#hopefully the full season but that's a big stretch

[miraculous-romance]

Loid Forger and Yor Briar "Forger" will get their reveal faster than the Love Square

[cuckoo-on-a-string]

Neighborly (Part 2)

mdni

Masterlist

Soap x reader x Ghost

Summary: You didn't know hate until Johnny MacTavish. (Or a really big build-up to cuddles and smut).

Warnings: near death experience, hypothermia, cuddling for medical reasons, implied medically-related stripping, implied anxiety disorder/depressive disorder, self-isolation, language, incredibly shitty communication and social competence.

It was supposed to be a two-shot.

The cold burned.

Once the sun set, the weather front moved in, and the temperature plunged. Snow fell thick and fast, just short of a whiteout. Your feet sank to the ankle, then to the shin, and your aching trudge became a slow-motion nightmare. It was about that time you realized – you were in real danger.

It was a two-mile walk – uphill, through old snow and frozen sludge – from your stranded vehicle. Home was closer than town, so you put your head down, buried your mittened hands in your armpits, and threw your emergency blanket from the car over your head as a bright orange cloak. And you set out.

It really took you too long to leave the car, but it was a life and death decision, and you waffled between shit options. On a busier road, you’d stay in the car. But this kind of snowfall would keep people home for a day or two. More than enough time to freeze to death, curled up in the driver’s seat.

If you lived, you’d make a better emergency kit for your ride.

In the meantime, the path demanded all of your attention. Even under fresh snow, it was easy to follow the road. Thick forest covered this stretch, and there was nowhere to go but forward. Hopefully you wouldn’t miss your drive. Should luck bless you for the first time in a decade, you’d see your neighbors’ lights in the dark.

But you had miles to go, yet. And the footing was terrible.

Old snow, half-melted and refrozen, threatened to turn your ankle with every step. Staying upright took work. Every muscle joined the battle, from your toes to your shoulders. Your abs clenched, and your thighs soon shook from exertion. As cold as you were, sweat stuck your hair to your face. Your neck.

The wind turned the moisture to ice.

Pins and needles prickled under your clothes.

Worse, and worse, and worse.

But there was no choice, so you moved on. No one was coming, so you would go. Keep calm and carry on and all that noise.

You had tea at home. An electric heating blanket under heavy quilts. Dry clothes and fuzzy socks.

So, you walked.

One foot in front of the other. Wobbling. Trying to find safe footing.

You crashed to your knees, bracing for pain that didn’t come.

Fuck.

You were losing sensation in your extremities.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The fresh layer of snow swallowed your hands where you’d braced to catch yourself. It didn’t look right from your perspective. You hadn’t punched holes into the drift. You’d joined it. Flesh flowed into freeze, and it sucked the heat from your body. Hungry. Careless.

Physically shaking the image from your head, you rose. You pushed on. Slow and unsteady as your thoughts lost traction on the creeping ice.

It never seemed right that such an oppressive season made the world so bright. Even on a moonless night, the snow practically glowed. When you first moved to the mountain, you’d look out the window and marvel at how clearly you could see the world you couldn’t explore. The endless white always looked so inviting, but it kept you locked away, isolated.

Snow ate the color out of the world. That was why it sparkled so brightly in the sun, full of ingested prisms stolen from kinder seasons.

What colors, you wondered, would it digest out of you.

Once you were buried.

Lost to the white void falling without. Swelling within.

Everything felt damp. Warm. Your muscles went syrupy. You were your own personal swamp, and you panted, dropping your blanket. It was too heavy, too waterlogged anyway. You couldn’t carry that weight forever. It fell easily. All you had to do was let go.

Your feet turned, and you began to ascend. Uphill. That was correct, somehow.

Fuck.

You were on fire.

The snow was up to your knees and still falling. Maybe, if you just took a nap, you’d wait it out. Better to travel in the daylight, right?

No. Not quite right.

One arm hung out of your coat, and you couldn’t shake the second free. It clung to your wrist like a needy child, and you just wanted rid of it. Wanted to be free and finished and home.

Lights blazed, and it felt like dawn. Had you walked all night, or did you just look up?

The path split. Or you thought it did. The snow covered the way, but your instinct sniffed out the divide.

You wanted to be closer to the lights. Lights were good. Even though they hurt your head. They looked so pretty, flushing the snow gold. You imagined they’d paint you gold, too. A Midas-touched statue – pretty, lifeless, and cold.  

Snow always looked so soft. You’d felt cheated as a child when you discovered it was nothing like the fluffy duvet you imagined. But in a pinch, it was wonderful.

It held you, gathering you up as you sank. The flakes landing on your cheek didn’t melt anymore, and frigid works of art gathered on your eyelashes, slowly eating the lighthouse you’d followed home from the bright white dark.

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

“Fucking hell.”

Death had a British accent. Not bad. A shame you somehow disappointed him.

“Johnny! Get some towels. Clean shirt and sweats.”

You blinked up at Death, swimming through waves of unfamiliar sensations to get a glimpse of the end.

Really, you’d hoped for Death to wear a kinder shape – like in Sandman – but the grinning skull seemed appropriate. It was the rare case where the destination mattered more than the journey. Or the escort.

Being dead was exhausting. As curious as you were about Death’s face, the quiet void already had a deposit on your soul. Resting limp in the psychopomp’s arms, somehow you relaxed further. He was so much more solid. More real. Soon you’d melt between his fingers and rain into the underworld.

“She isn’t shivering.”

Dreams ate your mind. Time rose and faded like steam as strange hands prepared you for burial. Your grave was warm. The soil packed tight, wrapping around you as the first gnawing sense of dread woke with the agony in your hands. Roots squeezed around you, tightening as you writhed against the sting in your feet.

You did not rest in peace.

You’d fallen into hell. Your skin burned, your muscles seized, and a sharp scream of a moan shrieked through clenched teeth.

“Easy, easy.”

A broad palm pressed over your heart, hauling you back to a second pulse. Someone else’s words rustled over your hair. Someone else’s breath pushed someone else’s chest flush against your back. Their smell and shape surrounded you.

A someone. A living someone.

That finally reminded you of the need to wake.

To rise from death.

Every inch you climbed towards consciousness scorched you, and reality came in bursts of pain. Your fingertips felt like you’d clutched red-hot iron, and shivers wracked you like private earthquakes. Everything wanted to tear itself apart, escape the pain radiating from every other piece. If the stranger wasn’t holding you together, you’d shatter like your poor, ugly mug.

You had a body but no control.

The stranger shushed you, a second hand settling over the top of your head. Locking you in. Keeping you in your flesh. You thought he might stroke your hair like a cat’s fur, but nothing moved between you besides the heat seeping from his palm to your scalp.

If you had a choice, you’d go back to sleep, but you were too aware. Pain dared you to relax, running knives along the underside of your skin, threatening to stab you inside out with the next shudder.

And you didn’t know where you were – or who was cuddling you back to life.

Helpless as you were, you knew to be afraid.

“Johnny,” the chest behind you rumbled, “she’s coming to.”

Wrath caught on the name. It bit the hook and followed the line to the light so your eyes could flutter open. They were painfully dry, and the gathering tears offered some relief, but you recognized the mohawk over broad shoulders leaning through the doorway through the blur. Your restrained whimpers turned into a growl.

“Think she recognizes ya.”

“Aye.” Johnny approached, kneeling by the bed you found yourself in. His pretty face was all bent out of shape with apprehension. “How you feeling, hen?”

