Aponi's room, still smiling. He started to pack up and clean out her items.

He stopped when he looked into her closet and saw a wrapped box with a tag on it labeled with his name.

Happy birthday Al

-Love, your Lilly

It read.

Alastor opened it carefully to see a radio with butterfly wings on it.

Aponi's eyes opened as she adjusted to her surroundings.

It was very different from hell.

"Lilly?" A man's voice asked from behind her.

She turned around.

"Dad?" She asked. "Dad!" She exclaimed before running over to hug him, tears in her eyes.

"70 years and I'm finally here," Aponi stated.

"70? It's only been 6 minutes since I died," Her father spoke.

"What? But.. Thats.... does that mean you died a year after I left?" Aponi asked.

"I did, yes," he replied.

"How many minutes has it been?" She asked again.

"Only one," he stated.

And at that moment nifty appeared.

"Nifty?" Aponi asked.

"Oh my goodness! Aponi!" Nifty smiled.

"Aponi?" Anither voice asked. Vaggie.

"Vaggie!" Aponi exclaimed, a smile on her face.

"That was the weirdest feeling I've ever felt in my life," Vaggie stated as she looked around.

A loud thud came from beside them.

"Angel?" Aponi asked.

"Oh my God. I-.... that's the most unexpected...." Angel trailed off before seeing his friends.

"Time is relatively here. 1 minute here is 10 years in hell and on earth," Aponi explained quickly.

The group stayed in silence.

"So now what? Like..... what do we do?" Angel asked.

"We wait?" Aponi suggested.

"Lilly?" A voice came.

"Mother?" Aponi asked as she saw the image of her mother.

"Deborah?" Aponi's father stated.

The family hugged for a good 2 minutes, awkward stares from Aponi's friends.

"What the hell?" Came the voice of husk from behind all of them.

"We're all here!" Nifty exclaimed.

"Not all of us," Vaggie muttered. Aponi sighed.

"So this is heaven? Not bad," Husk stated as he nodded his head.

"Obviously there's more but I think we should wait a bit longer," Angel stated.

"You guys can go ahead," Aponi stated. "I'll wait here,"

"You sure?" Vaggie asked.

Aponi nodded and her friends and family all walked away to go look around.

An hour passed.

Aponi had sat down and waited in silence.

"Hellow darling," A familliar voice spoke from in front of her.

She stood up quickly and stared at the man in front of her. She smiled.

"Hello, Alastor," she stated.

[wulfhalls]

KAREN PAGE IS COMING BACK SLDJFLSJFLIS https://x.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1746017363533647948?s=20

jon bernthal and deborah ann woll coming back for the new daredevil show? oh we won.

hashtag want to believe soooooooo bad. we genuinely could have it all fr but. the source is jeff sneider. I know his track record isn't that bad but it's almost too good to be true. will wrangle my hopes into submission until we have official confirmation but. vibrating out of my skin screeching at a frequency only audible to bats shaking and throwing up. WE COULD POSSIBLY HAVE IT ALL WE COULD GET THEM BACK

[planets-and-prose]

OC vs. Cockroach

Thanks for the tag, @k-v-briarwood!

Rules: Rate your OCs on how well they’d fare against a cockroach.

Let's do the Continuing Ed crew :)

Semira: 9/10. Will kill it but would absolutely prefer literally anyone else do it. Will not complain about it but her demeanor will show that she'd rather do anything else.

Briar: 8/10. Will feel very bad about killing it, but since cockroaches don't really have natural outdoor habitats as much in their area, will kill it anyway. But a lot of hesitation, -2 points for sitting and questioning morality for a hot minute before actually killing it.

Kay: 6/10, does not exactly understand WHY it needs to be killed and why people are afraid of them--man lived in a commune in the woods, he is not really familiar with the concept of bug phobias. Won't kill it but will eventually take it elsewhere.

Dawn: 5/10. She'll kill it if no one else can but she needs a hype person. Like someone to be screeching "Omigosh KILL IT!" and she'll be hyping herself up the whole time. It's quite a dramatic affair and there will be debate over who has to clean up the corpse. Points deducted for drama and inefficiency.

Masumi: 2/10. If she can, she will make it someone else's problem. Not even in a dramatic way, just in a "sees cockroach, walks out of the room" way. And if she can't make it someone else's problem, seriously considers burning the entire building down before making herself kill it and then takes another hour or so to move the corpse.

Deborah: 9/10. She's the eldest sibling, so she can kill a roach fast and efficiently. She hates them but she's used to like 4 people screaming at her to kill it so she's learned.

[theunitedstatesoffemale]

Weep

  Up in the early morn

Eyes longing to sleep

There's a weep in my heart

For a broken wing longing to soar

I know it's a new season of change

An opportunity to rearrange

A time to weep

A time to mend

Holding my own breath

Waiting for GOD to breathe my way

And I'll wait the night out

No more screeching night owls

No more fowl wind spirits

Just songs of angels and Jesus singing over me

And this heart that is bruised by lesser things will give way to lessons learned

Love discovered in a past once of fire now of tender flame

And I move on

Never forgetting to breathe.

  copyright 2013 Deborah Ramos

[jinx-boom]

[nakedmonkey]

“You are the least interesting person i know” for ava deb because i like my feelings to be hurt!

okay, so this magically works as a second part to this prompt:

It's quiet, eerily so, and they passed the hotel a good five minutes ago. Ava's starting to wonder if maybe Deborah is just looking for a good spot to dump her body.

