#girl i don’t . my 0 note posts about things nobody cares about say so much more .

[francisforever2014]

there’s a phenomenon on here where if u make a silly little text post that took 2 seconds of thought and then send it out into the world and then it gets notes people who see it think that the note count is somehow indicative of how much you care about the subject of the post . when in reality 15 0 note text posts in a row says more about what occupies my mental state than a 10k post ever will

[lifeofclonewars]

Fives and Echo in Clone Cadets

Okay, buckle in if you're gonna read this. I'm an English major and you can tell bc this started out as a quick rant with a few points in my head at midnight and turned into a full analytical essay on the Domino Twins throughout the entirety of Clone Cadets in one sitting plus some next-day editing. What can I say, I analyze everything I watch even when I'm not consciously doing so. Some pictures and links included.

----

I get the whole “Fives and Echo weren't close until after Rishi” thing because of the poetic-ness of the narrative of brothers who aren't close going through trauma and coming out of it stronger and as best friends all that but listen to what I have to say.

We’ll start chronologically: with their final run-through before the finals. As you may know, I made a list (here) of who argues with whom during Clone Cadets. The other three constantly nag Echo about his habit of repeating things. Hevy and Cutup both call Echo, well, Echo but before he accepts it as a name and more as an insult. Cutup’s the first one to do it, literally almost right off the bat. Hevy does it to purposefully pick a fight after the practice test. DB responds to Echo's “stop calling me that” with “stop repeating every order.” 

Fives argues a bit with the rest of Domino when they're all arguing, but he only says one negative thing toward Echo. But there are so many things that make it different from the things aimed at Echo from the rest of the squad.

He tells him “Will you shut up with instructions? You're not in charge.” Domino’s nagging Echo about the repeating, Fives... doesn't quite do that. The narrative makes it look like Fives is also mad about the repeating orders, given both DB and Cutup have at this point. However, what Fives says doesn't make a direct reference to Echo’s habit, at least. He's definitely frustrated here (they all are, they’re failing again), but, at least to me, he's frustrated because Echo's focused more on getting them to follow exact orders instead of moving forward or working together. And yeah, he snaps a bit while reminding Echo he's not squad leader and not focusing on the right thing. But he never mentions the echoing, and, after this one moment, he never makes a negative comment toward Echo again during Clone Cadets. Also, important to note, Echo wasn’t repeating orders or anything when Fives snapped at him, just saying they’re not following orders again (which is different).

So, basically: everyone’s arguing about everything. Everyone argues with Echo about various things. Fives is the only one that doesn’t go and make a comment about Echo’s repeating during it, though.

That signifies something. Fives has got a better understanding or acceptance or trust in Echo than the rest of Domino. He doesn't mock him for what makes him him. He gets why Echo does it, maybe. Even if he doesn't, he knows it helps Echo and that Echo repeating orders is his way of trying to help his brothers. And this comes into play at a point farther along in the episode that we’ll get to soon. 

Next comes the, like, one moment we see the clones have some downtime. It’s when, once again, they start arguing. Despite DB being the one to tell Echo “stop repeating every order” during the run-through, we see them getting along here. We see them chatting with each other and 99 very briefly when Fives' gives his “you never even met a girl” line and Hevy comes barging in. Hevy insults 99, Echo tells the squad to follow orders, an argument starts, yada yada.

Then, Hevy gives his “care to repeat that, Echo?” line, which I mentioned earlier as Hevy doing it to purposefully pick a fight. When they start to fight, we hear the other members of Domino start cheering Hevy on. One says “Come on. Get him, Hevy!” The other says, “Smack that know-it-all.”

Here’s the thing, though. They show a shot of DB, Cutup, and Fives. Cutup can be seen pumping his fist but his accent isn’t heard. There are two voices speaking, but they’re layered on top of each other so it’s hard to tell who’s speaking and how many people are speaking if you aren’t paying attention. Together, this comes out to look like Fives and DB could be the ones talking, and Cutup’s not actually speaking. 

However, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Cutup’s accent drops in and out all throughout Clone Cadets. Especially during impromptu moments. With this, it is also possible to conclude that he is speaking during the fight, just without a different accent, especially since he’s pumping his fist. 

That leaves Fives or Droidbait as the other person speaking. As you can see, both of them seem to be watching. Now, you could argue that Fives is the one who said something. You can argue the DB is the one who said something. Since they’re showing the fight when the lines overlap (the “Get him” one starting about a second earlier), there’s no conclusive evidence for either. For the point of this argument, you can’t argue that it proves Fives and Echo were close, you can’t argue that it proves they weren’t.

Following that comes Colt’s speech before the final. As I’ve noted multiple times, nobody in Domino is happy with Echo the first time he makes a comment.

Going back and watching it happen in time reveals a bit more, though. They’ve all got facial expressions kinda similar to it when it cuts back to them after Colt speaks. Echo says “thinks he means us, boys?” Hevy seems to be the only one truly angry about the comment. The other three seem to be more of “what are you talking about, you know we’re not that great.” Plus, you know, they’re all nervous about their final. Even more so with how they didn’t make it through the day before. (Here’s a link if you wanna see it for yourself. 0:45; it’s all quick reactions, but you can see what I mean)

(Hmm so maybe I was wrong about that screenshot before. Go figure. There’s a reason screenshots aren’t always completely reliable sources for shows, since none of what I just talked about is visible in a standstill moment. This is why I’ve rewatched Clone Cadets 48209832 times. I’m still picking up new things about Domino while doing it.)

When Echo says, “well bravo for Bravo Squad,” some other things happen. Firstly, Echo’s rolling his eyes. He’s either being flippant about Bravo or he’s being self-aware enough to know it’s a bad pun and that his brothers don’t like his comments. But Fives actually looks over, concerned, when he makes the comment.

That definitely counts for something. Especially since the other three don’t look very concerned about how Echo’s feeling with the comments. (Hevy’s definitely not looking over here.) But Fives seems to be wondering how anxious Echo’s feeling or something along those lines and how Echo’s expressing it. Especially since Echo doesn’t purposely pick fights like Hevy. He’s just making comments that happen to aggravate the Squad more than he’s usually trying to use as his way of showing he cares about his brothers and how well they perform.

After that comes their first run of the final. And with it comes a moment I love so much. Echo’s standing at one of the cover blocks when Fives runs up to him. Not only does this happen, but Echo smiles so much at seeing his brother do so.

He’s just! So happy that Fives is there. I love that. Anyway, Fives tells him, “you flank right, I’ll flank left.” Then comes Echo’s lil pun moment. Fives rolls his eyes, but he looks more fond but exasperated than truly annoyed. 

Right after that, Fives runs off again. Which means he took Echo’s comment about staying on the same side and went with it, even though that wasn’t his initial plan. He’s trusting in Echo’s combat planning there. After DB gets shot down, we can actually see this happen as they meet Hevy at another one of the blocks. They come from the same side, Fives, then Echo. So, it worked out successfully.

When Colt tells them they failed not too long after that, another thing happens! Fives and Echo share a look. They didn’t have to — Hevy was behind Fives and Cutup was in front of Echo. They could’ve shared a look with them. But they didn’t. It’s definitely an “oh crap” kind of look they share with each other. Something that’s usually shared with those your closer to in situations like that, ya know?

“But wait!” you might say. “These are mostly examples of Fives being a good brother than of them being close.” Well, that’s where Echo and Fives talking to Shaak Ti about transferring squads comes into play! Of course, since I’m going chronologically, it’s not the immediate next point on this, but it happens during this conversation.

The two of them talking to her is a pretty big deal, especially since constantly up to that point we see Echo not getting along with the squad. He definitely wouldn't do it with Hevy, who he fights with most. Cutup and Echo don't fight as much as Echo and Hevy but we don't see them actually talk to each other besides whenever they do the sim, right before the second final, and Rishi. And Rishi is Hevy and Cutup making fun of Echo a bit. (Main difference then is that they do understand each other better to some degree and it doesn't escalate like it once might've.) DB, I touched on some points earlier. 

But there’s a reason it’s Echo and Fives here, and it’s more than just Fives fighting with him less.

When they talk to Shaak Ti Fives trusts Echo to do the talking for them (he only speaks up twice with small comments then). While it’s a short conversation, most of the talking is done by Echo. The duo most likely had a conversation beforehand about what they were asking and why. While we don’t know who asked the other if they wanted to do it, they’re both there, and Fives trusted Echo and his memory and ability to repeat the points they wanted to make. It's the exact opposite of what the squad has been doing. Instead of mocking the repetition, he gives Echo a chance to do it without judgment and as a positive thing.

Echo also goes on to do some things that show it’s not just Fives being a good brother, it goes both ways with them. 

There are only two instances where we see Echo touch someone. One is when he fights with Hevy (and Hevy starts it). The other instance is with Fives, during this talk. The two of them had been standing at parade rest and Echo — who's whole thing as a cadet is following orders — breaks it to set a comforting hand on Fives' shoulder! 

He's the one to do it! Echo’s the one that takes the opportunity to comfort Fives and Fives doesn’t shy away from it. And not only did he recognize what Fives was feeling, but he also acted on it. They know each other well enough at this point to understand each other’s emotions and how to react to them accordingly.

And it's not like the other clones don't nudge and pat each other on the back and whatnot. Hevy pats 99 on the head (condescendingly smh Hevy you know better but whatever that's not the point).Both Fives and DB nudge Cutup for a comment he makes.

Echo just... doesn't do it during Clone Cadets. (I will point out he gives 99 a light excited punch on the shoulder during Arc Troopers — but that's after he's been with Torrent and trusts 99 even more than he did on Kamino for helping Hevy out) But he does voluntarily set a hand on Fives' shoulder. He’s comfortable enough with Fives to do it when we don’t see him do it with the rest of Domino or even 99.

Also, we all know Fives smacks some of his brothers, we've all seen that post by now. But he never does it with Echo. Instead, he lets Echo do what he's comfortable with. I just think that's important to note.

There’re also multiple times in this scene where they share looks while they’re speaking or when Shaak Ti says something. If you watch Arc Troopers or the first half of the Citadel Arc, even some parts of Rookies, Fives and Echo have a lot of nonverbal communication. This is just planting the seeds for that.

This scene can also be used for some “Fives and Echo aren’t that close” arguments, especially if you go with the “they are literal twins” hc. The whole “they wanted to stick together because they were twins, not necessarily because they got along better” argument. There are some other points here, like the fact that Fives did say something rude to Echo, or that Fives was talking to Cutup in their downtime and Echo with DB.

The thing is, with these things I've talked about, it shows that they were close on Kamino, regardless of that hc. I highly doubt LF and Filoni actually write them as twins (they probably would've mentioned it by now if they were). So while I personally like to take some of these things as them being twins, mostly they just show that either way, they were close. And the points Echo makes while asking Shaak Ti come into play as well.

Echo states, “Which is why Fives and I are looking out for each other,” when told that the clones, like the Jedi, have individuals and the group be one and the same. He makes it a clear point that they’re looking out for each other, that they’re trying to make the decision they think is best for the other. That’s! A big deal and sign that they’re close, if you ask me. 

Right at the end of the scene, Fives once again shows his trust in Echo. After hearing that they’ve been given another shot at the final, he looks skeptical. What does he do right after? Look at Echo. He didn’t need to, he could’ve stared at the wall, ground, given Shaak’s back a funny look. But he looks to his brother for comfort again. And we see Echo look back at him, doing so, right as it transitions to Cutup’s scene.

(“Wow this is really long, you must be obsessed with Domino Squad,” you might also say. That would be correct lol. We’re almost done, though.)

The next time we see either of them is when they think Hevy hasn’t shown up but then does. This is a nice little moment. Domino must’ve had a conversation or something because Cutup, DB, Fives, and Echo seem to be more at ease beside the whole missing Hevy thing. I should write that conversation someday. Echo even repeats what Fives said and nobody makes a comment about it.

Hevy eventually surprises everyone with his dramatic entrance and marches through their bench area to head to the simulation room. After that, the three of them turn and look at Echo, who shrugs. Not really a moment between Echo and Fives and more about the whole squad, but it’s there. Domino’s getting along better as a whole, matching more of what the dynamic between those two has been the entire time. 

And finally, the second final. Like how the practice test is slightly focused on Echo’s comments and the reactions to it, this one’s focused on Hevy being the natural leader he is. Also, just, Domino Working Together.

When they take cover in the little slit thingies, Fives and Echo take cover in the same one. Part of it was probably which one was closest. Part of it definitely was production trying to make it easier to fit more of them in the same frame there. But also, it says something about how they trust and understand each other on the battlefield. Partially from growing up training together, partially they've got the trust and understanding the whole squad is just finally starting to get within the rest of their dynamics. 

The only scene in this whole episode I don’t know who’s who is during the medal scene. If we base it on where Hevy stands, Echo and Cutup are the ones to talk. However, the second clone doesn’t have Cutup’s accent and it’s not one of those situations that Cutup tends to drop his accent. So I’m not really sure, other than that Domino is very clearly all proud of each other. I’m not really sure why I wrote this paragraph then… aNyWaY, that’s the episode!

TL;DR Throughout the episode, the Domino Twins show multiple signs of them being close to each other. I really think that the episode is supposed to show us that they're close from the beginning and Rishi just made them form an even stronger bond. Paraphrasing Shaak Ti, their journey is about them connecting to the rest of their squad throughout the episode, not necessarily about them also learning to connect with each other. They’ve got that down, after all.

[luluwquidprocrow]

love was made for me and you (and you)

originally posted: february 15th, 2019

word count: 22,821 words

rated: teen

beatrice baudelaire/bertrand baudelaire/lemony snicket, beatrice baudelaire/lemony snicket, beatrice baudelaire/bertrand baudelaire

violet baudelaire, klaus baudelaire, beatrice baudelaire, lemony snicket, bertrand baudelaire, kit snicket, the duchess of winnipeg, dewey denouement, olivia caliban, beatrice snicket

alternate universe – modern setting, alternate universe – everybody lives/nobody dies, alternate universe – parent trap fusion, family, romantic comedy, humor, with occasional required sad undertones, screenplay/script format, less of a fic and more of an outline but one hell of an outline, with enthusiastic swearing by yours truly, referenced but very background kit/dewey and duchess/olivia

Summary:

[so beatrice is nicholas, lemony is elizabeth, violet is annie, klaus is hallie, bertrand is the absolute worst at being meredith because he is a Genuinely Nice Person so honestly he’s really not meredith at all, and those parallels are all a little loose anyway because i moved places and conversations and character roles and basically everything around, everyone is just a mess. where is vfd????? i sure don't know.]

Notes:

back in march 2018, the good the iconic the legendary the CLASSIC ace attorney parent trap au came back on my dash and I decided to rewatch the parent trap a few days later, and as I was watching it, I thought, ‘i wonder how that would work with asoue, and lemony and beatrice, and of course with them getting together with bertrand,’ because I will of course ship the three of them together in any fic I can, but I told myself ‘girl, you cannot write this fic. you have too many other fics to write, you canNOT write this fic.’

I then told myself, ‘well, yeah, okay, but that doesn’t mean I can’t outline it.’

and then the outline spun wildly out of control, to the point where i was never going to write it as a full actual fic because it wasn't going to work like that anymore, but also to the point where it had a life of its own and was in my opinion somehow still worth reading like an actual fic. this is over 20k of a lemonberry ice parent trap au half-fic/half-outline/half-weird-script/wonderful mess of conversations and headcanons, and I genuinely hope my weirdly detailed ramblings (and unapologetic swearing) bring people as much unbridled joy as they bring me. I wrote this with the intention to have fun, and I hope!! you have fun too!!!

I think you can get through this with a working knowledge of the parent trap movie (1998 version) but a thorough knowledge is also very good

title obviously corrupted from love by nat king cole

.

lemony and beatrice, young and definitely foolish and definitely in love but totally not thinking this through, marry (fairly soon after college) and beatrice has twins, violet and klaus (violet is two minutes older, their birthday in this splits the difference between (what I personally image to be) their canon birthdays, so that’s, what, january 8th or something???? first I had it as the 3rd but nick and liz marry in the movie on january 8th and I was like ‘well that’s not too big a change to make in the name of a good reference’).

not long after, their marriage dissolves (for, well, pretty much canon reasons???? I mean like with less accusations of arson and criminal activity. lemony has Radical Commitment Issues and beatrice is Impulsive and Angry and Not Taking Anyone’s Shit and honestly how they made it through marriage and having kids with all those problems completely in tact and never doing anything about them is anyone’s guess, love is Occasionally Not Cool), they divorce, and lemony takes violet and beatrice takes klaus.

they both leave The City which I have always imagined as new york even though i’ve never spent a second there in my life, but anyway, beatrice does go to california (she likes the weather, but she does not end up in sanfran (danhan’s hometown) – the part of me simultaneously obsessed with a different fandom is screaming santa barbara!!!! but no i’m going to stick with the movie and say although she’s not in a vineyard she is in napa), the idea of lemony just being in england as like, a concept, and especially with a broken heart, is hilarious to me

kit: do I have to confiscate your copy of keats?

kit: do I?

kit: do I, lemony??????

beatrice raises klaus with the help of the duchess of winnipeg (and ramona’s delightfully sentimental and frankly adorable wife, olivia caliban, I will sail this ship single-handedly I guess) (what is ramona doing in california????? OH MAN DO I FINALLY GET TO BUST OUT THIS LINE I TOOK OUT OF THE BAYBEA FIC

ramona: have you seen winnipeg lately???

ramona: there’s not much for me to duchess over.

actually it’s probably that ramona’s mother is still alive in this (otherwise what would be the POINT of everybody lives/nobody dies modern au???? fucking fight me) and she takes care of winnipeg and ramona was like ‘…...canada’s not doing it for me’ and her mother was like ‘canada doesn’t do it much for anyone, dear.’ and ramona skedaddled to california with olivia, which worked out because they have banging careers as artists out in california.) (ramona paints (she likes watercolors and pastels), olivia actually writes historical fiction lesbian romance novels (where everyone also lives!!! she writes an on point jazz age novel only everyone lives and it’s great) (why historical fiction??? olivia is a sucker for romance and loves big sweeping romance epics….and ramona) (are her books just. period piece self-inserts with her and ramona??? well why the FUCK not), they are both………..really too good for this world.) (anyway bea has zero (0) family with which to raise klaus so ramona and olivia offer to help her out. out of the goodness of their hearts and long-standing friendship, not because they have any experience raising a child. they do not. have any experience.)

and lemony raises violet with the help of his sister. kit and dewey get together earlier, and have their daughter earlier (violet’s….five or six when she’s born?), and name her (obvs not beatrice) bernadette (I have Specific Reasons for naming her bernadette, however that is in my giant list of bernadette headcanons, which is a whole other Thing). beatrice is an actress (klaus can’t act for shit, sorry), lemony is a writer (violet doesn’t have a poetic bone in her body, sorry). (but violet can act and klaus is pretty good at putting words together.)

ELEVEN YEARS AGO BY, or, well, eleven and a half, I guess, eleven and a half delightful years filled with the following –

-lemony and beatrice fervently denying they ever married each other and trying to forget the other even exists, what do you mean you have photographic evidence, we were definitely not married

-ramona’s mother briefly going to california to tell three grown women how to change a diaper

-klaus, age one and a half, crawling up the staircase in their house all by himself to get to the library, beatrice promptly dies out of sheer terror

(true event. I did that.)

-violet getting ahold of a wrench at the same age and fixing one of the loose bars in her crib

(not a true event. I did not do that.)

-dewey and jacques, trying to fix the curtains in violet’s room, immediately and silently agreeing to never tell lemony they were The Worst Uncles In Existence for five seconds for accidentally dropping the wrench in violet’s crib

-beatrice training herself not to do a double-take every time she sees klaus with a book because he looks fleetingly like lemony, just for that second

-lemony lulling violet to sleep with a variety of accordion songs, violet’s favorite is his rendition of what he says is ‘a song about spending a day on the beach’ but is actually why I cry by the magnetic fields (particularly danhan’s rendition of it with ben gibbard.)

-hey I never said they were successful at forgetting each other, especially when the kids were kids

-a truly harrowing number of children’s birthday parties

-kit snicket, who firmly kept her maiden name, going through what she called ‘The Chillest Pregnancy In Existence, Look At Me, I’m Completely Fucking Calm’ in the middle of labor

-klaus going through a period where he only read poetry, which caused bea and ramona and olivia to speak in rhyme for a week

-violet insisting she could fix the toaster and promptly not fixing the toaster because nothing was wrong with the toaster (it just wasn’t plugged in.)

-beatrice appearing in a number of plays, klaus being enchanted when she’s in les mis and reading the book but, in fact, only finding the outrageously long sewer chapter interesting

-violet trying to write a poem for lemony for father’s day and rhyming ‘orange’ with ‘mortgage’

that summer, they both wind up sending violet and klaus to the same summer camp excursion, because what sort of comedy would this be without the wildest coincidence ever, honestly

kit drops violet off at the camp a la martin – will lemony get on a plane?? that is a resounding No (also he would have just cried the whole time. the whole time. the. whole. time.)

however lemony is the one who does the ‘fruits, vegetables’ thing, only before violet leaves, and he gives her a million hugs and honestly doesn’t want her to go to camp oh my god, it’s only because violet tells him he’s sort of squishing her that he stops hugging her, lemony is???? like the most concerned parent of all time

kit, meanwhile….

kit: I was going to give you a new dart set but I was informed that they would not let you through customs.

violet: uncle dewey told you, didn’t he.

kit: I married a real killjoy, violet.

I honestly cannot think of a scene for klaus to parallel hallie meeting glasses and tie dye girl while getting her duffel bag. I thought of putting the quagmires in this but I think that’s…...pushing the identical envelope a little here (would’ve been worth it though for the brief note I used to have here that was just isadora shouting ‘HOW DID THEY TAKE SO LONG TO REALIZE THEY WERE RELATED THEY LOOK EXACTLY ALIKE’)

i’m sure they hang out with like-minded people before running into each other, it’s a good camp and they literally never talk to those other characters again anyway, which is, a real shame

we can all at least rest assured that klaus gets to camp in once piece regardless and doesn’t have a conversation about darts and airport customs, anyway beatrice, ramona, and olivia each smuggle a deck of cards into his suitcase as a surprise and he has three card decks and impresses all the other kids in his cabin with a giant architecturally sound house of cards made to resemble thoreau’s cabin at walden pond

hey annie and hallie are both allergic to strawberries and KLAUS AND VIOLET ARE ALLERGIC TO PEPPERMINTS

before they meet there’s probably a moment like with marva sr and the strawberries (I just had a horrifying thought that JEROME is the camp counselor (esme is nowhere in this. olaf is nowhere in this.) and that’s…………..awful, but, as I was writing the following scene, you know who I wrote him more like?????? arthur fucking poe, what did I just fucking do, honestly poe is a WORSE choice but…...well

mr. poe: we have peppermint brownies today!

[I just saw someone on the food network make peppermint cheesecake brownies and I want them so bad]

klaus: oh, i’m allergic

mr. poe: oh, well, please live

mr. poe: I cannot perform cpr

klaus: …………………………………………………………….shouldn’t you maybe –

mr. poe: for your own personal safety and especially my own i’m going to have to ask you to step away from the brownies

[violet shows up on mr poe’s other side]

violet: oh! peppermint, i’m allergic

mr. poe: another – didn’t I just see you? how did your hair get longer that fast? that’s not an allergic reaction, is it?

violet: ……………………………………………………………...i don’t think that’s –

mr. poe: i’m going to eat this entire brownie pan to save lives, but also because I want these brownies

he came out more like show!poe instead of book!poe but, I do not care, no one cares about mr. poe.

SO, violet and klaus eventually do meet and have practically zero immediate animosity, also through fencing!!! lemony and bea are both canonically badass fencers but I stand by what I said in fight me, that lemony is the better fencer, and violet wins. klaus concedes his loss to a talented fencer. they take off their masks and are like WHOA WE LOOK REASONABLY SIMILAR

violet: I don’t know, I think your eyes might be little farther apart than mine.

klaus: oh, don’t worry, i’ll probably grow into them. it can take some time before people really grow into their faces.

however this does get them talking and they find out they have so much in common! they’re like, ‘you like books and only have one super weird parent??? what a coincidence!’

then they find out they both play cards. (this stays, cause poker games are gold and I am reasonably sure watching the parent trap so much as a kid was what instilled this love of ‘hilarious poker games’ in me because I used to jam them into my fanfics all the time.) (also explains why I only know two poker hands….)

they hold an (amicable!) poker game that night with all the campers, and they do like a round robin tournament sort of thing and swap tips all night until it’s just the two of them facing each other, and klaus wins. (lemony is Pretty Good at cards and definitely taught violet BUT you’re damn right bea taught her kid how to count cards. not that klaus wins through cheating, he also has a natural talent and bea’s impeccable poker face. klaus also hangs out with ramona, who has repeatedly kicked lemony’s ass at cards as well.)

since they still have to wind up in the isolation cabin (because how else are they going to secretly plan swapping identities with NO GODDAMN COUNSELOR noticing???), CARMELITA is at camp and busts them for the poker game. she got eliminated pretty early in the game and camped out outside the cabin the rest of the kids were in waiting until someone won and then got mr. poe.

mr poe: gambling is not for children! unless of course you have a verified accountant or, perhaps, an established banker who wanted to embark on a personal journey and decided to run a camp for small children but has always wanted to go back and manage money again because, you know, even after the two scandals, I was good at – but we don’t have time for this, violet, klaus, it’s very irresponsible to try and get adults going on a tangent to avoid your responsibilities.

violet and klaus: but we didn’t –

mr poe: i’m afraid that I have no other choice but to send you to the isolation cabin.

carmelita: cakesniffers in the isolation cabin!!! CAKESNIFFERS IN THE ISOLATION CABIN!!!!

oh……..that was painful.

AT LEAST THE CABIN IS LIKE A NICE GOOD CABIN AND NOT the orphan shack, also like how far into the woods is the isolation cabin???? do the marvas really just leave kids out there?????? come on, marvas…..

and so our heroes get stuck in a windy lil cabin out in the woods.

what do they do when they hang out there, since they have Zero Animosity???? talk about books. read books. klaus does sketches of various local leaves. violet rewires the lamps so they don’t flicker and rigs up the windows so they don’t bang open in the middle of the night. the only thing they argue about is how to make toast, which isn’t even IN the cabin (unless violet makes something into a toaster), whatever

does klaus have a stuffed animal like cuppy???? damn straight he does. because why the hell not. (some boys play with dolls? SOME BOYS HAVE STUFFED ANIMALS)

i’m being really basic here but it’s a teddy bear BUT bea made lil wire glasses for it because klaus got glasses when he was real little so she thought he’d feel better if his favorite stuffed animal also had glasses (bea wears glasses but she HATES wearing them although I think after klaus gets glasses she tries to wear them more because bea is supportive as hell) (she needs new glasses though like they’re still these big thick black frames from her goth phase and she hates them but she hates the idea of an eye doctor appointment more) (bold of me to assume bea has ever honestly stopped having a goth phase, though…)

oh gosh what is the bear’s name

what’s something like super nerdy but cute for a small book-loving child to have named a bear

oh no, he names it kenneth. bea reads baby klaus the wind in the willows and he names his bear kenneth and this is so cute. I can’t fucking handle this, oh my god

honestly I am one of those people who thinks oreos w/ peanut butter would be pretty disgusting. (I mean, without the cream in the middle, sure, that probably tastes good, but like, with the cream and the peanut butter???? no) their snack of choice is………….hey isn’t there a snack in penultimate peril at the picnic it’s mentioned they like

or is just because I have that particular book within three feet of me, i’m gonna check

okay, it does mention that klaus likes custard eclairs, violet makes a smoked fish sandwich and wants to try the chocolate spread. maybe they just like oreos, sans peanut butter. I like oreos. (also, you can’t stash eclairs in a suitcase.

olivia, staring at a series of freshly-baked custard eclairs and a collection of tupperware containers: ….do you think I made too much??

ramona: olivia, he’s – he’s just going to summer camp.)

ANYWAY, how do they realize they’re siblings???? like???? how do

do they have half pictures in this??????? I think that’s honestly going to be the easiest way

like, of course lemony and beatrice would have a wedding picture, and they are both absolutely extra and dramatic enough to have each other’s half

it probably is still a ‘sitting at a table, staring lovingly at each other’ sort of thing, lemony in a white suit and beatrice in a suitably extravagant but actually still somehow very low-key for her wedding dress (there’s a lot of tulle though, like………..layers of tulle………………………..), their color scheme flower-wise was red and white roses because like, what fucking else would they pick at that time (they are only JUST convinced by like, jacques, probably, to do red/white instead of red/black, beatrice personally wanted purple/black)

kit gave violet the picture of beatrice, because while she hasn’t spoken to beatrice since her brother’s divorce, she does think lemony and bea could stand to talk to each other

(although I headcanon kit as the kind of person to firmly forget about past romances and put them behind her THROUGH ANY MEANS NECESSARY this is not strict asoue canon, and she always liked beatrice, anyway. lemony and bea breaking up isn’t like kit and olaf breaking up, which, i’m not even gonna try and touch in this)

klaus found the picture of lemony when he was reading through anna karenina (beatrice forgot she put it in there when she let klaus read it) and figured immediately that it had to be his father, and he kept it (maybe he showed it to ramona, who was like, ‘yep, that was your father. goodness, I forgot how awful his hair looked back then.’)

they’re probably reading some book about geography (klaus is into geography at the time)

klaus: my mother says that for my birthday next year, she’ll take me on a trip to see the famous hinterlands sunset.

violet: my father’s shown me pictures, but he agrees that it’s a lot prettier in person, but he’s also not one for planes.

klaus: well, I don’t believe hinterlands are technically confined to one geographical area, i’m sure there’s more than just in california – here, i’m sure there must be more information in the index.

violet: when’s your birthday, klaus?

klaus: january 8th.

violet: !!!! that’s my birthday!

klaus: !!! that is an extraordinary coincidence.

I never said these kids were smart.

klaus: violet, what’s your father like?

violet: he’s kind of quiet, but he’s very kind. oh, I have a picture of him – well, sort of –

she pulls out from one of her own books a picture of lemony, from behind, sitting at his desk at his typewriter, absolutely no recognizable features present whatsoever

violet: he didn’t know aunt kit was taking the picture, otherwise he would’ve turned around.

violet: actually, even then he probably wouldn’t have? he insists he’s not very photogenic.

violet: what about your father?

klaus: i’ve never met him. he’s – my mother doesn’t talk about him much, but I got the impression that they divorced shortly after I was born.

violet: oh, gosh. i’m sorry, klaus.

violet: ….sometimes I think I get that impression too, about my parents.

klaus: i’m sorry too, violet.

and if this were a snicket novel, insert soft, gentle explanation about divorce and commiseration and finding kindred spirits in your friends and how sometimes love does not work out and the affects we don’t realize it has on the children who watch it happen or see the aftermath and are left with the gnawing wonder of what went wrong and how violet and klaus each wonder, a little, what the cause was, and it can be very lonely, at the end of the day, to know that even if you have one parent who loves you very much, there is someone out there who may not love you at all, and never got the chance to know you to love you, and an even deeper part of you that wonders – no matter how young you were – were you the cause of it?

violet: oh, but I – I have a picture of my mother, my aunt kit gave it to me – I have it in my suitcase

violet: /gets up to get the picture

klaus: I, I have a picture of my father, too, in fact I think it’s stuck in this book somewhere in the back, I didn’t want to forget it

and

as violet goes to sit back down with the picture of her mother, the half-picture of beatrice from her wedding day, klaus pulls out from the index the half-picture of lemony from his wedding day

and they are

STUNNED

to realize

this is, of course, the exact same picture.

there’s a lot of hugging and crying.

so they realize they’re siblings!!! and then decide try to figure out what the hell even happened with their parents, because now that they know they’re fucking related and still somehow wound up meeting each other they realize that there has to be some incredibly detailed story behind the reasoning for their parents splitting up and now they have not just proof but an actual opportunity to find out and maybe, just maybe, get their parents back together in the process!!! it worked once!!! it could work again, why not!!!!!

