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itsclydebitches · 4 years

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Witch”

Happy Saturday, everyone! Well, it's perhaps happier provided you didn't watch today’s episode lol. Getting through these 18 minutes felt like watching an extended version of a CinemaSins vid. I heard a little 'ding!' every time something nonsensical, contradictory, or just downright stupid happened. My mind became a pinball machine.

Which, in the interest of being fair as opposed to just snarky, only matters if you're looking for something resembling emotional depth in this show. RWBY, for all its faults, is enjoyable as a mindless spectacle. It's when you expect — or simply hope — for anything more that this very fragile house of cards comes tumbling down.

If it’s not clear already, today’s recap contains copious amounts of salt. Fair warning.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s dive in. Episode nine is titled "Witch," which is fitting since many members of our group go toe-to-toe against Salem herself. The narrative issues inherent in having your heroes fighting their final boss years before the series is meant to end might have been avoided if it weren't for Oscar's ridiculous, sacrificial attack... but we'll get to that.

We open with a sweeping shot of the Atlas battle, as hundreds of dead soldiers segue into endless grimm. Hold onto that image for a bit. At the end of this carnage is, of course, the mouth of the whale. We cut to Jaune, Ren, and Yang already safely inside.

"Well," says Yang, "that was harrowing."

I'm on the fence about this choice. On the one hand, yes, it's good that RWBY knows it can skip over extraneous scenes. We have NINE characters to keep track of and develop, fourteen if you count Ozpin, Maria, Winter, Ironwood, and now Whitley. Plus villains. There simply isn't time to show every insignificant moment... but was this insignificant? Obviously finding Oscar and escaping Salem's clutches is the true hurdle of this mission, but that doesn't mean getting through an entire army of grimm is in any way a cake walk. I'd be more willing to ignore this time skip if it weren't likewise presented as such a challenge for Winter's team. They have to "clear a path" to the whale, but our trio got there unscathed and unnoticed? The obvious implication here is that Ren just masked them the whole way — supported by his aura breaking later in the episode — but it still feels like we missed an important chunk of this task.

I'm nit-picking though. As said, I’m straddling the fence on this one and, given that, I'm inclined to settle on a, "Good job, RWBY. You're keeping the writing tight," if only because I don't have much else to praise about this episode. Throw the poor, struggling show a bone lol.

Now that they're inside, they realize they haven't the slightest idea how they'll find Oscar. “Like finding a needle in a giant…whale… why did we think this was a good idea?!” Because you and your friends are idiots who no longer bother to think about a situation before throwing yourself straight into it? This isn't me being mean to Yang, she literally says as much later on. Our heroes no longer get by on intellect, strategy, and skill, but rather plot armor and a staggering number of coincidences. For example, Ren.

Yang: Wow, it sure is lucky for us that on our way to this incredibly dangerous mission Ren inexplicably developed a new part of his semblance. Now he can not only mask peoples' emotions, see the true emotions that someone is feeling, pull thoughts out of their head about what they believe about a situation, but can also track someone across long distances through their emotions alone. Even that doesn't actually help us find Oscar, we just got lucky again when, in this maze of a whale, he ran right into us!

Me: So what were you going to do if this meta-world stopped giving you the most contrived solutions in Remnant history?

Yang: Die gloriously, I guess.

What Yang actually says is, "Okay. That's new!" and they enter the literal belly of the beast wielding a shield of convenience.

Jaune is also being awkward again because remember, RWBY doesn't know when to incorporate humor and when to treat a situation seriously. He reminds Ren not to "drain [himself]," he'll help him, and it's clear the scene is hinting at their earlier fight. There's a lot to unpack there, but I want to save it for the second conversation.

For now, we cut to Oscar, curled up in his cell, repeating stories to comfort himself. Yeah that's fine. I could use a broken heart right before Valentine's Day.

“She brushed off her bumps and bruises, for nothing hurt worse than the loneliness in her chest." It's a line from The Girl Who Fell Through the World, which Ozpin recognizes given that he's "lived through" a fair number of fairy tales. He immediately asks how Oscar is holding up — because he's a caring person! — and Oscar admits that he never understood why the girl of the tale was sad upon reaching home again. Now he does: she wasn't the same person anymore. I don't think the fact that Oscar has had both a metaphorical fall — leaving his farm to 'fall' into this war — and a literal one — falling through Atlas to unlock his magic — is lost on anyone. This is a nice allusion to our themes. Yang's speech to Salem later on? That’s something else entirely.

Storytelling done, Ozpin says he thinks "this plan to divide might have run its course” and it's time to try and find a way to leave. I'm sorry, I love my farm boy, but what plan? He didn't do anything. At least nothing that could remotely be termed an intellectual plot. Oscar convinced Ozpin to try and turn Hazel by telling him the world would end under Salem's rule and the only reason that worked is because the story decided to chuck out Hazel's entire character. You know, the one that hates Ozpin above all others, wants the world remade into a non-Academy horror show, can't understand that people make their own choices, is terrified of Salem, and has no reason to trust a prisoner he's currently torturing. Oscar's "plan" hinged on his writers erasing a great deal of work to build a new story that fits said “plan.” He didn't even get Emerald involved, she just — again, conveniently — eavesdropped outside their door at just the right moment.

To be clear, I'm not against a story being written to work in the hero's favor. Of course things are going to be convenient in a happy-ending tale. Someone manages to hold out just as long as they need to, a sword is lying just within reach, you, yes, happen to run into the one person you're desperate to find. This kind of stuff is reassuring, telling its audiences that sometimes things do work out for the best. It's enjoyable... but only provided the hero's entire success doesn't hinge on fate being shockingly kind to them. That's what RWBY has become. A world where Salem doesn't attack Mantle, Amity Tower is suddenly finished, the group can charge into any deadly situation they want to and bank on destiny twisting around itself to ensure they come out of it safely. A hero finding a convenient weapon nearby to defeat their enemy with is only reassuring after we've seen them implement a brilliant attack, struggle, nearly win, but then suddenly be faced with failure, necessitating that little push from coincidence. They earned it. The hero doesn't get to run in blindly and find a Defeat Bad Guy plot point gift wrapped for them at the first sign of trouble. They just die.

RWBY used to be a better written show because that's precisely Pyrrha's story. She charged a Maiden unprepared, without a single plan or hope for success, and she died. That's what happens in a dangerous, internally consistent world, but RWBY has since lost the second half of that formula.

I'm harping on this because this entire episode is built on that foundation of coincidence, something that shouldn't be happening at all, but especially not when you're pitting the heroes against Salem herself.

So yeah, it just gets worse from here.

Back to Oscar. Without the cane magic is the only weapon they have at their disposal, but he's reluctant to use it because every time he does, they merge more quickly.

They... do?

Okay, there are three major problems with this announcement:

I'm pretty sure we've only seen Oscar use magic once: creating that barrier to survive the fall through Atlas. That was the point of his near death experience, to unlock something that had previously been unavailable to him. Yet if he's only used it once, why is he so sure that it hurries the merge along? What's this "every time" business? This confusion could have easily been avoided if the show had just let Oscar use his magic this volume, tackling some other questions and gaps in the process. Let him use it to fight off the grimm in Mantle, giving him the opportunity to admit to at least Jaune, Ren, and Yang that Ozpin is back. He could have used some magic against the Hound with Ozpin's encouragement, answering the question of why he was entirely silent while the two of them got their ass beat. Give us a moment where Oscar uses his magic against Hazel, nearly escaping in the process, but is captured again at the last moment. Basically, his line makes it sound like magic has been this ongoing resource with an established downside when... it hasn’t.

Coinciding with all of the above, how is it that Oscar can suddenly use magic at will? Yeah, yeah, he unlocked it during the fall, but really? You open up the magic gates and from then on out it's as natural as breathing? This is the same issue with Ruby's silver eyes. The story gives these characters incredible powers, but never has them talking about how they work, let alone training them. They just exist, perfect in execution, as soon as the plot needs them. (See: the final shot of this episode.) At least Weiss had to practice her summoning for multiple volumes.

Finally, the question of how Oscar instinctively knows how to use magic could easily be answered with, "Well, he's kind of Ozpin now," but that would require the story to actually explain what the merge is. "We merge faster," Oscar says, but what does that mean? The Ozpin and Oscar we see in this scene are fundamentally indistinguishable from the Ozpin and Oscar who existed at his aunt's house, four whole years ago. They're still separate people, with one controlling the body and the other existing as a consciousness he can talk to. Nothing has changed. The show keeps insisting that Oscar is going through this deep and painful arc of losing himself to Ozpin... despite the fact that he has yet to lose a single bit of Oscar-ness. Has he changed? Well of course, but anyone going through these experiences is going to change. Remove the "merge" aspect and Oscar's confidence or power up is likewise indistinguishable from any of the other characters' developments. Nora is becoming more of an individual this volume. Ren is becoming more powerful in his semblance. Neither have an Ozpin to force that change, it just happens on its own. So what separates Oscar from every other character going through a formative experience? When is “I’m not the same person anymore” due to unnatural magic vs. just growing up?

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy our boy is getting more screen time — and that the cast is actually being kind to him now — but overall his arc is objectively terrible. He bought some clothes, told Ironwood he was as bad as Salem, told Hazel how to access the Relic, and then asked him not to be a villain anymore. Somehow these things are presented as significant moments of growth while the real questions surrounding his merge go unanswered.

“Honestly, I think you’re doing just fine on your own," Ozpin tells him, but he's not. God knows our boy is trying, but this is a moment where Ozpin's self-hatred (and the story's insistence that the younger generation is intrinsically better than the older) is blinding him to the situation. Oscar has made terrible decisions lately, in as much as he's been able to decide anything at all, and now he's rejecting escaping captivity because he's terrified of a concept he doesn't even understand yet. None of that is fine. Reassurance is one thing, but painting this situation as Oscar making better choices than he would with Ozpin's input is insane. He literally just decided to keep them in Salem's clutches indefinitely because something something magic is scary, I guess. Oscar doesn't need a, 'You're better than me' speech, he needs a reality check so they don't both die. Remember back in Volume 5 when Oscar, a brave but idiotic 14 year old, insisted on fighting someone entirely out of his league and Ozpin was like,

then saved him from getting his head crushed in like a cantaloupe? We need more of that. Our teenage heroes need guidance, but because RWBY keeps insisting that every adult they encounter is corrupt or incompetent, that hasn't happened in three volumes. They're just aloud to decide things like, “Let's tell our captor the Relic's password because UwU ~trust~” and then the story bends over backwards to make that work. Instead we could, you know, let characters learn that they can be wrong.

The snow scene was the beginning, but RWBY really went off the rails the day it let Qrow warn the group against stealing from and attacking an allied city, only for them to call him an idiot for doubting them. Now, Ozpin doesn't even get to warn Oscar about stupid decisions, he just agrees with them, reassuring and passive. Never mind the complication of whether Ozpin is even emotionally capable of providing guidance after they labeled him the worst thing to ever happen to them.

Why does RWBY keep ruining my faves 😔

Anyway, we’ve got to stay on track. Oscar has decided to just lie there but, luckily for him, Hazel's redemption — I use that term so loosely — has begun. He drags Oscar out of his cell before we cut to Winter.

She's leading a portion of Ironwood's army, trying to get things ready for when the bomb arrives. Neon and Flynt are a part of her team, sharing scared glances and trying to remain optimistic. It's a legitimately hard-hitting moment, striking that balance between horror and hope. Funny though, I wonder that RWBYJNOR would think of their friends fighting for evil Ironwood...

Marrow, continuing the tradition of insisting that our heroes be both adults and kids simultaneously, looks sadly at the soldiers heading into battle and goes, "But... they're just kids." I would like to remind everyone reading that Ruby is younger than them. Anyone who thinks that these teenagers shouldn't be fighting grimm — the thing they have been training to do as their professional career, during an unprecedented attack on their home — should not simultaneously be looking to the girl who is two years younger as his savior. (Something that, while not overt yet, is very much where Marrow is heading as he continually doubts the Ace Ops and looks to RWBY's group as his new, moral leaders.) I'm glad that, for once, this perspective is firmly called out. Elm arrives to tell him point blank that he needs to figure out his personal ethics later. It doesn't matter because there's an army of grimm out there and monsters aren't going to spare anyone, adult or child. Quit philosophizing and kill some already.

Back to Hazel where we get the doorway shot from our trailer. He's taken Oscar to the Relic, because of course he has. Do I really need to list how convenient this is too? Apparently, "the moment we move that thing, this place goes on high alert," but there’s no alarm for when Oscar is taken from his cell, they enter the Relic's room, or when they use it. What does a movement alert matter if someone can just waltz in and waste the last question themselves? Put some of those endless grimm in the room to guard it, Salem!

Just assume that I am, at any given point in this episode, letting out the longest sigh my lungs are physically capable of.

Emerald shows up, demonstrating both the convenience of everyone arriving when they need to, and the very real danger that Salem herself could come in and discover what they're up to. Hazel has Oscar summon Jinn, only to immediately say that “Actually, I think all my questions are answered now.”

I'm sorry, how does this answer any of Hazel's questions? His driving question was not, "Is the Relic actually a magical object capable of doing magical things?" but rather "Are you telling me the truth about Salem's plans to summon the Gods and destroy all of Remnant in her quest to finally die, thereby changing who I'm going to support in this war?" Seeing a naked, blue djinn does not answer that question.

Hazel's "redemption" is non-existent. He — we — learned about Salem's death wish despite how that contradicts previous lore, then he trusted Ozpin despite that contradicting his entire character, now he joins the heroes because, literally, he sees Jinn floating there. It’s bad enough that Hazel goes from clear villain to sacrificial hero in a matter of in-world hours, but we don’t even get a reason for why that change occurred.

Oh, there's also this:

So Jinn doesn't come out of her lamp unless someone intends to ask a question, but does it for Ruby because she's special, yet still reiterates that this won't happen again. Then Oscar summons her without intending to ask a question, she comes out anyway, confirms that none of them seek knowledge from her, and happily pops back inside her lamp because eh, it’s whatever.

If RWBY had any courage the three of them would be cursed now for toying with a powerful, magical object. Remember the days when Jinn was a little terrifying because it felt like she was warping her answers and we had no idea what she might do to someone who used her carelessly? When she felt like a djinn? Good times.

Or better times, at least.

So Good Guy Hazel and Good Gal Emerald promise to get Oscar out. Never mind all the horror they caused, the people they killed, and that for Hazel, at least, this defection is coming out of nowhere.

Anyone remember that Emerald orchestrated Penny's death? No? Just me?

As they leave it turns out Neo was camouflaged against the wall, because she was also precisely where she needed to be. Does everyone just periodically pop into the Relic room to see what’s going on? At least this time it's not working in the heroes' favor. Remember when I said it's beyond idiotic for Oscar to just hand out the Relic information to known enemies currently holding him captive and torturing him?

Yeeeeaah.

So Neo's got the Lamp. Funny how all of this could have been avoided if Ruby had just put it in the vault like she came to Atlas to do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We return to our trio where Jaune and Ren need to rest because their aura is giving out. Good! These guys fought a battle, fought Neo, fought more grimm, fought the Hound, traipsed through the tundra, presumably fought through more grimm to get to the whale, and have been using both their semblances to look for Oscar. It's about time their reserves started to falter.

Jaune decides to scout ahead a bit, leaving Yang and Ren to talk about nothing of importance. I mean that seriously. Remember a few days ago when I spoke about how, if the snow conversation does come back up, Ren's points would be entirely ignored for a nonsensical “I’m glad we’re friends” speech? Remember how I also spoke about how every emotional beat now is entirely generic and you could replace any character with another and not a single thing would change? Yeah. This is both those arguments in one. Nothing is said about the points Ren made. His problems with how the group has been acting lately and the very real, very deadly consequences it has had are flat out ignored. We went from

"But these aren't the kinds of decisions we should be making because we have no idea what we're doing!"

"Forward, no matter what!"

in a matter of hours, with precisely zero insight into how Ren went from one perspective to the exact opposite. Kind of like Hazel. Because see, RWBY doesn't write arcs, it just writes one thing until it decides to switch it up for something else, with the opposite idea presented as a “resolution” or a “twist.” Our creators writes scenes they know the fandom is begging for without considering how to get a character to that place, let alone how to get them out of it. That's all Ren's speech was, the equivalent of moral fan service. Here's a glimpse of actual character depth and a morally gray situation... now forget it ever happened because we're back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Instead of working through the laundry list of issues Ren raised, Ren instead accepts Jaune's aura help — something they've been doing since Argus — and tells Yang it's okay to be scared. These moments are meaningless and, as said, could have been between anyone in our cast. Ren could have told Nora she doesn't have to use jokes to cover up that she's scared. Jaune could have reminded Ruby that she can depend on him. Yang could have tried to keep Blake and Weiss' hopes up. This scenes ignores the individuality of the characters, like the fact that they just fought over very different world views, to instead favor any dime-a-dozen moment of support. The number of times this volume has rejected the conflict and resolution the group needs for bland, generic reassurances staggering.

Also, apparently Jaune isn't scared at all? I don't think that's as good a thing as Ren seems to think...

Then Jaune immediately rounds the corner, terrified lol.

One of the seer grimm is on its way and he tells Ren to mask them. Apparently he had been masking them before — one of the reasons he's so tired now, trying to do two things at once — but it's only here that they go black and white again. Ren manages to keep it up for a little while, but his aura breaks before the seer passes and they're spotted.

Hark! A consequence!

That was well done. It makes sense and it adds to the stakes. We've seen the insane amount of fighting the group has done since Volume 7, we just established that they're at their breaking point, and then Ren's aura fails him right when he needs it the most. Add this to the miniscule pile of things that were well done this episode.

Salem runs into Emerald and Hazel, the former of which is acting very suspicious when asked if he's made any headway with Oscar. The seer's alarm interrupts them though and... okay. Was I the only one who cackled during this moment? Between Salem's voice acting and the fact that she just yeets herself down the hallway, it came across as really funny to me.

Either way, it is a bad situation. Our trio is trying to figure out what to do, to which Yang responds, "Do what we do best… charge blindly into danger!!”

Ren's aura is broken. Jaune barely has any left and it’s unlikely he could heal right now even if Ren had any aura to amplify. If Ren takes a single hit anywhere important he is dead.

Me, on my knees, surrounded by the ashes of the Hound, the last bit of serious storytelling we had: "For the love of God, the kingdom is on fire and simultaneously dying of cold. There's a grimm army decimating hundreds outside. Half their group is missing and they're wandering lost inside a devil whale, about to have the most powerful being Remnant has ever known personally try to kill them — can we please have their attitudes reflect that?"

The answer, in case you were wondering, is no.

Back to the bomb. Whatever scientists were given this task have completed it and Marrow watches as it's flown out towards the whale. "Come on, Juan" he whispers and I'm all, "Juan?" Apparently it's a callback to last volume when Marrow couldn't remember Jaune's actual name, but it took me hopping onto the RWBY wiki to remember that.

As death via explosion inches closer, the trio runs into Hazel and Emerald. Turns out though that Hazel is really Oscar, disguised through Emerald's semblance. Nice trick! Jaune immediately drops both weapons to hug Oscar and, while that's nice and all, it's also the stupidest thing he could possible do in enemy territory. Also, Oscar has been beaten up by the Hound, tortured with magic, and likewise beaten bloody by Hazel. I was hoping for a tender hug like the one Nora gave him, not a giant squeeze for more comedy purposes. It just feels like RWBY has no idea how to manage the tone of this volume, let alone the torture of a child...

There's the obligatory, "Why should we trust you?" from Yang regarding Emerald joining the team, to which Ren responds, "Because she's scared, just like us."

That doesn't prove anything. Literally everyone is scared right now. There is a war going on. I really cannot emphasize enough how RWBY throws out Deep™ sounding lines that are, upon inspection, absolutely nonsensical. Nora reminding Penny that there are different parts to her personhood, Hazel saying that all his questions have been answered, Ren announcing that Emerald is scared... it's all worthless chatter that has no bearing on their problems: How do I keep from being hacked? How do I know you're telling the truth? How do we know you're trustworthy after you spent years trying to kill us? But of course, because it's RWBY, Ren's announcement is treated as some sort of secret truth that everyone accepts. Emerald joins up.

As they head for an exit we return to Marrow who, frankly, is getting on my last nerve. I know the fandom loves him because he's clearly leaning towards Team RWBY, but does anyone actually listen to what he says? He starts yelling at Winter for sending in the bomb because the trio might still be alive in there, despite:

Seeing for himself the hundreds of soldiers that have fallen trying to keep Atlas safe

Knowing and hearing again from Winter that the only way to stop this carnage is to take out the whale. Given more time, the whole city falls

Sadly announcing to the world that children shouldn't have to fight in a battle, rather than just joining the fray and helping to keep those kids safe

How does Marrow think those kids are going to be able to stop fighting? How does he think he'll get a city to return to? It's no wonder that he's drawn to Ruby because both characters stand around twiddling their thumbs, mourning that things are bad, and blaming others for imperfect solutions rather than doing something to make the situation better. Marrow's disgust at Winter over the bomb is precisely the same as Ruby's disgust at Ironwood over Mantle: how dare you not have a plan that results in both victory for us and zero sacrifices? They want perfection which, yes, is an admirable trait, but their problem is they refuse to do anything until that perfection appears. They’re paralyzed, a trait that’s particularly dangerous when your story insists that perfection will never appear: it’s not a fairy tale. So they just continue to get mad at others for the fact that they live in an unfair world. You want that perfect solution? Think it up yourself. Otherwise, stand aside and let those coming up with something do what they can to make things better.

