#guys this plot point marks the beginning of all the interesting stuff

[thattimdrakeguy]

I HAVE BEEN READING ZDARSKY BATMAN, AND I HAVE DECLARED: I FREAKING LOVE IT!!

I'm reading the Batman Zdarsky run in reverse. That way if I see any bull I can back out at anytime: and to be honest--besides a few things. I really enjoy it

LIKE YO, THAT IS JUST STRAIGHT UP TIM DRAKE RIGHT THERE. It knows who he is as a character. his motives, it's great.

Screw the people complaining "oh why is tim still robin :((", THIS IS WHY HE IS STILL ROBIN. Because this is when he's at his BEST. When he gets to hit his character purpose, WHEN HE GETS TO BE HIM AT HIS MOST HIM. It's FANTASTIC.

Reading in reverse because I know I hated the first story, it was so contrived and ridiculous.

But this--this is some good shit.

Tim being an underdog fighter, having to use his wits to win the fight? MY DAWG, MY DUDE, MY GUYS, MY GALS, MY THEMS, MY THEYS, THIS IS SO TIMMY DRAKE. This is so damn Tim Drake, guys. Oh, my gosh, I am loving this so far.

Dick has his temper back? And trust me, he isn't normally like this. But he's hitting a limit AND IT'S SOMETHING NEW, NOT JUST A REFERENCE. HE'S ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING HE'D DO, 'CAUSE HE'S AT HIS LIMIT. That's wonderful, man. That is so wonderful.

Plus Tim is the heart of the Bat-Family again? This feels like someone actually went back to read these characters before writing it. I'm not saying everything is perfect of course, but these high marks are exceeding all my expectations. And I STOPPED reading comics because of how the beginning of this run destroyed any hope I had.

You guys have no idea how much I'm enjoying the few issues I've read. Besides the cussing (I remember after a bit they decided Tim was someone who used funny words instead of proper cusses), this feels like the Tim I know and love during the era I especially loved him.

Tim comparing himself to his predecessors? Tim not being a natural? A WRITER REMEMBERING THAT?? It's been so long since I've seen that! Most writers treat him like he was another prodigy when he wasn't. AND THIS GUY REMEMBERED THAT!

I shouldn't be so happy at just seeing Tim do Tim things, and serving his character purpose. BUT YOU GUYS HAVE NO IDEA HOW LONG IT'S BEEN SINCE A WRITER KNEW WHAT TIM WAS SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE.

Only complaints I have is that Jason feels like a typical Bat-Family member, and not the sketchy outsider that he is. Making him so close makes his character more bland in my opinion. And Steph is--also generic af unless she's wacky quirky...which is a characterization I hate for her, because she started off so damn interesting, but they made her a freaking trope instead, which is such a disservice to her, but she barely does anything so far, so whatever I guess. Doesn't mean much.

--

This is the first honest thing I've seen that I hated.

No

Not this

This isn't the Bat-Family

This is a sitcom world the fandom wants to be the Bat-Family and some comply with

They're not a sitcom. The conflicts, and uniqueness of the characters is what makes things feel alive and well.

This stuff is cheap fanservice for the fanon demographic that doesn't buy comics to begin with.

Fanon doesn't belong in canon.

--

I mean sure Tim could be drawn smaller, the gag of him looking 12 when he's nearly 18 doesn't work when he's bigger than Damian who is 15 (and contrary to some bullshit comics isn't meant to be small. that was a random thing added for writers who aren't clever to write better humor. it actually contradicts things that were already established).

Don't see the big deal though for most of this.

Can't wait to find it, though. Oh boy.

This whole obsession with Zur Batman, is way over done though. So--I wouldn't be shocked if that was the problem, because my golly does that plot point not seem to be stopping--and it was there from the start and part of the reason why I didn't read it 'til now.

Good Tim tho, at least. So heehee, yey for that--I think--I guess.

Oh, well.

It let me peak at a pseudo-version of an AU I made up years ago. So that's pretty freaking cool.

Always a plus.

And redoing Red Robin story beats but better? Normally I'd hate references to Red Robin, 'cause that changed the perception of so many characters for the worst, but ayy, a bit of redemption isn't bad.

Man, just seeing simple stuff like Tim and Bruce being good ol' classic Batman and Robin warms my heart. It's been so long since Batman and Robin has acted like a proper classic Batman and Robin. It's dynamic that's been sorely missed by many.

OH, MY GOSH, WHY DID THE FIRST STORY HAVE TO STINK SO BAD. THIS STUFF IS GREAT.

Like, DUDE, this is such a Tim thing for him to do!!

And he's showing emotion?? He's crying like how he does?? Because he's not a typical Bat-Family member who just angsts his way through?? THEY'RE MAKING HIM STAND-OUT AGAIN BY MAKING HIM, HIM??

WHY DID THE FIRST STORY HAVE TO SUCK SO BAD?? THIS IS GOOD SHIT.

Like this part is why I originally stopped reading, not because Bruce should think Tim is his soldier, and not his son, THE FREAKING OPPOSITE.

But because the original story has Bruce acting weird when unneeded, just to say this was so unneeded, and adding in all these stupid corny Bat-Family moments was so groan worthy.

This run started off with a story that was a total turn off for me.

To end up being a run that could've kept me enjoying DC, rather than running away from it from as far as I have.

Chip Zdarsky started off awful, but really, he ended up great.

And I've seen people complain about his run, and TRUST ME, there's stuff to complain about. But I have only ever seen the stuff worth complaining about, or stuff I WOULD complain about.

WHEN MOST OF THE RUN IS GOOD

At least when Tim is around.

Go figure.

Maybe I should've paid sole attention to how he wrote Tim and nothing else at the very least for that first story.

'Cause even in the first story, Tim was well-written--it's how cheap the rest of the story telling was in that first story that turned me off--and the weird knew about the movie plans that I am still fully judging harshly. (Love the new Superman film suit, though)

[fanfic-lover-girl]

I like Hiccstrid...but I have issues

So I watched How to Train Your Dragon about a month ago and I absolutely loved it! So much so that before I took the time to watch the other two movies, I basically know the plots for the remaining movies from all the fanfiction, Youtube videos and Tumblr posts I have read about it lol. I know I have issues when it comes to consuming media properly :). I still intend to watch the movies...I hope.

Anyway, I liked Astrid's character in HTTYD 1. She was a fully fleshed-out character and besides her opening scene, she never felt like a love interest character for the majority of the movie. She was the perfect Viking, everything Hiccup was not. She was pretty (because what love interest is not pretty **roll my eyes**) but she was angry and violent. She was perfect...until the romantic flight scene. When I watched the movie, I enjoyed the sequence and I found Astrid cute but the entire scene just felt kind of forced. And it marked the beginning of my issues with Hiccstrid, as much as I still found the couple enjoyable at the end of the film.

Astrid's bullying was not resolved properly

Astrid never bullied Hiccup the way the others like Snotlout did, but she was still complicit in Hiccup's ostracization. It's obvious she does not like him or have any fondness for him. However, at no point does she apologize or express any remorse for hurting him in the movie. She just suddenly likes him after one (amazing) flight? Hiccup just moves on from her ignoring his existence like that? No reconciliation??

Astrid's punching Hiccup is not sweet

As I have mentioned before in other posts, I find the trope of a female character expressing her love for a guy through violence to be disgusting. The only fictional couples I tolerate this are Jimmy/Cindy (Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius) and Helga/Arnold (Hey Arnold!). I don't mind Jimmy/Cindy because their fights tend to be verbal and argumentative in nature and Jimmy gives as good as he gets from Cindy. They both get a kick from riling each other up, Cindy a bit more than Jimmy. I don't know the Hey Arnold! show very well but I understand why Helga acts the way she does and Arnold is allowed to be angry when she hurts him. When she is truly being romantic and sweet with Arnold she does not hit him. She seems to mainly torment him when she is upholding her mask to hide her feelings. You can say that this is the case for Astrid too. She grew up as a Viking and Viking culture is violent. However, I hate that we are meant to see her hitting Hiccup as part of her love language. It would be fine if it were Tuffnut or Snotlout but Hiccup is not like other Vikings. He is a gentle person and he is not tough like his other counterparts. Astrid's hits hurt him and he expresses obvious pain. But Astrid gives him a follow-up kiss after each punch so it's all good? Not for me.

Hiccstrid felt kind of shallow

I think the relationship felt rushed. Astrid went from disdain to crushing way too quickly. It's like they missed a step in the relationship: friendship. The romantic flight scene should be the starting point where she reconsiders her opinion on Hiccup and maybe after a few more dragon training sessions she would appreciate Hiccup's growth. Maybe her ice queen character thaws over time as she gets to know Hiccup better in training. She laughs at his sarcastic quips. Maybe she begins to sit with him at meal times away from the others. Just small stuff to show their deepening friendship. However, Hiccstrid was not given this development because like many other action type movies the romantic relationship is given the backburner which leads to my final issue.

Hicctrid was not needed

I mentioned earlier that Astrid was not treated like a love interest until like halfway through the movie when we saw the romantic flight scene. Hiccup does not even spend time beyond the opening scene expressing attraction towards her. You can easily forget he has a crush on her. Because ultimately romance was not needed in this story. At all. When you really think about it, what did Astrid contribute to Hiccup and Toothless' story? What does Hiccup and Astrid's relationship contribute to the story? Astrid could have given the pep talk and helped rally the other teens to help Hiccup as a FRIEND, not a love interest. But of course, when the guy becomes a hero and saves the day he needs to get the girl of his dreams at the end. It would have been nice if the first movie focused on developing the Hiccstrid friendship and then developed the romance in the second movie, wrapping it up with their marriage in the third.

Anyway, this is not to say I HATE Hiccstrid. I still need to watch the other two movies before I can truly say whether this couple is truly couples' goals as many people claim. I think they look amazing together and they seem to have great chemistry in HTTYD 2. I think they complement each other in theory and Astrid would be a great help in helping Hiccup lead as chief when the time comes. But I don't love it enough to read fanfiction or watch many Youtube edits about them and at this point, I sometimes find Hiccstrid annoying to see in my fanfics unless it addresses my problems with the development of the relationship.

[solradguy]

Please at some point if you can write about how those 2 panels in beginning and what they mean to you the begin content is always so good and also really enjoy how rough the drawings where for it UGH

Yess god I love Begin so much. Honestly, it's like a 7/10 star scifi novel at best; it's a pretty standard "guy gets monsterified by evil science" plot. But Sol/Frederick means so much to me and that book did more for his characterization than almost any other piece of GG media has before or since, imo.

I picked this thing apart like a carcass so readmore because it goes on for miles. A thorough dump of my thoughts on what I have labeled as "begin pic 12" in my GG Begin scans folder. Vague suicide mention warning for when I start talking about the personal stuff near the middle.

What I love about those two panels is that it's the first time we get to see Sol after he gets turned into a Gear and it's a downtime moment. It's 6 months after Asuka betrayed him and he just finished whatever mechanical process was required to complete the first Gear cell suppressor headband. He's actually unplugging it in the second panel on the left. There's a third panel below these where he's picking up the headband and there's a strong focus on how monstrous and gross his hand is as an effect of the Gear cells, but it's not quite as interesting as the first panel here.

It's so small. This is the only time we ever see or hear a (canon) description of what Sol's personal living space looks like. They DO show him at some kind of house at the end of Strive, but it's barely fleshed out. There aren't that many details or strong hints in that scene like there are here.

I've talked about this potted plant in the window a lot, it's my favorite detail in this illustration.

It's not clear what kind of plant it is though. Maybe some kind of succulent with how stiff and solid the leaves look? Something Sol doesn't have to worry too much about taking care of—low effort in case he has to leave for a long time or forgets to water it. But like... Where did he get this plant? The building he's living in is described as a rusty shack out in the middle of nowhere, so I doubt the plant was there when he moved in. He must've picked it up somewhere and brought it back. Why?

Sol calls himself a monster multiple times throughout Begin and it's pretty clear how keenly aware he is of his rapidly vanishing humanity. He knows his time is running out and he's trying to slow it down by making the limiter headband but that's only a temporary fix. Asuka betrayed him, Aria might be dead (or worse), he can't even blend in with normal humans anymore, and the only animals that are like him are mindless war machines. Sol is completely and absolutely alone.

Except he's got that plant.

The plant doesn't have feelings, it can't judge him. If he goes mad and becomes a rampaging animal like the bear Gear at the end of Begin, the plant won't know or care. Sol got that plant from somewhere and whether he takes care of it or not, it's something else for him to think about. A single purely organic thing in his rusty, machine-littered, shack. If he can't bring himself to do anything else on a given day, if the Gear cells are screaming too loudly and he just wants to say fuck it all and rip everything apart, he's got that tiny little potted thing that only needs sunlight and water. Daisuke probably didn't even think about it that hard when he was designing this scene, but I have hahah I appreciate this little plant. There is a lot of thought put into the layout of the things on Sol's desk though, so perhaps Daisuke did have a motive putting the plant there too.

Sol's desk space is about what you'd expect. A tiny toolbox under the light, notes, wires, balled up scrapped papers, books (likely on magic and software engineering, probably something on wiring), the corkboard up above that has a map with marked out locations that are implied to be locations of places Asuka might have gone since the research lab him, Sol, and Aria worked at exploded (referenced in the epilogue). The rolled tubes on the right may be maps or computer schematics for Sol to reference for making the suppressor.

Based on the position of his hands in the other panels, that thing near his elbow must be whatever was compiling something onto the suppressor headband. I don't know what those are directly in front of him by that dark tower. They look sort of like computer chips/boards? Too low detail to know for sure.

The rest of the scene around his desk are just cabinets and drawers without much unique/outstanding detail. Nothing unique or outstanding enough to base anything off of, just set pieces.

For purely personal reasons, I love this illustration because I spend a lot of time sitting at my own cluttered, dimly lit, desk working on projects that keep me sane haha. Sol's arc through Begin is relatable too, in a way, with regards to gender and body stuff. It's easy to read a lot of the Gear things as an allegory for transitioning for people that didn't have a very smooth transition or that took a long time to accept that's what they are. I fell into that latter category for a long time. Once puberty hit, I realized that I didn't want to be like a woman, but being trans was bad? All depictions of trans people that I knew were jokes or were things like drag, and none of them were women into men. I didn't know a single depiction of a trans man until I went looking for it myself as an adult. They were all tomboys that rescinded their masculinity and became petite girls in pastels. Or they were villains that died and were made fun of.

So. I just didn't know you could do it. I thought that maybe there were just never any women that felt like men or that they were something other than a woman. There was no one to talk to about it, no resources to look up, I hated myself over it because it was a bad thing meant to be kept to yourself. I grew my hair really long to cover my chest and only wore baggy/layered clothes to smooth out my unfortunately curvy waist. On top of this, I have also been 6'5" since I was about 14. I didn't fit in with the women at school because they saw me as a man and I didn't fit in with the men because, biologically, I was a woman. Through all of this, I had to move with my mom across the country to live with a literal nazi because I knew if I didn't, she'd do something stupid (I was right in that she didn't want to because I was there). My friends wanted me to stay and live with my dad but I didn't know how to tell them that I couldn't. I didn't tell them when I was leaving and just left.

I had no friends, no one else was physically like me, there was nothing for me to relate to or find inspiration in. I don't know what kept me going, in hindsight. Everything pissed me off all of the time. All I had was my sick cat, metal playlists, and art. Man, did I have art though.

My art teacher let me skip Art 2 to go from Art 1 directly into Advanced Placement Art (AP Art) because I was graduating that year and she saw potential in me. For our AP Art final portfolios, we had to do a certain set of pieces with fixed themes (portrait, abstract, specific mediums, life study, etc) and then another set of something like 12 that were wholly original illustrations connected through a single, personal, theme. The theme for my original pieces was that monsters have no friends because they're big and scary and no one else is like them, but that they still need love because they're just trying to find their place in the world. Lol. I wish I still had the short essay I wrote about it, but it was so long ago...

I don't really know what was keeping Sol going at the end of Begin either, when he's living in that shack so far from his own home, alone. But I get it though. Sometimes something activates in the human spirit when shit's got it out bad for you that makes you want to keep going. It ended up working out for me. My mom's still alive, I have friends again and I know who I am now despite being a weird biological anomaly. It's working out pretty well for Sol now too, it seems, despite it all.

[longitudinalwaveme]

Flash #1 (or #801) Review

As I promised a few days ago, here's my thoughts on the newly-released Flash #1.

SPOILERS below the cut.

Let's get the smaller things I noticed out of the way first:

-It's nice to see Max Mercury and Impulse as a pair again. I'm particularly glad to see Max getting some focus, since it's been a long time since he's gotten to do much of anything.

-The art looks good for the most part. I think the panel layouts are interesting, most of the people look okay, and the horror stuff looks really creepy (so the art is accomplishing that goal).

-Gorilla Grodd is back! Hurrah! (Like all those Silver Age DC editors clearly believed, everything is better with gorillas.)

-Having lots of text is nice. I read really fast, so I appreciate comic books with a lot of text. Otherwise, I can burn through an entire comic in seven minutes. (One reason I like Silver and Bronze Age comics so much is because they tend to have a lot of text, so I'm glad to be seeing something similar here.)

-Baby Wade is adorable.

-"As always, it is not until the house is perfectly silent...that the pipe begins to play." Is this a reference to Hartley? Please let it be a reference to Hartley. I miss him.

-Why does Irey look like a teenager? She's only like ten, right? So far, she's the one character whose design really stood out to me as not looking right.

-I am disappointed by the lack of Evan in this comic.

-Good to see that we're maintaining the friendship between Irey and Maxine that Jeremey Adams established during his Flash run.

-I have no idea who this Chad guy is, but he sure did suffer a gruesome fate.

-On the last page: Hey, is that a reference to that time that Wally West became the Porcupine Man during William Messner-Loebs' run? It's definitely got the spikes, and that was also the result of the speed force going out of control.

And now for the major plot points:

-The sudden undercurrents of stress in the West household kind of seem to have sprung up out of nowhere. I'm not opposed to the family going through a rough patch, but I feel as though it would have been better to build up to it a bit. As it stands, the conflict kind of seems to have sprung out of thin air.

-Why is the Speed Force suddenly a massive problem? Where did that come from? Why has it only now started to become an issue? Again, this seems like it should have received a bit more build-up, because right now I feel like I've been dropped into a story that's already in progress, rather than being at the beginning of a new story.

-Is Linda supposed to be suffering from post-partum depression? That could potentially be interesting, but only if it's handled properly.

-Wally's shared his super speed with Linda before (notably, during Mark Waid's run), and she didn't seem particularly upset about not having it afterwards. Granted, that was for a few hours rather than several months, but it does seem perhaps a bit out-of-character for her to be so upset about not having super speed. In fact, Linda's characterization was the biggest sticking point for me in this issue. She just seemed off (something that was also a problem in the story Spurrier wrote for issue #800).

-I can't say I'm super thrilled about having yet another story that focuses on the speed force. I feel like most of the stories that can be told about the speed force have been exhausted at this point. It probably doesn't help that the speed force has never been my favorite aspect of the Flash mythos. Some writers handle it well (Mark Waid and Jeremey Adams come to mind), but I'm much more interested about the Flash, his family, his supporting cast, and his villains than I am in the vaguely-defined source of his powers. Oh, well. At least Evan and the Folded Man are supposed to get involved. That should mitigate the problem somewhat.

-Wally's periodic issues with depression have returned with a vengeance. Spurrier seems to have a better grasp on Wally than he does on Linda.

Overall, I'm curious about where this story is going to go, and I am very eager to see how Spurrier uses characters like Evan and the Folded Man, but I'm not confident about how the run as a whole is going to turn out. While there's certainly room for horror in the Flash, I generally prefer a brighter and more cheerful tone for the book than what Spurrier seems to be going for, and I'm worried about how he's going to handle Linda.

Tentative Rating: 6.5/10.

[heroofspiritsisthebestlink]

VHAD NATION

I wrote another fic! This time, I think it’s short enough to just slap on here. I also want to thank @creativeskull95 for letting me use their OC, Maia! Please, give their stuff a look as well.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

A Dream Is A Wish Your Core Makes

"Lock down the whole building. We can't risk that thing getting in."

The overly sweaty humans on the screen started bickering between themselves, as Thad began to zone out for the 13th time tonight. He really was trying to keep up with the movie, but it bored him so much that he was genuinely starting to wonder if his motivator was malfunctioning. A quick hit on the pause button and a two minute full body-scan later revealed that, no, the flick was just that asinine. It didn't help that it was getting a little late, or that this was his third attempt at trying to watch the whole thing through. Horror was boring him, somehow. Living in an isolationist, paranoid society that was constructed from the fear of death made dramatized fiction like this feel artificial and numbing. At least, that's what he supposed. He rubbed his eyes and slumped back into the sofa, maybe he'll give it a fourth shot tomorrow.

His eyes went wide in surprise as the sound of a ventilation grid hitting the floor behind him brought him back to reality. When the initial shock passed, he looked over his shoulder and sighed in relief as a familiar, tall figure lowered herself into his hallway. Adjusting her hair, she then waved at him.

"Hey." Said V. "Pod got a little cramp and I got bored."

"That makes two of us." Said Thad, throwing a flabby hand up at the running TV. V chuckled, making herself at home by casually throwing herself on the sofa and putting her legs on the armrest.

"So what's on?" She asked, leaning up against his side.

"'The Instance,' or something. School assignment. We're supposed to watch horror movies to study how humans..." He picked up the paper laying on the table, digital eyes squinting to find a specific paragraph. "'...Use suspense and scares to engage their viewers.' This gotta be the worst movie in the world to show that. Thanks Teach." Thad threw the paper into the air and leaned back again, putting his hands behind his head.

"Dunno about all that, but I'm sure as hell entertained. Look at that guy's wig!" She cackled, pointing a stray claw at the screen. Thad rolled his eyes, but couldn't deny he was smirking. A wig that spiky did look a little out of place. He found himself earnestly smiling for the first time while watching this movie. Maybe it'd be easier to stay awake if he had someone to banter with.

As it turns out, it wasn't so bad if you just had company. They poke fun at the flimsy plot and all the oddities of humanity. V is especially snarky today, mockingly questioning every part of the movie from the character's illogical actions to their fashion choices. The former huntress exercised great comedic skill as she efficiently disassembled the poor Worker Drone's mask, leaving him gasping for air as she continued her assault on his Funny Code. They couldn't stop giggling.

As they finally managed to get past the 60-minute mark, the movie picked up considerably. It was at least interesting enough to make the two drones shift around in their seating and graduate from limp blobs to sitting normally. The characters had eventually gotten into a predicament interesting enough to get invested in. The guy with the spiky wig even got taken away. And then the movie's climactic horror scene happened. The movie's monster, some cloaked creature, had seemingly cornered a large group of characters in a foyer. Then, the carnage began. The monster lunged at the defenseless meat-bags and mercilessly culled them. Bodies were ripped apart, limbs were torn off, screams peaked and died out, and blood was splattered on the walls to such a gruesome degree that would almost be comical if it wasn't so disturbingly familiar. But it was with humans, so Thad could stomach it. He side-eyed V to gauge her reaction, she was being oddly quiet. V looked unnerved. The eyes on her visor had dilated into pupil-less circles. It was getting to her. It was too familiar. Same old horrors. It was too much.

The screen froze as two, grey vertical blocks stared back at her. Thad had paused the movie.

"Do you wanna watch something else?" He asked. V blinked, pupils returning.

"...Isn't this an assignment?"

"It can wait. I have the whole week." He didn't, but this felt more important. Stepping out of the sofa, he waved her over to a shelf with a bunch of plastic casings. DVDs, she realized. Thad began digging through them all, taking them out one by one and having increasingly indifferent reactions to the covers. Looking over the collection, V started to browse herself. Noticing an oddly fancy, glittery one, she took it out. 'Cinderella.'

"What's this?" V asked, staring at the cartoon woman on the cover with intensity, as if trying to gauge whether or not the woman may have the fire powers the title implied.

"Oh, that's my sister's. We can put it on though." He offered with an endorsing tone. V plucked the disc from its casing and threw the plastic over her shoulder, inserting it into the DVD player and hitting Play with her tail. Taking a seat next to Thad again, she waited with her hands resting on her lap. After a few seconds of unusually old static, the archaic sound of filtered horns filled the room.

Cinderella~

If you give your heart a chance

Thad smiled. He couldn't remember the last time he had watched this with Maia, but the melody brought back many memories of his sister gleefully singing along to all the songs. V had nothing to say. She just watched unblinking as colorful graphics painted several pictures to a beautiful song. She said nothing as the pleasant narration introduced her to a nostalgic setting. She didn't question how the woman could converse with animals, or how they could help her shower. It was just a story about a servant girl dreaming of more, and that was enough for her to escape in.