AND SO THEY DECIDE TO SWAP PLACES. (contrary to hallie having the idea, it occurs to them at the same time.)

meanwhile

for the past, say, YEAR, or so, bea has been seeing bertrand, a friend from her childhood (just narrowly managing to keep it from klaus BECAUSE it will involve A Conversation About Lemony and Commitment and Marriage and Things Not Working Out and Falling In Love With Someone Else and look bea is good at a lot of things but it’s a really heavy subject for her that even after eleven years she hasn’t quite figured out how to parse, so she’s really been putting off trying to explain all of that to klaus, in a case of her vastly underestimating her son [bea you see all the books he reads…….talk to your son]), and things are going well between them and they love each other a lot and!!! they decide to get married.

how do they meet up again??? bertrand winds up going to one of her plays completely on accident. he’s been on the other side of the country for years and years and he happens to go to napa and hears about this play happening and he’s like ‘well that sounds really neat!’ because bertrand had a short-lived theater career in high school and doesn’t act all that much anymore but appreciates a good play! who doesn’t appreciate a good play??

(bertrand played lieutenant frank cioffi in his senior year production of curtains to rave local newspaper reviews. bea, meanwhile, gave a stunning performance as carmen bernstein [esme wanted to be carmen so fucking bad and she’s never forgotten that bea got the role instead, and that would not even factor into this au even if esme WAS in this au] [esme was, instead, jessica cranshaw (if it was a small school she maybe doubled as bambi), ramona was niki harris, olivia played johnny harmon, olaf was…...daryl grady……..which pains me to write cause the guy I had a crush on in high school played daryl, josephine and ike played georgia hendricks and aaron fox, jacquelyn and gustav were head of stage crew, lemony supported them all from the audience – unless lemony was sasha????!!!!!!!! okay lemony was totally sasha.]) (wow I got unnecessarily invested in their high school drama club.) (IS THEODORA THE DRAMA ADVISOR?????? oh my god. oh my god she’d be so bad at it but so good. i’m dying.

theodora: snicket you need to FLOURISH your baton with MUCH MORE GUSTO

lemony: I am going to flourish this baton right up your –

bertrand: HE’S DECIDED AGAINST IT THANK YOU MISS MARKSON)

(hey you ever write a parallel that’s so good you hate it????? olivia is johnny. olaf is daryl.)

(I usually headcanon bertrand as two years older than bea and lemony but for the purposes of this au they’re all the same age – however bertrand joined drama club first, and I picture lemony as more of a band kid than a drama kid, they probably just pull him in for curtains.

was lemony drum major???? I want to say ‘hell no’ but I also want to say ‘most cryptic drum major ever, lead the most bizarre championship performance in the school’s history, somehow still won’) (I wonder what song it was to???? that right there is where my secondhand band knowledge conks out.) (but if I HAD to supply ‘bizarre, cryptic song for championships’ I would probably pick like, david lynch’s dark night of the soul or something, idk.) (but like, listen to it and just imagine it with marching band instruments……….i kind of like it. i’m kind of digging it.)

ANYWAY BERTRAND LOVES SEEING PLAYS and he goes to see it and he has NO IDEA bea is even in it and he’s like SUPER THROWN to see her but also???? really excited! it’s been eleven years!!! he can talk to her!!!! he finds her after the play and bea immediately drops whatever she was holding and is just like???? absolutely breathless to see him again (it’s been ELEVEN YEARS, cats. oh god no it’s been more like FIFTEEN YEARS since bertrand has seen bea cause they haven’t spoken since high school oh no that hurts even MORE). a giantass hug is involved. bea spins bertrand around. they make plans to see each other later. then they start hanging out, and they like, reconcile from their weird high school fallout and have a really neat relationship)

(so

the high school fallout

lemony and bea and bertrand were all delightful friends since they were kids (well, lemony and bea were, bertrand moved to town and joined their class when they were freshman in high school). they all had stupid crushes on each other, uggg. there was. an incident. at the end of their school escapades that resulted in a falling out with bertrand (maybe they had an idea of how they all felt and just couldn’t or weren’t ready to figure it out and it sort of. drove a wedge between them. not on purpose, it was just the way it happened to work out, with teenage emotions and refusing to talk about things and uncertainty. lemony+bea and bertrand went their separate ways after graduation, lemony and bea married right out of college, bertrand does his own thing, life goes on.) (maybe there was like some prom drama about who was gonna take who and who asked who first or something (at my junior prom, I was ready to kill the guy I asked who turned me down for that very reason). I mean that’s legit???? prom drama is incredibly legit. why is there so much drama at prom??????)

(honestly after going back and writing the production of curtains and remembering the (specifically romance-related) drama I witnessed happening among the drama club at my high school (I wasn’t in drama but I had a startling number of friends who were) i’m surprised they had the drama at prom and not in the middle of drama club, but i’m still going to stand by ‘prom drama.’)

(and I feel like it was prom drama of the type that’s like, low-key there and A Thing people think about but no one talks about or addresses so the whole night is real awkward and you worry something is gonna break out at any second but nothing does but you’re still obsessively on your toes about it. like, that simultaneously high-strung just-there high school romance drama angst that’s just this ever-present layer coloring everything that people say and do, hyped up specifically because it’s PROM. they probably all danced with each other and the dances were all cut short because of Feelings and Awkwardness and no one knew what to do, the whole damn night.)

and like, bertrand, going off to college and a little heartbroken but unwilling to try and do anything about it, is upset, but bertrand is also bertrand ‘sweetest man alive’ baudelaire, and honestly he wants them to be happy (bertrand is……..very non-confrontational……….and it is honestly his downfall, he likes to have fun and be nice and kind, and to acknowledge scary things is to actually deal with them and that scares bertrand so much, he buries a lot of things – so do bea and lemony, and in fact all of vfd, but in very different ways. bertrand has achieved a sort of Chill™ that bea and lemony just do not have) so he just goes on with his life, he does date other people but nothing ends in marriage, he becomes a librarian in maine and is actually only in california originally for a few months to help manage some of the collections at local libraries. then he runs into bea and he doesn’t like INTEND for a romance to happen (and neither does bea, which I also firmly stand behind for their canon romance too), he still planned to leave at the end of the few months, but it happens and bertrand feels a lot more secure in himself and his feelings about people than he did in high school and they really do love each other, a lot

oh he went to college for library science!!!! obviously lemony majored in lit and bea majored in theater and music)

(OH NO WAS BERTRAND AT THE WEDDING?????? oh no bertrand was not at the wedding. I mean he’s certainly invited but bertrand ‘sweetest man alive’ baudelaire is also bertrand ‘vaguely heartbroken, does not want to interfere, can actually honestly only take so much’ baudelaire and he says that he’ll be unable to make it. sigh. I want to say he sends a sweet wedding gift or even just flowers but man that makes me so sad to think about lemony and bea getting that on/around their wedding day and THEM being sad and i’m too sad now, bertrand does not send a gift. (he’s torn up about not sending a gift for some time. years later, walking through an antique shop, he is struck with the ‘Years Later But Still Feels Like It Just Happened And Oh Shit Why Did I Do That’ brand of Lingering Awful Anxiety™ about all that.)

HE DOES NOT KNOW ABOUT THE DIVORCE until he meets up with bea and she tells him.

bertrand: so how’s lemony????

beatrice: ahahhahahhahahhahhahahhahhahhahhahhahahaaaa!!!!!!

beatrice: ahahaha

beatrice: ahaha.

beatrice: …….oh you genuinely do not know oh shit i’m sorry

(I wanted so badly to put in my ‘bertrand and olivia were good cute friends and actually are penpals and like lemony and ramona’s ongoing card game they have an ongoing checkers game’ headcanon but it just. won’t. fit. in. here. cause why wouldn’t olivia have told him about the divorce???? I mean it’s bea’s thing to tell, NOT olivia’s, but to occasionally write to bertrand for YEARS and never mention she and ramona live with bea?????? I think that’s a little much.)

(does bertrand ever try and convince bea to reconcile with lemony???? I feel like at this point in his life he WOULD but bea would have very early on and very firmly vetoed that. and bertrand wouldn’t necessarily be happy about it but respects her wishes. not because he wants bea all to himself. but because bertrand is also quite frankly still. a little nervous re: navigating relationships. like he’s for sure A LOT BETTER at it now but like!!!! especially with lemony like bertrand is TERRIFIED of seeing lemony again. he really is. I think he thinks lemony blames him for stuff even though lemony does not. and I don’t want it to seem like bertrand’s……….just sort of swooping in and taking bea and not letting her talk to lemony????? cause it’s not that, it’s not that at all

they do really love each other

and just because bertrand’s grown as a person doesn’t mean he’s PERFECT

and bea certainly Does Not want to talk to lemony

it’s just, nick never mentions to meredith that hallie’s a twin and meredith HATES hallie and annie anyway, but bertrand does not hate kids and I just wonder, has bea told him about violet???????? like why wouldn’t she????????

so I mean yeah they probably have talked about it, and probably still came to the same conclusion, bea Does Not want to talk to lemony either, just, not right now, and yeah bertrand isn’t delighted about it but he’s like ‘alright, okay.’ because he still understands her reasoning and for all his talk he really doesn’t want to talk to lemony either

but it’s, I think it’s a thing, in the back of their minds, a worry that hits them sometimes, have they done something wrong, trying to forget)

(and this is why planning takes so much time because I always have so many stupid questions about characters)

(when bea and lemony were young and in college and extraordinarily drunk they would come up with new titles for bertrand, because they forgot they were trying not to talk about him

beatrice: bertrand ‘best hair this side of the mississippi’ baudelaire

lemony: bertrand ‘smooth hands’ baudelaire

beatrice: bertrand –

beatrice: wait do you mean like, his legit hands or like what he DOES with his hands

lemony, trying very hard not to think about Doing Things with Hands: ……..both

lemony: I definitely mean both

beatrice: good, I agree

beatrice: bertrand ‘i WILL dance the charleston and no one will stop me and I do not care’ baudelaire

lemony: bertrand ‘softest reading voice’ baudelaire

lemony: no no, wait, bertrand ‘BEST reading voice’ baudelaire, remember when he read ee cummings

beatrice: bertrand ‘i read lord of the flies and cried at the end’ baudelaire

lemony: oh bea are you complimenting him or being mean

beatrice: lemony I read lord of the flies and threw it out the fucking window when that kid killed piggy

beatrice: that was a compliment)

(ee cummings is because I have a scene in another fic where bertrand reads ‘maggie and milly and molly and may’ to beatrice and lemony and gosh…..i hope I get to use it at some point, it was a beautiful scene)

(they probably stop talking about bertrand like, sophomore year of college, idk, it just gets too hard and they become really miserable drunk nineteen-year-olds about it, and that’s not cool) (AT LEAST THEY HAVE THE WHEREWITHAL TO DO THAT)

ANYWAY, back to violet and klaus, who are still at camp and have decided to switch places!

ultimately, violet (like hallie) is supposed to find out how bea and lemony got together, and klaus (like annie) is supposed to find out why they broke up

violet cuts her hair (she’s a little bummed because she likes her hair but at least it won’t get in her way when inventing) and pierces klaus’s ears (klaus is so UP FOR THIS he’s very excited, also he keeps himself calm during it by telling violet the history of ear piercing) (these kids are either canonically very good at rationalizing or it’s just me radically projecting again…..or both), klaus practices wandering around without glasses (he bumps into EVERYTHING), violet practices how to fucking wear glasses and not die (she falls over EVERYTHING), of course violet already has an appreciation for books but she has to get the definition thing down (and growing up with lemony ‘a phrase which here means’ snicket left her with a pretty unorthodox idea of word meanings sometimes

klaus: so an optimist is someone who sees a positive side in any situation, like –

violet: say, if their arm was bit off by an alligator, a pessimist would say, “ahh! my arm!” and an optimist would say, “well, this isn’t too bad, no one will wonder if i’m right or left handed now.”

klaus: ……….what sort of person is our father

violet: he’s very specific about words.)

klaus has to figure out?????? how to invent on the fly????? (he’s seen beatrice macgyver a million things together but he’s still not sure how she does it) and the two of them teach each other about their lives, beatrice and lemony, ramona and olivia and kit and dewey and bernadette

violet: bernadette is really delightful, but you need to watch out for her

klaus: well, she is six years old –

violet: no, I mean, she can appear at a moment’s notice, and I don’t know who taught her how to pick locks, because I certainly didn’t and father can’t pick locks, but she can do it in under seven seconds.

(jacques taught her how to pick locks (he also taught violet). I don’t know where vfd fits into all this or if it even does in this fanfic but like, just try and tell me these guys don’t still act like absurd spies in any universe anyway.) (also I think lockpicking is, in general, a handy life skill, even if you aren’t living the absurd spy life.)

klaus: mother is, um

klaus: a little embarrassing

violet: how so?

klaus: she once scaled a ten foot wall because I forgot my lunch.

(ramona: hey so why did becoming a parent rob you of your top-notch secrecy skills?

[not necessarily, though, I mean, she does a great job scaling the ten-foot wall in complete secrecy. bea just, has a lot of love for her son, and is VERY OBVIOUS ABOUT IT, is the thing]

beatrice: ramona have you SEEN my son

beatrice: I will take a BULLET for him

beatrice: preferably in a non-critical area so we can hang out afterwards.

beatrice: but if I have to embarrass the shit out of him to make sure he eats, I WILL)

violet: father is the same way, a little. he keeps crying on the first day of school and I don’t have the heart to break it to him that I might be too old for that.

klaus: mother calls encouraging phrases from the car, which I think she does to prevent me from walking into school too fast.

violet: you know, they really sound like they were made for each other.

(lemony and bea, like, separately, are such legit disaster parents and I love them, they love their kids so damn much.)

the last day of camp comes, and it is time for them to officially swap places – violet goes to beatrice, klaus goes to lemony!

klaus recites book themes to himself the whole plane ride to england to keep himself calm because he’s trying not to think about how worried and excited he is!!! he’s going to meet his father for the first time!! truth be told, he knows pretty much nothing about lemony, even after talking to violet!!! IT’S A LOT FOR ANY KID TO TAKE IN, to suddenly think ‘yeah this was a good plan – oh fuck’

anyway, he meets kit at the airport, because kit is there to pick up violet. (kit and violet do not have a secret handshake. they have, of course, dart-throwing contests. of course that doesn’t make sense in an airport, but whatever. that’s their thing.)

why does kit pick klaus up at the airport instead of lemony??? I mean kit is in martin’s role but she’s NOT martin, you know, she’s lemony’s sister and definitely does not wait on him, but she does drop violet off at camp anyway, although in the movie that’s to prevent elizabeth (and nick) from showing up until the kids switch for Maximum Emotional Impact, but like lemony is obviously not THAT fucking busy he can’t pick up his own daughter

I had the thought that like kit is maybe his manager (on the side, otherwise she has….god some other job)??? does that work for a writer???? i’m a writer and I don’t even know. whatever. and kit maybe scheduled a reading that day by accident months in advance and couldn’t change it, or it runs long, so she has to get violet (klaus) from the airport

(moxie is still his editor, only she lives way out of town and they send angry emails to each other all the time about his work)

also ties in with hallie’s scene where she looks at elizabeth’s vanity and says she’s super cool about the wedding dresses cause I love that scene a LOT and I want klaus to think his stupid dad’s cool!!!

kit: violet, I am all for the beginning of your teenage rebellion with this new hairstyle but I should inform you that your father may just die.

klaus: you think he won’t like it??

[read: YOU THINK HE WON’T LIKE ME]

kit: he’ll probably come around to it. he’s still at his reading, do you want to surprise him?

klaus: !!!!!!

klaus: yes!

the reading is huge. I have no damn idea what lemony writes in this au, definitely not danhan’s stuff cause it’s not his vibe, but he still writes the picture books (although there are YEARS between them irl he wrote the composer is dead and the dark for bernadette before she became, in her words, Too Old For That Sort of Thing although she still secretly really likes them and reads the dark every night before she goes to bed. bernadette, in contrast to babybea, is fucking terrified of the dark but tries to like rationalize it out by thinking through the science of light or something, and then by just rereading the dark), oh he probably like, okay so he can’t just write asoue but he probably writes some other great children’s book series with the same sort of writing style and moral discussion, and the picture books

and violet told klaus he wrote stuff and bea like…..knows he does and refuses to talk about it but reads ramona’s copies in the middle of the night (and then has to stop doing that cause it bums her out too much), but klaus has no idea about it or how good it is and he’s so impressed, sitting at the back of this giant giant theater, and klaus loves books, he loves them with all his heart, and to sit there and see his father, for the first time in his whole life, doing something that klaus thinks is so incredibly cool

klaus: wow.

okay, so, the damn relief and happiness on lemony’s face when he sees kit and klaus

has he been imagining terrible airplane accidents for the past week? weeks? MONTHS??? yes he has.

he sees them once he gets offstage and immediately runs at this child (or, at least, definitely fastwalks.) and sweeps klaus up into this giant giant hug

klaus is!!! overwhelmed by the amount of sheer unadulterated love in this hug oh no i’m crying

putting aside that he’s pretending to be violet, this is the first time he gets a hug from his father and even if lemony thinks he’s violet klaus is still the one getting the hug and it’s just, a lot, man, it’s a lot, that scene in the movie where elizabeth hugs hallie is exactly the vibe right here god it’s so fucking sweet

lemony: oh, goodness – what happened to your hair?

klaus: I – I cut it. do you –

lemony is in the process of remembering that scissors and haircuts exist, he’s a little blindsided here

lemony: no, no – haircuts are things that happen, at one time or another, to all of us.

lemony: i’m just so happy that you’re back.

he just. hugs klaus again. god I can’t handle how much lemony loves his kids. klaus is really emotional and I’M really emotional I have to move on

on the ride home (kit is still driving)

lemony: so how was it at camp?

klaus: /frantically thinking of how he’s going to pull off something violet would say now that he’s HERE and has to act like her and decides to just be honest and hope it comes out okay

klaus: I had a lot of fun; the outdoors are incredibly pulchritudinous.

lemony: /thoroughly convinced that the outdoors has finally instilled violet with a greater poetic sense

I NEVER SAID THEIR PARENTS WERE SMART EITHER

do you know how wild the plot of this movie really is, when you get down to it, parents not recognizing their kids wtf have I done

violet can act pretty passably as klaus, but klaus, even employing beatrice’s acting techniques, just can’t act. but the one who finds him out is bernadette, like half an hour after he gets home.

[you can tell what scenes originally started this outline because they’re actually written like scenes, this was one of them]

[bernadette stares at klaus with wide, curious eyes over the top of her book. “you’re not violet,” she says.

the bottom of klaus’s stomach drops clear out. “what?”

“violet doesn’t squint when she’s confused,” bernadette says. “she frowns and puts her hair up. and it’s something she’s used to doing, so even if her hair was cut, she’d still reach for a ribbon, out of habit. you’re klaus. shouldn’t you have glasses? mother says aunt beatrice wore glasses.”

“how – how did you know about me?”

bernadette rolls her eyes. “i know everything,” she says loftily, for a six year old. “i can read, after all.”]

bernadette is the best kid. so I love babybea so much but babybea in canon is like…..still very on point but very quiet about it, because she’s grown up with really so little interaction with people????? she’s like a really subdued kid because she’s had to be so independent and do so many things herself. and she’s got her firm, almost unshakable optimism. so bernadette is still very quick and clever but a LOT more precocious about it and pretty boisterous for six years old and just. even more like kit than babybea is. her optimism is a little more…..sharp in this. I don’t think she understands embarrassment, as a thing that people experience, because she sure doesn’t. she’s just like, ‘well why don’t you just try again??????’ and it’s so great to see that inherent commitment to existence in a six year old

(an important sidenote from my bernadette headcanon list, though, is that she really does just read everything. she reads cereal boxes and magazines and reports and all the papers on lemony’s desk and really just absolutely anything she can get her hands on, and she’s easily bored so she goes looking for stuff sometimes and she’s good at putting things together, so that’s how she knows about klaus.)

[“i’m not gonna tell anybody,” she says. “i wanna see what happens. uncle lemony’s kind of lonely, you know? and aunt beatrice – when they talk about her – always sounded really nice.”]

bernadette makes it her MISSION to help klaus act more like violet and cover for him as much as she can

bernadette: you need to walk different

bernadette: and hold yourself a little taller

bernadette: here, keep this wrench in your pocket, violet likes wrenches

bernadette: and this ribbon!!! she didn’t give you any????

bernadette: oh, make sure you stare off into the distance while eating and think about machines or something

klaus: how do you notice all these things???

bernadette: ?????? doesn’t everybody?????? she’s your sister, you two didn’t follow each other around to try and pin down how you act????

klaus: …..do you do that, bernadette

bernadette: regularly. I can impersonate anyone’s footsteps. except my mother’s, because I think she keeps wearing different shoes on purpose. i’ll show you sometime.

so, armed with This Random Wrench and a lot of acting details that he can’t process very well, klaus HANGS OUT WITH LEMONY

so klaus spends a lot of time in the library in lemony’s house (which also doubles as lemony’s office, it’s big enough that he and violet can take separate corners and know each other’s there but not run into each other if they don’t want to (especially good for klaus pretending to be violet because no one has to see him TOTALLY FAIL AT INVENTING)), and it has so many books and klaus is so thrilled

klaus has to try and bring up bea and find out how they met, only, DISCREETLY

[gosh this one is a lot harder without “so doesn’t designing all those wedding dresses make you think about getting married again?”, especially because the truly spectacular “f word” line doesn’t make sense with lemony but what can you do]

he probably goes up to lemony while lemony’s at his desk because klaus figures, the easiest way could be to relate to something on the desk

AS purposeful narrative coincidence LUCK WOULD HAVE IT lemony is looking for something in his desk and you know lemony keeps the most inconsequential things and has accidentally dug out his plaque for ‘one semester of cheerleader participation’

klaus, immediately thrown by this news: you were a cheerleader?

lemony: mm? oh, my, I forgot about that.

he smiles at the plaque and dusts it off and my heart is m e l t i n g

lemony: yes, in high school. I wasn’t the only boy on the team, as a matter of fact. a – a friend of mine did it with me.

klaus: why were you on the cheerleading squad?

lemony, trapped in this conversation now: well – your mother was on the soccer team. I was not what you would call athletically inclined at the time, so I joined to support her.

klaus: !!!!!!!

klaus: my – my mother?

this was a fact he did not know about beatrice, as a matter of fact

lemony, realizing that children are going to be curious about their parents and, well, okay, it’s been eleven years, I probably won’t see beatrice again (ahahahahaha.), and my child deserves to know: yes. she was very good at soccer, among other talents, although she didn’t last very long in her soccer career.

klaus: why not?

[if this man was PAYING ATTENTION he would have noticed for sure that klaus is much more straightforward than violet.]

lemony, remembering that time beatrice launched herself across the soccer field and accidentally tackled the assistant coach and dragged him through the mud: she and the coach disagreed on some of the physical aspects of the game.

klaus, dying to hear what lemony’s going to say: what was she like?

lemony, immediately remembering the details of their divorce but also a series of Shenanigans from their school days that he should never repeat to anyone, then resolving to be kind about it: very charming and resourceful.

lemony: she had a great deal of verve.

lemony: I see a lot of it in you.

klaus is touched, I’M touched, god fucking dammit

klaus resolves to leave it there and decides to dig around lemony’s desk later for other things about bea and lemony when lemony isn’t looking

which he promptly does, that night.

klaus sees his typewriter and pictures of kit and jacques and there’s probably one of ramona (in a drawer) (sorry, ramona.) and in a secret compartment in the desk is a pic of bea (maybe one of bertrand too?) (definitely one of bertrand too) and some letters from bea (klaus recognizes her handwriting)

(watch it be something like, some stupid candygram she sent him for valentine’s day that says dear lemony, [the content of this candygram has been censored by the school administration] love bea!!!!!) (bea gets detention for a week for the content of the candygram.) (the second candygram gets through but it’s only because bea writes it so thoroughly in code that the school administration, at a passing glance, cannot see how raunchy it is. but also very heartfelt. it is genuinely heartfelt.) (so of course he has some from bertrand too. because bertrand sent everyone a candygram. they’re all so friendly but so sweet and so cute and bertrand’s just breaking my heart in this whole fic I love him so much) (they’re stuff like, i’m so happy we’re friends! happy valentine’s day! i made sure this candygram doesn’t have anything that will conflict with your peanut allergy! like some fucking NERD and i’m SOBBING) (because you know bertrand was on student council and helped with the candygrams, bea and lemony were definitely not on student council)

(bea: what gets me is that they still sent it!! they censored my loving sonnet about your ass but they still sent it!!!!!!

bertrand: I guess nothing stops true love?

lemony: or, nothing stops beatrice mariner. [you’d have to kill me before I conceded to ‘beatrice kornbluth.’ anyway one of kornbluth’s pen names was mariner so that’s my compromise.])

klaus thinks the candygrams are so fucking embarrassing and also had no idea his mother was capable of such language but then again, no, she is, but he also thinks they’re charming and evidence that lemony still has feelings for beatrice, if he kept them!!

he’s, intrigued, a little concerned, but not very worried about this mysterious picture of a strange man and his own candygrams, although klaus concedes they too are very sweet.

MEANWHILE, back in california

bea is so so so so so excited to pick up klaus (not knowing it’s violet) from the airport, like she manages to sit still for most of the wait but in the last half hour she just sort of bounces around the airport and buys a series of irritating, tasteless teas (“fuck this tea is so bland yes i’m ordering another one, ramona, don’t judge me”) and reads the same newspaper over and over again and when the flight comes in she’s ECSTATIC, MY GIRL IS BOUNCING ALL OVER THE PLACE

she’s the kind of like……...vaguely silly but a little (a lot) overprotective (?) parent

like beatrice is the one SHOUTING AT THE TOP OF HER LUNGS WHEN SHE SEES HER KID CAUSE SHE’S SO THRILLED, she’s just very vocal about how much she loves….

[I actually rewrote some of bea in this (or, changed the amount of capitals I had her using) because, like, bea is delightful and charming and very smooth but she’s also got such passion for life, she loves to be delighted and she loves to laugh, and she’s so smooth and sarcastic but like!!!! I love beatrice when she’s having a good time, but I got worried that she was leaning too silly in this which. irritated me.

like, in canon I feel like she is incredibly mischievous but once she gets married and has kids, she’s still very on point and loves her kids very openly but she becomes a lot more straight-laced because she’s so intent to protect them, so much so that I think she loses a little of that mischievousness. but considering the fluctuating capacity of vfd vibes in this au, I think she is a little more…….loose in this. the other thing about bea is that her veneer of perfection is her best acting job of all time, and divorcing lemony and being a single mother and raising klaus puts a big dent in that and makes her even more determined to try and wring as much joy out of life as she can without letting people know how much she has to deal with]

violet, upon getting off the plane and seeing beatrice: oh.

beatrice: look at youuuuuuuuuu LOOK AT YOU!!! you’ve got everything??? all your limbs???? nothing broken????

she says all this while like running straight at violet and patting her down and then giving her the biggest hug of all time. violet is engulfed in this hug and!!! she thought her father gave tight hugs but this is something else

I think lemony puts a lot of warmth in his hugs but beatrice puts this endless amount of joy, along with love, into her hugs, and violet’s life up until this point has been very low-key and surrounded by adults who excel at deadpanning their dialogue so this is!!! very strange but very exciting!!! because violet herself also has this very bright enthusiasm that other people in her family don’t have the same way she does so as much as it’s so different to meet beatrice it’s really cool!!!!!

[for the record, bertrand’s hugs exude safety]

re: pierced ears

beatrice: oh, ramona and olivia are gonna be real upset.

beatrice: they definitely wanted to be involved in your first rebellious teenager act.

beatrice: then again, so did I??

violet: doesn’t that defeat the purpose of a rebellious act?

beatrice, going in for a side-hug: …...i missed that snark so much

does beatrice have a dog???? she’s really not a dog person. neither are ramona and olivia (dogs scare olivia. in fact, most things scare olivia. the toaster scares olivia. she’s so nervous and I love her.) (it’s less of a josephine fear and more of a ‘please leave me alone!!!’ sort of startled fear, is how I see it)

if there is a pet, ramona and olivia have a cat that olivia named annabelle, and she’s a sweet, all-white cat who loves cuddles. she does not even care that violet isn’t klaus. she’s just like, ‘this person has arms!! this person can cuddle.’ annabelle is the best, most chill cat. (although I headcanon that bea is allergic to cats – but that was just cause I was allergic to cats, and now that i’m not allergic to cats????? GUESS IT’S FREE REIN NOW) (anyway the cat is still ramona and olivia’s.)

so bea has to introduce klaus (violet!) to bertrand, and, oh, bea

she really has been putting this conversation off for quite some time, and she decides to just, go for it, as she’s driving violet home

beatrice: klaus, there’s, there’s someone i’d like you to meet

violet: who?

beatrice: an old friend of mine. we’ve been talking recently, and he means a great deal to me, and if you don’t like him, then that’ll be it, but – I really want him to be a part of our lives, klaus. I know it’s a big change, but I’d like you to give him a chance.

violet is REALLY, REALLY THROWN HERE because she and klaus are supposed to get their parents back together!!! this isn’t supposed to happen!!! this is supposed to be a happy ending without this NEW CHALLENGER (UNACCEPTED!!!!), how is she supposed to ask about lemony now???????

violet: oh, um

violet: well, I would like to meet him

she resolves to be HARD AND UNCOMPROMISING when she meets bertrand, but, well, then she meets bertrand fucking baudelaire. bertrand ‘sweetest man alive’ baudelaire. bertrand ‘just desperately wants to make a good impression on his fiance’s son’ baudelaire. god I love him. what a guy.

especially because bertrand really does just want to make a good impression, and he knows klaus is into geography right now so he brings this absolutely impressive atlas as a gift

not as an attempt to bribe klaus into liking him, but to show that he’s supportive of his interests!!!!

bertrand, sweetest man alive, shaking violet’s hand: i’m so excited to finally meet you!!

violet, blindsided by the sweetest man alive: oh, thank – thank you. it’s very nice to meet you too.

bertrand: I heard you were into geography, so I brought this atlas for you! I hope it’s alright.

violet, holding the biggest, heaviest atlas she’s ever seen in her life: oh. that’s very kind of you.

they spend some time looking through it because it has so many cool details

he stays for a while and then bows out gracefully because he cares so much, hello i’m dying, and then beatrice asks violet what she thought

violet: I –

violet: I liked him a lot.

beatrice: are you sure? because I swear, it’s fine, klaus, if you’re uncomfortable, it’s absolutely okay, it’s –

violet: no no! it’s fine!

[read: IT’S NOT FINE]

violet: I have this….atlas, now.

beatrice: you could kill a man with that.

violet: probably! I probably could.

beatrice: ….so it’s okay?

violet: ….it’s okay, mother.

[read: IT’S NOT OKAY BUT WHAT ELSE CAN SHE SAY HERE] [hey you know when you take out how much of an awful person meredith is you are left with a lot less humor in this situation.]

beatrice: I don’t know what I did to deserve a child like you, klaus.

cue good, squishy hug.