Marrow goes so far as to drag Weiss into things, trying to guilt Winter with the knowledge that she'll have to relate the death of her sister's friends back to her. Winter, because she's a badass who isn't in denial over the situation, tells him that yes, she will shoulder that responsibility. To Marrow's credit he backs off then, but man. RWBY has legitimate moral questions here — when is holding out for a few worth risking the many? — but they go about exploring it in the most frustrating way possible. I personally have no respect for the guy who wants to announce that Children In War Is Bad instead of, you know, using the power he currently has to protect those kids already neck deep in a battle.

Because John Mulaney remains relevant:

"There shouldn't be a horse in the hospital :( "

"We're WELL PAST THAT."

Marrow is the one going, "There shouldn't be kids in a war :( We shouldn't have to kill a few to save the whole kingdom :( " and everyone around him is like, "No shit, dude! But this is the hand we were dealt! You going to help us, or what?"

Literally all of these characters could have been so much more than what they currently are.

Except Winter. She's doing great.

Now for the final scene. Our group nearly manages to escape the whale, but is incapacitated by some sort of screechy power that Salem employs.

She contorts her body, stretching out her arms to snag Emerald, and the others have a brief, but intense skirmish. Jaune manages to block a blast of magic aimed at Ren with his shield — nice — and Yang dots Salem's face with a bunch of bombs before blowing her sky-high — double nice. Oscar shoots out some magic of his own because, yeah, I guess he can just do that now? It really feels like it came out of nowhere after eight episodes of being the punching bag.

Of course, Salem immediately reforms. She traps the group with grimm arms that come out of the whale, interrogating Ozpin about why he bothers to keep coming back. There's a very sad answer there of, "I don't," referring to his lack of choice in reincarnating to fight her.

Yang interrupts their little tet-a-tet to throw the question back in Salem's face, calling her out on her choices. A great idea but, as always, execution: "because something bad happened to you once upon a time? No one gets a fairy tale ending."

I’m sorry, but that dialogue had me cringing. Like I said before, way too on the nose. There's keeping with the fairy tale theme, and then there's shoving the viewer's face in it. More of Oscar's musings on how he relates to the protagonists of fairy tales, blurring the lines between storytelling and reality, which in turn encourages the viewer to consider how they see themselves in the RWBY cast. Less... whatever this is.

Yang goes on to talk about how many people Salem has taken from her, which upon reflection makes a certain amount of sense if you toss in all the people who are here, but changed somehow due to Salem's influence, as well as acquaintances who died as a result of her meddling: Raven is scared off, Tai suffers as a result, Pyrrha dies, Penny dies, Yang loses her arm and her school. I think the dialogue could have been revised to reflect that better though because what Yang implies is that Salem has killed countless of her loved ones, yet what she says is, "Summer Rose. My mom." Honestly, for the few seconds this exchange was happening my thoughts weren't even on Summer. Yang calls Salem out for killing loved ones and my brain went, "Pyrrha??"

That's how little they've done with Yang and Summer. I know in the past I've argued that RWBY has a "better late than never" situation going on, that I would praise them for making the right writing choices even if they arrive years too late... but now that we're here, I find that it's a hard problem to overlook. Summer is Yang's mom? When's the last time we heard that? Volume 2? Whenever the conversation with Blake was. Since then Yang has called Raven "Mom," focused on that emotional connection (or lack thereof), was excluded from the conversation with Qrow, comforted Ruby after she was blindsided by Salem's taunt, and otherwise hasn't mentioned Summer at all. There is no foundation for this accusation except a few lines about getting cookies as a child and the fact that we're tossing references in now makes me worried that we'll indeed get a grimm!Summer reveal. Better remind the audience that she exists before the twist arrives! Honestly, as much as a part of me wants to praise RWBY for trying to get things back on track, moments like this just ring hollow now. They waited years and now it’s too late. It doesn't help that this is the episode where we shrug off Ren's speech. What will Yang's cutting admission amount to based on this trend? Probably nothing. Summer will become Yang’s mom again in another six seasons.

Salem, obviously, doesn't care. The real Hazel arrives and she orders him to take Oscar back to his cell. Instead, he gives him his cane with a whispered, "No more Gretchens, boy."

Behold, another meaningless line. Hazel hates Ozpin for "forcing" Gretchen on a mission and "getting" her killed. The whole point of his villainy is that he doesn't understand the concept of choice and that bad things can happen to good people with no one able to prevent it. Not every loss has a responsible party attached (outside of, you know, Salem/the grimm). So what is he even demanding here? No more huntsmen schools? That's what you wanted Salem for. No more "forcing" people to fight for you? Ozpin never did that in the first place. Or is it just a strange promise that no one else will die here? RWBY seems to be under the impression that they can just name drop dead family members — Summer, Gretchen — and that's that. Emotional depth created, never mind a lack of buildup or clarity.

Then Hazel punches Salem across the room and she releases every single hero from their bonds. See the theme of this episode: convenience. Hazel shoves a whole bunch of dust crystals into his shoulders and yells that he's doing what Gretchen would have wanted, clearly sacrificing himself so that the others can escape. The battle between him and Salem is pretty decent. I enjoyed the dust vs. magic creativity and the sheer damage Salem can take before reforming. This fight really showcases how not human she is.

It does, however, bring into question Hazel's reveal about her needing an hour to heal at the longest. I mentioned how unlikely it would be that our heroes would get the chance to "kill" her multiple times, yet here we are, just a few episodes later. They got that opportunity and... does it matter? Salem's reforming doesn't appear to slow down at all, despite her head getting obliterated at least three times, so at what point does she need longer than a few seconds to heal? If this was meant to be a potential weakness the group would eventually exploit, we needed to see it here, both for that setup and to keep it consistent with Hazel's story.

Regardless, they fight and at first it looks like a pretty straight-forward sacrifice on Hazel's part, giving the group their chance to escape. Except... Oscar.

"She'll just come after us," he tells Jaune, turning away from him to fight.

I need a list for this:

Of course she's going to come after you. This is not some shocking revelation. At no point has anyone thought that escaping the whale is the answer to all their problems, it just creates one less problem to deal with. Namely, the problem of "Our ally is captured, being tortured, and may give up important intel to the enemy. Oh, also he's about to be blown up with a bomb." Salem coming after them doesn’t matter. What matters is making her plans as difficult as possible as you work to come up with more solutions of your own. This is just a smaller version of the Ironwood conflict: “Well, Salem will just follow Atlas into the sky so it’s useless to attempt escape, or to buy ourselves time.” It’s really not. I know I’ve used this ridiculous comparison before, but if you’re ever chased by a horror movie serial killer hell-bent on your destruction and your reaction to this problem is, “Why run? He’ll just chase us. The only possible choice is to fight him with a 99% chance of our death,” then I beg you to re-evaluate things.

What was the point of coming to rescue Oscar if he was just going to stay behind? The whale is about to be blown up by a bomb and the trio risked their lives ten times over to get to him. If I were them I would be pissed. We went through all that to get you out and now you’re refusing to leave when we have a chance? Thanks for that.

Same with Hazel. Not that I care about the guy, but if I was sacrificing myself for others to escape I'd be pretty annoyed at them randomly deciding not to do that.

What does Oscar even think he's going to do? Kill the immortal witch? The entire point of our series is that they can’t do that (yet).

However, if he is able to do something significant via Ozpin's magic, why didn't Ozpin do that generations ago? Somehow I don't think a younger Ozma closer to the height of his power was in a worse position to attack Salem than a tortured, aura-less kid who unlocked his magic yesterday. The more RWBY reveals about Salem, the more I go, “Okay, but why didn’t his happen [insert any number of years] ago?”

Did Jaune actually leave? I assume he's just grabbing an airship or something before coming back to drag Oscar away, but seriously where did he go?

There's no way I can approach this scene without throwing up my hands and going, "What? WHY?" Which is a real shame because we finally get to see a bit of what the cane does and it’s... precisely what Ozpin's magic has always done? I mean, we saw that green shield five years ago and now there's a giant white beam. Okay.

If the beam just hits Salem with Generic Magic Power then there was never anything secret about the cane, it’s just, you know, Ozpin’s weapon. If the cane does something significant to hurt her we're left with the question of why it took literal generations to use it. Nothing is making sense to me and the only way I can think to salvage this scene is if Jaune runs back in, snags Oscar like a sack of potatoes, and runs out yelling about how he's clearly suffering from a concussion because what are you trying to accomplish here?

It doesn't help that this moment feels... final. Hazel has managed to hold Salem in place. Oscar has unlocked his cane and lands some mega hit right before Hazel passes out and looses his hold. Not only does this feel like a scene that should be at the end of the volume (we've still got five episodes), but also the end of the series. RWBY is building Salem into an unbeatable enemy by giving her more and more powers, and simultaneously eliminating the stakes by having our currently weakest character (in terms of exhaustion/injuries/aura/training) landing a shot like that. Why would you nerf Salem's threat level like that in the middle of a volume? Especially with a tool our group has had available from the start? If the cane does damage, maybe lead with that in the, “Here’s why we should stay and fight” office conversation.

I assume that Oscar's hit will obliterate Salem to the point where both he and Hazel have time to escape, or he obliterates both of them (“Do it”) and that's somehow presented as a better choice than just running while Salem is captured, or the bomb will interrupt things somehow... but it's just so shoddily done. At the very least, if they were going to have Oscar refuse to let someone fight alone, have it be an actual friend he's staying to assist. Having Oscar refuse his own rescue to help Hazel has more than one problem attached to it. We can say what we want about RWBY's themes of forgiveness, but this guy was torturing him just a few hours ago while serving Remnant's version of the devil. Just let him sacrifice himself and move on.

And that's where we end. Oscar powering up, the cane getting all magic-y, and him shooting a crazy big blast that engulfs both Salem and Hazel. I can't believe how not excited I am about my farm boy doing something badass, but here we are.

Overall I think this episode was way worse than last week's. We absolutely had problems in "Dark," particularly when it came to the Hound and the group's blind devotion to Ruby, but at least those moments were cushioned by an otherwise decent episode. "Witch" felt like I was watching something closer to a parody of RWBY, one deliberately poking fun at the fandom's desires: erase all conflict for awkward silly times, your favorite villains are instantly good now, the heroes go toe-to-toe with the main antagonist because why not, throw a bunch of magic in there for good measure, and wrap it all up in some over the top "this isn't a fairy tale" lines. I can see the pieces of a much better episode here — Emerald sneaking Oscar out with her semblance, Neo snagging the relic, Flint and Neon, Hazel attacking Salem — but it simply didn't come together.

I know I said this last time, but I have no idea what we're going to do for another five episodes. Salem slowly reforming from bomb damage as the group tries to keep Penny from opening the vault? The grimm attack halted with the whale gone so Qrow can go after Ironwood? The longer this volume runs, the more I think it was a mistake for them to introduce Salem as a fightable antagonist now. RWBY doesn't know what to do with her besides have her inevitably fall in the final season, so until then she's left being stupid (Relic), passive (Mantle), or, likely, written out of the story temporarily so the heroes can turn their attention towards smaller conflicts and weaker foes. They literally can’t beat Salem yet, but they can’t focus on other problems when she’s around without coming across as negligent, so if you have to find ways to erase her to make room for that... what was the point of bringing her here in the first place? We could have established that Salem is bound to her realm and had her send the Hound and whale to attack Atlas. There, all the fun parts of the volume without her complicated presence.

Well, the next five weeks will certainly be interesting, at the very least...

Until next time 💜

[Ko-Fi]

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #rwby witch #mymetas #rwby recaps

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datawyrms · 4 years

Text

Thief

Dannymay 202 Day 29: Heat

It had been a gradual thing. Keeping away and avoiding too much physical contact only made sense if you had a nasty habit of vanishing limbs and passing into already occupied spaces. It had been the right thing to do, the safest way to act. It wasn’t weird for a teenager to start being a bit more insistent on less physical affection from their parents as they figured themselves out, as Jazz put it. Setting boundaries, or something like that. Now, though? He had a grip on those unnatural powers, it wasn’t really a risk. He shouldn’t shy away from friendly contact anymore, honestly. Yet he did. Hugs and holding meant heat and warmth and the quiet reminder of how cold he was.

Being like this was way better than being dead. He couldn’t really imagine just being human again either. So why did the natural heat of warm blooded creatures get him jealous? It was stupid, he was still alive. He still had a heartbeat and warmth in his body, just not as much. Just a little bit colder, not so much that anyone would notice if they weren’t looking for it.

Not that it mattered that he knew all this. The reaction didn’t care about logic or being reasonable. It was like a little monster scrabbling in his chest, long seeking claws straining from behind his rib cage, desperately trying to reach out and steal the warmth and life of whoever had more than a hand on him. Like if it could only reach he’d stop being cold and be whole again. The feeling wasn’t his, it shouldn’t be his, but it couldn’t be from anything else.

He couldn’t tell anyone about it. He’d sound like a monster. A freak at the very least. It was easier to just avoid contact, he had practically perfected dodging straying arms. The disappointed looks were easier to ignore. He got those for lots of reasons nowadays anyway. Dash, bully that he was continued to be a nuisance, but if he could avoid getting pinned to the lockers or otherwise grabbed it wasn’t a big deal. It would be so easy to retaliate. He could take over his body with a thought, freeze an arm solid and shatter it on a whim and just listen to the bully scream and wail as the life giving blood left the body to cool.

He’d never do that. Yet he could. Easily. The scrabbling always reminded him of that. You’re cold and wrong, not like them. You don’t belong. The more it shrieked for the contact, the warmth, the love and attention, the harder he shoved any of it away. It was wrong, you don’t deserve it, can’t you feel how you’re stealing from them? It isn’t meant for a ghost in a human skin. Not for a leech.

The fact sweltering weather was a suffocating weight only proved it. Goths might simmer, but apparently ghosts just slumped. He’d been more on Tucker’s side before, enjoying the hot summer days, but the very idea of the tropics now made him want to make a pile of ice and sleep on it. Why couldn’t he even be consistent? If he wanted warmth, why did getting it because it was the height of summer exhaust him? Mom and Dad probably had some scientific reason for that. Some other ghosts might even know. Or they might not, half ghosts weren’t exactly common. He probably cared too much, was thinking about it too much. So what if some preferences changed? Lots of people didn’t like heat waves.

Why couldn’t he kid himself into ignoring the small changes? It wasn’t a big deal. Yet warmth had somehow tangled itself with his perception of life, and he couldn’t manage to get them separate again. It was nonsensical, he knew that. Of course the summers were more taxing, he had ice powers. Ice powers that had almost managed to deep freeze him before figuring them out. It didn’t mean there was more life in the world than a dead thing like him could stand. He knew that. He KNEW that.

Maybe Spectra had been more right than he thought. Who’d care for a thing like you indeed. You don’t even make sense to yourself.

He grew colder. More noticeable. Which only caused worry and concern and warmth from his friends again that he had to struggle to fend off. He was fine. Of course he was colder, his powers kept growing. They were worrying over nothing. Yet still they insisted with the worry and care and the thing under his ribs just wanted it so badly that he had to flee. It would steal from them, it would hurt them, couldn’t they feel how it wanted to latch on to them and steal that warmth for himself?

“So, do you think all ghosts are evil?”

She’d cornered him in the kitchen to ask that? “No. That’s Mom and Dad, Jazz” he muttered, trying to figure out a way to get past her without walking through walls.

“Really? We’ve all noticed you’re avoiding us,” she reached out a hand to touch his shoulder and he flinched backwards, eyes narrowing.

“Don’t touch me.”

“See, like that! You don’t need to hide from us, but you’re doing it anyway.”

“Yeah. It’s called brothers not wanting their nosy sister touching them. I’m not seven anymore,” he crossed his arms, wondering if he kept them folded that it would keep the scrabbling thing trapped.

“You look scared, not annoyed. What are you afraid of?” her eyes were searching for something in his face. Why did she have to be so nosy? Why couldn’t she just shrug and give up like Mom and Dad?

“You’re seeing things,”. The counter was cool against his back. Maybe he should just slip through it, get away from the heat in front of him.

“No I’m not. Are you going to tell me or should we all just keep asking until we guess?”

“You can waste your time if you want.” It was hard to ignore how her worry, concern and affection tainted the air, how it awoke the cold thing inside him. How it delighted in having someone suffer on his account. He should leave.

Jazz frowned at him, edging closer despite his efforts to gain more distance, “You know the cold doesn’t bother us, you don’t need to be ashamed or anything.”

Easy for her to say. She didn’t hear or feel the starving refrain of want. Of course it was bad, of course he had to make sure it didn’t hurt anyone. That he didn’t hurt anyone. “I’m not. Are we done yet?”

The scowl was expected. Considering how much she harped on boundaries, the hug was not. Heat and safety, worry propelled by love and it was for him and he could take it. It would be so easy to just stay there, or hug back. He couldn't, that was stealing, it would hurt, these cravings and thoughts were ghostly and wrong and he wouldn’t hurt them. That gave him enough sense to phase free of her, eyes wild.

“I said don’t touch me!”

“Are you afraid of us?” She looked a little hurt, but he could feel the worry coming like waves. Still caring too much about how he felt when she’d been in danger.

“Now you’re just making stuff up. I don’t like being hugged, okay?” Lying had become almost second nature by now, but judging by her eyes she wasn’t buying it.

“You seemed to pretty okay with it until you panicked.” He felt strangely like a specimen trapped on a tray as she pondered, watching him. Why did she have to keep digging and pushing? “You’re afraid of yourself?”

He snorted. “Really? No. There’s nothing wrong, you’re just being nosy.”

“So if I grabbed your hand right now, you wouldn’t try pulling it away with that panicked look on your face.”

Shoot. How could he squirm out of this, she’d just keep pressing and pushing and caring and the thing in him might finally snap his ribcage if it was constantly tasting the heat in the air. Slow your thoughts down. Yet he couldn’t. “No. It’s stealing.”

Something in that only seemed to strengthen Jazz’s resolve. “What do you think you’re stealing?”

“The heat. I’m cold. I can’t-” he tried to keep his voice low, holding his head in his hands. He shouldn’t be admitting this, shouldn’t let her know how much of a freak he was.

Being hugged again was startling. “Danny. You’re not stealing if we’re giving it to you.” Her voice was firm and would not take any argument, the warmth in it almost stronger than the emotions he felt and craved and wanted so very badly. Surely this hurt her, to have some half human thing clinging back. His emotions weren’t warm like life, not healthy and needed, she wouldn’t want them.

Yet she didn’t seem any colder even after letting go. Even as his insides purred and muscles relaxed from feeling wanted, safe and important.

“Are-are you sure?”

“We’ve always been sharing how we feel Danny. You’re just a little more sensitive to it now. You aren’t stealing, you dork.” she ruffled his hair and the warmth only reinforced the contented hum instead of awakening the starving scrabbling.

He wished he could know for sure. Yet this did feel better for now, at least.

#dannymay2020 #Danny Phantom #jazz fenton #my stuff #silly ghost headcanons #how does one react to being way more in tune with other's emotions?#BADLY #reposting because tag keeps EATING IT lol #gotta love tumblr's inane brokeness

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sonickedtrowel · 4 years

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1, 2, 4, 10, 20!!

Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

Oh boy so I’m sure I must have mentioned it at some point but I won’t turn down a chance to ramble about it again: me and @regalpotato are working on a Day of the Doctor rewrite and I’m pretty psyched about it! Basically, Eight is there rather than War (although War does make an appearance!) and also River is there, because Duh, and there are other Things going on that are different from the episode/novel, but that’s spoilers and also still partially cooking in my brain, lol. It’s at 11k-ish right now but still pretty early in the story, too early to probably say what I will love most. But I’m having a ton of fun with it, especially the dialogue, and currently torturing Ten in every way I can think of. You know, lovingly torturing. For the most part.

That is the really big thing I’m excited about, but I do still have two prompts left from a couple weeks back (I didn’t forget you, anons!) and those are milling around in my head too waiting for inspiration to strike. 2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

No secret that I love writing multi-Doctor / River stories, and in fact having somewhat recently finished an 8 and 11 / River fic I will have to be on my toes to not repeat myself too much haha. But I just love getting everyone together and letting them yell at each other for a while - the best honestly - and then later we get Revealing Conversations about Feelings, as well as POV changing chapters. Not to overhype it but! I think it’s gonna be fun! Putting the rest under a cut because I am long-winded lol.