No matter how your heart is grieving

If you keep on believing...

———————————————————————

When Maia woke up early in the morning, she was confused to find a metal grate on the floor in their hallway. Tip-toeing around it, she kept quiet as she sneaked into the living room, expecting to find her brother fast asleep on the sofa once again. Her hand flew up to her mouth to choke the gasp she nearly let out, as next to her brother slept a much larger, scarier girl. A Murder Drone, or, a 'Disassembly Drone,' as she had tried to learn, was cuddling up to Thad in a paradoxically sweet embrace. Looking over them, Maia could also see that the girl had wrapped her tail around Thad's leg. The drone had a big yellow SLEEP MODE sign on her visor, with text beneath reading 'DO NOT DISTURB' in threatening, bold letters. But even if she was really scary, Maia also thought she was really pretty. She was like a sleeping princess, but with big scary wings and teeth.

As silently as possible, Maia began tracing her steps backwards to leave, but was startled to hear her foot step into something crunchy. Panicked, she looked down. It was the casing to her Cinderella DVD. Why was that there? Looking back up, she gasped. Wide, terrified eyes met squinting, groggy ones. The murder princess was awake. With a surprisingly gentle smile, the big girl winked at her, quietly shushing her with a finger. More embarrassed than afraid, Maia turned around and quickly ran into her room.

[ravenya003]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Angel, S01E07

Remember in The Goonies when Sean Austin whispered: “it all starts here…”? That’s what this episode is for so much of what’s to come. It’s when the writers finally settle on who and what Angel is, and lay down the groundwork for the entirety of his story – not only in the next three seasons of Buffy, but in his own future spin-off. (Making it apt that the episode is simply called “Angel”).

As it marks such a turning point in the show, it’s fitting that it comes precisely halfway through this season, and it’s rather dizzying to watch while bearing in mind where all its main players (Buffy, Angel, Darla) will eventually end up. Heck, it’s even funny to consider that Cordelia is little more than a bit character here, given her later history with Angel.

Like Sean Austin said – it all starts here.

We begin in the Master’s underground lair, where some standard bad guy plotting is going on. He wants the Slayer dead, Darla is forbidden from interfering due to her personal interest in a certain someone who is close to Buffy, and the Anointed One says some generically evil stuff.

I was mildly interested to note that the Master calls him “Collin” (and he’s credited as this in the end credits) which once again makes me wonder what this kid’s life was like before he got vamped.

The Master decides to send a trio of warrior vampires known as the Three after Buffy, and they get a dramatic entrance with their game-faces already on, scattering a bunch of street thugs as they strut their stuff. Also, they wear armour. You’d think more vampires would think to wear armour. It instantly takes death-by-staking off the table.

Over at the Bronze, they’re celebrating the Fumigation Party, a supposedly annual event which (as far as I can recall) never occurs again during the entire run of the show. It’s so oddly specific and so utterly removed from any of this episode’s themes, that I have to believe one of the writers actually attended a real Fumigation Party at some point.

Buffy is moping about Angel and so decides to go home, only to run into the Three on the way. They attack her, and put up a surprisingly good fight (remember when vampires were an honest threat and not something that Buffy could dust without breaking her stride?) before Angel swoops to her rescue.

They make a break for the Summers’ house, and although Buffy does call out a quick “get in, c’mon” to Angel (I guess that constitutes an invitation) some hands of their pursuers manage to get past the frame in order to claw at the door and walls. As later episodes will demonstrate, the lack of an invitation will completely prevent any part of a vampire from crossing the threshold, almost like a force-field is in place.

So... continuity error. Though, I do like the theory I read years ago that the hands of the Three managed to breach the threshold because Angel had just passed through the door, and they briefly piggy-backed on the magic residue of his invitation. Or whatever, it’s not that big a deal.

The most important thing all this establishes is the invitation lore! A vampire has to be invited into a home before they can enter, though the nuances of this rule remain a bit iffy. For example, a building like a school or a mall can be breached since nobody actually lives there. But what constitutes a house, exactly? A place where you sleep? That you own? Where you keep your stuff? What if someone who doesn’t live in the house issues an invitation? Does that count? And how specific do you have to be in your wording? If a vampire asked: “can I come in?” and you said: “sure,” would that be enough to let them in?

Because I vaguely recall that vampires are able to breach dorm rooms when Buffy gets to college – or am I misremembering that?

Again, it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, but who is and is not invited into Buffy’s house is an important plot-point for this episode, so we’ll keep track.

Angel is wounded, which requires a shirtless scene, during which Buffy gets an eyeful of his back tattoo, something else that is rather nebulous in its application. I’m pretty sure we’ll see him shirtless again without the makeup artists having applied this particular detail to his back. The wiki tells me it’s a winged lion with the letter A beneath it, which is never stated in the show itself (I’d always assumed it was a bird of some kind) and never elaborated on again.

Honestly, we get the origin story of Jack’s tattoos on LOST, but not Angel’s? Was it there before or after he got vamped? Why a winged lion? What’s the story behind it? Unclear.

Their flirting is interrupted by the arrival of Joyce, who apparently didn’t notice any giant armoured vampires in her driveway. She doesn’t realize Angel is in the house until he deliberately steps forward to awkwardly make Buffy introduce him and – okay, I’ll say this for Spike: he handled Joyce better. I will give him that point.

Joyce goes upstairs and Buffy pulls the old “call goodbye out the door before smuggling the boy into your room” trick, though the pair of them should really be whispering once they’re in there. Pretty sure Joyce isn’t asleep yet, guys.

Buffy prods him for a little backstory as to why Angel does what he does, and he tells her that his family were all killed by vampires. For a second I wondered whether he was referring to his “family” of Darla, Drusilla and Spike (who were technically killed by vampires and currently lost to him) but it’s pretty clear by the end of the episode he’s talking about his human family. Which was comprised of... his father and a little sister? I’m surprised my memories are so fuzzy, but don’t tell me – I’ll find out all over again when we reach the flashbacks next season.

In any case Buffy accepts that it’s a vengeance thing (it’s not though) and the two of them have some cute banter when they settle down to sleep – Buffy in the bed and Angel on the floor.

The following day, Buffy is in the library, having told the rest of the team what went down the night before. (Sadly we don’t get to see how Angel handled waking up in a sunlit room. Did he just hide in the closet or under the bed or something? How’d he explain that?) Willow is melting, Xander is jealous, and Giles is unimpressed. He’s been researching all night and has identified the Three.

Another question: let’s say hypothetically that Buffy had managed to kill the Three the night before. Presumably Giles would have recorded this in his Watcher’s journal... but would he have contacted the Council so that they could update their records? I only ask because he shows Buffy a large tome with a picture of the Three inside it, which becomes obsolete by the end of the episode.

Because down in the underground church, the Master is having the Three staked by Darla for having failed him. This seems incredibly wasteful, since they were a formidable threat to Buffy during the one and only opportunity they got to confront her, and as far as I know, the Scoobies never actually find out what happened to them. For all they know for the rest of the show’s duration, they’re still out there somewhere.

(And yes I know that Giles tells the others that they’ll offer their lives to the Master as penance, but they never really know that for certain).

Which is why they actually shut down the library (complete with a keep out sign) so that Buffy can do some training. Plenty of Slayer training will go on in this library in the years to come, but I think this is the only time they take measures to actually keep people out while it’s happening.

Pedantic nitpick: Buffy is given a quarterstaff and makes a joke that she won’t be fighting Friar Tuck, even though it was Little John who is renowned for using that particular weapon. Sorry, I’m a Robin Hood fangirl, I can’t help it. This whole scene feels a bit like filler, though I suppose it’s to ensure that Buffy doesn’t get home until after dark and so avoid noticing that Angel can’t step out into direct sunlight. They’re gonna hang onto that reveal until the most dramatic possible moment.

Which is... the very next scene. Buffy gets home and Angel tells her he’s been hiding in her closet all day. There’s an awkward moment of misunderstanding when Buffy thinks he’s read her diary, which all plays out in a rather stilted manner... but then it leads into their first kiss, and I’d totally forgotten how good David Boreanaz and Sarah Michelle Gellar were at this.

Apparently, they’re too good at this, as Angel is so overcome that he vamps out. Buffy screams her head off, he dives through the open window, and Joyce rushes in to see what’s wrong. I have to admit, there was never a time in which I didn’t know that Angel was a vampire, so I never really got the full impact of this reveal.

Buffy tells Joyce she saw “a shadow” which is pretty weaksauce, but Joyce is still in her mostly-ditzy stage of characterization and accepts it.

At school the next day, Giles is delivering some important exposition on vampires: “A vampire isn't a person at all. It may have the movements, the memories, even the personality of the person it takes over, but it is a demon at the core. There's no halfway.”

This is important, because later on none of it will make any sense whatsoever when it comes to Spike.

Buffy is trying to rationalize the fact that Angel hasn’t tried to hurt her before last night, while elsewhere, Angel is also trying to grapple with this new development in their relationship. That’s Darla’s cue to break into his apartment and mess with his head.

As with the reveal that Angel is a vampire, the original audience back in the nineties would have had no idea of the history between these two characters (it probably hadn’t even been mapped out in the writers’ room yet) and so it’s amazing how much of their casual dialogue ends up matching what we’ll see in future flashbacks of their time together: kimonos, Budapest, an earthquake – all this is eventually dramatized.

And given the huge presence Darla will have in this show’s backstory (and in the spin-off) it’s almost hilarious that she dies in this, her second episode. Given the huge history and promise this character had, it’s not surprising they found a way to bring her back.

In any case, Darla’s goal is to try and bring Angel back to the fold, and taunt him over the fact that Buffy will never accept him for who he is. I’ve said it before, but I like that they deliberately make Buffy and Darla look physically similar (especially with the latter in a school uniform).

Giles has found information about Angel, also called Angelus (“the one with the angelic face”) in an old Watcher’s journal. I am immediately less interested in Angel’s backstory than in the implication that suggests Angel went up against a Slayer at one point. Unfortunately, this isn’t elaborated on, and we get the Spark Notes version of Angel’s history: two hundred and forty years old, originated in Ireland, cut a swathe of misery and bloodshed across Europe, then came to America about eighty years ago, where he shuns other vampires and lives alone.

The plot thickens.

Down in the Master’s lair, Darla is begging the Master for the chance to go up against the Slayer, and in doing so, bring Angel back into the fold. This is mostly expository dialogue, but it does reveal plenty about the characters involved – not only Darla’s manipulative streak (she plans to have Angel kill Buffy by sowing conflict between them) and that the Master really wants Angel back on his team.

We only get a few glimpses of the history between Angel and the Master throughout the show (I think it comes down to a single flashback on Angel) but I like that he sees him as an asset and not a threat. That he also has this line to Collin: “You see how we all work together for the common good? That's how a family is supposed to function,” and will later shed tears over Darla is a fascinating facet to his character: not only a deliberate wrinkle in Giles’s assertion that vampires are demons at the core (yet who apparently retain enough of their humanity to form and retain bonds with others) but also a deliberate comparison to the reveal that Angel killed his mortal family (though that said, the Master DID order the deaths of the Three, so it’s not a great family).

Willow and Buffy are studying in the library, but the talk soon turns to Angel. Unbeknownst to the girls, Darla is eavesdropping on their conversation and you can tell from the expression on her face that she’s pegged Buffy as a legitimate romantic threat. Willow is already poking holes in the impossibility of any future relationship, which Buffy tries to take on board given that staking Angel seems inevitable at this point.

Darla’s plan is certainly very fiendish: she goes to Buffy’s house, introduces herself to Joyce as a study buddy, and then gets herself invited inside. I’m pretty sure Darla didn’t account for Angel turning up at that precise moment (she probably just planned to drain Joyce and then hope Buffy would simply assume Angel was the culprit) but things work out incredibly well for her when he rushes inside to see her with a bloody, unconscious Joyce in her arms, who she then throws at him just as Buffy walks through the door.  This could not have been timed more perfectly.

Buffy gets an eyeful of Angel holding her half-dead mother, having unfortunately missed the part where he’s tempted and then refuses to drink her blood, and throws him out the house. Like, literally throws him through the front window onto the lawn. How she explains that to her mother later on is never explained.

But the next scene not only gives us our first look inside Sunnydale General Hospital but contains the first official meeting of Joyce and Giles! Joyce is a little bemused that Willow, Xander AND the school librarian have all turned up at her bedside, but we’ll blame her lack of serious questioning on the drugs.

Buffy grabs a crossbow, while Darla taunts Angel at his house about how the Slayer coming to kill him and will never accept his “true face,” to the point where he seemingly snaps and is ready for it to be “finished.” They don’t delve into the implications of this, and they don’t really explain what Angel is attempting to achieve at the Bronze, but it all seems to be hinting that Angel is ready to commit suicide-by-Slayer. The psychological seeds are sown for the events of “Amends.”

Giles is talking to a woozy Joyce, and her mention of Darla brings the truth to light – now the remaining Scoobies rush out to find Buffy and stop her from killing Angel. Somehow all parties spontaneously decide to converge on the Bronze (hey, it’s a pre-existing set, so it makes as much sense as anywhere else) and Buffy fights Angel to a stand-off. She can’t bring herself to kill him though, which is another fairly pertinent bit of foreshadowing.

Angel tries to goad her into it by revealing that he killed his entire family and enjoyed it... only for his self-preservation to kick in a little when he goes on to tell her about the curse: he fed on a gypsy girl, and her people took their revenge by cursing him with a soul. Now he has to live with the horror of what he inflicted on the world for nearly two hundred years.

Ah, that gypsy girl. I think we get a brief glimpse of her in a future flashback episode, but she has got to be the greatest example of Small Role, Big Impact of ALL TIME. I don’t think she even gets a name, and we never really learn anything about her or why Angel targeted her, yet she’s the reason half this show AND the spin-off exist at all.

He admits he didn’t attack Joyce, and the pair of them lower their weapons – only for Darla to appear, having brought guns to the crossbow fight. Darla manages to tell Buffy that she and Angel were involved for several generations and that she sired him (so much consistent backstory in this episode!) though it hardly matters: after some gunfighting and hiding behind pool tables and the Scoobies trying to create a distraction, Angel sneaks up behind Darla and stakes her in the back.

Again, if you’re watching this for the first time, you cannot grasp the weight of her shocked little: “Angel?” before she dissolves into dust. That he kills her is a much bigger deal than we – or Buffy – knew at the time, occurring well before the two shows delve into the depths of their past relationship. So kudos to Julie Benz for infusing her (first) death scene with so much pathos, without even knowing the full extent of her character’s history.

The final scene is the post-fumigation party at the Bronze, in which Buffy and Angel try to call things off between them, and end up kissing instead. It concludes with yet another iconic moment between them: as Buffy heads off, we can see that the cross around her neck has left a burn-mark on the skin. Classic those two.

Oh, and did I mention that the song playing over this scene includes the lyrics: “and I remember [you]?” What a song choice, three whole seasons before the episode “I Will Remember You”!

This is the episode in which everyone sat up straighter and thought – wow, this is a great show. In figuring out Angel’s character, the writers also figure out an important component to the show’s mythos and its subsequent themes: the pain of love, the cost of fighting the good fight, the idea that the distinctions between good and evil aren’t that simple, and of course – making amends. Allying himself with Buffy is the start of Angel’s redemption quest.

The concept of “a vampire with a soul” is perhaps the centrepiece of this entire franchise, one that blurs the line between good and evil, and defines so much of these characters’ lives (even the ones that are only peripherally involved at this point, like Cordelia). And we haven’t even gotten to the all-important happiness clause yet!

Throw in some pondering over what exactly a vampire is and what they’re capable of experiencing in the emotional sense, and you’ve got an instant classic Buffy episode. One the one hand, Angel was an unrepentant killer who destroyed hundreds of innocent lives. On the other, a monstrous creature like the Master can refer to his minions as “family” and shed tears over Darla’s death. Likewise, Darla clearly had feelings for Angel and was shocked that he would kill her, while Angel doesn’t look remotely pleased or triumphant about doing the deed.

Shit is complicated.

There’s going to be plenty more exploration of this grey area when it comes to vampires and what they’re capable of feeling in future episodes, and the amount of setup “Angel” does in regards to this particular strand of the show’s mythology is pretty impressive.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Watching this episode, the thing that stuck out the most was that all the Narrative Filigree the script sprinkles throughout the story remains consistent throughout the show – the Master’s feelings on Angelus, Angel’s comment that he last saw Darla in a kimono, that they spent time together in Budapest, that Angel killed his family, that Darla was the one to bring him the gypsy girl – this all gets picked up again in later episodes and elaborated on.

They obviously didn’t know the finer details at this point, but a lesser show would have retconned half these comments.

This episode was written by David Greenwalt, but Joss Whedon clearly liked the mysterious comment regarding what Angel and Darla got up to in Budapest so much that he borrowed it for a similar Noodle Incident comment between Black Widow and Hawkeye in The Avengers.

On my DVD set at least, we get our first “previously on” and it’s still narrated by some random guy instead of Giles.

Cordelia only gets two scenes this episode (one of which involves Xander slut-shaming her, urgh) which is kind of funny, as in four or so years, she’s going to be neck-deep in this Angel/Darla drama.

Buffy refers to the Three as “the Fang Gang,” which is also funny as this ends up being the Fan Nickname for Angel’s circle of allies in L.A.

Interesting that both Darla and the Master refer to Angel as “Angel” and not “Angelus.” Obviously this was because the writers had not yet decided to use these names to denote the different parts of his dual-personality (that doesn't start until season four of Angel, as even in season two of Buffy, the Scoobies keep calling him Angel after his reversion) but it’s still an interesting choice for them.

In hindsight, it’s a little creepy to watch Buffy try and figure out why Angel was helpful towards her even though he was a vampire the whole time. These sort of mind games are precisely Angelus’s M.O., she just doesn’t know it yet.

In time, Darla’s comment that Buffy will reject Angel’s “true face” will be proved incorrect, but we’ll get there...

It’s a bit surprising that Giles takes Angel’s true identity in his stride the way he does – not just that he’s a vampire, but that he’s a good vampire. This is a guy that’s presumably been raised since childhood on the fact that vampires are bad and need to be killed... yet acts quickly the moment he realizes it was Darla and not Angel who attacked Joyce in order to stop Buffy from killing him. It’s unclear how exactly he views Angel at this point – valuable asset, perhaps?

It's also unclear where Angel is living at this point, though it seems to be some sort of basement apartment. Wherever it is, it’s certainly not the mansion that he’s ensconced in by season three.

Reading the shooting script, there are a lot of scenes that got cut – some pretty inconsequential (like Xander asking Giles why it’s called “tweed” at the hospital) but some that I wish had been kept in, like Joyce and Buffy talking about Angel at the dinner table (if not simply because Joyce mentions an “Aunt Lolly” who I like to assume was Celia’s mother, but we also get a little context to Joyce’s relationship with Hank) and one that shows Joyce at home after her stint in the hospital, with Buffy trying to get her to eat some vegetables. It was cute, and a necessary wrap-up to Joyce’s injuries.

I’ve often thought about the potential strangeness of Angel’s brooding guilt over what he did as Angelus, as according to the show’s own mythology, becoming a vampire is akin to being brainwashed or possessed. The human is dead, the demon is in charge, and an individual is simply not what they were as a human. You can’t technically blame someone for what they do if their soul or free will or brain chemicals have been messed with (especially if it’s done without their permission).

And yet, it’s more complicated than that. You cannot deny that something of the human self remains when an individual comes back as a vampire, or insist that someone like Harmony could ever come back as an Angelus. Even as a demon, she’s not capable of that kind of depravity. Nobody but the mortal who was once Liam could have become the vampire known as Angelus – that cruelty and sadism was always a part of him; that potential was always there.

Heck, it kind of reminds me of how red kryptonite takes away Clark’s inhibitions. He’s not acting how he usually would, but it’s still technically him. (Speaking of, Smallville’s idea of having Lana wear a kryptonite necklace so that Clark can’t get near her kind of reminds me of the cross burning into Angel’s chest after Buffy kisses him). As such, Angel feels that burden of guilt despite the argument that it wasn’t really “him”... because a part of Angelus was him – and of course, he remembers all of it.

Best Line: Buffy: “Do you snore?” Angel: “I don't know, it's been a long time since anyone was in a position to let me know.” It’s cheesy but it’s cute.

Worst Line: Not trusting the audience to get the fact that Joyce explicitly said “come in,” we also have to hear Darla tell her: “it's very nice of you for inviting me into your home.” Yes show, the vampire has been invited in – we GET IT.

Best Shot: Together but apart, thinking about all the sex they're not having:

Best Scene: As mentioned, I do love Darla’s shocked little “Angel?” when she realizes he’s staked her, especially as it’s given added depth and poignancy in later seasons, after we’re able to grasp the full extent of their relationship. Angel killing her is a Big Deal, but we don’t have the context to fully realize it yet.

Best Subversion: It’s subtle, but any other show would have had the Master specifically forbid Darla from going after Angel (only for her to flout his orders and get killed as a result) but here she operates under his express permission. His comment at the end, about how Angel was meant to sit at his right hand, makes me disappointed that the show never really delved further into their relationship (technically, he is Angel’s grand-sire!)

Most Random Scene: Still trying to wrap my head around the Bronze Fumigation Party, in which you get a free drink if you catch a cockroach. Is it meant to symbolize that the cockroaches who survive it are stronger for having gone through the ordeal? Or something? I’m just trying to make it fit!

Death Toll: A vampire called Zachary, killed off-screen by Buffy so I won’t count him. The Three, staked by Darla. Darla, staked by Angel.

Grand Total: Twelve civilians, twelve villains.

[felassan]

I have a friend that has never played the games (They're very close to my heart, I forgive them this sin 😂) but they are really interested in watching Absolution. Do you have a basic run-down or know of a pre-existing post that would have the most important bullet points of the games to get the most out of the series? Appreciate your immense wealth of knowledge!! My wife and I intended on watching just the first 2 episodes and at the end all 6 were like.... that's it?! We need more 😭

hello! tysm and I know what you mean, more pls!! (๑*ᗜ*) that's a good question. the Dragon Age wiki has plot details/summaries of each of the games (DA:O, also DA:O, DAII, also DAII, DA:I, also DA:I). lots of YouTubers have done Lets Plays of the games over time. Ghil Dirthalen has a series of YouTube videos on Thedas lore here. in the one called "Nations of Thedas", the segment on Tevinter starts at timestamp 9 mins 30, and "A Brief-Complete History of Thedas" covers the history of the world. IGN did a "Dragon Age in 5 Minutes" video that covered the story so far/general broadstrokes lore up until before DA:I, Kotaku wrote a beginner's guide to all things Dragon Age article designed to help new players to DA:I who hadn't played DA2 and DA:O which could be useful, and The Kingdom has a series of 3 videos explaining the history of Tevinter (one, two, three). and to help get the most out of the series it might be helpful if they browsed the wiki pages on Tevinter, mages, blood magic and spirits/demons/possession.

I think the most important bullet points would be that:

the world is called Thedas and in it, being a mage often comes with a cost due to risk of demonic possession or perceived risk of this. because of this in most of the countries in the world mages are made to live in a system which is part of the main in-world religious organization, the Chantry, called the Circle, which keeps an eye on them and is policed by an order of knights called the Templars. however in one country, Tevinter, the country's government is made up of noble mages called Magisters, and it's effectively a magocracy. lots of bad things, dark magics and corrupt stuff goes on in Tevinter so it doesn't have a good reputation among the other nations

the Chantry religion is centered around a god called the Maker and his prophet, a human woman called Andraste

Tevinter has its own version of the Chantry, its own Chantry leader and its own Templars

Tevinter is a socially stratified society which has slavery

there are 4 races in the world, humans, elves, dwarves and Qunari (a tall horned people). elves are oppressed by humans who are the dominant race. in Tevinter elves are often enslaved. members of the other 3 races are also sometimes enslaved in Tevinter.

blood magic is a form of magic powered by blood (usually through sacrifice), it's very powerful but most people fear it and consider it to be evil. it's usually forbidden. it carries increased risk of possession. there's lots of blood magic stuff going on in Tevinter

a few years before the show begins, a corrupted ancient Tevinter magister from long ago basically came back to life and tore open part of the veil/barrier between the waking world and the magic dream world where spirits and demons live because he was A Bad Guy. this was called the Breach and demons from the other world poured through. a group of heroes got together and set up an organization with Chantry backing called The Inquisition. it was led by the Player Character from the most recent video game in the series. they could close mini-holes in the veil because of a magic mark on their hand. their title was the Inquisitor and some people thought they were chosen by Andraste so they called them The Herald of Andraste. many people joined the Inquisition to help. after closing the holes and saving the world, the Inquisition did some other stuff and then eventually disbanded.