You wanted to shout at him. Or slap him. Both at once and more. Instead, your shaking tongue fumbled the words, and your arm flopped weakly under the quilt, thudding into the branch-like arm caging your chest.

Which meant –

Wait.

If Johnny was in front of you, you must be in his house. He lived alone. Except for a hulking giant in a skull mask.

Like he could read the fresh stiffness beneath your shivering, Ghost said, “Spotted you from the window. Had to get you dry and warm, but you’re safe. Body heat’s best at this stage. We’re both dressed, and if you can’t stand it, I’ll trade out for a fleet of hot water bottles.”

You struggled to pick up his words and put them in order. They bobbed through the snowmelt in your brain like so much flotsam, a murky sea you already worried would drown you. But you did it. You got it all. But it was a lot.

He was barely more than a stranger, and you found yourself in bed with him.

But a man so hesitant to show his face wouldn’t be eager to show more skin than necessary, and while it was hard to tell what fabric was clothing and what was bedding, nothing but cloth touched you. Except for the hand on your head. Which was fine, actually. It could be better than fine if you thought about it much longer.

How much did it cost such a reserved person to get so close? You were no better than a stranger to him, too.

He saw you in trouble and moved to help. Everything he said was practical. Reasonable. He’d probably saved your life.

You felt you understood Ghost. Maybe it was the confusion or the onset of a fever, but you got him. And he was so, so warm. You wanted to crack open that giant chest and burrow inside him like a tauntaun.

When you felt better, you’d make it up to him. You’d apologize for being a burden and make your imposition right. In the meantime, you didn’t want him to leave you alone with some shitty substitute.

You wriggled, trying to put your hand over his, but something was over your fingers, and you had to guesstimate. Maybe you patted his knuckles. Maybe you smacked his wrist. Hard to know. But you felt you made your point.

“S’fine.”

He shifted in response, settling in for the long-haul. “Good.”

You tried forcing yourself calm. Everything had a mind of its own, though, and you curled up tight, trying to preserve heat even when it was given freely. Ghost supported your new position, bending his knees to keep contact, spooning with purpose.

How far had your temperature dropped for you to be this miserable? Very. Dangerously. Fucking shit.

Johnny cleared his throat. “I could join? Help get you toasty?”

Though you were still in gods damned agony, you wouldn’t let Johnny Fucking MacTavish join you under the covers if he was the last thing between you and death. You’d already touched the door to Hades that evening, and he hadn’t been the one to bring you back.

You lashed out the only way you could.

“No.”

The first word you managed to say clearly. You sent it off with a scowl, daring the Scotsman to try you.

He practically jumped back from the bed, anxious expression washed clean in shock. You’d never told him no. Never drawn a boundary. Never shared your anger or hurt.

Well, you’d finally learned your lesson.

Fuck that man.

He wouldn’t be getting anything from you ever again, not even a clear conscience.

Ghost hummed, his thumb stroking over your temple. “Got you right pissed off, has he? What’s he done? He the reason you got caught in the storm?”

Nodding was easier than speaking. You’d said the most important part.

“Thought as much. You’re too well prepared. When you feel up to it, you can tell me what Johnny needs to set right, yeah? He’ll clean up his mess.”

Across the room, where he’d stumbled after your rejection, the man in question blanched. “I didn’t – I couldn’t – What did… Ah, Christ. ‘M so sorry, hen.”

“Plenty of time to talk later,” Ghost said, still fully felt and entirely invisible at your back. “Let her rest. When I’m confident she won’t choke, you can make us something warm to drink.”

Johnny accepted, nodding with big eyes. His shoulders rose to his ears as he turned on his heel and marched away, fists squeezed tight.

He’d only been out of the room for a minute when you heard something crash, and you jumped.

Ghost just hugged you tighter and sighed.

Eventually, you did sleep. It was a night for achieving the impossible, apparently. Ghost kept one hand on your chest, waking or sleeping, and as the daylight slowly burned away the icy mist in your head, you realized he was monitoring your heartbeat. Keeping his arm around your chest was better for your recovery, and you might not have reacted so calmly to a hand on your neck.

You still felt like shit.

“How bad was it?” you whispered.

Asking was a struggle, and not just because your lips cracked and burned around your voice. Staring doom in the face only scared you if you recognized it, and you were afraid to hear how close your choices had brought you to the point of no return. Words could hurt. Knowledge could hurt.

“Should’a taken you to a hospital,” Ghost murmured. “No way to get there in this weather.”

You closed your eyes, burying your face in the pillow. You did it in defiance of the windburn over your nose and cheeks. In defiance of your chapped lips. Dead people couldn’t feel pain, and it was hardly the worst you’d suffered through the night.

“Your shivering’s manageable now. Think you could drink something?”

Could and should.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll go tell Johnny. Stay here.”

You didn’t answer, but you swam all the way under the heavy quilts as his solid heat left you. With only your eyes peering over the blankets, you watched him – probably cold in his thin t-shirt and worn sweats – breeze across the room, quiet as his namesake. He had a lot of tattoos, a whole sleeve. You couldn’t catch all the shapes as he moved farther and farther away, but deathly themes curled like gun smoke and curses up from his wrist, towards his heart.

Once you were alone, you examined yourself under the covers. There were socks over your hands, impromptu mittens. You’d worry about any horror beneath them later. You wore a loose tee you’d seen on Johnny when he was resting up, staying comfortable as he nursed his cold. The gym shorts they’d dressed you in were bunched up where the drawstring fought to draw them into a smaller size, and the fabric would fall to your knees if you stood. Maybe farther.

They’d dressed you in a piece of each man’s wardrobe, and the embarrassed heat creeping up your neck was almost as warm as Ghost.

But you wouldn’t read between the lines. There were no lines. They’d saved your life and carefully explained their actions. It didn’t mean anything else.

They were only being neighborly.

[thewritersofdeceased]

"Do you still love us?" -Billy Loomis and Stu Macher x Reader

CW: None? I don't think so.

Little Plot: Stu and Billy confronts our lovely reader about what happened a couple weeks ago.. Stu seems more relaxed on it, but Billy seems on edge. Seems something's on his mind... Something that led him to act out the weeks before..

Insecure Stu and Billy <//3

Gender-neutral(They/Them pronouns, change them to your liking :>)

Tags: @iwantsleepplz @bees-gees (I recall your reblog saying you needed a full part :) so here's part two <3)

F/D - Favorite Drink!

-Gif is not mine! Thank you for even making it a gif creator <3

Part 1: https://www.tumblr.com/thewritersofdeceased/721887201184579584/how-idiotic-are-you-billy-loomis-x?source=share

Sitting quietly at a table with Randy was a normal occasion that had begun to happen after the whole ordeal with both Billy Loomis, and Stu Macher. Both boys being so on edge after just a single movie night!

"Can you believe that?!" Y/n spoke, drinking their f/d. Randy only raised a brow, but drank the coffee he had ordered. Of course, he knew Stu and Billy could be jealous, but why jealous of him? Randy had his eyes on Sidney. Not Y/N. Sorry to say. He took a breath in before placing his intertwined hands on the table.

"They're both protective people. Tatum, Sid and I see the way they've become tense of some sort whenever your talking to someone. Like you're going to leave them or something. I don't know." Randy shrugged, taking another sip of his coffee. Before he realized y/n staring straight at him. Narrowed eyes, a confused look across their face.