[personally I cannot fathom marrying someone else and having twins and raising one of them and not trying to have a relationship with your other child because you didn’t want to work things out with first spouse, but I never said I myself was smart either, in what I chose to write (I NEVER SAID I TOOK THE EASY WAY OUT)

anyway, I do think when bea says that, she thinks about it for a second

that (as far as she knows) this is klaus, she’s known him his whole life, and she had so little time with violet and maybe she would be sweet and clever too and she doesn’t know

she doesn’t know!!!!!!!

and it tears her apart for a split second that she doesn’t have everything and before she can let it eat her alive she shoves it down and forgets about it like she does with everything else and just, moves on] [time is a scary thing – if this much time has passed, what can you do? do they care? is it easier to do nothing or does that hurt more? does it even matter when both parents know their kids don’t know about their sibling or their other parent (or as far as they know at this moment)??? does that possibly make it even a little easier????] [anyway.]

because of bertrand – or, not necessarily bertrand, but more, ‘wedding shenanigans,’ but also, yeah, bertrand – violet also spends comparatively little time with beatrice

she wants to dislike him on principle, but can’t because he’s just???? so nice!!!! he talks seriously to her about her parents and about her (well, klaus) and really wants to get to know her (well, klaus) violet is begrudgingly impressed. violet thinks klaus would be really impressed too. but she’s real worried about what means for lemony and beatrice

especially since they did this not only to get their parents back together but to spend time with the opposite parent, like!!! violet has spent practically zero (0) time with bea to get to know her!!!!

so she holds off for a little bit and just genuinely hopes bertrand will somehow be less nice

this is hard, when bertrand helps bea make dinner ever night (klaus was VERY EXPLICIT that beatrice allows NO ONE in the kitchen when she’s cooking so there’s that) and he talks so damn OPENLY to violet about being a presence in her life

bertrand: klaus, I hope you don’t think i’m intruding in your life.

violet: I understand where you’re coming from when you say that but remarriage is in fact a part of life that occurs with some frequency.

[not only death and taxes, but haircuts and remarriage….]

violet: mother said you were an old friend, though?

bertrand: yes, we went to school together.

violet: if you don’t think it’s too rude of a question

violet: you strike me as the type of person who would have had a high school sweetheart and I am perhaps a little concerned that you didn’t marry my mother earlier.

inside, violet is cringing but it’s a very klaus line.

bertrand: !

bertrand: oh, well, we didn’t date each other in high school.

violet: ! you didn’t?

bertrand: no, there was –

bertrand has been. avoiding these feelings for some time. but he’s so struck by them that he has NO poker face in this situation

bertrand: – it just didn’t work out at the time, that’s all.

but fuck violet is absolutely stunned by that look on his face

she’s never seen someone look so heartbroken before and she is, concerned, but that’s mostly ignored in favor of the sheer stress of the situation

and violet does actually get kind of angry!! about bertrand being such a good person!! she starts to get really frustrated!!! like I picture this happening over, maybe a week

she hates that she can’t tie her hair back and her thoughts are all jumbled and that she has to wear glasses and she misses her dad and she loves beatrice a lot but NOTHING IS WORKING OUT LIKE SHE WANTED IT TO

and she has to wear klaus’s glasses and keeps taking them off when she’s sure no one’s looking to rub her eyes man I want to give this kid a hug

but she also wants to make her mom happy!!! fuck this is a mess

violet: he’s been – a lot kinder than I thought he would be.

beatrice: yeah, he has that effect on people.

beatrice: when we were in high school, we called him “bertrand ‘sweetest man alive’ baudelaire.”

beatrice is viscerally reminded of Being Drunk In College and tries to shrug it off

however, violet, growing up with two detail-oriented snickets, does not miss a single thing

violet: we?

beatrice: oh, you know – nicknames, nicknames stick, klaus, everybody calls everybody things!!

violet: it just sounded as if you were….

violet: /casts around for the correct grammatical term, she’s committed, but comes up with nothing because hell even I don’t know, apologies to my grammar professor from college

violet: ….using ‘we’ to mean just you and someone else and not necessarily lots of people.

beatrice is actually vaguely suspicious to hear Less Technical Grammar but chalks it up to the situation

beatrice: well, I mean, we had friends, of course – ramona and olivia!! that’s!! that’s who i’m talking about!! that’s all!!

violet remembers that ramona gave klaus his half of the wedding picture, and klaus told her what ramona said, that ramona didn’t like lemony’s hair at the time, and violet’s done the math, she knows how old lemony and bea are and that she and klaus were born not long after they left college, and with this sudden but persistent reluctance to talk about An Additional Person from high school from both bea and bertrand, violet is terribly suspicious that there could, in fact, be much more to this than she initially thought

beatrice: don’t forget, we start looking at hotels for wedding reception venues this week, okay?

violet: okay.

so, that night, violet, now alerted to the possibility that there could be a connection between bertrand and her father, and also DESPERATELY HOPING THERE IS ANYWAY BECAUSE THAT WOULD CAUSE HER SO MUCH LESS STRESS, goes digging

she grew up with bernadette for the past six years (and has also seen lemony create giant information webs to map out books), VIOLET KNOWS HOW TO GET INFORMATION AND PUT IT TOGETHER

she starts looking for yearbooks – they all went to the same school, for years, they have to be somewhere, but violet can’t find anything in the library, or ramona’s studio, or olivia’s office, or beatrice’s hiding place (the kitchen), and then looks through their desks for papers or plaques or photographs or anything that could give her a hint (nope)

if there is one thing she’s learned from bernadette, but also her father, it’s that the best place to hide something is usually in plain sight, which leads violet back to the library, pulling out boring-looking books to see if anything is stored behind them or in them (still nope)

this leads to violet CLIMBING THE BOOKCASES to reach the top shelf because adults are taller than her and put things on high shelves

and lo and behold, there it is, the senior year yearbook.

violet has a HEART-STOPPING MOMENT in the downward climb (which she’s doing one-handed anyway) where she almost steps on annabelle who she hadn’t realized was sleeping on a shelf and violet is TERRIFIED but annabelle, chillest cat in the world™, just yawns at her and picks a different shelf

annabelle is no sammy.

so, curled up in a library chair, violet finds not only pictures of beatrice and bertrand and lemony in the yearbook, but also a giant section of papers that fold out from the back cover where apparently lemony had more than the average length of a yearbook comment to say to her

violet, vaguely skimming this hardcore romantic comment, incredibly used to her father’s verbosity: yes that sounds about right.

and she finds a (significantly smaller but still lengthy and painfully heartfelt) signature from bertrand nearby, that definitely reads as a guy in love

but she’s still not sure how they feel about each other now, like a few yearbook signatures are no indication of how a person feels over eleven years later, so she’s still nervous about this and decides to sleep on it

this takes the whole night, violet is exhausted in the morning

now re: chessy unpacking hallie’s (annie’s) suitcase in the movie, it’s not that ramona did the same, but when doing the laundry earlier she did notice this weird amount of ribbons stuck in the lint filter/in pockets/pant legs/sleeves

and she barely even thinks anything of it at first and asks olivia and olivia has no clue and she’s not asking beatrice because beatrice has so much on her mind and ramona’s like ‘….hmmm,’ and goes to talk to klaus (violet)

ramona: hey klaus, I keep finding ribbons everywhere and I just wondered –

violet, in the process of running her hand through her hair cause she’s tired and processing a lot and misses being able to tie it: /JUMPS

violet: oh

violet: bookmarks, i’ve been using them as bookmarks

[actually violet has a million ribbons because lemony never wanted her to be without one, and it was so natural for violet to bring them with her she just legit forgot she wasn’t supposed to have them, like hallie with cuppy]

ramona, vaguely concerned: ….yeah, your mother used to do that

ramona: anything wrong with your hair?

violet: oh, no, not at all!

ramona: everything….going okay?

violet: yes, absolutely!

[the thing about violet acting as klaus though is that she can get like his speech patterns down but her own natural cheeriness still shows through in the places where klaus is in general quieter]

this is gonna get discussed right after this but ramona knows violet ties her hair up to focus because lemony told her in a letter, years ago

so ramona frowns and walks over to her and ties her bangs back with one of the ribbons, and violet just so visibly relaxes

ramona, incredibly emotional: oh

ramona: violet?

violet: ….yes.

ramona: so I can’t necessarily abide by breaking up a marriage but HECK YEAH i’m down for helping you reunite them. beatrice got me in the divorce and it’s very irritating just writing to lemony, which he actually hasn’t done for a while, now that I think about it.

violet: why don’t you just visit him? i’m sure he’d love to see you.

ramona: he makes me send the letters to a post office box. I do not know that man’s address.

violet: ……...that sounds about right.

(bea still does not find out until the hotel shenanigans, though.)

(I love ‘beatrice got me in the divorce’ like that’s fucking hilarious, cause I picture ramona as lemony and bea’s best friend so when they aren’t together it’s like…...well, what happens to ramona???? WHO DOES RAMONA HANG OUT WITH?? WHO GETS CUSTODY OF RAMONA)

(but also like, wtf lemony and ramona write to each other and bea never finds out???? I mean ramona was their best friend so like yes I think they do keep in contact but then does ramona never tell lemony about klaus????? and for them to write to each other and ramona to get these letters and BEA IS IN THE SAME HOUSE??????? I can’t tell if this is just angsty or poor thinking through on my part

but like ramona has to know for the reveal scene here to work out right, otherwise she’d never guess specifically violet

unless I rewrite the scene, but? nope. i’m committed to this ribbon reveal. I like it a lot. fuck it.

THIS WAS WHY I TOOK OUT BERTRAND AND OLIVIA AS CUTE PEN PALS auuuuuggggggg

I don’t know I mean. it is weird and stretching this (already shenanigans-filled) fic a little but. I don’t think it’s the WORST illogical thing I can stick in here. and they are friends, they can write to each other, just, yeah, probably not a lot and they actually probably don’t talk about the kids a lot, cause then lemony would know about both kids and since r wouldn’t tell bea she was writing to lemony bea wouldn’t know anything at all about violet and THAT’S what’s not good (although r telling lemony about klaus is cute i’m gonna have to nix it here. no can do.), so yeah r probs never brings up klaus and lemony rarely brings up violet, he probably only mentions the ribbon thing back when she was really really young because of how much it reminded him of bea and lemony was One Sad Man in his twenties trying to cope with the emotional reality of raising a child that reminded him of his wife and needed to tell someone

that is a lot of weight on ramona though and she doesn’t say anything but lemony apologizes for bringing it up in the next letter anyway and actually after that they probably talk a lot less cause it’s hard on both of them)

(writing is hard! writing is hard.)

ramona: so what’s your plan now?

violet: first, I have to make a phone call.

VIOLET CALLS KLAUS, keeping in mind the concept of time zones a little bit better than hallie and annie

violet: so, it turns out that mother is engaged????

klaus: engaged????? to who?????

violet: this man named bertrand, and, honestly, klaus, he’s such a nice person, he brought me, well he brought you, an atlas –

klaus: oh. that is very nice.

violet: it’s the sort of atlas you could probably use to incapacitate a reasonably-sized adult.

klaus: wow.

violet: and mother said that apparently she knew him when she was younger, and they get along so well, but –

klaus, remembering the picture he found with the extra candygrams: wait

klaus: is he sort of tall, and thin, and blonde

klaus: and sort of, idly optimistic

violet: yes! although I would say more….calmly steadfast

klaus: hmmm

klaus, trying to describe bertrand’s facial expression in this picture: disarmingly kind?

violet: humorously honest?

klaus: I think father has a picture of him in his desk!

violet: !!!!

[myth: confirmed!]

klaus: and some notes from high school from mother and him!

violet: !!! klaus, based on some other things i’ve found, I think all of them might have had feelings for each other.

klaus: !! that makes a considerable amount of sense here. if they all still do, that could make this much easier.

violet: but we won’t know for sure unless –

bernadette: who are you two talking about???

klaus: BERNADETTE

violet: bernadette, are you on the extension again

bernadette: well why wouldn’t I be?

bernadette: it sounds like you guys are talking about bertrand.

violet: how do you know who bertrand is?

bernadette: dad talks about him all the time???

bernadette: well, not when uncle lemony’s around

bernadette: he sent dad that book of poetry that mom immediately burned

bernadette: the elephant guy?

violet: …….oh, now that you mention it! that’s right!

klaus: wait why did your mother burn the book

violet: aunt kit has very little patience for certain poetry.

klaus: she doesn’t like john godfrey saxe??

violet: it’s a big deal, it’s best not to get into it.

violet: look, I think what we need to do is get everyone together and sort this all out.

violet: we’re scouting hotels this week for the reception, you can come here and meet up with us at one of them!

MEANWHILE, kit finds bernadette on the extension, for an honestly longer than usual length of time (bernadette does eavesdrop regularly), and also klaus on the phone in general (and violet rarely uses the phone, like, as a phone. usually she’s taking the phone apart), and really, nothing gets past kit fucking snicket. (you know kit denouement does have a great fucking ring to it, but as I said before, just try and tell me she didn’t insist on keeping her maiden name when she got married.)

so she goes and finds klaus and hears the end of the above conversation and is like ‘oh shit, they totally switched on lemony and bea, what badass kids’

[what if she tries to corner bernadette first

kit: bernadette, I didn’t know you knew anyone to call on the phone.

bernadette, without missing a fucking beat: I called the international operator to ask about time zones, but she caught me up in a conversation about soap operas and whether or not their use of sudden death is considered theatrically cathartic or not.

bernadette: I told her it happens way too often for it to be cathartic.

kit is too impressed to counter her. kit loves her daughter so fucking much.]

so then she sort of shows up in klaus’s doorway when he goes to leave the room after the phone call, arms crossed over her chest

kit: is there something you’d like to talk about?

kit can be outrageously intimidating but kit is also, actually, a pretty good parent

kit, significantly more gently: just between you and me, klaus.

klaus: …..maybe.

kit: come on, let’s go for a walk. you can tell me all about it.

klaus: it’s a long story.

kit: well, good, I like long stories.

klaus: are you going to tell father?

kit: don’t you think you should tell him?

klaus: do you think he’ll be upset?

kit: oh, not at all. more with himself than you, anyway. once, violet was responsible for wiping out the electricity of the whole city, and he gave her two slices of cake for dessert and said he should’ve bought more books on electrical wiring.

lemony is appropriately concerned and horrified and thrilled to see his son, like, oh my god, but the moment is taken over by the urgency of the situation because klaus says he has something to tell all of them that cannot wait

[forgive me for not writing that one out.]

klaus: so it seems like mother is getting married

lemony: oh

lemony: well

lemony: like haircuts, marriage – marriage comes to all of us, at some point –

klaus: to bertrand?

kit, lemony, and dewey: /STUNNED, DEAD SILENCE

kit: oh my.

dewey: what are the odds?

lemony: I think I can die now. I believe i’m ready.

bernadette: why don’t you just go see them and work this all out???

lemony: bernadette, I don’t know if life works like that.

bernadette: uncle lemony, you’re going to ruin all my bright-eyed optimism.

dewey: sometimes I think I didn’t have anything to do with you at all, bernadette. I think you just sprang, fully-formed, from your mother’s head.

kit: don’t be vulgar, dewey. ….thank you, though.

kit: but really I don’t see any other way to sort this out than by going to see beatrice and bertrand.

[this was one of the very first conversations I wrote for this and I am still very attached to it, even though I find dewey so hard to write, I haven’t yet figured out how I think he functions with these guys, especially kit, which I should maybe have done sooner but, what can you do.]

[also I feel like it just makes more sense in this for them to KNOW bea is engaged]

[I’m putting this in here because honestly……….in the movie once elizabeth realizes the switch she does not spend nearly enough time hugging hallie constantly or getting to know her, I get that seeing your ex-husband for the first time in eleven years is A Lot but YOUR DAUGHTER WHO YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IN ELEVEN YEARS AS WELL IS RIGHT FUCKING THERE] [also makes up for not writing klaus revealing himself as klaus, i’m so sorry.]

lemony: klaus?

klaus: ?

lemony: I – please don’t think that I didn’t love you. because I do, and I have thought about you every second of every day, I promise you. and there are many things that I should have done as your father, and many things that I cannot make up to you, but I want you to know that whatever happens with this, I have always loved you. and I am sorry.

so i’ve always pictured that klaus (besides looking reasonably like bea anyway, in any universe) gets angry like she does, and bea gets that sort of like, quiet cool hatred that turns into full-blown shouting really quickly and she will pull no punches and just fucking give it to you!!!!! and klaus has some sort of version of that and like look I put a lot of thought into ‘adult problems fucking over small children as those adults fervently avoid those problems’ when I wrote babybea so like

man, of course klaus can be angry at his parents for like???? never trying to work things out???? this is the first time in almost ten years he’s seen his father and his sister and he has an aunt and an uncle (and another uncle he hasn’t even seen!) and a cousin he never knew about because of lemony and bea being stubborn and stupid and recklessly young!!!!! I think violet is honestly less mad about it (well, she gets a little mad about it later on, but like, being raised by lemony, she has this weird way of trying to rationalize things while feeling really guilty about it, but that’s scenes away from right here – or she just? maybe internalizes it more.) but klaus is like, he’s not totally angry but like, as himself, face to face with lemony, lemony talking to him like a parent and about klaus and not about bea or violet or shenanigans or anything, like, yeah, he’s a little angry that it’s just….taken this long and that lemony and bea are so stupid

klaus is an angry crier. and an angry hugger. so that’s what he does.

like it’s hard to suddenly have a relationship with a family member whose never….been that to you before or made themselves available like that or just generally been there at all, and as much as I want them all having a good time, bea and lemony have some shit to work out with their kids

THEY HAVE A GOOD HUG, IS THE POINT

and I want to say that like they spend some time together after this and…….yeah they probs do it’s just gonna be weird re: the previous paragraph so…….maybe they just sit around and read and occasionally point things out to each other, that sounds chill and legit, doesn’t ask a lot of either of them

SO, that brings us to, later that night, when lemony can Officially Panic

kit: so

kit: you seem a little tense, brother mine.

lemony: I am NOT going to break up a marriage between two loving people who care about each other and happen to have incredibly pleasant facial features and are two people I myself still care about a great deal despite not having seen either of them for a lengthy amount of time

lemony: we’re only going to switch the children back, and I will talk to beatrice, about something, and I don’t have to say anything at all to bertrand, and that’s going to be it. that’s all. nothing beyond that.

kit: that would be a more powerful statement if you weren’t packing every single fancy tie you own.

lemony: really.

lemony: we’re not going to think any more into this.

lemony: that’s all we’re going to do.

lemony: which tie should I wear?

kit: well, definitely don’t pick one of the ones you’re strangling in a death grip.

(hey, where is jacques in this??????????? wish I knew)

(he’s probably regularly out of town, maybe he happens to call home and bernadette is the one to pick up the phone and she’s like “we’re going to see aunt beatrice, I think we’ll be back in a week or something?” and then immediately hangs up because dewey calls her for something, and jacques is left, miles and miles away, standing in a phone booth and wondering if, perhaps, he should maybe visit his siblings more often so they don’t go tearing off to california

jacques: kit what the hell is going on

kit: what, didn’t bernadette tell you?

lemony: ask him what tie I should wear

kit: we’re embarking on the adventure of a lifetime, jacques, it’s your own fault that you decided to go out of town this weekend, I really don’t know what to tell you

lemony: ask him what tie I should wear

kit: /sighs

kit: what tie should your brother wear

jacques: the one with the single blue stripe, it brings out his eyes, what are you two doing

kit: really, jacques, you need to pay more attention

kit: lemony, he says the one with the blue stripe

lemony: oh, good. tell him he’s a lifesaver.

kit: lemony says you’re a lifesaver, although I have yet to see real proof of this, however I will consider changing my mind if you happen to bring me a souvenir. please remember that I could use a new set of nice, engraved fountain pens. also our plane is leaving soon and we need to pack, so bye, loser

jacques: ………………….

jacques: what did I do to deserve this)

(jacques, in any universe, is eternally pained by his siblings)

this being a rehearsal dinner brings it very close to, you know, an actual wedding date, and the thing is, I have planned a completely different wedding-related fic, weddings are EXPENSIVE AND, YOU KNOW, TIME-CONSUMING, PLANNED IN ADVANCE, ALL THAT SHIT

but the whole reason there’s a wedding in the parent trap in general is because, if meredith and nick are just dating, there’s no commitment, marriage means COMMITMENT and A TIME CONSTRAINT and meredith wants his fucking money

so yeah bea and bertrand ARE engaged and planning to get married and plans have happened but the idea of this being so close to the rehearsal dinner makes me sad about all those ‘yeah i’m gonna have to cancel’ phone calls someone is gonna have to make, which is, well, pretty silly, but still, I Hate feeling uncomfortable esp when reading things like that (or even just, thinking of them in advance)

and that is why they are scouting hotels for the reception. (don’t ask me where the denouement is. I do not know.)

so bea + co get to the hotel first, and the only people who know lemony + co will be there are violet and ramona

ramona, hanging back to talk to violet while bea and bertrand and olivia (she has a good eye for decorating.) go ahead: do you know what you’re going to do?

violet: well, I thought maybe we would just

violet: all bump into each other?

violet: and go from there??

ramona thinks that’s an exceptionally courageous take on this and that, yep that girl sure is bea’s daughter

[yeah bea still has NO IDEA ANY OF THIS IS HAPPENING ramona is A+ at keeping secrets

meanwhile, sometime later-

olivia: you didn’t tell me?????

ramona: olivia, I love you dearly but you can’t keep a secret to save your life

[oh, yikes, re: legit asoue canon]

olivia: ……..okay, you have a point.]

it is at this moment that lemony + co arrive, and bertrand, who had backtracked for a moment because he realized he dropped a pen, immediately runs into dewey, who had stopped near the door to examine the hotel brochures and ambiance in more detail (you can take the boy out of the hotel but you can’t take the hotel out of the boy)

[based on penultimate peril, I always thought bertrand and dewey were very good friends and had bonded over absurd poetry, and, of course, based on kit burning the poetry book, are still in contact – there’s much less of a sense of forced distance between bertrand and dewey, because dewey’s just lemony’s brother-in-law and bertrand was friends with dewey first so they’re still good friends but like most adults they have a hard time committing to keeping in contact regularly especially with the distance and haven’t physically seen each other for some time]

so they bump into each other –

bertrand: dewey!!

bertrand: it’s been ages, what are you doing here, how are you!!!

[dewey denouement, much in the way that olivia caliban can’t keep a fucking secret, cannot fucking lie.]

dewey: oh, um

dewey: you know

dewey: hotel conference!!

dewey: kit wanted to travel!!!!

dewey: we’re traveling FOR a hotel conference!!!

dewey: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THESE CURTAINS, BERTRAND

bertrand: ……..dewey, you’ve never been very good at lying.

dewey: no, no I really haven’t.

dewey: forgive me for everything, bertrand.

bertrand: you might have to be a little more specific.

beatrice: bertrand, have you – dewey??

dewey: oh no

beatrice, remembering dewey and kit are married, suddenly battling sheer terror the likes of which she has never experienced: how….how are you

dewey: I could be better. I could definitely be better.

beatrice: is kit here?

bertrand: I believe they’re here to look at the curtains.

dewey: we’re definitely here to look at curtains.

beatrice: ….they don’t have curtains in england

dewey, grasping at straws: not….like these….?

MEANWHILE back at the ranch, lemony backtracks outside because he dropped a pen, narrowly missing three adults awkwardly talking about curtains

olivia: beatrice, we’ll be late for the wine tasting if we don’t go soon.

beatrice: oh – well, dewey, it was….nice to see you

dewey: please, go enjoy your wine.

bertrand: /waves good-bye!!!!

klaus and bernadette, hiding behind a nearby ficus, because bernadette thinks fast and has her own specific idea about how this should go and it doesn’t involve her relatives meeting again because of her father talking about curtains: wow.

violet: /narrowly avoids getting swept up into the wine tasting, darts for the elevator to try and locate klaus + co

MEANWHILE back at the ranch, upstairs, in their hotel room

lemony: why did I think I could do this

lemony: how do I approach a couple here to scout locations for a wedding reception?

kit: ….you approach them

dewey: don’t talk about curtains, maybe.

lemony: i’m not – dewey, what do curtains have to do with this?

dewey: trust me, just don’t talk about them.

there is a knock at the door. lemony has seen death. this is it, for him.

anyway, it’s violet.

klaus: violet!

violet: klaus!

awkward sibling hug sincere sibling hug!!

violet: klaus, please take your glasses back.

klaus: oh, thank you. my spare pair just doesn’t feel the same as these.

lemony: violet!

now, seeing the two of them together, he can absolutely tell the difference between them. ain’t that just the way.

lemony hugs his daughter like she’s going to disappear right out of his arms and then hugs klaus for good measure and he has to try and ignore the true roller coaster of emotions that puts him through and then tries to look very stern.

lemony: i’m not disappointed in the two of you but I cannot believe you switched on your mother and me. that was very….

lemony is not good at being angry at his children, he has no real concept of it.

lemony: ….clever. it was very clever.

violet and klaus are very proud but find it in themselves to try and look a little chagrined. they don’t do it very well.

violet: father, you really need to talk to mother.

klaus: and bertrand.

lemony: both of you know about bertrand??

klaus: you and mother are very transparent about him.

MEANWHILE back at the ranch, at the wine tasting

ramona: what do you think?

beatrice and bertrand, equally lost in thought about the presence of dewey, the implied presence of kit, and the possibility of the presence of lemony: hm??

bertrand: oh, yes

beatrice: wine

beatrice: /downs entire glass

beatrice: /sets down glass

beatrice: not that one.

bertrand, who has been holding the same glass for the past twenty minutes and has no idea which wine that even was: definitely not.

MEANWHILE back. at. the. ranch.

lemony’s children have such boundless courage (I have hurt myself so many times while writing this fanfic with the occasional too-on-point line and this in particular wounds me these kids are so strong and so important and won’t take no for an answer compared to their parents and get the chance to get their parents to FIX THINGS and oh no i’m gonna cry) and have dragged him downstairs to the lobby, with the INTENTION of having him run into bea and bertrand

lemony: this is not going to work out –

violet: nonsense!

klaus: it’s going to work perfectly.

meanwhile, bea and bertrand leave the wine tasting

bertrand: ….did we come to a conclusion, about the wine?

beatrice: no, I don’t think so.

bertrand stops by the bathroom to wash his hands for something to do as he’s consumed with thoughts (not about wine), beatrice is in a daze as she goes through the lobby, violet notices her but sees she’s not with bertrand and decides she has to stall

violet, rushing over, purposely trying to block beatrice’s view with varying success: mother, how was the wine tasting?

beatrice: oh, it was –

did you remember violet gave klaus his glasses back?

beatrice: klaus, what happened to your –

and, well.

beatrice looks at her so hard and processes kit and dewey being here and then it fucking hits her like (forgive me. forgive me so hard.) a harpoon to the chest

beatrice: ….violet?

violet: yes.

beatrice: but – how –

klaus, appearing next to her: it’s a truly fascinating chain of events we’d like to tell you, but –

hey! beatrice is stunned and horrified! and grabs her daughter into a hug, knowing now that it’s her daughter and has been this whole time and!!!! she feels so awful with herself for not noticing but is also trying to not make a big deal out of it and startle violet by sobbing uncontrollably on her shoulder but beatrice is simultaneously devastated and filled with so much love and she’s for sure going to break apart now

beatrice: and klaus –

she’s hugging them both now, it’s very good.

beatrice, in tears: you two are lucky you’re so cute

violet: mother, there’s someone we’d very much like you to talk to.

beatrice knows somewhere in the back of her mind that it’s lemony but is also not even thinking of lemony because, her children

klaus: /tries to wave lemony over

lemony: /trying and failing to hide behind a ficus, have you seen a ficus, have you seen lemony

violet: /ALSO WAVING

beatrice can’t miss that for the world.

beatrice, while turning around: what are you two –

imagine, if you will, lemony snicket trying to hide behind a potted ficus that hits about mid-chest.

also imagine, if you will, two people who divorced over eleven years ago, still have too many feelings about each other, split up their children for their stupidity, have been trying to avoid the knowledge that both of them are there for the past hour, and are now confronted with the reality of their lives right in front of them

…….besides the ficus.

lemony, stepping out from behind the ficus: hello, bea.

this is a headcanon i’ve long held, since I first started writing asoue fanfic, but, bertrand and lemony say ‘bea’ differently, especially in canon, like particularly in canon, so it’s like less so here but lemony still says her name with so much love, and bertrand says it with love too but lemony has known beatrice for so so long and here they are after years apart and here he is saying her name again, and he never ever ever expected to say it like that again, he never even DREAMED of saying it to her again, but it’s real

beatrice: lemony snicket.

violet: as nice as this is for us –

klaus: – we’re going to allow you three the time you need to discuss assorted events.

at this moment (of course), bertrand reemerges.

bertrand: bea, I –

he sees violet and klaus rushing off, looking delighted, and bea and lemony standing there still trying to process words, and then there’s bertrand, frantically thinking ‘abort mission, ABORT MISSION’

because. the way they turn and look at him, in tandem, like they did all the time in high school, immediately makes bertrand feel like they’re there, back in high school, back at prom, here’s the two absolute loves of his life standing in front of him and bertrand is filled with delight but also fear because, here it is, they all have to deal with it now

(all of them are thinking that, the three of them, standing there, there is not a single trace of jealously but instead there is so much love and regret and it’s, heart-wrenching)

and here is where he loses all his Chill™.

bertrand: you know what, i’m gonna – go –

bertrand: /trips over a chair

lemony: oh –

beatrice: bertrand!

bertrand: totally fine, still alive, i’m – they have such a nice gift shop, you know, i’m – i’ll be there

bertrand: /high-tails it practically out of existence

beatrice and lemony: ….

lemony: he – he still has a very nice running form.

beatrice: yeah, I think so.

lemony: well, bea

lemony: or does everyone call you beatrice now?

beatrice: no, no, bea – bea is fine. bertrand still calls me bea.

[beatrice starts to laugh. “it’s – man, it’s funny, isn’t it?”

lemony smiles at her. “what is?”