I feel like those are the main things someone would need to know? (I tried to pare it down and put it into like, non-DA fan general fantasy terms)

I hope something here is helpful and that your friend enjoys the show ^^

[hamletandthegang]

France- Part 3

A dark figure walked towards Horatio in the dark underground corridor. The old green-tinted light attached to the ceiling caste a chilling glare onto everything in the tunnel. Horatio jumped, startled, and his back hit the back of the step he was sitting on. 

“Hello,” A dark alto voice said. “Who are you?”

“Hi, uh, hi,” Horatio stood up awkwardly and met her gaze. It was sharp, and cut through him. “Where- um- Where did you come from?”

“I’ve been watching you for a few minutes from over there,” she jerked her thumb back where there was a scooping indent in the tunnel, but it had been so dark he hadn’t noticed her there. “Who are you?” She repeated.

“Uh, yeah, sorry, I’m Horatio Gilbert. Who are you?”

She pushed a piece of her bushy black hair out of her face, “I’m Maggie.”

“Cool,” Horatio said, starting to get weirded out about the random person talking to him. “Well, nice meeting you, but I think I’ll-”

“Not many people come down here,” She interrupted. “Not unless they’re hiding from something. What are you hiding from?”

Horatio was taken back by the question. “I dunno. The world, I guess.”

“Huh,” Maggie looked him over scrutinizingly. She finished her scan of him, and said, “Do you have a place to stay? It’s getting late.”

“Uh, not really. I thought I’d probably get a place at a hotel or something.” Horatio knew that was a lie- he had no money on him at all. He’d had nothing but his phone when he woke up that morning.

“Hotels are expensive around here,” Maggie mused, seeming to have read his mind. “I’ve got a little place where me and some friends are staying, if you wanna come stay for the night. There’s an extra bathtub waiting for you.” She sounded like she was joking, but there really was no way of telling. 

Horatio knew that he’d typically be appalled at the thought of staying at a random person’s house that he’d never met before, but in that moment, he had nothing. No roof, no food, no money, nothing. And he felt as though he could pass out. Maggie was offering at least a place to stay the night, before he could find somewhere else to go. 

Horatio agreed, and Maggie led him up to the street. She walked quickly, and since there was more light due to the streetlamps and shop lights, Horatio was able to get a better look at her. She was wearing black ripped up jeans, and a black leather jacket. She had on chunky tennis shoes, and had a small bag slung on her back. She had a dark complexion, with curly black hair that circled her head like a crown. She also had a silver nose piercing of a silver spike, and long glossy nails.

Horatio was still wearing the uniform that Laertes had given him back at the base. Somewhere along the way, he had lost his helmet. But he didn’t really care. He just hoped that Maggie didn’t know he was the reason the fire in Notre Dame was raging. Maybe she knew, and that was why she was taking him to her place. Maybe she would turn him in and he’d be dead. 

Maybe he deserved that. Maybe he should be.

He tried to stop thinking about that. This was his only hope of having a roof over his head. He had to take it. 

After a few minutes of walking, Maggie stopped and turned to look at Horatio. She was standing in front of a fancier hotel, and motioning toward the alley that led down the side of the building. Horatio pushed the red flags away and followed her. She hefted a large dumpster out of the way, behind which a ragged tarp was hiding a short door. Maggie held the tarp up over Horatio as he went inside, and she followed after. He stood up and looked around.

Horatio was standing in a compact room with shelves lining the room. The shelves were packed with cardboard boxes, and in the center of the room, a card table and a few foldable chairs stood. A woman with dark skin and pink braids was sitting in one of the chairs on her phone. As she turned towards him, he realized with a shock that he recognized her. She was the leader of the acting troupe, the one who had attacked Hamlet! Then it hit him. Were the rest of the rebels here too? Then who was Maggie? 

For the time being, Horatio was forced to pretend that he didn’t know the acting troupe leader. There were two doors, one he assumed led out to the hotel, and the second was sitting open, exposing the disgusting bathroom inside. The door to the bathroom had a considerable chunk hanging out of the wood. It looked kind of like a gunshot. Horatio peered inside, where a sink, toilet, shower curtain (he assumed that behind that was the tub he’d been promised to sleep in), and dirty rug, all bathed in a sickly greenish orange light. Both the tile on the floor and the mirror had multiple cracks and hunks taken out of them. Maybe he should have slept in the tunnel instead. 

“The bathtub’s in there,” Maggie grunted, noticing Horatio’s appalled stare. 

“Right,” Horatio made for the door, but the leader of the troupe (Monica, he remembered), jumped up suddenly. 

“Oh, sorry, lemme grab some stuff out of there.” She quickly closed the bathroom door and shuffled around. Horatio couldn’t exactly see through the hole in the door, but she seemed like she was taking a bunch of large objects from the tub. She opened the door, and Horatio stepped back to see that she was holding many large guns, pistols, and rifles. She was holding a small revolver in her teeth that she couldn’t hold. 

Monica dumped the weapons in an empty box in the corner, and Horatio glanced at Maggie with wide eyes.

“Well did you wanna sleep on them?” She asked sarcastically. “In the morning we can reevaluate and probably set you up with some food or something, but for right now that’s all we got.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Horatio made for the door once again, but Maggie stopped him and threw a lumpy pillow at his head.

“Head’s up.” Horatio caught it and closed the bathroom door behind him. He took a breath and let it out slowly. At least he was alive.

Horatio spread out a little bit, placed the pillow in the bathtub, and sat down in it. Scrolling on his phone, he realized that Hamlet had texted him and he hadn’t felt it buzz.

Where in Paris are you?

He quickly typed out, Staying the night in the backroom of a hotel. I think I might’ve gotten picked up by the rebels.

Hamlet immediately shot back, Wow, small world. Which hotel? It isn’t La Masquerade by any chance?

Actually yeah, I think that might’ve been the name.

I’ll see you soon, gotta backtrack a bit

Horatio put his phone away, and tried to keep from crying. He was so happy Hamlet was coming. He was going to be with someone who wasn’t going to hurt him. He was so overjoyed, he passed out in the tub.

~~~

Hamlet was walking down the sidewalk, and had been for a few minutes. Far behind him was the train he had taken. And now it was dark, so the streetlamps and glow of the restaurants and shops lit his way.

Hamlet had texted Horatio a while ago before he had gotten off of the train, but he hadn’t responded. He didn’t want to open his phone, for fear of the flood of texts from Ophelia who was no doubt mad he had left without telling her. He silenced his phone. No news was coming in, unless it was from Horatio.

Hamlet sat down on a little green metal bench. He was tired from the sudden trip, and didn’t even know where he was going. He looked up to see a tall hotel called the La Masquerade. The moon was bright and blue tinted, and cast a pleasant light over everything. 

After a moment, Hamlet stood up and continued walking aimlessly down the sidewalk. 

It was over half an hour before Hamlet’s phone signaled that Horatio had messaged him. He opened it, and saw that he had responded to his text. He was staying in a hotel with the rebels apparently. He asked, and found that it was in fact the La Masquerade, the hotel he had passed a while earlier. He turned around, and started back down the other way, when he saw a newsreel being played on a screen. It was showing the same articles he had seen on the train and before he left, mostly just pictures of Horatio and Claudius and the French ambassadors talking. Then something else flashed onto the screen. FIRE OF NOTRE DAME LESSENED; ONE PERSON FOUND DEAD AND ANOTHER RESCUED. MORE INFO AT TEN. The screen flashed two big pictures of Ben and Marc. Ben was gone.

Hamlet stumbled and sat back down on the bench. 

~~~

Horatio was jolted away in the middle of the night by the sound of something hard hitting the floor. He heard a soft scraping sound from the room behind the bathroom door, and then the door that led to the hotel opened. He sat up and peered through the hole in the door, and through the darkness he thought he saw a familiar face.

“...Hamlet?” He whispered, perfectly audible in the quiet room. The head jerked to the side, and the person opened the door to the bathroom. Horatio held his breath as the door swung open.

Hamlet stood in the doorway. His eyes lit up as he saw who it was, and Hamlet rushed to the bathtub, and dropped to his knees. He wrapped Horatio in a hug over the white rim of the tub. 

Horatio broke down. He had lived a year in the few days since he had seen Hamlet, and he had been hurt in so many ways. Hamlet allowed him to, and hugged him harder. 

“It’s okay,” He whispered. “I’m here.”

Monica and Maggie seemed to still be in the other room, sleeping presumably. So the two of them stayed quiet, and tried to communicate as softly as possible.

After Horatio had collected himself, he told Hamlet the whole story. How he had woken up that morning in terrible pain, and Laertes had given him a uniform and his phone, and driven him to Notre Dame cathedral. He told Hamlet how he had been roped into watching for spies with the other people in Laertes’ team, and how the fire had started. He told him about what Laertes had said, and about meeting Maggie. And he told Hamlet how everything was his fault. The fire was his fault, and he was so, so sorry, and he hoped that Hamlet and the rest of his friends would forgive him someday, and that he understood if Hamlet didn’t want him to be around him anymore, and how-

Horatio stopped spiraling when Hamlet hugged him again. 

“I would never do that,” Hamlet said. “I would never push you away. You are the one thing keeping our group together sometimes. We won’t make it without you. Well, I won’t make it without you.”

Horatio and Hamlet stayed in the bathroom, talking until morning.

[sugar-petals]

Group Sex With SuperM

SUMMARY: creating a group chat is all it takes.

↳ A/N. yep, we’re going there. 

words. 14k

WARNINGS ⚠️ friends to lovers hc, porn with plot, idol au, sex w/ all members individually and together, dom/sub dynamics, corruption kink, sexting, blowjobs & cunnilingus, gaping, graphic, pegging, bondage, light foot fetish, sex toys, spitroasting (m receiving), brat taming, dick riding, protected sex, doggystyle, cuddling aftercare

curious about an eightsome are we

understood

how’s the state of things then?

last september you decided to open an entire group chat just for planning your juicy sexual activities together

and oh lord is it active

and full of ideas

and explicit videos

and emojis

and excitement

yesterday taemin sent a clip of lusciously covering himself in champagne foam for you

wearing close to nothing

in fact just a piece of gauze, a snake-shaped necklace, and probably a bit of perfume

oh boy

watching that was an out-of-body experience for sure

the entire chat basically imploded with reactions

but hey hey

not so fast

we need to go through everything from the start

to see how all these utterly historic events happened to unfold

so where did all that come from?

first off 

befriending super m outside work (eating together, fooling around, bingwatching stuff, you know)

...means there’s no point nor chance in having a permanent favorite with a group like this

every member truly is the creme de la creme

super m is the package of the entire packages

they are so legendary you can bias each member for one day of the week 

and never run out of that pure bliss

in fact 

you all agreed to do exactly that on a regular basis to get to know each other casually

it just naturally happened

seven days seven members that’s just logical

you can’t always hang out together in full attendance so you split up your times and set specific days

you change that routine very often depending on your individual moods

but it usually goes like this because you want to develop closer bonds with them one-on-one

so this is how it ends up

mondays you work out with xuxi. oh, that sexy smiley man. his body is the ultimate bomb. is there something better than doing sit-ups next to him? anybody’s sports motivation would go through the roof. and if there’s someone you call to share a pile of food with? it’s just gotta be him. being with yukhei is self-care.

tuesdays, you visit ten to check out his latest dance moves. and: to have a huge cuddle session with the cats. sometimes, you watch whatever series you’re in the mood for. it’s always a time to slow down and mend your sore muscles from monday anyway. you think ten is so interesting and talented, and super pretty, truly one of a kind.

on wednesdays jongin and you often end up on long midnight walks with the dogs or you both look after his cute nieces. meeting up at the river han is a staple, you get ice cream and snacks. you adore kai because he’s a sweetheart and steadfast person, and admittedly... so damn hot, holy hell. being with him makes you feel great.

thursday is baekhyun day and full of cheeriness as you’d expect. long hours of gaming, cheeky skinship, banter, and pizza eating await you at his apartment. you adore this mochi for his everything, he makes you laugh uncontrollably so much. sometimes, you also comfort him when he doesn’t feel good about himself or exhausted from practice. he will sing anything you want, baekhyun is like your personal 24/7 radio station.

fridays it’s time for the studio. mark is crafting his most fire bars and loves to have you around there. you inspire him a lot. he’s just completely astounding and the sweetest to you. friday most people would go clubbing, but super m just has to meet up in the studio. no paparazzi, and the music is obviously danceable. i’m telling you: this mob can jop, duh.

saturday is for handsome taeyong who loves coming to your home. cooking, organizing, doing the laundry, and browsing youtube together is the best thing. taeyong is the shyest goodest boy and a great listener. he gives great advice and is the epitome of respectful. you just vibe very well together.

sunday you dedicate to taemin. you watch artsy films, experiment with outfits, and he plays the piano for you so expertly. man, you are lucky. he’s like a fairy to you, and a connoisseur, a mythical figure almost. since he’s a newly-found cat dad, you easily fill your day playing with the most interesting kitten that is lee kkoong. sometimes, you even meet shinee members dropping by.

so yes this is what paradise looks like

and they all love to engage with you in their own way and you develop favorite ways to spend time, they put so much effort into this

it goes without saying that you all realize how hard you’re crushing as the weeks pass

like can you imagine

all the hormones i swear

you’ve already been joking to them that you have seven boyfriends some months ago

well the prophecy is fulfilled faster than you can blink

when you meet up as eight for a movie night at baekhyun’s, the atmosphere feels pretty frisky

because lucas is sending you ten thousand glances and certainly nobody misses that

if this guy is laughing at your every word i mean

meanwhile taeyong is having a nervous meltdown at your every comment about the movie, it’s ridiculous, he’s smitten as fuck, he looks at you like you’re an actual goddess

mark keeps on making glimmering eyes at you as well, and he asks you if you want popcorn every two minutes

baekhyun is all curled up close to your lap and not even watching the movie because his face is almost nuzzled into your sweater for fuck’s sake

taemin has spent the entire preperation in complete frenzy making sure there are scented candles everywhere and the snacks are exquisite and costly. mother taemresa? at full throttle. he even used his own damn credit card.

meanwhile kai suffers from his fidgety legs, constant hair fixing and even more inability to concentrate on the movie 

because damn, he knows he wants your attention. he literally came around with the tightest shirt he owns so there’s that. you can see every little muscle doing its thing when he does as much as breathe. kai is now well aware he came to impress. it won’t take him a lot to realize he wants to be even closer to you than doing midnight walks.

ten is so firmly snuggled up next to you, he might as well be your cat himself. if ten starts acting like a clingy feline instead of being in roast mode, you know he’s lovestruck i’m telling ya

needless to say

the mood in the room is hard to ignore

hell there are romance candles everywhere all those hecking rose fumes are to blame

surprise surprise all the members try to sit as close as possibly to you the more the movie progresses

even abandoning the couch and seats to sit on the ground in front of you instead

“you want popcorn?”

“like some more popcorn?”

“here, have my popcorn!“

“more popcorn?”

“hey do you want popcorn?”

from all sides, constantly

the m in super m stands for making sure you have popcorn

you never run out

like when the leading lady is pulling out a cigarette in those old hollywood flicks and at least twenty guys are scurrying to offer a lighter

i’m exaggerating but

nobody even knows what kind of movie they’re watching tonight though

the elephant in the room is trumpeting too loud to understand the dialogue

you’re surrounded by seven big ole hotties who have fallen for you

it was inevitable

it’s more than clear to everyone that they all like you and you couldn’t be any more fluttered yourself

let the hunger games begin

i’m jopping i mean i’m joking

this is not the wwe

it’s pretty clear to the boys that if they fight you’re gonna be so unhappy and your quality time together is ruined

you adore them all, and they’d be regretful about hurting their own bonds 

and anyway

if it came down to it and the bad blood was really escalating um...

...ten would destroy all of the competition

there’s no denying

by the simple virtue of his badassery and winning disease

quickly reducing all his opponents to a pile of dust so fine-grained, the great freddie mercury himself would resurrect to sing the soundtrack in the background and pump his fist

imagine that. superm actually being gladiators i mean wasn’t that the entire jopping mv

baekhyun would try to pull the leader authority card and use his hapkido martial arts skill but ten would obliterate him anyway so

even if taemin put on a dark robe and drew a salt circle to summon a million snakes from hell, ten would win the fight to a fault

but that’s too apocalyptic and outside of that thought experiment the boys are actually kinda shy so... let’s scratch that

there are seven days of the week with good reason 

you ease the uncertainty and tension by saying you’d truly fail as a tv bachelorette

everyone understands that deciding would be impossible and cheating is shit

why give someone a rose and break 6 hearts when you can hand out a whole damn bouquet

it’s more stylish my friend

and for what reason would ten want to face off against taemin and his army of snakes in the first place. they’re ten’s greatest inspiration

nor does kai have any tighter shirts 

he already ran out, he brought his A game from the get-go

on top of that the popcorn is empty there’s no more to offer

so you remain with the idea to just keep your daily routine

xuxi monday, ten tuesday and so on

keeps everything in order

it’s fair

plus it doesn’t mess with their schedules

usually unless a big award show is coming up but that can be re-planned in advance as well

you know... things can develop in their own timing with each member

it’d be awkward to expect everyone to be on the same stage at once

baekhyun is comfortable with all kinds of back hugs while taeyong and taemin are still completely flustered and turn all wobbly at just a greeting wave

you know what i mean

it’s already clear everyone loves you very differently 

some members are more straightforward, others take it slow, it’s just a normal thing

that’s when the group chat is born

it’s still very sfw 

compared to how explicit it’ll be in the future ahem

and everyone is overcautious with writing something except baekhyun, the eternal extrovert

for now you keep each other updated on how it’s all going with trivial details

earlier you just had individual chats and baekhyun arranged the group meetings since he knows the schedule best

now it’s all in one spot so that works

everyone’s curiosity is quenched at least a little bit

and they see each other anyway and put their heads together

baekhyun will be the most open about how far your skinship slowly develops followed by lucas and kai who oggle each other in their usual tom and jerry manner

which you have an eye on

you tell the members something very important for when they’re envious

or feel the need to one-up or catch up

it’s the sign to get closer to you and that they’re ready for taking another step. that’s literally what jealousy is all about

that advice helps them out a lot actually

kai takes that to heart in particular because he knows he’s prone and feels bad about it

and they also learn from ten who carries a quiet happiness with confidence that doesn’t need comparison, but he can also talk very honestly about how he’s standing with you to the point

ten knows how it’s done

as expected of such a competent man

like he’s kissed your hands very lightly but he doesn’t feel the need to show it off all day

and he also leads by example together with taemin and taeyong how one can give compliments even when not being involved in something 

“you’re looking adorable together“ as taemin would often say about you hanging out with kai or baekhyun

a lot of praise culture is developing in the group chat

you like to see it 

and now for the other elephant in the room

as for who will ask you to sleep with him first

(and mind you at this point they’re all walking around with condoms in their backpacks and jackets)

believe it or not

after the finishing touches on his latest mixtape (oh yes), and those tracks have you feeling some kind of way oh shit, mark gathers all his courage

yes it’s mark lee 

literally he steps into the blaze of bravery of jongin when he first put on a crop top

and gets out a little “can we... some time... you know...” after you’re having some pretzel sticks together and awkwardly sitting around

oh what's gonna happen next huh?

you say you’ve been thinking about it a lot

that he has a great body doesn’t go unseen

and tell him how you imagine it with him

long story short you’ll have your first quickie in the sound booth that night

cutting straight to the chase

him steadily penetrating you from behind, you leaning closely with your back to his chest

just standing and enjoying the rhythm

that dick. is amazing.

oh god, mark lee

long, curved, smooth, a classic

meanwhile your fave rapper is definitely going through it

his arms tell you everything

that’s an embrace for the books

he’s hugging you like his life depends on it

you can just take in how he’s been showering twice today this guy is clean as fuck he smells so good

getting off from shampoo and fabric softener is not what you expected but it definitely makes you clench

you both know he’s not gonna last for more than six minutes and that’s ok

that’s a lot of long-held frustration released into that condom

and a lot of passion put into how he puts his guitar fingers to work on your clit afterwards

jimi ‘lee’ hendrix has arrived

oh yeah mark, you fucking treat, fuck it up

that way you won’t last long either since you guide his finger tips to your favorite spot and the motherfucker completely goes for it

“like this, like, um?”

and he goes off with the wrist

oh shit

it’s all kept so short and simple and you’re on the oldest mustard-colored studio couch that ever existed but mark lee is mark fucking lee nothing can obstruct his quality

like this guy has some serious skills with the angles

that orgasm is gonna get some moans you didn’t know you were capable of out of you

never wasting time, that guy is he

mark definitely fucks like he raps. fast and good

you cool down together looking each other in the eyes, forehead to forehead, for like fifteen minutes, and you give each other little chaste kisses all over your faces and he melts every time

your little rendezvous was definitely so needed 

you ask if you can bring some vibes to play around with and a watermelon next time

you don’t have to ask twice

mark is so damn happy

and the timing was right

straightforward and spontaneous. that definitely works well with mark

no complaints, you go home feeling comfortably refreshed. you’ve told him he could tell the others or wait to do it, this is up to his comfort because he is shy

neither happens

after just one glance at him the next day while the group is doing a photoshoot

baekhyun already knows mark slept with you 

he just knows

and makes a loud “ohh wow, you did it” noise

ten takes two only glances to understand what’s going on too

mark nods and the whole group is highstrung for the entire day

like a hive of bees oh yes

kai is massively proud of raising mark so well but also really surprised

unlike taemin who calmly advised mark on many things in advance

guess where mark’s fingering skills originate from

he took some secret pointers from the king 

taeyong is shook at his rap buddy’s singleminded grit to just spontaneously ask you

while baekhyun...

is keeping it together repeating the anti-jealousy mantra you gave him in his mind