Why would they leave them? Sure, Stu was... obnoxious at some points, almost like a golden retriever... And sure, Billy would push them away sometimes in order to conceal this big bad guy persona, but they wouldn't leave the two. Not after all the stupid movie nights, both boys yelling at the TV, as if the characters could hear them. Now that was hilarious to watch. "What? Why would I leave them, Randy? You know how happy I can be around them?" Y/n's tone grew slightly annoyed, but lowered and relaxed only moments before.

Randy held his hands up, shaking his head. "Well. You rant to me about them. A lot." He shrugged, eventually leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. Randy wasn't trying to be mean. That was visible in how he spoke and how his body language was. Relaxed shoulders, relaxed face... even his eyebrows were relaxed! Randy knew what it was like to be insecure, not jealous. Maybe Stu and Billy were thinking that Y/n could do better than them? He didn't know, not really care. Billy and Stu didn't like him that much. Now that, he did know.

He took a breath before beginning to stand to his feet. "Here. Let me drive you home. It's getting late and all that. Curfew shit." He joked, stretching his arms over his head. Y/n only nodded, seeing as they walked to this little cafe just near the school. Usually Stu, Billy and them would go here in the morning. Stu never really got anything but a chocolate chip muffin, and Billy always got a coffee or hot chocolate during the winter seasons.

Shaking their head, they stood to their feet, fixing their outfit before taking their cup of f/d in their hands. "Thanks for this, Randy. I'm gonna' try talking to them later. Hopefully they aren't busy." They shrugged, only as Randy began leading the way. Knowing Randy, he'd probably drop off a new movie or something in the mailbox for them. Usually it was a horror movie.

"Good luck to that." Randy hummed out, going to his car before getting into the driver seat, Y/n following close behind and getting into the passenger seat. Both placed their drinks into the cupholders, rolling the windows down to enjoy the comforting Autumn air.

And what appeared to be a short ride, the sight of a beautiful house was in view. Randy parked near the walkway, looking to Y/n with a warm smile. "Good luck with your boys. I'll drop a couple movies off later." He spoke, gaining a nod from Y/n, who got out of the car. "Alright Meeks. See ya later." They gave a wave after closing the car door, and watching Randy drive off out of sight.

Finally. Home. They searched their pockets for their keys, eventually finding them. They walked up to the front door, unlocking it and entering the warm home. From the warm and cool air of Woodsboro's streets to the full warmth of their home was a different feeling. The smell of a pumpkin candle.. The aroma went everywhere in the house. Taking their shoes off, they began making their way to their room.

But when entering they didn't think they would see both Billy and Stu in there. Stu was looking around and little things he hadn't noticed. And Billy was leaning against the bed's frame, both boys were quiet, having not even noticed their partner entering the room. Until they heard them speak. "What are you two doing here? Put that down, Stu-!"

They grumbled to the much taller boy, who was holding a little sculpture of clay. It was a diamond on a box. Stu looked over, placing the little sculpture back down before speaking up. "Y/N! We came to.. uh.. talk.." It was rare for Stu to hesitate when talking. He lowered his head slightly, before looking over to Billy. Who pushed himself away from the bed and crossed his arms.

"You know I'm not going to apologize." Was the first thing he said, before he took a shaky breath in. What the hell was going on? Billy never seemed so... hesitant. Nor did Stu. Usually both boys cut straight to the point. Stu was the one who would be more emotional. But why did Billy have a shaky and uneasy breath? And tone?

This led Y/N to raise a brow in pure confusion. "Well. You never really do." They commented to Billy's sentence, shoving a hand into their pocket, and the other resting on their hip. Billy was acting weird.. it made them so confused... But realizing something was up, something that was making Billy on edge? They needed to know if they wanted to help their boyfriend. Both of them.

Stu was next to speak. "Do you.. uh.. still..." He was stuttering. Hesitant. Stuttering and hesitant.. Two things Stu never often did. He took a breath in before looking straight to his partner. Why were there tears in his eyes? In... both their eyes... What the hell happened..

The taller brunette continued to talk before eventually finally spitting out what was on his mind. "Do you still love us?"

Now that felt like a stab to the gut. A full stab. Countless ones. It made Y/n freeze up. What? How were they... how the hell were they supposed to respond? Of course they loved the two. Even if they were pissed off at them.. Taking a breath in, they carefully took a step towards Stu, who was watching them with tears threatening to fall down his face.

"Of course I do. I love you both... What made these thoughts happen?" They asked, holding their hands out. In which, Stu knelt down slightly, allowing Y/N to hold his face. That's when the tears started to fall.

Stu had... issues... Abandonment issues. First it was his parents leaving, and then Casey left him for Steve. So it wasn't surprising for Stu to ask that.. But even then, Billy was acting weird to.. Stu relaxed into the hold slightly, looking up to Y/n with almost a puppy-eyed look. "Just.. when.. Billy was.. upset.. I thought you were mad at me too for not stepping in.. Thought both of you were. Plus when I asked if you were tryna' make us jealous.." There it was... a better explanation. But now it was Billy's turn.

Continuing to hold Stu's face, Y/n's eyes and face turned to face Billy. Who was avoiding eye contact. Of course he was. Billy didn't like face to face unless he seemed to be upset or anything. But no. This time he was quiet. Taking a breath, Y/n carefully removed one hand from Stu's face holding their now free hand out to Billy. "Billy?" They called out, catching the shorter brunette's attention.

Billy didn't move, but took ahold of Y/N's hand tightly. Before being pulled over and letting his head fall onto his partner's shoulder. "What made you think I didn't love you? Or that I would leave..?" They asked, running a hand through Billy's hair, but gaining no answer for a while.

"I thought you were going to leave like my mom did." Was what he said after he had finally decided to talk aloud. Stu knew of this. That's why they started these.... nevermind. That's not important right now. But Y/n could feel their heart shatter in their chest. Billy thought that they were going to leave like their mom did?

That's it. Taking both Stu and Billy's hands into their own, they began pulling both boys to the living room. "C'mon. I'm gonna' cheer you two up." They spoke. But both their boyfriends were confused. They followed either way, plopping themselves down on the couch. "Movie time?" Stu questioned slightly, though his voice broke. Y/N only nodded. Putting in Psycho, getting popcorn and sitting in the middle between their boyfriends, everything began to fall back into place... Happy endings. But they never last long, do they?

[lurkingshan]

Breaking Down the I Feel You Linger in the Air Finale

Okay pals, I got some sleep and I'm ready to dig into this finale and all its beautiful messiness. I love this show and I'm frankly a little frustrated that we got such an incomplete resolution to the (hopefully) first season when there was ample time to do it right. As ever, pacing and time and information management continue to be major weaknesses for Tee Bundit. As I said last week, the writing for this show has been undeniably messy but it's still holding together on the strength of the production and the performances and the success of some of its big themes and character arcs; that take held firm through the finale and some of the baffling choices made about where to spend our time in this final installment. So, let's dig into it!

The Long Goodbye

I'll say upfront that this is my biggest beef with the pacing of the finale. We spent all of last week on a long and painful goodbye for Yai and Jom, perfectly executed, but for some reason we did another 45 minutes of it this week, not so perfectly executed. While I loved the covering of the mirrors, the saddest sex scene ever (complete with sex moans running as the audio over a memory montage how dare you show!), and the pain of Yai realizing he drew the final picture and watching Jom disappear, we didn't need to retread them saying goodbye to each other over and over again for two entire hours of story time, and we didn't need a long, sappy, on the nose speech from Jom saying things we already knew. As I told @neuroticbookworm, this might be my aro showing but I found the series of repetitive emotional goodbye conversations and memory montages exhausting and not in a good way. If I were the script doctor, I would have kept the mirrors, sad sex, and Yai drawing as the start of the episode and cut the rest, moving much more quickly into the next phase of the story.

