#heres Chris's human and demon designs!

[reallyromealone]

can i ask for part 2 of demon daddy the yuri on ice fic then? :o

-🐸

Title: paranormal christmas

Fandom: Yuuri on ice

Characters: you ensemble

Fic type: fluff

Pairings: Viktor x yuuri

Warnings: male reader, reader insert, child male reader, demon au

Notes: ✨

Summary: Yuuri and Viktor plan a Christmas party where human and paranormal meet... It surprisingly goes well.

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Viktor cooed at his little pack of humans, (name) resting against the couch without a care in the world while watching some show that made absolutely no sense to the demon. His Yuuri was watching study videos of himself and what he did during the last skating match... Writing notes about the mistakes.

The house was decorated to the brim, Yuuri mentioning how (name) loved western Christmas and the Japanese man always made sure the house looked like Christmas threw up on it.

It had been five months since Viktor was summoned into the humans lives, (name) took to him immediately and began following him around almost as much as he followed Yuuri though the second Yuuri came into the room; Viktor meant nothing to the boy.

"Do you have anyone you wanna invite for Christmas?" Yuuri asked after taking his notes and Viktor hummed "demons don't typically celebrate such a holiday... Though my friends would try and celebrate the day I was forged from the bowels of hell..." Yuuri took a second to process it before realizing "your birthdays Christmas!?" The demon shrugged "it was just a reason for them to cause even more mischief than usual..."

"You should invite them! We can have a birthmas!" Yuuri was rarely this excited, usually keeping his cool "you want to have my friends over... Yuuri you're aware they're demons right?"

"So are you and you haven't hurt me"

"Not unless you a--""tiny ears Viktor"

"Well... I'll see if their willing" Yuuri beamed at this, excited that his woopsie boyfriend was bringing his friends, Yuuri's human friends would be attending and all of them were skaters...

God he knew this was going to be a mess.

Viktor watched his mate get everything prepared, Christmas foods and a birthday cake sitting on the kitchen table, a mirror design with white and blue marble effect, fruits and such decorating it with a happy birthday sign stabbed in.

"Yuuuuri!" Pitchits voice called out while entering the apartment, holding gifts and such "whose ready to celebrate and then when my god sons asleep we get wasted!"

Yuuri rolled his eyes playfully when the man placed alcohol on the kitchen table, some mixers and juice boxes for (name) who recognized the box and immediately smacked his god dad's leg "peeese!" He yelled out, bouncing a bit from excitement and after the nod of approval the boy was given a box of juice with the straw stabbed in "ank yuuu!" He said happily and ran out into the livingroom to see Viktor, the Alpha waiting for his friends arrivals.

"Hello, little bunny" Viktor lifted him up and sat him in his lap "are you excited?" (Name) Nodded and sipped his drink, he wasn't sure why he was excited but everyone else was so therefore he was also excited.

Viktor could sense his friends before they even made it to the door, setting little (name) on the ground to go answer "bonjour~" Chris said happily with a bakery box and gifts "Yurio is just grabbing something~" the blond said happily and Emil popped his head from behind "I brought Seung-gil!" He dragged him closer "Sara and George will be here withing the next fifteen~"

Yuuri walked into the Entrance hall, confused at the noise but offered a kind smile to the demons in disguise, Chris offering a flirty grin "hello~"

"Chris, he's mine" Viktor hissed and the other fake cried "tragic...." Then his eyes moved towards the tiny human, (name) already finished his juice box and looking at them curiously... Specifically their foreheads "baabaa!" He pointed and Chris chuckled nervously, forgetting children so young can see spirits.

Ding!

"Oh! That's the food, come in come in!"

Yuuris friends came not long after, Otabek and Michele walking in, causing the demons to halt at the Italian "angel..." Chris grumbled much to Pitchets confusion and Michele glared at him but put a forced smile "my, I didn't know Yuuri had such... Interesting friends"

"I'm friends of Viktor actually"

"I see"

"Oi! Old man, where do you want this crap?!"

"Yura! Child present!" Viktor hissed at Yuri who grumbled things that little ears couldn't hear.

Yuuri was giddy while everyone mingled and chatted, Viktor holding his hips while he puttered "darling, enjoy your party" he said softly, ignoring how Chris was laying the moves on Pitchit and (name) was surprisingly being an excellent wingman for Yuri seeing as Otabek loved kids, especially his best buddy (name).

"I have to get the pie out..." Yuuri grumbled with no bite and Viktor took his hands and led him out into the party where everyone chatted happily and (name) was chilling with his god dad, looking a little sleepy on the Thai man's shoulder while he chatted away with Sara. "Papa..." (Name) Reached to Yuuri who took his son gently and kissed his head "domestic surprisingly suits you" George said casually while Yuri looked his brother up and down "Yura, meet my mate and son"

"They're human"

"Yes they are"

"The human is friends with an angel"

Viktor sighed at the blond and (name) looked over at his step uncle and gave a little wave "Kibby" he mumbled before letting out a yawn "I better put this one to bed, he had his fill of fun and turkey"

Yuuri brought (name) to his nursery, the room dark and quiet and changed the boy into his footie pajamas and brought him to his crib "I love you baby" Yuuri whispered and (name) yawned and the turkey slowly kicked in.

Yuuri walked out and watched his loved ones and new friends interact, who knew alcohol made people actually get along and with a few guests it was more than a simple getting along.

"And Viktor..." Yuuri whispered to the silver haired demon who hummed "Yes?"

"When they leave... I have a special Christmas gift for you... It's red, small and has minimal fabric"

"Can I please kick them out now?"

"Absolutely not" Yuuri walked off to talk to Otabek and Viktor growled and followed.

It would be a long night.

[gh0stofstarman]

A Ramble about X-Men

I’m a pretty big Marvel comics fan. I’ve had a Marvel Unlimited Subscription since the pandemic and I’ve pretty much run the gamut of heroes. Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl, Fantastic Four, Peter Parker Spider-Man, Spider-Gwen, Miles Morales Spider-Man, Spider-Girl, Quasar, Thor, Eternals, Hawkeye, Howard the Duck, What if?, Deadpool, I could go on forever. And I can pick a run for each of these characters that I specifically clicked with a certain author and the themes they chose.

Except X-Men.

Which is ironic, because I love the X-Men shows, the characters, their major themes, their designs, their movies. Heck it’s not like I haven’t read most of Claremont’s run and beyond.

But I’ve never had a run that actually fully clicked with me, and I kinda wanted to ramble about why. No idea if this will be a series or whatever.

Chris Claremont

Admittedly I’ve never really been one to seek out every single spinoff of a series so most of my experience with the “golden age” of X-Men is with the mainline Uncanny X-Men rather than stuff like the New Mutants. I know it’s sacrilege in some circles not to go in full chronological order with the spinoff series bouncing between but I’m just not that way.

Anyways while Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created the blueprint for what would define X-Men on a fundamental level, Chris Claremont would be the author who made the heroes popular. Storm, Colossus, Wolverine, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Banshee … Sunfire, Thunderbird … okay not all of them stuck. But Claremont would write iconic stories that are beloved and I love as well such as the OG Giant Size X-Men comic, Proteus, Days of Future Past, God Loves, Man Kills, and the Dark Phoenix Saga. Stuff that truly gets to the heart of the X-Men fighting against discrimination and hate, proving they deserve a chance to live as they want.

Then that should settle it! I like Chris Claremont, then! These are the most iconic storylines that means I love the most iconic incarnation of the X-Men.

Not really.

Chris Claremont founded a lot of good ideas that would be the springboard used by other authors in years to come. But it’s not as though his stint was as brief as Lee/Kirby or Roy Thomas.

16 years.

And most of what I mentioned is spread far across the first 8.

So what about the bits in-between?

Well, if I had to describe the majority of Claremont’s writing as X-Men outside of these storylines is that it’s kinda a roulette wheel.

This was back in the day where you had to have some bonkers concepts to hook the reader in. Vampires, sci-fi tech, aliens, gods, demons, etc. And most of the time Chris chose a random one to analyze the X-Men under and reevaluate how they can be used for the X-Men’s explicit purpose of fighting against discrimination and promoting equality and diversity.

Which often leads to those aforementioned storylines where they build on this very well. X-Men vs Televangelism does go out into creating weird devices to mind control people but it’s all in service to the team’s message. The bad future the sentinels create in Days of Future Past can easily be seen as a dystopian future where discrimination is normalized.

However sometimes Chris can’t help himself and adds more layers of insanity to the plot, to the point the message kinda gets lost in the mix.

Here’s an example.

X-Men go mysteriously missing, only for Beast to find them working at a circus freak show. Interesting. Leads back to the idea of them being demoralized and treated as freaks rather than real people.

Beast does some snooping around, finding that Magneto is the mastermind behind this. Perhaps he’s trying to humiliate the X-Men and get them to give up their hope for equality seeing how humanity makes fun of them while also getting revenge because he’s the bad guy.

They fight Magneto but are bested in combat. It’s then revealed that Magneto, after being turned into a baby in a previous comic did want revenge, so he took the X-Men to his Antarctic base to … mentally regress them into babies and torture them with a nanny bot.

Huh?

And I’d be lying if I said this sort of weird progression isn’t a repeating theme.

X-Men go to space to fight aliens; makes sense because all the other heroes were fighting aliens so they gotta prove they’re on the level. Alien fighting leads into them meeting Xenomorph-like aliens that slowly transform the X-Men into them; drama is created. X-Men escape but still are transforming, so Storm befriends a space whale and then becomes one to cure everyone; buh?!?!

Like I feel like some of these stories increase the insanity progressively but they go a little step too far. Sometimes it’s just out of nowhere like when demons kidnap the X-Men even though they were never hinted before to care about them, and somehow age up Magik to an adult. Or just Storm becomes a vampire suddenly even though last issue there was nothing even slightly referencing vampires.

It’s kind of a curse because X-Men is constantly trying to get bigger and bigger under Claremont but sometimes you’d prefer it just to take it slow and get back to the more straight forward connections to fighting oppression and discrimination.

Ironically it causes me to appreciate the more mundane moments that aren’t trying to be huge plot twists one on top of each other. Stuff like Kitty Pryde and Storm hanging out, going to Japan and getting to know Wolverine better, Nightcrawler trying to socialize more, and just Beast’s witty banter.

But even that can be a little fumbled at times because well,

Chris Claremont is a straight white guy.

And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But you can tell he has hang-ups trying to write about race or women because he doesn’t really have those experiences. Therefore, sometimes when he tries to write soliloquies and romances (which is pretty common), sometimes it can fall flat because of his perspective.

There is a lot of romance and relationship drama in X-Men, which is understandable and needed for the narrative. But so much becomes either bland, unintentionally problematic, or just too brief to make any true impact.

I’d say the biggest exception is Jean/Cyclops because they’ve been established for years and it’s very clear they care about each other. However, Jean dies in Dark Phoenix (at least that was the intent of the time) so a lot of the time the series bounces between other couples.

He later meets and then marries Madelyne Pryor, who is noted to look nearly identical to Jean. However that just makes things awkward as Madelyne often plays the role of “Not-Jean.” It at least has an interesting through line of him working through his grief, but little time is actually given for Madelyne’s own agency to break out of “Not-Jean,” which makes it really awkward when it’s revealed she’s a clone of Jean and Jean was alive all this time. So … what was the point?

Charles Xavier has so many love interests but often times he comes off as a jerk. Moira MacTaggart, Liliandra … even at one point Jean herself but everyone buries this for good reason. He comes off as very manipulative both to his partner and the X-Men. Charles is very unsympathetic to Moira’s predicament in raising Proteus. Liliandra he’s willing to bend over backwards for even if it means that he’s breaking his own morals in the process. And we don’t talk about Jean. However this would mostly be used by other authors to analyze how good of a leader Charles is, and more of his flaws. Meanwhile, Chris Claremont normalizes his behavior and rarely calls him out on it.

Colossus and Kitty Pryde.

What can I say about them? Colossus is an adult, Kitty Pryde is still a kid. It’s gross, but Chris wants you to really know they love each other more than a brother-and-sister relationship would. And they even point out it’s creepy, yet they still do it anyways.

Wolverine is entirely a whole other can of worms that I could write about separately.

Ironically some of the relationships that aren’t confirmed because of the times but are implied like Mystique and Destiny or Storm and Stevie are actually a lot better and written with much more nuance. However again nothing is confirmed and could be left to interpretation such as with Storm and Stevie. After all they do try to pair up these characters in straight couples … problematically but still.

Ultimately I feel like Claremont does have a lot of good ideas but the execution of them is where the ball is dropped. I would never call his run bad but I’ve never really felt compelled to return to it. I can’t deny the impact it’s made by any measure. However, returning to the originals just makes you wonder, how did some of this lead to Claremont’s X-Men being held up as an absolute gold standard comic?

I don’t know this was a long rant and I dunno if I’ll do it again. If you liked this let me know

[cherry-valentine]

Winter 2023 Anime Season

Here’s what I’m watching:

Buddy Daddies is easily my favorite new show this season. Following a pair of skilled but unlucky hitmen (Kazuki and Rei) who end up taking in and attempting to raise a little girl they just orphaned (Miri), the show is primarily a comedy. The humor mostly comes from watching two people who are woefully ill equipped to deal with a child having to work through the day to day challenges of caring for a little girl, from finding a good daycare to figuring out how to dress her. These mundane objectives are made hilarious through the lens of these guys being literal assassins. They go from shootouts to making dinner for their daughter. The show also sneaks in some truly heartwarming moments, as well as truly traumatic ones. Both Kazuki and Rei have tragic backgrounds that explain why they can’t just abandon Miri. The relationship between the two men is fun and interesting. While a lot of viewers are hoping for a romance between them, I just don’t see it happening. So far I’ve yet to see a single hint that the story will go that direction. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see it, but I’m afraid there’s going to be a lot of disappointed fans at the end of the season. Other than that, the show has decent animation and excellent character designs (Just look at Rei when he’s in assassin mode. Just. Look. At. Him.), as well as fun peppy music. The series overall is just super watchable. There’s not a moment in any episode that I’m not entertained. Highly recommended.

The Tale of Outcasts follows a young orphan girl named Wisteria who can see a powerful demon named Marbas, a rare ability among humans. Marbas is immortal, very old, and very bored, so he decides to take Wisteria along with him to travel around the country, meeting other demons along the way as well as avoiding powerful demon hunters sent by the church to destroy him, one of them being Wisteria’s long lost older brother Snow. This show is a bit more light hearted and mild than I expected at first. It does have serious or darker moments, but overall the stakes don’t feel incredibly high at any given time. The charm of this story centers on the relationship between Wisteria and Marbas. Both care very much for each other, and thankfully (so far) the age difference prevents it from becoming a romance. If anything, Marbas takes an almost fatherly role with Wisteria, even if he sometimes forgets how fragile humans are and unintentionally puts Wisteria in danger. It’s a soft, sweet relationship that carries the series on its back. The animation is fine, nothing special, and the design work is pretty good. In particular, the demons all have cool designs. I’m not crazy about the music but that’s a small quibble. Recommended.

High Card is an energetic action series set in a fictional modern kingdom where 52 special playing cards give people super powers. These cards were accidentally (?) scattered across the kingdom, one of which lands in the possession of a young thief named Finn. After getting drawn into a battle for possession of another card between rival groups seeking to collect them, Finn is recruited to join High Card, an organization trying to gather all the cards for the king. This is a very colorful, vibrant series with a fun setting, exciting battles, and excellent visuals. The characters are cool, especially Wendy, a somewhat shy and mousy young woman who turns into a batshit crazy, unstoppable killing machine when she uses her card, and Chris, the flippant ladies’ man who is rendered immortal by his card’s ability (and there’s obviously more to him than meets the eye). The animation is slick. The music is, in my opinion, the best of the season (both the opening and ending themes are absolute bangers). Honestly, if not for Buddy Daddies, this would have easily been my favorite new show of the season. The show has a generally light hearted vibe but they’ve thrown at least one episode at us to prove how serious and dark the story can get. Highly recommended.

Bungou Stray Dogs has a new season (I think it’s season four?) and like with a previous season, it opened with a mini arc that’s entirely comprised of a flashback. This is something not every show can get away with, but Bungou Stray Dogs pulls it off. This flashback deals with the creation of the Armed Detective Agency, a group of “gifted” (people with special powers) agents who work with the government to neutralize threats, most often involving other “gifted” folks. When the season’s actual plot kicks in following the flashback, it’s about the Agency being framed for horrific crimes and being pursued by powerful government-sponsored hunters. The strength of this series has always been its ability to balance its genuinely funny humor with the darker, more violent aspects of its plots. It does both things so well, and manages to overlap them without one aspect distracting too much from the other (something a lot of stories, anime or otherwise, struggle to do). This season might just be the darkest yet, with each new nightmarish development making the situation more and more bleak for the Detective Agency. The animation remains polished and the design work attractive and interesting. If you watched previous seasons, you’re definitely already watching this. If you haven’t, this is a great time to catch up.

Revenger follows a group or mercenaries who take jobs killing targets as revenge for people who can’t afford to hire hitmen, charging only a single coin that has been bitten into, to display the rage of the person who was wronged. A skilled but stoic samurai named Raizo joins them after they get involved in a plot by his lord that tricked him into killing his fiancé’s father. While they’re definitely a group of killers, there’s a lot of moral variety among the group, with some seeming to enjoy the kills while others simply want to see the guilty punished. It’s an interesting mix of personalities. There’s an overarching plot about a giant stash of opium hidden somewhere in the city and corrupt government officials, but the show is best when focusing on stand alone stories of random people needing revenge. The animation is decent and the character designs are varied and attractive, particularly the leader of the group Yuen. The backgrounds are especially nice, with lovely colors and lighting. The music is quite good too. It’s not my favorite show this season, but it has a solid spot on my watch list.

Carry Over Shows From Previous Seasons:

Boku no Hero Academia

Blue Lock

Yowamushi Pedal

To Your Eternity

Best of Season:

Best New Show: Buddy Daddies

Best Opening Theme: High Card

Best Ending Theme: Buddy Daddies

Best New Male Character: Rei (Buddy Daddies)

Best New Female Character: Wendy (High Card)

[skyofstorms]

The Muse Headspace

I could probably design images for each one in time, but for now, here's the masterlist of masterlists when it comes to my muses. Like...every single muse I've used [save a few novel muses] are on this list. Beware, my friends. It's a nightmare - 257 muses listed with fc and species [Canon or lore based mues are in bold]. Yes, there are some repeat faceclaims, I don't wanna hear it. @forwardlion, I want you to know this is your fault.