“jealousy means to get closer jealousy means to get closer jealousy means to get closer jealousy means to get closer....“

it makes him realize oh god he really wants to be inside of you badly as well

you ain’t dumb, you see his change of tone from cute to sexy in the group chat even if he might not notice

baekhyun is trying extra hard to make you react to him

he posts so many cute selfies with kissy faces

needless to say taeyong’s time slot gets postponed to next thursday while you visit baekhyun this evening

it works for taeyong because he still needs to think some things through

the news overwhelmed him a little and he is shy about meeting up but that’s not a problem for you

and it’s better to get together with your mochi sooner because you both know there’s a lot of banging to do

like seriously

your mood tells you that candy’s on the menu today

oh yeah. it’s time to be all over your clingy lil’ honey bunny 

there’s not much endless wooing involved it goes to the point very fast after you arrive at his home

you just wanna stop pretending and fuck like animals and see his brain melt from it

remember how baekhyun once said he doesn’t fancy nice girls

that’s what he meant by that

mattress earthquake

he wants you fully riled up with arousal and addicted to touching and grabbing him

yeah baekhyun gets off on your desire

that’s not hard to accomplish when he makes big puppy eyes and puts his tongue on your neck

with that gomez addams shit... kissing up your arm and then popping off as soon as he gets there

congrats morticia

here is a man who can handle ya

he’s being so slobbery and moany about it that it knocks the breath out of you 

that shit is so good

baekhyun is not just a pro at giving head my friend it’s also giving neck

and unlike mark, may god have mercy on you, baekhyun keeps on going and going and kissing and kissing and he wants to lick up all of you so bad 

we know how needy and stamina-heavy this fella is

baekhyun is super m’s most insatiable member by fucking far

he’s like just give it to me and you’re like ok here we go

this guy is burning up oh god

that’s an evening of ten thousand positions, fearless cumplay, and a lot of face-sitting

super m’s most unleashed tongue right here

thank god you worked on your fitness with xuxi otherwise you couldn’t do this

he’s moaning in some harmonic scales or something it’s a whole concert

baekhyun is fully at it with you in every room of his flat with his whole neck and underarms looking mighty veiny

yeah he even carries you around to make it short and simple he’s one impatient bun

he can lift up sehun bridal style so no worries

mochi is smol and thin but he won’t drop you i promise

he’s fueled by horny boyfriend hormones and wants to give you the greatest night of all nights

and hit all the amazing spots

baekhyun aims to make your pussy lips throb and fall completely in love with him

and the bridge of his nose if you get what i’m saying

he’s also versatile in his clothing choices

if you say keep your nerdy glasses on, oh yeah they stay on

just a little challenge to see if you can ride him hard enough to see them fall off

and that dick is not some extra long lasso mark lee calibre

so he can really bend it more and thrust with ease at many angles

talking about mark

he regrets not asking you earlier but you tell baekhyun that this way was much better because you unceremoniously skipped to the fucking instead of messing around

if it wasn’t for mark’s courage to break the ice even with a choppy sentence 

you’d still be awkwardly looking each other in the eyes while munching pizza

all hail mark lee nervous legend

this way, baekhyun goes all out with fewer restraint and the burden of being first with making the impression that comes with it

we all know he’s too self-conscious for his own mochi good so that’s a better way to start out

this way baekhyun will have sex with you until he’s passed out on his bed

knocking him out like that might as well become your favorite hobby

even minutes after your tongue still feels like it’s knotted together with his honestly, the muscle memory is kicking in

and this must be the most dick thrusts you’ve ever gotten in one night

baekhyun really wants to be all inside you, make you feel him

if the condom broke at least his baby will be easy to identify from day one

it’ll come out and belt a perfect G#5

he gave it all my god you stopped counting the times you came your pussy is just dripping wet it feels crazy

and his voice has become all raspy i—

that was baekhyun’s hardest vocal run yet i swear

the contraception shelf in the convenience store next to his house is close to empty

but there’s no need to buy more

what you two perverts have been up to is enough for comfortably going through 10 years of celibacy

baekhyun is content and sleeps like a baby

you hold your bun for like two hours afterwards and never want to let him go

you are as wobbly as taeyong after getting a head pat from you

and the most well-kissed girl in this city tonight

both sets of lips

what a smoochy boyfriend

you even get the chance to jerk baekhyun off in his half-sleep after he wakes up and asks you to put your hand in his pants

guess who opens his mouth very wide to lick his own semen off your fingers with some really obscene noises

it’s his royal nastiness byun baekhyun 

who sucks your tiddies to drift back into sleep again

with his hands in your pants

god bless this man

the group chat is sending 👀 emojis all the way throughout the night

your boys know love is in the air

they’re loosening up the timing is right again

you send cute smiling emojis 

a bunch of “ahs” and “ohs” come through via voicemail

and lucas even writes: “so who’s next? 😳”

damn

you reply boldly: “the one asking that”

the group chat becomes a buzzing beehive again

from which you extract that kai is also very interested while ten, taeyong and taemin prefer waiting a little more

but this time you don’t switch time slots since you’ll meet xuxi on monday already 

kai wants to set up something nice and prepare the catering and whatnot (alright you rich man)

so it’s gonna be wednesday as usual with him

so far so good that’s the plan

sunday being taemin day, you get together to read and paint and listen to music

you feel like just doing some sensual kissing with him and taemin is very down

yeah baby he is the kissing king, taemin is hot stuff, he knows exactly what he’s doing, those lips are the pillows at the gates of heaven

losing your mind is a staple when you do that with him

just making out on the couch surrounded by the nicest arrangement of pot plants you’ve ever seen while it rains completely relaxes you and the serotonin is off the charts

he holds you so gently and tastes so good

what is it, rose water or something like that

he even put on his coziest sweater so you’ll love leaning against him

TL;DR taemin is the biggest fucking romantic in the history of SM

that was so seductive you’ll be dreaming about it

applause for lee taemin please

perfect contrasting programme: just hours later

yeah here it goes now

monday starts with xuxi stripping more than he usually does 

at the makeshift gym in his room while he’s on the treadmill

with his hair freshly dyed the most himbo shade of blonde ever

and yeah that’s blonde with an e because yukhei is too sexy to be called a blond. what an ugly word to look at

he’s a blondé

so that’s nice

he’s so dtf you just skip the workout 

time for lubed condoms.

i don’t have to tell you that you literally jump on him 

or that you’ll be dealing with super m’s singlemost biggest equipment

he doesn’t even have to drive it home an inch by himself you’re already riding him

he can’t handle all that gear in the first place

because how do you even develop a technique with such an unrealistic dick

hell how do you even exist like that

so it’s clear who’s taking the lead

all he has to do is work that body but it sort of happens on its own

himbo autopilot

you are going hard and chaotic on this man

xuxi doesn’t even know what hit him

he’s so vocal and excited 

you fuck him while he holds you up, get down on several gym benches, have him bend you forward at the bathroom sink... 

...and you attend business in ten’s room on a desk and window sill

because it’s the most silent there and doesn’t disturb xiaojun’s beauty sleep

ten has discreetly ushered you there and preoccupies himself in the kitchen with the cats

he knows how the game is played

either floor ‘em all or always watch out for others

MVP

but you are secretly wondering what ten is plotting because he has some serious self-control and observation skills

given how tidy his room is... whatever his plans are you can look forward to it

xuxi is definitely suffering from your heavy duty cock destruction in the meantime while being in heaven at the same time

that dick is worn out and dripping 

so much bouncing is even gonna make the biggest boy lose it

milking that orgasm out of him is gonna be so gratifying yum

the deep and defeated moans, my god he really surrenders to the pleasure

wow that was almost as to-the-point as studio sex with mark

no idle talk in nct huh

you clean each other all exhausted and then gobble up three bowls of noodles each

then sleep for two hours in each other’s arms

then do a second round because this guy is really getting you going and yukhei wants to live this monday to the fullest

like this man gives you previously unknown levels of energy

must be the blonde hair. it does sexy things when yukhei is twitching

this time it’s a dick blowing festival

oh yeah

the type where you’re so sloppy with your head bops, he doesn’t even know where to put his hands and needs to think emergency thoughts

oh yeah big dicks make for some nice slurpy noises that sound really plump you know what i mean

he’s gonna realize very soon you do this shit for your own entertainment

and get all kinds of squeaks and faces out of him

only little pauses help him keep up the stamina so he asks you to pull off for a bit every two minutes or so

he has to look elsewhere and distract his mind with thinking about washing the dishes

girl... your tongue has this man sweating major bullets

you’re big on the corruption kink are you

once again 

xuxi is gonna be so shaken and pass the fuck out from cumming

and he thought he was a horny guy

his soul must have left his body and that scalp is probably dead

but bleaching was worth it (he looks like a sleeping angel now)

not to mention banging all over the wayv dorm

ten got a preview of what’s expecting him

not that he doesn’t know he reads you well

lucas promises to return the oral favor next monday and finally collapses entirely in the living room wearing only boxers

nothing new for wayv, great sight for you

not a single workout routine has exhausted xuxi this much

he needs 10 hours of sleep to reboot

“she’s so wild 😲😂😍” is gonna be what he’ll summarize it as in the group chat later

first big boy taken down

the second one follows

wednesday is right around the corner 

oh yes

kai definitely goes off with the preparation you are not ready for this spectacle

he redecorated his entire kitchen and bathroom to perfection with flowers, lanterns, dim light, petals, expensive fabrics draped from the ceiling, and there’s a great view on night time seoul

you can tell he’s best friends with taemin

i mean they’re the greatest entertainers of their time of course their taste is great

always going the extra mile

the black, sheer shirt with a deep cleavage that kai put on is nothing short of a treat

is that a lace choker he’s wearing

and his hair is pushed back lord have mercy

you get pretty weak in the knees at that

the catering leaves nothing to be desired either. a full 3-course sicily-style italian meal with 100% organic ingredients and beautiful basil and thyme garnishings

to set the mood afterwards jongin does what he does best

don’t tell me you didn’t see this one coming

just a chair for you, some music, and him

is this like a whole damn private concert?

he has prepared an entire setlist to thrill you with selected styles of dance

even a rendition of salsa, swing, and tango argentino

i’m telling you...

if kim jongin moves his body for you like that you’ll be fucking hooked and honored and not believe your eyes

what a feast

prepare for a serious case of dropped jaw

and jongin being an absolute daredevil dancing incrementally close to your chair

he incorporates all these little moments of skinship

where he strokes your hair, your jaw, or takes your hands

while at the same time he’s completely destroying it on the dancefloor

with those scorching hips and how he works it on the carpet right in front of you

you’re about to fucking melt

what a time to be alive

the sheer shirt’s buttons are holding onto dear life as do his pants

kai’s movements are becoming extremely ecstatic

what a fucking lapdance 2.0

men have clearly evolved otherwise this wouldn’t be happening

kai dances like a king on a stage but jongin? is god-like when he dances with just one person as the audience

shiit

and because he’s very nervous

he work particularly hard to ace it

in his mind he’s already underneath you judging by how he’s moving

...you can definitely fancy a luscious private concert each wednesday

and for designated activities in the bathroom

he even made a whole 5-hour playlist of the finest songs

so he can make you grind on top of him

don’t tell me kai isn’t the master of courting

king of effort

i don’t have to tell you that this is gonna be the most sensual night you’ve ever had

kai will get to know your body very, very well

those hips never stop do they

the fact that thursday is baekhyun day right after this?

wow aren’t you exhausted

the orgasms just seamlessly continue huh

everything goes on like that 

friday you have a toy-filled, passionate evening at the studio with mark who’s doing the most 

let’s say mark just has good ‘vibes’ indeed

this almost gets as messy as your first time with lucas

have fun cleaning up that couch, canada

what a sex marathon

if you don’t have your period

there’s always a lot of action going on 

or actually. you do catch a break for the weekend

saturday you bake delicious, pistacio and pecan-crusted sticky buns with taeyong 

who also shows you the new fledgelings that have hatched in his apartment

so adorable

sunday you endlessly make out with taemin in the sheets who has of course heard of jongin putting on a show

so he dances for you as well and even does the hands-tied criminal choreo in an especially luscious rendition (aka extra heavy breathing and grinding on the floor, and doing splits that almost rip his pants)

oh yes my love

nothing really happens afterwards you just have dinner completely flustered

if lee taemin dances, sex becomes redundant and doesn’t compare anymore

but really now

the slow burn is unbearable with him for fuck’s sake

taemin knows how to work up the seduction bit by bit

you basically masturbate all evening after returning to your house

god. what to do with this guy

on monday you ravage yukhei’s dick and get all that head 

xuxi is a chaotic fella but he keeps his promises

plus you get the best full-body massage of your life

and for the first time pull out your phone to basically livestream yourself riding him

so the whole chat can watch for five minutes

yep. you learned that courage thing from mark lee

the camera work is obviously subpar but the video definitely has maximum effect

kai and baekhyun stream their reaction right alongside your broadcast

“woah woah oh my god oh my god!!”

everyone’s freaking out, everyone stops whatever they’re doing, everyone is glued to their screens, they love your body moving

you’re having a blast 

especially when you stream another round an hour later and lucas holds the camera now

his arm is perfect for that by the way

strong and stable and high up in the air

so you can do your thing on that fat dick with a bonus of the sexiest xuxi moans ever

that deep but soft tone... yukhei really got a perfect groaning voice huh

after getting steamy for almost ten minutes, you get some great close-ups of your pussy after having yukhei pull out mid-romp

because that gape is for the gods

don’t kid yourself with a dick like that inside you’ll be opening a little wider

it looks and feels even better with lucas tracing his long fingers inside of it

with the closeup zooming in even more while he’s putting his thumb on your clit 

mmh that’s good stuff

six very shaky boys are sitting in front of their phones right now being able to look um very deeply inside of you

baekhyun is basically frozen to a statue on the reaction stream and salivates nonstop it’s just running down his neck at this point

his wettest dreams are right in front of him

stretched out pussy all juicy and swollen? baekhyun’s lifeblood. he’s seeing god 

he turns up the brightness of his phone to maximum so he can see every little detail 

remember. this guy loves to be inside of you so obsessively he wants to pay rent to live in there

so he’s appreciating an HD view of his favorite place, really deep and really pulsing and really soaked

yukhei has slathered you in lube and really pushed apart your muscles very gently, no abrasion, you relaxed so nicely around him

it’s feeling good as fuck

kai who’s watching right next to baekhyun just stares with big eyes

every injury he ever got while dancing is suddenly healed 

he’s a new man his spine has put itself together his legs are reborn

taeyong almost falls off his chair when he tunes in

he’s that bewildered

he just types a big WOW and a wall of blushing emojis

the explicit songs he’s been listening to and whatever he’s been rapping about recently are nothing in comparison to this

finally someone climbed up to taeyong’s level of nastiness

and he thought he’d never find someone on eye level

secretly he loves the nice view but he won’t admit how much

meanwhile he will rewatch this over and over for the whole week at least five times a day

and then there’s taemin

| adorable 😊🤗🎀 6v6

| can you put the camera a bit closer again 👉👈

| and turn on the flash if that’s ok 😳

| ah thank you 💟

i don’t know what taemin has seen or heard or experienced in his life and what made him this way but damn he loves that graphic shit

turning on the flash makes even yukhei’s jaw drop and rub your clit even faster

he’s damn proud he could make your pussy open up to him this way as he should be 

cuz he’s really been improving his Big Cock Techniques (BCT)

mark doesn’t write anything but he’s online and streaming so yeah he’s jerking off

with two hands

baekhyun is typing how much he loves the wet sounds and how great the fingering action is

and he’s damn right. telepathy 

that’s your favorite pervert right there yeehaw

in the meantime yukhei’s brain is empty he’s just smiling bright and enjoying the moment and the attention and your body

ten is basically next door because this is the fucking wayv dorm 

you can hear him choke on his coffee and whisper ‘oh my fucking god, oh shit’ to himself

the phone almost topples into the sheets while lucas is putting all those rubs and circles into your clit but the audio is already telling the boys to watch very closely anyway because here it comes

taeyong is probably falling apart by now given how he’s posting a couple fragmented sentences that you try to decipher on yukhei’s phone

until you get close and take up filming yourself again 

so yukhei can make a video with his own phone as well

yep that’s two cameras on you by now not just one

xuxi’s been such a steadfast babe 

and he gets to see the fruits of his work. for one, just how much of an imprint he left with his cock inside you 

and second how hard he can make you cum now

those big fingers are magic on you

taemin gets all the closeups he ever needed from your camera because you hit the zoom even more

yukhei starts kissing you twice

not as carefully as he often would

it’s the really wet and passionate version this time

he films your lower faces as good as he can

those big fucking lips 

they never fail to make you get the hots

they’re really made to do all this are they

his tongue nips into you with extra saliva on board

you suck it into your own mouth and mix it with yours, and gather some more

and slip your tongue above his in return

yukhei makes sure you can hear him swallowing all that warm runny spit and moans into your mouth

guess who just blew one big juicy load into the condom

and he’s not even inside of you

jesus christ yukhei

looks like french kissing is his orgasm button 

you start sucking on his tongue when it slides back between your lips and you make them really tight and puckering

the noise is so delicious

yukhei shoots the rest of his semen into the condom

you go even harder on him, the kiss gets really deep

kai and baekhyun are literally jumping up and down on their beds by now

taemin and mark are sending star-eyed emojis

ten is definitely beating the meat next door

yukhei’s hand is massaging incessantly between your legs

he makes you feel. so. good.

when he retreats from the kiss you’re ready

you can hardly keep the phone stable in your palm

yukhei also points his camera back at your pussy again

and makes sure to catch every contraction

you know an orgasm is good when you’re going all “oh... ohh...”

even taeyong goes online to stream his reaction because you cum so beautifully

he’s actually crying and can’t close his mouth he can’t believe what he’s seeing

your pussy lips are so sloppy and stretched apart and twitching and you make sure the camera catches every bit

it takes almost half a minute until your muscles calm

you tell yukhei to clean it up with those plump lips of his

baekhyun and taemin are violently agreeing with thousands of “YESS EAT UP!!!” and “yes!! 😊♥︎🌹” text bubbles in the chat

your guys are so cute do you realize that

in order to have both hands free, lucas ends his video, puts his phone aside, and is already licking you up like a whole bowl of whipped cream

you keep on streaming on your own phone and brush the hair out of his face

the best part is catching yukhei’s tongue winding between your lips and then spoiling your pussy with big kisses very very slowly as not to overstimulate you

he’s such a fast learner he’s doing it really well

once you’re satisfied and cool off, you stroke the back of his neck and his favorite boyfriend duties are officially on pause

so he can go to pull off the condom and clean himself up, and get ready for bed after a quick mini snack

while you blow kisses into the camera, flirt with all your babes while they flirt back and even bow to you

and film your pussy all swollen and licked up but slowly closing a little bit again, ever so slightly

ten sends two little black hearts and a little “that was the most amazing thing i’ve ever seen thank you 😽”

you make sure taemin gets an extra close view of your clit and taeyong is making high-pitched squealing noises in his reaction video stream

mark goes like “yea that’s the spot!”

kai has joined baekhyun with the mouth and saliva action, they’re both licking their lips all over the place and make lewd lusty faces

they’re literally sucking and eyefucking your pussy through the camera bitch they want it so goddamn bad

oh to have their mouths on you right now to come down from your high and chill

you tell everyone how much you miss them and how badly you want them to be here

and how you want to feel all of them all over, on your skin and inside you

the chat is full of yearning and horny crying emojis now

yukhei helps you clean up the rest while you text how it felt with mark and baekhyun because they wanna know more

you talk about how yukhei’s girth is always rubbing that one spot inside and his breathing changes when it does

and you say you really loved their reactions

the members promise to be careful and discrete when they re-watch the stream and ten also says that if you don’t want it to stay in the chat some day you should never hesitate to delete it

you say no problem boys you should know me inside out, just remember to use head-phones when yukhei starts slurping at the 01:27 min mark

taeyong and mark are losing it at your puns

then you have a glass of water taller than yukhei’s dick and basically dance to the bathroom

lucas talks to the boys with his big ole smile in his pyjamas while you’re busy

oh god he is so shy

but very very blissed out. it really takes only two things to make this man happy. big plates, twitchy pussy.

a truly simple man. you like that

kai is definitely evolving from his teasing yukhei agenda in the meantime

he is sending thumbs up emojis instead of raised eyebrow ones

you lay down in xuxi’s big embrace and say goodnight to your boys

yukhei buries his nose in your hair, and kisses you on the forehead so innocently, taeyong melts in his little video square on screen

taemin is a big fan as well

he’s living true to his “explicit shit and romance” life motto isn’t he

you ask if everyone was enjoying themselves

big positive reactions all over the chat

you coo how you adore them all so much and want more of things like this where everyone is involved

eight people are going to bed very happy today

yukhei waves and baekhyun goes offline as well, as does taeyong who’s beaming

end stream

it was a masterpiece

that mark needs to recover from the very most, his entire bed is full of used tissues

and basically

over the next few hours the chat is losing their minds over and over again

everyone can’t stop gushing and telling you what their favorite part was

kai says how turned on you were was making him hard all night

ten enjoyed the wild kissing part and how wet everything was

naughty boy taemin keeps on talking about how — i quote — your insides are the best ever!! while sending flower emojis

your stream has unleashed a gigaton of sexual energy

and that basically goes on and on

until tuesday arrives

oof 

today’s the day

you know that ten is up to something 

except the little hearts and kiss comment

he hasn’t written much in the chat

oh shit oh shit what is he planning

he truly is a pisces

you know that some epic stuff is about to go down since the cats are with yangyang 

and — what

there’s a large canvas in his room with a piece of cloth to cover it

lord have mercy

he’s bringing the big guns

ten will even hold a little speech on how he got inspiration two weeks ago

only to proceed to unveil the art very shyly

it’s an elaborate pencil drawing standing about as tall as him

immaculately sketched in a realistic way

have a guess what he’s been drawing

exactly right it’s an erotic depiction of you

laying on your back, thighs spread, head thrown back

and to make it mysterious you see more of the legs rather than the crotch area

so whatever or who is giving you pleasure is entirely up to you to imagine to your liking

it’s more about how the person he drew feels lust rather than the onlooker. he drew this for your own enjoyment

he did that very cleverly and classily 

this canvas will be your utmost treasure and get such an intimate spot in your home

it doesn’t take very long until you’re mounting him and get those hips moving in a circle

ten is just full of surprises

you ask if you can photograph the drawing and upload it to the chat

ten is like ohhh!

but why not, now that he thinks about it. he secretly likes praise and visibility for his drawings so much

the post is definitely a success 

lots of exclamation marks and reaction memes for three hours straight

but who would’ve thought otherwise

ten is just massively talented, always on point

and hits the right nerve with his line of work

as your pussy can attest

yukhei is gonna tease in the chat that he heard you in the dorm and that it sounded mega hot wink wink wink

ten writes:

| my tongue hurts 

| let’s do it again next week

| i feel inspired to draw more as well

the chat explodes with hype for another two hours

multiple members come up with their own artistic takes on you

on wednesday kai presents a feral dance he choreographed for the whole morning. showing a representation of what you are to him and what he feels for you

very beautiful

on thursday baekhyun gifts you a deliberately humorous doodle titled mochi mama in the style of i dunno, probably picasso on crack

you have not seen anything like it

it’s gonna make you laugh in sad hours for many days to come

talk about come

baekhyun will have his hands busy in and on you all night

he wants to feel mama mochi and please you and make you smile

try not to climax challenge: failed several times

on friday mark blasts a song he wrote about you as soon as you put your hand bag down in the studio

100% of the lyrics are about how sexy and charming and special you are to him and how infatuated he is and how much he thinks about you all the time and how much you knock him off his feet, and how he has the biggest hots for you, jesus christ

that mark lee canada flow wants to make you fucking nut right then and there

the fandom just got his lit mixtape and he’s already working on another one i guess he sure has enough nsfw inspiration for it

all the more reasons to cum hard on his dick tonight

and make sweet love to that sexy body because mark lee isn’t the only one with the hots

then comes saturday

taeyong day

the tension is rising

you’re at his place

the sweet boo comes to put some chirping fledgelings into a towel on your lap as usual

there’s a big crispy lasagna baking in the oven, dripping with cheese and sauce with the most full-bodied herbal mix ever

damn tasty 

gordon ramsay would rate this particularly well on twitter

honestly man

we all know gordon ramsey would like taeyong’s dishes

the evening passes as it always does

so he didn’t jump on the bandwagon that’s interesting

it’s almost as if the stream didn’t happen or anything

just as you expected

taeyong doing his own thing and being just very consistent makes him so sexy and desirable to you it’s hard to explain

you just like his style of going about things you know

he’s very receptive to your impulses

you figure it’s up to you to make some steps

so when he opens the fridge to pull out a self-made, perfectly swirly vanilla-chocolate vortex pudding that’s just at the right temperature, you can’t help but hit on him like the world is ending 

but as you learned from taeyong’s example: your way

you ask him to open his mouth and maneuver spoon after spoon of pudding into it for him to deliciously savor it

giving him compliments on always making your day along with that

that bowl is empty very fast my loves

and taeyong very happy

oh yeah he was enjoying that

with his eyes closed

oh fuck

the sexual tension could rip the air in half like a mark verse

you decide to sit down on his lap all nonchalant and finish your own pudding... more than suggestively

taeyong is basically holding his breath at this point he’s a puddle

you tell him he can put his hands on your waist if he wants to

no answer needed his fingers are already on their way

you can hear how his heart is approaching a techno music BPM

at this point all you can do anymore is lean in to whisper if he likes to go to the bedroom with you

he can keep the apron on

taeyong tastes deliciously of pudding aye

you roll around in the sheets kissing so heavily

this is pure indulging you just feel how you’re sleeping with a chef

who happens to have the veiniest dick of all time

you’re definitely filled up well

sliding up and down on him deliciously for twenty minutes

really slowly and hugging each other tightly

and saying romantic things

that’s the good life

by the end of the evening the group chat gets a picture of taeyong’s world class lasagna 

and a ‘very random’ shaky picture of your hand in his hair

which baekhyun instantly comments as:

“now tyong knows how great you taste as well 🤓😁🤗“

yukhei agrees wholeheartedly and ten starts making baby don’t stop puns

kai is totally in love with the quality food 

baekhyun voices his interest in making more pictures of that kind with you. you know, hand in the hair, no big deal

kai says hurry up with it hyung, all the hair dye makes you balder every minute

baekhyun reprises his doodling and now draws a couple

it’s mama mochi with byun baldhyun

“this will be the next selca“

glorious

you’re having a damn good time

but later you feel something is going on

the whole week passes and taeyong seems to be brooding

next saturday he has a hard time expressing himself when he comes to your home 

you ask if he’s not comfortable having more sex or if he struggles with the relationship setup

taeyong says it’s not that but can’t explain any further

you go on a whim and ask if it’s a confession he has on his mind

bingo

“taeyong... if you think i’ll judge you for something. remember we’re only doing this since a couple weeks. it’s hard to know how the person really reacts if you don’t know each other inside out“

he is still hesitant

you ask him if it’s something taboo

“yeah...”