Back to the Future

Jom returning to his present day life, trying to cope with his anguish and loneliness and adjust back into things, and further investigating the time travel mystery to figure out a way to reconnect with Yai should have been the main narrative of this episode. Instead, we got a truncated version of it that didn't have time to breath because we'd used up so much time on the above mentioned retread. For my money, Jom's devastation upon finding Yai's letter to him was the most emotionally resonant moment of the finale and the first part of the episode where I almost cried. But we had barely sunk into that feeling before it was abruptly cut short because we were out of time and Tee needed to wrap this baby up.

Eyebrow Scar Yai

Here’s where I get actually kind of peeved, because this final (pre-credits) scene was so poorly set up and executed that to even call it a resolution is a stretch. A modern version of Yai walks into the room, asks Jom why he's crying, tells him he's been waiting for him, kisses him, and then the credits roll!

Now I've been in the tags so I know this caused confusion for anyone who has not read the novel (me too, fam!). And that's because the show had not bothered to establish:

That Yai does in fact have a modern doppelgänger

Who the heck that doppelgänger is and how he’s connected to 1928 Yai

How that doppelgänger would be able to remember Jom when no other doppelgängers in the story can remember their past lives

Based on what we know, could we piece together a reasonable theory about who this man is, how he got there, and the final pieces of the mythology that make sense of it? Sure. In fact, bookworm and I pretty much guessed exactly what the explanation for this was after watching the show, and many of the elements at play here were theorized in conversations we had last week. Book readers like @tipsyjaehyun have now confirmed the full explanation for anyone who cares to go read it.

But the show did not tell us any of this information. If you have to read the novel or have novel readers spoil you on aspects of the story that the show didn't bother to cover in order to understand the ending of the story, the execution has failed. And given the pacing notes above, there is really no reason we couldn't have gotten a better set up for this ending with Eyebrow Scar Yai (yes I know his name but no I'm not using it because the show didn't bother telling me; I am petty like that). Jom could have found this descendant during his time of processing and the ending could have hinged on us realizing this modern Yai is a reincarnation who has his past life memories intact; had we gone into a final kiss between them feeling grounded in all of that knowledge, it would have landed so much better.

Hello Commander

And now on to the post-credits scene, where Tee puts a plea into the universe to give him a second season so he can play around in another time period and explore what is evidently the origin of this soul tie between Jom and Yai. I chose to read this episode tag as separate from the actual season 1 narrative, and I think that was the intention given its placement. If they secure funding for a second season, this tag scene becomes the beginning of that next story, with Eyebrow Scar Yai's kiss sending Jom into another time travel adventure. If they don't we can just ignore it and pretend the pre-credits scene was the end (which is why I'm not happy it was so poorly done). I, for one, would love to see a second season to explore another time period and give Tee a chance to clean up some of this mess he has made of the mythology and season 1 resolution. Shouts to @clairedaring for reporting back from the live showing of the finale on what the possibilities are looking like there. Fingers crossed we get a continuation of this story some day!

Tagging in @waitmyturtles and @twig-tea who also have linked posts above. And shouts to @blmpff @cankersoregirl @pharawee @wanderlust-in-my-soul @italianpersonwithashippersheart @bengiyo @dragonsareawesome123 @wen-kexing-apologist @junghaesin @stuffnonsenseandotherthings @slayerkitty @respectthepetty @chickenstrangers @sunshinechay @btwinlines for posting about this show every week and making it such a fun watch despite having a small audience on here. It was a pleasure watching this with you all!

[the-starship-athena]

Hey, guys! Welcome to the Q&A for Star Trek: Athena.

This will be the first of many Q&A’s for STA. I’ve gotten a few questions that I hope will clear up things. Let’s get started!

Q1: What is STA?

It’s pretty much what it says on the box.

In keeping with Star Trek tradition, I’ve named this project Star Trek: Athena. It’ll be following the adventures of the crew of the USS Athena over the course of their three year mission.

Q2: When does STA take place?

So…here’s the thing.

We know that Star Trek has two timeline, TOS (Prime timeline) and AOS (Kelvin timeline.) The relationship between fans and the timelines…well it’s complicated. You either love it or you hate it or you begrudging like both of them. I’ve been fan since I was kid thanks to me discovering Star Trek while bored during the summer and looking for something to watch.

The problem is the story that I wanted to tell didn’t fit into the prime timeline because there is already so much packed in there so I ultimately gave up on it but then when I watched the 2009 Star Trek movie I realise that maybe I could make my story but still keep it Star Trek. 

Thus, the idea for STA was born.

To answer everyone’s question, yes, it takes place in the Kelvin timeline. The story takes place in 2264 immediately after Star Trek Beyond.

Q3: Who is the crew?

Okay, so the crew is different. I kind of wanted a mix of both bridge crew and lower decks crew because I thought maybe it would be more interesting story wise. Star Trek Lower Decks did kind of influence a little bit of it but then so did The Next Generation.

I plan to release a crew profile soon so like you can get a preview of who is who and what their ranks are and what they do on the ship.

I had to do a lot of research both into the prime timeline and the Kelvin timeline about ldifferent ranks and ship classes and positions on the ship. So like I had a consult both memory alpha and beta, which was fun.  

Keep your eyes out in the future because I will post a full post about our new characters - 8 of them in total - and then the minor characters.



Q4: What do you mean by ‘episodes’ being released?

Okay, I think we’re all familiar here with the format of Star Trek so I aimed to do something similar but in a writing form. It’s not a script or a fan made movie or anything like that. Think more on the lines of the novelisation of certain episodes of TOS, kinda like that but in a shorter format.

It’s going to be a three-year mission, so I am dividing this up into three seasons. I have everything already planned out and drafts are written. Each season will most likely have 10 to 12 episodes and I’m thinking of adding like a little short mini episodes probably like in between seasons just know small little stories or maybe like deleted scenes that I didn’t think made the final cut.

The first episode of STA will be posted on April 10. Hopefully there will be no delays but I look forward to everyone reading this because I’m really excited.

Q5: Why did you start this project?

For fun.

I’ve always been a very big fan of Star Trek, ever since I was kid.

It’s the kind thing that shaped me as a person. So it’s natural that I want write something as a tribute towards it

So came up with the idea of here’s my little star starship crew and they go off into space and there’s all these cool adventures but then they also learn these important lessons… i wanted it to be in spirit of the original Star Trek while adapting some of the newer aspects of modern day trek.

But then I was like okay this might be a stretch and I realised, is this just like me day dreaming or is this something I actually wanna do and then I formed the idea of STA.

Then you know they came with the whole hammering out all the details and deciding what I wanted to do and then finally I realised let’s put this in the kelvin timeline because you know there’s a lot of unknown about this timeline so it makes sense to have this crew in this timeline.

I hope I haven’t lost anyone on this but you have question, dont be afraid to DM me.

[shrinkthisviolet]

Director's Commentary on 'i still love you (i promise)' please!!!!

So this is the affectionately-titled “Barry & Morgan angst fic”! It’s very centrally About Them, and they spend pretty much all of it at odds: first Morgan is mad at Barry, and then he’s mad at her.