"Well? You were dying to get in here and talk, are you going to talk?"

"I don't know what to say--" Ava admits, staring down at her hands, fidgeting on her lap.

"Oh, I'm sorry, you want me to tell you how to fix what you shat on?"

"That...visual isn't ideal," Ava replies, "but no, I just...I'm afraid to say something that's going to piss you off more, I don't want to upset you more."

"You couldn't possibly," Deborah says.

And okay, that's fair.

After a long stretch of road and desert and rocks, they reach another town, or an extension of the town they've driven out of, Ava isn't really sure. She only knows that her stomach is in knots and that Deborah's disdain is palpable, and that she might love her.

"I'm sorry," she mumbles for the sake of saying something, anything. But then the car swerves as Deborah pulls over suddenly, the tires screeching and picking up dirt.

"Is that it?" She asks once the car is parked, unimpressed. "Is that the very important life changing statement you wanted to make?"

"I'm--I'm--"

"What? You're what?"

"I don't know, okay! I don't know what to say, I just know I need to fix it, and I know it's not your responsibility to tell me how to do that, but I can't have you icing me out while I figure it out so I will say anything okay? I will filibuster you until the sun goes down. I feel like I have some advantage there, I mean you did find me interesting before all of this, so--"

"Oh, please," Deborah says in that controlled, low tone that lets Ava know she's really, really pissed and contemplating bloodshed. "Fuck up after fuck up, apology after apology, and you think I find that interesting? So predictable. You are the least interesting person I know."

Another time, in any other context, it could play out like banter, but right now, paired with Deborah's exit before she disappears into the bar they've pulled up to, Ava feels the intended jab right in her heart. Right where it's intended. She lets the pain stretch out along her ribcage. She deserves it.

[mollrat101]

Symbols Analysis: Red Hair

Part of the Ava and Deborah Could Be Endgame series where I talk about the evidence of Ava and Deborah’s romantic love story. This is part of my Symbols series where I talk about the various elements that serve their love story. You can read the whole series here on Tumblr or on A03. 

What’s this? An essay that I didn’t promise before season 2 and yet the muses forced me to spit this baby out? What can I say, I am Botticelli so taken in by the beauty and mystery of red hair that instead of painting I screeched about gay subtext via my keyboard. 

But yes, here’s where I talk about red hair symbolism and I promise to you all I am still working on the symbolism of Deborah’s flannel shirts and the other two last romantic parallels. If how easy it was to write this essay is any indication, hopefully those will come out soon. 

Enjoy! 

-----------------------------------------------

Because red hair is the rarest hair color in the world (1-2% of the world population), red hair can be quite powerful symbols in art and media. 

Artists have used red hair for centuries in their works to “suggest promiscuity, sensuality, deviousness, and—above all—otherness”. 

Cultural attitudes towards red hair throughout history have been, to put it mildly, mixed. 

“Throughout history, redheads have been feared and revered, loathed and adored, degraded and exalted. No other single human trait has provoked such a dichotomy of emotions in such a large number of fellow humans. It is as boiling is to freezing or despair is to hope. It is as hate is to love.” 

Redheads have been associated with witchcraft, sorcery and vampires which lead to a lot of persecution. Plus, there is some mix of other prejudices such as anti-Irish sentiment and anti-Semitism as red hair can be found in Ashkenazi Jewish populations (of which I believe Hannah is a part of). 

But on the other hand there’s also a long history of cultural attitudes where red hair is depicted as beautiful and erotic, as exemplified by the famous Birth of Venus by Botticelli where the goddess of love and beauty is depicted with red hair. 

“This business of being attracted to the color red is very hardwired into us,” Harvey said. Early humans developed the ability to differentiate between reds, greens, and blues as an evolutionary mechanism to help them (among other things) better forage for ripe, brightly colored fruits in overwhelmingly green forests. “And that’s even before all of the associations with fire, and warmth, and sun, and blood,” Harvey continued. Red is thus a highly visceral color associated with survival, sex, and strong emotion.

On its own Ava having red hair doesn’t have to be significant, but there are 4 key instances in the first season that suggest red hair is significant to the love story between Deborah and Ava. 

While the red hair symbolism is more relevant to Deborah’s desires, let’s talk briefly about the symbolism of red hair means for Ava herself. 

Ava, Red Hair and Differentness

Ava is a complex character and so in many ways she both lives up to and subverts stereotypes of a red-haired character. 

She can be temperamental, passionate, impulsive and a bit wild. Red hair tends to be associated with fire which I’ve mentioned before I see Ava as strongly connected to that element. 

The deviousness, while not true of Ava’s character as a whole as she’s not good at lying, is relevant considering the betrayal of Ava sending that email about Deborah. But that has less to do with following stereotypes so much as demonstrating that Ava is a human who is capable of both good and bad actions. 