you thought so. taeyong is the least basic person you know along with taemin

guess why these two are saved for last my dear readers

you tell him that how he’s in his own lane is what you appreciate him for in the first place, it’s why you’re here with him, you love your duckling chef so much

if he wants a different kind of sex that’s perfectly him

he looks relieved and understood hearing that

and confesses that yeah... he wants to go a little kinkier with you

now you know why taeyong was acting with so much restraint

and put all of his feelings and sensuality into food pretty much

in fact the kinky sex has already started whether you noticed or not

indirectly. as in, the dynamic

truth is he wants to be a service sub

oh yeah lemme introduce you to some new things

service subs like to really cater to their dominants and fulfill their every wish not just in bed, but around the house as well

and there’s even more to it as you will soon discover talking to him about it

an apron is only the start

in case you have been living under a rock

taeyong’s duality is nuts 

he’s a completely shy mega pervert

it’s not a secret that this guy wants hardcore bdsm torture sex

you letting all that aggression loose on him for fucking sport

and being cold to him

with a bit of soft domme action as the perfect balance 

yep 

he wants you to take him out and take care of him at the same time

he’s perfectly aware he’s among the freakier and more deprived members

even ten is just casually freaky and just open for a lot of things. taeyong is deliberate

and pretty deep in the femdom community as far as his browser history is concerned

we all know assertive partners are his thing

but he’s afraid he’ll get you into something that’s a lot of responsibility

you say mister i’m familiar with your interests 

my dear you never made them hard to guess

you tell him it’s no problem for you to give it to him raw

you’ll be doing disgusting things to him that sexy face will straight up drown 

did you know?

our dear boy taeyong loves it when you spit in his mouth and do virgin roleplay

if he asks you to break him don’t be surprised

he wants to release control completely

he goes by all the rules

and i guarantee. when he comes along your dominatrix mood is gonna skyrocket he just brings that shit out in people

his mere naked body is just... how not to go nuts on him how he wants it

long story short tied up taeyong head to toe ends up immortalized as a vertical photograph

the group chat is overwhelming your notifs with wide-eyed emojis and all caps

amping up the game a little more each day are we

without even trying. hell, this just happened

where this is going is gonna be fun

sunday goes down with you grinding yourself all over taemin but you’re both clothed

you grab the back of his neck to lean in for kisses over and over and over

yes kisses are key

if not the favorite thing he does

let this sink in. if taemin overwhelms a little kitty with a hundred thousand smooches, just how kissy is this guy gonna be 

and have fun teasing his erection through his pants

lee taemin a squirmy mess? hell yeah

in classic fashion he will spend the most time of the evening on his knees getting slapped around in several blindfolds, harnesses, and wrist ties

his fantasy finally came true

i repeat what taemin has been dreaming of is reality

thank god for taeyong having you second guess his private tastes. otherwise you would not be on your dom grind now

taemin even goes as far as ordering lingerie for your encounters — to wear himself because he’s taemin

satin and silk blouses he already has in his wardrobe so there’s no shortage

i don’t have to tell you that you can spend hours grinding on his cock in a room full of candles while taemin is in head-to-toe bondage

that’s his idea of a good time and hell you are really treated to perfect eye candy, taemin’s hotness will bring your pleasure to a new level

the group chat will definitely love your photography taken from your sessions

taemin is just an utter no-compromise kinda man to make kinky love with. everything is planned he’s never settling for less than a perfect evening

where both of you really experience the ultimate satisfaction from treating your bodies to the best of clothes and toys and scenarios

give me an amen for taemin being your sunday guy because this legend of a man is your personal church

and his discography is the bible

and cum play is the baptizing my friend

so yeah huh

every day you can look forward to. monday to sunday

and not a day goes by without someone in the chat reminiscing the steamy video you did with lucas

you end up repeating what you wished that day

for everyone to be with you

so you could feel all of them 

and you say maybe it’s time to arrange something 

you’ve gotten to know each of them personally and intimately by now

and integrated them into your personal life

hell when you wake up the first thing you see is ten’s drawing across your bed

or baekhyun’s funny mama mochi art on your phone background

and you start your day literally selecting from a pile of taeyong’s freshly washed and ironed clothing stacks in your wardrobe

sitting at your breakfast table with a bouquet of flowers that kai and jongin brought you

eating food you bought together with lucas

listening to music that mark made especially for you

they’re all in your life together so it’s the right time to make some heated love together

the chat is all down you don’t even have to ask any further

baekhyun volunteers to go about his leader duty to organize the best possible venue and best possible date

cause with superm things do go 100

he asks what kind of atmosphere you have in mind

you say hard and nasty and kinky

which will definitely make the chat interested

and baekhyun was about to rent a huge modern art penthouse in gangnam

you say no need to go that expensive. you just need a large bed, no paparazzi, and an area where you can be loud. sculptures you could care less about

you have yukhei on your team, so that’s a living sculpture already 

it needs a safe haven essentially, with a dark and lusty atmosphere would be so nice

ten steps in saying he has the exact spot you’re looking for 

he has a friend who runs a declining night club in the suburbs, with some pretty attractive and grungy backrooms with plenty of space to fuck

yeah a club is exactly what you’re looking for that’s a good idea

it’s closed on monday so baekhyun and ten arrange a rental just then

of course way in the evening

with the guarantee of nobody else around

baekhyun knows how this rigged game rolls he says they need the club to perform a dance practice, overnight stay, and shooting a music video

which is only a half-lie

not “hey we are super m planning an orgy wanna invite dispatch and tell lee soo man”

regardless ten’s friend is pretty chill and indifferent anyways

and baekhyun’s money is doing the talk

you’ll be guaranteed to be left by yourself

monday evening it is. 

you already have a whole bunch of fantasies to let loose on your boys

and put it all in the chat

yo it’s called brainstorming and it sure has brain in it

you discuss

and it goes down next week 

you encouraged the members to wear what they feel best in, no dress code, no comparison thinking. you want to meet them like you got to know them, each in their favorite expression

taeyong dons a mass onslaught of fetish gear underneath a trench coat, including a fancy collar, lots of hairspray

and latex gloves. shit he’s a freak

baekhyun puts on the coziest clothes he finds and his smol sneakers but they are secretly expensive, his hair is curly and big, he put on a nice scent

kai can’t help but go black suit and lace underneath, you know him

bleach blonde yukhei gets out the tight white tee and smug jeans

creative genius ten goes all out designing his own fashion (!) with paint, he puts on sexy af glasses and goes for his signature ‘cleavage down to the belly’ look underneath a bomber jacket

mark goes for a casual suit but make it swag, with a sleeveless top underneath, yeah those mark arms go crazy 

taemin — picks his most dazzling silver outfit that looks like a rendition of mermaid scales, pointed shoes, princely hair, famous i’m so fabulous

and it’s already starting out sexy in the car before you even arrive 

because this is all gonna be glorious from the first second to the last

baekhyun and kai will do the driving

you have not one but two classy and sexy chauffeurs you hear me

yeah in their shiny black german cars with those sleek comfortable seats

baekhyun, taeyong, ten and lucas are a team

and then you get kai, mark, and taemin, including your group luggage because such a trip needs a lot of things to pack trust me

you’re with team kai on the way to the club and with team baekhyun the way back 

it’s already lit and steamy on your way there

nothing better than getting in the mood held by the greek god arms of none other than lee taemin with mark lee assisting

you’re entirely wrapped up in kissing taemin so passionately, his tongue melts into your mouth like the finest chocolate

thinking about how you were making out last week gets you going even more

as does feeling up his bulge, ugh taemin is so sensual

mark sitting on your other side being eager to attend to your thighs, your waist, your back, your hands, your hair, your stomach

yep

yukhei has been telling him about the wonders of a whole-body massage since you like it so much

mark gets his hands all over you to provide a sexy caress and wow he’s doing it well, giving everything the perfect kind of attention, always asking if you want more of this or more of that

mark loves everything about you and he knows how to make your anticipation become even more intense by dedicating time to all areas generously

you feel like he’s worshipping you head to toe

it’s the way to get turned on

mark has great soft hands and knows your best spots by now

that’s exactly why it was a good idea to sleep with the members individually at first

you could figure it all out in detail and each member could show their style of doing things, and you could teach them

mark has become an expert in skinship

while he’s kissing into your neck whispering revering things to you nobody else would understand

they’re intimate, spicy details from your studio lessons

with a romantic twist even because mark is giving you his entire arsenal, the entire palette

“i’ve been thinking about you so often...”

with jongin driving carefully and taking the lesser frequented roads 

kai is really keeping it together

the maknae backseat party is faithfully photographed by mark who sends it to the other team after taemin and you select the best shots, giggling

your favorite is a bird’s view of your cleavage with taemin kissing right between your breasts, slightly below the sternum

his hair is softly splayed over the area

taeyong and ten reply with heart eyes in the chat

on you go kissing and touching

taemin is so gentle with you and easily accepts your wild licks and bites, leans his head back so you have perfect access to his neck

by the time you arrive at the club’s back entrance, he’s marked up and his lips are mighty used

ruined neck, ruined mouth

taemin’s favorite two accessories to walk into a club with 

including a hard-on

with mark and kai strutting right after, chewing mints

...both getting hard themselves because mark loves your body and jongin has very good ears when it comes to picking up things that happen in the back of his car

and this bitch got a raging libido, so

the best part is everything is prepared

the other team already parked their car there earlier

ten had the keys to every needed lock, showed everyone around, and then baekhyun went into organization overdrive

this is the first time he didn’t clown around to distract from work since debut

if baekhyun ever means serious business... wow

your best boy taeyong has located the perfect backroom that’s shaded inside and neon-lit from the outside

the window’s aren’t particularly low-sitting so that’s a privacy plus

there’s a huge white extra oversized bed with some more great furniture and a sofa landscape

he desinfected everything to a T

and pulled out every utensil you might need from a large black bag

he walked in like he just commited a bank robbery but in reality there’s cutesy pink rope in the bag

oh well

classic taeyong

yukhei sorted and handed out the condoms plus water bottles for everyone

he’s the expert for the basics don’t come at him he’s doing a great job

after you reminding everyone of the safeword 

taemin sits down with you on the bed and you keep kissing

keeping up the flow right there

//

you beckon your lil’ adorable mochi who’s been dying for skinship

baekhyun is so turned on he wastes no time joining

still fully clothed while the other members are about to undress

you actually like baekhyun huddling up against you in his oversized hoodie it’s cute

so hey, change in plans

everyone ditches the protocol and climbs on the bed only without their shoes 

lot of ties and belts to pull them closer to you

you bring all of them together on the bed now

the feeling of having everyone around you is so electrifying, you have to distance from taemin’s seductive lips not to get some kind of adrenaline overdose

jesus this guy is trying to soak your pants like baekhyun forgot to turn off the shower

you get to enjoy five minutes of relaxed massaging from all sides to cool everything down a little

baekhyun and yukhei alternate with kissing you

yum

big plush lips plus a horny tongue

that’s a good combination

kai is definitely setting the pace of how to massage you, and how to move the body while doing so, and what expressions to make 

instead of sitting there awkwardly staring into space

remember? master of courting — that’s kim jongin

even baekhyun follows his example a bit

you’re entering cloud 9 from that whole-body massage

you can tell they’re all dancers. there’s rhythm involved

having the seven of them attend to you at the same time just hits different

that are 14 hands

70 fingers

all in sync with kai’s physical ideas, carefully yet purposefully kneading and stroking 

kai also helps everyone find a good area and makes sure everyone stays away from any precarious or sexy zones

because you’d probably get off from that in the matter of a blink

to be honest you’re already feeling heated you can’t help it

but that’s a good sign you’re definitely feeling this 

and there’s not a single limp dick in this room at this point already

baekhyun being the best people reader all over again manages a seamless transition to some water drinking

so everyone is ready to go

you wish you could do everything at once but decide to get a load of some slow body rolls against you because hell yeah

courting expert kai is sure to oblige, dance god taemin joins right in, and ten completes the holy trinity and hell does he go off

photographer mark on duty again. this moment has to be captured

baekhyun does his mood management magic and encourages ten and taemin to let out their little sounds more

kai he doesn’t have to tell

nor you because you’re already moaning

shit these guys are just too good

these bodies are machines

again bless your xuxi workout sessions

you wouldn’t keep up otherwise

you curse them because your pussy feels creamy way too early

switching to grinding on their bulges is not a better idea because it’s making you even hornier but anyway it’s your favorite activity

yukhei takes time and some effort to get fully hard so that’s a grateful job now

because you can gather yourself

you resort to using your cleavage to stop turning yourself on completely

and then your hands to palm his pants because that’s even more inconspicuous

group sex with superm? hardest early orgasm avoidance challenge EVER

is there some kind of legally accessible viagra for women

there’s no way you could turn yourself off help

you either get the first orgasm out of the way or keep it together to have some suspense in here and see the boys work hard

the decision is clear

time to bring out the toys that taeyong assembled on a table

baekhyun, taemin taeyong and ten are in the down to get tied up in various ways

lucas and kai get blindfolded and get a sexy task from you

slowly humping the mattress just for your viewing pleasure

topless for that matter

no need to ask twice there they go

photographer mark stays free and flexible. it’s always good to have someone outside bondage just in case with such a big group

anyway so you will be busy for sure

the rest of the boys strip down to only their briefs and get a good dose of spanking

ten is definitely moaning the loudest there

taeyong ends up with tied wrists in a prayer position and has his fun getting slapped around by you 

until he’s breathless and smiling to himself with his tongue hanging out

someone got his daily meal of smacking

taemin highly approves 

nobody’s surprised

baekhyun gets a quick and simple upper body rope harness that’s very easy to grip him by

and just to tease him you add some nipple pinches

result: loud baekhyun noises

cute as hell

so that’s how he’s been training himself to reach all those high notes

interesting

taemin, completely naked, has his hands and ankles tied, looking so beautiful all helpless and his cock itching for stimulation

and because taemin’s strange ‘artistic’ kidnapping fantasies that he never stops talking about cannot be ignored he gets a mouth gag for good measure

you know you just roll with their ideas

he’s a simple man that’s all he needs

you decide to put a bigger bondage piece on ten who ends up in a hogtie aka his new favorite place to be in

if there’s one guy who’s flexible like that it’s him

let’s see for how long he can take it

ten likes a challenge

you tell mark exactly what kind of pictures you want of your tied darlings and he’s well-engaged with that task

baekhyun is clinging to you a lot in the meantime

he gets kisses on the mouth 

and your open ear 

because you can tell there’s something on his mind

or rather

his ass is telling him something after you activated it with spanks huh

what does baekhyun want?

baekhyun wants the strap

and the strap he shall get

his time has come

this time the safeword won’t do so tapping yukhei’s thigh is the deal

taeyong’s kinky tool collection has a nice and thick equipment to offer, jet black black straps, jet black dildo, like it’s some kind of secret agent gear

it takes a lot of lube to get it into baekhyun’s tight and tiny ass but what’s new 

he’s not the gaping expert 

and way too busy laughing at the members’ reaction faces so his damn asshole is contracting god dammit

what a brat

next time he gets a toy for prep

only when you grab him by the harness and get into a rhythm, baekhyun throws it back

good boy

kai and xuxi are allowed to take off their blindfolds now because you have a task for them

taeyong’s toy collection features one extra long double-ended dildo, transparent and neither too slim nor too wide

if baekhyun doesn’t have that thing inside his throat i don’t know who

this shit is made for him

and you can tell he’s salivating for that

you tell yukhei to use those big hands to keep baekhyun’s head steady

and oh wonder, his long fingers enclose it perfectly

kai gets to go hard on baekhyun and fulfill his lifetime fantasy that he has had for over a decade now and jerks off to every night:

baekhyun not talking

so while baekhyun’s ass is getting properly stuffed

so is his mouth

kai has no qualms squeezing the toy into baekhyun’s throat a little more roughly

those are some pretty intense choking noises

mark steadily hits the snapshot button

some people go to pound town

baekhyun goes to silicon valley

kai is not afraid to push that thing as far as it can physically go

you’re pleased with how he’s doing it

and with baekhyun’s blowjob abilities anyway

is there a better throat in this industry? probably not 

he’s pretty surprised himself with how much he can take it

that poor ass is getting more than it can handle in the meantime, baekhyun is throbbing and whining

little did you know his prostate is so sensitive and makes his dick leak

such a shame you fully exploit that

you tell yukhei to have baekhyun move his head on his own to get into the rhythm

and get taeyong over to suck on the other end of the toy because oh yeah

let me just say these two are amazing

god bless sm entertainment 

not for any executive decisions

but for their uncanny ability to attract and assemble all the subs

lee taeyong giving head like the rent is due is a sight you need in your life

like everything, he does it roughly and properly

baekhyun is barely even sucking anymore just straight up gagging and seeing stars

because uh-oh here comes a big fat prostate orgasm

mark is clever enough to hit record on his phone

and capture a shaking baekhyun travelling through a whole bunch of universes, at least in his mind 

because that’s how strong his climax is

all he can say is thank you mama mochi and recover from this on his back

kai is satisfied with the result as well because baekhyun managed to not say anything for fifteen minutes

kai never had this much silence in his life

taeyong is still not done sucking the toy off and you let him

never step between a man and his favorite dildo

lucas takes up the task of untying ten who wants to share the other end that’s free now

and mark hands over the camera to kai who films just that

which also means mark is in the mood for you

about time to get some dick

and have taemin watch right next to you

being able to delight in mark’s wonderful technique

doggystyle

which ends up in kai joining 

which causes yukhei to join

and baekhyun to film 

the three are literally queueing while waiting for their turn

you tell them when to pull out and let the other member have you

until mark is riddled with so much suspension, the fifth thrust on his turn ends up in an unexpected hard climax

“oh my god oh my god!“

obviously kai will let loose now and cum as well, accompanied by really breathy groans

yukhei takes his time to make you moan which gives both taeyong and taemin a good show and an untouched orgasm

eventually you get to hear lucas growling his soul out

and kai bickering to pull out already

because it’s time for buffet

after getting rid of his condom, mark has been untying the very resilient ten who’s been in prawn bondage for like half an hour and five minutes now

respect

he and baekhyun team up to eat you out

yeah prepare for a dream team

while mark and kai chill on the other side of the bed

lucas on the other hand still doesn’t have enough and ends up licking your legs with his cock firmly palmed in those big hands

baekhyun and ten are doing the most meanwhile, lapping you up all sloppy

the job of the cameraman goes to a wild taemin who’s undone his safety hook 

he can’t stand this shit anymore he has to join the action instead of lying around in ropes

jeez the guy has the fun of his life playing with filters

silently giggling to himself

until kai finds out that taemin has been putting cat ears on ten and cowboy hats on lucas

kai confiscates the phone from naughty taem and decides to take up that task himself

so taemin can eat you out himself now

alright there are three heads bumping each other between your legs now

and yukhei close-by, currently nibbling at your outer thighs

can you imagine how crowded and crammed that is

you tell mark to get taeyong out of his ties as well

if you’re gonna cum he has to join the party as well

and he will not hesitate my friend

taeyong’s kinky tongue (which can make all kinds of completely unprecedented moves and slurping noises) riles up the other three to put all their effort into this

you order baekhyun and ten to line you left and right of your hips, fingering you from there

and let both taeyong and taemin get you to the point with their tongues at the same time

it’s a busy day innit

the reason is that baekhyun and ten didn’t come but you plan to change that with some dual handjob

baekhyun lets out some pretty hoarse panting noises

(yeah jongin destroyed him with that toy in his mouth for real)

once your hands grip onto their erections, almost automatically baekhyun’s fingers start going crazy on your clit and ten goes mad with his thumb right next to it

yeah he’s kept his rings on this is gonna be a sexy sight

mark and kai retire from their pillows to join at your request

mark kissing you, jongin sucking on your breasts

from this point on things are pretty much just a daze

two tongues two hands? oh shit

four people are trying to make you cum what did you expect

and three other people are licking you all over

yukhei doesn’t even care at this point he’s just straight up kissing your feet

ten is silently groaning it out, he’s pouring his seed into the condom with little twitches in the hip and shoulders

taeyong’s tongue is gonna finish you off, taemin’s lips will make you feel so good, your legs will be a shaking mess in yukhei’s hands

how to even describe this

it’s an explosion of heat and contractions

you’re going fucking crazy from all that head and tongue action god damn

mark definitely has to swallow a lot of your moans all over the place

and taeyong

also swallows

what a god-loving man

your pussy is leaking enough to feed baekhyun as well

who still strokes himself off while he’s cleaning you up with his mouth, oh boy he really developed a lot of stamina

you have your fun telling him to stop jerking himself off

so his orgasm ends up being ruined

those always mess him up

always a nice sight to have him shaking and whining and gasping

you have to roll over at some point before getting overstimulated

phew that takes quite a couple of deliberate breaths

now you have seven hot guys with sopping wet mouths on your hands, looking at you exhausted and infatuated

that’s super m for you

yukhei, man for the basics he is, hands out towels

you really gotta say he’s kept a clear head in all of this except maybe the sudden foot fetish reveal

of course taeyong towels himself down the most he’s basically covered himself with anything he could get his hands on

that face is dripping like his saturday evening lasagnas 

you help clean mark who kinda lost his mind and heart while kissing you, he needs your care a little more now

baekhyun soon snaps back into organization mode and has the brilliant idea to unpack xuxi’s and jongin’s luggage

to have everyone wearing their gigantic hoodies and sweaters

it’s warm in the room anyway but this feels so much cozier

after going to the bathroom

a ball of cuddly guys is snuggled up all aroud you faster than you can think

mark and taeyong are already sleeping they really knocked themselves out

champs

kai finds the completely forgotten phone somewhere in the sheets and turns off what seems to be a 50 minutes video

that’s gonna be fun to watch some time

baekhyun nuzzles himself to sleep against your sweater, right between your breasts

“mochi mama thank...” are his last words before he drifts off to pineapple pizza land or whatever dreamscape is in his head

probably something much dirtier but anyway

lucas and kai steal kisses from you and go off to sort out the room

jesus christ they still have the energy

taeyong’s nasty lil’ toy collection gets cleaned and reassembled, the ropes get coiled up, the towels wander into a washing machine in the other room

whose steady bumping lulls the rest of you to sleep

while taemin, epitome of taste he is, plays his best of hits on low volume with his phone

dozing off between seven guys while “heaven” is playing? 

best thing ever

the rest is history. you’re surrounded by sleepy cuddly sweater men

you actually sleep for a couple hours

dawntime you wake up cozied and sandwiched between yukhei’s tiddies and jongin’s back

which is the most protected, snug place on earth

even a nuclear superweapon couldn’t explode past that spot

they’re fast asleep

giant baby and teddy bear

safeguarding you in unison

ain’t they adorable

baekhyun is awake silently doing pilates, smiling cutely at you when he sees you’re awake, and he gets a big load of kisses i’m telling you

miraculously everything is tidy and smells fresh, and there’s a light soup in the air...

... lee taeyong got up at 6:30.

he was a whirlwind

the group gets to enjoy a 3-course classic korean breakfast 

because taeyong found the club kitchen

what kind of godly entity is this man

how did he do all of this

the club is the cleanest it’s ever been

taking care of 24 people is probably so difficult, this is actually easy to him

you depart in a good mood because damn that soup was restaurant quality and baekhyun had the idea to give you morning head to which everyone joined in

good thing the club has showers

baekhyun is still horny as hell and you want that D(elight) any time of the day 

so you fuck for a bunch of minutes in his car after dropping off the team and they giving you playful winks

you park the car behind xiumin’s house because that’s the most calm place to be

people are sleeping on xiumnin so hard, no paparazzi are around, ever

baekhyun settles there with you smiling

he didn’t sing “get you alone” with no reason

baekhyun needs that one-on-one time with you to ground himself and love you all over again big time

plus you are dying to cum bouncing on him on the driver’s seat 

while he is desperately gripping the steering wheel to have something solid to hold onto

yeah baekhyun is always ready to lose it for ya

it’s literally such a good spot to fuck

he’s strapped in all underneath you and you can see him squirm and get heart eyes from up close

you also love how your thighs meet the fabric of his pants

baekhyun’s tiny lap is already worth a huge nut you love grinding on him

those shapely thighs

with his cock peaking out from underneath his sweater

what his morning head tongue can do, his dick can do twice with ease so time for round two today

glad you have your bag with some utensils

you’re generous with lube on the condom

in fact you love spilling it over his pants a little

it looks like you’ve been squirting on him that’s why

baekhyun is down for your pervy imaginations

and gets even harder

not bad lil’ guy

time to make him moan with the grip of your walls

mochi breathes pretty hard because damn... more dick destruction

you love burying your hands in his sweater at the shoulders and just fucking ride

his hair gets messy, his bedroom gaze is so intense

his ass still hurts from yesterday but it seems to turn him own judging by the high-pitched groans and his begs for you to bounce on him harder

no problem his dick is just made to be ridden

if this wasn’t a high-tech car from the future with carbon and whatnot anybody could hear baekhyun’s um ‘vocals’ from the outside

this is so much fun oh my god

baekhyun releases with his eyes shut and teeth pressed together, his nose is all scrunched up

jesus this one got to him

he drives you to his home with his fingers shaking a little on the steering wheel

literally tapping like they do in his microphone on stage

yep this shook him up

and insatiable byun is now satisfied byun

nothing better than knowing you ruined your cupcake boyfriend in the best of ways

back at his apartment and after some extra carbo hydrate heavy food, as a pre-nap treat you grind on his thighs and his ass because why not

and gyrate him to sleep with his arms and legs stretched in all directions

both of you are still in disbelief that all of this happened

legend has it you’re dreaming of more group sex ideas that night

the next day taemin sends the champagne video to celebrate your first time together

which brings us back to the start

and that’s how it all happened

now you know

congrats on being a lucky girl

related: super m as subs

FINAL NOTE. ah shit i love this dynamic, thank you for reading 🎊

© 2017-2021 submissive-bangtan. all rights reserved. no reposts or translations allowed. all depictions fictional.