Abigail Phantomhive | Claire Holt | Demon

Abraham Greenfeld | Keiynan Lonsdale | Human

Adam Milligan/Winchester | Jake Abel | Human

Ahn Taehui | Lim Sejun | Banshee/Demon Hybrid

Akali Tethi | Aeri Uchinaga | Human

Akello Caine | Jussie Smollet | Leopard Shifter

Aleksi Holland | Harry Shum Jr. | Mage

Alexander Lightwood | Matthew Daddario | Nephilim

Alexian Holloway | Alberto Rosende | Human

Aliceon Hartigay | Katie Cassidy | Polykinetic [Pyro, Techno, Terra, Cryo]

Alistair Hypanile | Hayden Christensen | Katagarian Tiger

Alizair Hollis | Dominic Sherwood | Arcadian Wolf

Allison Argent | Crystal Reed | Human/Raven Spirit

Amelie Rayne | Rambo Suicide | Water Elemental

Amelyra Shanarra | Summer Glau | Witch

Amy Waterford "Sailor Mercury" | Nicole Gale Anderson | Senshi

Anabel Lightwood-Bane | Arden Cho | Nephilim/Warlock Hybrid

Andrea Kattalakis | Gemma Arterton | White Tiger Shifter

Andrei Cruz | Jeremy Renner | Black Panther Shifter

Anneliese Romanova | Vanessa Kirby | Dhampir

Annabelle Brunelli | Jacqueline MacInnes Wood | Human

Annika Mitchell | Bully Suicide | Ocelot Shifter

Anthony Stark | Robert Downey Jr. | Human

Ares | Manu Bennett | God

Armand Tempest | Brian Krause | Owl Shifter

Artemis Crescent | Kwon Ji-yong | Mauian

Ashelina Logan | Malese Jow | Werewolf

Asmodeus | Godfrey Gao | Greater Demon

Audrey Briarose | Sarah Jeffery | Psychic

Aziraphale | Michael Sheen | Angel

Baelfire "Neal Cassidy" | Michael Raymond-James | Human

Belinda Oriella-Curani | Taylor Momsen | Succubus

Belladonna Trumpet | Miranda Kerr | Pegasus

Bellek Mosely | Ian Bohen | Phoenix

Brady Johannsen | Chris Pratt | Psychic

Bradley Harrison | Anthony Mackie | Jaguar Shifter

Bruce Banner | Mark Ruffalo | Gamma Enhanced Human

Bruni | Osaki Shotaro | Elemental

Caleb Danvers | Steven Strait | Warlock

Camael | Jensen Ackles | Angel

Camryn Adelaide | Glitz Suicide | Poly Shifter

Carrie Devereaux | Radeo Suicide "Chelsea Vitorio" | Human

Cassidy Merlyn | Dakota Fanning | Vampire

Castiel | Misha Collins | Angel

Catarina Loss | Sophia Walker | Warlock

Cassandra Rogers | Chloe Moretz | Human

Ceannaire Mellark | Daniel Sharman | Fenrir

Cerberus | JR Bourne | Three Headed Demon Dog

Chae Nari | Lee Chae-yeon | Feline Shifter [Rusty Spotted Cat]

Charlie Goodwin | Jesse Labelle | Wolf Shifter

Chelsea Barton | Scarlett Johannsen | Witch

Chezna Lumiere-Conriocht | Devon Shigaki | Werewolf

Chinami Kennedy | Heo Yoorim | Human

Cho Sorren | Choi Seung Cheol | Psychic/Red Panda Shifter Hybrid

Choi Byeol-Dal | Roseanne Park | Forest Nymph

Choi Byeol-Jageun | Lee Felix | Rainbow Nymph

Choi Subin | Jeong Yunho | Poly Feline Shifter [Serval, Siamese, Marbled Cat]

Christopher Argent | JR Bourne | Human

Ciel Phantomhive | Jeonghan | Demon

Clarissa Fairchild | Katherine McNamara | Nephilim

Clark Morrigan | James Marsters | Warlock

Claudia Hale | Lyndsy Fonseca | Werewolf

Cleossandra Reid | Candice Swanepoel | Angel

Clinton Barton | Jeremy Renner | Human

Cora Hale | Adelaide Kane | Werewolf

Coraline Basilik | Kristyna Panochova | Fenrir

Crimson Macabre | Reita | Dragon

Damien DeLuna | Tyler Hoechlin | Vampire

Daniel Cross | Keahu Kahuanui | Werewolf

Daniel Mahaelani | Keahu Kahuanui | Druid

Darius Talbot | John Boyega | Human

Demetrius Beltre | Charlie Carver | Griffon

Demkos Florian | Tyler Posey | Human

Derek Hale | Tyler Hoechlin | Werewolf

Desmond McKnight | Alex O'Loughlin | Wolf Shifter

Dionysus | Darren Criss | God

Dokuno Kokoro | Uruha | Snake Shifter [King Cobra]

Dominique Brady | Alona Tal | Druid

Druid Harrington | Shane West | Human

Eden Tryphist | Elsa Hosk | Human

Elijah Mikaelson | Daniel Gillies | Vampire

Elijah Roanoke | Stephen Amell | Siren/Incubus Hybrid

Elise Macabre | Kwon Yuri | Dragon

Elliot Erso | Joseph Morgan | Fox Shifter

Emile Hargreaves | Kellan Lutz | Witch

Emilea Curani | Charlize Theron | Faunis

Eros | Adam Lambert | God

Esmerelda Logan | Emeraude Logan | Human

Evelyn Queen | Sofia Carson | Witch

Ezekiel | Jeffrey Donovan | Angel

Fang Blackwater | Alex Meraz | Fox shifter

Fenrick Kelos | Josh Duhamel | Thunderbird

Fenris Conriocht | Zac Efron | Werewolf

Finn Storm | John Boyega | Human

Fiorin Basilik | Cody Christian | Psychic

Fury Peltier | Jackson Rathbone | Katagarian Wolf

Grif | Jason Momoa | Human

Hades | Ian Bohen/Cheyenne Jackson* | God

Hak Jiwoon | Kim Hongjoong | Nogitsune

Harry Hook | Thomas Doherty | Feline Shifter [black Maine Coone]

Hayley Marshalls | Phoebe Tonkin | Vampire/Werewolf Hybrid

Heather DeRoya | Emily Van Camp | Banshee/Demon Hybrid

Hera | Meghan Markle | Goddess

Hope Dracul | Daniela Ruah | Vampire/Angel Hybrid

Hwang Beongae | Momo Hirai | Pheonix

Hwang Seungki | Kim Youngjo | Kitsune Tribrid

Hwang Taeyang | Wong Yuk-hei | Phoenix

Ian Logan | Ian Somerhalder | Werewolf

Isabelle Gautier | Jill Wagner | Human/Succubus Hybrid

Isabelle Lightwood | Emeraude Toubia | Nephilim

James Barnes | Sebastian Stan | Cybernetically Enhanced Human

Jameson Morgan | Liam Hemsworth | Witch

Jasmine Estrella | Dali Suicide | Bunny Shifter

Jason Carter | Sebastian Stan | Dragon

Jasper Hale/Cullen | Jackson Rathbone | Vampire

Jasper Kallihan | Joseph Morgan | Warlock

Jayden McNamara | Jake Johnson | Dark Fae

Jefferson Hatter/Barnes | Sebastian Stan | Magically Inclined Human

Jessica Hawkblue | Claudia Kim | Warlock

Jin Galeon | Jennifer Lawrence | Human/Vampire Hybrid

Jocelyn Celine Herondale | Holland Roden | Nephilim

Jonathan Herondale | Dominic Sherwood | Nephilim

Jonathan Herondale Jr. (JR) | Will Tudor | Nephilmi

Jordan Kyle | Chai Hensen | Werewolf

Joseph Dixon | Nicholas Hoult | Technokinetic

Julian Moore | Colin O'Donaghue | Human

Kaina Red | Son Ga-In | Dragon

Kallin Elijah | Willa Holland | Hellhound

Kane Lancaster | Robert Downey Jr | Demon

Kang Kija | Kang Min-hee | Thunder Kitsune

Kataigida Parthenopaeus | Tom Ellis/Dylan O'Brien | Demigod

Katherine Elysia | Taissa Farmiga | Fae

Kevin Hawkblue | Ruki | Weretiger

Kim Jeongwon | Han Jisung | Sugar Glider Shifter

Kim Seonyul | Moon Taeil | Siren

Kiniko Hajime | Cho Kyu-hyun | Vampire

Kira Yukimura | Arden Cho | Thunder Kitsune

Kirishima Kyung-jae | Nakamoto Yuta | Witch/Siren Hybrid

Kirishima Touka | Kim Jiu | Ghoul

Kol Mikaelson | Daniel Sharman | Vampire/Witch*

Kole Winston | Tyler Hoechlin | Fae

Konstantin Udinov | Riker Lynch | Demon/Witch Hybrid

Kouga Hajime | Han Groo | Vampire

Krigare Storm | Joseph Morgan | Imp

Kuradei Phantom | Jung Seung-bo | Umbrakinetic/Wolf Shifter Hybrid

Kwon Yuri | Moon Byul-yi | Sensitive

Kyo Sohma | N/A | Cursed Human

Kyle Artmen | Jay Ryan | Jaguar Shifter

Kyrian Stone | Jonathan Rhys Myers | Psychic/Siren Hybrid

Laura Hale | Meghan Ory | Werewolf

Lee Hajun | Kim Jong-in | Warlock

Lee Minji | Kang Seul-gi | Psychic

Lee Sanghoon | Kim Dong Young | Monarch

Lestat DeMyre | Dave Salmoni | Elf

Lim Eunjin | Jung Wooyoung | Incubus

Loki Laufeyson | Tom Huddleston | God

Lucien Callihan | Ian Bohen | Human

Lucien Hoijer | Matthew Davis | Griffon

Lucifer Morningstar | Sebastian Roche | Angel

Lucille Quinnzel | Ashley Benson | Human

Luke Garroway | Isaiah Mustafa | Werewolf

Lydia Branwell | Stephanie Bennett | Nephilim

Macaria | Meghan Ory | Goddess

Margaret Leigh | Jakhara Smith | Psychic

Magnus Bane | Harry Shum Jr. | Warlock

Maia Roberts | Alisha Wainwright | Werewolf

Malia Hale | Shelley Hennig | Werecoyote

Malika Udinov | Clair Holt | Demon/Witch Hybrid

Marcellus Gerard | Charles Michael Davis | Vampire

Markus Ducaine | Steven Strait | Werelion

Maryssa Dixon-Bennett | Selena Gomez | Druid

Matthew Bennett | Jake Abel | Werepanther

Maxine Owens | Griffin Ramsey | Demigoddess

Melanie Barnes | Alexandra Daddario | Genetically Enhanced Human

Merrick Bennett/Hadriel | Jake Abel | Werepanther/Angel

Mia Mosely | Adelaide Kane | Phoenix

Michael Caboose | Jake Johnson | Human

Michael Hartford | Ian Cohen | Human

Michaelis Moon | Lee Teuk | Dragon/Human Hybrid

Mieczyslaw Stilinski | Dylan O'Brien | Human/Spark

Mikabane House | Meagan Tandy | Red Panda Shifter

Mila Martinez | Katherine Mcnamara | Psychic

Miles Brunelli | Matt Cohen | Vampire

Momiji Sohma | N/A | Cursed Human

Moon Eukyung | Jeon So-yeon | Demigoddess

Moon Heechul | Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Snake Shifter

Moon Kona | Park Jisung | Ice Nymph/Snake Shifter

Morgan Lovec | Norman Reedus | Imp

Morgana Krajick | Zoe Saldana | Angel

Morriginya Branwen | Cho Seo Young | Semblance Gifted Human

Nam Arwen | Chonnasorn Sajakul | Elf/Werewolf Hybrid

Natalee Grybyx | Maggie Q | Seer

Natasha Romanov | Scarlett Johannsen | Enhanced Human

Nataliya “Nekome” Dashwood | Ashley Greene | Cheshire

Nevinovat Fata | Crystal Reed | Hawk Shifter

Nicholas Hightower | Gavin Free | Cat Shifter [Russian Blue]

Niklaus Mikaelson | Joseph Morgan | Vampire/Werewolf Hybrid

Niklaus Udinov | Sam Pettyfer | Demon/Witch Hybrid

Nikolai Buchannon | Hunter Hayes | Human

Nikolaia Udinov | Chris Hemsworth | Witch

Padme Amidala | Natalie Portman | Human

Park Sungjin | Kim Geonhak | Kitsune/Vampire Hybrid

Persephone | Holland Roden | Goddess

Peter Hale | Ian Bohen/Michael Fjordbak | Werewolf

Peter Parker | Andrew Garfield/Tom Holland | Genetically Enhanced Human

Qrow Branwen | Lee Donghae | Magic Gifted Human

Quinton Macklemore | Dylan O'Brien | Werewolf

Ragnor Fell | Tom Hiddleston | Warlock

Rebecca Daniels | Holland Roden | Human

Reno Akujin | N/A | Mako Enhanced Human

Rex Coltin | Chris Evans | Snake Shifter [Diamondback]

Reyna Wingyr | Grace Park | Fenrir

Ryan Macklemore | Dylan O'Brien | Werewolf

Ryn Hollings "Sailor Chibi Moon" | Bella Thorne | Senshi

Ryuu Kyosuke | Lee Taemin | Dragon

Sainika Winston | Mackenzie Foy | Fae

Sebastian Mills | Cody Christian | Hellhound

Sebastian Morgenstern | Will Tudor | Demon-blooded Nephilim

Serena James | Kristin Kruek | Phoenix

Shane Westfield | Nick Groff | Psychic

Shin Chan Young | Lee Dae-Hee | Seer

Siobhan Conriocht | Penellope Mitchell | Werewolf

Snow White "Mary Margaret Blanchard" | Ginnifer Goodwin | Human

Son Jin | Lee Dong Hyuck | Ice Nymph

Son Minho | Kim Chan Young | Naga

Spencer Todd | Shemar Moore | Human

Steven Rogers | Chris Evans | Genetically Enhanced Human

Sun Kyujin | Lee Siyeon | Witch

Sun Seoyun | Park Seonghwa | Cursed Vampire

Sun Wukong | Yanan | Faunis

T'Khani Ekundayo | Chadwick Boseman | Ghost

Tarael Lightwood-Bane | Brant Daugherty | Nephilim/Warlock Hybrid

Tatiana Novak | Hannah Marks | Angel/Human Hybrid

Terra Riley | Nina Dobrev | Kitsune/Werewolf Hybrid

Thor Odinson | Chris Hemsworth | God

Tigerlilly Sikari | Elizabeth Loaiza | Seer/Weretiger Hybrid

Tristan Royans | Nick Bateman | Fire Kitsune/Human Hybrid

Tsukinora Kitoai | Jay Park | Werelynx

Tykeisha Caine | Taraji P Henson | Demon/Leopard Shifter Hybrid

Valerie Wilson | Shay Mitchell | Human

Valora Lovelace | Genevieve Padalecki | Cheetah Shifter

Vanessa Choi | Kim Hyo Yeon | Psychic

Victor Rivera | Devon Sawa | Human

Victoria Mosely | Crystal Reed | Phoenix

Vio Curani | N/A | Demon

Vishal Malik | Taylor Lautner | Nephilim

Wanda Maximoff | Elizabeth Olsen | Mutant

Weiss Schnee | N/A | Semblance Gifted Human

William "Spike" Pratt | James Marsters | Vampire

Xavier Rybolt | David Castro | Demon

Xavier Remmington | Sinqua Walls | Poly Shifter [Jaguar, Doberman, Wolf]

Yoo Daeshim | Kang Yeosang | Tribrid/Demigod

Yoo Jangmi | Jeon Ji Woo | Snow Leopard Shifter

Yukihara Arashi | Minatozaki Sana | Fae/Siren Hybrid

Yura Rybolt | Lee Ga-hyeon | Human

Zacariah Morgan | Jeffrey Dean Morgan | Witch/Seer

Zane Hertzfeld | Rasmus Ledin | Seer/Vampire Hybrid

[doubleddenden]

Man, I'm thinking about Sonic 06 again. I know it's a terrible game questionable decisions and a troubled development, but you know? 12 year old me and currently 30 year old me probably appreciated it best for the concepts, characters, music, and basically everything BESIDES the gameplay.

Like, Shadow was handled SUPRISINGLY well. Not a single connection to his past, just him getting entangled in the plot and trying to figure out Mephiles, and coming to terms with being hunted and sealed away in the future. The unshakeable friendship with Rouge, the hurt he hides well upon finding out Omega was programmed to seal him away, sort of becoming a brief mentor to Silver when they uncover the truth, and the bad ass line that is "If the world chooses to become my enemy, I'll fight like I always have" when faced with a demon that refuses to die and releasing his inhibitor rings- previously only done in game against The Final Hazard. Gameplay wise, his homing multi attack and chaos drive was actually pretty cool, especially with his red aura. Also Jason Griffith sounded really cool.

Silver himself is also incredibly overhated and underrated by fans and SEGA themselves. His character design is pretty cool, his powers are unique, and his backstory is sad and understandable when you realize he's even younger than Sonic. Watching him lose his friends- Amy when she finds out Sonic was his target after they bonded, PROBABLY his first friend he's made other than Blaze; and Blaze acting as his rock to keep him steady and SACRIFICING HERSELF to save the future, leaving him alone AGAIN. Yeah its complicated and never explained properly how she came there, but god it's such a cool dynamic. Sonic p06 actually is helping to show off just how cool of a character he could have been to control, especially by taking his cutscene speed into account.

Now Elise is complicated. It is definitely weird they had her fall in love with Sonic and kiss him back to life- however, if we ignore that, the friendship she was building with Sonic and their adventures together was actually rather sweet in it's own way. Perhaps if they simply wrote out the romance angle and simply kept it to admiration and friendship, then she would have been better accepted- like at least she's not Chris from Sonic X, cmon. Sonic being this fun guy that's there to teach her how to relax or to just be a fun, non political figure in her life is such a fun idea, too, being honest, its a fun trope that's been around forever and i never tire of it. Sonic isn't really one that needs a ton of character development because part of his charm is just how free, brave, and a bit happy go lucky he is in spite of the dangers around him. Really, their friendship could have been a lot like how KH handles the humans being friends with Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, with surprising wisdom, silliness, and bravery coming from the cartoony animal friend and the very human character learning a lot from them and growing. It would certainly help if Elise maybe hung out with other characters, too (maybe have that bit in the beginning where she sees Silver again actually play out).

I think the biggest loss from the retcon at the end was losing Mephiles. Mephiles as a villain was INCREDIBLE considering everything wrong with the game. Cold, calculated, scheming, not to mention Dan Green just bringing his absolute BEST here, like it's very rare to see a character like him in Sonic games, let alone the way he manipulates people by... not exactly lying. Sonic in a way WAS the Iblis Trigger- Mephiles killed him and Elise released Iblis. The way he presented only the cold truths to Shadow- he's a devil, but not wrong, because everyone did turn their backs on Shadow. His designs, too, are cool af- Shadow on a conceptual level was meant to be Sonic's shadow and fold, but Mephiles became that for Shadow QUITE LITERALLY by taking his form for himself, and this time it ACTUALLY makes sense and isn't just a huge coincidence. Going even further with the demonic form is icing on the cake, especially considering just 1 game ago, that could have been Shadow himself if he gave into Black Doom's temptations. Mephiles is such an interesting villain, but alas he was retconned out of existence and doomed to a bad game, so I doubt he'll even return in Shadow Generations.

Then the entire concept of the story involving time travel, adding more abilities that can be used with the Chaos Emeralds (time travel and soul... binding? Sealing?), the ruins, the Venice inspired city itself, the landing wasn't there but the ingredients WERE. So was the gameplay, 06 could have easily been Sonic Adventure 3, and they probably avoided that title because they knew the game would be a bust. Ugh. Ugh. But the MUSIC. FUCKING HELL THE MUSIC. His World is probably the best game theme from the entire franchise (so much so they made 17 versions lol), and Dreams of an Absolution CHANGED something in me as a kid. Shit, I'm still listening to Aquatic Base and Kingdom Valley all these years later.

Also... maybe controversial, I liked these models the best. The current ones are too short and plastic looking tbh. We'll, for Sonic, Shadow, Silver, Omega, and Blaze, the rest are definitely weird but the longer legs actually fit Silver pretty well with his boots in comparison to later 3d models.

Oh man. I don't think I'll ever get over this. I've had to come to terms with a lot of "what could have beens" in my life but I don't think I'll ever fully get over what was lost here. The potential for what could have been the best Sonic game ever and a game that could have defined a generation, LOST because some jackasses up top demanded that Christmas money. A development cycle so awful that Yuji Naka left Sonic Team, as did many other devs working on the game... Splitting the already struggling team down even FURTHER to try and make 06 for the Wii, realizing that the Wii was not going to be as powerful as the 360/ps3, and deciding to turn that into Secret Rings (oh look MORE squandered potential). Introducing characters that are cool as shit, only to be forever scarred by the fact they appeared in a bad game. Not only this, but said bad game had Sonic's friends in it, making it so assholes in reviewing would go on this "Sonic and his shitty friends" tyrade that would result in us not really getting to play any other characters in an official capacity until QUITE recently... as dlc for Frontiers. Or Shadow, but in Forces he was just Sonic again.

This is my Roman Empire, I swear.

I hope that when ChaosX finishes up with p-06, fans can somehow work together to create a more cohesive story to really rectify what could have been, complete with better character development and some major plot holes either explained or filled in. In my heart, I would really love 06 to get a redemption arc and go from one of the worst Sonic games ever (Boom now holds that title- again, squandered potential) to one of the BEST ever. Like so good that even SEGA says "actually THIS is canon now." Idk, it'd be so much vindication for middle schooler DD.