“i’m going to marry your high school crush,” beatrice giggles, “who’s still – still in love with you.” she stops. “you know, that’s actually really not as funny as it sounded in my head,” she says, frowning.]

they have dinner!!! and talk. about. stuff. do violet and klaus recreate the night lemony and bea met or the wedding or something????? idk honestly. like at least they didn’t get married UPON MEETING I MEAN LIKE COME ON (although somehow that is very them, but, come on, this backstory is good and solid and I love characters that grow)

maybe they just pool their allowances and give their parents a banging night out (which is pretty much just. dinner.)

beatrice: I see that cut on your forehead healed up nice

lemony: yes, anna karenina left very little lasting damage –

both: – except to anna karenina.

they pause, and then just, fucking burst out laughing, this is a horrible old joke for them that they made up when they were in school because anna karenina was the biggest book either of them owned (neither of them were particularly interested in war and peace) but was somehow sort of light and if you dropped it it really didn’t do much damage, which they thought was funny re: the size of the book and the subject matter

beatrice throws it at lemony during the fight that ends with their divorce and it’s the first time it actually hurts something

lemony: so, how is bertrand

lemony: I don’t think i’ve seen him since – well, since before the twins were born.

beatrice: oh, he’s – he’s doing really, really well. he’s a librarian, and – we keep joking about how many more books klaus and I will be able to read. lemony, he’s got the magazine editions of hammett –

lemony: w h a t

lemony: does he even have the –

beatrice: yep. he has the unfinished story. i’ve seen it.

lemony: I knew I liked that man for a reason

THERE IS SUCH A WEIGHTY PAUSE.

lemony: that is, hammett, obviously. I mean, the continental op is one of the quintessential fictional detectives, and hammett’s novels –

beatrice: you did like him, didn’t you

beatrice: when we were in school, you looked at him the same way you looked at me.

lemony: oh, no

lemony: I looked at you with a rapt adoration and I looked at bertrand like he was a puzzle I couldn’t solve. I have that on good authority from my sister.

beatrice: oh, right, right.

lemony: ….but I did, didn’t I. I did like him very much.

lemony: I don’t think anyone disliked him.

beatrice: that wasn’t quite what I asked, lemony.

lemony: ….what do you want me to say, bea? that I saw him there, with you, and couldn’t even find it in me to be jealous because the sight of you two together made me so unbelievably happy that I forgot how to breathe? that I – that I wondered, for a moment, if, twelve years later, we could – if I –

lemony: ….i don’t believe this conversation is supposed to be about bertrand.

beatrice: …….no, I – I suppose not.

lemony: that day, when you asked me to leave –

beatrice: you mean when I shouted at you to leave.

lemony: I was trying to be kind.

beatrice: lemony, I for sure shouted at you.

lemony: no, bea, I – I thought things would be better if I left. if you didn’t have to put up with me, because you clearly didn’t want to. and I didn’t make it easy for you, back then. there were many things I overlooked about both of us, things I hid from both of us, things I should have talked about with you. and I didn’t.

beatrice: ….oh.

lemony: I thought that loving the person that I wanted you to be was enough for the person that I wanted to be. obviously, it wasn’t, because you asked me to leave and I left. I never even looked back.

beatrice: ….lemony, I don’t think anything would’ve been enough for either of us. I asked a lot of you, too. I didn’t want you to see anything bad about me, and you didn’t, but the longer we were like that, the more I just – the more I really hated you for it. you just saw what you wanted to. and, well, what I wanted you to. I think I kind of hated me, too.

beatrice: sometimes, I think, what would’ve happened if we’d stayed together and I don’t know if I like that either. not that it was – okay, what we did. because it wasn’t. and we might’ve changed or we might’ve fucked up even worse, I don’t know, and i’ll never know.

beatrice: but lemony, seeing her now, I regret every single second I haven’t spent with her because of it.

lemony: I know.

beatrice, who’s a little angry cause she hates when lemony says that to her and her temper gets away from her: do you?

lemony, who’s just regretting all his life choices and knows he fully deserves beatrice’s ire: ….i’ve missed so much of his life.

beatrice, voice breaking: ….yeah.

man, these are some really miserable parents.

beatrice: we should – I don’t know, you know, what we’re gonna do, with – us – but we should – they, they should see each other. we can’t do that to them again.

lemony: I agree.

beatrice: you know, we have some pretty clever kids. I would never – okay, maybe, but I don’t know – have had the balls to switch places with someone on the other side of the world.

lemony: we do, don’t we?

lemony: I know we didn’t do a great deal right, but, maybe we did, with them.

beatrice: ….yeah, maybe we did.

beatrice: not every day two people have kids like ours.

lemony: …….can I be honest with you, bea?

beatrice: …okay.

lemony: i’m glad they switched places. i’m – i’m glad I got to see you. and bertrand. and you.

beatrice: i’m glad you came, lemony.

[all these conversations starring two people steadfastly trying to avoid that they are still in love with each other but also trying to really acknowledging they have Real Problems, brought to you by one (1) woman struggling to get two characters to talk about their problems but also the idea of introducing a third person into their already rocky relationship, don’t mind me just casually dying over here, this was harder than I thought]

beatrice, feeling the weight of this conversation and knowing they done fucked up in the past but also desperately wishing she and lemony could go back to where they were before only better and just trying to figure out where they’re gonna go from here, girl’s doing her best here, and you know what, so am i: so, um

beatrice: fuck, marry, kill

beatrice: continental op, nick charles, sam spade.

lemony, going through incredibly similar emotions: ….

lemony: do you want me to give my virtue to one man and then marry another

beatrice: why do you always take this game so literally

beatrie: I am banging nick charles, but I am marrying the continental op for job stability, and I am killing sam spade where he stands

lemony: bea, no, you can’t just kill sam spade like that

lemony: how about, I take the continental op to dinner, I have a pleasant night with nick charles –

beatrice: I like that we’d both fuck william powell.

lemony: we’ve both seen william powell. no one wouldn’t.

lemony: but sam spade, though, I don’t think it’s so clear cut as all that –

they’ve really!! grown a lot!! they’re really trying to talk this out!!! a little, at least!!! be adults!!!! talk like they didn’t eleven years ago!!!!!! they’re so stupid and they’re trying so hard!!!! my kids………….

this is definitely not the only conversation they’re gonna have about this, like it’s Good that they’ve said this but there’s. a lot more they need to talk about and will probably talk about, just not right now

anyway, LATER –

the continuing saga of two people Not Talking and then Talking About Certain Things and then Inadvertently Talking About The Things They Didn’t Want To And Not Quite Realizing It

lemony: at the hotel

lemony: you, ah, said something about bertrand

beatrice: !!!!

beatrice: ooo, we are talking about him, hmm?

lemony: bea.

beatrice: fine, fine. yes, that he’s still in love with you.

lemony: is he really?

beatrice: I think he is.

beatrice: you still didn’t really answer me before, when I asked if you still felt the same about him.

lemony: ….does it matter, if you’re going to marry him?

beatrice: of course it matters! i’m not – i’m not marrying bertrand to, prove a point or anything, or – say I like him better than you, I – i’m marrying him because I, I love him, but I don’t – that’s not all there is to this.

beatrice: I mean, we didn’t get divorced because of bertrand, that was all on us, but – seeing both of you, sometimes I feel like – maybe – we – maybe we could’ve made it work. not if we had bertrand, but with him. now.

beatrice: and, and that’s a lot, to ask you – I know – it’s a lot to ask both of us, especially after everything, but – do you?

lemony: ….bea.

beatrice: lemony.

lemony: ….i feel that, in the interest of the past eleven years, we should perhaps talk to him before I make a concrete decision about that personal feeling.

beatrice: well, that’s – that’s a wise choice.

they are, quiet, for a while

it’s a lot to think about, you know?? there’s a lot to this

lemony: …….but I think I do.

beatrice: you think you do?

lemony: I think I do.

beatrice: I think I do, too.

there is a little more silence because they’re like ‘!!!!! well that’s SOMETHING REALLY BIG TO THINK ABOUT’ especially because they haven’t like totally committed back to a relationship with each other and there is!! still!!! so!! much!!!! but, they’re thinking about it now, and they’re, sort of floaty-happy because it’s like, wow, wow, this is a possibility, they can

maybe

push it, a little, and see what happens, maybe maybe

lemony: well, you should, you are marrying him.

beatrice: shhh, you are ruining the rhythm.

lemony: I think –

beatrice: you think?

lemony: it’s been known to happen.

beatrice: mmm, I don’t think so

[it’s hard to tell because there’s generally very little concept of outside action/feelings when getting down scenes this way but these few lines are supposed to be v cute and soft and just the tiniest bit flirty]

lemony: trust me, I have had many a thought.

beatrice: well, I think –

lemony: you think, now, do you

beatrice: I do indeed, lemony snicket.

[god. lemony wants to kiss her so fucking bad. beatrice wants to keep teasing him until he does kiss her. they’re very close. he just. smooths her hair behind her ear and takes a step back.]

lemony: I think we should talk to bertrand.

beatrice: yeah. we should. we should probably do that.

MEANWHILE.

I want bertrand to bond with these kids with all my heart so that’s what fucking happens while bea and lemony are dealing with their problems

they play a rousing game of scrabble. it’s usually a game I give the snicket siblings because of their vicious playing styles (which is just based on me and my brother playing scrabble) BUT I love scrabble a lot and I think it’s super cute if bertrand hangs out with violet and klaus and they play board games, it’s distressingly endearing to me, violet trying to sneak in names of inventors on the board and klaus being insistent on following the rules of the game and bertrand trying to come up with a sufficient compromise

bertrand: okay, so, last names are allowed, but only if you can also include the first initial, initialisms by themselves are not allowed, and foreign words and phrases are on a case-by-case basis, providing I can translate it and you’re not trying to put down something inappropriate.

klaus: what about scientific names?? can I put down binomial nomenclature

violet: hey how do you spell binomial

klaus: b-i-n-o-m-i-a-l

violet: oh, how neat.

violet: /puts it down on the scrabble board

klaus: ….

violet: :)

bertrand: it looks like you can put down binomial nomenclature.

bertrand: but yes, I will allow actual nomenclature, klaus.

klaus is deathly quiet for the next few turns until he manages to put down nomenclature. (which I think is achievable, with enough luck.)

klaus: actual. nomenclature.

violet: so that’s how it’s gonna be, huh

bertrand: okay, references to previous conversations are no longer allowed, let’s try this again

eventually they stop playing the damn game and come up with their own wildly specific set of rules for playing scrabble, and bea and lemony come back to a lot of paper and a lot of scrabble tiles and violet and klaus sitting on either side of bertrand on the couch, helping him write this rule list

and bea and lemony want to comment about how they’re not even playing scrabble, but watching bertrand interact with their kids and be so soft and patient with them is the most distressingly heartwarming thing they’ve seen in a long time

they both have the immediate thought of ‘holy fuck I wanna kiss that man,’ which is followed by ‘holy f u c k maybe a relationship between all of us could work’

lemony: bertrand.

bertrand: ?

lemony: could we talk?

there is no camping trip! instead we got NEARBY HOTEL SHENANIGANS and THREE PEOPLE ON A DATE AT A LOCAL FAIR, TRYING TO FEEL THINGS OUT

imagine your average carnival-fair sort of thing with Rides and Games and Absurd Amounts of Cotton Candy and That Super Salty But Still Real Good Popcorn

bertrand and lemony arrive first and bea specifically gets there late so bertrand and lemony can actually talk, because honestly this is the only time I can see in all this that these two would be able to talk to each other uninterrupted

and they all know they’re there for the weirdest date ever but bertrand still feels the need to clear the air

bertrand: lemony, I don’t want you to think that I was waiting your marriage out or anything, I didn’t even know you two weren’t together until last year, and I didn’t even intend to see bea, it just happened on accident –

lemony: bertrand, it’s fine.

lemony: beatrice and I aren’t married anymore, you don’t have to explain anything.

bertrand: ….sometimes I feel like i’ve wanted to explain everything to you, for the past fifteen years.

[bertrand ‘breaking my fucking heart again’ baudelaire…….]

bertrand: that’s – silly, isn’t it.

lemony: no. I don’t think so.

bertrand: I never got the chance to say it. well, actually I don’t think I ever let myself say it, because I had plenty of chances! especially at prom, I could’ve changed everything! but you and bea were so – I wanted you two more than anything else in the whole entire world, but I didn’t want to hurt you two or what we had. I think I did, though.

bertrand: and, and I really shouldn’t blame myself or anyone for these stupid mistakes that happened when we were just kids, because we were just kids!

bertrand: I mean, we’re right here, right now, and i’m – i’m really looking forward to this, lemony.

[lemony, much like me, is momentarily dazzled by how fucking genuine bertrand is]

lemony: so am I.

lemony: ….i kept those candygrams you sent me when we were all in high school because they were remarkably sweet and I treasure them dearly

bertrand: !!

lemony is so nervous and I love him and you know when you get nervous and you just sort of spill weird secrets to people, especially when it’s the person you like???? that’s that

they look at each other for a moment and then start laughing and it’s the kind that starts kind of soft and then they’re just rampantly giggling and being dorks and I love them both so damn much okay

and because they haven’t regularly seen each other in you know fifteen years they spend some time. talking about their lives. there’s a lot of things they don’t know about each other!

lemony and bertrand like make a vague show of trying to win bea some prize and they suck and they stand to the side and talk while bea wins herself a prize and she runs back over to them and just looks so proud of herself, winning this…….thing (it’s very much “i don’t know if it’s a duck or a panda, but I want one.”)

lemony: is it a…….hmmm

bertrand: ….those are cat ears, right

beatrice: what, no, they’re wolf ears

lemony: it has webbed feet, though

bertrand: it’s a platypus! oh, no, not with all those feathers.

lemony: it could easily be a duck, I suppose

beatrice: BUT THE EARS

bertrand: a penguin!

lemony: a grackle

bertrand: a goose!

beatrice: THE E A R S

lemony and bertrand share an obnoxious amount of cotton candy, and honestly it’s the date they all should’ve had in high school, a date that would’ve changed everything, and man, they’re having so much fun and maybe they could do this, lemony has never been so happy and bertrand is just this ball of delight and, it’s really beautiful, and beatrice is for sure thinking that and she’s having such a good time and she’s so happy

but then

she thinks, what if it DIDN’T change everything, what if they all got together in high school and tried to make it work and really fucked each other over, would they have been able to do it?? what really would’ve happened??? and they’re adults now, they’re better people but they have so much more to think about, there is so much more at stake now and beatrice is fucking terrified about what could happen, all of a sudden

and she’s been terrified for years about all the terrible things that could happen to klaus or her or ramona and olivia and even their stupid cat and she’s still trying to hide it so well and she does, she’s happy and creates such a good life for her son but she is so scared and she can’t keep running from it anymore by being impulsive or silly or shouting all the time, she has to face the reality of the situation that she really has to think this one through, what all three of them are going to do about this

she and lemony still have so many problems, and they both know that, they all know that!!! they aren’t going to solve them right away!!! and with bertrand there, maybe it’ll be harder!! maybe it won’t be easier!!! not that bertrand immediately makes things easier, in any universe!!! but especially here!!! you know!!! what if they don’t talk about anything because he’s there??? what if they avoid talking about everything so much in trying to be happy that they irreparably fuck them all over??? it’s been so long since all three of them were together, what if they can’t do this!! what if their kids don’t like them together, what if none of them can get along??? suddenly there are a lot more variables to this, and seeing it happen, bea is struck by everything they’re going to have to fix and all the ways it could go wrong and it’s not good

beatrice: …..what are we doing?

beatrice: and – and what if it doesn’t work out, this time?? what if we all try this and we can’t do it??

bertrand: do you think that little of yourself?

beatrice: no.

beatrice: i’m thinking about, what if I break my kid’s hearts, even worse than I already have? I can’t do that, not to them.

and, they get it. they love each other so much but this story isn’t about just the three of them anymore.

bertrand and bea decide not to get married. and even though they all know they still love each other, lemony and bea have violet and klaus to think of, so they all decide it would be for the best to go their separate ways.

violet and klaus are not happy, by any means. they are not happy to pack up all their stuff and know that nothing is going to work out, and it hurts, a lot, man

klaus, picking up his books: I really respect our parents and their chosen additional life partner but don’t you think they can be a little…..

violet, jamming her toolkit into a suitcase: stupid?

klaus: I was going to say stubborn

klaus: but stupid works too.

so they all say good-bye :( lemony, violet, kit and dewey and bernadette go home. (bernadette’s real upset no one got back together. she hides it well but she just sort of crams herself into her seat on the plane on the trip home and is just super bummed. I love this lil kid.) (I fondly remember when this outline was nowhere near over 20k and was just a short little thing and bernadette’s scenes just monopolized it….)

the thing I love about bea raising klaus is that, and I also feel this for canon too, klaus gets so so much of bea’s anger and short temper

like violet is a lot more calmer in the take no shit category but klaus will, like his mother, flip a table

klaus: mother, that was the most foolish thing you’ve ever done and you know it

beatrice: !

beatrice: don’t you – don’t you use that tone with me, klaus

beatrice: I am your mother

klaus: and you’re just going to let my father and my sister walk away from us???

beatrice: I – it’s more complicated than that!

klaus: how??

beatrice: klaus, would you want me to risk this, everything we have, on the off chance that your father and I could maybe sort out our differences?

klaus: you didn’t seem to have that many differences!

beatrice: there’s a lot of things you don’t know, klaus!

klaus: then tell me! you’re the one who’s always telling me I can do anything, and I just think it seems pretty rich of you to decide that that doesn’t apply to you, or that I don’t get to know everything about the people who are supposed to be my family!

klaus has a point, here, and beatrice realizes that, so she decides IN THAT INSTANT that, okay. fine. it’s time to do something about this and she can do something about this.

SO SHE GOES TO BERTRAND

bertrand: bea, what –

beatrice: I can’t – look, I can’t do this to my kids either, okay, I can’t keep them apart anymore, what – why did I think that was such a good idea in the first place??? so I wouldn’t see lemony?? so I wouldn’t work things out between us, because we were fucking kids when we were together and, and I sacrificed my relationship with my daughter because I was so petty and selfish, and i’m doing it again, bertrand!! i’m letting myself do it again after everything we all talked about because i’m so fucking scared but I – I can’t do this to myself, you know? I want – I want things to work out this time. with all of us. I want to make it work and i’m going to make it work and i’m going to go get my daughter and lemony, and I want you to come with us, if you want to come with us.

klaus, leaning out of the car window and shouting at beatrice and bertrand, who are standing on the steps of bertrand’s place: if I may interject, the plane we intend to catch does leave in half an hour, so you two should maybe hurry up a little

klaus: not to ruin your moment or anything!

bertrand, desperately: I want things to work out, bea, I do. but what if you were right and we can’t –

beatrice: i’m right about a lot of things, bertrand baudelaire, and i’m right about this.

bertrand, nodding and trying not to smile too much: ….okay. okay.

MEANWHILE

violet: ….are you mad at me?

lemony: what – violet, I could never be mad at you.

violet: but I – I went behind your back, and I tricked both of you, and I wasn’t even thinking about what you wanted, it – it was just what I wanted, and that wasn’t okay, I shouldn’t have interfered with you and mother at all, I feel so awful –

lemony: none of what happened was your fault, violet. not at all. it was mine. i’m sorry that I kept so much from you. it was incredibly unfair to you, and to klaus. I should have told you a long time ago.

violet: I never got to ask before, but why did you and mother get divorced?

lemony: ….we were very young, and very impulsive. and, also, incredibly scared. that’s not a good combination when you’re trying to make a life with someone.

violet: you two seemed to get along a little better, now.

lemony: well, eleven years is a lot of time. you get older, and you realize the mistakes you made in your youth could’ve been dealt with a lot more easily than you previously thought. you realize you were….

violet: stubborn?

lemony: stupid.

violet: what made it not work out, this time?

lemony: you also realize there are more important things to think about than yourself and what you want.

violet: !

violet: father, I didn’t want you to –

lemony: it wasn’t your call to make, violet.

violet: but it was yours about whether or not I get to see my brother? you were only thinking about what you wanted, too!

lemony: ….

violet: ….that was rude of me, i’m sorry.

lemony: no – don’t apologize, violet. please.

violet, still very angry but also just sad and concerned about how lemony has, in the intervening time between these two conversations, said very little: I thought bertrand was nice.

lemony: bertrand – bertrand is very nice.

so they get back home.

lemony: what would you like for dinner?

violet: I don’t think i’m all that hungry, father.

lemony: no, neither am I.

and lemony just sort of, wanders into the library with his hands in his pockets, because he’s somehow more miserable than he’s been in quite some time, and he’s expecting to just sit around and stare at his typewriter and not get anything done for the rest of the night or really for the foreseeable future, and the library is filled with so many books and so much stuff but it feels so empty to him now, and lemony himself feels empty and horrible about everything and he just stares at the floor without really seeing anything at all

AND THEN

klaus, sitting in one of the library chairs: father, did you know that the concorde gets you here in half the time?

[I just kept the line. I thought long and hard and could not for the life of me think of any other jazzy lil line.] [although yes sadly the concorde no longer exists]

[hey, if lemony and violet are here, and kit and dewey and bernadette were with them on the plane, who’s driving the bus who let bea and bertrand in the house???? cause in the movie it’s gotta be the grandfather

jacques, who had stopped at lemony’s house hoping that he could catch them before the flight but obviously not catching them, who stayed to water the plants: /exiting the house

beatrice, careening out of a taxi: JACQUES HOLD THE DOOR

jacques: !!!! beatrice?? what are you –

bertrand: we’ll have to tell you later, there’s no time!

jacques: bertrand????

klaus really only has time to wave.

all three of them: /BOLT PAST JACQUES INTO THE HOUSE AND SLAM THE DOOR SHUT, leaving jacques out there in the street

jacques: ……….]

anyway

lemony, STUNNED: klaus?

violet, dashing into the room because she heard her brother: klaus!

klaus: ideally we would’ve figured this out before you left, but when you did, we were not completely happy about it.

lemony, still trying to collect himself: you –

and there’s bea and bertrand, standing there, real as anything! really there!! in his library!!

and lemony walks towards them, because this isn’t a matter of, chasing anyone, it’s all of them coming together like this

beatrice: this is gonna work. the three of us, this is gonna work.

beatrice: what do you think?

and the thing. about lemony. is that what he wants more than anything else in this whole fucking world. is a family. particularly in canon, being separated from (reasonably dead) parents and growing apart from his siblings and losing those connections to people, he so desperately wants something that’s his and his own and that he can keep stable by himself

and I think he still feels that way even in whatever fucking world of an au this is, and of course he wants to be with bea and bertrand and to have klaus and violet because he loves them but he is also massively craving that stability of having his own family and like really having it this time, not fucking it up because he’s young and stupid and just as impulsive as bea

THE POINT IS THIS IS A LOT FOR HIM, OKAY, THIS MEANS SO MUCH, to get this!! second chance at all the things he totally fucked up before, PLUS the loves of his life!!!!

and like!!! there’s bertrand. there’s bertrand!!! standing there and reaching out to take lemony’s hand and lemony takes bea’s and bea takes bertrand’s other one and. the road they had to take to get here wasn’t. the best. all the time. they all made mistakes. some. worse than others. and this isn’t the end, right here, there’s still gonna be things they have to work out. and it’s gonna be okay because there’s beatrice and bertrand and lemony. they’re in the same room and no one’s scared.

lemony: yes.

beatrice: yes???

bertrand: yes?

lemony: yes.

there’s a lot of good hugging, people are kissed, comments are made about chapstick flavors, lots of laughter, violet and klaus are tearing up and thrilled beyond belief, everything is beautiful!!!!!

klaus: I can’t believe –

violet: – we actually did it!

and, of course, beatrice was right. about everything.

the following amount of time is filled with –

-lots of arguments.

-mostly between bea and lemony.

-although bertrand has his fair share of arguments with both of them.

-violet and klaus don’t speak to each other for two weeks under the pretense of disagreeing about a book’s theme but really because they’re not sure how to act around each other now that they’re both there, they’ve lived their whole lives as only children and this is what they wanted but it’s also something they didn’t think about having to adjust to

-there’s also this immediate reluctance to listen to anything bea and lemony tell them because they have to get used to parents now, too

-parents who aren’t currently super functioning as parents

-there’s a lot of second-guessing people’s intentions

-why did you say that?? the hell does that eyebrow mean???? you picked that song for a REASON and fuck you for that!!!! you don’t trust me to drive, do you???? I KNOW HOW TO MAKE A SANDWICH FOR MY CHILD THANK YOU VERY MUCH

-that sort of thing.

-in varying shades of seriousness.

-i know it sounds mostly like just bea screaming there but trust me the sentiment is shared by all of them in various ways and actions

-they don’t do it in front of violet and klaus though

-NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO LIVE NOW, do they stay in england or all go to california??? do they go somewhere else???????? what even (I don’t even know)

-(they probably do stay in england though. that’s what I was picturing while writing this.)

-violet and klaus do adjust to no longer being only children and realizing they have someone their age to rely on now who understands them

-they make blanket forts where violet designs these stands that will hold books up and periodically turn the page so they can lay on their backs and read and not worry about moving

-klaus reads up on inventors so he and violet can talk about them

-they argue with bea and lemony a little about weird things because violet and klaus are trying to figure out where they are with their parents now and how they’re supposed to act and bea and lemony are trying to figure out how to coordinate parenting while wanting to kill each other

-they institute family game night and try to best each other in cards or scrabble because they can handle that

-bertrand, of course, is in a very awkward position at this time

-like he’s around but he can’t take sides because that’s Weird and he’s not that kind of person anyway, and he wants to be there but he doesn’t quite know as what

-like, he was gonna marry bea!! and now he’s not. and he loves lemony!!! but he can’t do anything about it because bea and lemony have problems to work out!!! and bertrand loves both of them!! and they love him!!! they know they do!! he knows they do!!!!! but everything is very uncomfortable!!!

-like, bertrand needs to be on equal footing in this relationship too!

-he hangs out with dewey a lot and they become Poetry Buds again

-he participates in family game night

-bea and lemony are worried that bertrand is only going to see himself as like a peacemaker between them when he isn’t because he never has been and realizing that bertrand is a huge official permanent part of their lives now is a big thing for them

-hi, my name’s lulu and writing the navigation of relationships is hard!!!! it’s so fucking hard

-the three of them watch movies wednesday nights – bertrand picks the movies and he picks these really sweet romantic ones (cause that’s just the kind of movies he likes!!!) and it’s unbearably great

-they mean to watch the thin man movies (the ones with nick charles aka william powell aka the guy lemony and bea would both fuck if they had had the opportunity) over a series of weeks but wind up marathoning all six of them one night (and it takes all night)

-none of them can function the next day

-bertrand: I get it. i’d do it with nick charles, too.

-beatrice sings herself hoarse during a play rehearsal and can’t talk for a week

-she can’t sleep one night and lemony finds her in the kitchen and makes them both tea and they salute each other with the mugs

-bertrand takes up writing limericks and leaves them around the house and lemony finds one in the shower and slips from laughing so hard

-bertrand, in the hospital: I could’ve killed you with poetry

lemony: I mean, all things considered, it’s not the worst way to go. it’s better than next to a pile of books I was meaning to read, which I always thought to be much more likely. slipping in the shower because of a charming limerick about shoes? it’s not all that bad.

bertrand: I don’t know whether to take the compliment or be worried about how you’ve considered how you’re likely to die. please don’t die.

-beatrice shows up at the hospital and throws the stuffed animal from carnival night at lemony

lemony: oh, you didn’t have to give me your….ah….

bertrand: ….moose? have we guessed moose?

beatrice: the ears……….

-things get, better

-they take turns picking up the kids from school

-some kid: gee violet how come your mom lets you have two dads

violet: just lucky, I guess

-lemony helps beatrice rehearse her lines and they straight-up make out for an hour instead

-lemony and bertrand make dessert once a week and routinely end up covered in flour

-there is a household debate on ‘what species is the stuffed animal’ and ‘what are we going to name it,’ moderated by kit

-violet puts on a one-woman play that she and klaus wrote about hedy lamarr for her school’s talent show and receives a standing ovation

-lemony and bea and bertrand are in the front row and beatrice is full-on sobbing during the standing ovation

-they get bertrand a new record player for his birthday and all three of them dance to his records the whole night

-yes they ARE all falling in love with each other all over again it is very important to me that they’re all on the same page when they do that

-violet and klaus make bertrand a ‘best additional parent’ mug because they don’t quite know what to call him (they haven’t figured it out yet), like violet makes him a fucking mug in her glassblowing class (you ever seen someone glassblow a mug??? it’s great.) and klaus does this beautiful calligraphy label for it

-bertrand cries immediately, for the next hour of his life, and just carries it around because he doesn’t know where to put it

-beatrice: aww, that was so sweet of you two, to make – does that say ‘additional parent’

lemony: I believe it says ‘additional parent.’

violet: we did also consider ‘greatest poet’ but that had less of the feeling we wanted.

klaus: we do realize that ‘best’ is truly an unquantifiable concept, because there’s no one out there ranking parents, but we thought it was the most fitting.

it’s after that that they all decide to get married.

later on, sunny is born!! and she’s very upset she missed out on all these shenanigans.

[jacques comes back to find so many people in his brother’s house.

kit: well jacques, you really should be home more

lemony: yes, find a nice person

lemony: …...or two

kit: settle down, stop looking so surprised.

lemony: kit your daughter just leapt off the bookshelf and tackled my husband

kit: and am I surprised? no.]

[also jacques does not buy his sister a nice new set of engraved fountain pens.

kit: so did you get me a souvenir or not, jacques

jacques: souvenir? I thought you said

kit: JACQUES WE ARE ADULTS DON’T YOU DARE BEETHOVEN ME

jacques: edward lear

jacques: here’s this book of delightful nonsense poetry.

kit: how could you]

[while bea is pregnant with sunny –

bertrand: what about sunny?

lemony: bertrand baudelaire.

lemony: you come into my house.

lemony: you marry my wife.

beatrice, across the room: I married both of you???

lemony: and you have the audacity.

lemony: to suggest we name our daughter after our high school drama teacher.

bertrand: okay but your reaction isn’t necessarily a no]

[gewoon-ellianna]

Let’s talk about JTV...

Yes, you read this correctly: I have returned from my Tumblr slumber to submit my review about the final season of a show I have loved and enjoyed for many seasons: Jane The Virgin.

***OBVIOUSLY THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS POST SO MAKE SURE YOU’RE READY TO FACE THE CONSEQUENCES***

Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend season 4 was all that either, but at least it still make some sense to me and didn’t anger me to the core. Honestly my face the entire season:

Ever since I’ve watched it - which is almost around a year ago - I still can’t shake off the anger this show has brought me to. While I was watching the series I’ve made a lot of frustrated selfies and notes I later shared with @fmrcheerios​ and I will now share with you all. So let’s begin...

1. When Michael returned we didn’t even got to see a great reunion between him and Rogelio. I mean WHAT?! They used to be the Best Buddies, but even when Michael got his memories back the showmakers didn’t even include a scene like that. Their friendship was one of the cutest in the show and now we’re just going to pretend that never really happened? OKAY.

2. After Michael came back in Jane’s life and she OBVIOUSLY had to figure things out and take her time, Rafael immediately fell back into his old habits. Good way of showing you had like what? 0% character development? Now I know I’m a little bias here since I used to be a huuuuge Team Michael fan, but even since Michael died and Jane and Rafael slowly fell in love again, I could definitely see them being happy and getting married. HOWEVER... after this set back and shocking life event, Rafael reminded me why I was never a member of his team: his absolute horrible behavior. Well done mate, up top!

3. Was Mateo even in this season...? I felt like Jane and Rafael only ever bothered about Mateo when he got in trouble/things were not doing so well. I understand that you have to make choices which scenes you are going to show, but in the last couple seasons Mateo was a very important character. Where he at??? Something I also didn’t get was all the drama about his diagnose? Maybe it’s because I’m not a mother, but I wouldn’t actually cry over such a thing I believe...

4. Alba and Jorge... I mean.........

5. A very important note that I thought I would never say: Michael should have stayed away. His character is not only ruined now that he returned to the show - honestly, I truly dislike his character now - but the only reason they brought Michael back was to tear open old wounds and create a poorly attempt at the old love triangle business seasons 1-3 was based upon. Back then it was a good storyline, but now it just felt stupid, unnecessary and mostly painful. Michael used to be my favorite character in the show, but after the final season I’m not even sure if I would ever want to rewatch JTV again.

6. Something I found quite strange was the absence of Xo and Alba trying to help Jane make her decision between Michael of Rafael. I’m sorry, but didn’t these two legends helped you get through every struggle in life? Guess they were as done with this crap as I was...

7. Around episode 8 it became quite clear how important Michael’s return was: surprise, it wasn’t. They could’ve started the season from this point and no one would have bat an eye about the stupid Michael return plot. It seriously broke my heart to see them not choosing each other this time around and Michael walking away...