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

Hmmm I’ll pick something I like from the WIP that’s all my writing - this is from Night of the Doctor with Eight and Ohila, but it’s diverged from the original script here and iirc pretty much all new dialogue for Eight. I don’t normally write this sort of Doctor speech because I’m usually doing romance, but I can hear Paul McGann righteously shouting/soliloquizing in my head so I’m pretty happy with it: *** “What would you have me do?” the Doctor hissed. “What does your broken prophecy foretell? That I become one more loyal soldier in Gallifrey’s glorious army? I can join this fight and take a thousand lives, die a thousand deaths, and this war will still go on. The universe doesn’t need another soldier!” “Not a soldier,” said the Sister, “a warrior, with the power you’ve refused to wield. You could have destroyed the Daleks before they were even created.” “Yes, I could have done. And I didn’t, because I have no right! Whatever it is you think you can turn me into, Sister, you’ll continue to be disappointed. Because there’s one person who is always needed in a war: a good doctor, willing to help whomever they can. No matter if they’re despised, or called traitor— no matter who they lose or how many times they fail! There will always be more lives to save, and I’ll be there, helping, wherever I can. I only hope I’m strong enough to carry on doing it half as well as another doctor I knew.” ***

(Yes of course we have Liv Chenka references!) 10. How would you describe your writing process? It takes me forever to get ideas, but once I have a sort of general amorphous direction for the story and an emotional starting point for the characters, I just jump in. And then I keep getting shower thoughts about more and more stuff happening and what was supposed to just be some fun fluff starts growing a plot and getting wildly out of hand and this is just my life. I am very much not in control. 20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?) Ohhhh this is such a good question! Definitely going with There is a love I reminisce because there’s a lot going on under the surface in that fic and not all of it stated super explicitly. So um, huge spoilers below if you haven’t read it!

Manhattan and Trenzalore (both times) are essentially retconned, through a combination of River’s innate abilities and Eleven going around the timeline trying to do better after being confronted with his shortcomings in TNOTD. How the Doctor survived Utah is explained and it’s not because he was in a stupid robot. It spawns an implied post-Library reunion with River, Eleven and the Doctor’s oft-referenced and never quantified or named children from Gallifrey. It implies a different resolution to the Hybrid thing and an alternate series 10. And of course it uses BF’s far-superior Ravenous 4 plot twist to preemptively annihilate the timeless children crap, and a combination of Ravenous 4 and Doom Coalition 4 to make River basically a time goddess. But maybe my favorite thing was giving life to this headcanon of mine. IT CANNOT BE REFUTED! They’ve never said ANYTHING specific about his family so it’s free real estate baby!

*** “Yes, sorry to harp on about this, honey, but I think we can discuss the regeneration semantics later,” River cut in. “You’re saying I came back from your future to your distant past and just… stayed?”

“Well… yes, I think so. There were certain things we couldn’t discuss. I had always just assumed that I’d reached the end of my last regeneration and you weren’t too pleased with that, so… You know, describing it now, it does seem very irresponsible. But I don’t recall having any complaints.”

“No, I shouldn’t think you would.” River smiled, but her mind was racing. “How would that even work? Eventually, we’d come back round to when we first met on your end, and what, I wipe myself out of your memories? Selectively, for your entire lifetime? I think you might notice a little thing like that.”

“I suppose you must have had a plan for it, but I can’t remember it now. I just remember the two of us, together through the centuries.” He smiled fondly and River felt like the ache in her chest would strangle her. “I remember our family.”

“Our what?” she cried, as the older Doctor had a sudden choking fit.

“Our family. Our children and…” Dread slowly dawned on the young Doctor’s sweet face. “Oh, please, no,” he whispered. “Don’t tell me they’re… No, this happened! It happened in both versions of my memories!” He looked to his older self, panic-stricken. “Tell me you remember!”

“You had a family,” River soothed, as Babyface stumbled over his own tongue. “It just wasn’t with me.”

“What?” he laughed incredulously. “Who else would it be?”

“Your first wife, sweetie. I’m your second. Well, the second one that counts.”

“No, that’s— I’m sorry, that’s nonsense.” He turned to the older Doctor again. “You can’t tell her, is that it? Because she hasn’t done it yet? I’m sorry, River, maybe I shouldn’t have—”

“No!” Babyface shouted, finally collecting himself. “Yes, we— I had a family, on Gallifrey, before I ever left. River wasn’t there, obviously, because that’s not how anything works!”

“Who, then?” the young Doctor demanded. “Who was your first wife?”

“I— I— she was—” He opened and closed his mouth silently, looking increasingly horrified.

“You don’t like to talk about it,” River explained. “She passed away.”

“Yes, but just between me and myself,” the young Doctor pressed on with an utter absence of tact that made it easier than ever to see this was the same man before her, “who was she? And your children, what were their names?”

River hesitated, watching as the older Doctor wrestled with himself. These were details not even she had ever asked him for. She knew the general outline, of course, and that was enough. It was a hurt so deep and so impossibly ancient, she couldn’t truly imagine how distant it must be for him now. No sense in forcing him to open that door and dwell on it again.

“I, I don’t,” he finally muttered, looking almost fearful, “I don’t talk about it. I don’t think about it.”

“You’ve forgotten them,” the young Doctor said, voice low and furious. “How could you?”

“S-Susan,” Babyface stammered, wide-eyed. “I left Gallifrey with Susan.”

A relieved smile flashed across the young Doctor’s face. “And where did you suppose she came from?”

“No, she… I don’t…” Chair legs scraped abruptly across the tile as the older Doctor bolted up from his seat, white-faced, and stumbled back from the table.

“Doctor?” River stood, her hearts racing.

His eyes met hers for a split second, the strange terror in them sending a chill through her, and then he was gone like a shot.

“Doctor!” She made to chase after him, but his younger version was still clasping her hand.

“He’ll be fine,” he reassured her. “He’s just working it out.”

“Working it out?” she repeated, too stunned to reach out and grasp for the obvious. She turned to him in a daze. He smiled, and for a fleeting moment she fancied she could see the long contentment of a life she’d never dared dream of, etched in each little line on his older, younger face.

“I told you, River.” He laid his other hand over hers, warm and steady. “It was always you.” ***

#thank you so much for these they were great questions!!#i need to like shut up though these are such long answers lollllll #amillionmillionvoices

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nodesiretogrowup · 4 years

Text

alrighty, play-by-play recap time!

“A shining civilization, until it fell...INTO THE SEA.” Something about that line/delivery makes me laugh

Kind of wish we had seen them solve to clues to Mervana

Why was this Huey’s quest? He doesn’t end up doing much. Did he chose this adventure?

“I like them.” “We know, Webby.”

Scrooge and Huey nerding out together is ADORABLE

Louie is already done

“Cool, now there’s two people who want to put us in constant danger.” Donald understands your pain. We need an episode focusing on Louie and Donald

I NEED to know why Della hates fish

Why is Della piloting the sub if she hates the ocean? I feel like Donald would be more qualified

“HEY, KNOCK IT OFF!” That was SUCH a sibling moment

LP isn’t here because he needed a break after last week’s episode OR something went down when he was with Oceanika and he can’t be in the ocean for some reason

Louie knows how this shit goes down

So according to Louie’s chart; Huey has been sacrificed the less with 10, then Webby with 15, Louie at 23, and Dewey at 63

“DEWEY’S ON TOP!” Sweetie, that’s not a good thing. How many of those times do you think LP saved him?

I bet Donald had/has a tally sheet too

Webby is PRECIOUS

“Life’s not some fairytale filled with happy endings and...” “MERMAIDS!” Webby is SUCH A MOOD this episode

It’s so cute how in AWE all of them are...

Except for Della

One more Della moment in the theme

Poor Donald

Those things in Aletheia’s headband look like eyes and I can’t unsee it. Also, STARFIRE THE MERMAID!

BEAST BOY THE MERMAN! He pretty much looks like a duck/mermaid version of Greg. It’s great

“So, speaking as a mermaid, WHAT’S IT LIKE TO ACHIEVE MY DREAM?!” WEBBY IS ME

I know the “suffering builds character” line is a joke, but it rubs me the wrong way

How is Scrooge’s hat not floating away?

Della’s reaction to saying fish is how I feel about eating fish

“Look at this stuff, isn’t neat!” THAT’S MY GIRL! I bet The Little Mermaid is Webby’s favorite Disney movie

This was much less dangerous than the last time Webby played hacky sack

Scrooge 100% DONE when they say that he’ll have to give up his worldly possessions

THERE’S THAT ONE MERMAID THAT LOOKS LIKE GOSALYN! I’m gonna pretend they are distantly related

Why is Honestus’ statue so BEEFY?

Louie is ALREADY calling bullshit

NO ONE MAY TOUCH THE DONALD

“Wow, a laid-back society where everything is free. Sounds PERFECT for you!” “It’s too perfect.” I love when Louie and Webby are paired off. They have pretty much opposite views of the world

“IT’S. A. TRAP! And take it down a notch, Beakley!” “Sorry, I was trying to drown out your nonsense.” You’re harshing her vibes, bro

“These hippies are harmless!”

Donald playing drums is adorable

“Operation Flower Power was...groovy.” FIRST THAT SUMMER IN PARAGUAY, NOW THIS! TELL ME YOUR SECRETS! Beakley probably has fucked as many people as Launchpad, possibly more

The face Louie makes after Beakley leaves is great. He knows Beakley fucks and does NOT want to think about that

I want to know all the warnings on the cave. My favorite of the ones I could see was NAAAAAHHHHHHH!

“Those MER-MURDERERS” Alliteration is fun, kids!

Digging the more proactive Louie, even if it is just to keep himself from dying

Donald is digging the vibe and Dewey is SO FOCUSED on playing the drums

FUCK YEAH, ARTS AND CRAFTS! Dewey was like “MY TIME HAS COME!” And Donald seemed pretty happy about arts and crafts too

Donald was TOTALLY checking out his own ass

Dewey is SO FOCUSED. Arts and crafts are SERIOUS BUSINESS

He looks SO PISSED when Scrooge takes the tail

Why do they have toxic markers? Hell, where did they even GET those markers?

“They’re ALL our markers” That face she makes is great

Dude, the harp fucking DRAGGED Honestus! We stan!

“It’s a beautiful castle made of coral and shells...” Webby, those are ruins

I knew that fish monster was Honestus. He had a crown and everything. Also they call him a sea serpent but nothing about him is serpent-like

“This is a chase” Is that really any better than a trap?

BEAKLEY TO THE RESCUE

“I’ve never been happier to see an adult!”

“Same thing we are-snoopin”

Webby ended up being spot on that the Mervanans had no idea what was really going on

“Something is going on here.” And Louie raises his arms in victory

I want more Beakley and Louie episodes. They are both cynical but deal with it in different ways, especially when it comes to Webby. Plus Louie has a unique position when he’s been the one that had secrets kept from him

“Her optimism is her strength!” “You can’t hide the truth from her forever!” “I kept her in a mansion for a decade, that worked out pretty well.” I don’t know why but this reminds me of how the Crystal Gems and Greg dealt with Steven

I love that Huey’s tail has the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook logo on it

Me and my sister agreed that Donald’s tail looks like an Easter egg

DONALD IS OUR LORD AND SAVIOR! NAMASTE, MY FRIEND

Dewey has flames on his tail because of course he does

“Man, these are hard to get around in. And off I go.” He just accepts that he’s falling

I’m with Louie, FUCK STAIRS

Della has that dumbass energy. We stan. Also, she and LP need to hang out. I feel like they’d somehow both lose in a game of Go Fish. Stupid, beautiful pilots :’)

“MOM LOOK AT MY SUPER COOL FINS!” “*gags* I have no family.”

CAPITALISTS DO NOT GET TO KNOW TRUE PEACE

Donald and Huey nodding after Aletheia calls Scrooge a judgemental boomer, beautiful

“I don’t want inner-truth, I want outer harp!” That’s a good line

“Scrooge, back to the arts and crafts section!” And then his face! Golden!

Louie clinging to Beakley’s arm is so cute

I LOVE YOU, HARP LADY!

“But I only tell the truth, a thing the merpeople used to value.” I feel like that could apply to other (current) situations

Whenever Honestus speaks during the song I lol

Also, what hard work was going on above the sea? Was there like a war or something? I need more!

I think the Harp and Honestus were a thing at one point

If the merpeople become more monstrous the longer they stay in the water, why are the ones who have lived their ENTIRE LIVES in the ocean still humanoid? How long was he gone? How many generations have come and gone? Why didn’t he age? I NEED MORE INFORMATION

Poor Webby. The person she trusted the most has been lying to her for who knows how long! I think we know what Webby’s arc for the season will involve

Louie does NOT want to be in the middle of this

MER-MURDER-MAIDS!

I want to PERSONALLY THANK the GENIUS that had David Tennant use hippie slang. You did the lord’s work

The face Scrooge makes when he thinks that they are gonna take his money is PRICELESS

I feel bad for the Mervanans. They were left to fend for themselves. They did pretty good for themselves all things considered but still

Della taking baby steps only to be pushed right back into her comfort zone, I felt that

She’s just like, nope

“Gotta get harp down. Gotta save family. Maybe sell the harp later.” The kid has his priorities straight

The way the Harp acts when Beakley picks her up is a mood and I ship it

“Is that what I sound like? Oh, boy.” I love the way Bobby says “oh, boy”

“We would never!” “Yeah, we’re vegan.” At least these merpeople actually flat out say they don’t eat fish, unlike other merpeople who act all high and mighty even though they probably eat fish too

I love the one dude who just kinda flaps out of the water

“I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.” “CORRECT!”

DUDE, DON’T INSULT THE MAN’S COOKING SKILLS! IT’S YZMA, KRONK, AND THE SPINACH PUFFS ALL OVER AGAIN!

I think Donald is just always angry ala Bruce Banner

Donald is me when someone says the wrong thing to me on an already shitty day

He just slings Dewey over his shoulder and drags Huey. I feel like a family meeting about chili is in their future. Though the Harp didn’t say whether or not Dewey was lying so...

“Our king returned and tried to eat us.” In the words of Zuko; that’s rough, buddy

“We’re all monsters on the inside.” “WE ARE?! GET IT OUT OF ME!” Vero is having a very bad day

“Mervana isn’t a place. It’s, oh boy, it’s in your heart!”

Louie and Webby make each other better and that’s what’s great about their team ups

“We need your inner-truths to move from your hearts to YOUR FISTS!” WEBBY WILL FUCK YOU UP

“WELCOME TO MERVANA” BITCH!

Poor Harp. It’s not her fault that she only has one setting

I WANNA RIDE A MERMAID! No, not that way! ok maybe that way too

Webby’s eyes sparkle when the merpeople get to land

DROP ON THE DECK AND FLOP LIKE A FISH

“TIME TO SEND THIS FISH BACK TO SCHOOL!” Della knows how to one-liner

Her Naruto run is great. I bet she’s been watching it with the kids

Della is gonna wash her leg SO HARD after that

I don’t think Honestus should have gotten off so easy. The dude’s a dick who only cares about himself. I know that wouldn’t mesh with the moral of the episode, but I still hate him

Della looks so fucking confused, like LP usually does. THEY ARE MEANT TO BE BESTIES

Dewey kept his tail. So cute!

“She’s kinda harshin’ my vibe.” I know, my dude, I know

“And it’s finally where it belongs.” “Telling shiftless hippies to get a job!” Scrooge is harshin’ my vibe. Stupid capitalist

The head kiss Beakley gives Webby GIVES ME LIFE! SO PURE

Well of course she’s fibbing! Beakley is/was a SPY! Her job was secret keeping!

I really enjoyed this episode. I, like Webby, ADORE mermaids so I wasn’t gonna complain there. I liked that the merpeople weren’t actually evil because that would have been predictable af. It really ties in with the legacy theme of this season. Just because the people who came before you were jerks doesn’t mean you have to be. I think I enjoyed the other episodes a bit more but that’s probably because they were a bit more focused on a single character and only introduced a few new characters. I give it an 8/10, not enough Launchpad and not NEARLY ENOUGH fish puns

#ducktales #dt spoilers #I think I might ship fethry and vero

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

Text

14x06 watching notes

Bugs 2.0

this is more like a sleepy note to self from last night (hi future me in the morning, you better have coffee) but I can't believe Yockey is sending Jack, who is consumptive, caught in a crisis of personal identity, and sworn to kill his AUncle who is blurred dangerously with one of his fathers, WITH said father on a hunt, while Dean is so messed up about Michael and guilt and all he's coming at the angsty nonsense from the complete other side... And that's still like half the story because also Sam and AUCharlie and a giant fly monster or something...

Anyway last time a Yockey episode showed up I wrote 100k words of watching notes, broke down crying over the elevated Shakespearean drama, and astral projected into watching the final five-ten minutes in the Globe Theatre.

What we know so far about this episode has me legitimately terrified to the point I'm writing preemptive episode notes the night before so maybe I will fall asleep and dream in such a way I sort this all out and can come to it with Secret Dream Knowledge.

Mittens had the audacity to remind me that Speight directed as soon as I rolled out of bed as well

Oh no the recap is awful in moments. Please leave Jack alone. He is small and young and doesn't deserve anything bad that has ever happened to him.

The ticking and chiming of this all coming due is a great way to raise blood pressure, and as I was saying last night, we get both Dean blurring with Jack in his issues as well as Dean blurring with Michael

I remain eternally optimistic that seeing Christian Keyes in the recap means he might get smuggled back into the show.

I WILL say this every time it happens and refuse to back down on that :P

Anyway, tying the two main points of plot stress together - what is wrong with Jack, and what is wrong with Dean. We KNOW what is wrong with Dean - he said yes to Michael, and got taken for a ride and sorely used. Don’t know if there’s a ticking time bomb about Dean and something Michael did to him. We can guess a few avenues of where the awful comes from for Jack, but I suspect it's going to be at least another full episode of Rowena poking him next time to figure it out, if not an ongoing mystery so his consumptiveness can be dragged out as a point of tension.

His is so obvious that equating Dean's tick tock clock with it is considerably more alarming on Dean's behalf, since we have a much better visual of what's up with Jack, and just "djinn didn't like the inside of Dean's head despite dealing in nightmares" to wonder about Dean.

We get the recap that Jack's being given his hunter go ahead, but then Dean's dismal "it's all on me, it's my fault" over a dark screen and even the "Now" which is a very over dramatic way to press home the sense of ongoing trauma and how that line is going to be affecting him.

Not that we haven't seen him very visibly affected already, behaviourally, but this seems like a clock reaches the end of its countdown episode now >.>

ANYWAY HAVE SOME UPBEAT MUSIC AND THE KOOKY STATUE GUY

Ooh dear, here's bandanna girl from the promo pics, but wearing......... would you fukkin believe it............................................. a long tan coat with large dark buttons up the front. Hilariously, I nearly mentioned when chatting about ascots yesterday morning, that ties made of ribbons were a modern equivalent you see in the same professions so maybe she is just visually connected to these sort of neck ties. Her floofy shirt and that ribbon tie has both shades of people's fem!Cas cosplay and also the sort of faux puritan modern witch look from The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, so. I'm gonna assume whether they know it or not she's a witch.

Aww she is the librarian :')

I love her already because she said good morning to the old person sitting by the statue, but also because she did that and therefore is emotionally completely at odds with the show and her personal theme music means she's in for it and I already feel protective that her jaunty tune is going to get interrupted.

Why do I feel like at least 4 of the library rules are going to be broken

Aww the floofy frills go all around her shoulders. She's so upbeat! Shelving books like it is the most thrilling and wonderful thing to be doing on this sunny morning after rain :')

She looks so much like Bela when she talks... good grief... I wonder if she's related. Anyway first jump scare is her library boyfriend because she was just so caught up in shelving.

Listen I get names wrong or ignore them constantly but for some reason I do not understand them at all so it sounded like Ambraubry to me and probably isn't Amber or Aubrey and also how comes I understand all the other dialogue but not this??? To the point that in multiple past episodes despite my slow and steady approach to understanding an episode, I've completely and utterly mangled understanding or missed entirely the name introductions D:

I really am going to try and do better this episode, because it's so awkward.

"Harper, are you okay?"

Adsjfhdkjsfhskjfds

She's an angel. Wings, trenchcoat, tie, harp -

Anyway she appears to have the affections of at least two dudes, one of whom will defend her with a stapler, and we're lucky the detective pikachu trailer came out like 2 days ago because the kid in that does it but it's too late to be an homage.

Obviously Harper's knight in dark plaid is brooding, gingery, and armed with a projectile weapon. *fires staples at sweater nice!guy*

"Put the stapler down"

*Dean Winchester's it back into the safety setting*

"That guy's always been creepy" See that was hilarious but now I like sweater guy better.

"He's just overreacting because nothing ever happens here" Is this Cas defending Dean to the bitter end, even when it might literally involve watching him murder the world for his own personal angst?

Harper is very clearly setting boundaries while being a total sweetie about being sad no one goes to libraries or reading time. She's almost too frighteningly well put together. No one is this well-adjusted :P

Aaand sweater!guy loses points for nice!guying his way into assuming he has a date

dear lord the music

RIP Sweater Guy.

We hardly knew ye.

Dear lord I love Yockey characters

And Speight directing

this is truly as unholy fun as I was fearing D:

Also re: something from 14x04... nice guy characters again being portrayed in this way where the old school "geek" coding (or at least, beta male who is small and wearing a sweater and such in this very old-school way which honestly I think is fashionable again or was recently... It's a coding which comes with not just the appearance but also the attitude, and if he'd been cool and charismatic, the same costume could have done something very different). It isn't so much the problem as the attitude... Nerds are beloved on this show, but people with gross toxic attitudes such as insisting dinner is a date and not taking no for an answer on that are going to be summarily murdered round back for hubris.

I mean the title is "optimism" and he was WILDLY over-optimistic about his chance of getting with Harper, so. I mean. If that's the magnetism that pulls the monster in...

On the other side of the title card, Jack is stayin alive, and curiously pouring way too much sugar in his coffee as the title comes up - there's an immediate irony that he may be optimistic that he is doing better and on his way to hunting with all his dads and being part of the team again and also optimistic that this much sugar will not ruin the coffee... It's also a little worrying though I doubt he thinks this far ahead, in the sense that too much sugar is bad for you and like Dean being thrilled at the thought of bacon killing him, Jack risking the health damage from drinking sugar-coffee-sludge is an endgame beyond his current consumptive state.