Most redheads are portrayed as either nerdy (mostly men) or hypersexual (mostly women). Ava is both and neither at the same time, subverting the stereotype. She’s not exoticized or hypersexualized. She is a very sexually active and open person, yes, but it never feels fetishistic or like we are meant to view her as a sexual object. Ava’s sexuality exists as one important part of her, but certainly not her only or even her most important trait. Ava is portrayed as pretty uncool, which she admits herself. She’s socially awkward and a little inept, unfashionable and socially isolated. But she’s not nerdy in a traditional sense either. She’s not portrayed as academically gifted, in fact she drops out of college, but she is certainly intelligent. She doesn’t have stereotypical nerdy passions as she’s a comedy writer and she likes to use drugs and party. 

As I’ve said before, red hair historically has been associated with witchcraft and sorcery. While there’s no magic portrayed in the show, I have compared Ava to an angel before and that Ava does seem to have magically shown up in Deborah’s life just when she needed her. Ava is also incredibly intuitive and perceptive, which while not magical is certainly deemed a type of feminine knowledge similar to witchcraft. Also, a couple of times we see Ava somewhat predicting events such as Ruby’s breakup with Kelly and even her father’s death. Not a significant correlation, but one that I still thought was interesting. 

Ava can also be associated with some of red hair’s positive connotations like passion, fierceness, courage, determination, independence, love, sensuality, and vivaciousness. “Natural red hair is perceived as striking, unusual, and uncommon.” While that idea could be viewed negatively, it also seems to fit Ava in a nutshell. She is the different element coming into Deborah’s life and it’s hard not to be charmed by her (as Deborah is).  

I’m not sure if this is intentional, but one comparison you could make in terms of red-haired funny women is, of course, the most iconic of them all: Lucille Ball. 

Deborah is more of an analogy for Ball than Ava seeing as how she was a classic TV actress who created and starred in a sitcom with her husband. If you want more information about that comparison I’d recommend checking out @jj-lockd​’s video series about Frank and Deborah and Lucy and Desi over on Tik Tok (1, 2, 3). But nevertheless, the red hair certainly gives at least a brief comparison to Ava. 

One of the more significant negative associations Ava’s red hair could symbolize is further emphasizing how socially isolated Ava feels. 

“The popular stereotypes negatively affect the lives of people with red hair. They often have low self-esteem, experience insecurity, and feel a profound sense of being not only different from other people but also inferior. As implied by the phrase “red-headed stepchild,” people with red hair often feel neglected, mistreated, or unwanted.” 

Ava doesn’t feel like she belongs much anywhere: not in Waltham, not in Los Angeles and (as of right now) not in Las Vegas. While her hair is not attributed as the cause of this, it’s still a common trope in stories to have the red-haired person feel out of place. 

In modern times there has been a movement to push back against red-haired children being bullied by their peers. It’s not clear that Ava was bullied, but she does say she was “uncool” and clearly friendless in school. 

We also just see how desperately Ava wishes someone to take her pain seriously and seems to get rebuffed at every turn, most notably by Kayla and Jimmy. With her bad tweet, Ava gets orchestrated by her professional circle. In episode 3, we also learn that she was dumped by her ex-girlfriend Ruby three months ago. When we meet her mother, Nina, we also see how much her mother dismisses her and her ambitions. The one exception in terms of support is her father who seems quite proud of her, but unfortunately he passes away leaving her without that. I partially read Ava’s entitlement as stemming from her desperate desire to fill the void left behind by anyone really believing in her and her dreams. If no one was going to believe in her, she was going to believe in herself the logic goes. 

It’s a basic human need to be loved and appreciated and this is exactly what Deborah offers for Ava. Deborah doesn’t needlessly flatter her (like the British writers do) and she holds her accountable for her bad behavior, but she also listens to her and slowly starts to see and value Ava’s unique perspective and her gifts and show as much belief in her talent as Ava has for her. 

One part I see of Ava’s arc is to let go of this desire to be “cool” and to instead follow her genuine desires and values regardless of whether or not it receives external validation. For her to value herself and what she can uniquely contribute and to not see her differentness as negative which could all be encapsulated in her red hair. 

And part of why she can do that is because she’s received the love and acceptance she’s been looking for from Deborah. 

Many people don’t like red hair and will harshly judge those who have it, but it’s important for her to find someone who loves and admires this trait of hers. Maybe the same person who also seems to admire other “strange” parts of her appearance (*cough* hands *cough*). 

Which speaking of…

Deborah’s Desires

Despite Ava being the character with red hair, the symbolism of red hair shows up mostly prominently around Deborah. 

Earlier when I referenced the historical mixed cultural feelings of love and hate of red hair, of attraction and repulsion also perfectly encapsulates Deborah’s feelings towards Ava. Throughout much of season 1, Deborah is torn between letting Ava get closer and pushing her away. In one instance she will be turned off by some of Ava’s more abrasive sides but then Ava will surprise her in another, endearing Ava to her. 

When we meet Deborah she seems to be trapped in a life that doesn’t seem to quite make sense to her anymore, unable to figure out how to move out of the rut she’s found herself in. She seems to be sleepwalking through her life. 