8. GOOGLE PRODUCT PLACEMENT ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! In episode 9 suddenly all the new Google Phones weren’t here to stay after all? HMKAY...

9. As much as I love LGBTQIA+ representation, I didn’t care a single bit about Petra and JR. It felt like a cheap move to make Petra’s character a little bit more interesting - which wow I didn’t know you could USE LGBTQIA+ to boost up someone’s personality??? I didn’t like it, I didn’t care about them, ROISA FOREVER BABY!!!

10. Talking about Roisa: I was so freaking done seeing Luisa being used like this again... She was finally happy, away from the drama, living her life and she only got used by the other characters to get to Rose... 

11. I love musicals. I really do. IF IT’S MEANT TO BE A MUSICAL SERIES/FILM. Can the CW honestly STOP making these awkward stupid episodes in non-musical series?! Gossip Girl, Once Upon A Time, Riverdale, Sabrina... YOU. HAVE. DONE. ENOUGH.

12. Something I found hilarious was the fact that the car crash scene wasn’t even filmed like ehm isn’t the whole purpose of a series that you like... I don’t know... SHOW IT? I guess the product placement money didn’t come through...

13. Something I mostly don’t enjoy about Jane x Rafael is the constant restrictions and fear she seems to have around him. Everything SHE does is wrong, SHE should apologize, SHE is the problem meanwhile Rafael is supposed to be the perfect man? Sis what? Call me old fashioned, but to keep a healthy relationship both parties are required to WORK for it. Right now, Jane and Rafael almost seem to become the next Jorge and Alba... No thanks honey.

14. Around episodes 12-13 you could feel the RUSH in the plot. I haven’t really took the time to investigate the reasons behind this, but rushing a show towards the final ending seems to be the story of our lives these days... I get that you have to make certain choices, but the first episode with the return of Michael were so insignificant that I believe it would’ve been better to only keep around 2-3 episode in about that stupid hassle and leave it at that. Period.

15. I cried so hard of laughing about Rose her escape scene. Even though I get the idea and it was really cool, the way they filmed it was probably one of the most messy scenes I have ever seen in TV history. On top of that: wasn’t Jane like terrified of Rose and now that she escaped I don’t see her hiding/scared/staying inside? Guess she grew over her fears, good for her!

16. Aaaaand there’s Michael again. And he’s with Charlie. And she’s pregnant. And Rafael suddenly doesn’t think Michael is competition anymore. Wow. Great. What a story people...

17. Besides the wedding being an ABSOLUTE MESS, something I found especially funny was the fact that Rafael didn’t even give a speech because “he had to cry so intensely”. Sure, let’s not pretend you were in a hurry, didn’t get the time to write at least a decent script, had no idea what Rafael would write to Jane and how to top MICHAEL’S speech at Jane’s and Michael wedding because that was freaking perfect... Writers, I’m looking at you! 

OKAY, I had many more complaints to make but this post is already way too long for any regular JTV fan to read I think hahaha. Besides: it’s been quite a while since I’ve watched the show and I’m not ready to watch it any time soon again... If you did make it all the way to the end of this post: please let me know what you thought of the final season. I’m currently a Team NOBODY because both Michael and Rafael were dicks in the last season and Jane was just trying to get through this while obviously being very emotional. Let me know if you would be interested in how I would’ve wanted the show to end and I might post about this in my next Tumblr Talk. 

Thanks for reading, talk to you later. xxx

[matkomakto]

How was it to be a volunteer in Italy?

In this post I want to describe my experience as an AIESEC volunteer in Bologna (I posted a lot during this period on my Instagram). My project was related to SDG4, or in other words Quality Education. The name of my NGO is EduChange. What I did in practice was teaching English and giving presentations about Poland and Polish culture to Italian children at the age of 9-10 (and once 14, but that’s a different story). I will put a line now, so that if you’re not interested you won’t have to scroll like crazy.

ARRIVAL

I don’t want to describe the whole procedure of applying, it’s very easy and nothing really happens. Before you leave you have two meetings - one in your local AIESEC and the other via Internet with the one you’re going to. My journey starts on January, 17th. In the morning I entered a bus to Kraków, from where I departed at 4pm to Venice, and then to Bologna. Venice welcomed me with rain (I got a little cold because of that, but Gripex saved my life once again) and so did Bologna. The whole journey took 26 hours (yes, I went by bus and you can’t judge me). Somewhere on my way my first host-mum, Mary, messaged me wishing me a good journey and asking if I was safe (and in this sentence you have everything about this woman - always kind and caring <3). A few hours later, my other host-mum, Chiara, who was supposed to take me from the station messaged me too. At the station I was welcomed by Chiara and Matilde, one of my new sisters (in general, now I have 3 sisters and 1 brother). In the car I met Davide, dad, and Carlotta, my other sister (or daughter, as some people would say). After a short conversation, I realised we were in the house of Mary, where I was about to spend next 3 weeks of my life. I was tired af, but it’s understandable, I think. I messaged my buddy, Marie Claire (oh, haven’t told you about her — a buddy is a person from bolognese AIESEC, who takes care of you, a kind of nanny I’d say) and my manager, Sofia. And then I had dinner and went to sleep. I was sleeping from 14.00 till 11.00 on Sunday. I had no idea what would happen next.

FERRARA

I woke up when nobody was at home. It was a bit creepy tbh. On the table I found a note “We’ll be home at 12, eat anything you want” (I didn’t, my stomach was still acting as if I were in the bus). When the whole family, it means — Mary, Andrea, Athina and Achille, came back, they told me “We’re going to Ferrara”. I thought “What is Ferrara?”. It’s a beautiful town near Bologna, where we spent an amazing afternoon. I didn’t know anything about this town, and even if Mary and Andrea tried their best as guides, I spent a whole evening using Google Maps to identify objects I had seen. Among them were the Cathedral, Palazzo Muncipale, Castello Estense, Palazzo dei Diamanti and Via delle Volte. I ate a delicious cake, which name I don’t remember, filled with Nutella. Achille kept complaining “Maddalena’s cake is the best!” (they all  ok, almost all called me Maddalena, which is Italian version of Magdalena). In the evening we played all three in the living room and I was texted by Serena, an English teacher from one schools I was going to teach in, also one of my best bolognese friends. With her message I became both excited and anxious about the next day.

FIRST DAY(S)

All the anxiety disappeared when I entered the first school. The children were so lovely and cheerful that I fell in love with them (in a good meaning ofc) instantly. On the first lesson I was just sitting and doing nothing. Then, Serena came, and I was helping her to answer children’s questions during a final test. Believe me, there were hundreds of them. I came home tired, but happy. And finally I became hungry and ate everything I was offered (I always have a problem with eating far from home). The next day meant another school. It was less pleasant as a building, as Mary described it - it looked more like a hospital. Nevertheless, both the teachers and the students again were pure love. In the canteen I sat with 5 boys, who were supposed to make an interview with me. I felt as if I had been watching Familiada live. Then, one of the teachers came to our table hugging one boy saying “Ask him as often as you can. He’s my son”. Lovely, isn’t it? XD In the next class two girls came to me, giving me a drawing (I have it still in my diary). When I asked in Italian if it was for me, I heard a loud, full of shock “LEI CAPISCEEEEEEEEE”. One of the funniest things during these first days is that nobody knew I spoke Italian, and seeing their faces as they discovered it was a very entertaining activity. Wednesday was my day out, I’ll describe it later. On Thursday and on Friday I went to the third school. I ended up in Athina’s class and believe me, it’s really hard to be in one class with your sibling. Fun fact, both English teachers in that school are Rosannas, which confused me a bit these days.

DISCOVERING BOLOGNA

Finally, on my free Wednesday I got an opportunity to go to the centre. I remember my heartbeat when the bus no.13 entered the centre, it was fulfilling of a dream I made as a 13-year-old girl. I walked through Via d’Azeglio and found myself in Piazza Maggiore. Do you remember that scene from Home Alone, where Kevin realises he’s home alone and walks along screaming as crazy? It was me at the moment (but I screamed internally, don’t be scared). I entered Basilica (which I loved and I came back there several times, even twice on the same day). When I went out, I met Marie Claire. She was my guide that day, we had a great time as she showed me Bologna and its 6 secrets (google it). Later I was supposed to go on an AIESEC meeting (there were 2 meetings and Global Village). I continued my trip around city centre from Saturday till Monday, even if the weather wasn’t as great as on Wednesday. Also, on Saturday we spent a few hours “occupando Italia in un Irish pub” with other volunteers. On that day I discovered KIKO Milano, which is now my #1 makeup brand, I’m addicted to it, sorry if I’m a disappointment.

WEEK #2

I was about to write “Nothing interesting really happened”. But damn, I survived a power shortcut in one of the schools, I ate a true Italian pizza and gelato for the first time, I prepared 120 minutes of lesson in 5 minutes because the teacher was absent, I got engaged into “International Mother Tongue Day” organised by one of my schools, I bought a pair of beautiful shoes, I started to enjoy my new social life (volunteers, ily’all and miss y’all <3) and I managed to organise my first trip completely on my own. If that’s nothing then I don’t know what it is. Oh yes, my famous trips, or as I heard from some people “you have too much money”. Let’s remember the first one.

ROME

No matter how hard I try to overcome it, the very first thing I remember about Rome is the pain in my feet. If you’re ever in Rome, please children, don’t go there in brand-new shoes and try not to walk 21,5 km in a single day. As a true Polish, I will start with complaining. I waited 1,5h for a bus and it didn’t have a machine to buy tickets, as they have in Bologna (Bologna-Rome 1:0). On Saturday, despite not the best weather, I made a beautiful trip from Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore, through Colloseum, Forum Romanum, Altare della Patria, Palazzo Colonna, Fontanna di Trevi, Piazza Navona, Castel Sant’Angelo to the Vatican City and its museum (I have an illegal photo from Sistine Chapel, but shh). My friends volunteers, who also were in Rome, wanted me to go with them to Trastevere, but believe me, I was dying. The next day I did the check out before 8am and I enjoyed empty Rome on Sunday morning, it was amazing. I visited Trinità dei Monti. It was almost empty, @turbinis​ told me I was very lucky, so I will make you see how my luck looks like:

INDEED.IT.WAS.EMPTY.AND.ONE.HOUR.LATER.I.CAME.BACK.THERE.AND.IT.WAS.FULL.OF.PEOPLE.

WEEK #3

In one class there was a Polish boy. Whenever I saw him, he was yelling “CZEEEŚĆ” and whenever I told something about Poland all the children looked at him in the way “Do you confirm what she’s saying?” This week also brought me two great memories with my bro, Achille. He was sick and out of school and this week he was supposed to be back. He was a bit depressed and thought he would have to study all night. Oh, I forgot about the deep existential question he asked me two weeks before: “Have you ever loved someone on this Earth?”. Deep, you must admit. Another time, he was watching cartoons. When his cartoon ended, they started a cartoon for younger kids. He got offended, switched off the tv and took off the battery from the remote control, because “he won’t watch things for babies”. I remember that one day I became extremely hungry and the next day I went to Café Zamboni (coming back from Pinacoteca, which was amazing btw) and ate so much, that I could barely walk XD. I started realising that I want to go to Erasmus here. It was also a week of Sanremo, I remember with laugh how Athina tried to show her dad the performance of Achille Lauro and poor babbo was running away from her and her phone (I was team Gabbani, although now, when I’m writing this, I hear a loud “FAAAAAI RUMOOORE QUIIIII”). On Friday I got compliments from Rosanna and Rosanna for being a good teacher. They really liked how I had substituted Rosanna#1 the week before. Having my wings grown, I started my next trip, using Frecciarossa for the first time.

NAPLES

Although you may not believe it, it was the first time I had seen the sea. Moreover, I saw it for the first time in the same place as did Elena Greco in “L’amica geniale”, but I realised it a few weeks later. Getting out of the hostel, I went down Via Toledo, Galleria Umberto I, Castel Nuovo to Piazza del Plebiscito. I swear, I will fight anyone who says that Naples is dirty/ugly/both. Also, everyone was telling me about thieves, but somehow I didn’t get stolen. After I finished a gelato on Piazza, I went to the sea. It was one of the most beautiful feelings I’ve ever experienced. I thought “Screw all the sightseeing, you will do it tomorrow. Enjoy the sea today”, and so I did. I followed Lungomare all the time, passing along Castel dell’Ovo to the Mappatella beach. As it was the first time I saw the sea, the beach was also a whole new experience. Kids, never ever go to the beach in winter shoes, did you know? Because I didn’t. Probably I would watch a sunset there, but I got a bit scared with all those theft-stories and I was in the hostel before it got dark (I watched the sunset on Piazza del Plebiscito though). On Sunday I went from Santa Maria del Carmine, via Via San Biagio dei Librai and Via dei Tribunali to the Cathedral, Piazza Nazionale and train station. I arrived in Bologna at 11pm tired, but happy.

WEEK #4

In the middle of my stay, I moved to my second host family. At the beginning it was a bit weird (just like every time you change your life 180°). Everything changed the next evening, when I stayed home alone with my sisters and their nanny. We had a great time playing games and joking. Although I’m still ashamed that I lose in Mario, which was the game of MY childhood :C. That week another AIESEC meeting took place. Even two meetings, because on February, 14th there was a Global Village. It was a great event, even if I couldn’t enjoy it till the end, because the next day I had to wake up early. For the train. Btw, it was a Valentine’s Day, wasn’t it? I received some sweet cards from my students and it made my heart melt. After school we met with Marie Claire, who showed me something that now I miss a lot - tigelle.

FLORENCE

I woke up with a strong “oh shit” feeling. But as I realised I’m going to Florence, I got up and got ready in 20 minutes. Everyone was still sleeping, though I woke up Chiara when I tried to open the door. It was a cursed day for trains, I think. The train to Florence had too few wagons (I was assigned #9, but there were only 7, though they let me in) and the train from Florence was 40min delayed (I got into precisely on time I should get off in Bologna). I spent a wonderful day, mostly contemplating Il Duomo. Seriously, I took 42 photos of it, which makes almost a half of all photos taken in Florence. I can’t resist to put here at least one:

When I arrived to Ponte Vecchio, I saw a beautiful exhibition of jewelry. Really, it was so beautiful, that I couldn’t stop watching it. I even took a photo of it. As I started to continue my trip I said to myself “Magdalena, you will regret it till the end of your life!” So I came back and bought one bracelet. For 130€. Do I regret it? No. Would I regret if I hadn’t bought it? Yes. I will even show it to you.

One of the most important highlights is the visit to Capelle Medicee - if you ever go to Florence, go there, it costs only 2€ if you’re below 25 (or 26 idk). I enjoyed an amazing view from Giardini Boboli, saw another Neptun Fountain (like, Italians, aren’t you done with them yet???) and took a rest in front of Santa Croce. As a nice finish, I watched the sunset by the Cathedral.

WEEK #5

That Sunday (yes, now I start with Sunday, why not) Chiara woke me up early in the morning and we went to Matilde’s training (she plays rugby and btw Athina plays tennis and Carlotta does skating, I’m really proud of them). After the match (Matilde’s team won ofc) we went to Chiara’s parents. Oh my, I had never thought that people who had never seen me before would treat me as if I were their granddaughter, because that’s what I felt. I don’t remember if I ever had such a dinner, in such an atmosphere. I miss nonna’s tortellini, no one will ever prepare me better ones. In the evening, we played Dixit (a bit of Katowice flashback), the best game ever and don’t even try to say something different. Monday and Tuesday were the days of saying goodbye, since next week these days were supposed to be free. On Wednesday I spent a nice afternoon/evening with Heloísa, my Brasilian friend. We both didn’t know then that we will miss going out so much. On Thursday and on Friday I was a bit sick, I don’t know whether it was just a cold, a beginning of flu or covid-19, which everyone believes me to have had. Nevermind, on Saturday I was completely well.

SAN LUCA

San Luca is a sanctuary located on a hill near Bologna. You can go there on foot, through 666 “portici”. So did I with my host-mom Chiara and Carlotta. It was a beautiful, sunny day. I remember Carlotta running fast up the stairs and being tired when we went down. My sister has a big, pure heart. She gave her chocolate to a homeless man. Also, on that day she became my daughter. At least for the woman in the souvenir shop. (If you ask about Matilde, she was on a soccer game with her dad)

WEEK #6 HOW IT ALL COLLAPSED

Here, I should describe my last week in Italy. But I won’t.

It all started on Sunday morning. I had bought train tickets to Venice and Rimini a few days before. Chiara said “Do you know, there are more and more cases of coronavirus in Venice, in the evening there will be an official communicate. Consider not going there tomorrow”. All I said was “Okay.”. But really, I had no fear of this virus, I even thought I would take advantage of it, because panic means it will be less crowded, no? In the afternoon I went to the centre. In Piazza Maggiore, Via dell’Indipendenza and near the Two Towers people were celebrating the end of the carnival. As I don’t like crowded spaces, I went for a walk near Via San Vitale and Strada Maggiore. As the sun started to set, I decided to go back home. I received a message from AIESEC members that all schools in Emilia Romagna are closed. “A whole free week, cool” I thought. But as the new messages appeared I realised, that there would be no Venice tomorrow. They wrote “Please, don’t travel”. But then it was not my problem. I wanted to get into a bus, but somehow all the bus stops were empty. I had to go back on foot. Have I mentioned that I lived about 5 km from the centre? So, it was a long walk. As I walked, I tried to think what I would do for a whole week as probably the girls will go to grandparents’ and Chiara and Davide have their works. With Chiara we made a decision, I have to go back to Poland. We contacted a few members, about an hour later I had new bus tickets on my phone. We went to a supermarket, it was as if a war was coming. 5 minutes before closing the shop was full of people. And empty on shelves a few minutes later. At 10pm we drove to grandparents to leave the girls there. It was one of the hardest farewells in my life. You can ask why, they are not even your family. Maybe because I remember Carlotta’s words, when they both occupied the whole sofa and I asked “Oh, there’s no longer place for me, is there?” she answered “There will always be a place for you here”. Maybe because I remember Matilde’s head on my shoulder when we were on the way. Maybe because I remember how grandma treated me as her real granddaughter giving me some food and her confitures to Poland. Maybe because all these people showed me more familiar love and affection in these 5 weeks than I received from my real family. Maybe because they still text me asking how I’m doing. Maybe.

I stayed awake till 3am, making my suitcase and handbags. On Monday I went to school, which was closed, to make a closing meeting and to say goodbye to my first host-family. I went for a last coffee and pizza to my favourite restaurant nearby and came back home. I watched tv all the afternoon and had a farewell-pizza as a supper (2 pizzas in a day, very healthy, Magdalena). On Tuesday at 6am I was in a bus heading to Prague and then to Kraków. Instead of watching the sea in Rimini, I was watching some fields somewhere between Kraków and my town.

To make a happy end, it was the time of my life, I’d write something better here but it’s almost 1:30am when I write this, so sorry :C

[emma-nation]

Till Death Do Us Part - KamilahxMC Fanfiction

Summary: Kamilah’s POV after the events of Chapter 16.

Genre: Angst. A lot of angst.

Rating: T (Warning: suicide attempt and spoilers of Book 2 finale)

KamilahxMC Tag List: @iam-the-fuckin-queen, @annabellewerecorgi, @voltos9, @scorpistraub, @leavemeandmyshipsalone, @jen825, @andreear17, @spacecarrousel, @justejuste727, @aureliaxj, @graceschoices, @sleeping-with-her06, @supersphynxsworld, @gavryllo, @galaxyside-0, @msuhailey, @zoe6111, @ptxgirwaffles, @tigerbryn11, @shanuuh, @ilovetaylor13m, @fal-carrington, @honorablebicycle, @ilovekamilahsayeed, @begging-for-kamilah, @kennaxval

Notes:

- One of the possibilities I thought for Book 2 ending. What if the LIs really believe MC died and she became a Vampire by herself?

- Next chapters of Bloodline and In My Veins will be posted in the following days, when I recover from this ending.

“And I love you,” Kamilah said, tears streaming down her face.

She hadn’t cried in a long time. Possibly centuries. Until now, no pain was strong enough to trigger such a reaction from her.

“I love you!” She raised her voice. “Are you listening, Amy? I love you! Say it. Tell me you’re listening, please…”

But there was so answer. Only absolute silence. A silence Kamilah was used to. The silence of death. Followed by sobs coming from Lily and the sounds of Jax punching the ground.

“Kamilah,” Adrian placed his hand on her shoulder. “She’s… Amy’s gone.”

Amy is gone. It was like time and space had stopped. Her heart started beating in an unusual rhythm. Though Vampires couldn’t feel sickness, Kamilah felt she was about to throw up. She looked down at her hands and her clothes. Amy’s blood had soaked her entire suit and shoes.

“She’s not… She can’t be…"

In an useless act of hope, Kamilah teared her own wrist with one of her daggers, letting her own blood flow inside Amy’s mouth.

"Drink it, Amy. You’re going to be okay. Now Gaius is gone, thanks to you, I’ll finally live… live with you by my side. Remember?”

Minutes passed. There wasn’t a single sign life would return to Amy’s body. There was no pulse. No breathing. Her skin was pale and cold.

“Amy…” she stroked the girl’s soft hair again. “You promised me. You promised we’d never be apart again. You promised you were going to live.”

“Kamilah…” Adrian, who was now crying too, uselessly tried to push her away from Amy’s lifeless body.

Kamilah tried to stood up, only to fall on her knees again. She had no strength. She felt all her forces had been completely drained. The air wouldn’t enter her lungs and she had no control over her body.

The next thing she knows was that she was standing in front of the cursed tree, generated by Gaius’ death. She stabbed it repeatedly with both of her daggers.

“This is your fault! This is all your fucking fault! You took her from me… Like you took everything else!”

The blood from the tree spilled on her face. On her body. On the museum’s floor. On the people around her.

“I’m so sorry,” were the last words she heard, before Adrian snapped her neck, leaving her unconscious.

———

“It was a nightmare,” Kamilah repeated to herself in the morning, before opening her eyes. Nightmares were always recurring in her sleep, either about Lysimachus’ death or the terrible things she had done in the past. This time though, it was real. She was still wearing the clothes from the previous night. The same suit, covered with Amy’s blood.

Even after forcing herself to take a shower, she still smelled like death. The scene of her lover dying in her arms repeated over and over again in front of her eyes.

“I don’t…  want to leave you…”

Amy’s last words echoed in every corner of her apartment.

Kamilah attempted to run to her living room, only to be face to face with the Ancient Scarab Adrian gifted her. The reminder of the first time she laid her eyes on that stunningly gorgeous young woman.

“The scarab is a symbol of rebirth, if I’m recalling my college class correctly?”

It was her fault. She failed to protect Amy and she knew it. She was so fragile as any other mortal. She had no chances against Gaius.

If only she had forced her to stay with Serafine, or even locked inside that mall… she still could be alive. They’d be dead, but it wouldn’t matter. Being dead would be less painful. Less torturing.

In an act of anger, Kamilah slammed her fists against the glass display. The ancient artifact fell right in front of her feet. Holding it fondly in her hands, she whispered to herself, while tears began to fall again.

“I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t say it before, when I had so many chances… But I do…”

———-

The days passed quickly. Kamilah refused to attend the funeral, or receive any calls from the rest of the group. She didn’t want to be comforted, there was nothing that could comfort her, except maybe for alcohol. Only alcohol would dull her pain.

She started to analyze every possible city where she had an office, she started planning where she should move to. Tokyo, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Toronto… Anywhere she wouldn’t find evidences of Amy on everything she looked at.

Amy’s presence lingered in her apartment, her office, her rooftop… and also at Adrian’s company, at the Central Park and even at that lame Karaoke bar.

Kamilah couldn’t just pick a location. Maybe more alcohol would help. Except that, in only five days, she managed to consume all the alcohol she had stocked.

She rolled her eyes and wore the very first outfit she could find in her closet. Who cared about looking good? There was nobody else to compliment her anymore. Who cared about that suit collection? She had wasted so much time in that stupid company. Time she could have spent with Amy. Lost time.

In the half-destroyed city, she walked to one of the few bars that was already working and sat down, ordering drink after drink. She didn’t even notice the hours passing… all her eyes would see were the happy couples, walking hand in hand… the people smiling and having something to celebrate…

She had nothing. Absolutely nothing. Gaius took everything from her.

“One more bottle, please,” Kamilah ordered.

“Miss, we’re closing,” the bartender answered. “Besides, you’ve had way too much.”

Kamilah looked at him with the nastiest scowl and opened her wallet.

“I can pay,” she threw a considerable amount of money at the counter.

“ASSHOLES!” She yelled as the security guards dragged her out of the bar. Though she had more than enough strength to fight back, she didn’t feel like it. She felt completely weak.

It was almost morning and she had nowhere to go. Nowhere that would make her feel any less empty and lonely. Kamilah walked, walked until she reached that familiar building. The building she spent multiple nights for the last six months… Amy’s building.

She broke down through one of the windows and lay on the bedroom’s floor, holding one of Amy’s shirts. At least there, she still could feel her scent. She could feel closer to Amy somehow.

“Amy…” she held the shirt closer to her body, “I miss you.”

———-

In the morning, once again Kamilah woke up, hoping for a nightmare, but she was still trapped in that cruel reality. A reality without Amy. A meaningless reality.

She went to the girl’s desk, looking at her pictures and that foolish, immature, decoration. A hint of a smile appeared in the corners of her mouth.

Wearing Amy’s shirt, she went to that living room. While she had coffee, she easily beat all the levels of that childish music game. It was like she still could hear Amy’s laugh somewhere, everytime she got a perfect score.

Kamilah put the guitar joystick away and laughed at herself. She was acting like a child, a spoiled child that was being denied her favorite toy. When Lysimachus or even her Italian lover died, she had no time for that. Her grief was based on revenge, what helped her to keep her mind busy. This time though, she had no one to plot a revenge against. For the first time in her life she was completely free, and without no one to share that freedom with.

She went to Amy’s bedroom to say goodbye one last time. Her family would probably be coming to pick up her belongings anytime soon. Kamilah thought should take at least something to remind her of the woman she loved the most. That remarkable, optimistic and cheeky human being. She started to look for something meaningful, something Amy would want her to have, when in one of her drawers, she found a diary.

It contained pictures and reports of her first days living in New York, her moments with Lily and her favorite songs’ lyrics. But then, her writing began to change, starting by that March 30 when she started working at Raines Corporation. Most of her entries, that became rare between the period of the Awakening Ball and the battle against Adam Vega, mentioned Kamilah. How she enjoyed her company and being close to her.

Amy reported everything later, when she had time, their first kiss, the first time they made love, how Kamilah started to slowly open up to her and act soft. Each one of their encounters was fondly described in those pages, ending on the day all the chaos started. The last entry described Amy’s nightmare, about a bloody tree and a mysterious woman. Deep down she was afraid, as if she knew what destiny was holding for her. Cuddling with Kamilah made her feel safe that night.

“I love her. Today I realized I love Kamilah Sayeed. Like crazy.”

Kamilah took the diary with her and before leaving the apartment, she softly told Amy:

“Don’t worry, Amy. We’ll be together soon.”

———-

2063 years was too much, even for a vampire. Kamilah Sayeed fought in wars, built her own empire called Ahmanet Financial, loved and lost countless times and accomplished things no mortal would ever accomplish. She lived a complete existence.

Now it was time to end this.

For the first time since she bought that luxurious penthouse, she opened her bedroom curtains and windows. She lay on the bed and waited. Soon the rays of morning would invade the room and consume her. Turn her into ashes.

On the other side they’d be waiting for her. Lysimachus, her parents, Amy. It became more pleasant to imagine death, than imagine a life without the one person who made her days brighter. She was finally ready to end that long life. One that should be long gone.

10 minutes. Her skin started to burn. Yet, the pain was not so intense as the pain she felt inside her heart. She smiled.

15 minutes. Her mind was foggy and all her strength was gone. She couldn’t move anymore. She smiled.

20 minutes. She started feeling delirious. Another 10 minutes and the pain would end. Forever. She smiled.

22 minutes. She still could hear her voice, calling for her somewhere close.

“Kamilah…” Amy was crying. “Kamilah, please… open the door… I need you!”

“I’ll be there soon, my love,” she answered.

23 minutes. A loud noise came from her living room. Like if someone had managed to break down the door. Another hallucination, she thought. Only a powerful vampire would be able to get through her security system.

24 minutes. The bedroom’s door opened. Somebody closed the windows and curtains. But she could barely see or hear anything anymore. Darkness consumed her.

———

“Wake up,” the tears falling on her face felt cold, compared to her burning skin. “Please…”

Kamilah slowly opened her eyes. A figure was staring at her, caressing her hair. Maybe she finally achieved her task. She smiled again.

“Amy,” she called.

“Yes, that’s me. Can you hear me?”

Kamilah nodded in response. Feeling too weak to speak.

Her vision became steady and she could actually see Amy, kneeled right beside her. Her clothes were dirty and bloodied, as well as the rest of her body. Her eyes were red and fangs were showing between her lips.

“W-What?” Kamilah forced herself to sit. “A-Amy… is that… really you?”

She hugged the girl, as tightly as she could. She touched every single part of her body and kissed her lips. It wasn’t a vision. It wasn’t the afterlife. She was actually there in front of her. Alive. In flesh and blood.

“Kamilah,” Amy sobbed in her arms. “I-I’m scared! I woke up in a coffin. I was… I was buried… I screamed and screamed for days, no one would come for me. So I fought hard and I caved until I was free. But I wasn’t myself anymore. I was so thirsty… I found this man on the road… God, I think I’ve killed him! I drank his blood! I… I almost lost you too! Only a few minutes and you wouldn’t be here for me!”

Kamilah listened to everything in silence, while she stroked Amy’s soft hair. She had no idea how she Turned into a Vampire, but she was glad she did. She kissed Amy’s forehead in relief, cherishing that moment.

“It’s over now,” she whispered softly. “I’m here for you. I’ll always be. And don’t worry about being a Vampire, you will adjust just fine. We’ll get through this together.”

Amy finally looked at her again. Her eyes had gone back to their usual beautiful color and the fangs disappeared behind her smile.

“Kamilah, we did it. We killed Gaius, right?”

“You killed Gaius. You’re a hero, Amy. The bravest, strongest and most wonderful woman I’ve ever met.”

“You told me that, right before I…” she stopped. “I remember now.”

“And there was something else, something you had no time to listen.”

“What was it?”

Kamilah stared deeply into her eyes and sighed, without hesitation she said those three words. The words she had been keeping to herself for all those weeks, until Amy died.

“I love you,” she said, taking another deep breath. She didn’t want to waste any more time. “Will you marry me?”

[mille-marteaux]

[T-A-C] Marte: how delirious do we need to get you in order to write a maid tier list

@t-a-c​ never ask me for anything ever again (you may feel free to ask me for things in the future.)

I will be rating the maids that I know of on the following criteria, on a baseline scale of 1-10:

Are they actually a maid: A yes or no question. If they are not actually a maid then they are disqualified but will still get ratings anyway because it makes the list funnier.

Modesty: How reasonable their maid uniform is. The "sexier" the costume is, the lower the score.

Professionalism: How they behave while on the job. The more they flirt with/actively torment/etc their employer, the lower the score.

Competence: How good they actually are at performing domestic tasks, such as cooking and cleaning. The worse they are, the lower the score.

Combat proficiency: How effective they are in battle. The more of a liability they would be in a fight, the lower the score.

Devotion: How devoted they are to their employer. The more disinterested they are, the lower the score.