See also: tragic or byronic heroes who are gonna self-destruct because they have mayfly lives in the age of consumption. Jack again being at genre odds with himself as part of an internal conflict...

"What's with the sugar?"

"without my powers, everything tastes different, and I can't get this how I like it"

Maybe you aren't meant to be drinking coffee if it's too bitter for you. I mean in your current state what is chugging red bull gonna do to kill you faster.

It's very Cas in 9x11, commenting on being an angel again after being human. But we know Jack's still in that state. It's interesting because we know he has a sweet tooth because literally the first thing he ever eats is nougat and now we all call him nougat child, but I feel like with powers he was probably rather less discerning because nothing would kill him and everything was digestible... Coffee tastes bitter because it's technically a bitter poison warning, telling us not to consume because caffeine bad... Er, yeah, sorry, coffee plants. But bitterness to humans is supposed to repel us on a “is this food safe?” level, and kids have trouble with bitter foods, and prefer sweetness and uncomplicated flavours because they're instinctively safer.

Jack's struggling to consume the bitter adult juice that makes the hunters run, and is dealing with it by a Sisyphean task of just adding more and more sugar to taste. It reminds me of when I was smol and wanted to drink cranberry juice because I thought it would make me more sophisticated, but it was too bitter, so I kept adding more and more water until it went from even remotely resembling juice to sort of pinkish tart water that still tasted gross and made my mouth dry and didn't even taste like juice any more. At no point did I hit the sweet spot where it was drinkable, because I wasn't even putting the right stuff in to make it taste better. In that case, a spoonful of sugar. In Jack's case... dude. A splash of milk. You don't have to drink it angsty black-like-his-soul like Dean does.

Anyway, "I can't get it how I like it" is very telling of Jack's current overall mindset and sense of place and all. Now he's human but despite having chosen his family and even declared himself human before his powers were stolen, he now has no powers and is consumptive to boot, so the balance has swung way too far over from super powerful cosmic entity to sick kid who can't keep up with the adults. No amount of sugar can change that to something he WANTS to drink when there's still a fundamentally fatal problem with his situation. Sure the dangers of being cosmic lil nephilim on everyone's radar is over, but as this show always does, it swings over to an ironic flip of the first problem, and he's too weak to help.

I suppose the optimism is that he can change this scenario by pouring sugar into it - hunting with the dads - when he needs a different drink.

Whoops already with the dramatic irony - Jack's excited and admiring of heroes Sam and AUCharlie (ChAUrlie?) and just assumes they're having the time of their lives. He's yet to solo hunt with either Sam or Dean, but he'll tick Dean off the list today. For now, what No.1 Dad gets up to (no offence to other dads, this one just tackled Lucifer for him that one time) is mythically amazing, so probably why it's the last on the list... if we'll ever see it. After all, Sam and Jack had their whole season structured around their dynamic from open to close, while actual conflict and confusion remains between his dynamics with both Cas and Dean, as much more complicated, less ideal dads.

Meanwhile: Sam is discovering that it's SUPER AWKWARD to go on a stake out with an AU version hardened by war and with like at least 5-10 years less pop culture than the Charlie you knew, loved, and got murdered by accident that one time.

Which I am totally sure is not on Yockey's mind at all now he's caught the Charlie ball that Buckleming threw recklessly out there.

Anyway. Dean not sugarcoating (haha) "he just left you here" "yeeeep." Obviously Jack's spent a LOT of time in the Bunker recovering and training (he's back in his tracksuit top at least here) but Cas declared him fit for service and they even seem to have survived that hunt together. Somehow. (No slight on their competency, but it's Cas and Jack. Come on, that was a TRIP and I'm so bitter we didn't see it :P) So now Dean can say this in a way that makes it sound like Jack's being left out and get his bitterness immediately on the surface, as he doesn't really have filters.

More bitterness you can't pour sugar over.

The fact that Jack is sitting with his back to Kevin's coffee machine is the worst thing ever.

LOL, poor Dean. Sam deputised Jack to wait for Dean to get back from his supply run to the love cabin, because he was worried about him, which means that Dean now has his own kick from Sam which I am assuming is the spite motivator to take the boy out hunting with him, that he thinks that *Jack* now has to look after *Dean* at least emotionally.

Obviously, like. Yeah. They're good for each other especially if they can bond some more. But like. Try telling Dean that while insisting it's mandatory father son bonding time out of CONCERN.

*cat falling in a bathtub and freaking out and reaching supersonic speeds out the door gif*

Nougat Son attempts a pep talk anyway because he is good and pure of heart and adores his pop pop, even if by sheer lack of interaction or early interest he technically does rank at no.3 in the charts. Listen, Dean WOULD tackle Lucifer for you if he had to, but the story wasn't framed in such a way that he COULD over Sam's narrative need to tackle Lucifer for you.

Dean rebuffs it not out of harshness to Jack but to himself - Jack repeats the line that no one blames Dean, but Dean is like "i do"... Honestly I'm curious for the Dean n Cas version of this because Cas was there in the room and he so far hasn't given Dean the pep talk. Mostly out of them not spending any time together, and I'm sure Dean has a lot of shame that Cas saw him do it, but for as much as Cas blatantly loves Dean still and all on first sight, does he have a more complicated view on it, given he was in the room and tried to argue Dean down?

Anyway Dean and Jack share a very knowing silence of mutual self-loathing and wow this is hilaaaaarious that that's their mutual relationship bedrock but yeah. Last season the most bonding they did was in 13x23 when Dean was like yeah we all get horrifying nightmares kiddo.

*consumptive noises* *Dean's eyes immediately shoot over to the kid*

"Maybe I'm allergic to sitting around doing nothing"

THERE HE IS. THERE'S MY SARCASTIC LIL NOUGAT

We do not get enough of him. I mean, like, maybe since 13x04? He had a rough childhood but now he is a Teen, with all the door slamming and threatening to kill dad no.3 that entails.

"What do you want to do?" We really are getting Dean coming towards Jack from arms' length even now, so he sits down with him and NOW and only now he stops the pretence of being a somewhat disinterested grumpy adult talking to another angst ball adult - very 13x02 last scene kinda wary understanding but without the threat of murder - to sitting at the table with Jack (who of course is in Sam's place) and reaches out to him with a very clear opening up of father son bonding time. I think obviously Jack has grown on him and he cares but he's resisted overt responsibility and their connection has been tentative and weird, and as paternal as Dean can be and has been since the start of the show, with Jack only he's been very careful about opening himself up, specifically for reasons of not wanting to get lumped with another baby to care for right when he was truly setting Sam down at last, and also for like, the whole getting Cas killed thing, and even a year and a half later, he may actually HAVE tentative paternal feelings towards Jack, but he's very much intent on keeping himself Dad no.3, and to only open himself up when it's necessary or else he's emotionally ready for it.

(The description of next episode makes me pretty sure Dean is the worst person of them all to have to discover Consumptive Nougat Son issues which is why I’m assuming he’ll figure it out)

In this case, this appears to be a mutual distraction from their angst - "HUNT" Jack says, with the kind of horrifying enthusiasm of one who still doesn't see it as nightmarish as Dean does.

"Cas is an insurance policy on those hunts" Awww Dean loves his hubby and thinks he's still the biggest BAMF ever, even when Cas has, er, a patchy record lately. Though perhaps low-level monster nonsense is still within his scope...

Anyway, after the Sam n Cas nurturing Jack conspiracy (how dare they love and care for him!!!) Dean straight-talks the kid that he's still very much on hunter probation and has been tagging along with Cas specifically for his own protection. Again, Dean never sugarcoats for Jack, but that honesty has always been a core part of their relationship, even when things were really, really, really bad. Jack still cared what Dean thought and Dean, eternally bitter from his own childhood, gave it to Jack straight, even if it would hurt. No fairytales for Jack.

Even though he has fanciful notions of sleeping beauty from his more whimsical fathers and whatever Kelly left in there :P

Why does Sam have a fidget spinner except that Charlie may be about to declare HIM the monster of the week and kill him.

I mean, dramatic irony and making him look goofy. And Sam is very very very hard to make look goofy because he had all his funny bones replaced with serious bones.

It is very embarrassing to watch him be a goof for this exact reason.

I suppose it is a way to make us start to sympathise with AUCharlie and start to get into HER headspace. We're seeing Sam from an outside perspective - Jack and Dean saying admiring things about him, while looping over to Sam to show us what CHARLIE is experiencing of this. Especially as she's spent a lot of time on the road being an independent agent, rather than sticking with the AU Peeps all the time, she's very much a strong personality of her own as a former rebel leader, and yet knowing OUR Charlie it's less the leading and more the rebellion that would have drawn her. Though she makes a great Queen of Moondoor, that's her softer, nerdy side, and she very clearly had a hunter!Charlie persona of a rebel that struck out on her own, and even when she was a civilian whistleblower/hacker from within RRE, she was acting on her own initiative against the corporate enemy. With her trip to Oz she also had a similar role as AUCharlie of being perhaps a general to a higher leader such as AUBobby in Dorothy.

The adverts on the McCook Sentinel are for TRAVEL, retirement funds, eating healthy and a local student initiative cleaning up the park - the next generation doing their bit to make the world better.

Oh dear, Winston "sweater guy" Mathers - the same name as Dave Mathers in 13x06 - was bitten all over and it was probably bath salts. Case closed.

Now the negotiations and loopholes: Sam said we all need partners now "so we can be hunting buddies!!" Oh Jack. Alex really is good at sounding innocently purely enthusiastic with total childish glee.

"A: don't call it that."

Dean snarks at Jack that HE is going to back ME up? Nah kid. Mistake - this is the key to the angst floodgates. Honestly pausing just after the "I could have killed Michael when i was strong enough!!" declaration is enough info for me to accept a smash cut to Dean and Jack kitted out and on the case, guilt trip accomplished.

It's also very familiar to Dean to have the guilt of having not done enough, to find someone else also specifically feels responsible for what Michael is off doing. And Jack's claim to guilt lies like a whole FIVE MINUTES earlier than DEAN'S claim to guilt. If Jack had killed Michael, Dean wouldn't have had him there to say yes to.

Check and mate.

Sorry, Jack is saying he was distracted and stupid so now Dean is legally obligated to take him hunting to cheer him up.

"You didn't do anything wrong."

"AND NEITHER DID YOU, BUT THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT ANY EASIER, DOES IT?"

Okay, what is the one that comes after check mate but even more vicious because Jack's running loops around his old man.

Dean is making.... left over noodle... taco.....

Jack, knock him out, drag him to the impala, and start driving before he can eat it

He also sharply identifies hunting as the coping mechanism and how they don't just sit around in the Bunker feeling sorry for themselves, and Dean not only can relate but he is being wildly called out by someone who has no filters and also will tell him the absolute truth about it. More than Cas, these days, who carries so much of his guilt and shame secretly so as not to burden Dean, that Jack is now the refreshing voice who cuts through all their crap and shows it for what it is.

Dean is like, man, I never wanted kids. Because they do this to you.

Thank god Jack won that argument with the final emotional appeal and we shifted over to Sam and AUCharlie's adventure.

They really are not getting along.

Charlie just has a jar of sloppy goo. What did she get it from? How did she get so much in the jar when it's so runny? Why does she still have it? Why did Sam put it on the dash? How comes they have Bobby's truck?

Or do the AU Peeps have a whole collection of identical beaten up blue trucks as part of their uniform shabby hunter look?

It's super weird having Charlie pull out an old book instead of a laptop. How do you do product placement????

Dick's Red Rooster diner!

There's a massive photo of a barn at sunset behind them. Putting them out to pasture??

"Yeah, when a young guy dies they never know what to put in those things." Ouch, Dean. Spent a lifetime reading obits, he has a deep insider knowledge of the writing style of them.

The line itself in a more meta way is really sad to think about contemplating anyone having that thought to write it in the first place :( It's deep enough that it doesn't seem an obvious thing to occur to you unless you're super morbid or have first hand experience with this.

Let's just go with these writers all have to write fake obits all the time for their show(s) so they know the struggle of trying to pass off the obit as legit sounding while also contemplating what to even say about their fake people who of course they have just imagined up so don't even know anything about them to start with.

Cocks, everywhere.

(Man, I really hope there aren't people who read these notes before/instead of the episode also hi if you do, you weird wonderful people) (the diner has a heavy red rooster theme and there's metal cockerels all over the place)

(I assume they're for Dick Speight)

Oh dear, Dean is indeed going to have to be the parent who gives Jack the birds and the bees talk, because they've left their kid to learn what he can from TV while creating a perfect circle of Cas assuming Sam will do it, Sam assuming Dean will do it, Dean assuming it's not his problem but it would be hilarious if Cas did it...

So of course Dean ends up being the one on the hunt with Jack where he goes down the sudden horrifying rabbit hole from explaining courting to hearing Jack say "the sex" like he's freakin swap-meated Sam...

Worst case scenario: Cas has ALREADY given Jack the talk but Dean's now going to have to fix that damage :P

Oh teenagers. You want them to stay disturbingly 1 day old naked manchildren forever.

Of course the waitress leans in like "sometimes you just have 'the sex'"

Dean shifts uncomfortably and rotates the cock that had been staring right at his midsection away, like he'd not only clocked it earlier, thought about what it innuendoed, but now in the moment where they're thinking about all this stuff surface text, he's too uncomfortable to deal with cocks right now.

Thank god Dean is as uncomfortable as I am dealing with the concept of Jack being adult bodied and now emotionally teenaged, because he puts the conversation back on track before I actually expire of horror.

Me and Dean are mutually uncomfortable at the realisation that Jack is catching up fast with his outward age. More than halfway there, probably. Only just started bonding with the kid and now we have to let him fly the nest :P

Awww we're getting the everyone loves Harper montage of townsfolk. I love one of these things.

We're spending a LOT of time on the Dean n Jack side of things, which is making me wonder if Sam and Charlie will play catch up later, or if they really are a comic cutaway case to the real angst. That Yockey really really wanted to get our two tragic main dorks into one room alone to work through their issues of guilt and murder and stuff and Sam is too emotionally well-balanced currently to be around that.

I'm pretty sure one set of the townsfolk are two married women

Oh Harper. She's so bubbly and she keeps losing people D: Is there a Nice Guy latched onto you?

(Is it stapler!guy? Nooo I was rooting for him. Maybe he's innocent but will be the next victim... Or maybe not. He DID just see Winston trying to pick her up moments before he died)

"She's bad luck" "real shame."

Yeah, something wants her for itself >.>

Maybe Harper is the one doing the murdering and eating

Probably not.

Sam sits there picking his teeth and AUCharlie finally snaps and tries reaching out to him if it will make him a less annoying stakeout partner. She also does not come under the bracket of Sam's hunter army in the sense of being inexperienced and over grateful of the rescue - that fierce Charlie spark clearly sets her aside not to treat him like the Chief in the same way of needing to be coached and looked after and she was immediately free last season to head off with main named characters like Rowena for side adventures.

It's interesting just because WE know better that she's interesting and Charlie-like so obviously worth a main side character promotion, but in-universe in a practical way, on the surface there might not initially be anything to set her aside from why she gets special treatment except that she had a former leadership role and clearly more experience and innate feeling towards hunting and rebellion than the rest, compared with Maggie who clearly comes across as a refugee wanting to make a new life and learn the ropes of this world with skills she didn't even develop growing to adulthood in the AU.

Anyway, AUCharlie's attempts to shore Sam up end up with Sam throwing the awkwardness back on her and finally opening up the emotional heart of their story - telling her that Charlie was Dean's old wingman and that she'd been a best friend of his (see also: they'd been going to Moondoor meets off-screen)

This is also hilarious that they're using the term wingman when Cas is blatantly the "wing man" in Dean's life and yet Sam is of course focused on Charlie when it comes to dealing with the awkwards of being in a car with AUCharlie but also this skips over Cas's place in the order of best friendyness, because Cas is so much beyond that with his family status.

Anyway Sam uses "you" to refer to Charlie to AUCharlie, which is a direct comment on how they find it weird to have her around and she recoils also from the weirdness that they'd been so close to her in their universe. Their mutual discomfort with each other probably also being why she's been happy to go off on extended adventures on her own getting to grips with this world.

"I'm just saying, I'm not surprised you survived the apocalypse" "Well, I am!"

Sam and AUCharlie going back and forth on his uncomfortable admiration of the other Charlie, while AUCharlie is of course having to fill the shoes of the dear departed first Charlie, a harsh copy of her to Sam's eyes and she can feel that because of course of the weird hug when they first met, it's clear that he, like Dean, struggles to separate her - even in a way where she's AU Charlie but Bobby is "new bobby" which is a distinction which shows more awareness of Bobby as a clean replacement while Charlie is a murky zone where should she be treated like just having another Charlie dropped in their laps, or should she be seen clearly as a completely different person from the one she's replacing for them?

Oh nooo this Charlie worked for RRE but she had a love of her life unlike our singleton Charlie. Just like AUBobby had managed to have Daniel with Karen so things were clearly easier between them than our version... It seems like Mary's sacrifice to not have John somehow boosted the relationships of all the AU people except maybe poor old Kevin :P

Oh noooo what if AUCharlie goes to find this universe Cara??

Oh goodness actual details of the "angel wars" - a massive EMP that put Charlie out of a job just for starters.

"We banded together, thought, someone will save us! No one ever did." Probably not a commentary on the effectiveness of the current government/world leadership at protecting us from disaster >.>

You made AUCharlie cry, you asshole. D:

It's mass grief vs personal grief - the AU peeps lost their world, Sam and Dean saved their world at great personal loss. They took on every one of these deaths into their own personal angst machine, so no wonder it's still rolling on :P

Because in the AU everyone has a Karen or a Cara - everyone who was left lost everything and everyone who was gone.

In Sam n Dean's world, paradise world, the heroes had their own grief, but it's a mythologised version, the great mytharc of losing Mary, Jess, etc that powered the intense personal angst of the apocalypse. But that angst which was so intensely forged in Sam and Dean for taking on the entire burden of everyone's angst that made them the heroes who stopped the apocalypse.

And literally one episode later I'm back to Dean's 2x20 speech about why does it have to be us who saves the world and sacrifices happy normal lives - throw "Carmen" into the Karen, Cara collection.

"One day the water gets shut off. The next day, people are on fire."

Anyway, AUCharlie is intensely hardened to the point of "it all falls apart" because of course she's seen their world crumble.

And again, the outside view point where she's not got the perspective that Sam is the hero that saved the world - it's for us to remember that Sam is the reason this world hasn't crumbled, that hunters are the secret glue holding this world together and we can correct Charlie about their world.

Going too deep is quite uncomfortable to end up comparing 2 worlds, one with a set of destined heroes who are just about holding this one together from at least supernatural threats, and one which immediately fell to pieces when the damage came. In 13x14 AUBobby said that their world just had him, again leaving that empty space that Sam and Dean fixed. But implies the everyday heroism of the AU peeps who managed to hold it together enough to rebuild communities and organise fighting back in their spaces, even heroic-minded people like Bobby and Charlie... AUBobby reckoned he didn't have it together as much as Sam, but in our world, Bobby was a pillar who held the boys and hunting community together much of the time. And Charlie helped save the world once, yet this one felt it crumble around her.

There's something vaguely divine right of kings going on with Sam and Dean at this point, that whole Chuck getting personally involved and calling Dean the firewall between light and dark, that puts their role in a much stranger and more cosmic position. The same thing that made Billie angrily stop pursuing the Winchesters and sit back to read Dean's books in bafflement about how he doesn't die every other day of the week, but is so important on the grand scheme.

To go another step beyond that into meta realms, they have a main character narrative purpose in their own world, so embedded that in the world building of a similar universe, there's no one remotely fit for purpose to step up because no one else was narratively placed to do what they did. And that's their tragedy that they were the people singled out by the narrative, that it's character fights god, directly and on a meta level at times, yelling "why me" and getting "because you're the main character, dumbass, now get back to work" as the answer.

Sam has CONSIDERABLY less interaction across the entire show with being the more meta character, as Dean has genre savvy and was the onlooker to Sam being the one in the crosshairs, that the choice was on Lucifer's vessel to say no or yes, or crack him out of the cage or put him back in. Michael's only purpose was to kill Lucifer, and the rest was free character development space for Dean to yell about how unfair it was that he was there and Sam was being forced this way and that to fulfill his destiny. Even in some meta episodes Sam stayed within the lines or played a role while Dean was the one critiquing and going to speak to the manager, as per the metaphor of Swan Song - 4x18 is the best example of that.

So I think Sam having to confront this here and now is really interesting that he seems considerably less challenged over time to think of himself as the centre of this narrative and what causes and effects this has caused, and to see himself from outside eyes rather than being the one trapped in the middle of it. Lucifer showed him a clip of Swan Song from outside eyes, but it's just not been enough for Sam to really conceptualise himself in this way. Perhaps it'll help him appreciate more what he's done for the universe. I think 6x15 might be the only time he showed more interest than Dean, and that also was about an alternate universe and working out their effect or lack of on it. Of course it was a branch AU from OUR world, while Apocalypse AU is a branch AU from THEIR world.

"not here"

"not yet"

More sugar for Jack. Dean rewards him for finding a case with PIE. Not cake though there was a lot in the displays.