Ava crashes into Deborah’s life and brings back classic things associated with fire and the color red: passion, creativity, determination, sensuality, courage, love and vitality. 

But as Ava is paralleled with Frank, we also see that Ava has the potential to also destroy Deborah. To be a wildfire due to her self-destructive habits that could burn Deborah’s life down. She won’t as the point is that Ava will right the wrongs committed by Frank, but the association with red and fire suggests it is possible though. After all, the most powerful and strongest loves need to exist with the possibility of great pain. Deborah will never find a perfect partner who will never hurt her, but needs to find a person who would make the possibility of pain worth it. To realize that the price you pay for walling yourself off from hurt is also to keep yourself from joy and love. 

There are 4 key instances of red hair in Deborah’s story that both reflect Deborah’s hidden desires both romantic and sexual, her desire for love and freedom but also how she can combine those desires with a real lasting love and a feeling of home. 

We’re going to go in chronological order. 

Josefina’s Introduction to Ava

Before Deborah even lays eyes on Ava, Josefina lets Deborah know she has a visitor. 

“Deborah, a girl is here from Jimmy, a redhead.” 

Now this is the only time I can recall where Ava’s red hair is actually mentioned by anyone. Like a lot of people with red hair, that’s often the first thing people notice about them so it makes sense that to make it clear who she’s talking about, Josefina mentions her hair. 

Josefina mentions the redhead part once she sees Deborah’s look of confusion, possibly thinking she needs to jog Deborah’s memory. Of course, she doesn’t know Deborah isn’t aware Jimmy sent Ava against her wishes yet. 

Okay great, so what? 

Well, this makes me think of another time in which Josefina says something that seems to reflect more on Deborah than what Josefina actually means. 

Josefina talking about her niece: “She has plans with her roommate. I don’t think it’s her roommate. I think it’s a girlfriend, but--”

I’ve mentioned before on my Tumblr how this is an interesting thing for Josefina to say in this moment because Ava has been Deborah’s roommate for the past 2 weeks. This conversation holds no relevance later, so you have to wonder why the writers kept this bit in unless the writers are trying to tell us something. Like that there is a possibility that Deborah and Ava being roommates and getting closer isn’t just platonic, there’s a potential for romance there. 

So back to the redhead comment. Is Josefina trying to suggest anything here? Like “hey, Deborah, there’s a red-haired girl here. I know how you like those, so brace yourself.” I mean I would love that, but I’m not sure it’s super conscious on Josefina’s part. 

Consider the fact that Josefina is Deboah’s house manager which means Josefina knows intimately every part of Deborah’s house which, as talked about by many people before in the fandom including myself, gives you a deep insight into Deborah’s unguarded self. 

Which means that Josefina has seen the Plum Brandy painting that sits in between Deborah’s bathroom and bedroom. A painting of a young red-haired woman. A painting of a person that Deborah keeps privately in her bedroom and not advertising to the world. A figure Deborah can see as she goes to sleep. 

Let’s talk about her next. 

The Plum Brandy painting

This painting is the inspiration for this essay. If you haven’t yet, please go read @lush-retina​’s beautiful analysis about this painting. 

Edouard Manet - Plum Brandy - 1877

“Plum Brandy is an image Deborah has woken up to for possibly many years, it is an image she walks towards every single morning. It is an image of Ava painted long ago on canvas, and on Deborah's inner eye.

Whether or not she fully grasps the profundity of it, Ava is depicted as an icon of hope, creativity, and intimacy in Deborah's life. Just as Ellen Andrée [the model] was a muse to Manet and many others.” 

Plum Brandy follows in the tradition of artists finding inspiration and beauty in women with red hair. As her analysis talks about, the painting can represent many of the associations of red hair with passion, creativity, inspiration and beauty. 

While the painting itself doesn’t sexualize the red haired woman (although there have been some interpretations), one could interpret her place in Deborah’s house to have sexual connotations as she lives in between Deborah’s bedroom and bathroom. Two places associated with vulnerability, nakedness and sometimes sexual intimacy. Places that many of us might share with only our lovers.

The Plum Brandy girl is seen as an object of beauty and comfort to Deborah as she is the first thing she sees when she wakes up and the last thing she sees before she goes to sleep, almost like a lover. She gently watches over Deborah. Considering she is buried deep in Deborah’s house where few will get to see her suggests she has a private meaning to Deborah, not one which Deborah would like to advertise to the rest of the world. 

As lush-retina nicely put it, if Deborah's house (according to the set designer) is symbolic of Deborah herself like a rose (there’s layers)-a red rose, if you will, furthering the romantic connotations- then that location in her house could be considered the pistil of the rose, the female reproductive part of the flower. And again the fact that it’s associated with the painting of a woman heavily suggests Deborah’s queer sexual desires and that Ava is Deborah’s romantic and sexual fantasy come to life. 

The real-life doppelganger of the Plum Brandy girl, Deborah has barred from entering her bedroom. A possible reading could be that Deborah isn’t quite ready for her private fantasy and the reality of getting what she secretly desires to collide quite yet. The possibility of humiliation, pain and confronting her long-repressed desires is too much for her to handle at this moment. For now, Deborah is comfortable with her painted doppelganger and letting her voice in via calling her, but likely soon she will crave more closeness and letting Ava cross more intimate boundaries. 