[possiblyimbiassed]

The lying liars who lie

Years and years late to the party, I’ve finally gotten my hands on all the DVDs of BBC Sherlock, and I thought it would be fun to watch the extra material carefully, one piece after another, and also listen to at least some of the show makers’ commentary of the episodes. But at this point, after S4 where DVDs seemed to be a constant lying device in general, I tend to look at them with a bit more suspicious eyes...

I still love the show of course, but now that I’ve taken this deep dive into all the special features, I find them a truly hard thing to try to wrap my head around. Even this long after the fact, I’m amazed by the amount of shameless, self-congratulatory BS in the DVDs, where the people involved can’t have enough of complimenting each other and their show, while they skillfully avoid to discuss anything actually meaningful about the plot line. ;) For example, Moffat claims in the S2 DVD that “In fact, you’ll never see a more obsessively authentic version of Sherlock Holmes than this one”. But if we follow their light-hearted commentary, which basically takes the show at face value, I’d call that not just hyperbole, but an outright lie. If you want to see the ‘authentic’ stories from ACD’s work in this show, you’ll definitely need to go much deeper into the subtext and meta levels - neither of which are mentioned on these DVDs of course. Here’s my own (rather subjective) ‘review’ of the whole thing, trying to pinpoint why I view most of the commentary of the show from its own makers as an advanced art of deception. 

(My musings under the cut)

Series 1 - a wealth of extra material

First of all - as many of you probably knew already - the whole of the Unaired Pilot is added to the DVD of S1. In the extra material about the making of the series, they (Sue Vertue, Mofftiss and others) talk about what things they changed between the Pilot and ASiP, claiming that many changes were necessary improvements once they knew that they had a whole series and a lot more time at their disposal. 

Which I can perfectly understand and agree with in general. But I think what’s missing in their discussions is more interesting than what’s actually there (”Mind the gap” ;) ). Things that I would expect from the show makers when they go to the trouble of comparing the pilot version with the aired product. There’s not a word, for example, about the fact that they added both Mycroft and Moriarty to the story in ASiP - two characters who later turn out to play major roles and appear in almost every other episode until the end of TFP. Or about the choice that one of the screenwriters would play Mycroft. 

Neither do they discuss why they chose to relocate the place where Sherlock was challenged by the cabbie from 221B to Roland Kerr’s School of Further Education. Instead they focus on the details, like for example the new design of the interior of 221B.

Not to mention the fact that almost every scene in the Pilot is mirrored in ASiP (as pointed out long ago by @kateis-cakeis X), but at Angelo’s in the Pilot Sherlock follows the events with the cabbie while looking in an actual mirror. I even noticed that in the Pilot the cabbie is offering Sherlock dark-coloured bottles with the pills in them, while in ASiP those bottles are transparent, as if the cabbie is offering Sherlock to play Black or White in the chess game that he is simulating. What’s with all these mirrors, though? Not a word on the DVD... ;)

Now, even though these rather remarkable choices are neglected together with a great bunch of minor ones, I still think that the most interesting fact about all this is that they actually included the whole pilot version within this DVD, which is sold by the franchise. Why even do this, when it raises far more questions than it answers? The only logical reason I can come up with is that they’re laying out a track of little hints that anyone with a deep enough interest in the show to actually buy the DVDs can try to follow. And it seems to me that lying by omission is one of the first steps in the long line of cryptic and misleading author comments on this show. But at the same time, they clearly want the fans to have access to it all, even the abandoned version.

Moving on to Series 2, time for bigger lies 

In the extra material of this DVD Benedict himself describes how his character "faces one of his deadliest enemies in the shape of Love, and it comes in the form of Irene Adler, who is this extraordinary dominatrix [insert here a bunch of superlatives regarding Adler]...”. And then we see how Adler whips Sherlock with a riding crop (without any kind of consent, I have to add) while he’s lying on the floor, and we have Lara Pulver telling us how it was to have a go at Benedict on set. So Holmes whips dead bodies and Adler whips living; seems like a match made in hell! :))

Gatiss claims, grinning with his whole face, that “they’re clearly, absolutely made for each other”. OK, so I think we can see Sherlock being intellectually impressed by Adler, and even trying to protect her from Mycroft, and we can see John acting jealously. We can also see her being dressed and styled as a perfect, female mirror of Sherlock. But I’m still at a loss what all this has to do with love on Sherlock’s part? Especially since he’s not even responding in any fashion to her various attempts at seducing him. 

And there’s more: Paul McGuigan, the director of ASiB, claims that the scene where Sherlock has a conversation with Adler inside his Mind Palace about the crime case with the car that backfires "is a part of a kind of love story, if you like...” No, I don’t. Maybe it’s just me, but if their aim really was to convey to their audience a love story between Sherlock and The Woman, I think they failed miserably. All I see is a guy ’mansplaining’ to a clever woman how to use her brain, while she’s trying to flirt with him by expressing her admiration (to no avail, though) and make deductions at the same time. Nothing new under the sun, really. John did the same thing repeatedly in ASiP (without making own deductions) and got far more attention from Sherlock, but I’ve never heard any of the show makers call that ”a love story”. But by ’lie-splaining’ the scene with Irene to the audience, they try to manipulate us all to see it as such...

In all the direct commentary of this episode, where Steven, Mark, Sue, Benedict and Lara are present, I get the impression that every time they even touch on the relationship between Sherlock and John, they hurry to add the term “friendship” or “man love” or similar words in case they forgot them at first, avoiding even the tiniest possibility that there could be anything more going on between them. They even explain that when Irene calls them “a couple” she does not mean anything romantic. This whole approach feels almost paranoic in the midst of all the laid-back jokes and light-hearted talk about the filming. It’s as if a sort of restrictive, heteronormative filter or blanket is being constantly applied, to teach the audience the ‘no homo’ lesson of it all. And the more I listen to this, the more tiresome it becomes.

In the commentary Moffat does reveal an interesting detail, though: that the ‘Flight of the Dead’ in ASiB was inspired by a cut out scene in the Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service. To me this is just one more reason to question the ‘authentic’ quality of this scene, as opposed to possibly taking place in Sherlock’s Mind Palace. But I digress... 

Listening to the commentary in general, it’s like it’s aimed to distract the attention from what’s going on at the screen rather than highlight it and try to explain their intentions. They do mention that Irene didn’t actually ‘beat’ Sherlock in the end of ASiB, but there’s no explanation of this obvious deviation from canon, where Adler does indeed fool Holmes, taking advantage of his prejudices.

The rest of the extra material of S2 is mostly about technical stuff, special effects and such, and also about filming techniques and Benedict’s delivery of fast deductions. But the part I really do love is the one where Andrew Scott talks about how much he enjoyed playing the scene where Moriarty dances before breaking into the Crown Jewels. That’s one of my favorite scenes of he whole show. :) Also, the takeaway message from this DVD is Moffat’s words at the end: 

“These are still the formative years of Sherlock Holmes, and the most important thing about this series is not that it’s updated; it’s the fact that those two men are still young and they’re still at the beginning of what they don’t yet know is gonna be a lifelong partnership”. 

And then comes Series 3... 

...and its extra material, with the most blatant attempts at deception so far, I believe. At this point Sherlock is called a “psychopath” by both the show’s characters, John’s blog, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as if it were true, which is a big deviation from ACD canon. That simply doesn’t happen there; while Holmes is sometimes described as eccentric, no one in the books is ever claiming that Sherlock Holmes has some kind of mental illness leaning towards cruelty and egotism - not even his enemies say this about him. In the show, however, they begin in ASiP with making him torture a dying man for information (something that is not included in the Pilot). And in S3, where they avoid discussing the reason why they turned Mary Morstan into a ruthless assassin, this major shift is glossed over by the fact that in the same episode (HLV) they also turn Sherlock into a murderer, who cold-bloodedly blows the brains out of a blackmailer for threatening to make said assassin’s crimes public. 

But without ever getting into the “why” of it all, the cast and crew seem overly happy and smiling describing these rather morbid choices as something positive; “fantastic”, "fresh and new” and "amazing” are their choice of words. Benedict claims that Mary, who has literally shot and almost killed Sherlock in HLV, is now "a new best friend of Sherlock’s”. Amanda claims that Mary “is protecting John” when she shoots Sherlock in the chest. Now they’re both psychopaths, and poor little John is forced to stomach them both because he’s addicted to danger. In Amanda’s words, Mary also “kind of gets in between the two of them, but she wants them to be together as well”.  Which is a load of BS considering that Mary tries to kill the protagonist of the story.

Lars Mikkelsen thinks it’s “such a good script” because “you’re mislead as an audience”. But he never gets the chance to expand on what the misleading actually contains, because then Mofftiss cut in to express how much they love playing with “what ifs”. As if this whole mega-budget project of a show were just a big experimental playground without any actual story to tell. 

Benedict repeats his line from HLV that Magnussen “preys on people who are different” and Moffat also says he “exploits people who are different”. Which is really confusing, considering what we can see Magnussen actually do in the show. Lady Smallwood and John Garvie are two well-established, powerful governmental politicians whom Magnussen blackmails by finding their respective pressure points. In Garvie’s case his pressure point seems to be alcohol problems in his past, but according to media he’s later arrested on charges of corruption. Lady Smallwood is blackmailed on the basis of her husband having sent compromising letters to a minor many years ago, in spite of later claiming that he thought she was older and stopped when he found out the truth. And then Magnussen is blackmailing an assassin who recently threatened to execute him but shot Sherlock Holmes instead, in order to try to get at Sherlock’s brother Mycroft, another powerful governmental figure. 

But what does media seeking out dirt on certain people in power and their families have to do with “people who are different”? Despicable as the method may be, isn’t this unfortunately how political power play usually works in our society? Or are TPTB somehow a repressed minority group now? Unless this whole “people who are different” accusation is actually about something entirely different, something that none of the show makers even cares to mention... ;)

In these DVDs, none of the involved persons is ever discussing the change of roles with regards to canon, though, or the (lack of) logics in this turn of events, or even a hint about the narrative motivation behind them. It’s all about the great Drama, the extraordinary visual effects and the aim to endlessly “surprise the audience”. Which is fine by me to a certain extent, but when this is all that’s being said, it feels extremely superficial, as if the audience is merely seen as a bunch of consumers that have to be triggered more and more by horror, special effects and cliff hangers to be able to appreciate the show. (“Warm paste” indeed, like Gatiss has later criticized some viewers of wanting...) While the "why”; the idea behind this surrealistic adaptation, made by self-proclaimed fanboys of ACD, is not even touched upon. Around this, the silence is total and therefore totally confusing.

Maybe I shouldn’t even go into Series 4...

...but why not, since I’ve already started? :) 

First of all, there’s a lot of extra material on this DVD and I particularly love the parts about the music and composing and Arwel Wyn Jones’ work with the design and build-up of John’s and Mary’s flat and the interior of 221B. Those bits are truly enjoyable. What I could live without, though, is the leading commentary that kind of instructs us, the audience, how we should interpret the show. 

Benedict is on it again on this DVD, telling us that in TST they picked up where they left off in S3 and “It’s a very happy unit of three people that then become four.” Why does he feel the need to make this statement, considering how S3 ended? Actually, if there’s anything I totally fail to see in S4, it’s happiness. The banter between the three  of them may seem entertaining for a while, but who could have a relaxed, warm relationship with someone who tried and almost succeeded to kill you less than a year ago? Without any sign of remorse? Now there’s a dark tone of discomfort and mean jokes that feels forced and not even a bit happy to me. 

But Martin tells us how excited John and Mary are about starting a family and Amanda mentions how much they’re looking forward to the baby. Again and again it’s repeated, as though trying to rub it in: “they’re in a good place, they’re a loving, married couple”. Yeah, right - a child that (judging by TSoT) wasn’t at all planned and now with an assassin for a mother... Twice we see the new parents complain that their daughter has the mark of Satan on her forehead and debate which horror movie she’s from. The clichéd hypocrisy of it all is sickening, and I’m willing to bet that it’s really meant to be. ;) 

But Gatiss chimes in, deciding for us all that the christening of Rosie is “a funny scene” and “they’re enjoying each other, enjoying being on adventures as a three”.

An interesting detail is that Gatiss also tells us that the working name of this episode was “The Adventure of the Melting power Ranger”. So this little blue guy was that important? :) And - even more interesting - is when he says: “Cake is now the code for violent death”. So how should we interpret Sherlock, John and Molly going out to have cake in TLD then, on Sherlock’s (supposed) birthday? 

These might be jokes, though, but when they tell us that Sue cries every time she sees Mary’s death I strongly believe they must be joking. How could anyone feel truly moved by this overly sentimental long monologue where far more efforts are put into reacting to Mary’s speech than saving her life? And John’s mooing like a cow, is that also moving? :)

One thing Martin says about TLD that actually disgusts me is regarding the morgue scene where John assaults Sherlock and Sherlock lets it happen: “From there, really, their relationship can only sort of rebuild, that’s the absolute worst it can get”. As if outright physical abuse would be something that makes you want to rebuild a relationship? Wow - just wow... How far can they go with this crap?

Anyway, when we finally arrive at the absurdity of TFP and Sherlock’s ‘secret sister’, everything is of course discussed as if she actually does exist on the given premises, and everything she does is ‘real’, no matter how impossible it would be in real life. The abandonment of any attempt to have the story line make logical sense is skillfully covered up by more distraction with fascinating technicalities of the film making process. This is where Gatiss makes his now almost classic statement that after Sherlock and John jump out of the window at 221B when a grenade explodes there, it’s just “Boop! And they’re fine.” 

Of course there’s no serious attempt at explaining this logically. Except perhaps Gatiss claiming that they both landed on Speedy’s awning - whatever good that would do to them, since the awning is leaning downwards, but never mind... But we never even saw that happen, did we? A great deal of time is then dedicated to show all the precautions to have Martin and Ben jumping safely at low level onto a madras supported by empty cardboard boxes.

Sian Brooke did say something interesting about Sherrinford, however, that got me thinking. She said that Eurus “wants revenge for the years and years that she has been held captive” there, isolated, and that in TFP the Holmes children are now “lab rats” and “it’s an experiment”. On a meta level, I think we can indeed see this episode - and maybe the whole show - as a kind of experiment, but maybe we, the audience, are also lab rats? Since Sherrinford is slightly shaped like a film camera (not commented in the extra material, of course), it leads my thought to all the adaptations through the years and years where Holmes and Watson have not been allowed to be together. A whole century when Sherlock Holmes has been held captive, restricted by the very same sort of heteronormative filter that all this extra material imposes; it’s like Sherrinford, isn’t it? Which gives all the more meaning to Moriarty’s arrival to the island, accompanied by Freddy Mercury’s “I want to break free”...

I think I’ll let the final words in this little exposé come from Mark Gatiss in The Writers’ Chat (my bolding):

“Moriarty is a fascinating thing in that in our sea of ongoing lies, one thing we’ve genuinely been completely consistent about is telling people he’s dead. But no-one believes it! And it’s a rather brilliant thing.”  Again - self-congratulatory statements. But instead of providing some actual evidence of the death of this character, who has kept popping up in almost every episode since his supposed demise, they think that the more a confirmed liar repeats something, the truer it gets? And the more we’re supposed to believe them? Well, all we can do is wait and see. :)

Tagging some people who might be interested: 

@raggedyblue​ @ebaeschnbliah​ @sarahthecoat​ @gosherlocked​ @lukessense​ @sagestreet​ @thepersianslipper​

My earlier meta on a similar topic (X)

[gillianthecat]

I watched episode 10 of Love Mechanics and, while I'm still not thrilled with the direction they took the series after the Ploy incident in episode 7, there were many things I liked about the final.

Spoilers below...

First off, I think both War and Yin are charismatic actors, so I always enjoy seeing them onscreen, together or separately, laughter or tears. And there were a lot of sweet moments for Mark and Vee, especially in the second half. Their flirting while studying was so adorable 😍. And the sweet little note Vee put in Mark's pencil box!! I was charmed by their conversation in Vee's bedroom when Vee asked Mark to tell him he loved him again. The rooftop proposal. Even when the setting or the dialogue felt flat or cliched, the actors always made the characters and their feeling for each other feel so real.

I was so excited when they brought up the specter of jealousy! That's what I've been wishing for them do since episode 7! Which is hilarious, because usually I detest jealousy as a plot point for established couples. But in this case, it felt to me like an unresolved issue because [see previous rant].

And obviously it did to Mark as well, since he was so bothered by the students at the bar saying that Vee would cheat again, but he brought it up so tentatively and Vee's response was not an actual response. "You're so hot, I'll never get bored," isn't a meaningful reflection on the fact that Vee has cheated before, that in fact their relationship started as an affair. I don't need or even want my fictional characters to perfectly resolve all their issues by the end, but narratively this felt like a major thematic thread that was just dropped. (Perhaps they dealt with this issue off screen, but I feel like as the audience, we too needed some resolution on it.)

I am glad they brought it up at all, though. I much prefer that to it being dropped entirely. And I do think the show creators thought they were resolving it with the whole Vee-isn't-cheating-he's working-to-provide-for-Mark storyline. Which I liked, it was very cute! But it didn't provide the reckoning that I was craving.

I wasn't thrilled with the family story line, because it felt too rushed to do it justice. I felt like it brought up some real and relevant issues around family and class, but because it was so rushed Mark's parents felt like caricatures careening from plot point to plot point. Probably a lot of my annoyance though came from my constant refrain since episode 7: "you don't need to bring in new plots to create conflict, the original ones are still there and waiting!!" So it wasn't so much that the parents stuff was bad, I just wanted the show to be doing something else.

This is more of a question than a comment: I also noticed how everyone, including his father, kept casting Mark in (what seemed to me to me) the 'feminine role.' His father's stated problem with Vee was that Vee wouldn't be able to take care of Mark. Which, I get how it brings up the class difference issue (which I'm all for examining) but it didn't make sense to me why they would be thinking that way. They're both guys! Mark is rich, why wouldn't he be the one to take care of Vee? I get that Mark's the uke, but does everyone else around them see them in terms of that private dynamic? Is it because Vee is older? Is there Thai cultural context that I'm missing? Or it just that BL feels the need to say uke=the girl in all contexts of their life?

Speaking off which, my absolute favorite scene in the episode was the sex scene on the roof. At first I was going, oh no, more rigid heterosexual roles, Mark used to be so much more interesting than that. And then Mark was like, psych! I am still interesting! Have some kinky roleplay where I am the senior and the dom.

And it was fun and hot, of course, but the reason I loved it was it gave us back the Mark we'd met at the beginning - the one who liked sex, who pursued his senior, who flirted with a taken man, who could be biting and mean. He never became passive exactly, he always spoke up for himself and made his own decisions. But I think post episode 7, the storylines that the show chose required him to be more of a "generic uke," and I guess to me he was starting to feel a bit bland. But the ending was like, oh ok, the Mark we all fell in love with is still here and isn't going anywhere.

And that, honestly, went a good ways toward redeeming the show for me.

Also, I had been thinking earlier during the episode that it was interesting that the show gave us high heat at the beginning, when they were messy and cheating, but now they were in a relationship, they seemed scared to even show us a kiss. So I was glad to see that wasn't entirely true.

[lucemferto]

I talk about the current troubles of the Dream SMP.

If you want to help me out, please reblog! You can also retweet my tweet and upvote my reddit post. Thank you.

Script under the cut

I really hope Technoblade succeeds in breaking Dream out of prison.

Now why would I say that? Well, it’s because there’s this feeling in the fandom right now that Dream SMP Season 3 is … going slow. That there’s not much happening. Some have blamed it on the pace of how lore streams are doled out, saying we get too little lore stretched out over too much time. Others postulate that it’s the quality of the lore – that the individual plot points are badly told or that the high production value of certain streams prevent the story from gaining momentum.

Now, because I’m me, I think I identified the problem as something that’s structurally wrong with Season 3 as opposed to Seasons 1 and 2. In order to explain that we must look at one of my favourite narratological theories: the Three-Act-Structure.

But before we get into that, here’s your obligatory reminder to please like this video, comment your thoughts down below in order to help me with YouTube’s algorithm and subscribe if you really like my stuff. Please feel free to check out my social media presences and share my videos on there so that more people have the chance to see them. Thank you so much.

Let’s get back to the video:

 Chapter 1: The Three-Act-Structure Explained

The Three-Act-Structure as a model to explain narratives finds its roots far in the past with its earliest recorded instance being in the fourth century by the Roman grammarian Aelius Donatus though similar ideas were also expressed by everyone’s favourite Greek philosopher Aristotle.

Since then, the model has been continuously evolved and used throughout recorded history. There are also alternative models such as the Five-Act-Structure, the Six-Act-Structure, the Eight-Act-Structure, the … Nine-Act-Structure, Jesus Christ. But the Three-Act-Structure has reigned the undisputed champion in modern-day creation and analysis of narratives.

The particulars of the Three-Act-Structure as we know it today were codified in Syd Field’s 1979 work “Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting”, which has since become the Go-To-Work when it comes being a screenwriter in Hollywood. You want to write a script? You need the read the “Screenplay”.

The modern Three-Act-Structure is comprised of the following points/sequences:

-       The Backstory/Exposition: Exactly what it says on the tin. Sets up the Ordinary World that the characters inhabit, let’s us know about what character’s general deal is. It serves as an introduction to the story and world of your narrative.

-       The Point of Attack: This one is not often talked about and doesn’t feature in every story, but it’s still worth mentioning. This is where the major tension/conflict/dramatic question (structurally, these terms fulfil roughly the same function) is set into motion. It usually doesn’t include the protagonists of the story, but rather the antagonists.

-       The Inciting Incident: This is where the protagonists are sent on their way. We are introduced to their personal conflict and given a reason as to why they would have to leave the Ordinary World behind.

-       The Turning Point: This marks the end of Act I, where the personal conflicts of the protagonists and the major conflict of the overarching story intersect and coalesce. It is the natural fallout of the inciting incident, the big dramatic status quo change that we need in order to get the story going.

This naturally leads into Act II, where all the minor character conflicts are resolved and integrated into the larger conflict. This is what is referred to as the Rising Action: through the resolution and incorporation of the minor conflicts into the major conflicts, the story gains momentum. The action rises.

This act has two big culminations:

-       The Mid Point: The first culmination or Mid-Point sees some sort of shift in the major conflict. Maybe all the minor conflicts set-up in Act I are resolved and thus the major conflict becomes the full focus or the major conflict gains an additional factor. Instead of defeating the evil bad guy, the Heroes now have to defeat the Bad Guy and save the Damsel

-       The Lowest Point: The Lowest Point marks the end of Act II. Here the villains are just short of victory or maybe even achieve victory. In a romantic movie, this is the cliché end of Act II fallout which naturally leads into chasing the Hero chasing the love interest into an airport.

With the Lowest Point, the Heroes begin the third act almost or fully defeated. The stakes are high and everything seems hopeless. But then comes:

-       The Twist/Resolution: Usually, the twist coincides with either the protagonist or some sort of character having a eureka-moment or resolving their personal conflict – their Want vs. Need.

-       The Climax: With their problems resolved, the protagonists can venture forth to stop the villains or antagonistic force or save their love life.

-       The Dénouement: After the villain’s defeat/the resolution of the final conflict, the protagonist returns to the ordinary world, but changed by their experiences. The Dénouement is the one part of Act III, that can really drag it out – think the many, many endings of Return of the King for instance.

Up until now, I usually focused on that end of Act II/Act III-part when discussing the storytelling of the Dream SMP such as the Final Disc War, November 16th or Doomsday. Because Doomsday wasn’t just the Lowest Point in terms of storytelling quality.