There's still cocks in the background. In the old season 10 pie vs cake thing (10x12 and 10x13 and 10x15 working HARD on it) cake was the forbidden option and pie was the sexy thing that literally was used as a yonic symbol. I'm beginning to dread that Jack's going to get the talk, if for no other reason that Dabb's pre-episode tweets of Jack as Fabio on romance novel covers, but the previous conversation sure didn't help. We're visually and show-language primed for Some Nonsense.

Oh Christ Jack starts asking about courting, and he says he's never experienced it "unless what you said about Rowena and Gabriel counts"

This dumb lump of nougat has witnessed one of the most ridiculous chapters of Dean n Cas angst and hasn't got a clue.

"No, definitely doesn't count."

He never saw them together, but he would have been there when they broke the news to Rowena I guess. Maybe had some innocent questions then too.

Maybe was advised not to touch the books on that side of the library until someone hosed them down with holy oil.

I've been avoiding watching more for like. 2-3 hours. I mean I've been dipping in and out but the mere prospect of this conversation has had me noping out for extended chunks of time to knit and stare into the void and I just realised it's 9am and I started at 5 and only some of that was typing.

My second hand embarrassment squick is barely able to cope with this concept. Now I'm IN this scene I've watched all of Rachel Maddow and nearly checked my dash before I remembered I'm avoiding watching the new episode because Dean has to give Jack the talk so I still have an unwatched episode and spoilers to avoid.

I'm ranking this episode right up there with my conceptual horror at 11x04 just for the prospect of Jack and sex in the same sentence.

Oh thank GOD "when we get back I promise I'll give you the Talk" I should have pressed play so much sooner.

(No, you're fooling yourself Lizzy. This concept doesn't just come up in the first quarter of an episode and then go away)

Oh. Oh Dear. Yeah, trying to do a trust fall with the rest of the scene just meant I walked right in to Dean proposing, I think, using this strapping young lad he has with him as bait to investigate Harper, by sending him to meet cute with her. You know, Jack, dressed in his tan coat, Harper now dressed with her red bandanna ascoting around her throat and a black shirt so she's more Dean-like.

Bless, Jack's all grown up, he's in a Destiel parallel :')

A Ploy! Father Son roleplay! Dean plays the horrible looming FBI man who is threatening a smol lady with only a book for protection to interview her aggressively... And in steps the hero, in his red shirt and still tan coat of course, primed for young love and a hunger for local history books! :P

Well at least maybe stapler!guy might be protected by this if he's not the monster :P

Dean has watched enough rom coms/read enough romance novels to know how to set this up even if Jack doesn't. Canon.

Put that nasty FBI man in his place! Bam! Jack's getting another one in over Dean in the roleplay which mirrors their starting conversation of him emotionally triple-checkmating Dean over letting him come.

It is also a position of trust to let him do the work to chat up Harper.

Gosh I am curious about the endgame of where the Jack vs Dean conflict goes. Jack was literally yelling at Cas that they might have to murder Dean to get Michael a few weeks ago. There's shit going on here and the self-aware staged conflict really makes a curious sort of play within a play aspect, where it mirrors the dynamic. Set a play to catch the conscience of the king.

In this case, Dean being overbearing and threatening to a young woman mirrors Kaia and his treatment of both versions of her, but this time someone is here to step in and stop him, when Jack has been a bystander in the past. And in 13x09 of course, when they first met Kaia, Jack was being really grabby and possessive of her, and she had to beat him off and when Sam and Dean caught up with Jack, Dean immediately said "Good!" about Kaia hitting him, because Jack really was overstepping lines and was wavering one way and the other about being a Joffrey.

Jack is again playing the hero - he's been the prince to sleeping beauty and now he's the Fabio to this love-challenged cursed town darling. This is about perceptions and surface levels - playing the games of being the hero while still working out his own place in the world and discovering that heroism can sometimes mean a murderous revenge quest against the AUncle and the high collateral damage of achieving that. Despite Jack's full on tragic narrative he's battling it hard to dabble in other more light-hearted genres, and join his dads who have all survived by travelling between genre lines and becoming action heroes instead of tragic heroes.

And why is Dean now the possessive and grabby one when he was possessed and grabbed? Or is he still the one who did the grabbing? He CAN'T be Just Michael for all this time, but what's the secret Michael has set up? We can't know it yet but there must be clues, and more we'll work out when we know and can look back on these episodes with hindsight...

But Dean also was presumably the one to come up with the ploy so is it HIS play, and we're getting the boy king (v.2) conscience caught here?

"Why don't you back off kid?"

"You back off... Old man" Jack suddenly sounds threatening enough that Dean recoils, having never been on that end of Jack's terrifying switch Alex can make to being a truly frightening presence, at least not when Jack wasn't naked and lashing out dumbly because he was literally hours old. Jack's never threatened Dean with intent because why would he.

Dean's caught off guard and makes a genuinely "uh" noise in his throat while recovering from the threat, but it impresses Harper so I suppose that's what matters.

Dean vs Jack is very much the Dean and John version of this whole thing, except Dean tried to launch himself to Mars rather than parent Jack and give him the same experience... While accidentally doing stuff like handing Jack a shovel and dismissively telling him to dig which had the exact same effect of being raised as he was. Because like it or not, by 13x02, Jack was mimicking Dean and idolised him a little all along. And now of course, with Daniel laying into Bobby and probably a bunch of other stuff I can't recall mid sentence, we're deep into confronting father figure territory, with John's ghost looming over them all.

"This isn't over" after a moment of comical blustering, the squint Dean gives Jack is almost imperceptible but there's a bit of confusion/curiosity there about just where Jack's assertiveness came from, because DEAN didn't teach him to disrespect authority like that (he totally got it from you Dean). The warning is of course nice and meta in the sense that this staged conflict probably is over, but the Dean vs Jack stuff is only just kicking off.

Jack... Smith.

Aw hon.

Still no surname then? Not Kline or Winchester or... whatever Cas's surname is.

"Dean what do you mean you don't know Jack's surname? It's the same as mine!" Dean stares blankly at Cas. Cas squints at Dean. Dean slowly, slowly, sinks to the floor and crab-walks backwards out of the room.

Anyway awwwwwww romance hero Jack! You play those genres! Find the one where you don't have to be consumptive and murderous!

Aha, Stapler Guy is probably called Miles, since Dean is getting perfect audio on this conversation from the car.

Jack is the politest nougat ever, and wants to shake hands with everyone. SOMEONE raised him right. Probably Kelly. I can't even begin to imagine where else he gets it so it must be an instinct she hammered into him from the womb.

Anyway as soon as another guy leaves to get coffee with Harper, Miles comes shooting out of the library to ask what's up, so he's looking more and more like the monster. Grabbiness as the motw!

Oooh she's taking Jack to her apartment to get him a book. Oh dear, Jack, this is what Dean did in 9x08.

Be careful, sweetie. No one's given you the Talk yet D:

"You don't even know this guy!" "Miles, stop it!"

Yeah, staples guy is definitely my no.1 suspect.

Oh.

Is staples guy about to be eaten?

Whoops, me and Dean both made the wrong call there. And I was just about to tell Dean he should have been following him in case he was the monster, which would have at least saved him.

Apparently just crushing on Harper is dangerous enough. Though Staples Guy crushed hard enough to be a threat. Which means, I would guess, that the MotW feeds on toxic masculinity.

Oh my GOD Sam is still stuck in the truck with AUCharlie.

"Who wants to be a hunter? Just a lot of tears and death." Yeah, our Charlie got into it with only personal sacrifice of broken arms in exchange for a bunch of thrill-seeking adventure. Until she died, of course. AUCharlie is what you get when Charlie has a tragic backstory involving monsters. I think she must still be hunting for the same principle Charlie had on our first meeting, of what sort of douchebag doesn't help when monsters are eating people in your very building you work... But at the same time, AUCharlie has none of the sunshine, because it was already all taken from her, and she never started hunting to save people, only to fight angels and survive. I suppose the only difference in this world is that now there's no angels to fight, she's outcast from society by default and has ended up with the same asocial vigilante skills from guerrilla warfare as hunters use day by day for their less world ends stakes job.

Sam says "you" and then corrects to "our Charlie" - I can't remember exactly when this was but I think it was 10x18, after Charlie had been through enough that she was starting to lose the shine and Robbie knew he was writing a Charlie who was about to be chewed up and devoured by the story. By Sam's man pain in the story.

This is a baton that Yockey is having to take very seriously and carefully, because of course AUCharlie is so different but the meta perspective on bringing her back is very much about replacement and loss of a fave and facing what the story did to Charlie and for what stakes, vs what was she brought back for and can just shoving a new different Charlie into the story actually make up for doing what they did to her.

"So glad this is my last case" aw no she's retiring to the beach. Has she just been working with them while she gets enough resources to start over?

She's going "away" - from monsters and people. Go live on a mountaintop or something. Again, this is more about the trauma she's been through and how she copes, and what she needs to do to settle herself.

(PS: I will weep openly if the last shot of this is Charlie outside a cupcake shop)

I don't think this means she's necessarily out of the story or that through this van conversation bottle episode, Sam might not convince her to at least just take a break like Mobby are doing, but she's clearly there in the collection with them and Dean of people who have been so badly hurt that they need to retreat from the hunting frontlines. Dean NEEDED to watch 2 weeks worth of horror movies and take it easy. He's not exactly describing himself as really ready for action now either. Charlie may end up a mirror that's a fair bit darker, because while AUBobby is full of grief and self-destruction, it's open and explosive, while she's cold and retreating and surrounded by people who see the wrong person when they look at her - the bubbly fun Charlie we used to know. In the same way, if Dean has changed, people look at him and see the Dean THEY used to know and expect things of him he's sometimes not ready to offer. He made a big step in letting Sam take charge of the operation, in the sense of acknowledging himself under Sam's direction.

It's interesting now that both AUBobby and Charlie lost romantic loved ones, when we saw Dean change so dramatically in season 13 without Cas and that being the beginning of Sam's tentative need to take control and start to be right about his hunches like nurturing Jack. The swap in the roles and Sam struggling to understand Dean, and in 13x05 - the Yockey episode - failing so desperately to help Dean on his chosen cheer up hunt compared to acing it the same time next year.

LOL Harper's house has "AMOUR" and a huge love heart on the wall. This poor romantic sap. I'm so sorry a monster is eating all your prospective boyfriends.

She has stuffed toys on her bed and so many shelves of books. I love her. She's the best. Protect her, please, Jack.

His "??" over the "moves" also is a great way to make her way more the flustered one, because Jack could be way more awkward with inexperience except he's literally transcended it, as Cas often does, back out the other side of obliviousness :')

He leaps into action to prepare to test her for monstery things :') He's been trained well!!

On the other hand it does look like he now has REALLLLLLLY sweaty hands after covering them in holy water.

Oh christ, Jack, this is why we don't do Christo any more. Also. You shouldn't be aggravating your cough. You could really set yourself off.

"I'm just nervous"

Harper goes through the correct range of emotions for how adorable Jack is.

Charlie's "I got something" is layered over Jack being invited to sit with her - both of them just got a break on the case, though for Jack it is being prey for the boyfriend eater, and Charlie has read enough books.

Muscas look horrifying. I love the 17th century illustration of one.

Awww AUCharlie calling him a nerd. Those awful flashes of her being the Charlie they once knew.

LOLLLLL the Musca has a "bad egg" who FAILS TO FIND A MATE and goes bad, and starts killing people to nest. So we're really roasting beta males who fall into the woe is me victimisation trap of incels and would rather kill people (literally, unfortunately, in some cases) than address their own issues, get help, and find some peace and probably, honestly, a girlfriend as soon as they stop behaving like that and learn to see women as people, not mating-prey >.>

Why do I feel like whatever has latched onto Harper is going to have a suspiciously similar motivation where it's picking off men in order to leave her single...

Not that I have the best judgement on her case, but it's B L A T A N T L Y about courting.

And these guys are courting her - lots of innocent courtly gestures like dinner dates, protecting her nobly with a stapler, fighting off the nasty FBI man... She's their damsel.

"Our perp might just be a giant fly with low self-esteem" Don't sugar coat it Sam.

Is this episode "wow look at this hetero bullshit by Steve Yockey"

AHAHAH THE GIANT FLY IS MANSPREADING AT THE BUS SHELTER

It also has ribbons at the front of its cloak. The design is both modern with the suit and boots, but with enough of that old 17th century twist to give it a nice spooky old fashioned uncanniness. it's not of this time, place, world, etc...

Awww Harper has a halo with the lamp!

Oh Jack no, I told you not to aggravate the cough.

Vance... probable monster. (I say that a lot but we’re past the elimination round)

She didn't want to leave town... we could see the world in books!

You are also adorable and not quite of this town or modern world. Her "sappiness" does make her a weirdly good match for Jack, though, just because of the pure-heartedness they exude.

Jack can not IMAGINE someone leaving Harper behind.

"That was the beginning of my bad luck" Fancy that.

Also you still keep a photo of your ex in your apartment.

That’s weird, hon.

Oh dear, now Jack's opening up. "I try to stay optimistic." "Me too."

Awww sweetie. for all the bad that's happened he keeps on powering through, because sometimes that can be powered by optimism for a happy ending

Unfortunately, we're in irony town where the grimmer you are about your fate the more chance you have of surviving just to spite that. And, you know, vice versa, it gives you consumption just to make it harder... like, how much can we throw at this kid before he stops?

"Do you believe in love in first sight?" "Harper..... do you mind if I use your bathroom?"

Unlike 9x08, Jack is rather less distracted by being adorably hit on by the sweetest romantic. Time to flee.

Dean has been standing awkwardly at the corpse this entire time.

The bathroom has dragonflies all over it which I assume are interesting symbolically in a way which relates to her love struggles. Also the other side of the story's bug struggles.

"Harper is not a monster. And i'm 99% sure she's in love with me."

"She was looking at me with these googly eyes"

This is like, warning for next time Cas and Dean are in the same room because you SAW them last time

Next time, you will be prepared.

Dean is convinced she couldn't be in love with him so instantly. What do YOU know about love, Dean?

"But if she is I need to know everything about sex. Go:"

Kid, there isn't time in the world to tell you everything Dean knows about sex. Also, are you really going to pull a Dean and hook up despite all the deaths in town? ALSO dude, courting. Court her first. You know NOTHING about this or what you're feeling.

Teenagers are the worst.

Ooops Dean just stood around talking and now he's been eaten.

Guess it's time for Jack to SAVE HIM

"You're fine. I'm fine." No you aren't Jack, stop kidding yourself.

Oh good, she's scaling back to saying they should get coffee.

This is sensible and take notes, Jack, but also disregard this offer of a date entirely and go save your dad, you're not in a romance novel.

"I... don't know" this was Jack's stock response when he was younger to encountering new things about himself and deep philosophical questions which he just had not had time to ponder but in the world he had been thrust into, he was being asked to immediately have an opinion on.

I think we ought to file courting and sex under those headings for now :P He will figure it out but not at this breakneck speed, no matter how fast he grew up.

Bam, Dean bursts in on them - is there remotely time for him to have done this fast enough? Is this really Dean? Are we supposed to be doubting who Dean is?

Vance has literally come back from the dead to bother her about having new boyfriends. Great.

Oh, okay, this looks pretty cut and dry that it's a zombie now he's in the room :P

he looks like Archie Andrews. Is this the crossover we've been waiting for?

"Archie! Hey!"

oops.

*puts another penny in the "quoted Dean before he said the line" jar*

I can't believe Dean watches Riverdale.

I mean, yeah he grew up reading the comics, but you know it's on his netflix queue.

Stop smashing up Harper's bookshelves! Dean's all "let's dance," still looking waaay too excited to get to wrestle monsters to take his mind off of all his angst.

Why are Sam and Charlie still sitting in the truck instead of following their weirdo fly?

"You can't just quit and go live on a mountain somewhere"

Somehow when he sits in cars with female characters in Yockey episodes he ends up saying a lot of things like this. Bless your heart, you just described my whole life.

"People need people." "We're social animals" Sam is finally starting to realise that maaaybe that bit in 8x10 where he and Dean removed everyone they cared about from their lives and sat gloomily in silence anger-eating chilli in a dank cabin in the backwoods was PERHAPS not the best way to be people.

He's really starting to like having a squad around him... Maybe this is awakening a bit of Sam that he never had except in college when he got to have people around him without too much fear about having to leave them behind because he was so determined to stick to his new life there.

Sam pulls that not only he tried and failed to quit hunting, but our Charlie did too.

"She ain't me!" but you are still cut from the same cloth whether you like it or not.

"It's my life, Sam! not hers and not yours" basically no one else can tell me whether I should be here or not, and it's on my terms if i am or not. Which is very healthy but kind of sad about the commentary on having a Charlie on the show if she's so insistent to escape hunting. Because it killed our Charlie so we should want AUCharlie to be safe. But at the same time, bringing her back then sending her off to a mountain... it's a cold comfort that a version of her survived, that they saw her face again before she left in slightly better terms. But what does it bring to the show to have had her back but then to let her go again?

And, on a character level, can Boss Sam wrangle a great asset and potential amazing friend to stay and work with them and be a key part of his hunter squad, or will he have to let her go and fail to achieve some networking people skills.

They have a funny friend potential moment as sam says we don't want to tackle him in case it’s a guy into weird fashion and she's all, don't we?

This hesitation was enough for that poor guy to get grabbed under cover of the bus.

Though perhaps the hesitation was also timed to stop Sam and AUCharlie getting mowed down by a bus and very disappointingly ending both their careers.

Harper stops and demands to know what's happening. Jack throws aside the book that was the ruse, and holds out his hand for trust with open honesty now and she takes it, and he continues to pull her away to protect her. Awwwww.

Has Dean been wrestling in her apartment since it got dark?

How has no one called the cops.

Vance gets a spidey sense tingle that someone is holding Harper's hand, and marches out of the apartment, to Dean's disappointment that he didn't get to smash a chair over his head. Because that was a totally normal amount of enthusiasm for a fight.

Jack is clever, Harper is snarky... aw :P

I can't believe Sam and Charlie can walk after sitting all day.

"Brass nail dipped in sugar water" lol flies are drawn to sugar. More flies with honey than vinegar.

If you creatively mock that up using American beverages I will be horrified that corn syrup counts as sugar. Charlie literally just reminded us of Dick Roman taking advantage of your industry's corn fetish

BUGS

Those who don't learn from history etc

I don't think that's enough fly papers

Sam just sniffed a chloroform rag. Er.

Oh that is disgusting. Why weren't you wearing the orange jacket so we could ritually burn it.

Oooh gross. (pt.2 - Yockey was only warming us up with bug juice)

Harper let the zombie in and now she's kissing him? She better be mind controlled or this is a whole level of weird Jack should not have had to deal with because no one should start the Talk at necrophilia and work backwards from there D:

Oh NO this is going to be the Talk Dean has to give Jack, and to top it off they have a jealous boyfriend stalking roleplay kink, AND she threw in a bunch of other things for Jack to ask questions about >.>

Told you she was a witch. It was the Sabrina-like collar that gave it away.

Who knew my dorkiest joke about my suspicions was the most accurate.

She's even wearing a red jacket, just like Sabrina has her signature red coats.

This is a CW cross-promotion episode.

"It's first love, Jack. The best kind. Without baggage or compromise. I mean. I did have to kill him to keep him here after college..."

She's a Mary mirror. This is Mary and young!John. Oh god. Azazel's deal is her raising the dead, and sharing a gross kiss to boot... And Harper is from a long line of necromancers and Mary was from a long line of hunters, the last of them...

Of course, Mary has all that baggage from her first love but has moved on and is now having a happy vacation with Bobby but I don't think it's symbolically unimportant that that was literally last episode and now we're seeing first loves with an undead boyfriend, that Harper couldn't let slip out of her hands so she did the most toxic thing to bring him back. It's very much like the Plum sisters being the zombie-raising parallels to Sam and Dean and their need to bring Mary back come what may - which of course after Jack's vision in 13x09 made Dean threaten Kaia in the first place

Can't spell Necromancer without "Romance"

I love the hiding from the zombie chase going on here. Vance is dumb as a box of rocks and we’re getting lots of new gifs of Jack being “sneaky”

Ahaha she has a romance novel called "Lances and Laces" (i think?)

Awww Jack is doing a Ruse again, playing dumb for her. "I thought we fell in love at first sight!"

Awwwwww he's proposing to her. The allure of un-undead love.

"But I tried to kill you!" "Every relationship has its stuff, right?"

pffffffffffffffft

You aren't officially in love on this show UNTIL you try and kill each other

Ow, Jack. That's going to shake some bloody phlegm loose.

FATHER SON TEAMWORK SAVES THE DAY

Lol, Vance got ditched as soon as it was awkward to have a zombie boyfriend

Sam is seriously using the fly as a parallel to Charlie being a loner. I wonder what you could put in front of him that he WOULDN'T be able to twist into a moral. He really is the camp leader :P

Awww the gross bug thing's people came for it

Sam I can not hear a word of your motivating speech over these terrifying things and their nightmare aesthetic taking home one of their own who strayed from the swarm to swooping music.

AUCharlie relents enough to have a door open... Yeah, she did also get knocked out when trying to hunt on her own and though she wanted to retire, well...