To sum up: the Plum Brandy girl represents Deborah’s romantic and sexual desires that she hides deep within her heart. Her red hair is meant to represent what Deborah most wants in her life: passion, creativity, love, courage and warmth, like a nice fire or the warmth of the sun. Ava is the person who brings all of this into her life and the painting represents how long Deborah has been yearning for Ava to find her. 

In the Waves painting

While having the time of her life blackmailing Marty, Deborah lays down in a bed that features a painting of a naked red-haired woman on it. 

This painting is called In the Waves. It was created by Paul Gauguin. 

From what I can gather from interpretations I’ve watched, the painting is meant to represent a desire to leave civilization in order to enter a more primitive, instinctual existence. The woman is throwing herself into the sea and therefore embracing nature instead of societal expectations. 

The painting can be interpreted in a couple of different ways. She could be throwing herself into the sea in despair and muffling her mouth in anguish. That’s a very sad interpretation considering there’s a connection between Ava and death and suicide. 

But the painting is placed in a bedroom, so let’s just assume there’s a sexier interpretation of it. 

Ivy, Ava’s parallel, is the one who bought this painting and put it in this bedroom. This is likely a spare bedroom considering how minimally it’s decorated, so in a way distancing from Marty’s bedroom and Deborah being associated with Marty’s private space in this moment. Even then, still bedrooms are associated with intimate and vulnerable acts like sleeping and sex. You could interpret the woman in the painting muffling her mouth as trying to stifle her cries of pleasure. 

Water is a widely used symbol for the subconscious which houses our deepest desires. Deborah being near the painting symbolizes Deb choosing to forget societal expectations and enter into an existence where she follows her natural desires. Following her very gay desires with Ava. 

However, one problem is that we later learn at the end of the episode that Ava can’t swim. One way to read this is that Ava can’t survive for long just being a desire in Deborah’s subconscious mind. She has to bring her to the surface in order for any of this to be realized.

In this scene, Deborah is getting her revenge on Marty screwing her out of her dates. She’s hitting him hard in a couple of ways and one way that’s more speculation based on this painting. 

She’s taking advantage of his young and naive partner by persuading her to go against Marty’s wishes and show her the house. In a way, this is payback for Marty constantly dismissing her as a potential partner he’ll show off in public because of her age. She takes advantage of Ivy’s naivety, desire for recognition, her and Marty’s weak bond and being easily impressionable. But more importantly, Deborah uses this to potentially screw over Marty financially (what he cares about most, let’s be real) by blackmailing him about his alimony payments. 

But of course, we know none of these schemes end up making a lasting impression on Marty. In their toxic relationship of one upping each other, Marty more or less comes out unscathed. Deborah is the one who suffers the most. She gets humiliated, harassed, assaulted, her career taken out of her control, belittled and left alone as Marty has no trouble finding another partner while Deborah struggles to find romantic and sexual fulfillment. 

But there is one potential way Deborah can finally break free of this toxic dynamic and get her revenge in the best possible way for her. 

The sweetest revenge Deborah could ever get on Marty is to enter into a happy romantic relationship with Ava. One where, unlike with him, she is supported and loved unconditionally, and she is sexually satisfied. And whether or not he’s pissed about it hardly matters, as Deborah is too happy to care. 

So in this scene Deborah uses the parallel!Ava (Ivy) to take pictures of her enjoying being in bed with painted!Ava and that’s just absolutely delightful. It’s as if Deb is preemptively rubbing it in Marty’s face and I believe we should support that journey for her. 

Marty is the kind of man Deborah thinks she should be with. If the painting is talking about bucking societal expectations, then Marty represents the toxic heteronormativity that has made Deborah so miserable. 

Ava represents freedom from those expectations. She represents Deborah following what she truly wants both as an artist and in her personal life. Following the idea of what red hair represents, Deborah is embracing more wildness, embracing differentness, and diving into a love so powerful and passionate it’s like a wave. 

Aidan

Wait, wouldn’t this say more about DJ because he is her partner? 

Well, remember that everything in this show is about Ava and Deborah (at least to some extent) so even this really says more about Deborah. 

First of all, I see DJ and Aidan as actually a romantic parallel to Deborah and Ava. Same first initials (DJ’s full name is even Deborah Junior) and same hair colors. 

But the other thing I find interesting is the idea that DJ and Deborah aren’t nearly as different as they think they are and how DJ’s choice of partner of Aidan could reflect that. 

Despite seeming to struggle to understand each other, DJ and Deborah actually have a quite a lot in common. They’re both creative, passionate, aggressive, fierce, they share a love of the dramatic and being the center of attention, and despite what Deborah says they share some taste in style (e.g. DJ desiring Deborah’s tennis bracelet). 

They also, I would argue, have a similar taste in the type of partner they would like. 

Aidan and Ava are both comfortable with letting their partners be more of the center of attention and they are unconditionally loving and supportive. 

And, of course, they both have red hair. Which I feel like isn’t an accident considering they are the only two red-haired people in the cast. 