Extra input: A miscellaneous category that does not award points, but is more room for my own observations and extra opinions.

I will be going down the line from series that I know about. I do not actually actively seek out maid content - it mostly finds me. But I'm bored, so whatever. (Don't expect to see Rem on this list because I never watched Re:Zero.)

i am not inserting images as i’ve already spent two and a half hours on this fucking awful post like three people are going to read. find images yourself

PHANTASY STAR ONLINE 2 This game has at least one maid.

LUCOTTE IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 5/10 (despite being an android, she still expresses herself with a "sexy" maid-like design) PROFESSIONALISM: 8/10 (she is very serious about what she does but is a little eager to dote on others) COMPETENCE: 5/10 (seems decent enough at chores but will break brooms using them as weapons) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 10/10 (trainer NPC for the Etoile class; helps all Etoiles grow stronger) DEVOTION: 10/10 (loves her friends and all her peers and will protect them with her life) OTHER NOTES: checked my vibes when we were introduced to her and basically made me admit that i do, in fact, like maids to some extent

THE AVERAGE ARKS MEMBER WEARING A MAID COSTUME IS A MAID: No MODESTY: Anywhere from 3-10 PROFESSIONALISM: Anywhere from 0-10 COMPETENCE: Anywhere from 0-10 COMBAT PROFICIENCY: Anywhere from 1-10 DEVOTION: Anywhere from 0-10 OTHER NOTES: putting on a frilly dress does not automatically make you a maid. spend money on your gear instead of trying to seduce others

==================

PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA Fuck you. Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you god damn it son of a fucking bitch fuck you

MELISSA IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 10/10 (very tasteful uniform and magical girl costume) PROFESSIONALISM: 10/10 (she does maid things and treats everyone with respect) COMPETENCE: i don't remember. like at least a 8/10. it's been a while since event ran and i don't feel like reading it for this list COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 0/10 normally, 9/10 if contracted and transformed. her personal memoria implies she got darc killed at least once due to being on the front lines and not as a magical girl DEVOTION: 10/10 (she will take an arrow for darc without hesitation if she has to but darc would take the arrow first) OTHER NOTES: the first magireco event character i uncapped and four-slotted

KANAGI IZUMI IS A MAID: No (she works part-time in a maid cafe; otherwise is not a domestic worker.) MODESTY: 6/10 (as her work uniform is a "sexy" maid costume it scores lower than usual, but it could be much less modest) PROFESSIONALISM: 5/10 (she treats all customers with respect but does not behave in the cutesy bubbly way you'd expect a maid cafe employee to behave) COMPETENCE: 9/10 (excellent worker; but accidentally messed up a ketchup drawing once) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 10/10 (is a veteran magical girl) DEVOTION: 0/10 (she does not put any love into anything she does and is only a part-time worker) OTHER NOTES: AABBC is a good disc loadout

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GRANBLUE FANTASY oh you know it has maids

DOROTHY IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 10/10 (wears an actual proper maid dress) PROFESSIONALISM: 8/10 (has a few... moments. professionalism drops to 2/10 when near MC) COMPETENCE: 10/10 (is very good at her job) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: (8/10; is only held back by game mechanics. 10/10 when paired with claudia) DEVOTION: 15/10 (she will kill a man for her employer) OTHER NOTES:

CLAUDIA IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 10/10 (also wears an actual proper maid dress similar to dorothy) PROFESSIONALISM: 7/10 (is fond of napping on the job. would be 8/10 but she loses one point for flashing her thigh during a combat tournament battle to distract and defeat her opponent.) COMPETENCE: 10/10 (is very good at her job) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: (7/10; is only held back by game mechanics. has a slightly worse kit than dorothy as her big damage skill can miss. 10/10 when paired with dorothy) DEVOTION: 10/10 (she will break a few legs for her employer if needed but is lacking in empathy for non-employers) OTHER NOTES: she scares me

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AZUR LANE whY ARE THERE SO MANY MAIDS IN THE ROYAL NAVY

BELFAST IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 5/10 (while her skirt is fine, her top is minuscule and requires copious amounts of fashion tape) PROFESSIONALISM: 2/10 (she sees the commander sleeping once and decides to move their head onto her lap so they awaken to a lap pillow, just to see how they react) COMPETENCE: 10/10 (despite everything, she is very good at her job) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 10/10 (goes to 14/10 if equipped with a HE gun) DEVOTION: 10/10 OTHER NOTES: she is not as lusty as the fandom would like to make her out to be but she would still jump the commander's bones in a heartbeat if given consent to do so

EDINBURGH IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 7.5/10 (her maid uniform is more akin to a maid cafe costume than a proper domestic worker uniform, but isn't offensively alluring like SOME OTHER PEOPLE in this section of the list) PROFESSIONALISM: 6/10 (she's doing her best) COMPETENCE: 0/10 (do not trust her with actual tasks) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 10/10 (goes to 13/10 if equipped with an AP gun) DEVOTION: 10/10 (she's doing her best) OTHER NOTES: she's doing her best

GLASGOW IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 8.5/10 (it's not perfectly modest but it's much more modest than SOME OTHER PEOPLE in this section) PROFESSIONALISM: 9/10 (she reads during active secretary work if she thinks nobody is around) COMPETENCE: 9/10 (seems good enough) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 9/10 (is held back by lower stats due to lower card rarity) DEVOTION: 10/10 (even if she hates the commander, she will continue to do work just fine) OTHER NOTES: i do not know anything about this character and only just read her lines about five minutes ago as of the time of writing this assessment

GLOUCESTER IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 7/10 (while the majority of her uniform is fine, she loses three points for the strange underbust window in her blouse that seems to be entirely there to distract perverts) PROFESSIONALISM: 10/10 (she will scold the commander for staring at maids instead of focusing on their work) COMPETENCE: 10/10 (as expected of one of these maids at this point, i imagine) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 10/10 (i am running out of witty comments. i will stop making them here unless i have something funny to say) DEVOTION: 10/10 (will continue to work even if she dislikes the commander but will refuse to speak to them) OTHER NOTES: did albert design her uniform or something

NEWCASTLE IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 6/10 (looks more akin to a maid cafe uniform than a domestic worker uniform) PROFESSIONALISM: 2/10 (very friendly and flirty. easy to get along with) COMPETENCE: 10/10 COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 8/10 (loses a point for rarity, another for having anti-air mode in her kit) DEVOTION: 10/10 OTHER NOTES: friend

SHEFFIELD IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 10/10 (finally a normal uniform) PROFESSIONALISM: 9/10 (while normally curt, she loses a point because of a distressingly weird scene in the anime where she nonchalantly flashes her peers during underwear discussion) COMPETENCE: 9/10 (loses one point due to being trigger happy) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 10/10 DEVOTION: 0/10 (rises to 2/10 when oathed) OTHER NOTES: wow i don't trust her at all actually

SIRIUS IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 2/10 (this is just getting ridiculous) PROFESSIONALISM: 0/10 (it appears everything she knows about being a maid she learned from pornography) COMPETENCE: 7/10 (despite everything, she's still relatively good at her work) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 10/10 DEVOTION: 15/10 (a little too devoted) OTHER NOTES: you have likely seen fanart and pornography of her without even knowing who she is

DIDO IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 1.5/10 (imagine albert designed a maid cafe uniform and you have dido) PROFESSIONALISM: 3/10 (she has severe anxiety issues that get in the way of her behavior but is at least not actively trying to jump the commander's bones) COMPETENCE: 9/10 (is good enough at her job that her anxiety makes her think she's being ignored because she isn't being watched all the time) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 10/10 DEVOTION: 30/10 (this is fed into due to her anxiety and fear of being abandoned) OTHER NOTES: albert really should not be allowed to design outfits

CURACOA IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 8/10 (drops to 3/10 after retrofit) OTHER NOTES: it's incredible how little i seem to care about her and curlew

CURLEW IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 8/10 (drops to 2/10 after retrofit; lower score than curacoa as she is in a more seductive pose) OTHER NOTES: see curacoa and replace "curlew" with "curacoa"

HMS NEPTUNE (not to be mistaken with HDN NEPTUNE) IS A MAID: No (she is a waitress) MODESTY: 6.5/10 (her uniform is very flashy and alluring) PROFESSIONALISM: 0/10 (she will regularly ask the commander to get on their knees and beg to her for a good reward) COMPETENCE: ??/10 (she does not seem to actually do domestic tasks) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 12/10 (rises to 17/10 if equipped with an AP gun) DEVOTION: 10/10 (she will devote herself to the commander but may also attempt to monopolize them; use extreme caution) OTHER NOTES: i'm fucking stupid. make of this comment what you will

==================

FIRE EMBLEM fire emblem fates was a mistake

FELICIA IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 7/10 (the nohrian maid outfit is nice but still a little fetishy with its short skirt and stockings making it resemble a cafe maid outfit more than a domestic worker uniform) PROFESSIONALISM: 6/10 (she's trying) COMPETENCE: 0/10 (not very effectively) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 10/10 (while a bumbling fool in domestic chores, she's skilled martially) DEVOTION: 10/10 (she will follow you even if you decide to defect from nohr) OTHER NOTES: heroes introduced me to her and i bought conquest to have her hit things in a good game and also to marry her

FLORA IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 7/10 (see felicia) PROFESSIONALISM: 10/10 (much more curt) COMPETENCE: 10/10 (she tends to have to fix felicia's mistakes) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 9/10 (skilled in battle but not as skilled as felicia is) DEVOTION: 10/10 (she normally would lose a point because she'd kill you if cornered but that's entirely garon's fault so she is excused) OTHER NOTES: i reinstalled heroes to roll for her and got her so i still have it installed

THE GENERIC NPC NOHRIAN MAID IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 7/10 (see felicia and flora) PROFESSIONALISM: ??/10 COMPETENCE: ??/10 COMBAT PROFICIENCY: anywhere from 5/10 to 15/10 depending on difficulty DEVOTION: 3/10 (if captured and bribed, they will join your army) OTHER NOTES: i'm stupid

ANY CHARACTER RECLASSED INTO A MAID IS A MAID: No OTHER NOTES: putting on a frilly dress does not automatically make you a maid

==================

LOVE LIVE god fucKING damn it

KOTORI MINAMI IS A MAID: No (works part-time at a maid cafe) MODESTY: 10/10 (finally. some proper fucking maid uniforms after all this weird fetish stuff) PROFESSIONALISM: 10/10 (falls to 0/10 if her peers are present) COMPETENCE: 10/10 (earned a nickname with "legendary" in the title due to how well she serves her customers) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: ??/10 (MIERNO "IDOLA" - VOLPHORNO playing loudly in the distance) DEVOTION: 9/10 (her customers usually come first but she loses a point for trying to flee work when discovered by her peers) OTHER NOTES: use extreme caution

EVERY OTHER CHARACTER IN THE SERIES THAT HAS A MAID-THEMED CARD IN THE MOBILE GAME(S) IS A MAID: No OTHER NOTES: SHUT UP DERX LEAVE ME ALONE

==================

TOUHOU PROJECT

RUUKOTO IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 10/10 PROFESSIONALISM: ??/10 (has no spoken dialogue nor personality to go off of) COMPETENCE: 0/10 (is noted to be bad at performing domestic tasks) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: ??/10 (is nuclear powered; while she could be harboring massive latent powers she poses a huge risk if she were to detonate) DEVOTION: 10/10 (is a good noodle) OTHER NOTES: she is probably my blog mascot in another timeline

SAKUYA IZAYOI IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 8/10 (while mostly fine, she still has a rather short skirt in the fighting games) PROFESSIONALISM: 10/10 COMPETENCE: 8/10 (loses a point for every time she lost to the mc during the events of eosd; gains a point for running the mc off if playing on easy) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 10/10 DEVOTION: 10/10 OTHER NOTES: alice's quicksilver is more fun to use than marisa's thousand knives but is infinitely worse for speedrunning so you never see it

YUMEKO IS A MAID: Yes MODESTY: 10/10 PROFESSIONALISM: 10/10 COMPETENCE: 9/10 (loses a point for losing to the mc during the events of mystic square) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 10/10 (throws swords) DEVOTION: 10/10 OTHER NOTES: superior maid

==================

HYPERDIMENSION NEPTUNIA

FINANCIER IS A MAID: No MODESTY: 10/10 PROFESSIONALISM: 10/10 COMPETENCE: ??/10 (is not actually a maid) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: ??/10 (has not been playable DEVOTION: ??/10 (i think she was evil in the original neptunia and then was good in the re:birth series) OTHER NOTES: cute

==================

HONORABLE MENTION AS I TYPED THIS UP AND REALIZED ANGEL MORT IS A RESTAURANT, NOT A MAID CAFE, BUT DO NOT WISH TO REMOVE THE WORK I PUT INTO THE SECTION:

HIGURASHI NO NAKU KORO NI SHION SONOZAKI IS A MAID: No (works part time at a maid cafe) MODESTY: 3/10 (this isn't even a maid costume anymore) PROFESSIONALISM: 10/10 COMPETENCE: 10/10 (is almost indistinguishable from mion when she tries) COMBAT PROFICIENCY: 10/10 (is trained in handling firearms due to her family connections) DEVOTION: 10/10 (she is a good noodle in a bad situation) OTHER NOTES: higurashi was among the first anime i watched and was a powerful formative experience on me

[mysterylover123]

Another Top 20 Favorite BKDK Moments

 mysterylover123

Yes, I actually found even more! Looking through the series for other moments just kept delivering unto me more BKDK stuff, until I finally had so many they needed another list.  These are admittedly mostly smaller moments, compared to the first list, but I still though they were worth including.

My Next Top 20 Favorite bKDK MOMENTS:

#20. “Deku, that has to be my codename.”

“Time to Pick some Names” Chapter 45/2.14

What Happens: Midoriya decides to  choose “Deku” as his hero name. We get Bakugo and Uraraka’s reactions to his decision, along with Bakugo vs Deku replay.

Why I Like It: Though this is also probably my favorite Izu/Ocha moment, I do like how BKG giving Deku the Hero Name fits in with some of the other LifePartner characters in the show (Erasermic and Mirio/Tamaki). It’s minor and mostly Izu/ocha, but I still wanted to include it.

#19. Waiting up for Deku 

Chapter 163/Internship arc’s ending

What Happens: Bakugo (and Todoroki) both wait up for the Internship kids to return from their harrowing experience. Bakugo plays it cool, but this was the night before the remedial course, so we know he’s actually concerned.

Why I Like It: While again this one can apply to Kiribaku, Kacchako, and Tododeku as well, we shouldn’t discount BKDK either - since Bakugo did indeed wait up for Deku’s group. Also Kaminari calls him Kacchan now too :)

#18. “You’d die in the exam!”  

Highlights from KiraElric’s meta (Link: https://kiraelric.tumblr.com/post/158423114578/my-best-friends-a-fucking-nerd-and-an-idiot-god)

Chapter 1/Episode 1 “Izuku Midoriya Origin”

What Happens: Deku’s desire to go to UA is revealed in front of the class. Bakugo freaks out, but unlike the rest of the students, doesn’t laugh at Deku, but instead demands to know what he can even do in the UA entrance exam.

Why I Like It: Well this is our introduction to Bakugo and he’s designed to come off as a complete ass. But the subtleties of the rivalry are present from the beginning: first, Bakugo dismisses his other  classmates as extras but freezes when Deku’s name is brought up, he doesn’t laugh at him, and demands to know what the hell he can even accomplish. It comes across like Bakugo knows, subconsciously, that Deku can probably do great things, but doesn’t want to admit it (because that’s the reason, we hear it stated later on).

#17. “What about Deku?”  

Highlights from above post: https://kiraelric.tumblr.com/post/158423114578/my-best-friends-a-fucking-nerd-and-an-idiot-god 

Episode 5 “What I Can Do for Now”/6 “Rage you Damn Nerd”

What Happens: During the quirk apprehension test, Bakugo checks to see how Deku is doing. When Deku displays his quirk for the first time, Bakugo freaks out and demands an explanation.

Why I Like It: Bakugo is very fixated on Deku. He takes time out of his own test to see how Deku is doing in the exam, and is absolutely stupefied when Deku displays an ability - in hindsight, he seems at least a little justified in getting so mad, since Deku must have been lying to him their entire lives - he doesn’t know yet about OFA  -so what other explanation is there?

#16.  “That was your idea, wasn’t it?”

Chapter 37/Season 2 Episode 9 “Bakugo vs Uraraka”

What Happens: Bakugo, when fighting Uraraka, is cautious of her because he knows she’s friends with Deku. After the match, he confronts Deku about “his” scheme, and Deku corrects him, informing him it was Uraraka’s idea (though not from lack of Deku trying).

Why I Like It: While I’d like to think Bakugou is careful of Uraraka at first because she helped beat him before, he states he did it because she’s friends with Deku. It’s Deku he confronts, Deku who he thinks came up with that scheme. Deku also knows Kacchan well enough to tell that he’s not going to hold back against Uraraka, and tried to help her win against him too. He goes into his match with Todoroki soon after, and says the phrase that Bakugo repeats to him “Where are you looking” while demanding that he not hold back (same as Kacchan does).

#15. “Still should’ve broken some bones.” 

From: Chapter 70/3.02 “Wild Wild Pussycats”

What Happens: Bakugo, having heard about the Shigaraki incident, mutters that Deku should have fought back against him, despite Hagakure’s protests.

Why I Like It: This scene is tiny and flashes by fast, but it does show that Bakugo, whether he’ll admit it or not, thinks highly of Deku and believes that he could’ve taken on a super villain. It also shows that he probably agrees with Deku and Todoroki about heroics, breaking rules to save others and the like - we saw Iida and Deku disagree on this, etc.  

#14. You didn’t help me!”  

Chapter 1/Episode 1 “Izuku Midoriya Origin”

What Happens: Bakugo, post sludge villain, is preoccupied with Deku, leaves behind his offers to be a hero and runs after him to remind him, loudly, that he didn’t save him. He slouches off like the good Tsundere he is, and Deku smiles.

Why I Like It: This moment’s visuals and dialogue are so at ends with each other. Basically on Bakugo’s side 1) he ignores all of his offers from pros to brood about Deku 2) he chases after Deku, with a very sweet delivery of his name in the sub, just to tell him that ‘he didn’t help, and 3) Deku actually looks happier after this conversation, no longer brooding and smiling. It’s the weirdest scene, because the dialogue is so angry and derivative, but the body language comes across as sweet and sincere. (Also earlier on, depending on the translation, Kacchan’s friends ask him if he wants to go check out girls, and Bakugo loudly protests against this idea, after having brooded about Deku the entire walk home. Guess he’d rather be thinking about Deku.)

#13. “Don’t compliment me!” 

From: Chapter 194/Joint Training Arc

What Happens: Deku sees Bakugo’s new winter costume and starts fanboy-ing over it so much that Bakugo tells him to stop, chewing on his speech balloon.

Why I Like It: As I pointed out in an earlier post, this is another romance trope they check off (dismissing a complement). But moreover, it’s Bakugo seeing Deku watching him, asking what’s up, and Deku openly gushing about how awesome he thinks he is. Uraraka, pay more attention - Hatsume’s not the one you should be punching yourself in the face for jealousy towards. (In all seriousness, this moment is so cute. Deku’s so openly admiring)

#12. “No point if I can’t do better than Deku!”  

Episode 2.12/Chapter 43 “Bakugo vs Todoroki”

What Happens: Bakugo, during his fight with Todoroki, loudly proclaims that he won’t accept a win unless he can stand up to the same thing Deku stood up to. Deku even cheers Todoroki on in a way that makes Bakugo smile, because he wants to win right. When Todoroki doesn’t give him that he flies into an unstoppable rage.

Why I Like It: Bakugo’s fixation on Midoriya just dominates this arc, even in Todobaku/Tododeku scenes like this one. Bakugo pitches a fit when his childhood friend is brought up (in a scene that can be easily parodied into “It’s not like I like that idiot baka” territory), and demands that he be given the same fight that Deku faced. He has to be as good as Deku, basically, or else he’ll be left behind and he knows it.

#11. “Because you’re amazing”

Episodes 6-7 Battle trial Arc Deku vs Kacchan

What Happens: Deku and Kacchan fight in the Battle Trial Arc. They both go all out and Bakugo freaks out about Deku holding back. Deku calls him an idiot and says he wants to beat him because he’s amazing. All Might notices his passion. Deku passes out and Bakugo’s anxiety fit starts.

Why I Like It: Never let it be said that Deku can’t “Idiot Baka” too. This is one of their darkest, most intense scenes, but woven into it is their future, more positive bond. Deku ignores teamwork with Uraraka and takes Kacchan on. Bakugo is upset that Deku wasn’t honest with him. Deku feels guilty about that. Deku tells him he’s amazing and that’s why he wants to beat him. Fighting Kacchan gives Deku the strength to go beyond.

#10.  Sitting Together

Chapter 2-3, Episode 3 “Roaring Muscles”

What Happens: After a snippy exchange, Deku and Kacchan sit together at the entrance Exam. When they’re handed out their assignments, Deku notes “They’re splitting us up so we won’t work with any of our friends.”

Why I Like It: While they tsun-tsun a lot in this scene, even in Chapter/episode freaking 3 Deku and Kacchan thought of each other as friends. They say it, right there. They sit together voluntarily. They commentate on what’s going on. BK’s dialogue in the manga is less confrontational than the anime. + Bakugo and Uraraka walk in in the same pose, and Deku compares saving her to saving Bakugo. Deku gets 0 villain points, Kacchan 0 rescue points, to hit home how they’re two sides of the same coin. Chapter/episode freaking 3.

#9. “Arrogance? No…” 

From: 2.02 Roaring Sports Festival

What Happens: Bakugo gives the Pledge of I will Win. Everyone thinks he’s being an ass except Deku, who thinks that he’s intentionally making things hard for himself. Kacchan bumps into Deku afterwards, with a challenging intent in his eyes.

Why I Like It: Nobody understand Bakugo quite like Deku. While he often slips up in how he handles the Lord of Explosion murder, (early on), Deku definitely gets him. (“You’re a piece of work, but I get it.”) He sees straight through his facade here and is the only person we hear giving him the benefit of the doubt. Bakugo for his part also makes sure to let Deku know that he’s still his #1 rival. (Also: Jealous Kacchan in the Locker Room when Todoroki challenges Deku. Just in case you thought him challenging Shoto wasn’t about Deku.)

#8. “Don’t lose, All Might!”

From: 3.11 “One For All”

What Happens: Watching All Might’s final fall on TV, a panicking Deku and Kacchan shout out in unison their cheer for him to do his best, not to lose. We got some sweet Horikoshi sketches in the manga when this ep aired of D&K as the heirs of AM.

Why I Like It: Deku and Kacchan disagree on a lot, but they both love/worship All Might. They’re set up as his two heirs, the heroes who will take up his legacy, and in this moment they yell out in sync, cheering him on (standing together voluntarily). It’s super emotional, but just a quick reminder in this big payoff episode that BKDK is alive and well.

#7. “What do they want with Kacchan?”

From: 3.04-3.07 Training Camp Arc

What Happens: Deku, while fighting Muscular, learns that Kacchan is in danger. As the fight goes on he goes more and more into BKG territory. This powers him up for 1 million% and throughout the rest of the arc.

Why I Like It: While this moment is mostly about Kota (the kid we specifically compared to Kacchan earlier), it’s also important how pumped up Deku is on the need to rescue Kacchan throughout this arc. Like, all he has to do is hear his name in the context of threatening and he goes bananas, more so than for anyone else. 1 million% OFA is Deku’s saving urge + Winning urge fused together.

#6. “Thanks for the idea, Kacchan!”

From: 2.03 “In their Own Quirky Ways”

What Happens: Deku, taking inspiration from Kacchan’s quirk, comes up with a plan to win the Obstacle Course race.  

Why I Like It: One of my favorite Deku moments ever, where he goes bananas and wins it all. Deku’s first and biggest #1 win in the series so far, and who does he have to thank for it? The inspiration he takes from Kacchan. It even seems like he gets his second wind here once he hears Bakugo’s voice and falls, upside down in profile, towards Kacchan. We intentionally have him cute Todoroki out of the frame here, just in case you missed who he’s thinking of. And Deku wins, all because of Kacchan.

#5. “Just like Kacchan then!”

From: 1.10 “Encounter with the Unknown”

What Happens: Deku, trapped with Tsuyu and Mineta by villains, tries to think of a way out of their situation. He thinks to himself “what would Kacchan do” or “act like Kacchan”, and succeeds in beating up the villains.

Why I Like It: “What would x do” is a phrase the series likes to throw around its couples (Izu/ocha, todomomo; Iida’s is more platonic because he also lists his brother). And here’s Deku saying it about Kacchan. Finding once again the strength to win due to thinking of the symbol of Victory. It’s nice that the inspiration isn’t one-sided either, as Bakugo seems to have adopted Deku’s rescue policy later on. Love these two.

#4. The Hideout Raid

From: 3.08-3.10 ‘From Iida to Midoriya’/‘All for One’/‘Symbol of Peace”

What Happens: Deku goes against his own safety to save Kacchan from the LOV. He freaks out when AFO shows up but regains focus when he hears Kacchan’s voice. He comes up with a plan that relies on who Kacchan is as a person, and successfully saves him.

Why I Like It: Take note, Naruto, on how to properly retrieve your rival: #1. Go against the authorities’ wishes to get him back, not on their orders. #2. Consider your rival’s wishes and friends, and #3. Don’t force it. In all seriousness, my favorite part of this is Deku regaining focus when Kacchan turns up. He was panicking and experiencing death dreams, but one word out of Kacchan’s mouth and he’s back on task.

#3. “Just watch me, Deku” 

From: Chapter 206-7, Joint Training Arc

What Happens: Bakugo, going into his training test, mentally asks Deku to watch him. Watch him Deku does, as he shows off his new teamwork and rescue skills and wins the day. They share some light banter afterwards.

Why I Like It: So much. Sexy Sestuna Tokage on one side, demanding attention, while BK & DK only have eyes for each other. Deku watching Kacchan. Kacchan demanding Deku watch him. Kacchan saving to win, as Deku must win to save. Their light challenging banter afterward, All Might calling Kacchan a “good friend”. (All Might stop shipping them, they’re not best friends yet!) Like if you want to see how BK benefits from Deku, outside of having someone he can cry in front of, here it is. Deku makes him a better person. And he wants Deku to see that he’s a better person now.

#2. “He lit a fire under me”

From: Joint Training Arc Chapters 208-216

What Happens: Deku gets hyped for his match because Kacchan “lit a fire under him”. He wins his fight despite his power freak out, and we get lots of worried Kacchan shots during and after the battle, just as we got Deku shots during his.

Why I Like It: The other side of the coin: Deku wants to win thanks to Bakugo. He’s ready and raring to go, smiling and optimistic. Their teams both win, all to 0, because of this (the only teams to do so). + Bakugo looking concerned for Deku when his powers go out of control like the good BF he is. I’ve talked about the big BKDK moments in this arc before, but these subtler ones are just as powerful

Extras:

-Winning the Tokyo Tower Contest 

-Bakugo cheering for and smiling when Deku (and All Might) win in the movie.

-Filler Pool ep where Bakugo makes sure to remind us he’s Deku’s rival, in case we forgot.

-Omake and various incidents where Uraraka calls them “fated enemies” and roots for them to reconcile. (does she want an OT3?)

-Mothra!Deku and Godzilla!Kacchan (queen and king of horror cinema)

-A few bNHA Smash shenanigans:

Baby Kacchan’s crush on Deku 

Vanilla ice cream mixup

Bishonen Bakugo being all kinds bi 

Deku blowing off their OFA date

Fanboy stalker Deku 

-The Couch stuff 

-Pop poll 4: Holding the two halves of AM’s sword 

#1. “I’m headed for the top, why should I care?”  

From: 2.02 “Roaring Sports Festival”

What Happens: Deku is feeling unmotivated to do well in the Sports Fest, until he overhears Bakugo stating that he’s headed for the top and that’s all that matters. This finally gets him psyched to go and motivated.

Why I Like It: Why’s this #1? Well partly because it’s the biggest oversight from the last list, but also because it’s so subtlely important. Deku doesn’t get hyped to do well in the Sports Fest, that very definitive story arc, until he hears Bakugo’s resolution and how dedicated he is. It’s Bakugo’s words that motivate him to go forward and beyond here, just as he so often does. This is what causes hime to do well in the fest and acknowledge how important Iida and Uraraka’s motives are too, and yell at Todoroki for holding back, and in doing so change the course of so many stories. Yes, most of that is Deku’s own strengths shining - but the best kinds of relationships are the ones that make each partner better through being together than apart, aren’t they?

[airlock]

airlock grades the Punchable archetype

so far, a majority of the Fire Emblem villains I’ve covered in this series are the sort who are meant to be liked, forgiven, sympathized with... these here are not those ones. these are the ones whose singular purpose in the narrative is to piss you the hell off. so, which of them played that role to excellence?

(do note: under cut are spoilers for�� everything, and also a significant amount of me criticizing or blamming characters that you might- okay, yeah, no, you probably don’t like anybody on this list, but you may still strongly disagree with my opinions of them. you’ve been warned! ha, no way these fools would set about reading the whole post now... what!? impossible!)

a foreword

so, to be very specific, I’m not rating every flatly irritating miniboss here; the definitive aspect here is that the character has to be a recurring one, whose extended screentime never quite ends up giving them a chance to be something other than vile. but more important than the hair-splitting here is giving some consideration to how exactly I’ll be doing the rating; after all, I’m not supposed to like any of these people, but there’s still better and worse ways to be despicable as a character.

I’m running pretty much on two central critteria: is this character entertaining, and is that character satisfying to take down. it’s more important to hit one than to hit both; a character who hits neither is significantly more likely to be a pure waste of bile, however.

without further ado, let’s start gritting those teeth!

fuck this guy

(9/10)

directly enabling the single most badass scene in all of Book II obviously lands you on the upper echelons of this here character type. but that’s just the effect; we should peer into the cause of what makes him work so well!

of the critteria I mentioned, Lang goes for the latter: he’s not only quite satisfying to defeat, it’s also great anytime someone finally talks back to him and puts him in his place. that’s because he’s not the sort of character for whom this sort of thing is a given. a lot of the ones we’ll see ahead of him are incompetent toadies on top of being amoral, but not this guy; he knows exactly what he’s doing, relying on the backing of the most powerful nation in the continent to plunder, raze, and oppress to his heart’s content. the business of doing something about this dipshit gets severely delayed by the dire consequences of crossing him -- until Marth finally decides that enough is enough.

and THEN Jagen tells him to meet him 9 PM at the Grustian denny’s parking lot for an old man brawl-

fuck this chin

(3/10)

I struggle to understand ol’ Kaga’s obssession with jealousy as a villainous character motivation, I really do. it’s one entirely realistic thing to envy someone for having riches, fame, status, influence, the attention of one’s crush, or other such things that are more or less objective and palpable. it’s also entirely a thing to have an inferiority complex and fear or spite people one perceives as being more talented, better looking, stronger, smarter than oneself. but the way these characters are written tends to come across like they’re furious because they’re underwritten gonk and not everyone else is.

... which hey, would be a pretty upsetting thing if it happened to a real person, but I don’t think meta-commentary is the point here, is it? I sincerely hope it isn’t...

fuck this lady

(7/10)

the second leg of Genealogy of the Holy War finds you facing the same sorts of enemies most of the time: half of them are Satanists, and the other half are unfortunate innocents trapped in the crossfire of courtly intrigue. it’s exactly because of this that the arc desperately needs a villain like Hilda.