God I've actually prayed to see the universe where 06 became Adventure 3, or 07/08 instead and was the best game ever. Like many things in life, I'll probably never get to see or play it in it's fully realized state.

[bonniebeanie]

Yoo

Redesigning demon kratts au a little bit let's goooo

[whitehotharlots]

Associationism: A postmortem for liberal decency

In the last half decade, liberal political writing has undergone a profound seachange. This has infected all strata of media: from braindead outlets like Adbusters, to intentionally digestible pap such as USA Today, to our august papers of record (only two of which remain; one is owned by the world’s richest man), all the way up to self-styled intellectual journals and peer-reviewed scholarship. This change can even be found in literal children’s media and grade school curricula. It deserves to be examined.

For lack of a better term, I refer to this shift as an adoption of associationism. Cause and effect has been abandoned as an analytical frame. The devices that used to be relied upon to adjudicate cause and effect, such as scientific method, statistical analysis, balanced reporting, and even basic “X leads to Y” logic, have likewise been marked as problematic vectors of evil.

Now, you might say this has been a long time coming. Scientific method has been used to design and excuse a bevy of historical wrongs, and balanced reporting is often deployed to obscure morally unambiguous phenomena. Those are fair points, but an astute observer will notice that these adjudication mechanisms are still deployed within liberal discourse, just that they are now used only selectively. Rigor and attention to context are now considered problematic--white, male, cis-normative, whatever--and this allows for otherwise inherently evil mechanisms of truth adjudication to be deployed only when they are guaranteed to enforce the desired narrative, often by writers who are shamelessly fabricating evidence. I mean, why not? It’s fascism to be fact checked, after all. 

Importantly, moral and factual correctness have become collapsed into one another. A statement or belief is True to the extent that it is Right, and vice versa. There exist no confounding variables or contradictory phenomena. The liberal writer’s job, therefore, is to center their own subjective perception (referred to as “lived experience”) or the subjective perception of someone in a supposedly more marginalized position, and then craft a narrative that puts this perception beyond all moral (and therefore factual) reproach. 

The liberal writer’s process is, generally, as follows:

Zero in on a moral outrage of some kind, be it pressing and manifest or petty and completely subjective--everything has the same weight within this frame. 

Narrate this outrage via the “lived experience” of a subject who shares the writer’s opinion.

Cherrypick a handful of statistics, studies, or expert opinions that appear to lend validity to the writer’s understanding of the outrage, being careful to ignore any context or ambiguities that might soften or even fully discredit the outrage. 

Demonize anyone or anything that problematizes--through their opinions or their existence--the writer’s understanding of the outrage. This is achieved typically by associating the problematizer with supposedly empowered groups, who are evil.

Clarify in no uncertain terms: anyone who does not share this outrage is a member of the evil groups, even if they are very literally not a member of those groups. 

This has all been framed as a form of radical moral clarity, providing space for marginalized voices to express their once-unutterable truths, which will in turn bring about the changes this country desperately needs. But, oh no, it turns out that every media organization in this country is stolidly against any actual reform. All of our major presses and news outlets are still owned by austere capitalist psychos, including the aforementioned richest human being in the history of the world. Universities are still MBA-run shitholes that would have students march into incinerators the moment that doing so became more profitable than providing them with resources for identity affirmation. And media aggregation--the manner through which words appear before people’s eyes, 90-odd percent of the time via a screen--is controlled by a small handful of the most megalomaniacal companies on earth. 

So, while we have indeed radically changed our practices of communication and truth adjudication, doing so has not resulted in any radical social changes, or even really any structural changes whatsoever. We’ve just made it radically more difficult to come to an honest understanding of the causes of social malignancies, which in turn has made it radically more easy for the vampires who run this country to make everyone else’s lives radically worse. Radical, dude!

There is no idea so cruel or horrible that it cannot be made to appear progressive under this new frame. Come up with any hypothetical, no matter how evil, and within a few seconds a media-savvy reader should be able to fashion an adequately woke headline: 

Hypothetical examples: 

Abolishing school lunch programs: “Should We Really Be Nourishing White Bodies?”

Pro-female genital mutilation: “The Inherent Transphobia of Those Who Oppose ‘Female Circumcision.’” 

Let’s start using napalm again: “Once Considered an Effective Tool of Precision Warfare, Napalm Was Demonized by Those Who Fear Non-Normative Bodies”

Indian Residential Schools: “Sheltered From Whiteness, These Communities Were a Place Where Native Excellence Could Thrive”

Here we see the Associative aspect of Associationism. Cause and effect no longer exist, and so malignancy is a contagion, the result of the presence of bad people who cause badness. Members of statistically majoritarian groups are presumed to be empowered, and therefore oppressive. And since majoritarian groups contain by definition a majority of people, you will be sure to find their members among the detractors of your position. And even if the members of that majority make up a minority of your detractors, that’s still okay, because context is a white supremacist construct used to obscure moral clarity, and you just so happen to be the arbiter of morality by virtue of being yourself. 

Now, to be fair, not every piece written in this style is done in the pursuit of abject evil. Some are, but a solid plurality are instead written in an attempt to remediate a genuine social wrong. The trouble is, they’re being printed in venues controlled by people who do not desire reform; written in thrall to a political party that does not desire reform; and reliant upon the subjective perspectives of academics, politicians, and NGO bloodsuckers who do not desire reform. This leads, inevitably, to an understanding of social problems that occludes all possibility of reform, only now the discoursal boundaries are so droolingly retarded that you cannot mention the fact that these discussions do not contain even a hypothetical description of how reform might take place.

The point is, radically altering the manner in which social problems are understood, measured, and discussed does not lead--automatically or otherwise--to those social problems being positively addressed. Shifting rhetorical frames can be a precondition for change, yes, but it can just as easily be a means of calcifying the status quo. Unequivocally, our embrace of associationism has accomplished the latter.  

We can easily discern the utility of associationism so far as our elite castes are concerned: it’s getting harder and harder to simply deny the existence of malignancies, so instead let’s just insist that everyone understand them in the dumbest possible way. Their popularity among the non-elites is due primarily to American Puritanism: the more upsetting and uncomfortable something makes us feel, the more we assume it must be working. 

But Puritanism is a two-way street, and the true believers tend to be the ones at the base of the food chain. Regular folx will go through the motions in an earnest desire to do something, anything, to cleanse themselves of whatever horrible brutality video they found on their timeline this morning. They can be annoying, but you can’t blame them. The real malignancy of associationism is how it’s allowed a small group of conniving cocksuckers a means of enhancing their professional status by making their cruelest impulses appear progressive.

I started this essay with the intention of digging deep into Chris Lehmann’s abominable TNR piece in which he insists that the men driven mad and homeless after participating in our genocide in Vietnam were actually doing greviance politics. By the time I finished, he had been very thoroughly destroyed. I still think it’ll be worth the effort to do a deep dive to show the machinations of his horrific essay, but has already gone long so I’ll save that for later this week. 

[thebookwormfairy]

Maribat Buzzfeed Unsolved AU

Ok so another one. In this au there Marinette is not ladybug or Chat Noir she's just a regular civilian. If you wondering who have the miraculous right now it's a adult, because Marinette deserves to be a child also this takes place around the time Marinette is 16

Also warning lots of curse words used

This idea came from the Maribat Discord thanks to everyone there

********************************

Ever since Lila came to school Marinette has been more and more excluded from class events

Originally it was very rare, like we went to the movies and were going to invite you but then we remembered that you were helping your parents in the backery

We were going to invite you but then remembered you were babysitting

Weren't you working on a design for that contest

Then they stop making excuses and just posted pictures to their social medias

She tried to organize events but for some reason Lila always had something planned then and of course the class can't leave HER out of anything

It got to the point where the class only talked to her if they needed something

Oh Marinette I have a big race coming up can you make me a banner

Oh Marinette can you make some bake goods for me

Hey Marinette can you plan this school dance all by yourself with absolutely no help from us while if you ask for help we'll make you feel guilty about it

Hey Marinette can you babysit the Twins and Chris, when we're suppose to do it, for no pay, while we go out on a date.

It really sadden Marinette that her so called friends who for most she knew all her life only saw her as at most an employee

But there were some bright sides

Her grades where going even higher and now she's one of the top students at school

Marinette was able to put more time into training in self defense something you need with all the Akumas in Paris

And Sabine even taught her everything she knew about martial arts

She was able to study Mandrine (for her mom's family) and English (for Jagged and Penny) and had become almost fluent in both

Marinette had a lot more time to work on her designs

Jagged Stone started to hire her to make and design more and more items

Her business has even spread to Clara Nightingale

Which will really help her in her career later in life

But Jagged seemed to think that later in life was now

One day he asked to have a meeting with Marinette and her parents

Marinette just thought it was to commission another design, but like always Jagged had a way of surprising her

Jagged: Well you see I'm leaving Paris soon to head back to my home town of Gotham, and I was wondering if I could take Marinette with me

Tom, Sabine, and Marinette: WHAT?!?!

Penny: Let me explain, you see Marinette's designs are some of the most popular Jagged ever had, people love her work, and we want to make her Jagged's full time designer. It would be a great opportunity for Marinette's future and would put her on the fast lane to a great career

Sabine: But what about school.

Jagged: Don't worry Sabine, Penny's thought of everything

Penny: It's all taken care of. Gotham Academy one of the top schools in the world is ready to take her the moment she says yes, she would be staying in an apartment right next to Jagged, with all expenses paid for while still getting paid for her work, and of course she can come back and visit whenever she wants.

Tom: It sounds like a great offer, but can we discuss this in private for a moment

Jagged and Penny nodded their heads and left the room

Marinette: Mama, Papa, I really want to take this offer

Sabine: Are you sure honey? This is a big step.

Tom: Not to mention you would be all alone in a big city. What about your friends?

Marinette: I will miss my friends (or at least the old them) but when will I get an opportunity like this and I wouldn't be alone I'd have Jagged and Penny

With some more discussions the choice was made and Penny started making arrangement to move Marinette to Gotham City.

And before Marinette noticed she was settling in to her new life in Gotham city.

And already it was much better then her one in Paris

Her new school was great

She had a lot of great friends and even a boyfriend now Damian Wayne

They met on her first day, when she accidentally ran into him

It sounds crazy but it was like love at first sight

They didn't start dating right away, it would take a couple of months for Damian to ask her out, but Marinette couldn't be happier

So were his brothers who she met soon after becoming Damian's friend

Now whenever Marinette wasn't designing for Jagged or at school she was hanging out in Wayne Manor

Marinette already had a youtube channel but it really didn't have that much content. Until one day she decided to discuss a famous cold case with her boyfriend and get it on camera

The first case she told him was an Australian case called the man from Somertan Beach

It was a short video, with her talking about it with Damian, but halfway through the video Jason (who had been filming them) made one too many comments and Damian decided to just switch places with him

Marinette kept making videos with Jason as her cohost and Damian behind the cameraman

It was relatively popular but not to big until Marinette did a case about the supernatural

When she learned that Jason did not believe in it

They spent the whole video arguing over the ghost at the Cesil Hotel in LA

The videos blew up

Jason: I don't know old building are weird they make all sort if weird noises

Marinette: How does a house creaking sound like get out

Jason: Well nobody said weather this person is a credible witness or not

As the youtube channel got more popular Marinette and all the bat boys (all of them got dragged into helping with videos now) started to go to haunted locations during school breaks and when Marinette had breaks in designing for Jagged

The Winchester

Jason: Man this place is bigger than the manor

Marinette: well if you had to keep building to stop ghost from killing you, your house would be huge too

Jason: Wait is that why Wayne Manor is built so weirdly, Bruce is hiding from ghost

The Sally house

Marinette: Fuck this place omg we're all going to be killed by a demon

Jason: How can something that doesn't exist kill you

Jason: Hey demon come on kill me you mother fucker.

Damian (off camera): Jason stop freaking Marinette out.

Jason: Oh I'm sorry Marinette I was wrong. Demons do exsist, one is our camera man

At the bottom of the screen you can see Damian's middle finger

Marinette (to flashlight): Don't turn on don't turn on don't turn on

Flashlight turns on

Marinette: NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE MOCKED IT JASON!!!!

Joker's Hideout

Marinette: it said that this place is haunted by Joker's victims, or that it is possible that this place is infested by a demon who drove Joker mad and drove him to kill

Jason: Well that's convenient, you're a crazy murderous clown, it's all because of a demon.

Marinette: Keep it down Jason we don't know if the Joker is here right now or not

Damian: Wait the Joker might be here. Angel why did you want to come here then?

Marinette looking embarrassed: It was a good case.

Jason standing behind something making a grunting sound

Marinette walks by and sees him: AAAHHHH!! WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU HERE SOUNDING LIKE A FUCKING ZOMBIE.

Goatman Bridge

Jason: I'm dancing on your bridge Goatman it's my bridge now

Marinette: He is going to kill you

Jason: See this Goatman I disrespect your bridge. It's me and Marinette's bridge now

Marinette: Stop pulling me into you bullshit Jason!

Jason: If you're not apart of this then tell Goatman

Marinette: I'm not with him.

Jason: You're talking to Goatman now

Marinette: I see what you did there.

Jason: Hey we're here for the cult stuff

Jason to demons: Hey demons it me ya boy

The fans love the twos dynamic

They also love the random comments Damian would make from behind the camera every once and a while

Sometime between breaks in filming at a location Jason would get candid videos of Damian hugging Marinette

When they sleep overnight at places Damian would always sleep and cuddle with Marinette

The fans love it

And they ship it

One case as a joke is The Mystery of Marinette Dupen-Cheng

This one is Jason and Damian doing the video, while Marinette is away on a tour with Jagged Stone

Half of the video is actually stuff that Marinette does and can do that confuse them

They show a video of Marinette yeeting Jason out of the kitchen when he scared her once

Another video is of Marinette stealing Damian's sweatshirt while she passes him

Just one moment it's on Damian the next Marinette has it

A video of Marinette going head to head with Riddler

And her actually stumping him with one

The other half is just Damian gushing about his girlfriend

Damian: She is just the sweetest girl who deserves the world. I would gladly kill anybody who hurts her. She is just my Angel and I would do anything to make her happy.

It ends with Jason saying: Well that is the mystery of Damian's future wife, weather she's actually human remains unsolved.

[bestworstcase]

a comprehensive guide to zhan tiri’s lore or, it’s not that confusing or contradictory, i promise

first things first: if you are somebody who pays attention to creator interviews and you are interested in canonical zhan tiri lore, i want you to gather up everything you’ve ever heard chris say about zhan tiri and erase it from of your brain. i know he’s made statements regarding his interpretation of her backstory but this post was made by death of the author gang and we are interested ONLY in what is stated and shown in the text itself. meaning belongs to the viewers, and creator interpretation is irrelevant. 

ready? let’s go!

who or what is zhan tiri?

zhan tiri’s first appearance in coronan history occurred thousands of years ago; in plus est en vous, rapunzel specifies two thousand, but every other mention of zhan tiri as a historical figure is “eons” or “millennia,” and the most objective source we have—the plus est flashback—is marked “thousands of years ago.”  

there is no direct evidence to suggest that she existed prior to this, but i think there is enough circumstantial support for this theory to conclude that she did: namely, the existence of idols and other religious iconography associated with her name. my reasoning here is as follows: 

the plus est en vous flashback shows demanitus banishing zhan tiri to the lost realm. this makes it—give or take a few years—the last point in time when zhan tiri would have been free and thus able to make any lasting cultural impact.

it follows that any relevant historical artifacts we see must predate the plus est flashback, as they represent a time when zhan tiri had a significant enough cultural impact to fuel their creation.

moreover, though sugracha and tromus are the only disciples of zhan tiri who directly appear in the series, it is implied that there are many more: 

Lord Demanitus was in a constant battle with Zhan Tiri and his brethren. Over the years, Demanitus captured many of the evil spirits and held them prisoner in that chamber. (S1, Painter’s Block)

much of the coronan folklore concerning the demanitus-zhan tiri relationship is... wrong, but due to sugracha’s verifiable imprisonment in the demanitus chamber, i feel it reasonable to conclude that this tidbit is correct in that there are, or at least were, other disciples held inside the demanitus chamber. and, as with the historical artifacts associated with zhan tiri, it is logical to conclude that whatever cult produced these disciples predated the plus est flashback. 

so, we’ve established the historical artifacts and iconography associated with zhan tiri came before the plus est flashback, but what exactly does that entail, and what does it tell us about zhan tiri’s true nature?

icons of zhan tiri: an overview

#1: janus point

janus point is a henge, and based on the iconography—the ram’s head symbol is plastered all over the jardinière and the henge pillars—it appears to be a site dedicated specifically to zhan tiri. the same symbol also appears on the seal in which sugracha’s spirit was trapped inside the demanitus chamber and is unique in that the muzzle appears to corkscrew.

the appearance of the henge evokes a quasi-religious flavor, and in who’s afraid of the big bad wolf, rapunzel refers to the site as a “mystical ground.” at the very least, this is a ritual site that was heavily associated with zhan tiri, and it would not be much of a stretch to conclude she was outright worshipped here.

#2: the spire idol

this artifact appears in both the keeper of the spire and race to the spire. it’s a small stone idol kept in the spire’s... gatehouse, for lack of a better term, and it depicts the basic ram-headed hulking demon zhan tiri. nothing is said about it in either episode. 

#3: the tree of zhan tiri

there is zhan tiri iconography all over this tree.

the stone ram’s head over the entrance...

...the bas-relief in the first chamber...

...more ram’s heads over all the interior archways and the scroll shelves...

...and a return of the corkscrew-snouted ram’s head from janus point on the altar for this glorious oversized flytrap.

#4: the shell house

tromus’s shrine gives us yet another variation on the ram’s head symbol as well as another full-body idol and also, though i didn’t get a screenshot of it because it’s hard to see with the way tumblr resizes images, a little ram’s head symbol on the clasp of his robes. 

so where did this imagery come from?

with the exception of the spire idol, there is evidence to suggest that zhan tiri herself had direct influence over the design of all this iconography. 

janus point seems to have held some importance to zhan tiri herself; when she appears to varian in cassandra’s revenge, she surrounds herself with pieces of it and superimposes her own head on top of the tree. 

further, the corkscrew-snouted ram’s head reoccurs at the great tree, which is unique among the sites associated with her in that we know zhan tiri actually resided there for what sounds like a significant amount of time; according to the legend adira shares, the great tree was zhan tiri’s “stronghold.”

this means that it’s plausible that either (a) zhan tiri herself shaped the symbols on display in the tree, or (b) they were modeled after her by her contemporaries. the interesting thing about this, there are four distinct variations on the ram’s head symbol inside the tree: 1) long, thick snout with elongated horns; 2) angular, no snout, short horns, 3) corkscrew-snouted, and 4) humanlike skull with ram horns. 

and likewise, the iconography inside the shell house was created by someone we know to have been a contemporary of zhan tiri’s; tromus was one of the students of demanitus who turned against him to join zhan tiri instead, and it is logical to assume that he did, in fact, see zhan tiri in the flesh at some point—and his ram’s head design is yet again different.

this begs the question: if all five of these designs were modeled on zhan tiri herself, why is there such variety in the basic shape? i believe this is a strong point in favor of considering zhan tiri a shapeshifter who chose and stuck with a single general form for long periods of time but casually and frequently modified the smaller details. and in fact, we do see her do this in season three, with the most notable occurrence being. this: 

so, we have concluded that: 

zhan tiri’s historical iconography predates the plus est flashback, and

accurately represented her physical appearance from that time

from this, the only reasonable conclusion is that zhan tiri is a shapeshifter, who spent a considerable amount of time in the giant, ram-headed demon form depicted in all of her pre-demanitus iconography. 

but she’s human in the plus est flashback!

in the series, human characters are designed with a wide diversity of shapes and sizes, but their color palettes stay within the range of realism, with natural skin tones and eye/hair colors. zhan tiri is... not like that.

she may be human-shaped, but her color palette sits drastically outside the norms the series has established for human characters; her skin is dead white, her hair is a dull lilac color, her eyes are bright purple with a circle of gold around the pupils. none of these are natural human colors.

there is precedent in the series for marked changes in appearance and coloration as a result of meddling with magical forces: when cassandra claims the moonstone, it turns her hair and eyes bright blue and gives her an unhealthy-looking pallor. rapunzel’s hair, likewise, turns gold due to the sundrop’s influence. thus, taking this in isolation, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility to conclude that zhan tiri, too, has had her appearance altered by whatever magical nonsense she’s been mucking around with.

however, if we look at this design in the context of the conclusions we’ve already drawn about her historical iconography and what that tells us about her true nature, i think a much simpler and more plausible explanation is that zhan tiri, being a shapeshifter, donned this humanlike form in order to get closer to demanitus. there could be any number of reasons for doing so—considering demanitus’s fixation on seeking the drops for the right reasons, i would imagine creating some distance from the malevolent monster form in order to gain his trust would have played a role in this decision.

five final points in favor of shapeshifting

#1: zhan tiri in the lost realm

we see in plus est en vous that the lost realm causes absurd magical mutations in people who are trapped there. varian theorizes that these mutations could become irreversible if they stay in the lost realm for long enough, but given that they are all freed shortly thereafter and the changes revert, there is no concrete evidence for or against this theory.

still, this raises an interesting question: if the lost realm mutates anyone who enters it, and if these changes become irreversible after long periods of time what would happen if a shapeshifter was trapped there for thousands of years?

when zhan tiri escapes from the lost realm, she isn’t all that different in appearance from when she entered it. she’s much smaller. her hairstyle has changed a bit. she lost the bag at some point. but that’s... really it. it’s a much less drastic alteration than we see happening with the coronans, who are shown transforming into objects and animals, with their bodies distorted, or with pieces of themselves becoming detached and floating away. and these changes also serve her manipulation of cass by making her appear small, weak, and harmless, so it isn’t out of the realm of possibility for zhan tiri to have chosen this form for herself.

i think it is reasonable to assume that zhan tiri, being a shapeshifter herself, was able to, if not outright resist whatever magic in the lost realm causes these mutations, at least “fix” them as they happened. her brief appearance in painter’s block supports the idea that she retained the ability to shapeshift while inside the lost realm, since she appears there as the ram-headed demon.