We don’t know a ton about Aidan but a few things we do know is how much he means to DJ (“Ava, this is the love of my life”), how much he loves DJ, we know he’s a boxer so association with blood and vitality and we know has some history of not taking care of himself and/or self-destructive habits, similar to Ava and like a fire burning out of control (“Before you, I didn’t care what happened to me in the cage. But now, I gotta be careful. Because I can’t risk anything that would ruin the life we’re gonna build together.”). 

We don’t know if DJ has always had a thing for red-haired men, but let’s just imagine that’s true. 

I have no idea whether sexual attraction is genetic or not. Could relatives find the same traits in partners attractive? Honestly, I don’t know, I’m not a scientist. But luckily, this isn’t about science but a story and stories can create these parallels to signal something to the audience. 

If we take it true that the Plum Brandy girl represents Deborah’s romantic and sexual fantasy, then Deborah shares DJ’s love of red hair except for the opposite gender and she desires the same person who will be comforting, reliable and the love of her life in the same way Aidan is for DJ. 

Conclusion

While looking at all of these instances of red hair, overwhelmingly the evidence is about how Deborah doesn’t just see Ava as inspirational and a source of courage for her, but also that she is an object of beauty and desire for her. 

While red hair can symbolize how Ava might feel othered, same with how Deborah feels about Ava’s hands, what makes Ava different is desirable to Deborah. Not only does she accept it, but she is turned on by it. 

Deborah makes fun of many parts of Ava’s body, but all the parts she makes fun of are also traits that people tend to list as what they find most attractive: hands, lips, legs, breasts and, of course, hair. And you’ll notice that Deborah only makes fun of the cut of her hair, not the color of it. The Plum Brandy reveals that Deborah loves red hair. 

I feel just like how cultural attitudes reveal both adulation and repulsion for red hair, Deborah struggles with fighting between her private desires for a romantic and sexual relationship with a woman and the social stigma she’ll face to those who are disgusted by that choice and dislike it for being outside of what they consider normal. 

(Disclaimer: Just want to be clear here I’m not saying being discriminated based on red hair is the same thing as being discriminated for being queer. I’m just making an analogy.)

But for both of their characters, part of their story is about embracing their desires and values even if they aren’t understood, as it’s enough that they accept, love and see each other. 

What I hope for Deborah, as this symbol is most attached to her, is that she embraces its call for passion, love, courage, non-conformity and vitality and to let her desire and love for that finally be allowed into the light.

[blackacre13]

Okay but now you have to do the only one bed fic I can’t stop picturing how perfect it would be 😂🤩

“Danny,” Debbie hissed, tugging at the older Ocean’s jacket as he tried to move past her down the hallway, his mouth full of eggs, the plate in his hands overflowing from the breakfast buffet. “That’s disgusting by the way.”

“It’s free,” he sighed, trying to feed his sister a piece of bacon as she swatted it away.

“You’re shitting me with this, right?” Debbie whispered, glancing around the hallway.

“The buffet?” He laughed. “Nah, Debs. It’s free. I mean we paid for the rooms, but—“

“Not the stupid casino buffet you dipshit,” the brunette glowered. “This,” she seethed, smacking her key card into the palm of his hand, pressing it deep into his skin before he protested, trying to shove her off.

“Well, I’m sorry it’s not the Bellagio, but you know we can’t run and stay in the same place.”

“I’m not stupid, Danny.”

“Well—“

“Danny, I’m talking about the crap in my room. There’s a leather jacket on my bed and the mini bar has been cleaned out already. And there’s like…I don’t know, combat boots on the floor,” she fumed.

“That’s probably because of Lou,” Danny shrugged, going back to eating the bacon Debbie had neglected to take. “You’re bunking together. Only two ladies running the job. Deal with it. You’ve got a roomie.”

“Seriously?” Debbie screeched, trying to pinch his ear as he let out a yelp.

“Jesus, Debs. What?”

“There’s only one bed, Danny!”

“Shit, really?” He laughed, shoving another forkful of eggs into his mouth as Debbie stared at him incredulously, tapping her foot. “Supposed to be a double, but whatever. We can’t swap rooms and call attention to the team. You know that.”

“Then you switch with me,” Debbie declared, sticking her hands on her hips as she stood in his way. “Your messenger boy fucked up the rooms. So he can reap the rewards.”

“I’m not sleeping with Rusty,” Danny growled.

“Right,” Debbie snorted. “I’m sure you aren’t. But even so, what’s the big deal? You two can spoon for a night. Test out the waters.”

“Why don’t you be a spoon, Debbie?” Danny yelled.

“Real mature,” Debbie nodded, shaking her head. “Yelling about cutlery totally won’t call any attention to us at all.”

“So it’s settled,” Danny smirked, reaching around her to press the elevator button. “For the sake of the team then, Debs. Be the little spoon, Deborah. I’m sure Miller will take good care of you,” he winked.