But for Season 3, I instead want to focus on this section, The Inciting Incident and The Turning Point. Because this is where the current storytelling falters. The narrative has failed to pick up momentum, something that is achieved through a successful Inciting Incident and Turning Point.

So, I want to make the theory palpable and apply the Three-Act-Structure – with focus on Act I and early Act II – to all three Seasons of the Dream SMP to see where Seasons 1 & 2 succeeded and Season 3 failed.

 Chapter 2: The Three-Act-Structure Applied

Despite being much less written out and planned and more focused on the roleplay-aspect, both Season 1 and Season 2 somehow stumbled into recreating the Three-Act-Structure pretty well (S2 had its problem, but on the whole, it was still generally discernible).

I’m not here to discuss why narrative conventions and tools of literary analysis are applicable to something as seemingly idiosyncratic as the Dream SMP, I will do that in a future video. For the purposes of this video, we will simply have to take it at face value that these tools are applicable.

Season 1, which was probably the most consistently and competently written out of the three seasons thus far, has a very clear major tension/conflict: Who gets to steer the fate of L’Manburg, whether that be through stewardship or dissolution. It ties deeply into the personal conflict of our protagonist Wilbur as well as the external threat as represented by our villain JSchlatt, the best character in the story.

And not just that, basically every character whether that be Tommy, Tubbo, Niki, Fundy, Dream or Technoblade is invested in seeing this major tension resolved.

All this is achieved through a wonderful inciting incident and turning point. The inciting incident, the personal conflict for our protagonists, is Wilbur calling a presidential election. He wants to solidify power; his personal conflict being gaining full control over L’Manburg – I will talk about it more in my Wilbur-video.

This leads to the Turning Point, which in this case is a very natural cause and effect: Wilbur loses the election his sense of self shattered and JSchlatt, best character, takes over L’Manburg declares himself Emperor and exiles Tommy and Wilbur. The protagonists are forced out of their Ordinary World and the dynamic of the server is changed forever. The Main Tension or Major Conflict has been fully established.

This has server-wide consequences that every character is impacted by. All the many personal conflict are now framed by this all-encompassing major conflict. Thus, everything feels like it’s building up towards the same climax. Whether that be Fundy’s personal conflict as a deep-undercover spy, Niki’s conflict as the resistance in Manburg, Quackity’s struggle for power under Schlatt or the threat of Schlatt trying to expand Manberg into Dream SMP territory.

This even applies to the most disconnected conflict in Act II: The War between Sapnap and Tommy. Because even here, Sapnap’s stated goal is to gather enough power to take over Manberg. Now, that the power dynamic has shifted once it has signalled to other antagonists that the power dynamic can shift once more. The Balance of the Ordinary World is disrupted.

And from the Pogtopia-side, this conflict serves as a great way to not only build up their team, but also as a mini-version of their major conflict. If they cannot defeat Sapnap, what chance do they stand against Big Bad Emperor Schlatt.

Season 2, in spite of all the problems that it has, also managed to pull off the inciting incident and turning point rather well. The Inciting Incident here being Tommy burning down George’s house – his intent being to gain some leverage to win his discs back – which then again lead very gracefully into the Turning Point: Tommy being exiled from L’Manburg.

Tommy’s personal conflict – regaining his discs – was folded into the major conflict: Breaking Dream’s grip over the SMP (and in effect creating a new power dynamic on the server).

Tommy’s exile led to Tubbo being pushed by Quackity to institute the Butcher Army – an antagonistic force intent on making L’Manberg the strongest nation on the server; in effect dethroning Dream. This would of course lead to Hog Hunt and Technoblade’s involvement; ultimately bringing a lot of momentum into the narrative.

Now, Season 2 doesn’t pull this off as graciously as Season 1: You will have noticed that both the Inciting Incident as well as the Turning Point are pretty exclusively focused on Tommy which leads to the major conflict revolving mostly around Tommy and the characters in his orbit – which is not ideal when dealing with an ever-expanding ensemble cast.

While Season 1’s Inciting Incident and Turning Point also had Wilbur as their centre point, they were open enough to allow for other characters such as Quackity, Sapnap and most crucially Schlatt to naturally integrate themselves into the narrative.

What also doesn’t help is that the Rising Action up until the Midpoint is almost exclusively focused on Tommy as I discussed in my Philza-video. There is dramatic and narrative momentum, but it comes at the expense of basically every other character or storyline. The Butcher Army and New L’Manburg are painfully underexplored.

But still, despite its flaws, Season 2 managed to get the ball rolling. So where did Season 3 go wrong?

The main problem that Season 3 has is that it presented us with a large number of potential inciting incidents, but no concrete turning point. We have a lot of personal conflicts, but are as of yet missing the big major tension or conflict that ties it all together; that gives the framework in which the personal conflicts of the characters can intersect and resolve.

I think just to showcase how scattershot Season 3’s storytelling is right now; I’ll have to list all the big plot points of the season as they happened:

1.    Tommy meets with the Egg and shows an immunity to it. The Egg orders the Eggpire to kill Tommy in order to proceed with their plan

2.    The prison gets into lockdown mode, while Tommy is visiting Dream

3.    Tommy gets killed by Dream

4.    Tommy gets resurrected by Dream

5.    Technoblade and Ranboo come into contact with the Egg

6.    Quackity comes into contact with the Egg

7.    The Syndicate meets up and checks out Snowchester

8.    Tubbo loses a nuke

9.    The Red Banquet

10.  Tommy breaks into the prison

11.  Wilbur gets resurrected

Now, quite a number of those could have worked as either inciting incidents or turning point with some narrowing the scope of the narrative more than other. The early points involving Tommy for instance would have pushed him again into the role protagonist akin to how it worked in Season 2, while others like the Syndicate, the Red Banquet or Wilbur’s resurrection would have established the respectively involved groups or characters as the drivers of the major tension.

But none of these avenues are taken. All these conflicts are still insular; their resolutions don’t build to anything.

Tommy’s resurrection – which in my opinion is the first plot point that could have been used as the Turning Point relatively easily – changes the course of the prison and Las Nevadas-storyline, but has little to no impact on the Eggpire, Syndicate or Nuke-storylines.

Similarly, Tubbo losing the nuke could have led to the major tension becoming every faction hunting for the missing nuke in order to fulfil their personal agendas. But again, no dice.

And this just keeps adding up and up. Each new plot point subconsciously leads the viewer to expect that this will be the one to establish a major, unifying tension for the season – and then nothing comes of it. Though the volume of “lore” is still relatively high, the narrative momentum that is needed in order to make the viewer invested in the storyline is diminished with every potential turning point that is ignored in favour of more set-up.

And this structural problem of Season 3 when compared to Seasons 1 and 2 is made the most apparent when looking at …

 Chapter 3: The Eggpire

Oh, my poor boys. Where did it all go wrong?

To give some context: The Eggpire or Crimson-storyline actually started in the middle of Season 2, where they managed the impossible: Establishing a storyline with some narrative momentum and impact outside of the major conflict.

So, how did they do that and do it successfully at that?

The first thing we need to understand is that the Season 2 Eggpire-storyline basically involved no one from the “principal cast”. As such, the story was not chained to the developments that were going on there – such as Exile, Hog Hunt, the Green Festival, etc. – and instead had more freedom to do their own stuff.

The Eggpire-storyline in Season 2 was for the most part self-contained. So much so, that people were viewing it not as a part of the on-going narrative, but rather in the vein of Tales from the SMP: A story that stands alone, the resolution of which would have no impact on the server as a whole.

And, to be fair, they could have gone that route. But the writer(s) behind the Eggpire-storyline decided to be more ambitious.

The Eggpire-storyline in Season 2 follows its own mini-version of the Three-Act-Structure, with BadBoyHalo serving as its protagonist. The big narrative movements coincide and are influenced with dramatic movement in his own personal conflict. He is the Wilbur of this storylines – the once good man (relatively speaking), who falls from Grace.

Now, the thing that makes the Eggpire-storyline in Season 2 quite brilliant is that they ultimately tied the resolution of their tension into the major conflict/tension of the Season 2.

Doomsday saw the Lowest Point of the main storyline of Season 2. With L’Manburg’s destruction and Dream’s future imprisonment, there was a huge power vacuum on the server – a power vacuum that BadBoyHalo, now fully under the control of the Egg, was ready to fill.

The climax of the Eggpire-storyline in Season 2 saw the rise of the Eggpire as they spread the seeds of the Crimson in the L’Manburg-crater, intent on taking over server – thus adding onto the dramatic tension that Doomsday already established, making the Lowest Point feel even more foreboding and successfully linking their erstwhile separate storyline to the main tension of the overall narrative. The villains for Season 3 seemed to be perfectly set-up.

And then Season 3 rolled around and they … bungled it completely.

Though the Eggpire eventually came into contact with almost every active character in Season 3 – such as Tommy, Tubbo, Ranboo, Technoblade and Quackity – they completely failed at driving the major conflict and establishing themselves as the main antagonistic force of the storyline the same way Schlatt and Dream had done in the Seasons prior.

The biggest missed opportunity in that regard is without a doubt the Red Banquet. Now, I talked in the past about how the Red Banquet failed just on its own – at least a specific aspect of it – but now we’ll have to talk about how the Red Banquet fails in the context of Season 3.

Because this was the moment that all the storylines could have been brought together. The Eggpire could have succeeded in their endeavour and established themselves as the most prominent force on the serve. This event would have impacted the server as a whole and thus the entire storyline.

Immediately we would have had a major conflict to drive all other storylines – such as Tommy’s storyline, Snowchester, the Syndicate, Kinoko Kingdom and Las Nevadas – to stop the Eggpire from fully taking over the server. All the character-specific conflicts could have then happened within the framing of this major tension.

Maybe Tubbo and the rest are hunting for the nuke, because they think it’s the only way to stop the Eggpire. Maybe the Eggpire wants to free Dream, because he could be of use for the Crimson. Tommy could get abducted by the Eggpire because he is some sort of chosen one or whatever and the onus would fall on the other characters to save him and stop the villains – so Tommy would become the damsel effectively.

Maybe they decide that the only way to defeat the Eggpire is to bring back Wilbur and that’s how that storyline gets integrated. Maybe the disparate forces disagree on that or other plot-points and there’s some infighting between them.

But still: All conflicts would be unified by this one major tension. The Red Banquet would have been the Turning Point to lead into Act II of Season 3, where all the problems would be viewed with the knowledge that the Eggpire and the Crimson was looming in the distance.

Alas, we did not get that. Instead, the Red Banquet turned out to be just another plot point in a long line of plot points that promises more in the future. Smaller personal conflicts are resolved just within the limited scope of their individual storyline and a major tension is yet to be seen.

When Bad says that there’s just one more Egg-stream planned, I hope he’s either misleading or not being clear enough on what he means. Because if this was it; if the Eggpire-storyline just kinda dies here – too connected to all other storyline to be seen as standalone and yet too separated to be enjoyed in the context of Season 3 as a whole – then it would be a worse writing choice than Doomsday.

 Epilogue: How the Prison Break can bring it all together

To bring it all back to the sentence I opened this video with: I hope Technoblade succeeds in breaking Dream out of prison, because this could finally be the Turning Point that introduces a major tension to the narrative of Season 3.

I hoped that Wilbur’s resurrection would fill that role, but disappointingly that plot point is again relegated to driving the tension of a few chosen storylines instead of providing a major tension for all players involved.

And with five months into Season 3, this Act 1 has gone on for far too long! For comparison, the entire written storyline of Season 1 encompassed 4 months. Season 2 took place in only 2 months. Season 3 has already exceeded both their runtimes and still seems to have yet to truly start.

Whether Technoblade breaks Dream out or Quackity succeeds in trapping Technoblade in Pandora’s Vault – there needs to be a turning point somewhere in sight.

Because my biggest fear is that we’re already past it. That the Eggpire-storyline will just fizzle out and that some other plot point will retroactively reveal itself as the turning point – because that would mean that Season 3 would have a horrifically unfocused, saggy and just generally unengaging second act. And that would be a shame.

Thank you so much for watching. Once again, please feel free to like, comment and subscribe. The links to my social media are all in the description down below. I have a bunch of stuff planned for the future including a very long video on Wilbur as well as two videos that have nothing to do with Dream SMP.

Until then, please be excite.

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

1. The trial happening right now bothers me because we get to see how Thanatos and Echo reacted to this, but Demeter and Persphone don’t know and I know why they don’t know yet. However you think that would tie some more stuff up together

It was Minthe, Thanatos and Thetis who whistle blew on Persphone. Meaning Thanatos would probably be called to trial and would have to face persphone and I would hope say something to her BUT I kinda doubt that’s gonna happen.

But the other thing to this Minthe is a plant who can’t testify. Are hades and Persphone hide the fact she’s a plant and pretend she’s missing or are they gonna say “yeah I still don’t have control over my powers but I’m queen now” HOWEVER I truly believe RS is just gonna not address these two plot points until way later.

FINALLY Eros and Psyche KNOW the last person Daphne was seen with was Apollo, did they chase after her after he got shot by the arrow? We don’t know. We don’t even know what they’re doing about Psyche. Did Eros and Psyche even see the Daphne tree? Are they going to try and sneak in to tell Persphone?

I know the plots gonna focus more on HxP secret marriage at the court trial rather than the actual consequences and the fact people are turning into greenery left and right. (It’s not Persohones Faullt Daphne is the way she is but RS needs to focus on other plot points I feel)

2. like, age gaps, height differences, and power imbalances dont always have to be bad, the issue to me is that the way rachel does it is hyper-focusing on how young, small, and child-like/unexperienced persephone is compared to the old, giant, and all powerful/mature hades is like ... yeah obvs people are going to find it creepy? how would they not?

3. i honestly cant stand the "theyre immortal gods the age gap doesnt matter!!" agreement because like??? ok??? then she could easily be 300 years old then? she shouldnt be so borderline underage then?? like the immortality aspect actually makes the age gap worse, not better??

4. i realize getting nitpicky over unimportant characters in lo having american names is a bit dumb, but it does speak to just how lazy rachel is and how little care she has for greece and its mythology. there are countless english names that are also greek, yet even that's asking too much of her. percy jackson isnt a perfect series, but even the characters (who are in america) have greek influence and meanings put into their names and characterization, something rachel doesn't even attempt to do.

5. ok but thats a good point, because rachel seems to be taking physical wounds to matter more over the mental ones, when thats not how trauma works. her writing on zeus is reflective of her writing minthe, where she confirmed she has a severe untreated mental illness and that's linked to her evilness, and thus what she should be punished for. meanwhile persephone own mental issues can be bastardized as a "yass queen" thing?? somehow?? its just bad writing all around.

6. i kinda wish lo fans would listen to their own logic and give the same leeway to the other characters. theyll scream from the rooftops that hades and persephone and hera can be awful people all they want because thats ~realistic~, meanwhile minthe and zeus and everyone else are held to such extremes they can never meet and are hated and despised for nothing in compared to hxp or hera. either hold your faves accountable or let off on hating characters who do the same as them.

7. i see a lot of lo fans excuse how everything drags as "thats how a slow burn works" and its like ... no? because most of that slow burn isnt even hxp, its rachel forcing in more plots we dont need, and when its hxp, you look at the timeline and how they act and its actually neck-breakingly fast? like if as much time had past in LO as irl time then yeah, four years is a slow burn, but its only been maybe a month in comic? so its not slow for them at all, but it's a drag for the readers.

8. See, the difference between Lo!Hades and Punderworld!Hades is that PW!Hades has so much personality, he and Persephone are literally bustling with life (even though one of them rules over a realm of dead XD) AND their interactions are so cute with their awkward attempts at flirting and failure at doing so. Persephone is still somewhat sweet and “pure” but she’s also a bit of a spitfire, she’s not easy to surrender, she has wants and dreams and that little differences makes her character likable!

We NEVER get to see anything like that with LO!Hades and Persephone, we don’t see them have these sweet interactions, these heart-fluttering moments, because there’s no base or foundation for those sorts of moments! It’s always these very out-of-character unrealistic scenes expected from a married couple, but they just met! It doesn’t feel natural, it feels forced and rushed and so slow at the same time.

Although Punderworld makes Demeter overbearing, i love her characterization i really do, waAAAY more than LO!Demeter, because we actually understand her reasons for her overprotective behavior and we get to see her in a more sympathetic light/manner in the newer chapters, we see her as more than “mean mom hates bf”

9. Daphne and Thanatos were adorable. Like, Daphne was a sweet, caring girl with genuine interest (and power/agency) and Thanatos was a shy, awkward guy who was just doing his best (and not pressuring her). They weren't perfect, but it was something! Why couldn't LO be about them?

10. What I find funny is that Minthe and Thetis have a more defined friendship than Persphone and other female characters.

Minthe and Thetis ARE TOXIC don’t get me wrong but both characters are aware of each other’s motives. Minthe knows not to trust Thetis fully and is straight with her on her opinion of Thetis. But the readers clearly know their relationship as well as the characters.

Persphone is in gray areas with most her female friends. The beginning of the story we are lead to believe Artemis and P are besties with the dress sharing and the way in P’s mind they’re holding hands with Hermès. But clearly now their relationship is a question mark and they’re both more detached than we thought. Artemis was just being nice to P letting her stay with her because they’re both in the TOGeM but they’re probably more like acquaintes at best.

Daphne and P we know they’re friends but P isn’t straight with her. Like Daphne is P’s only named friend, but did P think of her as the other overbearing nymphs? We don’t know because they’re all pink and some of them are dead. Despite being told they grew up together we don’t even know much about their relationship what do they like about each other? Does Daphne agree with Demeters parenting or P’s need to leave? When did Daphne get to move to Olympus? I feel like the plot just says “these two characters are friends “ but doesn’t elaborate much. Why did P let Daphne in her room at Hades mansion and not the other nymphs? P told Daphne that Apollo is dangerous, but it was a little too late. Also why didn’t P have her phone number when she got to Olympus? Wouldn’t she know to contact her on insta or something? P was like “omg I know no one except Hermès “ but that’s not true! Daphne! I could go more but I think we get the picture that Daphne’s plot point is having the readers be told Persphone has friends but she doesn’t but she does.

Were shown that P and Meg are getting along because P was nice to Meg, despite Meg being silently jealous of P, but what about Meg now? Is she ever gonna tell P that she’s jealous of P that she had a mad crush on Hades, even her journal? Or is that all gone now? Does Meg even matter any more or is she now here just to support HXP?

[the-desolated-quill]

WandaVision: ‘Subverting’ Good Television - Quill’s Scribbles

(Spoilers for the first five episodes)

Hey everyone! Well... it’s been a while, hasn’t it? The last time I wrote a proper review or Scribble, people still thought the COVID crisis would be over within a month. The poor saps. But I thought that as a special way to mark this year’s Valentines Day, we could take a closer look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s shittiest power couple in their new Disney+ show WandaVision.

The first of many MCU spin-off shows that nobody asked for, broadcast exclusively on Disney’s totally unnecessary streaming platform, WandaVision is about everybody’s favourite whitewashed Nazi experiment and her red sexbot boyfriend as they try to fit into a suburban sitcom neighbourhood without arousing suspicion.

Yes, you read that correctly. The MCU has a sitcom now. My life is now complete.

Sarcasm aside, I was legitimately curious about WandaVision because of its unusual setting. And considering one of my most common criticisms of the MCU is its total lack of creativity, anything that’s even a little bit subversive is bound to attract my attention. Of course ‘subversive’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good.’ I could hand you a canvas smeared with my own shit and call it subversive. That doesn’t necessarily make it good art. And that’s exactly what WandaVision is. A canvas smeared with shit.

So lets split this critical analysis/review/angry bitter rant into two distinct chapters. The first focusing on the plot and setting, and the second focusing on the characters. Okay? Okay.

Chapter 1: Bewitched

Critics seem to be utterly enamoured with the whole sitcom gimmick, and it is a gimmick. As far as I can tell from the episodes I’ve seen, the sitcom setting serves no real purpose whatsoever other than to make the show ‘quirky.’ Which I wouldn’t mind, believe it or not, if the show was actually funny. There’s just one problem. It’s not.

Now in some ways describing why a sitcom doesn’t work is often futile because comedy is largely subjective. What I find funny, you won’t necessarily find funny and vice versa. With WandaVision, however, I won’t have that problem. I can demonstrate to you precisely why WandaVision, objectively, isn’t funny. And it all comes down to one simple thing. The stakes. Or rather the complete and total absence of stakes.

The show makes it very clear from the beginning that none of what we’re seeing is real. The cheesy theme song, the era appropriate special effects (mostly. It’s actually very inconsistent), the joke commercials, and, in the case of the first two episodes, which are in black and white, the appearance of red lights and objects in Scarlet Witch’s general vicinity. (Gee, what a mystery this is).

Basically Wanda has brought Vision back from the dead and created this sitcom world for them to inhabit. I’ll explain the stupidity of this in Chapter 2. The point is none of this is real, and that has a negative effect on the comedy because the very nature of comedy is suffering. Take the plot of the first episode. Wanda and Vision have to prepare a dinner to impress Vision’s boss. If they fail, Vision could lose his job and the couple could be exposed as superheroes. If this were a normal sitcom, it would work. The stakes are clear and it would be satisfying to see the two struggle and overcome the odds. But here, we know it’s not real. If it’s not real, it means there’s no stakes. If there’s no stakes, it means there’s no suffering. If there’s no suffering, there’s no comedy.

It would be one thing if the unfunny sitcom stuff lasted for like the first ten minutes or so before making way for the actual plot, but it doesn’t. Oh no. It doesn’t even last for the first episode. Out of the five episodes I’ve watched, four of them are almost entirely about these unfunny, objectively flawed sitcom homages, each set in a different time period. The fifties, the sixties, and so on. And what’s worse is that nothing that happens in them is plot-relevant. That gets relegated to the last five minutes of an episode. So you’re forced to sit through twenty five minutes of boring slapstick and puns in order to catch even a whiff of actual story. Which begs the question... who is this for exactly? It can’t be entertaining to Marvel fans, who have to slog through all this pointless shit so they can figure out what the fuck is going on. Comedy fans may get a kick out of the sitcom pastiche at first, but after four episodes, surely the joke would wear thin. So why is it in here? Clearly someone in the writer’s room absolutely fell in love with the idea of doing a Marvel sitcom, but nobody put in any time or effort to figure out how it would work in context.

I cannot stress enough how bad the plotting of this series is. As I said, the vast majority of a thirty minute episode is about shitty sitcom plots that aren’t funny and don’t have any impact on the story, only to then tease you with a crumb of actual plot in order to keep you coming back for the next instalment. Admittedly it’s an effective strategy. I was more than ready to quit after Episode 2 until that beekeeper showed up out of the sewer (don’t ask. It’s not important). WandaVision essentially follows the Steven Moffat school of bad writing. String your audience along with the promise that things might get more interesting later on and that all the bullshit that came before will retroactively make sense by the end. Except, as demonstrated with BBC’s Sherlock, that doesn’t work. And even if it did, it wouldn’t justify wasting the audience’s fucking time. And that’s what the majority of WandaVision is. A waste of time.

The only episode that doesn’t follow the sitcom format is the fourth episode. Instead it basically exists to explain all the shit that happened before. The shit that the audience, frankly, are smart enough to figure out for themselves. Wanda created the sitcom world as a way of coping with the loss of Vision, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we got it. Thanks. It doesn’t advance the plot or anything. It’s just a massive info-dump. But by far the lowest point was when Darcy (by far the most annoying character in the first Thor film and is just as obnoxious here) was sat in front of the TV, watching the sitcom and asking the same questions we were. Not even attempting to look for answers. Just reiterating what the audience is thinking. Like this is an episode of fucking Gogglebox.

In the end it becomes apparent why the series is structured the way that it is. It’s to hoodwink people into subscribing to Disney’s stupid streaming service. If you think about it, there was no reason for WandaVision to be a TV series other than to lure gullible fans in with a piece-meal story buried in a mountain of crap. This isn’t a TV show. It’s what is cynically known in the world of big business executives as ‘content.’ They’re not interested in entertaining the audience. Instead they crave ‘engagement’, which isn’t the same thing. Watching WandaVision is like staring into the void, waiting for something to happen, while Disney charge you for the privilege.

Chapter 2: I Love Lucy

So the plot sucks balls. What about the characters? Surely if Wanda and Vision are likeable at least, it’ll give us something to cling onto.

Well as I was watching the first episode, it suddenly hit me that I couldn’t remember anything that happened to them in previous films. I knew Vision died, but other than that, I couldn’t tell you significant plot details or their personalities or anything. Not a great start.