#2: her shapeshifting disciples

both tromus and sugracha are able to appear human, and sugracha states that she can take “many forms” in painter’s block. though it’s never explained where they got this power, it is reasonable to conclude that they received it from zhan tiri—she is their master, and the implication very much seems to be that it was she who gave them their creepy green spirit form of immortality.

and, if zhan tiri is handing out powers of shapeshifting to her minions, it follows that she must be capable of shapeshifting herself, too. 

#3: gremlin zhan tiri’s demonic shadow

this shows up in cassandra’s revenge and plus est en vous and seems to straightforwardly suggest that zhan tiri’s true nature is closer to the ram-headed demon, with the humanlike form being more of a disguise.

#4: we see her shapeshift in plus est en vous.

she briefly loses her grip on the humanlike nature of the gremlin form when rapunzel blasts her with the sundrop, as i noted above. and later—once she has the drops in hand and the gremlin form has no further use to her—she sheds it altogether to return to yet another variation on the ram-headed demon, albeit one that looks more... monkey than ram: 

#5: and finally, zhan tiri herself says so

in race to the spire: 

I believe Cassandra promised us a proper introduction, but she failed to deliver, didn’t she? Frankly, I’m surprised you hadn’t guessed who I am—seeing as how we’ve already met, in a way. You see, over the centuries, I’ve taken the form of whatever suits my needs: a warlock, a demon... even a blizzard. 

she also portrays herself as the ram-headed demon in the vision she gives to cassandra in once a handmaiden:

now... zhan tiri is a liar, and if these were statements given in isolation of any supporting evidence, i would be skeptical. however, when all the evidence in the text points toward zhan tiri being a shapeshifting entity as the most logical explanation for everything we see of her throughout the series, i’m inclined to take her corroborating statements as a factual confirmation. 

in conclusion: zhan tiri is, and has always been, a shapeshifter. if she has a “true” form, the evidence points toward it being the large, ram-headed, tentacled demon, while the humanlike shape(s) we see in season three are forms she assumed to ingratiate herself to demanitus and, later, cassandra. 

what’s the timeline with her and  lord demanitus?

time in this series is fuzzy. this applies not only to zhan tiri and demanitus, but to every historical event discussed by the characters and the timespans covered by each season, where the only time markers are the lantern festivals that celebrate rapunzel’s nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first birthdays and a few throwaway lines about the passage of months. thus, there is no way to say with absolute certainly when any specific event in zhan tiri’s backstory occurred chronologically. we have to do our best to arrange the events we know about in an order that is logical. 

this is complicated by the fact that we know demanitus fudged some of the details to make himself look better to rapunzel and eugene: he obscured the fact that he and zhan tiri were working partners for an unknown length of time. this verifiable lie of omission casts a patina of doubt over everything else he says regarding their shared past, but it also accounts for discrepancies between what we see and what we’re told. 

as always in unreliable narrator situations, what we see has far more weight than what we’re told. with this in mind, there are three tiers of trustworthiness in the information we are given about zhan tiri’s past: most trustworthy are the flashbacks and things we see with our own eyes; in the middle are the accounts of zhan tiri’s contemporaries—demanitus and the disciples; and at the bottom are the folk legends recounted by xavier and adira. 

so what do we see?

#1: zhan tiri and demanitus searched for the drops together

just how this arrangement came to be is unclear, but i think we can glean some interesting information from the plus est flashback.

DEMANITUS: Zhan Tiri! This is your last warning! Give up this foolish quest for power.

ZHAN TIRI: This quest for the sundrop and moonstone was both of ours.

DEMANITUS: It was, until you made it about something darker. You made it all about gaining power for yourself! You turned your back on what was right!

ZHAN TIRI: And you turned your back on me. As long as I live, I will never stop until I have that power!

DEMANITUS: I know.

[He activates the portal to the Lost Realm.]

ZHAN TIRI: This is far from over! I will have that power, and when I do, I will destroy your beloved Corona! I promise you!

[The portal closes.]

DEMANITUS: I had no choice, Vigor. I had to send her to the Lost Realm.

this suggests a couple things.

first, the working relationship between demanitus and zhan tiri broke down because her selfish desire for power clashed with his idealism. demanitus didn’t want the power of the combined sundrop and moonstone for himself; he wanted to reunite them in the service of a cause he believed to be right. zhan tiri, by contrast, was interested solely in acquiring that power for herself—but given how demanitus reacted when he learned this, it seems obvious that he didn’t know that about zhan tiri until later in their relationship.

in other words, there was some level of deceit on her part involved with their partnership from the very beginning. she hid her true motives from him; she may also have hidden her true nature from him. i think there is support both for and against the latter point: in the present day, demanitus describes zhan tiri as “a warlock”—a word zhan tiri uses as an example of her duplicitous shapeshifting—but he also describes her as being “from another realm”—suggesting he knew her to be something otherworldly or inhuman. 

i tend to fall on the side of demanitus knowing her basic nature while they were contemporaries, but believing she shared his more noble motivations at first, but i think a strong argument could be made in favor of him believing her to be human from the start and only discovering her true nature later. 

second, demanitus appears to have cared for zhan tiri far more than she cared for him. in the flashback, she’s angry at his betrayal, but her focus is on her desire for the power of the sundrop and moonstone. by contrast, demanitus gives her plenty of warning and chances to turn away from her dark path, pleads with her to “give up” her selfish motivations, and expresses clear regret after her refusal forces him to banish her to the lost realm. 

this, again, supports the interpretation that zhan tiri manipulated or used  demanitus to further her own goals, just as she would later do with cassandra, rather than this being a true partnership that broke down as a result of differing goals. she doesn’t care about him any more than she cared about cass.

#2: zhan tiri’s behavior in season three

season three firmly establishes zhan tiri as a skilled manipulator who does not care about anyone or anything besides herself and her pursuit of her own power. i won’t get into the weeds with this—if you want to read a breakdown of (some) of zhan tiri’s manipulation of cass in season three, i wrote a post about once a handmaiden here—because for our purposes, we just need to understand that the basic character of zhan tiri as we see her in the present should inform our interpretation of her behavior in the past. 

in other words, i think it is safe to assume that zhan tiri applied similar techniques and principles of manipulation to demanitus as we see her do to cassandra in the present; to wit, she would have sought to make him emotionally dependent on her by exploiting whatever vulnerabilities she could find and presenting herself to him as a trustworthy friend and kindred spirit. 

#3: she is not close to her disciples

once she is freed, zhan tiri never so much as mentions tromus or sugracha again. moreover, it is unclear how much personal information they actually know about her: in painter’s block, sugracha refers to zhan tiri as “he,” which could indicate one of several things: 

zhan tiri is female, but her disciples don’t know her well enough for assumptions they made about her gender based on the appearance of the ram-headed demon form to have been corrected, or

zhan tiri doesn’t subscribe to human conceptualizations of gender, and both “she” and “he” are acceptable pronouns because the gendered connotations of both are equally irrelevant.

i, personally, prefer the second explanation, but the first is tenuously supported by how little zhan tiri cares for her disciples.

what do her contemporaries say?

lord demanitus’s telling of his conflict with zhan tiri is as follows: 

Millennia ago, a mysterious event in the heavens divided an ancient power in two. The sundrop and moonstone fell to the earth. Three of my pupils and I researched the legend of the sundrop and moonstone, two elements that longed to reunite. We searched, but alas could not find them.

Unfortunately, we were not the only ones looking. My pupils betrayed me, and summoned my old nemesis, Zhan Tiri: a warlock from another realm, bent on destruction. It took all of my powers to banish the evil from our world.

I knew the research I had written about the sundrop and moonstone was valuable. Dangerous, in evil hands. So I tore the scroll and hid the pieces...

this exposition also shows us the identities of the three pupils who turned against demanitus and joined zhan tiri instead: sugracha, tromus, and gothel.

their identities are all confirmed outside of this sequence: sugracha and tromus appear as loyal servants of zhan tiri, and in a tale of two sisters, rapunzel and cassandra discover gothel’s research on the sundrop flower, including a piece that is an obvious attempt to recreate the demanitus scroll, indicating that gothel was indeed his student at one time: 

though it appears that gothel abandoned zhan tiri as well once she found the sundrop flower, as she hoarded its power for herself rather than seeking to use it to free her former master from the lost realm. 

now... because demanitus leaves out the part of this story that would involve admitting he worked with zhan tiri before she became his “nemesis,” we can’t say with any certainty when this business with his traitorous pupils freeing her happened—or, indeed, if it actually happened that way at all. it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that the three disciples could have been pupils of both demanitus and zhan tiri, who stuck with zhan tiri after demanitus betrayed her and banished her to the lost realm. 

my personal belief is that demanitus gathered his pupils to help him continue the search for the sundrop and moonstone after the flashback in plus est, only for them to be lured away by zhan tiri (perhaps via communication in dreams or visions, as cassandra’s revenge establishes that she’s capable of entering people’s dreams whilst trapped in the lost realm) and free her by reactivating the portal—thus shifting demanitus’s focus from “find the sundrop and moonstone” to “put the demon back in her prison and clean up this mess.” 

however, this is all very up for personal interpretation, because demanitus’s version of events is verifiably deceptive and thus cannot be taken as hard fact.

and what do the folk legends say?

#1: the blizzard

Eons ago, an evil warlock, Zhan Tiri, had a deep hatred for Corona, and cast a spell which caused a blizzard to sweep across the land. The storm destroyed everything in its path. All would have been lost, had it not been for the ancient engineer and inventor, Lord Demanitus. 

Using both magic and science, Demanitus built a massive subterranean machine deep in the Coronan mountains. This mighty device had the ability to change the direction of the wind, and it pushed the flurries out to the sea. The day was saved. Zhan Tiri had indeed been defeated. But some say the curse of the storm lives on, and is simply waiting to strike again...

we know that the basic event described here really happened, because the demanitus device does exist in the location indicated by the legend and works just as described. the details may have been glossed over or elaborated on over the centuries, but we know it is accurate in the essentials.

until recently, i put the events described in this legend immediately before the plus est flashback, to account for the snow on the ground during the flashback, but over the course of writing this post i have actually changed my own mind, and i now think that zhan tiri’s blizzard occurred when the disciples freed her from the lost realm for the first time. why? well, the imagery used to illustrate xavier’s telling of the blizzard legend is directly echoed by the imagery used to illustrate zhan tiri’s release in demanitus’s account in lost and found: 

queen for a day.

and lost and found. 

the color palettes here are identical, and in both, zhan tiri is depicted as the ram-headed demon, in almost the same pose, rising out of the mountains—which fits with both the location of the demanitus device and the possibility that she created (or became) the blizzard immediately after being released from the portal in the coronan mountains. moreover, her hatred of corona is based on her hatred of demanitus and her vengeful desire to destroy everything he loves, which would logically be stronger after he successfully imprisoned her once. 

#2: the great tree

Millennia ago, this tree was once a sentient being, a force for good. But it was corrupted by the evil sorcerer [Zhan Tiri] to destroy any who approached it. It was Zhan Tiri’s stronghold. Inside it, he was invincible. But Lord Demanitus put a stop to the tree’s magic using an enchanted spear. 

as with xavier’s blizzard legend, the fact of the spear’s existence and the behavior of the great tree itself once the spear is removed proves the basic accuracy of this legend. 

the difficulty hear lies with pinpointing when all this occurred. unlike the blizzard, there are no contextual clues to suggest where this conflict at the great tree may lie in the general timeline, so any conclusions we draw must be based on speculation. the only thing we know for sure is that zhan tiri’s residence in the great tree ended during demanitus’s lifetime, which puts a hard stop in it at about two thousand years ago.

my theory is that zhan tiri corrupted and resided in the great tree long before demanitus’s time. adira calls it her stronghold, and as discussed in the first section, the great tree has the greatest variety and frequency of zhan tiri iconography of any location in the series. one of the symbols inside the great tree is even found thousands of miles away at janus point—the corkscrew-snouted ram’s head—which draws a possible line of influence from the tree to janus point. taken together, all of this suggests a long period of time during which the great tree was zhan tiri’s tree.

and as for when it entered into the conflict between demanitus and zhan tiri, i believe there are two possibilities: 

demanitus knew of zhan tiri’s use of the great tree as a fortress, and she allowed him inside while they were collaborating in their search for the drops. she likely hid the violent nature of its defenses from him for a while; then she either let her guard down and allowed him to glimpse more of the truth, or the tree as attacked and he inadvertently witnessed a brutal massacre. either way, this is what clued him in to her ulterior motives, and he crafted the spear to destroy the tree’s magic—and it is this betrayal that zhan tiri references in the plus est flashback when she says “you turned your back on me.” 

zhan tiri had been using the great tree as a home for many years without the aggressive kill-anyone-who-enters security measures, allowing it to function as a library or house of research. this may have been how she and demanitus encountered each other in the first place, and would go a long way to explaining why demanitus trusted her initially. it wasn’t until demanitus turned against her and imprisoned her in the lost realm, and her subsequent release by his pupils, that she became enraged and turned the great tree into an indiscriminate killing machine and demanitus forged his magical spear to stop her.

i think both options are equally plausible, and since there isn’t any direct evidence one way or another, this is another case for personal interpretation and preference to really come into play.

so, to sum up...

at some point around two thousand years ago, lord demanitus encountered zhan tiri, and she persuaded him to trust her and work with her to find the mythical sundrop and moonstone. she was most likely just using him the whole time, while he grew to care for her but became so uncomfortable with her violent methods and selfish motivations that he felt he had no choice to imprison her in the lost realm. 

his pupils—whom he either once shared with zhan tiri, or gathered after the breakdown of his relationship with zhan tiri—turned against him, and either took her side in the conflict, or successfully freed her from the lost realm. i think the latter explanation(s) fit better with the information we are given. 

the blizzard discussed in queen for a day most likely happened after the plus est flashback and her subsequent release by the disciples. 

the conflict at the great tree most likely occurred either right before or at some point after the plus est flashback and her subsequent release, but it is plausible to assume that by this point she had been residing in the great tree for a considerable amount of time prior to working with demanitus. 

demanitus defeated zhan tiri and her disciples, imprisoned her in the lost realm, imprisoned most if not all of her disciples in the demanitus chamber, destroyed the portal to the lost realm so she couldn’t easily be brought back, and transferred his soul into the immortal body of a monkey so he could spend the next two thousand years as a... watchman of sorts, over the drops, probably with the hope that he could step in to prevent zhan tiri’s release if necessary.

[fearsmagazine]

THE GREEN SEA - Review

DISTRIBUTOR: Trinity Creative Partnership, Reel 2 Reel Films

SYNOPSIS:  Simone is an American writer and former musician living a secluded life in the Irish countryside. She is haunted by visions of her past. They’ve begun to intertwine with the fantasy world of the novel she is writing, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. Her life changes when the protagonist of her book, known only as “Kid”appears to her as a victim of a drunk driving incident that forces the pair together. Their meeting is the beginning of an unlikely relationship that will ultimately set off a chain of events that will force Simone to face her sinister past.

REVIEW: THE GREEN SEA is a film set in a writer’s world of magical realism. In many ways the film reminds of the 1947 film “The Bishop’s Wife,” wherein an angel comes to assist a Bishop who is struggling with several issues, including his faith. The central character here, Simone, is dealing with darker demons and scarred by personal trauma.

Filmmaker Randal Plunkett’s screenplay is focused on his main character Simone. The other characters serve as catalysts whereby the viewer comes to understand Simone, where she is at this point in her life, and causes old, painful memories to surface. I enjoyed the way the screenplay weaves elements of nature into the story that ultimately payoff in the film’s climax. Plunkett crafts some excellent dialogue that fits Simone perfectly. I can’t help but wonder if he didn’t know someone like this in his daily life. There are elements that have a more organic feel then something you'd find in a Stephen King novel and I think Simone is a bit more complex and darker. Plunkett sets up the viewer for certain expectations that he is able to manipulate in surprising ways. While he has many short projects to his credit this is his first feature film and it’s an impressive and compelling narrative.

Bringing Simone to life on the screen is veteran actress Katharine Isabelle. Genre fans will remember her for her role in the 2000 female werewolf film “Ginger Snaps.” She has a career of at least 121 projects that include film and television projects prior to and after the werewolf film. You can understand why she obtains so many roles as she does an outstanding job of creating this complex character on screen. She presents this portrait of a tormented artist that is both a writer and musician. You believe the facets to the character of mother, wife, musician, writer, alcoholic, etc. that make up this role. You feel the tension and torment of this character who has just about hit rock bottom and the potential for a glorious train wreck of an end to it. In contrast, rising star Hazel Doupe plays “the kid.” Doupe presents this character that is on a journey and has ventured off her life’s path. She comes across as a lost pilgrim and there is an innocence and lightness that provides excellent contrast to Isabelle’s performance. Finally there is actor Michael Parle, who is referred to in the credits as “The Collector.” He has very few lines of dialogue, and he does have a bit of a creepy voice, but his screen presences, body language and smirk create a chilling, memorable character.

The filmmakers have some excellent locations, the costumes add a lot to the character, and Darius McGann’s score adds a dream-like quality to the film. There are some compelling moments where the filmmakers use multiple shots and a variety of angles to create dreams and flashbacks that hint at Simone’s past and her current struggles. They employ a very rich palate that borders on extreme shadows and lighter, brighter moments given the locations.

THE GREEN SEA is an impressive first feature film by Randal Plunkett. He presents a contemporary fairy tale supported by strong performances and nicely shot visuals. The story is set in Ireland, a place of magic and wonder with a rich folklore of all types of mythical creatures. Instead of presententing a tale of humans beset by mischid creatures trying to bring about their demise, he spins a more positive yarn about hope and redemption, and a different type of benefactor that is as helpful as requiring help. An overall delightful viewing experience that baited my anticipation as to what Plunkett does for his next feature.