“She can sleep on a chaise lounge beside the pool for all I care,” Debbie grumbled, shoving him into the elevator. “Go on. Enjoy your two beds that I’m sure will go untouched. Don’t forget to say hello to Rusty for me before you cozy up together and—“

“Debbie, I swear—“

“I can’t hear you,” Debbie called, stomping down the hallway. “I have some cakey boots to clap out on the patio so there isn’t dirt all over my room.”

“God forbid anything get in the way of one of your plans,” Danny teased as the elevator doors shut with a ding, Debbie letting out a growl of frustration before sucking in a deep breath and trying the key card. The light turned green, but she couldn’t open the door, cursing as she tried to fiddle with the handle until she was smacking at the door, her face turning red as she cursed louder.

“I mean I’ve had plenty of women on their knees for me, but this is a whole new level of desperate,” a voice chuckled, as a high-heeled leather boot appeared in the crack between the door and the frame, long ivory fingers sliding down the side as the deadbolt chain moved to the side and fell, the door swinging open as Debbie practically fell into the blonde as she stumbled inside, clearing her throat and trying to straighten out her dress as the woman looked at her wise raised eyebrows and an amused smirk.

“Classy,” Debbie muttered. “I’m—“

“Deborah Ocean,” the blonde nodded, looking her up and down, in no way trying to hide the way she was examining her, giving Debbie silent permission to do the same, noting the tight leather pants and open denim button-down haphazardly thrown over a…was that a corset? Who the hell did this woman think she was?

“Debbie,” the brunette sighed, offering out her hand. “You must be Lou.”

“I thought I heard some commotion down the hallway,” Lou grinned, blowing a bubble and letting it pop, Debbie’s eyes darting around as they tried to follow the popped bubble back inside Lou’s lips, momentarily distracted until she snapped to, Lou looking at her with a wicked grin.

“Yeah,” Debbie blushed, looking down. “I—uh, I thought we should’ve each had our own room. Was trying to mull it over with Danny.”

“The other guys are two to a room,” Lou shrugged, her eyes flashing, practically challenging Debbie like she was daring her to spill her darkest secrets. Usually, this would have Debbie rolling her eyes, but now, she was actually considering it.

“Right, but I think there’s…”

“More than one bed?” Lou grinned, snapping her gum again as her eyes twinkled.

[i-mybrunettelady]

How about a lil 23 from the kiss prompt list :3c

Hey, hey! Sorry for the late reply, I had a really tough time making this not either terribly and painfully angsty or weird angsty. I think this is an acceptable level of angst.. Slight spoiler for HoT.

-- prompt: life-or-death kisses

--- Maguuma, 1328 AE

When Deborah hears someone yell for a medic and when a green body vaguely enters her line of sight, she smiles. They found the Marshal!

But when it becomes clearer, the smile drops. There’s no way in Grenth’s watery halls that he’s alive, with a hole ripped through his body like that, with Caladbolg dripping with sap against Rytlock’s fur.

But then her heart sinks to her heels and dies there. Nyra looks so small in Braham’s big arms, head tilted back, arm hanging, sap dripping from her fingers. The cut on her back is so deep she might as well have died while they came down here.

“Grenth have mercy on us,” she murmurs, paling. Her hands shake so much she lets her sword drop to the ground. Warmaster Bjornsdottir stares, Boy screeches.

“Warmaster, tell me what I’m seeing is not real. Tell me that’s not my sister, please.” Deborah whispers. Tears gather in her eyes. Her heart keeps skipping beats so much she thinks she’ll just drop down.

“I.. I can’t,” the warmaster stammers out. “Ainsaph, Bear help me, I can’t. That’s the Commander alright.”

“Dwayna, please,” Deborah stutters, feeling tears on her tongue. “Dwayna, please, don’t let her die. Dwayna, Melandru, whoever is listening, please.” Before she knows it, she’s pushing people on her way to get to Nyra, uncaring who she pushes aside. Bjornsdottir runs after her, but Deborah just runs faster.

“ALYSANNYRA, DON’T YOU DARE DIE! DON’T DIE ON ME!” she shouts desperately, looking up at Braham. “You’re a guardian too, do something! Please!”

“Ainsaph, get a hold of yourself!” Bjornsdottir yells, pushing her away to medics can pass. Deborah is shaking, staring up, begging repeatedly, but the warmaster’s arms are relentless. “Listen, I’d lose my shit too if my sister was in danger, but you have to calm down! Eirsson, use your magic!”

“I can’t heal!” Braham shouts. A medic signals for him to put Nyra down and Deborah is there in moments, moving hair from Nyra’s head, and she’s so pale, so pale, so motionless, but a little breath is there, Dwayna’s mercy, breath is there, and Deborah is sobbing out in both desperation and relief.

“Please, Nyra,” she begs, “please, please. Don’t die on me.” She presses urgent kisses to the side of her sister’s head, stopping only to help remove the broken armor to let healing magic in. “I can’t lose you too. Please. Dwayna, please.”

“Ainsaph,” warmaster grits out and Deborah looks up to see her aiming magic to the gaping wound, “we’ll have to move her soon! We can’t do much here!”

“Promise me she’ll live,” Deborah shouts, staring at Nyra’s face. “Promise me. Promise me!”