Hilda is just someone who doesn’t particularly mind if the most effective path up the social ladder involves destroying her relatives, daughter included, or capturing children and forcing them into murder tournaments. how is the imperial machinery of tragedy and death supposed to run without someone like her cranking a couple of the levers? er, I mean, you don’t really crank levers unless you’re doing something weird, but... okay, moving on

amidst all of the battles you might struggle to feel were worth fighting, Hilda here serves as a reminder, as a face of every reason why the Empire is the enemy and must be defeated.

and yes, making Tinny kill her rocks

fuck this guy IN AMERICA

(2.5/10)

not too long ago I would have dropped him a straight zero, but I’ve recently been reading through the Project Exile text dumps for a new Thracia 776 fanslation and what can I say, they put good work into making him tick properly and I essentially have no choice but to keep that sort of thing in consideration when making the ratings, being that all of the other villains are also characters I only have indirect contact with through a translation that may have improved or worsened things.

but the good work is no miracle -- although given much-needed entertainment value, this guy is still who he is: practically a standard-fare asshole miniboss who ends up getting three whole chapters to chirp into. and to make matters worse, you only actually get the payoff to him in one of two possible routes!

I am strong, I am clever, I am handsome, and most importantly, fuck me

(4/10)

I can’t possibly deny that his antics are some of the most hilarious on this list; the ridiculous speeches, the facial expressions from the manga, the fact that he gets demoted on screen... and I mean, they got Kaiji Tang to put voice to his high drama on Heroes, on top of it all!

alas, it just really spoils the fun to a significant extent that his very introduction in Binding Blade sees him macking on a captive prepubescent girl. however entertaining it may be that she snatches his wig on that occasion anyway.

fuck this morph

(5/10)

yeah, some people wish. notably including Brendan Reed-

the thing with Sonia is that she’s a little less believable than most folks in this archetype -- specifically because she’s not, like, working within the structures of power that would let her get away with being as much of a dip as she wants to; she’s earned her influential position by seducing the boss, which is hard to buy when, however attractive she may be, she never has a single positive interaction with anyone and nobody trusts her (barring Ursula on both counts, but she’s not the one who needs to be brought on board anyway). I realize what a phenomenon it is to think with one’s dick, but come on; surely, you don’t let your new friend with benefits tell you how to do your job just because she’s that good in bed or something.

that said, although her overall spot on the plot feels weakly implemented, she still makes for a tremendous bulwark to overcome specifically within Nino’s subplot. what a powerful confrontation against a lifelong abuser she provides in the end!

do not fuck this guy what is wrong with you

(3/10)

Valter is just uncomfortable as a character, which is limbo as far as emotion-inducing goes; it’s not particularly entertaining, and nor is it artfully terrifying in the way that Orson is. furthermore, I normally praise Sacred Stones’s antagonists for averting the way of behaving like a plot device, but this guy is the exception; he seems to primarily show up to cause trouble because trouble needs to be caused.

I feel like he’d have made for a far stronger character concept if his backstory had been handled differently, being more specific in what part of his mind broke when he held the cursed lance, instead of just being “now he does bad things and talks like he’s vaguely horny throughout”.

at least he’s quite a bit entertaining in Heroes where he gets voiced lines and no particular characters or plots to interact with -- but if that’s what it takes to make the character shine, it doesn’t really say good things about him.

fuck beauty

(5.5/10)

so, the truth come out: does this guy is deserve becoming the absolute teacher’s pet he’s been since Radiant Dawn? my verdict on the matter is: not really.

I mean, Path of Radiance actually writes him into a solid niche; for all the big words he emits about being a patron of beauty, he’s ultimately just the same kind of petty, ostentatious garbage that poisons the governance of Begnion, and finally taking him down for good and all makes for an excellent dive after all the work it takes to set the light of justice on him -- not just in Day Breaks (oh gooooooooddd) but over the course of the several chapters it takes.

it’s all downhill from there, though. his appareance in Radiant Dawn is not only unecessary, but also a deviation from the established writing to focus on pallid, ineffective jokes, like someone invented Heroes writing before the thing itself happened. he fights on your side because now he genuinely cares about beauty and art to the point he’ll fight a goddess over it? yeah, that’s not who he was.

and seriously, one strongly gets the impression that, in that appearance onwards, the punchline is just supposed to be that he’s fat, bald, wordy, and has a shitty mustache -- which, besides being blatant fatphobia, is seriously stale; “it’s funny because he’s ugly” is, like, at least two random minibosses per game, usually more.

fuck the senate

(2/10)

although he jabs a lot of the buttons that should make for an entertaining and stalwart hate sink, it ends up not really working.

his narcisism lacks the performatic grandeur of the likes of Narcian; it lands as pastiche at best, and common annoying smugness at worst. and although he’s powerful and influential enough to cause a bunch of problems, he’s introduced at a weird time that fails to make his specfic capabilties relevant to opposing the protagonists, and he ends up not doing a lot more than severely inconveniencing Zelgius (who is on his team) a couple times.

at least, the battle dialogue against him in Part 4 still provides some of the most fierce drags in Radiant Dawn

fuck the valm arc

(0/10)

seriously, fuck it

but ahem, onto the guy in question: he’s an annoying waste of writing space that doesn’t seem to be intended for any reason other than making the rest of Team Bad Guy look good, plain and simple.

you might be thinking, airlock, this is the third Awakening villain you blammed in four posts, are you just biased? the answer is: yes, but even if I were being perfectly fair, let’s be real, antagonists are just not one of that game’s strengths, overall. that just happens sometimes; I can really say the same thing of like Thracia 776, y’know?

fuck playing f- yeah, okay, that’s just low-hanging fruit

(??/10)

honestly, from this distance, none of Fates’s fixed antagonists bar Anankos really give me the impression of not just being despicable pastiche, but I’m guessing he’s supposed to be the one who actually intended to take it as a niche?

so, I’m just going to assume you hated this, but how was it? are you glad it’s over, or do you regret having read it at all? we’re probably not going to be spared from one of these characters on Three Houses, but specifically how much would you like to hate the one that comes along? to be honest, your thoughts aren’t remotely as good as mine, so I wouldn’t bother replying or reblogging to share them, worm. what? you’ll do it anyway!? how dare you! do you know what I’m capable of!?

[yo-namine]

Okay, I’m not done with this idea, so...

To start off, Riku and Kairi's relationship post-KH3 is a little, uh.... strained. After everything that happened in the Graveyard, Riku really doesn't trust Kairi to hold her own at all. They both want to go search for a way to revive Sora, but Riku's pretty dead-set on Kairi staying safe at home while he does all the actual work. He's already lost one friend, and he's not risking losing another. Kairi argues that if he's going to go chasing the Lich, he needs someone like her who can bring him back, but her argument kind of falls flat because her PoH abilities have been pretty shaky ever since Sora died because, well, her heart's broken. So Riku doesn't budge, and Kairi's left feeling useless and powerless to help her friends. Again. Also, Kairi can tell that Riku does sort of lowkey resent her for being a liability back in the Graveyard. Riku knows it's unfair of him, but he can't help how he feels. And while Riku really does want to keep her safe, Kairi feels that he's also shutting her out as a way to penalize her for costing them Sora's life. Angst ensues. Basically, instead of working together on a way to bring back Sora, Riku and Kairi end up pushing each other away and doubtlessly making things harder than they need to be. 🎉🎉🎉

Obviously, Kairi isn't going to just stay home. She thinks that if she can fully regain her powers, she may be able to restore Sora like she did in KH1, or get some kind of tether on him from the Realm of Light like she did in KH3. So she decides to sneak off on her own to first go find the other former Princesses of Heart to see if they can teach her more about her abilities, and then hopefully get her powers back and use them to revive Sora or at least help Riku. And admittedly, there’s a small, petty part of her that just wants to prove to Riku that she's not useless.

Naminé catches on to what Kairi's planning and wants to come with her to help however she can. Kairi kept her alive for the last couple of years, so Naminé is basically RIDE OR DIE for this girl at this point. If Kairi wants to go save Sora, then dammit, they’re gonna go save Sora. That said, she probably feels guilty enough to leave Riku a note or something just telling him that she and Kairi left together and everything's fine and to please not freak out. Riku reads it and is like "for fuck's sake," decides to go look for them (on top of everything else he's doing).

I'm... not really sure how Xion gets involved tbh. Maybe she initially wants to help Riku find Kairi and bring her home, but then switches sides once she realizes that Kairi's just trying to prove herself? Anyway, Xion is a total badass and (in this story, at least) has some of her Days boss battle abilities still in her arsenal, so after she joins the other girls, they're able to venture into more worlds that they'd had to avoid before because the combat level was too high they were too dangerous. During their journey, Xion gives Kairi lots of pointers that do her way more good as a keyblade wielder than whatever Merlin had her and Axel doing in that time chamber.

There's initially some tension between Kairi and Xion because Xion is supposed to be "Kairi as Sora remembers her," and in this story, Xion's clearly much stronger and (now that she's free of the Organization) cheerier than the real Kairi. So Kairi feels like she's hanging around a better version of herself all the time, and it takes effort to not let her bitterness over it show. It also doesn't help that Kairi's spending most of her time with two people who are like embodiments of Sora's love for her (Naminé being the Nobody that was created from Sora housing Kairi's heart in his, Xion being made up of Sora's memories of Kairi). Theoretically, that knowledge should be comforting, but it really just ends up rubbing some extra salt in that "Sora's dead and it's all my fault" wound.

While they're off on their journey, Riku tries to call Kairi almost every day, but she never picks up because she knows he'll just try to talk her into going home. Eventually Axel calls her, and it's fine until she realizes he's trying to weasel her whereabouts out of her so he can pass the info along to Riku. After that, she keeps her phone off.

Kairi, Naminé, and Xion start to work really well together after a while both because of their skill sets (Xion being the powerhouse, Naminé the healer, Kairi the warrior-still-in-training), but also because they have a lot in common. Xion can empathize pretty strongly with Kairi feeling like she's just a liability. Naminé knows how it feels to be used by people more powerful than you to hurt someone you care about. The trio develops a pretty deep understanding of one another, and they help each other rationalize and work through their problems/insecurities (like Xion has a tendency to get irritated/overly defensive when her judgment's questioned because, well, she also isn't sure if she can trust her own mind sometimes thanks to the Org reprogramming her in the past. Naminé has some pretty deep-rooted abandonment issues that are part of the reason she clings to Kairi as much as she does. Kairi has survivor's guilt in spades.). Character development ensues.

Naminé does Not like combat or just hurting things in general, hence why she sticks to healing. She does still have her heart-shattering ability from CoM, but she never wants to use it again (especially considering whose replica vessel she’s inhabiting these days).

Meanwhile, Riku thinks the other masters will help him with figuring out how to either find the Lich or contact Sora somehow, but nope. Yen Sid and Mickey don't want him going after the Lich or "chasing hearts," potentially costing them another valuable wielder getting himself killed. Aqua's more inclined to let him do what he thinks is right, but she's also doubtful that Sora's heart is even salvageable at this point. She tells Riku what she knows from her own training just because she feels he has the right to that information as a master, but that's about it. Beyond that, Riku's basically on his own. Without any real leads, Riku decides to visit different worlds to learn more about their differing concepts of death/the afterlife (so like the Underworld in Olympus, the Locker in the Caribbean, etc.). A lot of worlds have legends of creatures similar to the Lich that ferry the dead and all that cool stuff, so he makes note of that while also scouting the place for Kairi. He might also run into Maleficent at some point and learn something from her (since idk, she commanded the Heartless for a while, so maybe she knows something about the Lich)?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The trio runs into Riku once early on, and it... doesn't go that well. Riku's still not keen on Kairi running off (plus he's probably kind of annoyed that Naminé and Xion sided with her over him despite them both being his friends for way longer, oop), and Kairi's still frustrated that Riku has 0 faith in her and won't let her help him. They basically have the same argument they did back home, only now there's been more time for resentment to build. On top of that, they're both grieving over Sora without really knowing that they are (because neither's willing to even consider the idea that he may not be savable), and both feel like the other's abandoned them when they need them the most. Anyway, their fight doesn't accomplish anything other than hurting each other further. They split up again after Riku tells Kairi to just answer her damn phone every once and a while. She doesn't.

So Kairi meets up with the former PoHs as she travels worlds. She's lucky that Riku's on bad terms with half of these ladies and is gonna steer clear of Wonderland, Agrabah, and Beast's Castle. Kairi gets advice and some training from each of the princesses on how to tune out her own self-doubts and focus her magic on what she wants to accomplish. Her biggest help is probably Belle just because that lady spent SO MUCH TIME in Hollow Bastion's library in KH1 probably reading everything about light/darkness. That, and I think Belle kind of uses a tethering ability in KH1 to bring the Beast to Hollow Bastion (or at least, the Beast says he got there just by ~believing~, so maybe it's a two-way connection or something), so she may have a better understanding of her (former) powers than the others. Anyway, Kairi slowly starts regaining her powers, and they only get better as her confidence/faith in herself improves. Eventually, she starts working Faith/Holy into her combat moves and "tethering" to the other girls just to see if she can. She's able to use the latter ability to sense out where exactly Naminé and Xion are whenever they're separated from one another. Connecting with people in the same world is easy enough, but doing it across worlds/realms is trickier, so she practices reaching out to Riku occasionally with mixed results. She gets to where she can figure out where he is, but she can't communicate with him, and she's not sure if that's due to her abilities being too weak or if it's because she and Riku have been shutting each other out (spoilers: It's mostly the latter.).

The trio has another run-in with Riku later on. He and Kairi have another argument, but it's more constructive this time around. Riku starts to call her out on leaving him to go on this journey (because unlike her, he's been going it alone this whole time, and it's really starting to get to him), but she points out that she only left him before he could leave her. Everything kind of starts to click after that. Riku eventually apologizes for trying to leave her behind, Kairi apologizes for shutting him out for so long. There's still some tension between them, but it starts to ebb once they finally start working together on a plan to bring Sora back.

Kairi finally turns her phone back on to find approximately 34978593487 missed calls from Riku. She also sees that he left her a few voicemails, and while Riku says she can just delete them, she keeps them to listen to later when he's not around.

....I'm not sure how this ends? Part of me likes the idea of Sora just... staying dead and everyone moving forward with their lives because that's all you can do, really. But another part of me really likes the idea of Riku and Kairi finding the Lich and figuring out a way to split the price for Sora between them. Maybe they have to give up a fraction of their hearts or cut time off their lifespans to give to Sora's. And they both agree to just not tell Sora about that once he's back.

I realize I'm leaving a TON of characters out of this story lmao. I don't know what everyone else would be up to. tbh Ven could probably save Riku and Kairi a lot of trouble just by introducing them to his magic cat that apparently knows all about the afterlife, but.......................... whatever.

[prozacshawtyyy]

I posted 916 times in 2021

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906 posts reblogged (99%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 90.6 posts.

I added 7 tags in 2021

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#pointless thoughts

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

i beg you to just keep loving me even when i don’t give you exactly what you want.

i only give what i can.

i do the best i can and i ask that you keep loving me however you can.

0 notes • Posted 2021-02-11 05:30:10 GMT

#4

there’s nothing more that i would love than to crawl into my fathers arms and cry. and for him to tell me he loves me. but i can’t be that vulnerable with him. sometimes i want to tell him i need his help. to ask him for his love and tell him i need light again. that i need to be held like i’m his little girl just for five minutes. to hear that i’m loved by him even if he doesn’t feel like it right now. but i can’t say it. i can’t make it come out of my mouth. all the time i wonder if he prays for me. if he thinks about me on sunday.

I wonder if anyone knows what it’s like to feel the way i do. I wonder if anyone knows what it’s like to be so sad that you think things that aren’t normal. And make the people around you think something is wrong with them for caring about you because you can’t handle it. Or because they care too much. Because you don’t know how to feel anything but sad. Do you know what it feels like to sit in your own pathetic little hole and fill it with your own pathetic little tears and just drown there? I sit in the dark in my mind. I don’t remember what a bright smile is like. What warm love is like. I wouldn’t even call it sad anymore I feel something so much different.

I call my depression my pool. Anxiety is the pool cover. Some days i float on the pool and i see clearly again. Other days i drown. On bad days i am tangled in the pool cover. You know in the way they warned you about as a kid? Don’t go running into a pool that has a cover on it. You’ll suffocate. You’ll surely drown. It will wrap you up and pull you under and you’re dead. Nobody can hear you or see you. Nobody to help you. You have to help yourself by looking at the pool before you fucking jump but I guess i didn’t because i wake up everyday wondering if i’m going to be floating or suffocating. I hope he prays for me on Sundays.

0 notes • Posted 2021-01-06 08:39:42 GMT

#3

Move on.

I’m minding my business 🙃

1 notes • Posted 2021-11-19 16:05:55 GMT

#2

2 notes • Posted 2021-11-23 03:45:34 GMT

#1

how do i explain the love i had for you

but i have always been so afraid of you

and not because you’re wild and crazy and act on every emotion you feel

just because i have loved you so much that i long for you every minute of my day no matter how long we go without talking

how do i explain that i love you so much that i wish when we met we decided to be friends so that it never got so complicated and i could still see you when you would have me

and i never would have broken you and you never would have broken me

we would have been friends and i could have loved you that way and i could still love you now

i could send you a text and ask how you’re doing without there being a subliminal message or your friends thinking i’m crazy or mine thinking i’m crazier

i wish i loved you differently i guess is all i’m saying and

when i look back i realize i’m just as crazy

just as much the bad guy as you ever were

i will always love you and now i spend my time hanging out in my memories wishing i was somewhere else

so i can’t feel anything that happens to me today

i only feel what happened with you

i search for any glimpse of you in someone else i can cling to and when it’s not there anymore my skin crawls and i need them to get away

i think i used to look for glimpses of you in you too.

i missed you

(now i just post my stupid notes pages on tumblr because i can’t talk to anyone else about this kind of shit without being judged for it🤍)

2 notes • Posted 2021-03-02 06:40:19 GMT

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[joysofbraindamage]

Interesting thoughts on “Speechless” from its creators. Unlike “Fosters” 5A the  “Speechless” writers seem to be paying attention and getting input from actual disabled people, and disabled writers. 

http://uproxx.com/sepinwall/speechless-great-family-comedy-season-2-preview/

Text from article. 

When it debuted last fall, Speechless was just the latest of ABC’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of distinct family comedies. By the time its first season wrapped, the series — about a special needs family where oldest son JJ DiMeo (Micah Fowler) has cerebral palsy — had become the best of them, deftly mixing at least two parts silliness for every one part reality, exploring how mom Maya (Minnie Driver), dad Jimmy (John Ross Bowie), and siblings Ray (Mason Cook) and Dylan (Kyla Kennedy) build lives that are always at least partially defined by JJ. It’s a story that on the one hand is deeply personal to Speechless creator Scott Silveri, who grew up in a family like the DiMeos, including a brother with CP, and on the other had to be figured out as he, fellow executive producer Daniel Chun, and everyone else in the creative team discovered what could be funny about their premise, what risked being offensive, and when it was okay to let things get serious. It’s a balance Silveri, whose previous show was the grief support group comedy Go On, keeps feeling surprised he’s working to maintain. “I told my wife, ‘I just want to write something funny for once,’” he recalls, “and she says, ‘For a guy who just wants to write something funny, you sure do an awful lot of shows about dead wives and disabilities.” Last month, I visited the Speechless writers office to talk to Silveri and Chun about how they decided on the rules for this show, what they’ve learned from talking to real special needs families, what’s coming up in the second season (which premieres September 27), and a lot more. THE FOUR BULLSEYES Posted on the walls of the Speechless writers offices are four “bullseyes” for the writers to aim at, as explained by Silveri: Funny “Funny should go without saying, but you certainly can imagine a version of it that isn’t. One must always be mindful of that. That’s the goal, not teaching anybody anything.” Rock Star Family “This is meant to broaden the action in the show, rather than being the ‘ramp of the week’ show where Maya is always taking on some cause. A different thrust for fun seemed like, these are people who come to believe they’re in a special, privileged position, a little bit above the law. ‘We don’t play by other people’s rules.’ Taking the chaotic nature of their lives and turning it into a good thing, on the cheap, oftentimes.” Comic Specificity of Disability “We have that, let’s take advantage of it. When you set up, particularly in the first year, you want to do stories that nobody else can tell. We’re in a block of a bunch of different family shows, but we’re about this type of family, so let’s lean into that.” (As the season moved along, they gained the confidence to do episodes — a Valentine’s Day adventure for Maya and Jimmy, a family trip to the supermarket — where disability was a minor concern at most, but they first had to establish the characters in the context of JJ’s needs.) Non-Cynical “I wanted to celebrate the bonds they share, their inclination to take being ‘different’ and turn it into a positive — the farthest thing from cynical I could imagine, and it was important always to keep an eye on that. So we looked — and continue to look — for other avenues to inject the bite we wanted. Whether it’s trading on the ignorance of others outside the family, or leaning into our characters’ brutal honesty and their choice to laugh in the face of adversity. (Take Jimmy’s ‘Having a disability is expensive. It’s almost not even worth it?’ from the hero episode.) It’s maybe the most fun part of the puzzle of making this show. Finding that tone where we can be frank, direct — the teeth — without being jerks about it. “The other reason is simply a taste thing. I kind of relish the challenge of making a scene funny when people actually like each other. Folks taking turns crapping on one another has its place, but I wanted this to be a family that gets along, and I thought there could be plenty of opportunity for laughs even given that scenario. People have at times described the DiMeos to me as dysfunctional. I kind of think they’re supremely functional. They have differences and they butt heads, but they work in my mind. They care about each other. And this is a network comedy. I love darker, more sinister stuff in different contexts, but for a network comedy, people with differences finding common ground (and actually enjoying those differences) is what I most like to see.” ADVERTISEMENT NOTES: 1. All tokens are represented by '$' sign in the template. 2. You can write your code only wherever mentioned. 3. All occurrences of existing tokens will be replaced by their appropriate values. 4. Blank lines will be removed automatically. 5. Remove unnecessary comments before creating your template.

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DRAWING LINES OF GOOD TASTE AND GOOD COMEDY Perhaps the show’s best, and certainly most quintessential, episode of the first season was the Oscar party show, which hit all the bullseyes, and particularly the ones about funny and the specificity of disability. Maya grappled with her jealousy of a much more put-together special needs mom, while JJ’s aide Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough) tried to organize competitions for JJ and his disabled friends, which climaxed with the absurd spectacle of the kids beating each other up with padded sticks and cushions and wearing various improvised devices designed to put them on a level physical playing field. “We’ve shot stuff and not used it,” says Silveri, “but that felt pretty much within our power alley, because it was coming from a place of empowerment: ‘Okay, if anybody else can do this, why can’t these kids do it?’ If you have that sure footing, then you can go for it. I was surprised early on when JJ gave the finger, people were into that. When JJ got drunk, people were into that. We got clued in very early on that he could even misbehave and that was welcome in itself, because it was ‘normal behavior.’ So as long as he’s got a point of view in it, as long as he and these other kids with disabilities are not props in it, then we’re on sure footing. How wrong can we be? “We also have a lot of sensitivity in the room,” he adds. “We have a lot of people with either siblings or kids with disabilities. We now have a writer with a disability. We’ve bounced a lot of the stuff we do off of a couple of different foundations, including the Cerebral Palsy Foundation. We could be wrong, and we will be at some point, but we kick the tires a little bit. But if JJ has a say in the matter, if he he’s active, that helps us a lot.” An early cut of that same episode found the creative team crossing a line without realizing it, with a joke where one of the kids at the party kept repeating the same phrase over and over. “It had the crew in stitches,” Chun recalls, “but when we saw it in the cut, it felt a little like, ‘Which side of this joke were we on? Are we laughing with this girl? Are we laughing at this girl?’ It felt close enough to that, that we cut that out.” Another major line the writers have to worry about crossing is being so honest that laughter becomes impossible. The show is blunt about the realities of JJ’s disability — Kenneth helps him go to the bathroom, Dylan has to feed pizza to him, and he has virtually no privacy — and can do it very well as matter-of-fact material, occasionally taking place in the background of a scene about something else. But when they did an episode about JJ being briefly hospitalized — a periodic fact of life for many people with disabilities — Silveri found it was “a tricky thing to edit, because he got hurt and was in a little bit of pain. That was not fun to lean into.” At the same time, JJ’s condition not only gives the DiMeos license to be jerks (though Jimmy would contend that they’re idiots, not jerks), but gives the writers license to let them be as loud and abrasive as possible — so long as the loudness is specifically in service of JJ. “Early on, we had some stories in mind that were just Maya going on a tear for a tear’s sake, and it didn’t feel right,” says Chun. “That was the sort of thing that we executed and just went, ‘If she’s doing it for the kid, that’s funny. Crazy for crazy’s sake is not going to win us any viewers.’” WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW Silveri didn’t pull the idea for the series out of thin air. His brother’s CP is more severe than JJ’s. (“He’s non-communicative.”) And in Micah Fowler, who has CP, he has a star who knows the material even more intimately than he does. Where some showrunners want no creative suggestions from their actors, Fowler is an obvious resource, both for details about life with disability and for advice on narrative philosophy. “I had my pad out ready to take down a bunch of disability-specific ideas,” Silveri recalls, “but that’s not how he sees himself. He wants to talk about what any 17-, 18-year-old wants to talk about. He wants to get in relationships. He wants to put himself out there. He wants to think about his independence. That’s what we ended up doing a lot of, towards the end of the season especially.” At the same time, the show can’t always draw from real life. Fowler is working on walking, which at first Silveri wanted to make into a parallel arc for JJ. But when they spoke to some of their other consultants in the disability community, “They’re like, ‘Maybe not make it about him overcoming disability. Living with, dealing with, thriving with.’ When it’s ‘casting off the shackles of dreaded disability,’ it’s much thinner ice for us.” “We met a lot of people in pre-production,” says Chun. “Either parents of people with special needs, or the people themselves. We went to some places that do therapy for kids with special needs and got tons of material from that. Usually, in pre-production we’re sharing, ‘Oh, this show’s at a restaurant. Let’s go visit a restaurant for 30 minutes.’ Then, it’s just a huge waste of time. Here, we got tons of stories from talking to those people.”  ABC Zach Anner The season two writing staff has added Zach Anner, a writer and comedian with CP who worked as a technical consultant in the second half of season one — Silveri reached out to him after watching an online video where Anner discussed the show — and cameoed in one episode as a man Maya hoped could be a role model for what JJ’s adult life could be like. “In the first packet of ideas that he sent us [in season one],” Silveri says, “I think we used about five different stories out of it. We were just about to do the grocery store episode, and in my first conversation with him, he mentioned that thing of, ‘When I go to a grocery store in my chair, it’s just a string of, “Hey, buddy, you got a license for that?”’ I went, ‘Shit, change what we’ve got, get that in the show!’” Anner knows the subject, but he’s also funny enough to keep up with a room full of more seasoned sitcom writers, and at times outpace them. “The only problem with Zach has been typing fast enough to get what he’s saying on the screen,” says Silveri. “It does save us the added bonus of we don’t have to think, ‘How might this go? This process with the school board? Who would be involved in this?’ He knows. But that’s .01% of what we get from him.” ADVERTISEMENT NOTES: 1. All tokens are represented by '$' sign in the template. 2. You can write your code only wherever mentioned. 3. All occurrences of existing tokens will be replaced by their appropriate values. 4. Blank lines will be removed automatically. 5. Remove unnecessary comments before creating your template.

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SOMETIMES, COMEDY WINS OUT OVER TRUTH Nowhere is this more unapologetic than with the show’s use of Kenneth. Not only would someone with Kenneth’s (lack of) qualifications (he was the school groundskeeper) never be allowed to take that job, but he wouldn’t be hanging out at the DiMeo house on nights and weekends, or really at all. “Sometimes, we’ll do some mental gymnastics to justify it,” Silveri says, “like it’s right after school, so he dropped the kid off and got sucked into some DiMeo thing. Or, ‘This isn’t a Saturday, even though they’re all sitting around sitting college football. It’s a Thursday, it’s right after school.’ But it will never limit us, it will never keep us from putting him in a scene. It’s the unfortunate curse of having him be really funny. Sure, he could work for that family 25 hours a week, but it would be a lot less funny. We’ve all worked on shows where it’s like, ‘Why are they over there at that apartment? Why is he meeting the murderer for coffee at work?’ After a certain point, you just go for it. We have bigger fish to fry.” (Chun says they also justify it both in the writers room and in occasional dialogue by pointing out that Kenneth doesn’t have much else going on in his life, and is thus eager for the excitement and companionship he gets from the family.)  ABC Silveri and Driver HOW “HEY!” BECAME “OY!” In development, various executives kept pushing to make Maya an American. (TV executives are terrified of the idea that a foreign accent might scare off viewers, which is why Karen Gillan is somehow no longer Scottish.) So, for that matter, did Minnie Driver herself, who told Silveri that the Maya in the pilot script seemed very American to her. Silveri, though, wanted her to use her native accent. “Comedy is so delicate,” he explains. “Any time you see somebody trying to hide an accent, there’s this sense of, ‘What is that? Are her parents Dutch?’ It’s just a little off. It was clear to me, you didn’t want her to be playing vowel police off in the corner. We’ve got enough work to do without having to say, ‘No, that was really funny, but you were British.’” Driver and the execs gave in, and then she improvised one of the most defining bits of the character by inserting a demanding and very English “Oy, sea slug!” in a pilot scene where the script had her saying, “Hey, sea slug!” (The school’s mascot is a sea slug, for reasons best explained in context.) “As soon as she said it,” Silveri recalls, “we were like, ‘Throw some more “Oy!”s in there! It’s fine!’ Now, we keep writing ‘Hey’s and ‘Dude’s, and Minnie Britishes them up for us. I just wish she’d stop saying ‘bugger.’ It’s funny and we’re not allowed to use them.” Chun thinks Maya’s Britishness helps in another way: “It buys you about 10% more outrageous behavior than you’d accept from an American.” THE SHOW ALMOST DIED AT “THE COOKIE PASS” While Speechless has fit seamlessly into ABC’s family comedy machine, it was originally developed to air on Fox the year before ABC bought it. No pilot was ever filmed. There was no Kenneth character, since JJ in the first iteration of the script spoke with the help of a computer; while doing research later, Silveri met a woman who used a word and letter board like the one JJ has, with an aide who read aloud from it, and enjoyed their dynamic so much that he realized, “I don’t know if we can make a computer funny, but I know we can find a funny person to (play an aide), and that adds another flavor to the show.”(*) (*) Because the talking computers have become fairly common for disabled people with the means to buy one, Silveri decided to do a story midway through the first season where JJ inherits a hand-me-down device from a friend, only to realize that he prefers letting Kenneth speak for him. It was meant to answer the many fan questions they’d received on the topic, but, “We had to wait to find a version that actually felt funny, and wasn’t just like a Star Wars crawl at the beginning of an episode of, ‘Here’s why we do this.’” Silveri commends the Fox executives who read “70 different revisions” of the script, “each getting incrementally closer or way farther from the mark.” One of those is what he and Chun (who was developing Grandfathered for the network at the same time) refer to as “The Cookie pass,” in which Silveri attempted to transform the show into something that felt more appropriate on a network becoming increasingly defined by the success of Empire. That version featured “A lot of white fur coats and stuff. It was just leading into her being outrageous and her husband being a record mogul.” By the time Fox declined to make a pilot, Silveri was so dispirited that he initially wasn’t interested when he heard ABC wanted to revive the idea. “Then, when I looked at what ABC had, I thought, ‘Oh, of course. It was crazy ever to consider putting it anywhere else.’”  ABC WHAT COMES NEXT? When I visited, pre-production for season two was still in early stages, with only a script or two having progressed beyond the outline stage. But the writers already had ideas for the year as a whole, from small ones, like the introduction of a rival for JJ who gets away with being awful because he’s disabled, to big. One of those big ideas involves Maya’s initiative in getting JJ into this great school backfiring, as word spreads throughout the special needs community that Lafayette is open for business, resulting in so many families moving into the district that it runs out of money, which could lead to JJ losing Kenneth as his aide. From a less plot-driven standpoint, Silveri is interested in JJ’s aging, and what that means for both him and Maya. “It’s an interesting and true fact of life with kids like him, there’s so much that’s available to a kid with a disability,” he explains. “Then, the older you get, there’s a little less. There’s a little less infrastructure. It’s a little less cute to people. There’s less novelty and help. Now we’re feeling like, ‘What is this guy’s life going to be?’ He’s going to apply to college, he’s going to have to become realistic about what his options are while challenging himself. “For Maya, she doesn’t want to hold him back, but at the same time, ‘This kid’s been my life forever, what am I without him?’ It’s going to open up new worlds for her about where is she, what is her place in the world, in a world that’s already a little less dominated by him. Now he’s in the school, and he’s got an aide, and he’s going to be more independent, and she’s going to get more independent. We want to meet her family.” Other stories will be less profound, like a Halloween episode where Ray and Dylan swap bodies. The writers had to sell ABC on that one, since it’s so far outside the show’s usual reality, but Silveri looks at it as the kind of big swing that then allows them to get more grounded and serious elsewhere. THE “FUNNY” BULLSEYE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE Silveri spent years as a Friends writer/producer, but of late has worked more on shows that straddle the comedy/drama line like Go On. But rarely has he seen the line become as blurry as it is here. “Shows that I’ve worked on, it’s normally like, ‘This is a funny scene, this is a serious scene.’ In this show, we do a lot of banking recklessly from one to two. It’s kind of a fun way to write, not to have to quarantine the arc.” That said, the longer we talk about the series, the more he begins to fear that this story will make it sound like televised broccoli. “One thing we really want to get out there is, if you see the poster, if you see a still shot, it could read as this earnest and self-serious thing. It’s no documentary on disability. It’s comedy, and it’s not too good for you. He pauses after that speech, worried he still hasn’t made his point. “Just tell people it stinks,” he adds.