It’s interesting, because initially the whole fic was just gonna be Morgan being mad at him. But then I kept finding reasons to reconcile them sooner, but they still needed to be not on speaking terms until 1x14, but then Morgan telling Barry “I helped Hartley” wouldn’t leave room for reconciliation at the end...so we ended up with what we got: Morgan being mad at Barry, reconciling, Eowells stepping in to wreck that reconciliation with his “revelation”, and then Barry being mad at Morgan.

Yeah, it’s strange thing to hear I bet, but Eowells did not initially have a hand in ruining that reconciliation in the very first draft 😂 which surprises even me tbh because he slots into that role perfectly. Makes it hit so much stronger.

This fic was chock full of the miscommunication trope, but hopefully I did it in a way that wasn’t just “easy misunderstanding that could be solved in 5 seconds is stretched out unnecessarily”. It’s more than that! Barry and Morgan do talk here and there, Barry does what he can to atone, but Morgan’s mad at him because her anger isn’t necessarily at Barry...it’s at Eowells, projected onto Barry because he’s a “safe” person to be mad at. Although Barry’s had outbursts of temper, Morgan doesn’t fear him the way she fears Eowells. Of course there’s Morgan’s fierce protectiveness over Tina playing a role in her anger at Barry too, but…it’s mostly anger at Eowells, given that she’s still mad at Barry even after knowing he apologized to Tina.

(It’s just his temper, Morgan tells herself, that’s what I fear—but what’s the difference between that and fearing the man himself, when you live with him? Eowells is rare with his outbursts of temper, but he’s not as effusively apologetic and comforting about it afterwards. Nor does he take any steps to fix it…he doesn’t even tolerate any dissent from her anyway.)

And on Barry’s end, he was told about Morgan working with Hartley from her “dad”!! The person who’s meant to paint her in the best light, always!! Ofc Barry should’ve probed deeper and looked closer, but he trusted Eowells to paint his own daughter in the best light, and that was his mistake, sadly 😭 an understandable one though, I hope.

There’s also the Ronnie & Barry parallels going like crazy in this fic, like how both of them helped measure Morgan's height—exclusively them, no one else. Not even Eowells back when he could stand. Clearly he felt it was “beneath” him past a certain point (past age 7, probably. In his mind, that’s when he “lost” Morgan). Also how Morgan constantly compares them. Also how often the narrative does too, framing them as similar and contrasts them too (Ronnie passing the big-brother torch to Barry is a bit of tragic foreshadowing about his fate at the end of the season). It’s great stuff 💞 I’ve talked more about Morgan's relationships with Barry and Ronnie here!

There’s also such a wonderful focus on Morgan & Tina and Iris & Morgan here, brought about in part because of Barry & Morgan being at odds (Iris & Morgan’s focus in particular is a large part of why I wanted to keep that Barry & Morgan tension later in the fic, especially the reveal).

Tina’s motherliness to Morgan gets to shine, and I loved showing how protective and supportive she is towards her. You also really get the sense that Tina knows…something 👀 maybe not fully, but enough to reasonably suspect.

And Iris!! Oh, how her friendship with Morgan shines in this fic. The future-sisters-in-law dynamic is going strong…and it’s very telling that she’s the first person Morgan actually tells about having powers and being a hero (Barry, Caitlin, Cisco, and Eowells all find out. So does James, and Sentry is half his idea anyway). She trusts Iris so much 🥰 and that’s so wonderful to write.

ask for the director's commentary on a certain story, or send a ⭐️star⭐️ for me to choose something to talk about!

Taglist (send an ask or DM to be added or removed):

@ocappreciationtag @arrthurpendragon @vexic929 @ironverseocs @raith-way @thechaoticfanartist @goldheartedchaoticdisaster

[manawitchyt]

A Cozy Celebration

Quest 3 Part 1

Emily made it home just as the Goths were walking across the street with thier suitcases. She is glad they don't have any horses or crazy amount of Cats or Dogs. Just two children that she hasn't met yet. Good thing she has a few spare bedrooms to fit them all in.

Everyone quickly piled into the house. It was nice to see that the shipping company threw down the new outdoor rug for her before everyone showed up. So nice to be able to stomp the snow off of your feet before coming into the house. Saves her having to clean up a big puddle in the landing.

The rug she chose for the indoor landing was so pretty! The Winterfest trees could be used the entire winter season instead only during the holiday. There were lots of different seasonal Holiday swatches to choose from, but this one Emily thought was the nicest.

Emily gives her back a bit of a stretch. Too many near slips while walking home from the park made her back sore.

E: I have the first two bedrooms in the hall are for guests. You can throw your bags in there. Sorry kids, you will have to share a bed and you might have to sleep on the blowup bed.

After all the Bedrooms were chosen, Introductions were in order.

B: Emily this is my oldest, Cassandra. E: Hi Cassandra. Hope you enjoy your stay! I've got a ping pong table in the basement and a cute little hamster that could use some more attention. C: Hi. Thanks. You got Wi-Fi?

E: I do! I made sure to install the fast internet Lot Trait. C: Thats so Sigma. Cassandra walks away.

E:???…

The Goth's son came around the hallway corner, A: Don't worry thats a good thing. E: Oh. Good, I was so confused for a second there. Thanks for the interpretation. Im Emily. Welcome to my home.

A: Im Alexander, but you can call me Alex.. Our house is getting fumigated for termites again. My parents like to stay up late playing Blickblock. Do you have a gaming mat? Emily is overwhelmed with information, E: Uh no. Sorry no blickblock here. (thank the watcher) I've got a computer though.

A: My mom said you liked her fruitcake, which is strange. Are you sure you did? You don't seem like the type that would. Alex squints his eyes at her. Trying to understand how someone like her passed the fruitcake test. E: I loved the cake it was really good! Those extra bits were so fancy. shiver

Emily narrowly avoided disaster by realizing she had leftover Brigadeiro to bribe him with. Can't talk when your mouth is full of holiday treats right?

Hopefully he will forget about the fruitcake by the time he is finished. Maybe his sister will take him downstairs to play on the computer.

Emily makes sure to welcome her adult guests after they get settled in.

B: Thankyou so much for having us on such short notice.

E: Its no problem, its the neighborly thing to do. You and Mortimer were so helpful with my work assignment, its the least I could do. So Welcome to my home!

Just like that, Emily gets another notification on her phone. Another Quest has started. This one seems like it will be all about family gatherings. Well, she doesn't have family close so the Goths will have to fill in for her. How does Jasmine know she has guests over? Are there hidden cameras in my house!?

Emily heads to the kitchen to welcome Mortimer,

E: Hope everything is to your liking.

M: Oh it is darling. Im glad we will have the opportunity to talk more. I did enjoy our conversation last time we spoke.

E: hoping it wasn't the mistletoe conversation I'd love to hear more about your book later.

One of the first things on her quest to do list is to "Cook some Chocolate Chip Cookies". Strange it says cook instead of bake, but oh well. Must have something to do with menu placement.

Emily loves cookies so she decides to make a family double sized portion to share with her guests.

Im going to stop this part here. Quest 3 has more images than the blog post will allow . The rest of the story will be in Part 2

[alleyratts]

10/20

We’re leaving the villa. Mom is not thrilled to be leaving but we’ll be enjoying the sights and foods on our way back to Rome, hopefully overshadowing the saddness of leaving such a place.