“I can’t promise you if you don’t let us work!” Bjornsdottir cuts her off and Deborah moves her hands from Nyra’s body. “Medics, move out! We can’t lose the Commander!”

Somewhere beside her, a sylvari shouts. She recognises a mindless threat that he’ll make someone ashes between the screaming, but it becomes background noise as she watches them move Nyra to the nearest free tent. Prayers leave her lips before she registers she’s saying them, kneeling on the ground.

Trahearne is dead. She suddenly remembers the sap on Nyra’s fingers. “Six, have mercy,” she says breathlessly. “Not her too. She’ll survive the aftermath if she survives this.”

Deborah will make sure she does. If nothing else, she’ll do that. But now she has to keep praying Nyra makes it through this.

[catalinaroleplay]

Gender & Pronouns: Cis woman, she/her

Date of Birth: April 20th, 1984 (36)

Place of Birth: Rochester, NY

Neighborhood: Avalon

Length of Residency: Since March 2020

Occupation: Architect and Owner of Danziger Arch

Face Claim: Deborah Ann Woll

BIOGRAPHY

TRIGGERS: Divorce.

Rachel Danziger was born and raised in Rochester, NY to a civil engineer father, David,  and a middle school teacher mother, Elizabeth.  Rachel was the oldest of two girls, born in quick succession, who couldn’t have been more different if they tried.  They were close, though, both in age and relationship.  The family was always firmly middle class, never more privileged than minding their nickels and dimes, but bolstered by their Jewish faith in a largely Jewish community, they never felt wanting.  

Always a hard worker, and blessed with a calculating mind, Rachel sailed through school and entered Parsons with enough IB credit to be considered a sophomore in college and almost enough scholarships to pay her way.  Thanks to her father’s efforts to teach her about his job, and her own strengths in math, she always knew she wanted to study architecture.  She loved the rules, and the challenge of subverting those for artistic purposes while still needing something that both looked beautiful and was functional. It was, she felt, a microcosm of her own personality on display.  It clicked immediately as a passion for her and she never looked back.

Nothing shook her confidence, or increased her appreciation of beautiful things like her college friend, Rory.  While they were pressed together quite often for school projects, the future architects and the future interior designers, she almost immediately had a more personal interest in him.  The acquaintance grew into friendship, which turned romantic, and grew into a marriage.  Both beautiful and functional, at least to Rachel. Her beloved younger sister, at that point, was off the rails and living wildly in Europe, and it was a source of constant drama and worry.  Rachel loved the stability Rory provided to the point she wasn’t even shaken when they made a baby well ahead of schedule, just before she graduated with her master’s degree.  Finishing an internship and working under her bachelor’s degree while battling through a challenging pregnancy wasn’t easy, but she made it, and her reward was the love of her life, their son, Adam.

Her comfort zone was severely tested when their little family relocated to Los Angeles at Rory’s behest. It was easier to get established in California, rather than New York City.  However, that didn’t translate to success and the struggle was very real for Rachel.  Work stress, parenting without any balance, and family needs as her parents’ health failed on the other side of the country, plus her sister’s antics crushing them— it all added up to make Rachel not a good partner or person.  Practical to a fault, she refused to be the weak link or to be vulnerable, and this distance would ultimately result in the unraveling of her marriage.  Her first, real bout of doubting herself resulted in a very rocky transitioning to co-parenting through a divorce. Rory’s descent into addiction, combined with her own unwillingness to trust and inability to let someone else do something, cost her dearly.  Her focus shifted to Adam, rather than dealing with her own heavy baggage, and it was a long time before she managed anything more than the basics of existence.  

Finally, years later, two men coaxed her out of her emotional hibernation.  Well, three if one were to count the father she leaned on cross-country.  Her mother had passed on at that point, so they needed one another.  Adam was growing into a great guy, and was easily her favorite person to be around.  The third source of support was an unexpected, older man.  Their meet-cute was nauseating and she was reluctant to get caught up again.  Adam’s little heart was still bruised from the parenting back and forth of a difficult and complicated divorce, and Rory’s personal struggles and shortcomings.  But slowly, over the course of a year, he worked his way into her stubborn heart.  They had a great relationship and he actually built one with Adam, too.  Their relationship came screeching to a halt when life pulled him away, a job offer he couldn’t refuse in Toronto combining in epically terrible timing with Rory’s rehab and recovery.  While Rachel had her reservations and hesitations about Rory, she couldn’t bear to be the person who separated Adam from a father who was finally trying so hard to be what he deserved.  She turned down a proposal, and in an uncharacteristic leap of faith, moved Adam to Catalina to be closer to Rory as soon as she could arrange it.

Things in Catalina haven’t been, and still aren’t easy, by any means.  She’s kept the full depth of reasons she’s there to herself, and it’s hard to avoid being bitter about when she’s become so isolated.  Work is flourishing, though, so she can throw herself into it.  Adam is doing well and, while it’s not perfect, his relationship with Rory is improving.  Still, she recognizes she needs something more to be truly happy and settled, she just doesn’t know what that might yet be.

PERSONALITY

Positive: Independent | Practical | Private

Negative: Standoffish | Demanding | Guarded

Rachel Danziger Hirsch is portrayed by M.