See, up until now, Vision and Scarlet Witch have been little more than background characters. So already there’s an uphill struggle to get us invested in their relationship, especially considering we haven’t actually seen that relationship develop. In Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Scarlet Witch is killing people because she’s pissed off about Tony Stark killing people (you work that one out) until all of a sudden she stops and joins the good guys because the script said so. Vision meanwhile is introduced as a convenient deus ex machina to beat Ultron and gets no real personality other than he’s a robot. Captain America: Civil War comes the closest to giving Wanda a story and personality of her own as it’s her actions that cause the Sokovia Accords to come into effect, but she never gets any real growth or payoff as the film is heavily focused on Cap and Iron Man’s penis measuring contest. And as for Vision, all he does in the film is accidentally cripple War Machine. No real character or arc there as such. And then we have Avengers: Infinity War, where Wanda and Vision are now sporadically in love and on the run until that pesky Josh Brolin, looking like a CGI cross between Joss Whedon and a grumpy grape, comes along and rips out Vision’s Infinity Stone to power up his golden glove of doom, and the film treats this like a tragic moment, except... it isn’t. Because we haven’t really had the time to properly get to know these characters and see their romance blossom. So instead it just comes off as hollow and forced.

WandaVision has the exact same problem. Apparently Wanda was so distraught about Vision’s death that she broke into a SWORD base, stole his corpse, brought it back from the dead... somehow, and then enslaved an entire town of people to create an idyllic lifestyle for her and her hubby while broadcasting it as a sitcom to the outside world... for some reason. Putting aside the dubious morality of it all, it’s impossible to really sympathise with Wanda or her supposed grief because we’ve barely spent any time with her. Had the Marvel movies taken the time to properly explore the characters and show us their relationship grow and develop, this might have had more emotional resonance. But no, it just happens. In one film they barely speak to each other and in the next they’re a couple. No effort to explore how they feel about each other or any of the problems that may arise trying to date a robot. It just happens and we’re just supposed to care. Well I’m sorry, but I don’t care. You’re going to have to try a little bit harder than that I’m afraid. What’s worse is that, thanks to the whole fake sitcom thing, it’s impossible to really become invested in Wanda and her plight because the show has to constantly keep us at arms length at all times in order to keep up the pretence that this bullshit is somehow mysterious.

Looking through the WandaVision tag, it amuses me how many people say that she’s acting out of character. And yeah, her actions are a bit of a head scratcher. Why would an Eastern European’s ideal life be an American sitcom? Why a sitcom? Why kidnap an entire town? Why keep changing the decade? None of it makes sense, but you’re wrong for thinking that Wanda is behaving out of character for the simple reason that Wanda has never actually had a character. In fact, ironically, Wanda mind controlling an entire town and forcing them to do her bidding is probably the one consistent thing about her as she did this in Age Of Ultron. In interviews, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany described how they used actors like Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick Van Dyke as influences, which is really funny because they’re straight up admitting they don’t have characters and even now they’re still not playing the characters, instead emulating the work of far better actors.

As I was watching the show, it became abundantly clear that not only do Marvel not have the faintest idea what they wanted to do with these characters, but they also straight up don’t give a shit about these characters. Wanda in particular has had a rough time under the tyrannical regime of the House of Mouse. First they cast Elizabeth Olsen, a white woman, to play a Romani character, then systematically erasing her Jewish roots, even going so far as to put a cross in her bedroom in Civil War, and now the character is being butchered even more by forcing her into an American sitcom housewife role that she apparently willingly chose for herself, which is laughable. I mean say what you like about Magneto in the X-Men films, at least they actually depicted his Jewish culture. At least they recognised his Jewish background was important (though not important enough to cast a Jewish actor apparently). Wanda’s steady cultural erasure over the years is incredibly insidious and judging by Olsen’s comments in interviews, where she called Wanda’s comic book outfit a quote ‘gypsy thing’ unquote, it seems nobody has an ounce of fucking respect for the character or the culture she’s supposed to be representing. (and to all those kissing her arse saying it was a slip of the tongue, she has been repeatedly called out for using the slur in the past, so at this point I’d describe her behaviour as wilful ignorance)

If you want further proof of how much Marvel doesn’t seem to care about Wanda, look no further than her brother Pietro, aka Quicksilver. At the end of Episode 5, Wanda brings Pietro back from the dead, except it’s not Pietro. It’s Peter Maximoff, the Quicksilver from the X-Men films played by Peter Evans, who coincidentally is not Jewish or Romani either. So Quicksilver has the dubious honour of not only being whitewashed three times, but also twice within the same franchise. But should we really be surprised at this point? It’s Marvel after all. The same company that whitewashed the Ancient One in Doctor Yellowface and claimed it wasn’t racist because Tilda Swinton is ‘Celtic’. But now I’m going off topic. My point is that this isn’t a simple case of recasting an actor like Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk. WandaVision actually acknowledges the recast in-universe, which makes no sense. Why would Wanda bring back her brother, only to make him look like a different person? We the audience may be familiar with this version of Quicksilver, but she isn’t. That would be like me bringing my Grandad back to life and making him look like Ian McKellen. He’d be perfectly charming, I’m sure, but he wouldn’t be my Grandad. 

If Marvel really cared about the characters or narrative consistency, they would have brought Aaron Taylor Johnson back. Instead, now they have absorbed 20th Century Fox into the hellish Disney abyss, they use X-Men’s Quicksilver as a means to keep viewers from switching off and so that people will write stupid articles and think pieces about whether the rest of the X-Men will show up in the MCU. It’s like dangling your keys in front of a toddler’s face to distract them from the rotting corpse of a raccoon lying face down in the corner of the room.

And it’s here where I decided to stop watching the show because fuck Disney.

Epilogue: One Foot In The Grave

You know, I am sick and tired of the so called ‘professional’ critics bending over backwards to praise these god awful films and shows when it’s so clear to anyone with a functioning brain cell how bad they truly are. WandaVision is without a doubt one of the most cynically produced and poorly structured TV shows I’ve ever seen. Its riffs on classic sitcoms are pointless and self-indulgent, the writing is terrible, the characters are unlikable and unsympathetic, and it’s entirely emblematic of what the entire MCU has become of late. And it’s only going to get worse as Disney drowns us with more ‘content’ to keep the plebs ‘engaged’. In short; pathetic.

[stuckasmain]

The crow : Wicked Prayer review

I have been making this for four days (things keep coming up finally posting this)

It may be a unpopular opinion but I honestly believe that this is the best out of the three sequels. I completely mean that. It has its problems as they all do, a lot of them I can chalk up to “it’s 2005” just like with salvation. This movie introduces a LOT of interesting lore bits and concepts that it expands on a little bit, some of its lost for sake of aesthetic or a bad writing point but most of this is genuinely good. I like that it plays into the aspect that the whole Concept of the crow is inspired by Native American legends… even if they do it in a very um… “2005” way. However it’s not as bad as getting the core idea of Dia de Los mertos wrong.

My central “2005” problem is the films opening. They begin two paragraphs of text MID OPENING CREDITS. Imagine you’re watching the Star Wars title crawl and instead of starting it just “Bob the camera man” and continues. As well as when introducing our main bad guys it does a smash cut style video game esc character screen- pausing and showing their names and things we get basic info we learn about them naturally in the movie? Also the fact their names are ALREADY ON THEIR FUCKING CARS. This is never done again and only for these four characters. The opening itself is also plainly confusing despite their paragraph explaining it- i understood none of the central conflict it actually hinges on because it looks like the miners were protesting themselves. This is never done better though the whole movie. Anyways, onto the good stuff

A new beginning/leaving it all behind-

A wonderful aspect of this film is the central romance, Jimmy and his girlfriend Lily ignites the dawn. Unlike salvation’s problem of failing to make me care for Lauren besides the mystery around her death, lily feels like a real character. They’re actually quite cute to watch. Her impact is marked on the rest of the story… you get to see how losing her effects everything. Similarly to Shelly.

The movie actually has a unique beginning in that the first 20 minutes are spent with Jimmy while he’s alive. (Salvation somewhat does this but it’s 2 and directly up to his death). We get to learn a lot about him and his troubles but still have a level of mystery that slowly gets revealed as the story goes on. Jimmy is a ex con, on parole on the Rez side of the road, he’s a ‘white trash’ sort living in a horribly run down trailer with his dog and is dating the daughter of the chief . What we see is his plans to skip town once his parole is up, head to the coast and hopefully with Lily. Unfortunately- the proposal is given to a empty shop, and ends with Him and Lily getting killed.

Turns out, the local “satanic Cult” which- is more of a club …. There’s five of you shut up you’re a club. No cult calls itself a cult. Needs them for a ritual.

They’re ambushed and hung up in the middle of the shop. They take Lily’s eyes and his heart. It’The dead is watched in real time, the full thing plays out straight right up to their bodies being dumped into a fridge at a junkyard. It’s ‘nothing personal’ except it seems that Jimmy knows Luc.. and begs.. unfortunately on death ears. From this point , the ‘actual’ plot starts and we get the expected flashbacks and so on.

Rebirth-

I expressed before and I’ll say again how I think the effect is dampened by a nearly instant revival from the dead. Ashe was a few weeks - Alex and Jimmy only a few hours which creates a lot of problems later on but in this? It works beautifully.

This entire scene is so tragically beautiful and honestly the best part of the movie. Jimmy launches out of the fridge into the water - barely able to breathe (has no heart + noose) struggling to figure out what’s going on, he barely has a second to process. He keeps feeling at his chest panting and crying before completely losing it- … and then he sees Lily. “Oh my god… what have I done?!” Is the most hitting line. The fact Jimmy thought he had done it- and was capable of hurting the woman he loves is such a raw line. I just wished they kept up this feeling the whole film. He brings her body back to the store and rests her in her bed, getting flashes of what actually happened (in this situation it actually works for a instant revival and flashback to what we saw just happen. It’s like whiplash and it works). It also ends up being a plot line with the amounts of times he takes her body- not quite important but I just wanted to add it.

Jimmy’s makeup is a design Lily would draw on his face, sometimes for fun but this one specifically ties back to Rave-N- Fest along with his outfit. It’s a sweet flashback (I adore more then most as it makes me feel. It gives me a sense of character and love that most sequel flashbacks lack).

Also! Comic references .. His makeup actually has no white facepaint only the black (which is sharpie). The white is the fact he’s extremely pale do to being dead. He also torches his trailer in the same way Eric burns his house.

Jimmy-

Jimmy is the best part of this movie and he’s shafted in what should be his story. The movie focus is more on the villains because David’s got the star power at the time. The villians have very shotty motivation and a horrible plan and aren’t much to watch struggle about or make jokes when they mow down groups of people…

Jimmy is different from the others. He doesn’t have the same manic highs the others do when in a fight or angry.. he’s made up of the somber, sadder moments in between. He’s much more … done. Sarcastic and snappy then scream and yell. Depressive > bipolar. He doesn’t have the same drive instead he has the longing for death… he has a resentment towards the crow for bringing him back, the fact he now has to do the one thing that scared him about himself.(his ability to kill) “what have you done to me?” “You turned me into a fucking monster” and it’s great. He reminds me a lot of Comic Eric’s calmer moments, where he can quip but he’ll sit down and say some word of peace with a dying man.. while longing for it all to end. But the movie never places a focus on this or him as they should!! (The movies misguided focus on the bad guys and hard lean into comedy in certain parts greatly ruins what could be phenomenal.)

Another particular moment I love takes place in the quick Marry chapel place on the edge of town. Jimmy isn’t as directly violent as his formers- more defensive (except the movie would rather have his ass kicked then properly able to defend himself or clear fighting style). He rights a wrong by keeping someone alive- I like that it expanded beyond the hunt kill aspects and the mental of the comic and first movie. He is making amends- not being forgiven but doing right by the parents of the man he killed /was on parole do to(which was more defense/good reason but made the entire town hate him despite seeing what happened???) and it’s a wonderful moment.

“Are you a Angel or another devil?” “I don’t know. Both.”

“Who are you.” “Maybe a ghost”

“I’m sorry”

And just “but don’t expect me to forgive you” is hhhhhh yes.

I love this moment as it’s righting wrongs and it’s doing what he needs to do, what he needs to settle before he moves on. It’s not all killing.

Lore-

This review is getting a bit long so I’m going to jump straight into lore. Stuff introduced or expanded on that I liked or disliked and a brief thing at the end. Most of the things I didn’t like were touched on in what I loved. Some of this will include quotes I like to save time!

So … don’t even ask me why Lilly is talking about Legends at the casino proposal/announcement but she is. She goes over the legend of the crow and instead of a new or more detailed way she rips Sarah’s monologue almost directly? (Movie logic but just- how she says it the exact same almost..) except it is expanded on a bit more. Lilly mentions the souls burden+ expressed idea at funerals.

Expressly states the Crows power comes from his love. (Which has always been true but it’s nice for it to be stated)

According to legend without your eyes you’re lost in the spirit world forever (I guess they really are the window to the soul, ha) which makes it all the more pressing that Jimmy puts a end to this. He doesn’t care what happens to himself, but if he fails- he damns her too. “You owe me two lifetimes and a pair of perfect blue eyes.”

Uses a in between state/mental purgatory (like og comic) more often. There’s a part right after their deaths and at the end. This is the first time there’s more then a few seconds where we get to see them reunite and I’m 💕

Different death effect then usual. All have leftover effects from their deaths , scars etc Eric particularly with head damage, Alex with having his brain literally fried. I like that, Jimmy differs in that it’s his breathing and being slower? At least at the beginning.(the man doesn’t have a heart and was choked/hung)

“What happens to a Angel who loses his wings?”

“Killing is easy. Forgetting his hard.” Great quote and another use of memory transfer and not just receiving.

“Why not? She did.” (Jimmy referring to having faith in him)

The movie opens up much more ? Power? It’s on a way larger scale then it should be. Fighting literal satan (as it does happen) then a personal conflict between ex friends. I sort of like the “Angel” concept in the bit that it’s a “avenging Angel” like tale and also clear they’re a good person but not in how it opens some gates. It did give this great shot though;

You have to let go. This is another aspect that’s always been there but has been drilled into this movie specifically. It’s not enough to have killed everyone off- you have to be ready to go. You may be released of your burden but if your still clinging to earth, it’s not much better. They get onto this several times in the movie where Lilly tells him to “let it all go” before leaving for the day/if he wants her to go with him. A few other times but there’s also a analogy with a angry dog on a chain hurting itself in its struggle “all it has to do is let go”.

Crows are Apparently considered “Minor angels”

In the end this movie has a lot going for it. A detailed backstory, a solid concept but it shoots itself in the foot midway into the marathon. The movie’s antagonist’s have bad motivation- like “Tony stark pushed me once” level bad. It could be used effectively but “we’re racist and everyone hates us” is not a excuse to summon satan and have the absolute lack of mental ability to be shocked when it turns out he’s bad. Their plan is also just- a massacre and it’s weak. Falling onto them more then the main character added to its main switch to comedy is what prevents it from being as good as I know it could have been. 2005 man. 2005.

[lunarrin]

Twisted Wonderland Theory! May have future spoilers so please skip this post if you don’t want to risk getting spoiled.

I accidentally posted this before it was finished before, that’s why this might seem like a repeated post, whoops sorry. Edit: Also I tumblr keeps on messing up the format and making me edit it again ;-;

Anyways, It seems like a bunch of people are interested in learning more about this theory circulating among JPN twisted wonderland fans so here I am to display the possible evidence/hints. I had to use google translate to look at some of their claims and although it’s easy to just confirm on your own the claims I have to admit I couldn’t list some of their claims simply because I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Please keep in mind this is only a speculation and has no in-game proof or foreshadowing that I’ve seen at the very least proving it, so take it with a grain of salt. Now, onto the theory!

The Ace Betrayal Theory

This theory concerns our beloved Ace Trappola and concerning “coincidences” that point to Ace possible betraying us in the future. If you would like to look at the twitter posts yourself, search up エース 裏切り説し on twitter.

So first of all, the first thing that may point at things being not what they seem, or at least that something is wrong is the Heartslabyul dorm main characters. There are 5 main characters from the Heartslabyul dorm and in terms of cards it seems a bit odd that there is no sign of a joker within the dorm, of course you could chalk it up to Riddle being the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland so he doesn’t count as a “Heart”. With the “heart” suit being represented by Ace and Riddle, is it possible one of them could also represent the joker? In this case, when I say “joker” I don’t mean they’re gonna be like “surprise I’m actually a joker not a heart suit!” I more so mean that one of them will like a wild card. Given that Riddle already had his episode, and Ace’s status proven by the twisted wonderland opening to be a main character, could we say that Ace could be the “joker” of the dorm in a way? The wild card? Of course this point is based on perspective, if you exclude Riddle from being counted as a “Heart” suit then the dorm is fine, but if you count him as someone representing the “Heart” suit then the repetition seems odd.

There is one main concerning part of this theory that surely would be difficult to pass of as mere coincidence, and it’s Ace’s last name, “Trappola”.

In Italian is means  “trap/pitfall(a possible danger)".  

And Ace is the only dorm member to not have his suit somewhere in his last name, instead he has Trappola, a Venetian trick-taking card game where the Ace is the most powerful card. (Funny enough, it seems like the Deuce is the second most powerful in terms of points alone) And it’s no news to anyone who’s read Ace’s profile that he enjoys card games doesn’t he? What’s a trick-taking card game? It’s a tile based game where each round is called a “trick” and in Trappola, your goal is to take/win the trick. Funny thing is, in Trappola specifically, it seems like the player is awarded bonus points for taking a trick(s) with a Deuce.

There is also another trick-taking, or more so, trick-avoiding game called “Hearts” where you try to have the least amount of points by the end of the game. You get points by wining hearts in tricks in which the amount of points lost depends on the the specific card, with the ace of hearts giving the most points (something you do not want). A fan interpreted this in terms of twisted wonderland to be another pointer for Ace betraying the group just as the Ace of hearts in the game in a way betrays you because it gives you the most points, I personally feel like this is a stretch? But I listed it anyways in case you wanted to know.

Edit: It has been brought to my attention that the Red Queen and Jack of Hearts are from Alice through the Looking Glass and not Alice in Wonderland so the next point does not hold as much ground anymore, but I’ll leave it here anyways

Then there is Ace's similarity or possible link to a character within Alice in Wonderland, being the Jack/Knave of Hearts, who betrays the Red Queen (whom he was previous lovers with, and in general close to the Red Queen). Both Ace and Jack(or the Knave of hearts) have a heart on or around their left eye (our right). Both Jack and Ace steal a tart from the Red Queen (Queen of Hearts (Riddle) in Ace's case). Next, Both betray the Red Queen/Queen of Hearts respectively at one point (Jack tries to kill the Red Queen while Ace tries to take Riddle’s dorm leader position).Off topic coincidence, there is an otome game where the Jack of Hearts is named "Ace". Now this point’s coincidences seem difficult to be just “coincidences” but at the same time you could also say that Ace’s role as the Jack of Hearts has already ended since he has already had his failed attempt at overthrowing Riddle. The concerning part of this link though is that the Jack of hearts tried to kill the person they were at least it seemed to be very close to and at least loyal to (when in actually he hated her) while Ace himself wasn't very close to Riddle at that point, but who is Ace close to and loyal(?) to? MC and the gang ;-; But still take this possibility as a grain of salt.

Of course, we know Ace’s name isn’t Jack, or at least, hopefully he doesn’t pull a “Ace is not my true name at all! Instead I’m also named Jack/Knave!”. But he does have a older brother who once went to the same school, could it be that Ace’s brother is named Jack/Knave? We don’t know much about his brother besides it seems like he was rather relevant as he led a parade that is shown in a picture in one of the halls of the school and that he’s good at card tricks. And similiar to how the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts are different, the Knave of hearts and the Red knight could also be different, with the Knave of Hearts and the Red knight being Ace’s brother and him. Still, we need more info to see how relevant Ace’s brother is in all of this.

Next we have the Twisted Wonderland Opening Movie, which has proven to spoil/hint at plot lines before with Azul as the opening movie teases Azul’s overblot form as well as his child self photos. Now in the opening a fan has noted that every character so far that has been seen alone (besides the part where they have the character’s names and dorms, this part (because Kalim appears and the dorm leaders have to be alone)

Every character that has appeared alone or a bit during the opening so far has overbloted, Jamil, Leona, (and we can guess Malleus and Idia will overblot). While every other character has been introduced with someone alongside them, for example, Epel only appears with Rook, Floyd only appears with Jade, Jack only appears with Ruggie, and the Diasomnia group(minus Malleus) only appear with each other. But who else appears by them self? Our boy Ace.

And Deuce who the OP proves alongside Ace has the same amount of relevance is introduced alongside Cater and Trey

Now for Ace to overblot, it probably means he’s gonna do something villainous like I don’t know, betray the group?

Now here’s the thing, does Ace’s character/personality have the potential to be evil/betray us? Yes, 100 times yes. This is the man who went up to us in the prologue and acted all nice and everything explaining the Great Seven, only to laugh (maniacally?) at our misery and ignorance claiming to have only visited us to mess with us and essentially mock us. If Deuce is the person who could and would (if you pissed him off) physically beat you to death, then Ace is the person to psychologically and emotionally torment/manipulate you, oh and verbal abuse too, he’s good at that. One thing I personally find very concerning about Ace is his hobby of card tricks, like aren’t you guys based off of cards? Are you trying to tell me Ace is good at manipulating/messing with people? 

Like we’ve seen Ace be good at acting and lying on two separate occasions in the story, one with us in the beginning, two with the guard at the underwater museum. In his personal stories, for example in the ‘A Kouhai This Honest’ story, Trey comments on how Ace did indeed have ulterior motives to helping Trey besides just wanting a cherry pie as Ace was trying to fish possible test questions out from Trey. This is their conversation:

Ace: “To collect information, I’m carrying all this heavy stuff~ Beside, Trey-senpai you too… You knew from the beginning I wouldn’t carry all this stuff for a pie with lots of cherry on it “

Trey: “ You… could it be you were lying about liking cherries too?”

Ace: “ That’s the truth. I learnt that from my big brother. “When you’re lying mix a bit of truth in it” he said”

And with the ‘Tch, I Got Found Out’ personal story he tries to take the profit all for himself:

Ruggie:  “ But anyway, isn’t it fine in the end? It wraps up without sensei knowing so your mark doesn’t get affected Anyway, I’m also… wait, Ace-kun!? Where are you going with that bag? That’s the mandragoras to be sold to the ghosts. Don’t just take it like that!”

Ace: “ Tch, I got found out. I thought I could sneak off with it while you two aren’t looking at me ”

Ruggie:  “ You were planning to slip out and take the pay all for yourself huh? What an impudent first year”

Jamil:  “ When I thought you were being all meek…You sure are bold”

Ace: ”Hehe, I’ll take that as a praise, senpais ♪ “

It clear to see Ace at times schemes for his own benefit, whether that is taking advantage of his senpais or other people, Ace will lie and pretend to be innocent while carrying out his ulterior motives. Funny how his big brother taught him that.

On another note, Ace has the uncanny ability of being able to copy what he sees, from his brother’s card tricks, to how to speak hedgehog from seeing Rook just say the phrase once, from quickly learning how to extract um, something from mandragoras and doing it very efficiently. Perhaps will his unique magic be a copy magic, maybe copying the unique magic of others? If so, that sounds like an ability that could build up blot fast if he uses it willy-nilly. (it also sounds OP)

All in all, it seems like Ace really does have the potential to be the villain at one point (even though almost all of them are villains lol).

One more thing pointing to a possible Ace betrayal in the future is kinda a stretch in my opinion, but I will list it anyways because it’s coincidences are a bit unnerving. It has to do with birth month flowers and the Dahlia, a flower which can symbolise “Warning someone about a potential betrayal” and Dahlia is the birth flower of August, what month comes right after August? September, the birth month of both Ace and Jamil. Guess what? Jamil betrayed Kalim in the story.

Well, that’s it for the evidence at least I found people using for the Ace betrayal theory, some of it is a stretch and some of it’s is concerning if it was a mere “coincidence”. I hope you enjoyed reading this, regardless if in the end you believe in this theory or not. I personally love this theory because I love the thought of Ace getting more development in the future, also the fan art people make for this theory is great. For example, the twitter account  @GPs_ac has a piece of fan art of the ace betrayal theory and it’s great.

Also If Ace does betray us, I want to see Deuce beat him into the ground ahahaha... (I still love you Ace but I will be hurt if you do betray us, this is why I stan Deuce lol)

Turns out MC can’t trust anyone but Deuce, because Grim is probably gonna overblot and Ace might betray.

Also, fun fact. The Ace of Spades symbolises death

Haha very funny Disney, making our lovable no braincells duo represent death

Anyways feel free to comment your thoughts on the theory!