I can't believe Yockey metaphorically compared the hunter community to the fly swarm. Like, Charlie was all blurr the metaphor has holes but they had no idea the bugs looked after their own like that D: Dramatic irony again - this time against Charlie to make her more right than she knew that she has people who would care for her.

Oh NO, Jack has left an impression on Harper... Oh dear oh dear oh dear. You can NOT have a necromancer long distance girlfriend.

Even though she's in a different diner there's still a cock in the window.

"I'm sorry I have to kill you!" heee she's so cute. In a very twisted way, I still like her even though the necromancy thing is gross, and Jack should steer WAY clear.

But awwwwwwwww.

"And that's love."

Dean saying it can get crazier than that... Dude, just give him the talk, I'll turn off the last 2 minutes of the episode. You clearly need to. Or at the very least start the ball rolling on suggesting Sam do it, Sam asks Cas if he’d want to, Cas comes and asks you for help to do it and you end up being the one to try after all.

I LOVE Jack hanging with Dean, with his too-sweet coffee, angling to make Dean let him come on hunts more because he was right.

I think Dean just pointed out neither of them are ready to be hunters if they can't cope with the mistakes they make without feeling super guilty, since they had the guilt Olympics at the beginning.

Oh Jack, no.

OH NO HIS NOSE IS BLEEDING

Down he goes!

This is what happens when you meddle in genres you don't belong.

Tragedy comes back and kicks you in the face.

Dean on his knees by Jack yelling his name: same. D:

#14x06 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

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happythexceed · 6 years

Text

Summary of “K SEVEN STORIES Episode 5 K: Seven Stories “Memory of Red - ~Burn~”

Spoilers ahead. Sorry for any discrepancy. I tried to put in whatever I remembered I watched once and I’m not so good in remembering details. Some of the sub feels a bit vague.

The Idol K

The Silver Record Trio headed to the school island to pay the duo a visit. Kuroh wondered why they need to pay them a visit when their entertainment companies had agreed to help them. Shiro mentioned they were just going to tell them to “Please support them”. The school island had the sceneries suitable for filming.

The duo were filming special effect for a kid show where one is an ally of justice and the other is a devil who kills all people. Yeah, Yata is a hero and he gets a cape on screen on The Idol K finally. The two of them had a healthy rivalry relationship Shiro hoped Kuroh can have with Yukari.

Yata and Fushimi should have been over (the betrayal) as Yata is talking to Fushimi and getting along very well with him. During their break, Fushimi was grumbling about how lousy the script is written and Yata said he enjoyed it. Shiro greeted them and hope to get their support. They had both heard from their company about the charity event. Yata had no complaint if Kusanagi had agreed. Fushimi will just do his job.

Shiro presented them with the onigiri as the reward. Fushimi stared at it and Shiro replied that there’s only salt as filling. Yata teased that Shiro have even make the effort to research on Fushimi’s preference. They are going to have a wonderful performance.

Memory of Red - ~Burn~

The movie started off with the Damocles Down happening. The former Blue King Habari Jin couldn’t stop the former Red King Kagutsu Genji on time and his Sword of Damocles fell and he was caught in the blast. Various kids saw the Damocles down happening including Hisui and Tatara (if not Neko) who was hugged by his parents watching the blast intently. Young Iwa was shown at the scene.

The slate kid appeared commenting on the destruction. Kagutsu is the representation of it. What will the next Red King do? The next scene had a kid wearing his soccer uniform with the name “Suoh” on it witnessing the destruction from the Kagutsu crater. Suoh woke up from his nightmare. Anna who had been having a nightmare as well woke up and Mikoto wondered if she had a nightmare. Anna explained she could be affected by his dream sleeping by his side. Anna asked if Mikoto wished to be free.

Mikoto found himself in a cage with Totsuka and the rest of HOMRA members. He wished to be free but he doesn’t hate to be trapped.

It’s December and HOMRA members were having a discussion about Anna’s birthday celebration. Totsuka wanted to bake a 5 metres tall cake and everyone were like NO! This is only meant for her wedding. Everyone have their ideas which were scrapped until Kusanagi came up with the idea everyone to present Anna a rose and Anna would be able to form a bouquet from them. Anna overheard them and headed back to Mikoto’s room upstairs. She remarked that it isn’t a good time for her to go downstairs.

Totsuka shared his plan with Mikoto. He couldn’t stop harping on the 5 metres cake. He told King to present a rose and congratulate her on her birthday. They commented how time flies and they had taken in Anna when she was 7 and now she is 11.

There is a scene with Anna telling Totsuka he would not live long if he remains by Mikoto’s side.

The drinks arrived and Mikoto is staring why they have a “normal” drink and why is his drink so “girlish”. Red and with strawberry and suitable for King. “Strawberry fizz” was what Totsuka had ordered for King since he said he could decide for him and the red suits him.

They talked about their past how they started HOMRA with only the three of them at first. The man who was a supporter of Kagutsu caused Mikoto to become the Red King and what kind of destruction he could cause if he become the Red King instead. In the first place, they are already dead by now. (That make me wonder if Mikoto was not the supposed red king? He somehow took the power from that guy). People wanted to destroy everything surrounding them not caring if the world is destroyed tomorrow but doesn’t deny there are some good within it.

Totsuka waved goodbye to the two of them as he wanted to buy some stuff from the convenience store before going home. That was when he crossed his path with “Shiro” who was possessed by the Colourless King for the first time.

Preparation for Anna’s birthday is going on and everyone was busy. Chitose is flirting, Eric is looking at a necklace, etc. Totsuka showed everyone a dress and he wore a ribbon.

As for Mikoto, he passed by a shop and seemed to be having a debate in his mind. He gave up and walked into the shop. Mikoto was staring hard at a cute little teddy bear. He was like telling the bear to stop looking so cute, stay away from him, and he can resist not buying him. He gave up again and going to grab the bear. Little did he expect another hand grabbed the bear the same time as him.

That guy who is eyeing the same bear was Munakata. Mikoto wanted to leave and Munakata could have the bear. Munakata stopped him asking him didn’t he want to get the bear for HOMRA princess? Mikoto can’t deny. They talked how how they have their friends and family. They are Kings but at the same time they are both human. Munakata is in a cage like him. Munakata questioned if Mikoto wanted to leave the cage. The life outside the cage is too dangerous for human.

“Shiro” and Hisui in Kotosaka was having a discussion. “Shiro” thanked him for providing this body to him. This body is light and good. Hisui provides information about Totsuka and Kusanagi to him for him to plan his game. “Shiro” the new Colourless King using Weismann’s voice commented how he possessed many people obtaining their memories, how human are black and he is going to combine them together. First step he declared he would kill Totsuka Tatara who is the weakest.

Yata burnt the pot in bar HOMRA practicing his cooking for party food and heading home with Kamamoto (subs keep spelling his name wrong). Yata defended his fried rice is delicious ok? He just can’t manage party food. An airship passed by them, flying close. They noticed a girl using a candle app raising up to the sky aiming at the ship. To think people are still doing it now. Yata recalled how he went after it when he was still in middle school. He thought his world might change if he hopped on to it. Kamamoto added Fushimi was with him back then isn’t it? Yata changed the subject by demanding Kamamoto to lend him his kitchen to practice his cooking.

Totsuka is heading home from the bar and bumped into King who is going out to get cigarettes. He asked King to accompany him to the rooftop and showed him the night scene. Mikoto wondered about the red blinking light and Totsuka told him about the candle app. There is an urban legend that if people who feel down and out raised their device to the air with the app when the airship passes by, their troubles will be sucked in by the ship. Mikoto asked if he likes that. Totsuka replies that he didn’t need to as he had Kusanagi, Anna and him. He preferred to be grounded.

At the bottom of the building, “Shiro” is staring up at the rooftop where Totsuka and Mikoto are.

The night before Anna’s birthday, HOMRA alphabet boys had a talk among themselves after leaving the bar. Eric got a little sentimental and how happy he was taken in somehow and found a sense of belongings and the boys “beat” him up for spouting nonsense.

Totsuka asked Kusanagi if he needed help and Yata offered to help. Totsuka decided to head off to get Anna the “cake” instead. He reminded Mikoto although he can’t bake the real one, he wanted to film that same scene he and Mikoto saw that night. The blinking red light resembled that candles on top of the cake and he wanted to show Anna that. (It was as though everyone knows this was the last time they see Totsuka alive). Kusanagi tell Totsuka to take care, Kamamoto said he will pick up the cake from him tomorrow. They would see each other tomorrow. (Tomorrow never came).

Totsuka came to the rooftop and was shot by “Shiro” and he asked him why as he laid in the pool of blood. “Shiro” introduces himself as the Colourless King as he shot the camera Totsuka dropped. He declared to Totsuka on the Seven Kings and Seven Stories they have he wanted to take them all and make them all his. He raised the phone with the app as the airship appeared above him.

Totsuka wanted to go back to inform them but his body didn’t allow him to do so. He fell and laid on the ground in despair if he is going to die there. He is also worried that the rest of HOMRA friends will be targeted. Yet when he thought about the time he had with them he felt happy and peaceful. He took out his phone he wanted to call king. He wondered if he would be angry. He called Kusanagi. (The phone keep ringing and we wondered if he will answer). Totsuka told Kusanagi he was happy.

He saw himself on the speeding on the mountain road and met King who stood in the middle of the road. He thought of the past during school days how much fun he had.

Totsuka died in Yata’s arms later. Mikoto heard from Kusanagi and informed Anna who started to cry. She just woke up dreaming of Totsuka breaking into pieces like a marble.

The whole HOMRA grieved. Tears running down Eric’s cheek, Bandou burst into tear. Yata in bloodied shirt yelling why in frustration.

Fushimi went into Munakata’s office to report about Totsuka’s death and they had a meeting. Awashima mentioned Kusanagi contacted her and asked her and Scepter 4 not to interfere. It is between Red Clan and Colourless clan. How can Scepter 4 not get involved when it is clan related and they had the safety of people in mind. Munakata decided they will advance for their cause is pure.

Mikoto watched Totsuka’s body and Kusanagi noticed he got a new ear ring on his ear and recognized as Totsuka’s but didn’t remember it was that red. It’s hollow so Mikoto filled it with his blood. He wanted to remember Totsuka’s existence as there won’t be a grave or anything left of him when he burns him. HOMRA held the ceremony by the seaside. Anna left Totsuka a rose before Mikoto burnt the coffin. “No blood no bone no ash!” There wasn’t a trace left by Totsuka after the fire died out.

Mikoto sat quietly alone looking out at the sea when Kusanagi approached him. Totsuka lives his life the way he wanted and Mikoto decided he would do the same. Kusanagi would not stop him. It was payback time.

Hisui and Iwa discussed about the Colourless King. Hisui played a supporting role this round and he would not want to get involved in his game. The plan Colourless King has would help him to move his greater plan. Iwa can choose not to watch if it’s hard for him. Iwa after all witnessed the Damocles down and lost all his clansmen as the only survivor.

Neko as a cat came to Ashinaka Academy and slept when a boy fell from the sky and crashed.

HOMRA gang walked into the street. Mikoto signaled them to do their job as he walked on with Anna. Anna asked if he wanted to avenge Tatara. Mikoto thought about Totsuka’s words that he needed a place of belonging, Munakata’s words about the world outside the cage is not meant for human etc, Mikoto merely replied he would do whatever he wants.

Thoughts:

The life in the cage is the world the people involved in the Dresden slate is it seems. Yata and Fushimi used to be really normal wanting to change the world found themselves inside it. Mikoto wanted to get out yet he doesn’t hate to stay in the cage where people he cared and care about him are in. Life outside the cage is dangerous although they set themselves free. Hisui will want a life outside the cage. This is a movie setting up for Season 1. The bit and pieces of various characters getting together and their discussion will ultimately lead to the series of happening in season 1. I’m hoping for a miracle and a different ending to happen yet it won’t be nice if there is a major change changing what led to the end of season 2.

#k seven stories #k memory of red #totsuka tatara #suoh mikoto #setting up for season 1 #tatara witness the damocles down isn't it?#the kid looks like neko too #problematic when the kids look similar #can't differentiate by the colours #poor Kusanagi can't say anything to stop Mikoto #totsuka tatara was the character that brought me into K fandom #liking sarumi came later

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criticalthinkingedu-blog · 6 years

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The Last Leaf

So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."

At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.

That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places."

Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.

One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, grey eyebrow.

"She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?"

"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.

"Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?"

"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."

"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."

After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime.

Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.

She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.

As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.

Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward.

"Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "seven", almost together.

Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.

"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.

"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now."

"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."

"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"

"Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self."

"You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too."

"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the shade down."

"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.

"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves."

"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves."

"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back."

Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above.

Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker.

Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings.

"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy."

"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet."

"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes."

Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.

When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.

"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.

Wearily Sue obeyed.

But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground.

"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time."

"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?"

But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed.

The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.

When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.

The ivy leaf was still there.

Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.

"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."

And hour later she said:

"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."

The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.

"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. "With good nursing you'll win." And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable."

The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and care now - that's all."

And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all.

"I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colours mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."

#the last leaf #o`henry

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mrleopard25 · 6 years

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James Bond Series Revisited: SPECTRE (2015)

Directed by Sam Mendes

Starring Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes, and Léa Seydoux

Yes, this has taken years to complete, and for that I apologize. In part it was due to me seeing the film during its opening run and then not again until very recently. I like to be fairly familiar with the film before giving it my full thoughts. Also I like hearing what other people had to say, and well...some of it wasn’t so kind. But I’ve also gone through each of the other Bond films in deep analysis so, like Quantum of Solace, maybe I could give the film a better appraisal. Was it terrible? Was it great? Well...

The film opens on Bond engaging in some good old fashioned espionage in Mexico City, during the Day of the Dead celebrations. Some nefarious types are meeting in a hotel room talking about bombing a stadium, and Bond decides he’s going to assassinate all these guys. They get wise to the attempt at the last second and several explosions later, the block is leveled. But Bond’s target, a man named Sciarra, survives and decides he’s going to escape Bond by the most inconspicuous way he can think of: a helicopter in a crowded town square. Bond’s having none of that, takes his octopus ring, and shoves him out of the helicopter.

But uh oh – why was Bond even there? That’s what M wants to know because, from his point of view, a vacationing agent demolished a couple city blocks and did some aerial tricks in a helicopter above several thousand people. So M wants an explanation, but Bond gives him nothing. This is especially frustrating, as there is a new centralized intelligence agency, the Joint Intelligence Service headed by a man named C, that wants to merge with MI6 and has made no secret about wanting to shut down the 00 program. Why? Because it’s the future!

Meanwhile, Bond reveals to Moneypenny that M, the last M, sent him one of those tapes that says “If you’re seeing this, that means I’m dead, so do this because I’m dead.” Unfortunately M has grounded Bond, but Bond also enlists Q to help him out, and soon Bond has gone to Rome to go to Sciarra’s funeral. He makes an acquaintance of Sciarra’s wife, and later that night saves her from assassination. In response, she informs him of where he can take that octopus ring.

Bond finds himself at a meeting of a clandestine organization engaged in operating terrorist activities around the globe. The leader of the organization notices Bond is there, and soon Bond has to go on the run through the streets of Rome. Based on some word clues, Moneypenny informs Bond that this organization has ties to Mr. White. Bond tracks him down to a remote cabin where he finds the man dying. Bond gets some information about this organization, SPECTRE, and their involvement in global affairs. White makes Bond swear to protect his daughter, then commits suicide.

Bond finds his daughter, Madeline Swann, as a doctor in a special treatment clinic in the mountains. He reveals her father’s fate and her role in this, and she spurns him. On his way out, he bumps into Q, who is feeling chagrinned at working with Bond illegally. Bond gets Q to identify some DNA samples on the ring (not sure why they’re there), and we get links to all the previous Craig movie. More on that later.

SPECTRE tries to abduct Swan and a long chase sequence ensues. After recovering Swann, she takes Bond to a hotel that White used to take his family to, as Bond believes White left information there. Bond tears the room apart, and eventually finds a hidden room that contains information detailing Quantum / SPECTRE activities, including coordinates to a secret base in the Sahara.

Travelling there by rail, Bond and Swann get to know each other a little better, but this is interrupted by Hinx, a SPECTRE assassin, who nearly succeeds in killing them both. After finishing him off, the pair arrive at the SPECTRE base where they are confronted by the leader, Franz Oberhauser – the son of the man who took Bond in after the death of Bond’s parents. Oberhauser killed his father and staged his own death, and has lay hidden as SPECTRE’s leader, calling himself Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Blofeld lays out his objective in overseeing the new global intelligence community, and how C is one of his agents. He then decides to torture Bond by drilling into his brain. Luckily, Bond has an exploding watch that allows him to escape and destroy the compound.

Returning to the UK, Bond meets up with the remains of the 00 program: M, Tanner, Q, and Moneypenny. Their goal is to dismantle the intelligence network before it is activated, and time is running out. Unfortunately, Blofeld kidnaps Swann and keeps her tied up in the old MI6 headquarters, which are rigged to blow. The former MI6 teams now has a limited amount of time to stop Blofeld, C, and SPECTRE.

So SPECTRE isn’t a bad movie. If anything, it’s biggest flaw is that it follows Skyfall. But it’s also not a great film, and I’m pretty sure it boils down to the script. Sam Mendes returns to directing, but we’re missing the fantastic cinematography of Roger Deakins, and he is sorely missed. Not to say that Hoyte van Hoytema is a bad DOP; certainly his work on Interstellar and Dunkirkwas fantastic, but there was something visually stylistic that was missing, and this film just feels like it was filmed as a normal action film.

But on to the script. There are some things taken as granted in the script that rub people the wrong way, myself included. First is that we had a build up in the first two Craig films about an organization called Quantum, that was clearly supposed to be the reboot’s version of SPECTRE at the time. And I was fine with that. It seemed to have the same goals and methods, but be updated for the 21st century. Now we learn that Quantum was really taking orders from SPECTRE this whole time. That could have been an interesting development, if it made sense. But it doesn’t. It only really seems to be done because Blofeld has an anger-boner for Bond. For the fourth movie in a rebooted franchise, having Blofeld be the evil mastermind behind all of it just because he has daddy issues is not good enough for me.

Second are the leaps in logic that serve only to move the story. I really didn’t know how Bond located White’s cabin so quickly. There’s a reference that the Pale King is actually Mr.White, and he was last spotted in some certain place, and then we cut to Bond finding this remote outpost. The average audience member might forgive this, but I found it nonsensical in how fast it happened.

Very glaring is C, played by Andrew Scott (perhaps best known as Moriarty in the BBC Sherlock series). Nobody was fooled by his betrayal, and I think the story would have been better served by this being a genuine surprise that he was working for SPECTRE. I don’t want to denigrate Scott as an actor, but I really feel that he was cast because he has such a sinister presence, not because it would service the story.

And finally is a scene at Blofeld’s Sahara compound where we get a twist on the cliché. Blofeld goes to explain his whole evil plan to Bond, but Bond just explains it to him instead. Blofeld kind of nods and smiles, and basically says “Yeah you got it.” Now, I am completely for us bypassing this cliché, but the way it was written, it seemed more like the movie was getting impatient with itself.

I don’t want to harp on the film too much, because it’s certainly far from the worst in the franchise. And although it’s easy to only focus on the things you don’t like in the movie, we shouldn’t forget the good stuff.

Right at the beginning of the film, we get a great long shot of travelling through Mexico City, which must have included some fantastic trickery, including getting on and off cranes and going through false walls. That whole opening sequence is pretty stellar. This is then paired with an unfortunate credit sequence which borders on uncomfortable the entire time. Apparently Radiohead was involved at some point to do the opening theme but this fell through. The song, “SPECTRE”, is a dark and moody piece with some moments of levity, but has a very grand and sweeping cinematic feel to it (and fits in amazingly with the “A Moon Shaped Pool” tracks they were working on at the time). The replacement, “The Writing’s On The Wall” by Sam Smith is too much for me. The verses work all right, but then he keeps hitting this painful falsetto in the chorus. Meanwhile some of the imagery is great, but then we get some nutty allusions to tentacle porn. It’s a shame, because the title sequence is always a golden opportunity to set the stage for the film.

We are given some interesting questions at this point, and that is: what is the role of the 00 program in the 21stcentury? Skyfall gave us a pretty good answer about using raw tools against advanced technology, but this film picks up that thread by asking what if the good guys have that advanced technology? Do we still need the blunt instruments? C brings up a good point – why use assassins when it’s more effective to destroy their reputation and limit their resources? Don’t make them a martyr, and instead let them fade into obscurity. Remove their power. We do see this with White. He wasn’t killed at the end of Casino Royale, while he was a powerful and influential man, and was allowed to degrade into a recluse with very little standing. Sadly, we really don’t get much discussion about this topic, as the movie goes through the same motions as the last few, wherein the blunt instrument Bond just blows everything up and wins.

Continuing on the theme of technology, watch this film against an older Bond film, and the filmmakers made a logical and interesting use of cell phones. Sometimes you’ll watch a film and if it’s an older film, you are chagrinned that so many of the issues that could be solved with a quick call on a cell phone, or if it’s a newer film you might be shouting at the screen to make a quick phone call and fix the issue. This film does not have this issue, as it uses the technology of the day appropriately.

There are a few chase sequences in this film, and those are Bond staples, but the real task was to make them interesting and compelling. And it’s successful! These were great chases with some inventive ideas, and even a way to incorporate some useful information via a phone call with Moneypenny thrown in.