Before I forget, it’s Porcini season in Italy, so most restaurants we go to have featured dishes with Porcini. Of course in America we use them for burgers mainly, here it is presented alone with salt or marinated in fish sauce. If you don’t like mushrooms, don’t go to Italy in October. We can’t escape them, not that we want to. Another fun thing we’re here for is olive picking season, so most olive farms are being worked, leaving no room for tours of goat farms or wineries; the entire country is extremely busy making olive oil for everyone. What an amazing treasure. In this way, I don’t feel like I’m missing out, I feel like I’m here for the cultures busiest season and for that I am accepting in the lack of tours we’re on. Plus, who wants to do touristy things anyway? We went to the Vatican and Basilica, think we’ve done enough of that.

I asked Carlo last night to visit me in my dreams to test if religion is real or not, instead, I didn’t sleep at all. Is that my answer?

We’ve just arrived in Amelia, Madi from the villa told us to go here for their ancient city wall. In this town, they have a wall built around it that is the most perfectly preserved ancient wall in the world. You can’t enter by car, you have to park below it and trek the ten minute walk through the small city to the square where the duomo is. It’s grey outside again, but every now and then we get patches of sun, and to me this makes moments in the day that much more special. I have never had to pee so much in my life.

I have not sat on a toilet this big ever before. The seat is so wide I don’t understand who made this model to be universal. It’s not.

Anyways, we went to a cafe per Madi’s suggestion, that she has an apartment above as well. Hers is the only apartment with a balcony. I think I want to become Madi. She said she lived in the states for 20 years and wanted the closeness of her homeland again, but something that was just hers. Something she owned by herself that she could call her own hill in Italy, since she was originally from Genoa she chose Guardea to be hers. Then the birth of the villa ensued. Then another, then another, and a few apartments. She was a professor at Yale, having her daughters attend the school as well. This family is the genuine idea of wealth and health. Passing down the hearts that are full of Italian soil and American university brain abilities. I believe if anything, that god gives her whatever she wants because she is a pure form of light and love, only meant to spread kindness and speaks so elegantly when she does you have to listen. This is what beautiful people are like. You will stop whatever it is you’re doing to be present with them.

Amelia was beautiful and special, like Madi said. Small and perfecto. I met a man named Marten who used to live in Beverly Hills, his dad was Greek and his mother Italian. He now lives in Amelia, three minutes from the main square. He told me I had a sweet soul and a huge heart. We talked for a good ten minutes while Taylor enjoyed a glass of wine and mom was taking baby sips off of it. He told me to stay active and do sports because we only live once, to travel everywhere, and love everyone. I hugged him and took him over to meet the girls, where upon leaving, all got hugs too. Marten touched my soul today, he waved me over to the bench he was sitting on after seeing me take photos of a saint from 2002, unnamed. I gladly walked over, we had seen him from afar earlier, working out with elastic and doing arm stretches. We commended him as he must’ve been almost 90 years old and I was unaware I’d later be having this gorgeous conversation with him about all of his travels. He’s been in Amelia for 4 years now, it was kind of hard to pin down where he was before Amelia because his accent was so thick. But he told me he wanted to be an actor in Los Angeles, and that he’d modeled for Gucci; probably in the 80s if I could guess. He told us to write him a postage, so after lunch my goal is to find him a post card that reminds me of him, and write to him a goodbye from us and to Italy itself. I can’t wait to send it. Though I hadn’t gotten his last name, I trust the higher authorities to send it straight to Martens front door in Amelia. What would life be without strangers?

Madi texted her friend that owns a restaurant in the middle of the woods in Umbria, close to Amelia, to save a seat for us at the restaurant he owns. 30 feet from where we sat were local cows, chickens, sage bushes, all the necessary ingredients to their menu. Talk about farm to plate. I could walk to the steak I was eating and say hello, thank you.

[christinesficrecs]

Any fluff seasons 5-6 or post cannon fics?

There are so many fluffy fics in the tags! This post is a little more canon divergent, which is hopefully what you were looking for. ❤️

Turn a Little Faster by skoosiepants | 3.2K

He shifts back and forth on his feet and tries to psych himself up. He can do this. He’s a badass werewolf, he can totally tell Stiles that they accidentally got werewolf married because—because Stiles was thinking about him, and happened to give him a token of his, uh, affection under the silvery light of the last full moon. Platonic affection, Derek thinks sourly, so he doesn’t get why his wolf feels all warm and fuzzy and bonded all of a sudden.

Honestly, it’s like—why aren’t people accidentally getting werewolf married all the time, if it happens this easily?

Introduction to Zero-Sum Anthropology by apocryphal | 19.7K

Stiles buys Derek a set of cooking spoons. Derek retaliates with lunch.

The war begins.

Derelictions of Duty by Regann | 10.8K

No one wants to be the bearer of bad news to someone as nice as Sheriff Stilinski -- especially when he's your boss. That's why none of his employees want to be the first one to tell him about the scandalous goings-on between his only son and the former murder suspect Derek Hale. For all of their sakes, hopefully the Sheriff will find out all on his own...

Kingdom By The Sea by kilaem | 4K

Lydia grabs his arm and pulls him down in the seat next to her. “When the hell did you find time to bag a guy like Hale?”

“We’re friends,” Stiles feels his face heat up, and then the team are running out and Derek sees him and smiles. His blush gets worse.

“Oh really?”

“Our moms were friends, okay? We’ve been in diapers together.”

“I thought you two hated each other.”

never found a boy (to love me like you do) by stilinskisparkles | 6.6K | Mature

Stiles sits down opposite him, long fingers wrapping round the vodka bottle’s neck as he drags it towards him. “Huh.” He’s practically caressing the lid as he unscrews it and Derek shifts in his seat, looks determinedly elsewhere.

Tell Me, So I Know by TroubleIWant | 7.4K | Mature

It took years for Derek to finally confront the way he felt about Stiles, and even after he figured it out he could only explain in Spanish. It took them two years more to get to where they were now. Only with neither of them quite willing to commit, where exactly is that, anyways?

Well, for Stiles it’s a deserted stretch of road behind the Hale house, half trapped in a car wreck after being abducted by hunters. Frankly, he could really use Derek’s help if he’s going to get out of this alive. Mates are supposed to be able to tell when the other is in pain, right? As Derek would probably say, 'querido, no.'

Or, a love story in two parts... and two languages.

Not If You Were the Last Fake Boyfriend on Earth by mirrorkill | 8.3K | Mature

One of Derek's ex-boyfriends is headed to town and Derek's not feeling inferior at all. ...yeah that's a total lie. He needs something to make his life look less pathetic and he thinks maybe a boyfriend would do the trick. Derek's willing to let the pack help out… but he draws the line at Stiles becoming his fake boyfriend. No way. Not even if Stiles was the last fake boyfriend on Earth.

an awful curse by blinkiesays | 6.2K

Isaac is asleep in a chair. The angle of his neck makes Derek wince in sympathy.

"Isaac," Derek says.

Isaac snaps awake immediately.

"You're-"

"Where's Stiles?"

"Stiles?" Isaac asks.

Jesus. It's not like they know more than one.

Wet T-Shirts For Charity by LadyDrace | 2.4K

Derek takes his car to a charity car wash. He didn't realize the wash came with a side of sexual frustration and pining.

everything you do [sends me higher than the moon] by crossroadswrite | 4.5K

When Derek opens his door to see Stiles standing there with four full suitcases, his massagers’ bag thrown over his shoulder, two big cardboard boxes that barely close and his demon cat cradled on the crook of his elbow all he can say is, “Why?”