CAST: Katherine Isabelle, Hazel Doupe, Jenny Dixon, Dermot Ward, Michael Parle, and Zeb Moore. CREW: Director/Screenplay/Editor - Randal Plunkett’ Producers - Edwina Forkin & Stephen Lordes; Cinematographer - Philipp Morozov; Score - Darius McGann; Editor - Chris Gill; Production Designer - Ger Wallace; Costume Designer - Sonja Mohlich; Special Makeup Effects Artist - Fionnuala Coffey OFFICIAL: thegreenseamovie.com FACEBOOK: N.A. TWITTER: twitter.com/TheGreenSeaMovi TRAILER: https://youtu.be/VaA2NlGGZsg RELEASE DATE: VOD and Digital Platforms July 13TH, 2021

**Until we can all head back into the theaters our “COVID Reel Value” will be similar to how you rate a film on digital platforms - 👍 (Like), 👌 (It’s just okay),  or 👎 (Dislike)

Reviewed by Joseph B Mauceri

[roseofithaca]

First Strike

One last mini-fic before it’s back to work for me. Inspired by something @cecret-with-c said months ago about if Chris revealing himself had been more intense. It’s been a while since I wrote some whump as well.

What if Chris had done more than punch Eleanor in the face? (Sort of a sequel to Let Me In).

Once again, Michael is grateful that he was given a human suit with such long legs to help him sprint in such far strides. He’s had to do more running than he ever expected to do in the past couple of years and the only time he was ever ‘caught’ was when he willingly gave himself up, not that he counts that time as a loss.

He races across the town, ignoring the heads of the Janet babies who turn in his direction out of vague, programmed curiosity, making his way towards the most dull-looking beige bungalow on the corner. It’s the house of the grandmother no kid ever wanted to visit because all she did was sit in her armchair and forbid laughter while she ranted about the noisy ‘illegals’ living next door.

The door is closed. From the outside, there’s no obvious sign of distress. 

And of course, every resident’s home is made to be sound-proof in the interest of privacy (a feature Tahani pushed on when Janet revealed the ‘surveillance’ feature of Michael’s previous experiment. They weren’t happy about that). It explains why the others are all going about town as normal despite being close enough to hear any sort of ruckus.

He braces himself before rushing forward, finding the door unlocked as he turns the handle.

“Eleanor?” He calls, immediately. 

What awaits him inside is as bad as he predicted, furniture turned aside, a few smashed vases and torn, hideous flowery wallpaper. But at least nothing is on fire. Michael feels that’s always a plus to be counted in most situations.

He stumbles in, almost tripping over the leg of an upturned side-table. 

“Shirt...Eleanor?!” Michael tries again, looking down the hall, the house seeming like a small bull just charged through the place.

“I’m here.”

He follows the dejected voice to the living room, finding her sat on the one half that remains of broken sofa. The tiny bit of relief he feels at first to see her in once piece shatters when she raises her head up from her hands.

An uneven pattern of swollen bruises decorate her face, tearful eyes shining between the puffy lids, blood still dripping from a cut on her lip and to the side of her left eyebrow. There’s marks on her throat, her hands and where her jacket has been torn on her arm as well.

One would think Michael had seen enough beaten up humans in his existence for it to no longer affect him, but the sight of Eleanor in this state cuts deep.

“Shirt...”

She braves the smallest smile; “You should see the other guy.” She then winces, possibly regretting speaking.

“Linda?!” He still can’t believe it. It doesn’t make sense!

He’d been leaving his office to head over to Tahani’s when he’d bumped into a furious Janet, frog-marching a pissed off looking Linda in her grip. Before Michael could ask what the fork she was doing, Janet simply ordered him to get over to Linda’s house, for no other reason than ‘Eleanor is there’. He didn’t need more than that.

It was only after he’d left he smelled the blood on Linda’s hands. Eleanor’s blood. The same that is sprinkled around the room in its destruction and still leaking from her fresh wounds.

“Turns out Linda’s not as boring as we thought.” Eleanor scoffs, raising one of her blackened hands and cringing in further pain; “Fork...”

He puts aside the issue of Linda for a moment as he goes to kneel in front of her.

“Here...” He gently takes her wrists, cradling what looks to be an almost crushed set of fingers, delicately; “It’s okay...”

He snaps his fingers.

Eleanor hisses again, in discomfort more than pain this time, as the bones reset and fuse, her cuts seal up and the bruising settles down, hopefully taking the pain away with it. She lets out a deep sigh, now simply looking pained with exhaustion. 

“Thanks, bud...” 

He stays kneeling before her, eyes full of concern.

“What happened?” He asks, carefully; “Why didn’t Janet do that?”

Eleanor shakes her head, “Y’know what? It’s crazy. I don’t even remember...I just came here, wanting to try again with Linda, see if I could have a talk and understand her...For a few minutes she was just quiet, sitting and sucking on her mints while I did all the talking...And then out of nowhere...she got up and...”

She clenches her fingers on her lap, clenching her jaw to the point Michael hears her teeth grind.

“Take your time.” He tells her; “What did she do?”

“Not she...He.” Eleanor smirks again, annoyed; “Suddenly Linda was speaking in a guy’s voice...Calling me an annoying little bench, raging at me about how he got so sick of having to ‘play nice’ around me, and put up with me, when all he wanted to do whenever I opened my mouth was...Well. You saw for yourself.”

Michael takes a breath. He saw the result. He dreads to imagine what actions the clearly-not-human took to leave Eleanor looking like that.

“I just kinda blacked out, I guess. At first it was almost funny...this little old woman picking her chair up and throwing it at the radio, that was kinda neat. Then he started throwing things at me and I wasn’t ready to get out the way. And then, when I tried to call for Janet...his hands were on me and...” 

It might be more terrifying than the scene he walked in on, to see Eleanor Shellstrop this shaken and struggling to form a sentence. 

He flips the coffee table back upright and slides it close so he can sit and take Eleanor’s healed hands in his. He cages them safely in his own, rubbing them warm.

She laughs again, tears spilling; “Fork, Michael....I dunno what’s wrong with me!”

“You just took ten rounds from a demon, no one is going to judge you for not being yourself.” At least, that’s what he’s assuming. If Linda isn’t a human then angel is also very improbable, which leaves one last option. 

“I’ve dealt with ashholes on Earth trying to cup a feel when I wasn’t interested and I had no trouble handling myself or knowing how to get help. But this...” She trembles in his grip; “I was so....frozen. Like I couldn’t do anything! It was only when I thought he was gonna throw me through the window, I managed to call for Janet. She did offer to fix...” Eleanor gestures to her face; “But I just told her to get that motherforker out and somewhere secure...And I asked for you.”

She...wanted him? That causes a selfish little ball of light to glow inside of him, that he was the first one she wanted, out of the others. 

Then he reminds himself that he’s the only one out of them with magic to heal.

“You said this guy talked about having to put up with you before?”

She nods; “Yeah, I can’t remember if he was in those memories I saw...He might have been at that bar in Canada, I don’t remember. Might be the concussion.”

“Ah...I think I know who Linda might be underneath. I...put you with a lot of demons who posed as your fake soul mate and...one of them kept coming to me with a lot of complaints by the end because he was sick of it. It was only because he had the most handsome skin suit out of them all, he claimed I was being objectifying.” Michael waves off that bit; “His name was Chris.”

If he was working for Shawn to infiltrate them, posing as one of the humans, did he agree to it purely for the chance to finally get to physically hurt Eleanor like he always begged Michael permission for? He feels sick at the idea that he contributed to this in a way. 

“Well I’m glad Chrissy got it out of his system, now I know how guys really feel after having to put up with me.” Eleanor lightly jokes.

“No guy who’s been close to you would ever dream of hurting you like this.” He says that, earnestly.

Even before he changed sides, no matter how crazy Eleanor drove him, no matter how often she foiled his designs, he never wished physical hurt on her. Just to make her miserable by pranks and mind games. Nothing like this.

This was the last thing he ever wanted.

“I’m so sorry, Eleanor.” He brings one of her hands to his lips, “This is my fault.”

“No it’s not, dude.” She says, tired; “I should’ve waited for you to be done at Tahani’s before we checked on Linda...We agreed to do these things together...”

Damn, will he and Janet have to chaperone all the humans now until this is over, in case something else threatens them?

“I’m just pissed that we didn’t see through Linda’s whole boring schtick. Tahani even said something was up with her but I ignored it.” She groans and rubs her head.

“Does it still hurt?” Michael frowns. It shouldn’t do, if he did it right.

Eleanor shakes her head; “No...Not from the fight, just...all of this. I was so sure I could handle it but this...I wasn’t ready for...”

“Blame me. You wouldn’t be in this position if I hadn’t had that break down at the start.” Michael tells her, feeling twisted with guilt.

“You didn’t make me choose to take this on, Michael. Stop it. None of this is on you...I’m just glad you’re here now.”

“Of course.” He gets to his feet and offers her his hand; “C’mon. I think we better call Shawn and tell him we’ve got something of his. And the Judge too while we’re at it.”

Eleanor looks up at him and gives a smile, then a nod, before taking his hand and standing up.

They’re half-way to the door when there’s a sudden tug on his hand.

Michael turns, frowning, seeing Eleanor standing motionless behind him. Her fingers are gripping his with such ferocity, his fingers would probably crunch if he was human, while her shoulders tremble, the smallest wince of panic on her face.

“What is it?” 

Her bottom lip wobbles, her eyes on the ajar pink door; “I...I dunno, I just...I d-don’t wanna go there yet.”

“Eleanor, he’s restrained. Janet’s way stronger than any demon, remember? And I wouldn’t let him touch you agai-.”

“I know that, dude, all right?!” She raises her volume, frustrated; “I don’t need your forking rational argument - I know that he’s all chained up and I’m safe and, whatever, because I’m a sexy badash who doesn’t get scared of anything so, fork you, this isn’t because I’m scared because I’m not! I’m fine! You’re the one who’s scared, I’m just protecting you, got it?! So lay the fork-.”

Once Michael has pulled her into his arms, she shuts up. It’s hard for her to keep babbling once her face is smothered into his chest. He waits for the resistance, to be shoved back, but nothing comes. Instead she stills, before her knees buckle, and her arms slip around his middle to cling to him. He places one hand on her neck and the other on the top of her head, stroking gently.

He just holds her tight for a moment, closing his eyes to stop his senses from seeing all the clear signs in the mess around them of what that deckhead did to her. How there’s a dent on the wall from where she was clearly thrown, or how that particular drop of blood stained on the carpet must have come from a blow to her mouth.

“Michael...Bit too tight, bud, you just fixed these ribs...” Eleanor sniffs against him.

“Sorry, sorry.” He loosens a little, still keeping her close, for as long as she clings to him. He pulls back after another minute to touch her face, searching for those green-blue eyes; “Listen. I know you, remember? No one’s aware of what a badash bench you are more than me, okay? But I also know you’re still human...And humans break, that’s what you guys do, it’s what makes you so amazing. That you can be so spunky even when you’re so stupidly fragile.”

And the more vulnerable they are, such as the small woman in his arms, the more courage they seem to hold to compensate. 

“I know how often you’ve wanted to break down when things got tough but you always had to put up a front to save face. You don’t have to do that with me, remember?” He whispers, softly, his thumb brushing a tear from her face; “You were there for me when I collapsed like a Tahani being told she has to fly economy. You trust me to be still be there for you if you do the same right?”

She sniffs again, nodding.

“It’s not just you, bud. God can’t be seen weeping, can she?” She japes.

With a wave of his hand, the blinds close and the door shuts.

“God can have some privacy. You’ve earned it.” Michael smiles at her and brings her back in again, letting her curl into him, one of her hands grabbing at his jacket; “Take as long as you need. I’m sure Janet can have fun with Chris while he waits for us. Make him sweat. We’ll go when you’re ready.”

Perhaps he’ll ask Janet to have some ‘time alone’ in a quiet room with Chris, even after they’ve called Shawn and the Judge. He might not be Chris’ boss anymore but he still feels the need to offer some ‘managerial feedback’. Which is a euphemism, by the way, he plans on eviscerating the forknut.

He hears the smallest hum.

“Thanks, bud. I dunno what I’d do without you.” Eleanor whispers, still shaky, clinging onto him; “We should’ve known they’d be too dumb to use something like a Michael-suit and instead they pull a stunt like this that gives them away. Forking idiots.”

He chuckles with her, resting his cheek on her head as he keeps her close.

“They’re no match for us. Say it with me...We’ve got this.”

“That’s my line.”

“Our line.” He jostles her a little, delighted by the sound of her laughter, more so when she smiles up at him, that fire slowly starting to ignite in her eyes again. 

Michael moves a strand of her hair away before planting a kiss on her forehead. Only fair, as she kissed his cheek last time, and it had felt...oddly pleasant. 

She sighs, “Fine. We’ve got this.”

He looks down at her, feeling ready to burst with admiration. There she is. Eleanor Shellstrop. Holding it together after taking a pummelling from an immortal being. 

Unstoppable, as always. 

Better luck next time, Shawn, old pal. But try to lay a finger his humans again and there will be Here to pay.

[nikkoliferous]

Well.

Wow.

I mean, wow.

So in case you missed it, the first US presidential debate was everything the US empire deserves and a fair reflection of everything the US empire is.

If Vladimir Putin were every bit the election-meddling demon the Democrats say he is, and if he had unlimited time and unlimited resources to create the perfect ninety-minute propaganda video to discredit the US-led unipolar world order, he could not have designed one more effective than the performance that was just delivered by President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden with the help of moderator Chris Wallace.

I mean, it had everything. Both candidates yelling over each other the entire time, Biden telling the sitting president of the United States to shut up on live television, Trump at one point saying the Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by”, Chris Wallace literally shouting to be heard over the unceasing interruptions, Biden getting confused and arguing that the Green New Deal would pay for itself and then turning around saying he does not support the Green New Deal, mountains of lies and nonsense, and absolutely no meaningful discussion of policies that will actually help ordinary Americans at all.

It was crazier than any of Trump’s debates in 2016. It was crazier than any presidential debate that has ever happened. You seriously could not have designed a more perfect display to do everything we’ve been told for years that Russian propagandists are trying to do: depress the vote, encourage support for third parties, weaken public trust in America’s institutions, and humiliate the United States on the world stage.

The world is going to be talking about this for a while now. Clips from this debate are going to share widely all across the planet. It will be translated in many languages. Articles will be written about it for days. And people who’d never thought to question whether this is the government that should be leading the world into the future are suddenly going to find themselves contemplating that question.

And hopefully the next one will be even worse.

It is good for the US empire to invalidate itself in this way. The government that has encircled the planet with hundreds of military bases and snuffed out millions of human lives while displacing tens of millions since 9/11 in military interventions that were based on lies, which sanctions, sabotages and destroys any nation which dares to disobey its dictates, and which is escalating world-threatening cold war aggressions against not one but two nuclear-armed nations is not a government that should have any control over humanity’s collective future.

The uglier a face that appears on this murderous empire, the better it will be for everybody. In a government that is intrinsically evil and destructive from root to flower, an attractive face with competent management is the last thing anyone should want.

It doesn’t matter who won this accidental Kremlin propaganda performance of a debate. It doesn’t even matter who wins the election; the most evil aspects of the US government will continue unhindered regardless of which oligarchic puppet wins in November. What does matter is that the dark, ugly aspects of global power that people had previously not noticed are being drawn into the spotlight and seen by everybody. 2020 seems to be a good year for that.

If the imperialists who run things have any sense they will find a way to cancel future debates in the name of national security, because they’re the ones who will be worst affected by them. Here’s hoping they don’t, though.

[letterstothemidnightsociety]

CARRY ON MY WAYWARD SON IS JUST THE WHOLE MOOD FOR 2020, CAN WE ALL AGREE ON THAT?

Oh boy, guys, it’s here. The end. The very end. Tonight, Supernatural says goodbye for real this time. Maybe. Who really ever knows. But I’m not great at goodbyes, so instead let’s go back to the very beginning. It’s Supernatural!

So I’m here, at the season finale of Season 1. Very conveniently on the same day that the show is on the series finale of Season 15. It’s like I planned it, you guys! I did not plan this. 

Also, let’s take a minute to appreciate the irony of using Carry On My Wayward Son in every season finale when the Winchesters will never be done, they’ll never have peace, they will never lay their weary heads to rest. Don’t mind me, I’m just laughing til I cry. 

I genuinely think of the the last two episodes of Season 1 - “Salvation” and “Devil’s Trap” - as if they’re one episode. This is because a) I think they are designed to be a two-parter and b) they’re the only two episodes on the last disc of my box set BUT I think it’s important to note that these two episodes did not air on the same night. There was a week between them and that is...rough for an audience watching in real time. But when I watched it the first time, I was watching this exact dvd disc and of course I plowed right on through the cliffhanger in “Salvation” until the literal car crash that ends “Devil’s Trap”.

This disc! Right here! That has the real soundtrack on it, UNLIKE SOME STREAMING SERVICES!

Let’s look at a couple things: 

Way back in 2006 when these episodes aired, Supernatural’s success was average at best? Even though it’s the 5th most watched show on the WB, it’s averaged a little more than 3 million American viewers per episode, which at the time, wasn’t great. In contrast, the #1 show of the 2005/2006 TV year was American Idol season 1 - an average of 12.7 million viewers per episode. So it’s not exactly a winner of a show, but it’s not too far behind the WB’s #1 show, Smallville, which averaged around 4 million viewers per episode. Still, Supernatural’s fate was uncertain. “Devil’s Trap” aired on May 4, 2006, but the show didn’t get renewed for season 2 until May 18. That’s two weeks of cliffhanger limbo, and lemme tell you, that would have been a real slap in the tits if the show had been cancelled. 

Even further back, though, in January of 2006, it was announced that the WB and UPN would be renouncing their independence and merging under CBS and Time Warner company into what we know today as The CW. It was a network that was frankensteined together from the only working pieces of both networks and honestly I think that was a big reason Supernatural did get renewed. The CW was in need of some kind of programming to kick off the 2006 Fall Season and they greenlit new seasons for 13 of WB’s and UPN’s established programs. For a real blast from the past, here is their list of inaugural shows - 

7th Heaven (WB)

Beauty and the Geek (WB) 

Gilmore Girls (WB) 

One Tree Hill (WB)

Reba (WB)

Smallville (WB)

Supernatural (WB)

America's Next Top Model (UPN)

Veronica Mars (UPN)

Everybody Hates Chris (UPN

Girlfriends (UPN)

All of Us (UPN)

WWE SmackDown! (UPN)

I think my favorite part of this list is that both Gilmore Girls AND Smallville were still on the air, arguably the origin stories for Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles respectively. 

However, there’s evidence that Supernatural was in less danger of cancellation than you might think. In March, around about “Hellhouse” time, Supernatural gets moved from a Tuesday air date to a Thursday air date. If you follow American network TV at all, then you’ll know that Thursday is THE day. Historically, Networks believed this was the best day for programming. Advertisers paid extra for the combination of influencing your weekend plans and also influencing you before the weekend since you’re less likely to be watching TV and more likely to be spending money. Friends aired on Thursdays. Grey’s Anatomy is a Thursday show. Putting Supernatural on Thursday would indicate that the WB had some faith in it, although it’s possible they were simply removing something else that wasn’t working in that 9pm time slot. 

Ratings aside, once we get to the finale Supernatural has a good thing going, and it seems critics agreed. I think the back half of season 1 is where the show really starts to shine and take on the semblance of what it will become. This is where you see it shift from Monster-of-the-Week, anthology-style, to episodes that focused more on character - what I like to call the Feelings Episodes. That’s not to say there won’t be a ton more Monster-of-the-Week episodes, just that those are the B-story line, less important than the Winchesters-Working-Through-Trauma A-story lines. There’s also a greater emphasis on the overarching mythos and story arc of the season in the back half. This is ultimately what carries Supernatural into season 2 and beyond. Everyone from critics to series creator Kripke agreed that the episodes that focused more on the relationships and the internal struggles of the Winchesters was what really captured audiences. 

And all that gooey feelings stuff really comes to a head in the one-two punch that is “Salvation” and “Devil’s Trap”. 

UGH. FEELINGS.

The day of reckoning is finally here - the Winchesters finally know who they’re after, where to go, and how to kill it. Thanks to Sam’s Oh yeah! He’s got ESP!, they know exactly who’s gonna get hit next. The search is finally over, the battle’s about to begin. But it’s not just the Quest that’s winding down, it’s a bunch of character arcs that are coming to light as well. In fact, the Quest really does get pushed aside in favor of big character moves.