My final point I want to touch on is casting, and this is the most complicated issue. Daniel Craig continues to really seize the role of Bond and own it. The screenwriters and Craig continue to develop the psychological destruction of Bond was a sure treat. After Bond has demolished the suite at the hotel, we see him devolve into a drunk just barely hanging on to sanity. He is used to being an unstoppable force, and when that doesn’t seem to be the answer, he begins to lose cohesion with his psyche. Seeing the mouse scuttle on the floor, a weak animal that lives under cover of darkness, amuses him and challenges him – especially when it gives away the location of the room. Going on with that thought, whenever we see Bond lose composure, it can make the scene gripping.

The supporting cast are mostly very good. Fiennes is an excellent M in this film, and Harris as Moneypenny has the type of relationship with Bond that we expect, in that it borders on romantic, but never gets going. But it’s more realistic than the condescending / paternal relationship that the Bond / Moneypenny relationship danced in the original run. Bautista as Mr. Hinx is brutal. As with his other roles, he conveys a real presence while on screen and his punches look like they hurt. There is a raw masculinity and physicality in his motions, and it really creates an impression. Naturally the fight scene on the train is reminiscent of the fight with Red Grant in From Russia With Love. That has to be one of the best homages.

Christoph Waltz delivers despite some pretty bad dialogue given to him. His allusion to Bond as a cuckoo chick, with him making cuckoo noises to taunt him are a little grating and not at all sinister. Where Waltz delivers is in his mannerisms and the cold in his eyes, and he has such amazing potential to really develop further as Blofeld. Again though, his character is undermined by the lackluster motivation of daddy issues.

Also, during the big SPECTRE meeting, we get a call back to previous SPECTRE members in the last run with two characters who seem to be visual callbacks to Klebb and Mr. Big. I actually had to double check IMDb to see if the characters had actually been named that.

But now for the elephant in the room: Léa Seydoux as Swann. I haven’t seen Seydoux in anything else, so I really am not qualified to give a review of her as an actor in general (although apparently she was good in Blue Is The Warmest Colour). And it is not without precedent to have a French girl in a Bond film. But there’s two ways in which her character portrayal lets the film down, and I’m not sure if its her fault or Mendes’. The first is that she has no chemistry with Craig. I don’t at any point buy their relationship, either romantically or sexually. There is no fizzle between them. There was something really serious and real with Eva Green in Casino Royale. And secondly is her stoicism with her father. I never really came away with the sense of her emotional state towards her father, and that should have been a major component of her character. She should have extremely complex feelings towards him. She should love him dearly but have an anger at him for bringing so much death and destruction into her life. It should drive her character.

Okay, so let’s break this film down.

Mission Completed?

Bond was grounded after failing to have a vacation. He received an unofficial mission near the end to stop the launch of Nine Eyes, the global intelligence network. The MI6 team really kind of did it all together to be honest.

Dastardly Scheme

So by using a subsidiary organization, Quantum, SPECTRE has been achieving two goals: one to slowly convince world governments to reconcile their intelligence services into one network, and the second to slowly convince the British government that the MI6 agency (in particular the 00 program) is obsolete and to disband it.

SPECTRE mostly succeeded, but was undermined by Blofeld’s endless pursuit of Bond.

Best Buds

The entire MI6 team stands behind Bond and helps him out whenever they can. Naomie Harris continues in her support of Bond as Moneypenny, being a reliable source of information to keep him moving. Ben Whishaw steps up as Q, going into the field to lend forensic aid to Bond, and even getting involved in a chase sequence himself. He really should be more careful out there. Bill Tanner and M also show up at the end to take a hands on approach to stop the Nine Eyes.

The Bad Guy and His Goon

I already spoke about Christoph Waltz’s cold portrayal of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, a man who uses humour to mask his insane revenge plot and obsession with having eyes everywhere. Waltz is supremely charismatic, even if some of his writing is subpar.

Dave Bautista plays Mr. Hinx, an assassin who fills a vacancy in SPECTRE for being the go-to for dispatching enemies. Again, I’m a big fan of Bautista, as each role I’ve seen him in is completely unique. He’s strong but funny in Guardians Of The Galaxy, and strong but tragic in Blade Runner 2049. I almost wish we saw more character from him here because his portrayal is just... strong and brutal?

An interesting take on a villain role is Andrew Scott as C, head of the Joint Intelligence Service, but not because of his portrayal. It’s because he is an antagonist for M, not Bond. His arc revolves around M, and the conflict is with M. It is resolved through M’s actions and confrontations. That’s a welcome addition.

Booty Snatched

Two again. The first was Sciarra’s wife, Lucia, played by Monica Bellucci. She had been a name floating around the franchise for years but only now has finally landed as a Bond girl. She’s the oldest woman cast in such a role, but you know what? It really doesn’t matter – she absolutely fits the profile. Bond gives her a contact to help her get out of the country and into safety and... hey what happened with that? Did she make it?

The second was with Swann, after they dispatch Hinx. Apparently there is no bigger turn on than barely surviving a big sweaty fight. Well...and her dress.

Baddies Dispatched

An astounding 31 killed by Bond, a strong percentage of which during his escape from the SPECTRE compound.

Gadgets Trashed

Bond dumps his car into a canal in Rome, after exhausting all the bonus options. He then hijacks a plane to chase down Swann’s kidnappers, and thoroughly demolishes it. And finally his watch explodes spectacularly. I would actually be really hesitant to wear something with that much yield on my wrist.

It Goes BOOM

Eight explosions, including an absolutely spectacular fireball in the middle of the Sahara.

You Misogynistic Pig

I realize as someone who must use every tool at his disposal to save the world, this falls in line with Bond’s objective, but it still feels really slimy that he immediately sets his sights on, follows home, and seduces Lucia on the day of her husband’s funeral.

White Man’s Burden

This is a weird one. While this film was being made, there were no such Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico as depicted in the film. It’s really reminiscent of Carnival in Brazil with Day of the Dead imagery thrown in but apparently Mexico City was so enamored with the idea of it, it’s actually become a real celebration in this manner in recent years.

Best Line

“Your word?! The word of an assassin?!” White is incredulous that Bond is promising anything, much less protecting someone.

Worst Line

“He’s everywhere – everywhere! He’s sitting at your desk, he’s kissing your lover, he’s eating supper with your family!” White, during the same scene, trying to beef up how scary a villain Blofeld is. It’s too hammy and making Blofeld sound like a metaphysical demon stalker isn’t intimidating, it’s a cartoon.

Bond Moment

During a fight scene at the clinic, one of the security guys gets up and approaches Bond. Bond gives him a look, raises his hand and says “No! Stay!” The man immediately obeys, probably seeing it’s not worth the trouble.

Special Awards:

Another Number:

Bond’s car (Aston Martin DB10) was to be reassigned to 009, who apparently has questionable tastes.

Scrooge McDuck’s Heir:

Blofeld is so rich, he has a massive compound in the middle of the Sahara desert with a fully landscaped and maintained yard, that is fully staffed with enough supplies to easily sustain at least a hundred people, with the most cutting edge technology at their disposal.

Worst Spy Ever:

When M is grilling Bond at the beginning of the movie about why Bond just blew up Mexico City, it is painfully obvious Bond is lying which forces M to ground him, hindering his objective. Bond really should have brought M in on it – the last film already established Bond could trust him.

Lately there’s been a question as to whether or not we still need to have the Bond franchise, and what it should look like. “Why can’t Bond be a black man?” some say. Others press on and say “Why can’t Bond be a woman?” And it’s really hard to argue against that when you have mediocre movies as evidence.

And that’s what this film is: an average Bond film at best. The film fails in its script and execution, but succeeds in some of its themes, acting, and quiet moments. So what do I think about radically changing the Bond franchise? I’m really against it, but hear me out.

Bond is a depiction of toxic masculinity. He’s an embodiment of it. Those who glorify him as someone to aspire to miss the point entirely. When Bond films are done well, we get the image of a man who can not hold himself together when he has time to himself. So he perpetually endangers his life. The irony is he hates his job. He drinks himself to numb his pain at having love only once, and having that love taken away from him by his work. He uses people for his ends, and his ends are the tool of a government he’s not even that attached to.

The best Bond films explore this. Even this film shows some of it, in that scene at the hotel with the mouse. Bond is a man who needs to be in control at all times, but drinks himself stupid. He is a white male because he is the worst of the white males. He’s a killer, a tool by a higher power playing by old rules, a man who does not value life, he hates every minute of it, but he will never leave it. The end of this film shows him and Swann leaving together, but that’s part of what makes this movie so unsatisfying – it’s not a logical end point and seems tacked on.

The Bond films aren’t glorifying the lifestyle; they’re a warning. At least... they should be.

2.5 / 5

#James bond #007 #spectre #blofeld #Daniel craig #mi6 #m #sam mendes #Ralph fiennes #Christoph waltz #rome #Andrew scott

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askauradonprep · 6 years

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Descendants Book Read Along - Isle of the Lost. Chapter 5

- The Sea between the Isle and Auradon is called the Sea of Serenity. Of course it is. Auradon is just the place that would have corny names like that.

- Apparently Mulan and Shang live near Aladdin and Jasmine. Disney earth is just throwing geography to the wind, clearly.

- Aurora and Philip call their castle Honeymoon Cottage, that is SO CUTE. Also it has 40 bedrooms because of course it does. They live near Charming Castle where Cinderella and Charming live. Nice.

- Rapunzel and Eugene are in the south, near the coast where Ariel and Eric live. Ariel and Eric’s kingdom is called Seaside. I am LOVING this. SO MUCH AURADON WORLD BUILDING, BE STILL MY HEART.

- They’re still calling Adam King Beast. You never live it down, I guess. Also, their library has every book that’s ever been written. Of course it does. I am so so so jealous of Belle. GIVE ME THAT LIBRARY.

- Apparently when it comes to Auradon, Adam is ‘strong and fair’. Must be nice to be Auradonian. Not that I’m bitter. Oh, wait, YES I AM. #FreetheVKs

- But yes, Beast is the high king. He’s united all the crowns under one (his own) but the others still style themselves kings and queens, so he’s definitely the high king (though really, in a case like this, he OUGHT to style himself Emperor).

- Belle and Adam are still cute <3 She calms him down and pacifies things when he gets too angry. ...So where was she when he created the Isle? And again, WHAT made them decide it was necessary. Even in Descendants, Adam doesn’t strike me as someone who would go after dead adversaries just for grins. So, again - why the Isle? Forget D3, I want a prequel!

- Ben is Christian (or at least, had a christening as a baby - apparently a fairy less one because he didn’t need gifts - he was handsome like dad, smart like mom, and apparently already a good hearted boy with a winning spirit). Yeah, sounds like Ben. Also - Ben was Captain of the tourney team.

- Okay, apparently magic isn't actually banned. Beast and Belle encouraged hard work and scholarship over relying on magic, and because he’s the high king and the most powerful man in the country, nobody chose to argue with him. Everybody’s just kinda followed that example. So no, nobody’s going to arrest Jordan or Mal or Jane for using magic occasionally. It’s not illegal. Social mores have just moved on, I guess. Magic still has its uses, but it seems to be a ‘last resort’ thing (unless you’re like Jordan). I say it’s a good idea to mostly retire magic too but not for the nonsense reason of ‘hard work trumps all’. That’s just silly. Taking the hard way to do things just because its harder isn’t inherently more ethical. If nobody gets hurt, there’s nothing wrong with using more convenient means. The reason limiting magic would be smart is because its easily abused against mortals who have no feasible way to fight back. But whatever - Auradon culture is what it is.

- “If everyone wasn’t happy ALL the time (its not as if this were HEAVEN - get a grip, people) - Okay, I laughed out loud at that part. As well the fact there’s never more than a five minute wait at the DFMV (Department of Formerly Magical Vehicles).

- Sidekicks United are disgruntled. Interesting. Wonder what’s up with them? Probably some day to day thing, since I’m sure we’d get more info if this were important. I wonder if Sidekicks United is like a union?

- Adam started training Ben to be king months in advance, including asking him to do things like lead Council meetings. THANK YOU. This is something I wondered about.

- The traditional age of ascension in Auradon is 16. I have no idea why they KEEP this tradition, since it’s no longer the age of high school graduation in Auradon.

- Beast and Belle are ready to retire, go on long cruises, get early-bird dinners, play golf (Beast) and bingo (Belle), get around to the long list of bedside reading threatening to topple Mrs. Potts when she takes their breakfast tray every morning (every book ever and breakfast in bed? So so so jealous, Belle). Geez, the book makes it sound like they’re 60 something instead of 40 something.

- Ben dreamed about walking on the Isle. I like how he says ‘the horror’ not about the Isle denizens eating rotten fruit, but because they drink their coffee black (’no cream, no sugar, no coffee cake to dip in it’ are his words). Ben, honey, PRIORITIES. I’d be more concerned about the curdled milk that can go into it! Or the potentially polluted water used to make it! Ben, come on. He falls in a ditch and Mal helps him out, but she disappears before he can catch her name. How mysterious~ Ben is an obliviously privileged little bird, isn’t he?

- The Sidekicks want more compensation for the work they do keeping Auradon running. That, plus their tendency to ‘steal the spotlight’ has me calling it - Sidekicks United is TOTALLY a union. Ben thinks they have a point, as does Beast. Beast also makes a good point about how, while its important everyone have a voice, its also important not to get drowned in all the different voices when making a decision. Beast seems a little less enthusiastic to the union than Ben is, but he also doesn’t seem outright against their complaint (although the timing of his ‘don’t get drowned in voices’ comment has me making squinty suspicious eyes at him). He also gives his advice forcefully (not necessarily rudely, but forcefully).

- Belle makes Ben more comfortable. She also says Mrs. Potts will punish Adam for raising his voice if he breaks the china. She won’t let him have warm milk or warm baths again. :P I love Mrs. Potts.

- Adam still has Beast strength and paw like hands.

- Ben is closer to his mom because he’s shy and quiet and Belle is understanding and gentle. They also like to read rather than do state building.

- Ben is very sensitive to injustice and is upset by people believing they have cause for complaint (injustice wise) in his kingdom and especially in his castle staff (many of whom sign the union petition, like Cogsworth and Lumiere)

- Also, their garden grows peas. If I’m gonna gross you out harping on the Isle’s food, I may as well let you read about Auradon’s delicious food.

- Adam assures Ben that Cogsworth and Lumiere likely aren’t truly unhappy with their bosses personally, as they’ll sign pretty much anything. He doesn’t talk about the complaints in general but seems more dismiss than Ben is. Without knowing their normal compensation and benefits and things like that, it’s hard to say, but I believe he’s likely wrong. Adam has a history of being more blind to injustice than Ben. If Ben believes the complaints are founded, and Adam hasn’t even read the report (he hasn’t) then I’m more inclined to believe Ben is right and Adam is wrong.

- That said, there are a few clear not serious (or hopefully not serious) petitions here - like one to declare every day a holiday. Lumiere and Cogsworth will sign pretty much anything to get back to work and Chip likes to make a little mischief.

- Adam actually gives a little more decent advice - listen to your people but assert your right to make the final decision. Use a gentle heart and a firm hand. Basically - be compassionate and listen, but be decisive and firm in your decisions. Not a bad piece of advice for a ruler, considering its not a democracy. Shame he couldn’t be bothered to use that philosophy for the ISLE, eh Adam?!?

- Adam still growls and whacks him on the back, which is strong enough to nearly send Ben flying. The book notes that Adam is fine to joke about himself but does not like when others make jokes about him.

- Belle tells Ben that even if Adam clearly wants him to be like his dad, they both believe he’ll be great on his own. That’s why they want him to lead the council and learn to rule. Ben doesn’t believe Adam wants him to be himself, but another “King Beast”, but Belle is reassuring. Ben swears to himself to make his father proud.

#Ask Auradon reads #isle of the lost by Melissa de la Cruz #chapter 5

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thedeanthomas · 6 years

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Expectations and Reality || AU

It’s been days. It has to have been. Dean has barely moved from the bed, ordering take away pizzas to sustain himself. He doesn’t think, all he does is sleep and zone out to Office reruns on Netflix, trying to keep himself as numb as possible so he doesn’t break down again. Shay’s Smiths t shirt is in a crumpled pile in the corner of the room, Dean had thrown it there that first morning when he’d woken up. He hits the power button on his phone and gets the dead battery icon. With a sigh, Dean rummages around for his charger, plugging it in. As soon as it gets the juice, his phone blows up with notifications he’d been ignoring. He has 18 missed called and 158 texts. He groans when he opens his texting app and sees that at least half of them have to be from his mum.

Dean hits call and throws the phone on his bed with speaker on. He tries to stay awake as his mum shouts at him for disappearing, then he comforts her dully as she weeps about some nonsense with thinking he was dead.

“You’re not alone, are you? Dean, you can’t be alone right now-“ She rambles on for several minutes, but Dean knows she’s right. His mum knows him well enough to know that that’s what he defaults to when he’s upset.

“…we’ve been praying for you Dean and…”

And at the same time she didn’t know a single thing about him.

“I’m fine mum.”

“Seamus is with you still?”

That hits him like a thousand bricks to his chest. Of course she didn’t know. Why the hell would she know. He’s supposed to be torn up over Lavender, mourning the future of married life, suffering the humiliation of being jilted-it was there, but it was nothing compared to the fog of hurt, anger, confusion that he’d spent the past 72 hours in. He’d lose Lavender a hundred times over if it meant Seamus would come back. But he can’t even begin to conceptualize how he’d explain this to his mother. He didn’t even know where she stood on gay people, not really….not that Dean was gay people. God, was Dean gay people? No. No he wasn’t. He liked women. What happened just happened because he was drunk. But that didn’t make explaining this any easier to his mom.

“Dean?”

“Yeah. Yeah he’s around. Just stepped out for a smo-food. He’s getting food.”

Dean didn’t need a cigarette lecture on top of everything else. For a few seconds, he lets himself believe it-that Shay would be showing up in his apartment with eggrolls and one of those trash magazines he read ‘ironically’, throwing himself on the couch…throwing himself on Dean….no.

“I have to go mum. Okay?”

He’d cut her off in the middle of something, but he didn’t apologize.

“Okay. Many happy returns. Namaste.”

“Yep. Ditto.”

“You call me if you need me?

He did need her. He needed her to be who she was when it was just her and him, when they were poor, when she didn’t speak with the affected uppity accent. When she knew him. When Dean could tell her anything. When she would’ve been here, waiting for him, instead of hours away tending to her perfect replacement family.

She didn’t need Dean anymore. That was the problem.

“Sure mum. Bye.”

His plans already disrupted, Dean lets his phone charge and drags himself into the shower, trying to zone out in the water, but it doesn’t work. His thoughts keep drifting to Seamus, to the large loss of him obviously, but Dean can’t quite get other thoughts out of his head. How Shay had tasted….how he’d looked when Dean had been on his knees in front of him…

Dean grunts pinches the skin on his arm to distract himself from getting hard. God. What the hell was wrong with him? He smacks the side of the shower wall and feels better when his hand starts to smart. Good. Something to feel other than fucking sad and like a fucking girl.

He gets out the shower and paces around in his towel, suddenly needing to get out. It’s eleven in the morning. Luna should be awake. Dean checks his phone. It’s…how the hell was it Thursday? Didn’t they get back on Sunday? Whatever. It didn’t matter.

“Hello?”

“Hey it’s-“

“Oh so now you can fucking call me, hmm? Come on, Thomas! We thought you died.”

Luna’s hint of an Irish accent deepens whenever she’s mad.

“No you didn’t. I live across the hall, numpty. You’ve seen lights on.”

“My point still stands. Don’t fucking do that.”

“Sorry.”

“So what have you been-“

“Want to go out tonight? You can bring Ginny if you want.”

“Er, sure. She’s got practice tonight and she usually just crashes atAngelina’s after because it’s closer, so it’ll just be you me and Shay.”

God. It stings. He wants to cry. He hates himself. He wants to punch something. A thousand more emotions hit him at once and Dean locks them away, and his voice is flat when he speaks.

“Shay isn’t coming.”

“Why?”

“I’ll be round at eight okay?”

“Dean Malcom Thomas. Talk to me.”

“I’m going back to bed, Lune. I’ll see you at eight?”

“I’m mad at you.”

“Bu I’ll see you at eight?”

“….I’ll see you at eight.”

He didn’t lie to her. Satisfied, naked, Dean falls back onto the bed. It’s hours later when his text tone pulls him out of sleep.

Luna: What the hell happened with you two?

Dean starts to type

Dean: We got drunk at the club in Greece, and we were trying to get me laid, or at least someone to make out with. Shay kissed me because we couldn’t find anyone, and then I kissed him. Then we sucked each other off. Then he fucked me. And I liked it. Then he left me. Then I got drunk and called him a whore when he came back and I don’t think he’s ever going to talk to me again-ok?

He hits the backspace button so fast his phone glitches for a second. Then he types again.

Dean: had a massive blow up. I think we’re done. Shay hasn’t talked to me since. And I don’t care.

Luna: Yes you do.

Dean: Sure. Look, I just want to get drunk and find a girl tonight, okay? Can we focus on that?

Luna sends him an excessive amount of the eye roll emojis, and the rest of the afternoon passes in the same haze he’d been living in. Around 7, Dean takes the time to pick out his clothes carefully, settling on a royal blue sport coat, white button up and dark jeans. He expects Luna to berate him for his outfit choice, but when he knocks on her door, it flies open and her arms are around him instantly. Dean would normally resist, pull away even, but he just accepts the affection, gently hugging her back. He’d forgotten how nice human contact could be.