Not “what” not “what happened stiles” not “get out” not “please let me kiss you this pinning thing is really getting old for me” not “why are you bringing satan into my home”.

Just a simple “why”.

You’d Be So Good To Come Home To by SylvieW | 5K

In Stiles’ final year of college, Derek decides to rebuild the Hale house. He keeps asking for Stiles’ opinion on the house plans. Stiles doesn't realize that Derek is building the house with a mate in mind.

Wild and Reckless Breeze by GotTheSilver | 15.7K | Mature

In which Stiles is killing time working at a bookshop, Derek buys a lot of Chuck Palahniuk and they start hanging out, much to the confusion of Scott and the Sheriff.

warm shadows by stilinskisparkles | 22K

“Fine,” Stiles spits back, “We’ll die together, it’ll be dandy.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Derek snaps, “I’ll get some peace and quiet for once.”

Stiles grins suddenly, blindingly. There’s blood on his teeth, and his eyes are dark and desperate as he looks up at Derek, but he’s never looked more stupidly, infuriatingly beautiful.

A Whole Strip of Condoms by eeyore9990 | 20.2K | Explicit

Somehow Stiles has managed to survive the horrors of Beacon Hills until the ripe old age of twenty. He's still a virgin, of course, because there hasn't really been time between school, work, and running for his life to take care of that pesky little problem.

Derek Hale — also a Beacon Hills Survivor — has sadly attained lonely bachelor status. In between running for his life, researching the latest threats to the town with his good buddy Stiles, and lingering nightmares of the outcomes of his past relationships, he hasn't exactly been on the lookout for anyone new since Braeden.

Stiles feels the crushing weight of his family's debt; Derek has piles of money. Derek needs to get laid; Stiles is a willing and eager virgin. It's a match made in... well. Beacon Hills. Eesh.

Their odd little friendship has survived death threats, possession, and all manner of things that go bump in the night. Surely it'll survive a friends with benefits arrangement.

Right?

[bonefall]

So I've been reading the story of the Brokenstar changes. How he killed his father because he could not accept losing the war, and that Tallstar was going to keep what WindClan had won in battle...

This makes me wonder, what is Tallstar going to be like in your story? How is Tallstar changing, if at all?

FANTASTIC question. I feel very, very strongly about stories that want to talk about flawed societies, and then make false dichotomies of "good people" who oppose it and "bad people" who enforce it, as if it's a Heaven vs Hell struggle that can be won in a big fell swoop.

Like all other leaders, Tallstar is subject to the wider cultural values of the four clans. He is a good man. A good leader. But an authority figure of a flawed society nonetheless.

And Raggedstar was right that Tallstar was being extremely generous with his offer. He didn't owe ShadowClan anything, by the might-makes-right values that the four Clans lived by, WindClan won the war. That aid he was providing probably would have helped ShadowClan get back on their feet.

But does that make Brokenstar wrong? What happens when the aid stops? What if WindClan does start pushing further south? How is he to know that Tallstar isn't just going to use this as leverage in future 'negotiations'? What's stopping WindClan from going further?

And think of the honor of ShadowClan. A value this culture holds highly. The casualties over two generations, the hard winters, not being able to provide for your own clan, eating garbage-stuffed rats full of disease?

If they just give up now, what was it all for?

Now let's look at this from Tallstar's perspective.

He's served under Heatherstar for years, lost dozens of their own warriors in fighting this war. They sacrificed an ancient tradition to win. Now Tallstar has inherited this legacy, Heatherstar's final gift to him is the Mothermouth Moorland.

As a clan leader, he is leading ALL of WindClan. He has cats to feed. He has supporters he has to maintain. His first act as leader is going to color how his warriors view him for years to come-- and in spite of all that, he is choosing a form of peace.

He's already losing some face to hunt for ShadowClan, the enemies they just beat, cats they've been at war with since before he was born-- why would he EVER just give up the whole moorland to ShadowClan now? After they won?

His society doesn't see winning land through warfare as wrong, they are a battle culture. That's moorland, of far more value to his people than ShadowClan. They've sacrificed for this moment, too, injuries, infection, casualties, the loss of tunneling. in a way, he is facing the same question that Brokentail is.

Turn back now, and what was all of that for?

Now you and I, as outsiders, hopefully we can see through this.

Who cares who beat who? WindClan has TAKEN ShadowClan's land. They invaded. NO ONE had to fight or die for it at all, everyone could have helped each other, they could have agreed to divide the moors between seasons; Spring and Summer when ShadowClan uses it to hunt frogs, Fall and Winter when only WindClan can chase the rabbits.

But they didn't. They had to fight for it, and now dozens are dead. It's sunk cost all the way down, stretching back longer than the main characters can even remember.

THIS is the disease at the heart of Clan Culture. THIS is the violence that drove out SkyClan, it hasn't changed! It's only gotten worse! The clans WOULDN'T change without a reckoning, either. Without Bluestar, without Firestar after her, Brokenstar is how the clans were destined to end, a bloodbath of their own making.

THIS is what "Fire Alone" truly means.

TL;DR Tallstar's a good guy in a bad system and power acts through him as much as he can act with it.

[yeetlegay]

so i have some silly questions. ive seen you and a lot of other kp accounts talk about skam. where do i start? which is the og skam? do i start with that? are all the skams the same but in different languages? should i watch all of them or some or only one? is it ongoing or done or unfinished? where do i watch it? also what is the show about and what are its major tws?

Definitely not silly questions, but holy shit they're big ones 😂 I'll try to be as succinct as I can, with the caveat that I haven't watched all of them in their entirety and the remakes are very much NOT interchangeable despite being adaptations of the same show.

So to break it down—

What is SKAM about?: SKAM was a Norwegian show that aired from 2015-17 for four seasons. The show was set in a high school and centered primarily around two friend groups (fans usually call them the girl squad and boy squad). Each season focuses on a new main character from these friend groups and is told from their point of view, with plot arcs that range from SA to mental illness to coming-of-age struggles, but they're all very grounded and relatable teen issues told with (for the most part) a lot of empathy and hope. The seasons are pretty narratively distinct rather than having major plots stretching across multiple seasons, so while you might miss some context, you don't necessarily have to watch all the seasons or watch them in order.

Now what's really cool about SKAM, and what you unfortunately miss out on somewhat by not watching it live, is the multimedia component. The show's format is something that was never really seen before and hasn't really been seen since, at least not to the same extent. While it was airing, each scene in that week's episode went live in real time throughout the week. So for example, if a scene is meant to take place on Monday at 3:20pm in the story, that scene would be posted online on Monday at 3:20pm. Scenes could drop at literally any time, day or night, and on top of that the characters had real Instagrams that they'd post on and text conversations that would be posted too, again all in real time, so not only was there something new pretty much every day for the fandom to talk about, but all those media components (clips, Instagram posts/stories, texts, etc.) were interconnected so they all fed into the plot in important ways. At the end of the week, all the scenes would be compiled into the full episode, but you wouldn't see the other media components which really add a lot to the story even if they're not 100% essential. I think a lot of the remakes have a fan-made Tumblr where all the different types of content have been collected and put in order so you can get the full experience, so I'd definitely check them out first.