John Winchester, hyperfixated on revenge for the past 20 years, is finally close to resolving his grief and guilt over Mary’s death and the way he raised his kids. He tells his sons “whatever it takes” and we know he means it. This plays out in his decision to split up the team, in his willingness to sacrifice his own life so his boys have the opportunity to kill the demon they’ve been hunting all season. 

Who’s fault was THAT, you piece of shit.

Sam Winchester’s own feelings of guilt and grief are also on the cusp of absolution. We see just how similar Sam and John really are, specifically in their reactions to fridged girlfriends lost loves. For the first time this season, Sam follows John’s orders without question or complaint. He doesn’t hesitate to risk his own life to kill the demon, willing to literally walk into fire for a second shot at it. Sam’s here to do whatever it takes, and it’s only because of Dean that he doesn’t. 

Dean, on the other hand, is finally struggling with following John’s orders. I love the scene where John yells specifically at Dean when he finds out about Sam’s visions (watch John’s eyeline, he is NOT looking at Sam on that line) 

Exhibit A, because this show has turned me into a 19YO Stan again and I hate it.

and Dean yells back, pointing out that they were in much more dire straights than death omens and John never picked up the phone, not once, not even when Dean was dying. 

It’s TRUE and he SHOULD SAY IT! And seriously, John, even MEG knows you don’t answer voicemails, that’s why she calls Sam.

More importantly, Dean is not willing to do whatever it takes if whatever it takes means losing what he already has. Dean, who was so gung ho about finding mom’s killer in the beginning of the season, understands better than ever what he stands to lose if he lets his family continue on this path. It’s a real reversal of his attitude from the beginning of the show, but the about-face has happened so gradually over the last 22 episodes that it doesn’t feel out of left field. 

Because that’s what you get when you put Sam and Dean together on a cross-country road trip for nine months! The two grow and change just by proximity and the sheer number of hours they spend in the car together. Over the course of 22 episodes, Dean reminds Sam why they do what they do - saving lives - and Sam reminds Dean what and who they do it for - family, safe and sound and living their best life now. John’s got his own thing going on, so who even cares what his motivations are, I don’t, hurry up and get out of here, John, nobody likes you. 

That being said, “Devil’s Trap” starts with a pretty ruthless Dean performing an exorcism on Meg. He’s not dicking around this episode, and based on the fight he has with Sam in “Salvation”, it makes sense. Dean won’t do whatever it takes just for vengeance, but he will do whatever it takes to save someone, especially if those lives are his brother and his father. You could even extend that motivation into his decision to exorcise the demon and essentially kill Meg Masters - she may be dying, but she’s been saved from being a human meat puppet and unwilling participant to any number of evil things. 

In other news, Bobby Singer is a National Treasure and the Best Part of this Episode and Maybe All Episodes. He doesn’t have a lot going on in this episode, he’s just amazing and I love him forever. 

I had to pull a still from the episode because lookit this glorious mullet that he loses immediately, thank GOODNESS!

After getting a reality check from Dean in “Salvation,” Sam’s still struggling to figure out where he is on this spectrum, and you get to watch him make that decision in real time. He has the choice to be like John, to do whatever it takes to kill the demon, even though that means killing his own father. And he does not hesitate to aim when John tells him to shoot to kill, and that says a LOT. 

But it’s Dean who convinces Sam not to lose himself in this fight, even when he’s so close to winning it. It’s Dean’s tiny little “Sam, no!” that makes Sam put the gun down, and that ALSO says a LOT. 

It also hits me right in my heart meats, just OOF. 

And THEN, just when you think the Winchesters are at their lowest, beat to shit and barely holding on, THEN the show delivers its final blow: they crash a semi into the Impala. 

Listen, I watch a lot of garbage, and I watch that garbage on purpose. Sometimes, that’s just what you want. I don’t rate movies and tv shows on a good to bad scale anymore because some bad movies are GREAT and some good movies are just really terrible and I don’t like watching them. I’ve started talking about movies and tv in terms of whether or not I enjoyed them. Does it spark joy? Will it spark joy in others? 

My legitimate reaction to anything that looks like a dumpster fire.

I enjoy Supernatural. A LOT. And maybe it’s just because my calibration settings are off, but I’d also argue that this season is good. As in, it’s well-crafted, satisfying and (mostly) logical storytelling. Is it perfect? No. It’s a show that aired on the WB in 2005. And when I watched this for the first time in 2008, I didn’t dig too deep into character arcs or story structure, I just liked watching two hot guys fight ghosts and sometimes cry a little. Twelve years later, watching it with a more experienced eye and a more refined palette - er, well, maybe just more educated palette -  I can see the skill that went into crafting this 22-episode long story. 

Well, skill and and a little bit of sheer dumb luck. Cuz remember when I said that Kripke and Co. figured out that the Feelings Episodes ended up doing better than the Monster-of-the-Week episodes? That wasn’t until after they realized what a gift they’d been given in their two leads. It was the chemistry between Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki that both sold the show at the outset and built the foundation for seasons to come. Viewers cared about the show because they cared about the characters. They wanted to see these two beautiful dumpster fires struggle and overcome their internal battles way more than their external ones. If you need proof - I did not once talk about the Yellow-Eyed-Demon motives or plans from this episode. I barely even mention the quest, unless it’s in relation to how the characters are handling it, emotionally, and how that’s impacting others around them. When you come down to it, Supernatural is a show about a family struggling to survive just as much as it is about two guys saving the world, and that’s something that any audience can relate to. I’m never gonna perform an exorcism or face down angels and demons to stop the apocalypse. But I am gonna struggle with insecurity and doubt, grief and anger and family drama. That’s the human element. That’s what connects you to these characters. And when you’re lucky enough to have two lead actors that really sell the hell out of the family dynamics, you're setting up for some serious television gold. 

Fifteen years after this season aired, both of these elements - the story-crafting AND the luck - are more important than ever. No matter what show you’re watching, when you get to a season finale, that finale needs to feel like a set of dominos tipping over. It needs to feel like you’ve set up for that final confrontation both externally (the quest arc) and internally (the character arc). It needs to feel satisfying and motivated when those dominos finally fall. Most importantly, you need to make sure your audience cares about why they’re falling in the first place. Who cares about anybody’s arc if you haven’t built that character connection with your audience in the first place? 

For a TV show looking ahead to season two, all that resolution also needs to ask more questions. It needs to propel us through one conflict and into another. That’s what the finale of this season does. It threads the needle into that sweet spot between conclusion and new beginning. Will our heroes live or die? Will the yellow-eyed demon be defeated? What’s next? And on this side of 2020, how did they keep that momentum going for more than a decade? 

I can’t think of any current show right now that I would follow for 15 years. Hell, I didn’t even follow this show for 15 years. But the longevity of Supernatural means that they’ll be the template for any show looking to last even half as long as they did. And no matter how you feel about this show, you’ve gotta admit that’s heckin’ WILD. 

[drawing-way-outside-the-lines]

Malou (’Mia Mayhem’) Jensen *Main character

Voice Claim:(Olivia Wilde) https://youtu.be/bV6cC-rUMCs?t=1m13s (Right click on links and open in new tab)

Partner(s): Dalton. Parents: None. Kids: None. Age: 37 (Year 2020) 26th of May. Height: 173cm Body type: Slim. Eye color: Light blue/gray Human: Immortal.

About: Caring, Individualistic, Generous, Passionate, Creative, Adventurous, Sarcastic, Charismatic, Clever, Compassionate, Sensitive, Freethinking, Friendly, Helpful, Sharing,  Humble, Self-critical, Understanding, Witty, Open-minded, Absentminded, Emotional, Brooding, Skeptical, Stubborn, Shy, Introvert, Observant, Anxious, Cautious, Genuine, Awkward and Clumsy. ~ Straight, but loves to watch gay porn. Is borderline Asexual when it comes to straight sex. ~ Has several tattoos on her body, mainly Geeky, representing some of the fandoms she’s in. ~ Her favorite tattoo is the unicorn she has on her left hand. ~ Colors her hair electric blue. ~ Is a writer/artist. ~ Currently learning to write song lyrics/sing/play guitar. ~ Lives with her roomie, Dalton. ~ Used to attend a design school where she would sew clothes all day, now she can’t stand sewing by machine, and only does things she can sew by hand. ~ HUGE cat lover. - Has 3 of her own, Oliver, BMO and Bunny. ~ Used to be very skinny and hated when people assumed she had an eating disorder, or called her names like giraffe or spider legs, when she actually had a very large appetite and always ate a lot. ~ Always smells like burned incense and wood. ~ Hates most artificial smells, loves earthy tones. ~ Loves to collect creepy stuff. ~ Atheist. ~ Has a pretty dark sense of humor. ~ Drinks almost nothing but tea. ~ Is probably made of tea? ~ Dislikes society. ~ Flannel/tartan addict. ~ Super power = anxiety. ~ Believes in unicorns and magic. ~ Strong-willed. ~ Stomps around in big boots. ~ Once kicked a taxi cause the driver was an ass. ~ Hates when people repeatedly sticks their nose in her business. ~ Orphan. ~ Pretty good cook. ~ Fills her bed with plushies to make up for the fact she hasn't shared her bed with anyone half a decade at least. ~ Lonely. ~ Melancholic. ~ Romantic at heart though she never fully admits it. ~ Cares too much for her own good. ~ 100/10 would do anything for the people she loves. ~ Is very honest, if you can’t handle the truth, don’t ask for it. ~ Was abused physically and mentally as a child, as result she sometimes suffers from anxiety, Depression and bad nerves. ~ Can be rather pessimistic. ~ Hates freezing. ~ Uncomfortable around people. ~ Loves her friends, her cats, Rock music, chillout music, pandas, unicorns, owls, wolves, ravens, deer, bears, foxes, Deadpool, watching movies, plushies, licorice, writing, being creative in any way, light chains, grungy stuff, neon lights, Christmas, Halloween, Halloween-type decor, Hello Kitty, 90′s stuff, spearmint, finding deeper meaning in stuff around her, stickers, Anti-Heroes, collecting penis decor, spooky stuff, anything made out of raw wood, flannel, daydreaming, weird/cute/extraordinary mugs, leather wristbands, gay porn, dancing to loud music, Rick & Morty, coloring books, cozy blankets, strange backpacks, gemstones/crystals, nature and scented candles. ~ Her style changes with her mood. One day she wears bright colorful stuff with rainbows and unicorns. Next day it’s black clothes with witchy/creepy symbols/prints or dirty jeans and oversized flannel shirts. ~ Can be pretty grumpy, but it’s usually nothing more than just that. Malou’s tag Malou’s house/home Malou’s moodboard Handwriting/ask answer pic:

One Gif to describe her:

One song to describe her:  Mumford & Sons - Hopeless Wanderer Personal playlist: 1. Incubus - Drive 2. D-A-D - Laugh 'n' A ½ 3. Godsmack - Serenity 4. Jack Johnson - All At Once 5. Damon Albarn – On Melancholy Hill (acoustic) 6. Tim Christensen - Whispering At The Top Of My Lungs 7. Linkin Park - Papercut 8. Nirvana - Plateau 9. Gorillaz - Tomorrow Comes Today 10. Serj Tankian - Left Of Center 11. Korn - Freak On a Leash 12. The White Stripes - Hardest Button To Button 13. Gorillaz - Aries ft. Peter Hook & Georgia 14. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Can't Stop 15. Madrugada - Sirens 16. Alabama 3 - Woke Up This Morning 17. Gorillaz - Amarillo 18. Jewel - Absence Of Fear 19. Angels and Airwaves - Secret Crowds 20. Blur - Girls And Boys 21. Gorillaz - Saturnz Barz (Spirit House) 22. Cigarettes After Sex - Sweet  23. Jewel - Deep Water 24. Jack Johnson - Sleep Through the Static 25. Damon Albarn - Lonely Press Play 26. D-A-D - Empty Heads 27. R.E.M. - Drive 28. Incubus - Promises, Promises 29. Chris Cornell - Billie Jean 30. Blur - Colin Zeal 31. Puscifer - Momma Sed 32. Heartless Bastards - Only For You 33. Gorillaz - El Mañana 34. Angels & Airwaves - Breathe 35. The Beatles - Come Together 36. 4 Non Blondes - What's Up 37. Gorillaz - Momentary Bliss ft. slowthai & Slaves 38. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me 39. Blur - Mirrorball 40. Incubus - Black Heart Inertia 41. Limp Bizkit feat. Method Man N 2 Gether Now 42. 2Pac - Changes ft. Talent 43. D-A-D - Bad Craziness 44. Nirvana - Pennyroyal Tea 45. Blur - Ong Ong 46. Angels and Airwaves - Do It For Me Now 47. Right Said Fred - What A Day For A Daydream 48. Damon Albarn - Everyday Robots 49. The Human League - I’m The Law 50. Jamiroquai - Virtual Insanity 51. Linkin Park - A Place For My Head 52. Blink -182 - Down 53. 3 Doors Down - Duck And Run 54. Alanis Morissette - Hand In My Pocket 55. Savage Garden - The Animal Song 56. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Scar Tissue 57. Incubus - Dig 58. Green Day - Basket Case 59. LP - Lost On You [Live Session] 60. D-A-D - Sleeping My Day Away 61. Bob Marley - Buffalo Soldier 62. Beth Hart - Delicious Surprise 63. Extreme - Hole Hearted 64. Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al 65. Jack Johnson - Breakdown 66. Damon Albarn - Photographs (You Are Taking Now) 67. Sticky Fingers - Cyclone (The Village Sessions) 68. Blur - Star Shaped 69. Serj Tankian - Empty Walls 70. The Dead South - Diamond Ring 71. The Kills - U.R.A Fever 72. Godsmack - I Stand Alone 73. Queen -  Bicycle Race 74. Alanis Morissette - Ironic 75. Dizzy Mizz Lizzy - Hidden War 76. Nirvana - About A Girl 77. Damon Albarn - Mr Tembo 78. Savage Garden - To The Moon & Back 79. Alannah Myles - Black Velvet 80. Jewel - Down So Long 81. Tep No - Swear Like A Sailor 82. Youssou N'Dour - 7 Seconds ft. Neneh Cherry 83. Gorillaz - Broken 84. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Road Trippin 85. Jewel - Good Day 86. Sheryl Crow - Everyday Is A Winding Road 87. Gorillaz - The Valley of The Pagans ft. Beck 88. Green Day - When I Come Around 89. Tim Christensen - Lay Down Your Arms 90. Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood 91. The Pretty Reckless - Zombie 92. Stereophonics - Maybe Tomorrow 93. Blackfield - My Gift of Silence 94. Dizzy Mizz Lizzy - Love Me a Little 95. Damon Albarn - Heavy Seas Of Love 96. The Paper Kites - Bloom 97. David Bowie - Heroes 98. The Beatles - Day Tripper 99. Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc. 100. Faithless - Mass Destruction 101. Limp Bizkit - My Generation (Uncensored) 102. Tasmin Archer - Sleeping Satellite 103. Jennifer Brown - Alive 104. Of Monsters And Men - Sloom 105. Panic! At The Disco - New Perspective 106. Limp Bizkit - Break Stuff(Explicit) 107. Blur - Lonesome Street 108. Sort Sol - Holler High 109. Jacob Lee - Demons (Philosophical Sessions) 110. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here 111. Nina Simone  Feeling Good 112. The Human League - Darkness 113. Gorillaz - Strange Timez ft. Robert Smith 114. Des'ree - I'm Kissing You 115. Meredith Brooks - What Would Happen 116. Dan Black - Symphonies ft. Kid Cudi 117. The Kills - No Wow 118. Gorillaz - Fire Flies 119. Guns N' Roses - Patience 120. Incubus - In The Company Of Wolves 121. The Dead Weather - Will There Be Enough Water 122. Hooverphonic - Mad About You (Live at Koningin Elisabethzaal 2012) 123. Blur - The Universal 124. Sort Sol - Let Your Fingers Do The Walking 125. Roy Orbison - In The Real World 126. Corey Hart - Sunglasses At Night 127. Imagine Dragons - Radioactive (Henri Pfr & Hësling Edit) (Cover By Victoria) 128. Hollow Coves - These Memories 129. Beth Hart - Favorite Things 130. Catching Flies - Quiet Nights Bonus: Yello - Oh Yeah Double Bonus: Meredith Brooks - Bitch Triple Bonus: Seal - Crazy Almost done I swear!: Wolf Larsen - If I Be Wrong Last but not least: Tim Christensen - Enjoy The Silence

[stoopsbookstore]

Seven Deadly Sons Chp. 1

Welcome all who enter these halls! A new year brings new changes and with new changes comes new people. We are excited to announce an exchange program! Demons, Angels and Huma-

"Oh, fuck off."

Throwing his textbook at the speaker, Seonghwa growled at the news. Six other bodies joined him in their secret room, a small lounge for them to sit and gossip about the student body, which happens to be growing this year.

"Humans," Yeosang took a sip of wine from his chalice, "how pathetic. At least Angels have abilities to make them worthy."

"Humans can be useful, little brother," Yuta patted Yeosang's shoulder, walking past him to pick up Seonghwa's book, "they make great fucktoys."

"Well, from what I've been told, there's one girl who's coming from Earth that Diavolo wants us to keep our eyes on, make sure no ones fucks with her," Bang Chan jumped over the couch, landing on the middle cushion and reaching for the remote to turn on the TV.

Appearing on the screen was a girl in a mid-thigh pastel purple dress, holding her cross-body bag walking with Diavolo.

"From my research, her name is Y/N," Shinwon sat up, his laptop on his chest, his finger flicking the mouse wheel, "according to this page, she doesn't really have a social media presence, only really having an Instagram full of aesthetic shots, either taken herself or from Pinterest."

"And why do we care?" Seonghwa yanked Shinwon's laptop, folding it over and reading the page himself, "Oh, lookie here. Looks like she's going to be our new plaything, fellas!"

"Diavolo is trusting us with the human?! That's rich," licking his lips, Yuta zoomed in on Y/N, her skirt flowing in the wind, "come on, upskirt shot."

"Enough, Yuta," Kun grabbed the remote from the older male, shutting the TV off and pointing at the door, "We're supposed to go meet the new people, including the new girl. Get up, get dressed and look presentable."

A groan from behind the couch startled everyone. Kun throws a energy drink to a hand that launched up behind the furniture.

"That includes you, Shinwon."

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"This is the quad!"

Diavolo gestured around the octagonal space, lush plants growing on one side with a stunning waterfall and on the other, a small volcano warms the surrounding area.

"This is where you'll be able to hang out before, after and during the class day. Now, those who are underage will be on a curfew of 9pm, while those are older are allowed out until the gates close," Diavolo conjured up a projection of the front gates, the ominous feeling leaking through, "The gates close at 2am every night. If you're outside, Thornwood is not responsible for any injuries, deaths or other occurrences that may happen!"

Y/N zoned out, sitting by the small pond as she looked around. A fire demon set up a blanket by the volcano, sunbathing by the blanket. Her eyes scanned over the seven boys who appeared next to the headmaster, not stopping as she followed a butterfly that flew by her. The beautiful creature caught Y/N's eyes, the tour group leaving the quad just as Y/N noti-

Thud!

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry." Y/N recovered, jerking forward to avoid falling on the ball of whatever.

"Don't be," The lumpy blanket begun to speak, moving with a sloth-like pace, a head of orange-tinted hair popping out, "My fault for plopping on the ground really."

Fully exposed, the tall boy made Y/N feel small, clutching her notebook to her chest as she struggled to find the right words. Anyone could tell hs was exhausted, dark circles under his eyes in need for concealer, caffeine or something to wake him up.

"Again, I am so fu-"

"Shinwon! What are you doing to the new meat?" Seonghwa and Yuta were walking towards the newly named demon, the former dressed in a blood red button down and black skinny jeans while the latter was dresed in a loose white shirt with khakis that had been torn in suggestive spots, "At least wait a week, let her get used to the place."

"That's never fun, Mars," Yuta circled Y/N, smiling and seemingly examining her, his fingertips barely touching her waist, "might as well give her a proper introduction to Thornwood."

"A proper introduction," Yuta jumped away from Y/N at the voice of Diavolo, the three boys bowing to the ground like servants in a palace, "does not include the violation of a human with your penis, Yuta."

"Sorry, Diavolo," Yuta bows his head in the one time he willingly shows any shame.