[dinodrifterdarsh]

Star Versus the Forces of Evil: A Timeline and Analysis of Star’s (and some of Marco’s) Feelings, Part 1

With the S3 movie a little over a month away, I figured I might as well post this. Star Versus the Forces of Evil does a good job of building up the relationship (platonic and non-requited romantic) between Star and Marco, and it also shows how Star and Marco can suck at dealing with (romantic) emotions. They suppress and lie about them, or are just plain old clueless about them, which is pretty standard for 14 year old kids (speaking from personal experience here too). So this makes for some darn good writing material. Originally I posted the bare-bones framework of this on /co/ and it was received well, so I beefed it up proper and decided to share it with others. Here, I’ll try and give a timeline for at least some of the big hints or events that happen which show the kind of romantic feelings that exist-or don’t exist (YET)-between the two.

Season 1: There’s a decent amount to unpack here. Already, great posts have detailed how Star may have started falling for Marco in Sleep Spells, etc. I’m lazy, so I’m gonna focus on the most prominent episode in S1 that deals with romance. To nobody’s surprise, that’s Blood Moon Ball. In Season 1, I think that Marco develops some small unconscious degree of feelings for Star. She's attractive, the coolest girl he knows, etc. But they're not conscious and he still has the pedestal for Jackie, so Marco isn’t exactly making moves on Star. The events of Blood Moon Ball hint that Marco has some degree of attraction to Star, which Marco himself doesn’t actually realize until the episode itself. Marco’s initially defensive of Star around Tom because he genuinely doesn’t trust the guy, and when Marco first proposes going with Star to the Blood Moon Ball, there’s no hint of romantic intent (in the voice acting or music), just genuine platonic concern. But that changes when Star reveals her outfit to Marco.

Dude’s verbal and physical reaction to Star’s dress are pretty clearly not just a “AH YES, MY TOTALLY PLATONIC FRIEND I HAVE NO FEELINGS FOR LOOKS SO GOOD I WAS JUST AWESTRUCK, PLATONICALLY” and the background music certainly lends to that feeling. After this, Marco attempts to ride down with Star (sounding a little more than just a concerned friend), but gets kicked out. When Marco hears the voice of the Old Sea Captain say “The Moon of Lovers,” that gets Marco to get up and eventually ring the bell for transport himself. The fact that the Sea Captain said “The Moon of Lovers” is relevant simply because from a writing perspective, the juxtaposition of that statement and Marco going after Star hints at Marco having some degree of feelings (probably not too consciously) for Star.

Let’s skip to the end of the episode for a bit. Marco thinks he’s done Star a favor by rescuing her from Tom, and that he was in the right to help her, but Star’s reaction clearly wasn’t expected (side note: the really healthy and awesome dynamic between the two in this scene, with the understanding and actual apologizing, is fantastic). Star ends up saying the (in)famous words, “I don’t need a hero, I need a friend.” I think it’s pretty heavily hinted (through later actions) that Marco and Star see this statement in two different ways. Marco, who at this point likely has some unconscious degree of attraction to Star, (mis)interprets Star’s words as “I’m only interested as you in a friend, not romantically.” Star’s words shut down that small flame-Marco may still find Star attractive but any attraction to her at this point would be well and truly unconscious and comparatively minor. We see this change reflected physically in Marco’s look, which changes between the above and below pictures.

Marco definitely looks a bit more downtrodden in the second picture, and I don’t think it’s solely because he feels like he didn’t believe in Star enough. This change in Marco’s feelings is also reflected in the fact that it is only after Blood Moon Ball that Marco seriously attempts to act on his long-standing crush on Jackie (I’m not counting “Marco looks/makes an awkward noise at Jackie” as a serious attempt because they’re really not). Yes, the events of Freeze Day also played a big role in it, but the positioning of that episode immediately after Blood Moon Ball is not coincidental.

Star on the other hand likely interpreted her words literally: she didn’t need (or more importantly, want) some person/dude to just save the day for her because they think she’s not capable of saving or handling herself. This is a recurring theme with Star (Banagic Incident, etc.). She didn’t necessarily mean “Marco I am only interested in you as a friend” but intent and perception are two different things, and neither Star nor Marco can really be blamed for their interpretations (because they’re non-malicious interpretations and I feel blame is a bit of a loaded word in this context).

But what Star says and what (part of her) feels are not necessarily the same thing. So let’s break down Star’s feelings towards Marco in Blood Moon Ball a little bit more. Specifically, her initial reaction to him when the dance starts. Now, the actual effect of the Blood Moon (or at least the light of it) is completely unknown, but I’m gonna assume it doesn’t actually mind control or influence the characters because (a) no evidence of that has been shown (the Blood Moon is also shining at the end of the episode yet Star and Marco’s interactions during that sequence are entirely in character and there’s no hint of manipulation by the blood moon) (b) it’d be more than a bit creepy if there wasn’t free will in all of this, and (c) her reaction is consistent with later ones.

Anyways, Star’s pretty darn entranced by Marco, and this is really obvious to the viewers, although perhaps maybe not to Marco because the dude can be an idiot when it comes to emotions. However, once Marco reveals himself to Star, she’s shocked and the overt attraction disappears, a shift that’s reflected in her eyes, which go from glassy back to normal. This is interesting to note, because it indicates that Star does find Marco attractive and/or romantic, when she doesn’t know it’s Marco (i.e. this scene conclusively establishes that Star can find Marco attractive in a non-platonic manner, period). This is likely because Star has consciously only thought of Marco as a friend, and any attraction to him prior to this scene she could pass off as “I think he’s cute, but I think a lot of things are cute!” which is a line that should sound familiar. Star’s reaction here is also semi-repeated later on in Running with Scissors, when Star goes goo-goo over Marco (although by that point the audience knows for sure that Star has a crush on Marco, and Star herself is starting to become aware of that).

Season 2 (Episodes 1 and 2): Star likely found Marco cute and funny but may have actually developed a small crush on him by the time of S2. My New Wand features Star’s diary, which contains an interesting tidbit. Since we don’t actually see much of the diary’s contents, there’s only so much we can infer, but that’s not to say there’s nothing to be gleaned. I think that in the “My thoughts on Marco” section, Star wrote something along the lines of “I think Marco is kinda cute,” probably post-Blood Moon Ball (which is when Star first really gets swept off her feet by Marco). I say that Star wrote something along those lines (i.e. something that would make a 3rd party go “huh Star has/had a small crush on Marco?”) because of her reaction to Marco finding that chapter. Specifically, Star dipping down. Previously, Star dipped down in Storm the Castle when Marco’s life was in danger. Later on, Star dips down during her attempt to rescue Glossaryck. Dipping down for Star (at the beginning of S2) is not something Star can do easily (or even voluntarily). The previous time she dipped down was during a situation of high emotional stress. Keeping that in mind, note how Star doesn’t dip down when Marco is reading the other parts of her diary. Yes, she’s frantic and yelling at Marco to put the book down, but she’s not sufficiently emotionally stressed (or worried or motivated) enough to dip down. But the second Marco finishes reading the title of “My Thoughts on Marco” Star involuntarily dips down again. This signifies that whatever Marco was about to read, Star REALLY did not want Marco to read (at that point in time). Given that Star has had 0 qualms about expressing how much she values Marco as a friend (verbally, through physical intimacy, and through saving his life), the implication is pretty heavy that Star’s writings had some degree (likely minor) of non-platonic thoughts/interests in Marco (mind you, I’m not saying Star wrote “STAR BUTTERFLY IS IN LOVE WITH HER BEST FRIEND AND HIS NAME IS MARCO DIAZ”). It’s also entirely possible, and in fact likely, that whatever non-platonic thoughts Star wrote about Marco were in the past tense (I’ll elaborate on this shortly).

Also, the above magic key that Star unlocks the secrets closet with is pretty telling. Yea, the heart is technically just the same heart that’s on Star’s cheek but I think the color (pink-ish) and the fact that it’s unlocking a door behind which Marco is reading Star’s diary that has her thoughts on Marco...I mean the symbolism is there.

In Mr. Candle Cares, when the guidance counselor asks Star if she has a secret crush on Marco, Star’s response is interesting: she says "He’s my roommate. We’re just friends.” Technically, that’s not “no” but I think it’s more of a hint that Star isn’t consciously aware of her feelings for Marco as opposed to “HAHA STAR IS LYING.” This ties back into the contents of Star’s diaries, and the Season 2 finale, Starcrushed. I’m gonna lay out a rough timeline of Star’s feelings towards Marco by this point in Season 2. Through the course of Season 1, Star started developing some very minor romantic feelings towards Marco, mostly consisting of “I think he’s cute/funny/nice/etc.” and these feelings became obvious to Star and us, the viewers, in Blood Moon Ball. She writes these...uh, observations, down in her diary. However, Star ignored those feelings for the most part because they were about Marco, her best friend, and no way could she ever have a crush on her best friend/roommate, that’s just crazy (hint, she can). Fast-forward to Starcrushed, when Star says she had a crush on Marco once and then says that she doesn’t anymore. I’ll go into more detail in Part 2, but basically, I think Star is referring to roughly this point in her life when she says that bit in Starcrushed: thus, it’s not technically a lie she’s telling everyone either.

Anyways, I’m tired and I think this a decent enough (or at least not god-awful) ending point for Part 1 of this timeline/analysis. Next time, Sleepover, Bon Bon the Birthday Clown, Just Friends, and Starcrushed!

[barcaavengers]

Support || Hector Bellerin Imagine

Note:A Hector Bellerin imagine nobody asked for but I felt like I had to do it to calm my eternal love for him, but it didn’t happen so here ya go! Feedback is encouraged and greatly appreciated :3 It took a while to have it up, my baaad.

Being the girlfriend of a footballer wasn’t an easy thing as most made it look. You had to look after them when injured, when they had a bad day at a match, their losses, but then, you also shared the happy days when they were stressed free and when they won. Patience was the name of all of it, and you didn’t had much at the beginning, but it slowly started growing to you.   Said patience had started to die down when the hate against Arsenal started getting out of control. It hasn’t been their season, everything was messed up and Wenger and the players went through heavy stress when they didn’t win. Fans could be very supportive, but there were ones that were a complete pain and were quite harsh right now.     Today it was the match against Crystal Palace. Your boyfriend has been trying to keep a clear head and was more than ready for the match. He had woken up early, his sleepy eyes scrolling through his social media and getting texts from the guys.   “Morning” you whisper as you snuggle close to him and he smiles.   “Hey” he smiles and kisses your forehead and pulls you close. “Slept well?”   “Mhm” you hum in response as you rest your head on his naked torso. “You?” You ask and yawn after making him chuckle.   “I did” he says and shifts his body, making you move as he now faces you. “Want some room service or do you want to go eat something around?”   “Whatever you want” you didn’t mind really. Whatever he wanted was okay with you.   “Room service it is” he says and moves to stand up and reach for the phone at the desk to order. You bite your lip as you look at his back muscles as he leans against the table. His absolute mess of hair that everyone was begging him to cut. You didn’t mind it as long as he didn’t have it in that messy bun. He actually looked good with his long hair as long as it was tamed, not like now, but he just woke up, you had to give him a break. And even then, it didn’t make you feel less attracted to him. You loved him for his personality, not his looks.   “Staring I see” he says as he is walking back to the bed and you wake up from your reverie with wide eyes. “Very smooth, love” he teased with a side smirk that you only wanted to kiss away from his face.   “Eyes were made to look, you know?”   “Even in that particular way?”   “You have a nice back” you shrug as he sits besides you.   “Just my back?” He starts crawling on top of you, his smirk never leaving.   “A few other things too” you shrug.   “Like?” He is facing you now, his face away from yours and a strand of his hair is suddenly on your face, almost poking your eye.   “Not your hair, if that’s what you think” you say and he laughs and drops his body weight on yours making you groan playfully and push him away.   “Oh, come on, you like it. Don’t act like you don’t” he says and starts wiggling himself on top of you and you start pushing him away by the shoulders.   “Hector, get off me!” You say between laughs, Hector in the mean time, its mocking your words.   “You would’ve missed me if I haven’t brought you here so deal with it” he teases and you grin as he finally gets off and lays on his side. He smiles and runs a hand through his hair before leaning in and pressing a firm kiss upon your lips. You try to stop your giggles as his moustache tickled your lips and return the kiss happily. You feel him shift his weight to one hand while the other one reaches to his side.   “What are you doing?” You mutter between pecks you were giving his lips to speak and he kisses you one more time before pulling away, your eyes looking at him before going to his hand. “Did you just take a picture, Bellerin?”   “Relax. It’s just us kissing.”   “I’m almost naked-”   “I’m cropping it, don’t worry” he says as he falls on his back besides you and doing as he said.   You hear the knocks on the door and you grin. “I’ll go get it.”   “I got it, you aren’t even properly dressed” he says as he gets up and you stick your tongue out at him as he mocks you. Again.   You reach for his phone to look at the post he made. You had to admit the picture looked perfect…Even if his hair was all over the place.   Best way of waking up for a match day. The caption read with a heart and kissing emoji.   He could be so sweet when he wasn’t being a pain, but a good pain. You didn’t had anything to complain about Hector, he was the most down to earth person and the sweetest you have met. And let’s not forget how talented he was when it came to football.     The two of you ate your breakfast and soon enough he was getting ready for his training and match. You were going to go later, but he has convinced you to go early and stick with them. As you got to the stadium, you greeted his teammates, Chambo teasing you both by doing kissing sounds about the picture he posted before they were sent off to train and you went to your assigned seat on the stands.   You were scrolling through your social media as people started to come in. Some of them were complaining about Arsenal lost matches and how they were having a really bad season. The girls complained about how Hector should cut his hair once they spotted him on the pitch, causing you to roll your eyes. Thankfully not many people knew who you were, but sometimes you wished they did.   Although when you thought about it, you’d have them asking why you don’t get him to cut his hair and you’d answer in a bad way, and all thought fades away.   The match soon starts and you keep your eyes on the field. You watch how the game is played, but also watch for your boyfriend, trying to keep up with where he was since at one moment he was before you and in the other he was at the end of the pitch defending. He was too fast sometimes for you to keep track where he was, but that was one of his best football skills.   Your boyfriend does what he can throughout the match, but he can’t do it all alone and the game is 3-0. The complains around you get heavier, they start insulting the players and you try to hold back your comments. That was until people started to criticize your boyfriend and tell him he wasn’t fit enough to wear the jersey. You can’t take it anymore.   “Maybe if the fans weren’t criticizing them so much and hating every uneven breath they take, they’d at least try harder and feel more confident” you say as you stand up from your seat and start moving out. People were glaring at you, but you didn’t really care.   “Oh my God, that is Hector’s girlfriend” a guy says as you move past him.   “Hey! Tell your boyfriend to cut his hair!” You hear behind you and you take in a breath before you turn around.   “Long hair, don’t care” you say and shrug with a smile, referencing to one of Hecky’s caption in one of his recent pictures.     You make your way to the exit where the players came out through when avoiding fans. At this point, you couldn’t blame them from doing such thing because of how they were being treated. You waited for a couple of minutes as they showered before Hector came out, headphones on, his hair falling down his cheeks as he let it go from his messy bun. He probably forgot you were around because as soon as he saw you, he took his headphones off and you walked up to him.   “Hey” you breathe out as you pulled him to the side as the rest of his teammates walked out. He stays silent as you run your fingers through his hair, pushing it aside. “I’ll see you at the hotel, okay? We will talk there” you say, pushing a side everything you wanted to say to him now to comfort him. He nods his head and you cup his cheek with one hand as you lean in and press a kiss to his lips before he continues to walk to the bus.   You only have a few hours at the hotel before going back to your house. You arrive almost at the same time as Hector to the hotel room. He drops his things before dropping himself on the bed with a loud huff. Shutting the door close, you walk up to the bed and doing the same by his side.   You two stay silent for a few minutes before you speak, “You know they don’t mean those things…” You say to him. “They are upset about this whole season and take it out on everyone they can…” You say.   “They think I don’t deserve to be there…”   “Hector” you say and move to your side, placing one hand on his chest, “You deserve it. You give it all in all the matches. You are literally everywhere in the pitch” you giggle. “I can’t keep track of you running around. One moment you are defending, the other you are almost a striker. Be slower, I can’t keep up” you laugh so he knows you are joking and he chuckles.   “Sorry, love” he says and finally looks at you, his hand resting on top of yours.   “You don’t need to apologize. Just like you shouldn’t listen to the fans. You are the best center back yet in that team, Hecky. You are the least they can complain about” you voice and he smiles softly. “And you are very fit to be in that team. I can witness that” you eye him and raise your eye brows in a suggestive manner and he laughs.   “So you are willing to prove that?” It was good seeing him smile, it was a nice change at how he left the stadium.   “Any time” you bite your lip and he leans upward to kiss you but you pull away. “To the fans, I mean. Not you. Why would you want me to prove it to you?” You ask as you push him back down with the hand on his chest and he pouts.   “Sometimes I can forget?” He says with playful hesitation and making it sound like a question.   “You are the worst. Get up” you say and pat his chest as you sit up but he brings you back down and pulls you on top of him making you squeal.   “Thank you for distracting me…” he says as he pushes some strands of hair away from your face.   “I’m here for you, to support you and the team no matter what” you say and run your fingers through his hair. “Long hair or not, don’t care” you say and he groans.   “You too?”   “Hey, I actually went defensive with a fan because of that. I defended you, at least thank me for that” you poke him and he arches an eye brow.   “What did you say?”   “Long hair, don’t care” and you flip your hair back playfully and he laughs, cupping your cheeks.   “That’s my girl” he says and makes sure you don’t pull away this time before placing a kiss on your lips that you smile widely into. His hands moved to your back, pulling you close until you pulled away.   “Soon this will all be over. There will be a new season and Arsenal will return stronger” you say with a smile and he nods his head in an appreciative manner. “You will get through this, okay?”   “I hope you are right” and with that he pulls you as close as he can, kissing your forehead and just holding you in his arms. “I’m lucky to have you around…” He whispers and you smile, the two of you decided to sleep at least one hour before going back home     When you get back home, you make sure that Hector feels more than comfortable and that he is relaxed. Both of you shower and you just cuddle by his side on the couch.   “We are going to give it all next match…” he comments.   “You always do, all of you” you assure him. “Just don’t push yourself, okay? You are doing a lot already. You need some rest…” You mutter.   “We need to prove the fans-”   “You don’t need to prove anything, Bellerin. Fans should be there for you through everything and be supportive. The ones that are screaming and insulting you and the team aren’t fans. They just want to say they club won, but they aren’t real fans if they hate you when you lose” you frown.   He kisses your forehead and then moves to your nose, your body squirming as you giggle. “You know exactly what to say to make me feel better.”   You ran a hand through his long hair. He looked adorable with it falling down his face. Maybe it was because you loved him no matter what, but you didn’t get the hate unless it was the bun. The bun…You weren’t fond of.   “I can make you feel even better” you say as you poke his lips.   “Oh?” He arches an eye brow, a smirk over his lips and moves to kiss your cheeks, trailing kisses to your lips.   “Mhm…”   “How?” He asks and you grin.   “Wanna kick some ass in Call of Duty?” He laughs and you grin.   “God, I love you so much…” he pecks your lips multiple times before he jumps out of the couch to get the controllers.   “Say that when I beat you” you stick your tongue out at him and he just makes a face that screamed a sarcastic ‘sure’.   And that’s how you and his console get him distracted from the awful events of the week for a couple of hours.  

[littlexbts]

Another 20 question tag

I was tagged by @bipjm a long time ago.... Thank you so much!💖love you💕 

RULES: answer the 20 questions and tag 20 blogs you would like to get to know better or die (sorry i don’t wanna bother that many people bye)

NAME: Micaela

NICKNAMES: Miki, Mikipedia, Miki-Wiki, Mica (and “the short one”)

GENDER: Female (she/her)

STAR SIGN: Capricorn (careful, i bite)

HEIGHT: 5′0 (I need to grow up please someone water me)

TIME RIGHT NOW: 11:45

LAST THING I GOOGLED: “Yoongi in a suit” please don’t ask, okay? (i am a horny child okay?)

FAVORITE BANDS: kpop: Bts, Vixx, Blackpink, Mamamoo, BigBang (mention Top and i’ll cry), 2ne1 (kill me and my feels), 4minute (kill me again pls), Exid, F(x), CLC (still learning stuff tho), Got7 (still learning their names) non kpop: Sleeping with sirens, twenty one pilots, P!atd (fight me), Hey Violet

FAVE SOLO ARTISTS: Taeyeon, Cl, Amber, GDragon, Melanie Martinez, Dua Lipa, Tinashe, Ariana Grande (those high notes tho), Dean

SONG STUCK IN MY HEAD: Brave Girls - Rolling 

LAST MOVIE I WATCHED: The Help (we did a History project based on this)

WHEN DID YOU CREATE YOUR BLOG: This one on February, 24 of this year... (this blog is a Baby™)

WHAT DO YOU POST: Kpop, mostly Bts, Blackpink, Vixx and Kard (please feel free to request of any other band you want and i’ll try my best or just tell you i can’t) 💜

WHEN DID YOUR BLOG REACH ITS PEAK?: With that meme I did about the essay thingy (still getting notes wtf, you are amazing)

DO YOU HAVE OTHER BLOGS: Yup... Not active tho (my dark past buajajaja... nobody cares i’ll stop now)

DO YOU GET ASKS REGULARLY: I mean, for having started this blog not so long ago I NEVER IMAGINED THIS, I LOVE YOU SO FUCKING MUCH, OKAY? (in other words: I kinda do, i mean, this blog is a Baby™, so I do get a beautiful amount)

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE YOUR URL: Cause I’m known for being the small one between the people I know so yeah...

FOLLOWING: 142 (LOVE MY MUTUALS) (HIT MY INBOX SO I CAN CHECK YOUR BLOG OUT AND BE MUTUALS)

POSTS: 338

HOGWARTS HOUSE: Ravenclaw

POKÉMON TEAM: Mystic 

FAVORITE COLORS: Black, Metalic Blue, Dark Red, Violet, White

AVERAGE HOURS OF SLEEP: Around 6

LUCKY NUMBERS: 2, 6, 18

FAVE CHARACTERS: (already answered this one so... hi mum)

WHAT AM I WEARING NOW?: Black jeans, Tokyo Ghoul shirt and my black converse

HOW MANY BLANKETS DO YOU SLEEP WITH: it’s getting quite cold rn so 3 or 4 (my bedroom is a freezer tho)

DREAM JOB: Engineer 

DREAM TRIP:  (already answered this one so... hi mum)

I AM SORRY TO BOTHER BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

Saying sorry and tagging:

@sleepyseop @lalalafool @returnofthesquishies @wisegirl4ever @seokjinxpink @taetaebears @notnormalhuman @dontbeexpectingflowersandshit @theunfrostedcake @tairn13 @megamagicalpotato @as-moody-as-ella @abeamoflightinthedark @evilmeetsgirl

IGNORE ME IF YOU DON’T WANT TO DO THIS.... THANK YOU!

[lilietsblog]

this post is going to get 0 notes i know and am not bitter about it at all. anyway fuck all of you im not putting it under the cut

...so reblogging that post about Chinese culture has brought my thoughts back around to my own individualism ideal

it's this romantic image stuck in my head ever since i first started getting my own interests and aesthetic and social circle and music taste (so, ~14)

like. it's not All That I Think Is Good In Life, in fact i have another romantic image, more recent, that... well, not opposes, but complements it to a whole world? anyway that's a different thing

this one is older and sometimes I feel like its an immaturity thing for me but also the more i grow up and analyze it the more i understand how important the core of it is to me

it's an image that comes from songs. russian 'minstrel' songs. filk? folk rock? whatever. they are a thing. and in them there's a thing - a romantic image of a 'minstrel'. obviously these girls (almost excusively girls) are talking about themselves (and grammatical gender wise the minstrel is usually male but also they absolutely mean themselves and its one part sexism one part breaking down gender boundaries I M H O bc just because the world minstrel is male doesnt mean the person it refers to has to be... ANYWAY)

...so yeah, a minstrel. its actually a pretty extensive and specific image. im not sure if its accurate to anything historically, and obviously its not accurate to anything about these people in real life. its a romantic ideal like i said and i have 2 separate OCs based on it with love and care as a deeply secondary but still important part of their design

The Minstrel is a wanderer. He (imma use he for now bc grammatical Russian gender and im gonna slip into it anyway. just imagine its a gender neutral he) doesn't stay anywhere for long. He does not have permanent employment. He does not own property other than what he can carry on his back. He usually doesn't even have a horse or any other means of transportation because he's pretty much dirt poor.

The Minstrel earns money by performing - making up fiction, retelling existing fictional stories, retelling existing historical tales, fictionalizing recent history, etc. If he performs for the wealthy, in castles and stuff, he is usually treated like dirt. Always -this- close to being killed for rudeness towards his hosts. He does not have a permanent patron. If he performs in front of the general public, he's usually able to make ends meet much better, and will often be universally beloved. He will often spread revolutionary ideas, put himself in danger via political stuff in various other ways, spread truth where it is suppressed. Tell the tales of people who aren't normally remembered, tell the other side of the story. One very particular variation probably based on a specific story that I just don't know is a minstrel who inspired a rebellion, then it was quashed with extensive cruelty, then the minstrel was cursed by the people for bringing all that about and must now wander forever, mute. Or something. I know it from like three separate songs, they are very beautiful but not very specific.

An important part of The Minstrel archetype is that he is like this by choice. He might have a home, property, everything, and then just spontaneously abandon it and go be poor. (Obviously the minstrel is able-bodied and able-minded enough to afford to do that. Although historically at least some people the archetype was based on were blind / otherwise disabled, and earned money by singing because they didn't have any other way. Never said this archetype was unproblematic) A minstrel might abandon his lute (or another musical instrument, personally I favor the guitar, sometimes a flute is featured, but the lute is archetypical) and go fight in a war to defend his country. This is a tragedy and a great unfairness. Usually the minstrel will die because he is a musician and not a soldier. It's a conscious sacrifice, nobody can CONSCRIPT a minstrel. Like, he just won't come and there's nothing you can do about it. (A more cynical variation is a young silly minstrel who is TRYING to die a beautiful death and succeeds, except nobody things it's beautiful they just facepalm and go 'well that was tragic and useless')

I have heard like... one whole song about multiple minstrels travelling together. I think the basic idea is that they meet people, then part again, then maybe meet again, like waves, from time to time. Randomly running into each other, spending like a whole week together, then parting until next time is the name of the game here.

All those are surface attributes. They are easy to gather, and I'm not a particular fan of all of them... it's harder to talk about the core of it, the thing that makes me love this despite everything that is wrong with it.

The Minstrel is an individual who is, for the most part, entirely without attachments in all the new places he goes. He does not have friends waiting, he does not have anyone waiting. Nobody knows his name until he introduces himself. Like, okay, maybe they've heard of him, but they won't know it's him until he tells them, and they might not believe him if he does. (A minstrel whose face is actually well known, who is relatively well off and can afford to travel with like... a bodyguard - he's a separate thing, he's not this trope)

There are many stories that imply that when people are utterly alone, when nobody is there to know about their existence, the reality sort of cracks under them, and they fall through, and they might as well have never existed. This trope takes that and says a hard NO. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear the sound, the tree itself is still an observer. The Minstrel is somewhere alone, on his own, with nobody's viewpoint to support his existence other than his own, and it's good enough. It's valid. In fact, The Minstrel EARNS HIS LIVING by being just that - a living viewpoint. He tells stories, he shares his perspective. HIS PERSONAL knowledge and understanding is what he brings to the world, and it is valuable. He bears witness. Sure, he can have personal relationships, friendships, but he will leave them and go further forward in a heartbeat. His primary relationship with the world is that he /knows/ the world, and that he /tells/ about it. And the reciprocal relationship is that people know HIS STORIES. If he goes to a new country and hears his own song sung by people there, that is reciprocation, that is validation. He as a physical body does not need to be acknowledged, his presence in other people's minds is via the impact he made, and he himself might as well be a ghost.

(Yet, his physical body doesn't 'not matter'. It matters to HIM, and that is enough. He is a thing in himself, a complete entity, and he doesn't need to see his reflection in mirrors to know himself.)

(The Minstrel can very well be too vain, conceited, or alternatively, filthy and uncouth. In stories that feature echoes of this archetype, it might very well be a conflict that he is All That yet entirely unpleasant to interact with as a person. AND THAT IS OKAY. You might in fact want to try and murder him, and you might even be absolutely justified in doing just that, but you've still just killed a unique person, snuffed out a valuable existence. Hope it was worth it, you murderer.)

The story of The Minstrel is, to me, a story of self-worth. A story of your own story being valuable, no matter who you are, no matter how you are. Just existing, just experiencing things, it already makes you someone of worth. And yeah, the minstrel /tells/ his stories to make his living, but the only reason it works is because HIS STORIES HAVE WORTH. The service he performs is not so much that he sits and talks all day, it's that he travels, that he /listens/, that he /watches/. That he hears others' stories and gathers material for his own. Just being an observer is his profession.

It's... I don't know. I think this is an important ideal to have in mind, an important extreme to acknowledge, no matter how flawed particular incarnations of it might be.

It deserves to be a thing.