“What was that for?” He asks as he lets her go. Dean tries to smile at her but he knows it looks fake.

“You needed it, mate. After everything that happened.”

“I told you. I don’t care about Shay.”

Luna raises an eyebrow.

“I was talking about Lavender.”

Dean looks away from her.

“Oh. Right. Well I’ve ordered a car it should be here so-“

“Right.”

Luna stands next to him at the bar. They’re about three shots in.

“You look hot by the way.” She says this as she plays with the lapel on his jacket. The compliment surprises Dean and he smiles at her for real this time.

“Really?”

She rolls her eyes.

“Yes, Thomas. If I wasn’t with someone, I’d pity fuck you.”

He laughs, and she does too. He’d asked her for that once, when he was really drunk the first year of Uni and it’d turned into a sort of in joke. Dean takes a long swig of his beer.

“So….you on your own in the apartment?”

Dean won’t ask about him. Not directly. Luna nods.

“Shay hasn’t been round, no. Asked me to tell him when you were going to be out.”

He ignores that and how much that hurts.

“So Gin isn’t moving in?”

“Er….no. She can’t afford it. Neither can I really, on my own. If I can’t find someone I might have to move.”

That surprises Dean. They hardly live anywhere extravagant. Dean preferred it that way, though Lavender had been harping him to move somewhere nicer after the wedding. He didn’t need much, not really, and even though his stepdad always paid for everything, Dean didn’t like to take advantage of that, even when he should. An idea pops into his head before he can stop himself.

“Let me.”

Luna scoffs, not understanding.

“What, drunkie?”

Dean grabs her hand.

“Its er-partially my fault you don’t have a roommate now, and it’s definitely my fault you lost your first one at least. Let me pay your rent. Please. It’ll make me feel better.”

Luna laughs.

“You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met, you know that?”

Dean throws his arms out in front of him.

“What?”

“You’re going to sugar daddy my lesbian relationship because you feel bad?”

“Yeah.”

“And you don’t see what’s weird about that?”

Luna does another one of the shots set in front of them.

“Only you saying the word ‘daddy’.”

Luna chokes on the shot and coughs, glaring at him. Dean pats her back.

“Sorry, mate.”

“You should be.”

He flags the bartender for water before turning towards her again.

“So will you let me or no?”

She raises her eyebrows.

“You serious? This isn’t just drunk Dean talking?”

Dean thrusts his arms forward and dramatically mimics a sobriety test.

“I’m not that drunk. But I am that serious.”

“Dean!”

She presses a kiss to his cheek.

“Normally I wouldn’t let you…but god, I want to live with my girlfriend. Ooh. Sorry.”

Luna’s eyes grow large as she realizes what she’s said. Dean shrugs.

“Don’t be. But I’m serious. Seriously.”

Luna’s face breaks out into a grin.

“I’m gonna go call her and tell her the good news. Also…” She jerks her head slightly to the right. “It’s looking like I’ll see you in the morning. Let me know if you need clean up crew.”

Dean laughs as she walks away. He sips on his beer for maybe 30 seconds before new company joins him.

She’s gorgeous. He hates himself for noticing how similar she looks to Lavender, but this girl’s hair is cropped short and her lips are fuller. She smiles at him and Dean notices her eyes are a lot kinder than Lav’s hand been in years.

“Hi.”

She’s American. That surprises him.

“Hi.”

“Um…was that your girlfriend?”

She’s bold. Drunkenly bold, she glances over at her group of friends and they all giggle. Dean smiles, feeling anticipation build in his stomach.

“No. Not at all. She’s on her way to call her girlfriend.”

“Oh. Great. I’m Rowan.”

“Dean.”

“Hi Dean.” She smiles, getting just a touch closer to him.

“Hi.”

“You can buy me a drink now, if you want.”

Dean laughs.

“Well I think I want to, but it depends on something.”

“Hmm?”

“Are you as fun as you are pretty?”

She blushes but laughs.

“Definitely.”

“Then, definitely.”

Rowan’s lips tickle his neck as Dean fumbles with his keys in the doorway.

“You live alone?”

She says this between kisses, sucking a hickey on his neck.

“….yeah.”

They open the door and Dean barely gets it shut behind him before Rowan’s all over him. She’s practically climbing the front of him, and Dean takes the hint, lifting her up easily. She’s so little, she about the same shape as someone else who had recently wrapped his legs around Dean’s waist. A groan escapes him at the memory, and Rowan smiles against his lips. Dean grabs her jean covered ass as they walk into the bedroom, and when Dean falls back onto the bed, he gropes her breasts through her blouse. As Rowan gets settled on top of him, Dean’s hands run up the back of it and undo her bra, slipping his hands up through the front of her shirt after. She moans into his mouth as his thumbs graze her nipples and Dean bites her bottom lip in return. He massages her breasts as she undoes the buttons on his shirt, and he moves his arms to pull off his jacket and shirt. Rowan pulls her own shirt off, flinging her bra aside, and Dean tries not to show disappointment. He liked undressing women, the moment of anticipation just before you get to see her...it’s like magic. He notices her pale chest is dotted with beauty marks, and it’s endearing. He traces a finger over one of them and she shivers.

Rowan climbs onto his lap and kisses him greedily, gyrating against him as she kisses down his neck again. Dean pushes back up towards her, moaning, but uh....

It’s not working. He’s only half hard. And Dean knows Rowan notices.

“Sorry, ‘m a little drunk.”

He says this against her lips and she smiles.

“I can fix that. Lay back.”

Her telling him what to do does make his hips twitch.

“You don’t have to...”

She pushes him on his back and starts kissing down his neck, down his chest, and she sucks a hickey on his hip before answering.

“I want to, yeah? I bet your dick is huge.”

She’s trying to be sexy, but it just makes feel gross to have her talk to him like that-still, Dean grins at her as she starts to take off his pants and briefs, watching, propped up on his elbows.

“You American girls are different, yeah?”

She licks a stripe on the underside of his cock and smiles at the immediate effect of it.

“Oh, you have no idea, baby.”

Baby.

Dean groans again at the memory of Seamus instead of what Rowan is doing to him now. It’s just dark enough and her hair is short and dark-Dean’s mind slips easily back to Greece, to Shay calling him baby-Shay swallowing all of him .Rowan’s pace is quicker and...wetter, but it works. Dean closes his eyes and loses himself, growing harder and harder until--

“Do you have a condom?”

“Nightstand.”

He stays on his back as she goes to find one, giving his cock a few pumps with her hand before she puts it on him. He feels himself soften at her touch but he thinks of Shay and fixes his problem. God, what the fuck was his problem? This absolutely stunning girl absolutely desperate for him, sucking him off, and Dean has to think about getting fucked by his best friend to stay hard?

Maybe...maybe he liked men.

It’s the first time he lets himself think that, really, soberly and truthfully, and Dean knows its true. He wasn’t not attracted to Rowan, it was just-there was a large part of him, larger than he’d known actually, that wanted to be taken care of. Used. Praised. And he wanted a man-Seamus preferably, but he’d bungled that quite nicely-to do that to him.

If only he hadn’t had this realization with a woman on his lap. Rowan’s trying to fuck herself on his cock, but it’s not going to happen-and they both know it.

“Dean?”

“Can you uh-can you get off of me?”

She does, looking at him strangely.

“You okay?”

Dean breaks eye contact, looking over the side of the bed for his underwear

“I uh--no. Sorry. I think you should go.”

She makes a noise of surprise.

“Seriously?”

Is she annoyed? Dean glances at her. She’s definitely annoyed. In the light from his lamp that he’s turned on, she’s not nearly as pretty as she looked in the bar. Though that might be her personality.

“....yeah.”

“You won’t even like, go down on me or something? I only have two more nights in London.”

That annoys him.

“Am I a tourist attraction?”

She ignores him, putting her clothes back on in a huff.

“Thanks for nothing.”

“Anytime.”

That pisses her off.

“What, are you gay or something?”

“I-”

Dean laughs, even though it’s not funny.

“I think so, actually. Yeah.”

She walks away,not looking back, but Dean doesn’t care. For once, someone was leaving because it was what he wanted. Dean could get used to getting what he wanted. When he hears his front door slam, he grabs his phone,opens his messages with Shay and starts to type.

Dean: I’m sorry. I miss you. I want you

He hits delete.

Dean: I just tried to fuck a girl and all I could think about was you

Delete

Dean: will you come over and fuck me? we don’t even have to look at each other.

Delete

Dean: I just want to kiss you again.

That’s it. That’s whats so brilliantly pathetic about all of this. Dean wants affection, tenderness, softness from Shay. The opposite of everything he deserves. He deletes the message from his phone and closes it. He sighs and falls back onto the pillows after pulling his briefs back on, glad Rowan left him alone with his thoughts. Even if he can’t get what he wants, at least Dean can get some sleep. Despite it all, he smiles slightly to himself. He was right-picking up a girl did make him feel a little better. Just not in the way he had expected.

#drabble #:/#luna #rowan #seamus #au

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thebibliomancer · 7 years

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #158: When Avengers Clash!

April, 1977

What is not immediately evident is that we are facing another change in the creative team.

Steve Englehart was kicked off the book after #150. After that, Gerry Conway took over with an assist by Jim Shooter in #151 and #156. With this issue, Jim Shooter takes over until #177, a little after he becomes Editor-in-Chief.

And its another rough transition.

I don’t actually remember being a huge fan of Shooter’s Avengers on my first read through so I’ll see if that holds up. But in this issue at least, we get off to a semi-rocky start.

Last time: Wonder Man came back to life, causing non-ending angsts in the Vision right when he was feeling good about himself and his capacity for emotions. Also, a metaphor in the shape of a stone statue of Black Knight beat up the team but punched itself to death against Vision.

This time: Some continuity hiccups.

We start off with the Vision staring moodily, as he is wont to do, but specifically at the broken statue of Black Knight.

The heap of broken statue is a lot more recognizable as specific body parts then it was last time but it does make for a more striking visual. Also, Statue Knight is staring into my soul and its not okay.

Wonder Man walks into the room supporting Scarlet Witch, both in costume. Which is one of those continuity hiccups because they were both already in the room in a pile of defeated heroes and also not in costume.

So I have to believe that they left while Vision was ‘fighting’ Statue Knight specifically to get changed and then came back, instead of helping.

But seeing Wonder Man supporting Wanda is just too much for Vision. He angrily announces that because of Wonder Man he has already relinquished his foolish delusions of humanity and will soon relinquish his wife BECAUSE A ROBOT HAS NO RIGHT TO ONE but hey until he does, hands off.

And then he punches Wonder Man for copping a friendly demeanor.

Also, I notice he hasn’t consulted Wanda with this. Which just goes to show that maybe he’s the most human of all because real human men similarly disregard her emotions and wants and needs.

Its a wonder she didn’t murder them all sooner.

Anyway, so now they’re fight.

Even though Wonder Man was knocked out by a mailbox last time, it will take more than a single punch and also SOLAR BEAM to take him down this time. He’s apparently getting his strength back and also he’s tired of getting knocked out by cheap shots so much.

He tries to tackle Vision but, y’know, intangible.

Except Vision apparently has the human emotion of shit talking because he decides that he’ll humble Wonder Man on his own terms instead of just remaining untouchably intangible.

Of course, even if he’s diamond hard, Wonder Man can just knock him off his feet by attacking the ground.

Its fine, Tony will pay for it.

Speaking of the cool exec with a heart of steel, he comes to underneath the computer bank that Black Knight tipped over on top of him.

Because apparently Shooter skimmed the previous issue?

Because Iron Man was one of the heap of heroes that should already be in the room where Wonder Man and Vision are fighting.

But I’ll try not to harp on it too much.

Back to the fight where Vision continues to ignore Wanda’s desires by exchanging blows with Wonder Man even as she insists that they cut it out.

I guess he gets tired of punching a fellow tough customer about the chest because he tries to go for his insta-win sure fire finishing move and fists Wonder Man through the chest.

But Wonder Man is able to resist the pain and punches Vision in the face.

He’s not the only one that the sure fire fizzled on but I think it usually just doesn’t work at all rather than ‘I say that hurts like the dickens -pawnch-’

The rest of the heroes that should already be in the room show up and Scarlet Witch begs one of them to stop this nonsense.

But Iron Man goes “Let’s just let them fight it out!” but stops just short of suggesting they bet on the outcome.

Tony. Geez. I know they have to work out their issues but a) this is probably not the most productive way? and b) they’re liable to cause a lot of damage to your home before they finish.

Okay. I know the theory is that they have to get it out of their system but guess what? IT DOES NOT WORK. They have this exact same fight again during the Busiek era and eventually have to use their words to clearly express what their thoughts and feelings are, instead of their fists. Because frequently, words work better than fists in the very specific field of robo-angst.

In one of the few times its a disadvantage to be a robot instead of an ionically enhanced human, Vision’s solar batteries are running low while Wonder Man is just getting fired up.

In desperation, Vision drains his solar batteries even faster by using SOLAR BEAM right at Wonder Man’s face.

It’s SUPER EFFECTIVE!

But even though this apparently hurt worse than anybody ever hurt him before (even worse than dying!), Wonder Man has enough juice to BWA-AM Vision.

And now that both heroes have knocked the shit out of each other and are too shaky on their feet to continue, now Iron Man tells them to cut it out.

And now that he has only now decided it was a problem, he scolds Wonder Man for breaking the mansion even though he’s a guest.

Oh and he also tells Vision to act like a man or man-shaped robot instead of a child. Or you’re grounded, mister.

And now that the fight is over, Jarvis shows up to make them all feel bad. He also took the time after waking up from a stone cold beating to put on some fresh clothes but also he fielded an emergency call and told them they were shit out of luck because the Avengers were dealing with personal biz.

Also, are they expecting him to sweep up the stone gentleman or should he call a morgue?

Jarvis’ ploy, if it were that and I’m not simply making up motives, works. Because Iron Man can’t believe that they’ve gotten to the point where they’re turning people away to wallow in their own troubles.

Which might but then again might not be fair. How long did you watch Vision and Wonder Man punch each other?

Before that they were unconscious because a statue beat them up and before that it was Christmas damnit. Can’t they have just one quiet day?? Also, is it still Christmas? They never mention it again. I think they were unconscious through the entire holiday.

But, yeah, obviously just sitting back and watching Vision and Wonder Man beat each other up instead of literally any other thing was a bad decision and you should feel bad, Iron Man.

Meanwhile, we finally get to the plot of the issue.

Because apparently! Vision and Wonder Man’s tension coming to a head? Wasn’t enough of a plot!?

I’d usually discuss this at the end but here goes:

This issue, if it was going to have Vision and Wonder Man punching each other in the head because of Vision’s poor ability to both communicate and deal effectively with his emotions, should have been just about that.

And if the fight was only going to be part of the issue before moving onto something else, that something else should have been thematically connected. As it is, this issue feels disjointed.

It feels like Shooter felt obliged to wrap up this plot thread before moving onto stuff he’d rather write about.

And dang will I have small, mostly neutral comments to say about the stuff Shooter would rather write about. Later. After we’ve seen a couple examples.

So the plot happens in Canada because Marvel Canada is a fascinatingly terrible den of evil, worse than a thousand Mos Eisleys. Specifically a research community in the Canadian Rockies called Research City because scientists are bad at naming the things, some of the times.

And the worst scientist has taken over this research hamlet (it has fewer than ten buildings, it is not a city).

Frank Hall.

And he is nettled because one of the other scientists has disobeyed orders and tried to contact the outside world and request the Avengers’ help.

That is not how we do in Research Commonwealth, JOSEPH.

Just for that, Frank Hall is taking the entire community off the map. TRY TO SNEAK OUT NOW, JOSEPH.

And then he crushes Joseph with kirby krackle.

Not to death but enough that Joseph’s wife Judy begs Frank Hall to stop hurting him.

Frank does not take it well. He gets some real squinty eye face going on for reasons that will be revealed later. But he doesn’t kill Joseph. Just has him taken away and locked up.

Because he just had a wonderful, awful idea.

Which is him beating up the Avengers.

He just now realized that he could become a supervillain instead of being a tinpot bully dictator of a small research community.

...

Frank Hall has sort of limited ambitions considering his scope of power.

Also, he forces Judy to make him a supervillain suit.

Its not specified whether she made it to his exact specifications or spitefully made it to make him look like a prat but he kinda does.

Oh also his backstory: It is every backstory ever about a scientist fucking up science so hard that he becomes a supervillain.

Except slower.

He was working on a teleport beam, doubled the power to see what would happen, and accidentally gave himself gravity powers.

Instead of immediately going megalomaniacal, he at first used his powers to throw stuff at people’s heads. Because, as mentioned, Frank Hall is a petty prick.

But then people started to shun him, because he kept throwing stuff at their heads.

So he proved their impressions of him correct by seizing control over the entire not-city and pushing people around.

And that’s why Frank Hall, Graviton, is the worst.

Also, he’s an entitled, harassing bastard.

Remember how he got angry that Judy didn’t want Joseph to be hurt? It was because he decided that he deserves her. Because she’s his fave.

She’s a bit distracted even though he’s all touching up on her face though because behind his back she noticed the Avengers standing outside the window watching this whole thing with evident disgust.

So she does the thing that everyone does in such a situation and unconvincingly goes “tell me more” but Frank Hall is an entitled idiot bastard and falls for it.

Not that it matters.

Because another woman, Raquel, who was jealous of Judy, bursts in and announces that the Avengers are RIGHT BEHIND YOU.

And the gig is up so the Avengers dramatically fly through the window.

(Attack instead of Assemble? Whats the deeeeeal??)

Things immediately go to hell.

Graviton smashes Vision into the ground with gravity and then blows the rest of the Avengers away with anti-gravity. Because sure.

Vision increases his mass to max mass to max his muscles but Graviton just makes him weightless and flings him through the roof.

Clearly, it is time to pull out the big gun.

Cap readies his mighty shield because he knows that when he flings his mighty shield all who oppose his shield must yield. But Graviton saw through that ploy and increase the mass of the shield.

Now Cap is opposing the mighty shield and must yield. By getting crushed.

Although what kind of posture were you in, Cap, where your shield getting super heavy all of a sudden made you fall backwards with it on top of you instead of just dropping it?

Meanwhile, Judy tries to run away because honestly, wouldn’t you? And Raquel beans her in the back of the head with a vase maybe. Because Raquel is not a great person. Also, this will be important later.

Iron Man and Scarlet Witch attempt to blast Graviton but he just... gravities the floor up so that it blocks the... attack...

I don’t think Graviton knows what gravity is.

He says he made the section of the floor lighter than helium so that it would rise up to protect him but. It was still connected to other floor that was not lighter than helium.

Also, remember when Scarlet Witch’s powers had evolved so she had control over natural forces.

Bet those would come in handy here instead of just shooting generic energy. Alas. The thread has been lost.

Anyway, Graviton condenses some floor fragments into a super-dense sphere and hucks it at the two heroes.

Because armor is better than not armor in this scenario, Iron Man shields Scarlet Witch from the sphere but they both get knocked out anyway.

Although at least her head is still head shaped and not salsa.

Wasp and Yellowjacket try their patented and recently useless Fly Around While Tiny And Annoy Someone battle technique but Graviton knocks them out with a pencil.

It sure is exciting watching those two consistently be useless. =\

Finally, since its just the two of them left, Beast and Wonder Man rush Graviton together but he just drops the ceiling on them. While boasting about how he wishes there were more Avengers because of how easy this is. Womp womp.

Anyway the Avengers are now all defeated. Even Vision. Who we last saw crashing through the ceiling while weightless and also at his maximum density so something like that shouldn’t be enough to knock him out?

Maybe the ceiling was made of mailbox.

And okay. This kind of stomp happens to the Avengers sometimes and with increasing frequency in the near future. But at least Graviton’s backstory had him dicking with his powers for a while before using them in a fight.

Imagine how embarrassing it would be if he were pulling off this kind of nonsense after having just woken up from a coma and never practicing his powers.

Anyway, now nothing can stop him probably and he’ll rule the world possibly.

And Raquel smugly thinks that she’ll rule it at his side because she has some issues she needs to work though.

Next time: More of this. YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE HOW GRAVITON IS DEFEATED probably.

Hey, you should follow @essential-avengers. Why? When I get twenty followers, I’ll do a bonus post where I look at some Alternate Avengers. Avengers from the future? From when mangas roamed the Earth? Or from an alternate universe? Up to you!

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u-dont-care-kms-blog · 7 years

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The last leaf

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account! So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony." At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted. That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places." Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house. One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, grey eyebrow. "She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?" "She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue. "Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?" "A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind." "Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten." After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime. Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep. She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature. As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside. Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward. "Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "seven", almost together. Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks. "What is it, dear?" asked Sue. "Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now." "Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie." "Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?" "Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self." "You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too." "Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the shade down." "Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly. "I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves." "Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves." "Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back." Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above. Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker. Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings. "Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy." "She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet." "You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes." Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock. When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade. "Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper. Wearily Sue obeyed. But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground. "It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time." "Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?" But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed. The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves. When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised. The ivy leaf was still there. Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove. "I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook." And hour later she said: "Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples." The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left. "Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. "With good nursing you'll win." And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable." The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and care now - that's all." And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all. "I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colours mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."

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