"You three, go study. Let the new exchange students explore in peace," Diavolo gently nudged Y/N past the boys, his smirk beaming as she left the quad.

"Dia-"

"Not now, Seonghwa," putting up a hand, Diavolo silenced the younger boy, "you and the other six will be requested for a mission. 7pm. It's very important, don't be late."

With that, Diavolo vanished, Yuta, Seonghwa and Shinwon coughing at the dust cloud. Shinwon patted Yuta's back while posing a question to Seonghwa.

"Should we tell the others?"

"They already know what to do."

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Walking with her map in hand, Y/N strolled past door by door, the corridors ornately designed, purple walls with gold trim and artifacts from all around the world through the history of time.

Stopping in front of a mirror, Y/N traced the designs. The swirls under her fingers telling a story of years past and the millions of those who have walked the campus grounds. This mirror has seen millenniums of history, millions of faces, no cracks and the gold still shining as if it were brand new.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

Y/N saw a boy in the mirror, his hair dirty blonde and a little bit past his ears. His outfit seemed too formal for campus life, a deep purple velvet jacket with gold designs, not unlike the hall with matching pants. Y/N found herself staring at his reflection, his face was softly sharpened and his cat-like eyes pierced through her.

"The mirror, I mean," he fixed his hair, leaning into Y/N, his breath against her ear, "but the two standing in front of it aren't that bad either."

"Uh-"

"Don't worry, I already know your name, you've met my brothers," the boy bowed, presenting his hand to Y/N who hesitantly took it, "you're Y/N, our new exchange student."

"And you are?" Y/N broke the gaze, shaking her head and letting go of the foreign hand she held, the demon rising from his bow.

"Yeosang, it's a very nice pleasure for us to meet. I'm sure maybe we can get together," Yeosang had a condescending tone in his voice, sliding Y/N's notebook out of her hands and flipping through the blank pages, "bask in my glory a little bit."

"I don't think that's how it works," feeling offended, Y/N took her notebook back, walking away before slamming into a body, money and chocolate syrup flying everywhere.

"Kun!"

"Chan!"

"Dumbasses!"

Two boys were on the floor, a third filming as Yeosang pulled Y/N to his chest, the chocolate syrup and money narrowly missing her. The mess in the hallway was ignored by those who were saw this as an everyday occurrence, one girl even throwing a towel to who Y/N can only assume is Chan and Kun. Blowing a kiss at Y/N, Yeosang let her go, stumbling over Kun and into the arms of the one filming.

"Yeosang! What the fuck? I could've had the best shot for my new DemonTube video!" The admittedly whiny voice demon pushes Y/N, Chan and Kun standing up and catching her just as she fell chest first, her outfit ruined.

"Joshua!" Yeosang clinched his teeth together, vividly gesturing to Y/N, "he-say s-iay he-tay ew-nay irl-gay."

"What the fuck are you saying?" Joshua's anger was palpable, his face a bright tomato red as he slammed the camcorder shut, "I don't care who this girl is, she ruin-"

"Dude," as they were getting up, Chan was fascinated by Y/N while Kun covered Joshua's mouth, chocolate smeared on his face, both of their eyes widened, "Exchange program, Diavolo, human?"

"Oh?" Looking Y/N up and down, Joshua shrugged, his discontent apparent as he stole the towel Chan was using to wipe himself down, "Demons are cuter."

"You assholes know how to make a guest feel fantastic on her firsr day," Y/N brushed past the four, aggressively bumping her shoulder into Joshua's.

"What is her problem?"

"I don't know, Joshua, maybe you just made her feel like crap for no reason."

"Rule number one of girls, Kunnie," swiping a stroke of chocolate off of Kun's cheek, Joshua licked his finger cleaned, "Make a girl yours by making her believe she's not. What's up with Chan?"

Chan had ran away before hearing Joshua's question, catching up to Y/N as her stomps could be heard echoing.

"Wait! At least let me buy you a new outfit," Chan grabbed onto Y/N's shoulder, the girl immediately turning around to land a sharp slap on his cheek.

"I don't know how the hell you creatures treat people down here in where the fuck this is," Y/N was almost on the edge of tears, her notebook, dress and cardigan covered in chocolate and coins, her map on the floor as Chan reached for it.

"I'm sorry that this is your first impression, please let me tak-"

Plucking some coins off of her dress, Y/N threw them at Chan, frustratingly ripping her map out of his hands.

"At least let me show you your dorm please."

Chan took Y/N's map and her hand, Y/N looking at it like it was infested, the same sticky substance coating him. Chanting something in a language Y/N has never heard, Chan magically transported them to a large opaque glass door.

"I know this wasn't a good day, but welcome to Thornwood. I'm Chan, but you can call me Chris if that's better."

"Chan's fine."

Happy with a response that wasn't shouting, he knocked at the door, looking at Y/N with a sympathetic look. Sprinkling something over the human, the chocolate stains and mess that was created suddenly vanished just as the door opened. Standing in the doorway, 7 girls peeked their heads out, groans and gasps aplently.

"You must be Y/N!" The girl looked over to Chan, her face dropping into a grimace, "he hasn't done anything to you, has he?"

"Thanks for thinking highly of me, Joy. I actually am the reason she's not dead yet," Chan gestured Y/N in, handing back her map and bowing, "Y/N, if you need me, it seems like I'll be in your classes. Don't be afraid to ask."

Slamming the door after Y/N was safe in the living area, Chan backed into the wall across from the door, sliding down the wall in frustration before Diavolo appeared before him.

"My office. Now."

In the girls' dorm, all of the others looked at Y/N like a rare specimen, one girl go as far to tug and pull at her arms like she was a rag doll.

"Sunny, I think something's off, I thought humans were to be cheerful."

"Jesus, Chaeyoung, be a little nice," Sunny conjured up a cup of tea for the new girl, Y/N reaching for it almost instantly, "She was with Bang Chan, you know what that means?"

At the sound of his name, Y/N busted into tears, falling into the arms of the long black haired girl next to her. The six other girls knew what happened, each of them grabbing a stereotypical sleepover food before the girl who Y/N could assume was named Joy patted her head, a gentle smile on her face.

"It's okay. No one has a good experience with the seven deadly sons."

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Emily's Awakening, Part Three

Following a jolt and abrupt halt in her uncontrolled flight, Emily shot through the air and tumbled forward. Immense heat, so fiery that it threatened her skin to blister, made way to flames licking at her nude body, triggering a visceral response; making animal instincts flare up and drive her to new heights of exertion.

She rolled after hitting the ground, stumbling back onto her feet only to run yet farther—only forward—liberating every aspect of the clashing realities and letting this hell burn to the ground with its own flame.

Running, sprinting, up until she stopped sensing her body itself. Until her entire being had become this valley of fire.

A scent of sulfur and something that reminded her of blood or rust—iron—hit her nostrils like a freight train. The heat that accompanied it was out of this world, radiating from a floor made out of red hot cast iron—but it did not hurt Emily.

She stood before a maze and in the center of that maze stood Emily. Or rather, a glowing image, a reflection of herself, lit and radiating with the dim light of that calm blue flame, contrasting the crimson glow of the inferno and lava all around.

Emily finally paused, finding that she didn’t need to catch her breath. Instead, a strange calm filled her. Smoke billowed out from between her lips even though her last cigarette felt like it had burnt down an eternity ago. Fire burnt on her skin—no, it burnt from her skin, escaping through the pores from her blood within—a raging fire. Her skin had lost all semblance of flesh, now made of pure, living iron.

The other Emily—the other one who stood in the center of the labyrinthine pattern of glowing lines—she beckoned Iron Emily to herself. Blue Flame Emily’s blue light glimmered, glowing in a steady counterbalance to Iron Emily’s red-hot rage.

Focus.

Focus.

“What the jailer does not know, is that they are just another prisoner,” Emily whispered. To herself or to anything within the infinity around her; none of that mattered. Recalling Wise Man’s words helped her calm down.

All that mattered was that her mind still functioned and the words emerged from her core, like the whisper and crackle of a flame, like the mantra that heralded an anchor being cast into the water. It didn’t sound or feel like her self anymore, but it was—unmistakably so. Even more her self now than ever before.

Reborn.

No—something was missing. Something crucial. She was still in the process of rebirth.

Iron Emily approached Blue Flame Emily. Her consciousness trailed behind her by half a step, always following, all entities connected by silver threads but remaining out of sync and catching up in a blur.

The fires would meet. Together they would burn brighter than any color.

A beacon of blinding light.

The moment Iron Emily stepped onto the pattern of the maze to cross the floor, a shock wave jolted through her body and an unseen force pushed her back. She could feel the iron of her feet melting into the searing-hot stone of the maze, making her steps weigh a million tons and slowing her advance.

“Wake up,” Iron Emily said to Emily. The words poured out like smoke, smooth and toxic. She was not appealing to a dreaming self, nor was she urging Emily to wake up from a nightmare. Emily was telling Emily to focus—to shed all things that still held her back.

The first thing that weighed her down was a glimpse of another reality—another timeline? Another dimension? A place where Emily sat inside the bright white confines of a psych ward, rocking back and forth and withdrawn from reality altogether, failing to cope with the horrors of being abducted and raped by monsters posing as human beings.

That image loomed behind her like a dark shadow. That alternate existence and everything else behind her—there lied madness.

Only two ways left to go: to turn back and surrender herself to insanity, or to wander the infernal maze and embrace her destiny.

Iron Emily struggled to move, finally lifting a foot and taking her first step into the circular maze. A familiar presence blinked into existence—felt but not seen, then heard but not felt.

“Gay Chris,” as they always called him back in the day. One of her best friends. He stood, leaning against one of the fiery rocks on the edge of the maze, giving off a casual air and unfazed by this surreal hellscape.

“You always rant about all the shit that’s wrong with the world, but what the fuck are you doing about it but ranting? Shut the fuck up if you’re not going to do anything about it,” he said, repeating the words that had inspired Emily to become the truth-seeker she was now.

Even his expression mirrored the one on his face from that decade past—annoyed by his stoned friend’s idiotic tirades. When it clicked for Emily. When she steered her life in a new direction, one in which she would change the world, and the one in which she became a jaded journalist.

“I won’t shut the fuck up,” she replied, now smiling. Originally, she had been taken aback by his words. Now she knew the purpose she had found, the things she had done, and all the things she still wanted to do. “At least I’m fucking doing something now. Can you say the same for yourself, designing graphics for stupid little video games over in Montreal, motherfucker?”

“She won’t be silenced, son,” Detective Tanner said. The law man had appeared behind Iron Emily, seemingly out of nowhere, born from this fiery hell.

Chris chuckled and his skin melted, sloughing off like pudding. The chuckling gurgled and exploded into a bellowing, booming laughter, growing in volume. From the hideous molten flesh emerged a demonic figure, showing its true form.

Emily’s madness.

“Sure, keep acting tough, little girl. Cuffed to the curtain rod while the Grinning Man sinks the blade into your back,” the demon said.

Iron Emily squinted, pushing back the memories of her trauma. But there would be no avoiding them here. She could feel the infernal fires burning away all uncertainty, peeling away the layers of her flesh like the skin of an onion till all that was left was the stark realities underneath, and the core of who she truly was.

Thing being, Emily was not afraid of that anymore. She was not afraid of her true self. She knew her flaws, her weaknesses, all the rough edges and the inconsistencies that she believed to burden the world around her with.

Part of her true self was this thing—this demon—and she felt no shame about it. No regrets. She was more in tune with who she was than ever before. She remembered it from her drug trip in Rodney’s basement. And here it was again, haunting her.

She let her gaze sweep back and forth between Tanner and the demonic entity that had worn Gay Chris as a disguise.

“What the fuck do I call you?”

“Tanner,” said the entity looking like Detective Tanner.

“Okay. And you? You’re not Chris anymore,” she said, nodding at the demon. “Here’s your chance to pick a cool name, because I sure as hell am gonna give you a dumb one just to piss you off.”

The demon cackled and growled, “I am what lurks at the bottom of each glass of booze you drown yourself in.”

“Alright. Suit yourself, asshole. I dub thee Stinky Jim.”

This also amused the demon, prompting more mad cackling.

A sense of uneasiness returned. It reminded her of the presence of the Grinning Man. Always behind her, closing in for the kill. Murder in the eyes, just watching her.

Emily dared to shoot a glance over her shoulder, peeking at the infernal madness behind her, raging at the edges of the maze. From it emerged Hal, carrying the studio camera, approaching her.

“Clever, Emily. Now show us how much of a ‘highly-functioning alcoholic’ you really are. Not sure you ever managed to pull off that magic trick, you dumb bitch,” he sneered, keeping the camera trained on her. The red light on the camera flashed menacingly, matching the beat of the all-devouring madness, beating to the pulse of this Pandemonium.

Stinky Jim cackled more at this, and melted into a puddle of searing-hot lava on the floor. Emily chose to ignore Fake-Evil Hal and look straight ahead.

Kept her eyes on Blue Flame Emily.

Still she could feel the camera, hovering right behind her. Watching her every move. Some part of her knew this was her own insanity, a part of herself that was judging her, testing her. Prodding her with every single bad memory, and exposing everything she thought or desired.

Fake-Evil Hal reminded her of her self-destructive, self-hating streak.

“You have to keep going,” Tanner said. Emily wanted to imagine that she reminded him of her father, but Tanner didn’t. If anything, he reminded her of what she imagined a father figure to be like, and what such a man would do now. “You got this,” he added on cue.

“Are you really Tanner?” she asked him. Because while everything and everybody else felt like manifestations of her self, Tanner’s presence felt so—off. Out of place.

He turned and pointed to the wall behind him. Instead of the obsidian and granite that comprised the solid structures within this fiery hell, he stood within the confines of his office at the precinct.

A red yarn connected pins on the corkboard there, drawing lines between different photos, maps, and pink Post-it notes. She remembered this “paranoia wall” of his quite well.

“It’s not paranoia when they’re really out to get ya,” he reiterated. “This shit sandwich is made in the top echelons,” he told her, tapping the Post-its with question marks at the head of the maze-like map he had created. She knew what he meant: that it went all the way up to the police chief. “I’ll do what I can, but you need to be careful.”

A presence neared, heavy with malice. As both Emily and Tanner turned in unison to gaze upon its visage, more of the projection of the detective and his office overlapped with the fiery maze. Through the milky obscuring glass on his office door, silhouettes approached. Shadows. Nebulous, faceless, and evil.

Converging on Tanner.

“You gotta go. Never give up,” Tanner said.

Emily wanted to tell him that things would be different now, but the moment she turned to tell him so, Tanner and his office transformed into ashes, like thin sheets of paper burning up in a flash. The violent winds of the inferno swept the ashes away, scattering them in every direction, and absorbing the embers like they never existed in the first place.

Tanner was gone and a pang of guilt hit Iron Emily in the gut.

He was right, she had to go. She strained and tried to lift her legs, but her feet had fused with the smooth stone ground beneath her.

“Welcome to the Emily show, where everybody is rooting for everybody else—yelling at the screen and hoping to see you fail. Because you’re such a vile piece of shit,” Fake-Evil Hal said, still behind her, a presence holding the camera. “Did I say everybody? Hah, don’t let it get to your head. Nobody likes you, and nobody’s watching. You’re the only viewer, you self-loathing, self-involved whore.”

Emily took a deep breath and exhaled more smoke. She flipped Fake-Evil Hal the bird without even turning around or giving him the satisfaction.

Then she pushed forward, pulling her limbs with all her might. Taking one difficult step at a time, her iron legs thudding against the accursed stone with tremendous weight as she made her way into the maze.

Blue Flame Emily looked so close, but felt so far. So infinitely far away. Every step Iron Emily took, the stone ignited and burned beneath her feet, threatening to melt her down and swallow the molten metal that her body had transformed into.

Roaring jets of bright white flames shot forth from the lines of the maze. Where the walls of this labyrinth had only occupied an imaginary space, now deadly fire forced Emily to wander through its forlorn paths.

“Only you can walk this path,” Miranda’s words echoed in her thoughts.

And walk she would.

Thick clouds of ashes and flames exploded from the walls of the maze, dragging deadly fog through the fiery corridors. Iron Emily felt the heat inherent, so hot that it would singe all her hair. But she had not a single hair on her body because iron made up her entire being now.

Even with this invulnerability to the fire, she instinctively raised her hand to shield her eyes from the toxic cloud of suffocating ashes. She could breathe smoke but held her breath as if it mattered. Every step she took to move forward she made in complete blindness.

When she dared to open her eyes, the world had changed again.

Unlike in the maze, the smoke she exhaled was born from a lit cigarette. Emily let her hand holding the cigarette lazily droop off the side of the bed in which she now lay. Sweat and the smell of sex clung to her and she glowed. So did the man next to her, with whom her legs were entangled. The legs of her love: Julian.

Just like she remembered, he smiled at her when he plucked the cigarette from between her fingers and snuffed it out in a glass of water.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t need those anymore if it was just that good?” he asked.

The maze faded quickly from the forefront of Emily’s mind and made way for a warm, soft feeling throughout her entire being. It crept across her face, stretching her lips into a warm smile.

“Maybe it just wasn’t that good,” she whispered coyly.

She rolled over and rested her head on his chest, tracing the lines of his arm with the tip of her index finger.

He chuckled and gingerly brushed strands of her hair aside, then fondled the curve of her ear and the back of her neck with his hand. They both radiated with heat—not that of fire and destruction, but a heat of passion and deep-rooted love.

She remembered this night. You don’t forget the ones in which the sex you had stands out as some of the best you ever had. But the inferno and the madness that had brought her back here still lingered, chipping away at the back of her mind.

Even in reality, she found Julian’s apartment incredible. Living there as long as she had always made her think she was dreaming. It never quite matched where she came from and where she imagined to be going in life. And alas, it existed only in a short-lived bubble of time, a sweet memory sandwiched in between harrowing experiences.

One wall of the spacious bedroom consisted of glass, beyond which a twinkling sea of lights sprawled across the horizon of a nightly sky—the skyline of Los Angeles sparkled in warm colors, fuzzy and distant.

Lost in this moment when it had been a reality, Emily wanted to lose herself in it again. Never again, she believed, would she experience a comfort like this in her life. She drank in Julian’s scent, basked in his warmth, and swam in a sea of harmonious bliss.

This was her home.

“I can’t wait till we get married,” he said. He rested his palm against her lower back, hot and soothing at the same time.

And there it was again—the madness, chipping away, scratching at the back of her consciousness. Reminding her that this was not real.

She exhaled sharply through her nostrils but lingered where she lay. She turned her head to gaze dreamily into the tiny orange lights of the skyline, to rest her ear on his chest and listen to the calming rhythm of his heartbeat.

Emily savored this memory and place for as long as she could before replying.

“I’m so sorry, Julian, but that isn’t real. You never said that. I was going to propose to you before Kathryn Shaw killed you.”

She hugged him tightly, holding close to him.

“None of this is real.”

The bedroom door opened. Julian entered, wearing the jogging clothing she had gotten him for his birthday, darkened around the neck and pits where the fabric had soaked up sweat. No less attractive, he brandished a feeble smile as he blinked and looked upon Emily from across the room. His eyes were wet with sadness and concern—and longing. The smile faded from his face once his gaze shifted from her to the Julian she lay with on the bed, upon which he squinted.

The Julian by the door instantly felt more real to her.

“You can’t fool her. She is too strong for that,” Real Julian said.

She pushed herself up, away from False Julian. This one smiled back at her, but his smile had an almost sinister air about it now. His body lost all definition and melted down into a pile of gray ooze, bubbling goo that seeped into the sheets of the bed and vanished entirely, leaving only sweaty stains. Emily felt like she should have been more startled at this, but everything made perfect sense here.

By the time Real Julian had approached, she sat up straight on the edge of the bed. When he cradled her cheeks in his hands, her eyes welled up with tears, blurring her vision of him. With the soft light and her sights a mess, he looked an angel.

How fitting, she thought. Just like the memories blur.

But he wiped the tears away with his thumbs and knelt by her side to match her eye level.

“You have to carry on. Continue on. Only you can walk this path, and only you can do this,” he said. And every word resonated with that sense of natural strength inherent in his being. Everything good about him that she remembered and cherished.

A lump formed in Emily’s throat and tightened, making it harder to hold back the tears, and impossible to say anything.

“I will always be with you,” he said.

His warm, genuine smile forced the sparkling tears from his own eyes.

Before Emily could answer, she had to gulp, rid herself of that lump in her throat. It was the most painful thing to swallow, because she wanted to tell him how much she loved him. Tears rolled down her cheeks like pure little pearls of sorrow.

Before she could say anything, he pulled her close and then melded with her—passed into her, like a ghost, dissolving as they merged. Real Julian became one with her and the warmth that she had always felt in the memories of him filled her, making her soul hum and her essence scintillate. She glowed with light—constant, like a lantern, and soothing; unlike the violently flickering flames of her rage. They flashed in a blue light for a brief moment.

“Goodbye, Julian,” she said, breaking the words as she choked on them.

“This is no goodbye,” he said. His voice was everywhere and nowhere. It didn’t exist, yet it came from deep within. “You will always have me by your side.”

With the tears fully streaming from her weary eyes, she wiped them with her entire forearm, sobbing in silence and this strangely comforting solitude. When she looked down upon her nude body, it was iron again, with her hand clad in the strange gauntlet.

She rose from her seat on the bed’s side, shot one last longing glance at the skyline of Los Angeles—reminiscing on how this represented the one short phase in her life during which she truly knew happiness—and made her way to the bedroom door.

Just twisting the doorknob and pulling lightly on it, a gust of mighty wind blew it wide open, nearly knocking her back, and a flurry of ash and embers flowed through. Flames licked around the edges of the frame, incinerating everything and devouring this place of solace. Rather than succumbing to despair, Iron Emily shielded herself with the gauntlet and marched through, continuing through the fiery walls of the maze.

Her limbs weighed heavier than before, as if she had to grow stronger just to lift her legs and press on. Where she had been moving effortlessly through Julian’s bedroom, she now felt the weight of the iron in her soul, threatening to stop her in her tracks.

“You have to carry on,” Julian’s words echoed in her mind, feeding the pure flames of her will.

And she did, groaning as it took more and more out of her essence to stride forth, doubly so when the walls flared up, trying to discourage her from continuing and instead whispering to her; luring her into a false sense of security, promising an escape that the self-destructive madness behind her might offer. With the growing flames of the maze’s walls, another cloud of thick black smoke billowed out from them and engulfed her whole.

The tears had long dried—burned away by the searing heat. When the plumes parted and her vision cleared, she gazed upon her family life. Times growing up, ghostly rooms taking shape and dissolving before her eyes as she continued to wander through the maze without ever taking a wrong turn or even considering to turn back.

Here, she argued with Willow. There she played with Hannah. Being the middle child of three sisters always had been a mixture of blessing and curse. Willow, older, strong and aloof, always daddy’s favorite. Hannah, younger, sweet and doe-eyed, always pampered and cut some slack. Young Emily had to settle on the hand-me-downs from Willow but never had to feel the jealousy towards Hannah that Willow felt. Teenage Emily was cut no slack, expected to excel wherever Willow failed, and be a perfect example for Hannah.

Little Emily woke up in a panic from a nightmare and wandered into the living room. Dark, save the cold blue glow from the television set on the stand that her father was staring into. Tears streaked down Little Emily’s eyes as she approached him and told him about her bad dream. Mom was out of town on work.

Black rings of exhaustion lined Dad’s eyes from the long hours at work he had put behind him—from the time before he started his own hardware store—and he put most of his attention into the news on TV. Her repeated attempts to earn some comfort or calm from him only added to his annoyance with her that night, gnawing at his patience.

He slapped her. Stunned her. Told her he was too tired for this. Had an apology written on his face, but said nothing to that effect. She cried and went back to bed, alone, sobbing in solitude. He never did apologize, though that was the only time he ever hit her—and to Emily’s knowledge, hit anybody in his family.

Unlike in her raw memories, she suddenly heard a whisper. A thought. Then more, reaching her through the ether. These thoughts were not her own, but her father’s, forming in Iron Emily’s mind like speech, “Fuck, I can’t believe I just did that. Should I say something? I’ll apologize tomorrow. I mean, she really should respect me and leave me alone when I tell her to. God, she looks so miserable and pathetic. I’ll fix this tomorrow.”

Maybe things would have been different back then, had she known his thoughts. Iron Emily then wondered if hearing her thoughts was not just the madness catching up to her.

Iron Emily hardened and pulled her legs up, taking one step after another with renewed vigor, finding yet greater strength to continue. Nothing would be easy—nothing ever was. Though she vowed to not forget those who helped or loved her, she would expect no help from anybody. She left the sobbing Little Emily behind, the little girl who had strangely grown from this bit of trauma.

At a party her mother was hosting, Young Teenage Emily kept telling Mom that she didn’t want to play the guitar. A bunch of grown-up friends of Mom whom Emily didn’t particularly like were there, staring awkwardly and trying to not interfere with the minor drama unfolding.

Sure, Young Teenage Emily could play the guitar a little bit. But despite being a heavy metal enthusiast, she had never really gotten into it. Instead of going to all the lessons her parents paid for, she would rather hang out with Gay Chris, Carlos, Rodney, and Jimmy—getting high and talking about politics and philosophy with the average stoner’s depth of a shallow pond.

She could play a few chords, a few riffs, and had a shaky grasp on rendering some common songs. Just capable enough to softly play a couple of pieces on her acoustic guitar.

Mom haranguing her to perform something she neither wanted to nor thought she was particularly good at embarrassed her deeply, let alone in front of all these people she didn’t even know or give two shits about.

“Mom, come on. No.”

“You’re so talented, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Mom hissed at her.

“I don’t wanna. I’m not even warmed up.”

“Come on, Emily, I believe in you.”

“No! I’m not going to play the stupid fucking guitar, alright?” Young Teenage Emily exploded, and Iron Emily could almost lip-sync it word for word; with that outburst having burnt itself into her memory.

Everybody stared. Someone bit their lip in the uncomfortable silence that ensued. Someone else almost cleared their throat, then changed their mind as to not draw attention to themselves.

Young Teenage Emily stormed out of the room. She went to her own room, brooded and paced for a few minutes, then climbed out of her window and went to hang out with her friends.

Iron Emily, however, witnessed what happened after Young Teenage Emily had left the scene.

Was this her imagination? The madness of this maze and her crumbling mind now manifesting in these scenarios, filling in the blanks? Or was the unfettered power of this place bleeding through reality, piercing the veil of time and space and showing her something that Young Teenage Emily had never seen?

Her mother went to the nearest couple and complained about her.

“I just don’t know what to do about her anymore. We tried everything to raise her right, but she started listening to heavy metal and smoking, and I think her friends are just a bad influence on her,” she said.

The guests did not contradict her. They nodded with their awkward, fake smiles, not trying to feed the fires of this conflict or take part in it in any way.

“She is always so angry, and explodes like that all the time. I think we really need to get her into counseling. Or therapy,” her mother said, shaking her head, explaining the situation to yet other guests.

The guests all tried to duck away from this conversation, growing uncomfortable. Emily could hear their thoughts; knew they wanted nothing to do with any of this. Disgust and rage welled up in the heart of Iron Emily, who silently and invisibly watched this unfold.

Foreign memories and minds broadcast their thoughts into her own consciousness; it was the only explanation. She couldn’t just be imagining this.

“You can change this,” Stinky Jim said from behind Iron Emily. He chortled, smoky and sinister. “You can make her pay.”

“For what?” Iron Emily asked. “She’s not all wrong.”

Stinky Jim cackled, “Oh, just wait, then. It’s going to get even better now.”

The guests were not impressed. Emily’s mom didn’t seem to understand that those nearby just wanted this awkward situation to end. They would nod and smile but those smiles were strained and their participation and compassion feigned. Some of them wanted to leave the party.

“She talked her older sister out of her relationship with her boyfriend and into lesbianism,” her mother lied, shaking her head with a theatrical sigh.

“The fuck,” Iron Emily growled. Her teeth screeched like a fork on the chalkboard as she ground them together as a result of the anger welling up in her gut.

Stinky Jim’s cackling erupted into full-blown laughter.

“She wasn’t even twelve years old when she started shoplifting. And that was after we caught her stealing toys from other kids. We did all we could, but she just—she never listens. There’s only so much you can do to raise a kid right, right?” her mother lied.

She kept inventing things to make Emily look bad and garner pity from her friends. Those same friends averted their eyes, exchanged nervous glances, and paid less and less attention to her; not engaging and only causing Emily’s mother to pile more and more brazen lies on top.

“She stole our car when she could barely reach the gas pedals and gave us quite the headache when we had to foot the bill for repairs.”

“The police brought her home one night and let her off easy, you know how it is.”

“I think she tried heroin.”

Stinky Jim’s laughter swelled to ever greater volume each time she lied about misdeeds Emily never committed. All the while, Iron Emily’s insides boiled. She refused to let the rage take control any longer. What if her mind could slice through space and time and change this? Stop this bullshit? But what if that obliterated her mother’s mind? The minds of her guests? Her morals clashed with her wrath.

“You have sworn to expose the truth. You could do that right here and now if you put your mind to it. You have real power now. Even greater power than you’re willing to embrace. You can punish liars. Just gotta use your head,” Stinky Jim said, egging Iron Emily on. He stoked the fires of wrath in the depth of her being. Part of her wanted to give in and test the limitations of her power; wanted to make her mom pay for doing this.

But Iron Emily gathered herself. Breathed. Focused. Took control over the rage. Just like the old homeless man told her to. She wanted so badly to lash out, but she had to get out of this. She remembered where she truly was: inside the fiery maze. Not in this moment.

She would let it slide. The realities of future times slid into being, overlapping and overlaying this scenery.

Nowadays, Emily visited her mother regularly. Mom would talk about conspiracy theories after her long combined shifts of dog sitting, working at her backwater supermarket, and work in a retirement home. Emily would take the time to debunk or confirm whatever nonsense she had picked up from the yellow press and Facebook.

Maybe their relationship would transform, now that Iron Emily knew of this day and what horrible things her mother had said about her in her absence. Still, she wondered if any of this was even real.

Stinky Jim laughed and didn’t even need to say anything.

Iron Emily knew this was real. Realities clashing, connecting; she stood in an intersection of worlds.

The imagery faded away like smoke being dragged away by a gust of wind. As it cleared, only more imagery unfolded beyond it: places Emily had never been. Moments of minds that never reached her, thoughts that bounced around in her skull.

Her mom sat alone in the glow of a TV set in a dark room, when Emily’s exposé on the human trafficking ring aired on national television. She sat up in surprise when she saw Emily on screen, personally delivering some statements, followed by voice-over narration for the segment.

Surprise. Pride. Mom was proud of her now. She cried tears of joy and she was proud of what her little girl had become: exposing those monsters, cracking the veil wide open and revealing those injustices for all to see. She wiped her tears and could not stop listening and watching. The content of the exposé upset her; learning of the personal fates of individual victims—such as Tran—caused her mother to feel sick. But above all the emotional upheaval lingered a profound happiness and pride over her daughter’s accomplishment.

Not only her mother felt this way. As the fiery winds carried embers and whisked away these images as well, they revealed a room in which her father, Sean, sat on the couch next to his second wife, Christine. They, too, watched TV and saw the same exposé airing on national TV.

He stared into the glow of the device, wide-eyed and surprised. His mind swam in the same place: proud of his daughter’s achievement. Sean also regretted how little contact they still had and for the first time in his life, realized how much of that had been on him.

By contrast, Christine’s thoughts circled in different, darker places. She saw Emily’s success on clear display on the television and only wondered how she could help her biological daughter to be more successful than Emily. These pieces of thoughts and feelings did not just reach Emily’s being like spoken words, intercepted by her mind, but they took more tangible forms.

Stinky Jim’s laughter had long gone silent. Though Iron Emily felt his presence, his quiet only spelled out a tense anticipation. A curiosity. Emily stood on the precipice of discovering something new, and the demon of madness could hardly wait to see her experience that breakthrough.

She tasted Christine’s personal vice. Sour and bitter and artificial and unsatisfying, like sucking on a piece of plastic-covered cardboard. Christine’s pride burned brightly, and Emily tasted it as clearly as the aftertaste of coffee and cigarettes clinging to her tongue.

Christine got up in a huff and switched the TV off.

“Enough of that,” she told Sean.

“What if you could burn that nonsense right out of her?” asked Stinky Jim.

Iron Emily shook her head and shut her eyes.

Smoke and fire tore through this memory, tearing Emily away from the insights it delivered. When she opened her eyes again, the memories of her parents had made way for the inferno of the labyrinth once more. Iron Emily had seen enough, anyway. Daddy, for whom she was never good enough, was proud of her. She dismissed the spark of defiance that threatened to arise in her, and decided to embrace this little victory for what it was. She would hold onto that.

Emily could have touched their minds, changed their being, but decided against it.

The smoke billowed past her and violent winds fought her progression. Still she continued on, one deliberate step after another. Every time, the heat threatened to melt her, she forced her legs to lift and take another step, yet again.

“You’re not special,” said the demon behind her. “You’re no better than anybody else, sitting on your high horse. You and your stupid moral high grounds. Fictions you cling onto to make yourself feel better when all you’re doing is looking down on the rest of the shit-stains that populate the world around you. You probably think you’re so great for not using your newfound mojo, not reaching into their petty little human minds and wrenching around in there. So noble I could puke. So responsible. But let’s see just how long that lasts.”

With a thunderclap, a torrent of flames exploded outwards, cascading through the maze’s corridors towards Emily. She braced herself, leaning into the massive weight of her iron body. She clutched her hand in front of her—the iron gauntlet—it pierced her mind, cutting through every thought when she closed her eyes. Always there, even when she tried not to think about it. Now shielding her from these infernal forces.

The maze took her to another place.

“Let’s see who you really are when you stare into the abyss,” growled the demon.

After a double take, Iron Emily knew she stood in Starkford Penitentiary. A different part of it; a section she had never seen with her own two eyes—the mess hall where the inmates ate.

Kathryn Shaw sat in between other women, all of them dressed in their bright orange jumpsuits. The woman who had murdered Julian with a two-by-four. She ate from her tray, stuffing her face; a face deformed by too much plastic surgery.

Julian’s murderer didn’t look like she had aged a day. Iron Emily realized that this must have been some time after she had gone to the prison to get answers from Kathryn. Probably a good deal after, or she would have still been a sporting a black eye or two from when Emily lost her mind and attacked her.

Iron Emily cringed as a sea of thoughts and emotions crashed in on her from every direction. The minds of all the inmates and guards here washed over her, drowning her in waves of despair and contempt and surrender and negativity. The tempest of emotions clouded her with such intensity that her own rage towards Kathryn Shaw had no room to well up again.

“You know you can do more than just read minds, right? You can reach into them and clutch. Grab. Tear. Squeeze. Rend,” said the demon. His growls came through gritted teeth. Emily could hear the sadistic grin growing on his face without even looking at him. “You can kill with a thought, little girl. Just think hard enough and focus your mind like a blade. One precise thought, sharp like a guillotine’s edge. That’s all it takes.”

Iron Emily focused. The world froze for a split second and she pushed all the thoughts back. The chatter, like a million radios running different programs all at the same time, all went silent. Even Stinky Jim choked, unable to taunt her any more for now. All minds blocked out at once—all but one. The screech of microphone feedback died down and all she heard was a faint whisper, coming from Kathryn’s direction. The only thoughts Emily was curious about now.

Sadness.

It hit her like a truck, overwhelming her senses, making her light-headed and dizzy. Iron Emily didn’t feel tethered in place by her iron body at all any more, rather as light as a feather, like she teetered back and forth and nearly fell down.

Stinky Jim’s claws gingerly clutched her by her shoulders and helped her stay standing.

“Why would I kill her now?” Emily asked. It took her a moment until it dawned on her: the same sadistic grin she sensed to be forming on the demon’s maw was now plastered across her own lips. “She’s right where she belongs. Getting what she fucking deserves. Rotting in prison for the rest of her life. Justice isn’t served if I kill her now. Being a husk and withering away in prison would be the right punishment for this crazy bitch. Fuck her.”

The sadness made way to imagery. Emily could see the movie playing in Kathryn’s mind; glimpses of her own little world. A bizarre fantasy that defied all semblance of reality.

Full-on delusions. Kathryn saw herself getting out of prison soon. She had fooled herself into thinking she was some sort of A-list celebrity. Had all the famous directors lined up, ready to talk to her once she was out of here. She would be even more famous than before going into the slammer. Her private army of lawyers would get her out long before she had served her full sentence. Make a mint off of an autobiography book deal, too.

Julian wasn’t dead in Kathryn’s little fantasy world, either. Part of why she’d get out so easily.

Sure, none of it was real. But Kathryn believed it with all her heart and soul.

Stinky Jim roared with laughter.

“Justice, huh? Ten years later, she’ll still be happy in her blissful little make-believe castle. And where will you be?” he asked, egging her on. “Kill her, killer. I know you’ve got it in you.”

Emily rocked back and forth in the padded cell. Iron Emily screamed and willed that image away. Nobody in the mess hall heard the scream. They just carried on with their lives, lips smacking as they ate the slop served up as meals.

“Fuck this. And fuck you, Stinky Jim. Killing Kathryn serves no one,” Iron Emily cursed. The inner fire of defiance exploded outwards, wreathed her in fire. She spoke in multiple menacing voices when she added, “I am being reborn now. And this is what I was meant to do—reveal the truth.”

Iron Emily focused. She breathed fire, like a dragon. Holding out her hand, the gauntlet around her fist was real. She unfurled her fingers, marveling at their claw-like shape. She focused harder, and the world breathed her, sucking her towards Kathryn, pulling her through a vortex of intertwining realities. Iron Emily stood behind Kathryn and reached into her mind with the gauntlet-clad hand.

She tasted the pride in Kathryn’s mind, for it tasted the same bitter disgusting plastic way that Christine’s vice shared. With the gauntlet, she gripped at the barriers inside of Kathryn’s brain with all her might—taking hold of the prison bars and expensive doors and beautiful illusions that Kathryn Shaw had erected around her core self to protect her mind from the horrors she had inflicted and the horror that she had become.

The gauntlet clenched shut into a fist. Crushed, shattering glass and mortar, bending steel like it was nothing. Iron Emily tore away at the walls of Kathryn’s delusions, peeling them back until Julian’s murderer could glimpse reality for just one moment.

She was here for murdering Julian Stone. She was serving a life sentence in Starkford Penitentiary. Her career was over. Her cell mate hated her. One of the cooks probably spit in her food. Her life was hell, and all of it was her own making.

Emily didn’t even need to construct these thoughts. They all came pouring in on their own, the stark and cruel weight of reality crashing inside like a lake flowing in through a breaking dam.

Kathryn’s fork dropped into her food tray. Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened to the size of saucers. The harsh truths of the world outside the fantasy she had created caught up with her.

Iron Emily wept tears of fire and sealed the illusion again. Just a glimpse. Just enough to make her suffer for a brief moment. Just enough to make her pay. But it rang hollow. It gave Iron Emily no satisfaction. Kathryn’s evident suffering even filled Emily with a short pang of guilt. She shrugged it off and screamed into the void again, getting no response from anybody in the prison.

Only Stinky Jim responded—with more sadistic laughter. The inmates and guards all melted away, transforming into smoke and embers. They spiraled upwards until the fiery walls of the maze subsumed them all, and Iron Emily was surrounded by the inferno again.

“How the fuck was that better than killing her? You heartless bitch,” the demon said. “Can’t wait to see what crimes against humanity you’re capable of committing.”

Iron Emily ignored him and swiveled, struggling to find her way through the firestorm. Her heart beat faster when she gazed upon Blue Flame Emily, an unsteady beacon shining out from the center of the maze. The flames grew larger and obscured that vision, but Iron Emily had seen her clearly enough to know: she had gotten much closer. Halfway there.

She refused to be the Emily in that padded cell. She refused to give up now. Just thinking that, realizing that—it filled her with new vigor. Her soul flared up with newfound determination. The next steps she took to brave the maze came much easier; each one of them much lighter than the last.

She would make it. She would see what destiny had in store for her.

—Submitted by Wratts