As for the remakes, all of the above applies to them too. There are a total of seven remakes, each from a different country: SKAM France (France), Druck (Germany), SKAM Italia (Italy), SKAM Austin (U.S.), SKAM España (Spain), SKAM NL (Netherlands), and wtFOCK (Belgium).

Where to start: I recommend the original Norwegian SKAM. Some seasons are better than others, and if you're just in it for the gays (I pretty much was lol) then season three is what you're looking for. It's been a while since I watched the og or any of the remakes so I'm not sure where they're available now, but that info should hopefully be pretty easy to find.

Are all the SKAMs the same but in different languages?: Sort of, but also not. Most of them follow the main plots of the og seasons but they vary widely in terms of how closely they adhere to the characters, tone, themes, etc. SKAM España, for example, is SUPER different to the point that it barely resembles the original most of the time (and it's GREAT). Also some of the remakes didn't get to cover all four seasons (SKAM Austin and SKAM NL only got two seasons and I'm still in mourning), while some remakes covered all four AND seasons beyond that (SKAM France just finished its tenth season).

Should I watch all of them or some or only one?: Everyone has remakes they like more or less than others, it's just individual preference, but they're all worth checking out imo. After watching the original, I'd probably recommend SKAM France, Druck, or wtFOCK first as a taste-tester, but genuinely all of them have their strengths and their flaws. My personal favorites are SKAM France (for the cinema and acting), wtFOCK (for the music and general vibes), and SKAM NL (for the cinematography, acting, directing, basically everything).

Ongoing or finished?: Most of the remakes are finished, with the exception of SKAM Italia (which just started season 5 like two days ago actually) and mayyyybe SKAM France and Druck, which both had seasons finish airing recently.

Major TWs: This is hard because the remakes are, like I said, distinct from each other, so some TWs won't apply to all of them, and especially with the remakes that have gotten additional seasons, they have more than the original. I also haven't watched all of them from start to finish so I don't know all the things to look out for.

For the original, you'll definitely encounter drug/alcohol use and abuse, SA and SH, Islamophobia, homophobia, bullying, as well as depictions of mental illness that could be triggering. The show has its heavy moments, but it's not gratuitous about it imo and at the end of the day still manages to be uplifting despite talking about some really serious topics, which is a feat tbh. If you have questions about TWs for specific seasons or remakes I can try to go in a bit more depth. Each remake (and the original) also has a fandom wiki with episode/season summaries that give you a good idea of what to expect, so that could be useful as well if you want to watch out for anything in particular.

——

I think I got everything! If you have more questions about SKAM, totally happy to help as I know it can be confusing at first to get up to speed with it all lol. And definitely hmu if you want deets about the gay seasons, which are the only ones I've consistently watched because...well, I'm gay obviously lol.

[literaryobsession]

a king without a crown || xiao x fem!reader

summary: eternally bachelor xiao, the sole heir and son, decides to get married to save the family name

word count: 2006

chapters: i , ii , iii, iv , vi , vii ,  epilogue

v

The Central Park in Celestia was full of people promenading. There were mothers and lady’s maids hanging around, either chaperoning for their girls or looking for prospective husbands before the season is over. Everyone is clamoring for someone to pair with, the pressures of society weighing down on everyone’s shoulders.

You, however, found yourself sitting with Lord Xiao in a picnic that your Aunt organized - it was weird that she wasn’t there to join you. Lord Xiao seemed surprised too, he was told that Lady Ei would be there too. It was alright though, due to the past two conversations you had with him, this moment seemed to be getting better than the last and you found yourself getting more invested in him than you previously planned.

Katheryne sat by the maid sent by your aunt in another picnic spread and you sat with Xiao, as you two filled yourselves with cheese, biscuits, and grape juice - there were sweets too but your corset was already quite tight now so you didn’t indulge.

Xiao was leaning back on his seat, his palms planted on the cloth you were both sitting on and his legs stretched out. He looked much more comfortable in the grass than a ballroom, you noted as you saw the glint of happiness in his eyes as you two started talking about Liyue again.

"Yes, we have two big festivals in Liyue. My favorite would have to be the Lantern Rite festival. It is our celebration for entering another year. We celebrate what was, what is, and what will be. We release lanterns in the sky, glowing up the darkness like fireflies." He described, looking up at the sky as though seeing the lights in the afternoon sky. "I try to attend the festival as much as I can, because that is the one night I feel like I could release my worries."

You felt a bit sorry for him. You understood responsibilities and duties because even though you didn’t have a title, you were still a close relative of the queen and people expected you to be a perfect epitome of grace. "The responsibility of being the only son is quite the burden isn't it?"

He nodded slowly, "It is but I find myself loving what I do for my people. There is not a day when you feel left out, people are all so generous that we'd find produce right from the farm and directly to our table!" As fast as that frown on his face came, his smile returned. 

"That sounds delicious, Lord Xiao!" You bit from the grape, wondering if the produce he was talking about was as delectable as that of the queen’s usual tea spreads.

The young gentleman sat up and nodded enthusiastically, looking like a young boy, "It is. You must try almond tofu, it is simply one of the best."

You giggled and reached out to take a piece of bread when he reached out too. The touch of his skin made you pull your hand back, and you licked your lips in nervousness before trying to cover it up, "Hopefully I can visit, the queen doesn't allow me to go too far."

What is this feeling? Why is my heart beating wildly in my chest? That was just his hand, Y/N!

Xiao tilted his head, trying to look into your eyes. The humor in his face died down as he asked you a question. "If you'd have the chance, where would you want to go?"

No one ever asked you that question before. Many people were usually inquiring about the queen and Xiao’s attention was a breath of fresh air for you. You went quiet as you thought of your answer and then you confessed, "Sumeru. I'd love to have the chance to attend the university there but I don't think the queen will let me. I have teachers coming over the castle but there is something different with a school."

You were given everything in life, how can you ask for more?

He offered you a piece of bread, "Are you happy with what you're doing?"

"What?" You were about to take it from him but you were taken by surprise once again. 

Xiao repeated, "Are you happy?"

"I have money,” You stammered, “I have tutors. I have these amazing dresses. I have Katheryne. I have my family. I think... I think I'm pretty happy."

Xiao watched your expression as you answered the question. Granted that it was a difficult one but it made him sad that you seemed obligated to say that you are happy, that you are contented with everything.  

"You don't think it, you feel it. Responsibility is really very tough on people especially if they don't find joy in what they do. It would help if you'd be able to find that." Who was he and why was he looking deep in your thoughts? What gave him the right to search your soul for all of these things you yearn for but rarely spoke about. "But who am I to really say? I haven't traveled although I did attend school."

Maybe that’s the answer to the question that has been plaguing your mind, he understood your life because that was his life too. 

The only difference is he was happy with what he was given, you were not.

You were grateful for the queen, of course! But deep inside, you wondered about the life you would be capable to have if not for the rules and the expectations.

You didn’t want to bring the mood down so you tried to turn the table, "What would do if you weren't about to become a duke, Lord Xiao?"

"I'd love to travel too. Learning about places and people from books can only get you too far. It would be nice to not think of my duties for even just a day," His voice was quiet, as though you caught him in a rare moment of vulnerability. You were touched that he was honest to you, "But I don't want to think of the what-ifs, I have my family to think of. I have Liyue to think of. It would feel rather selfish if I think of only myself."

Who are you? 

Why are you so kind?

Why are you so easy to be fond of, Lord Xiao?

You hesitated to touch his hand, wanting to tell him you understood and that it was okay. You wanted to cup his cheeks, wipe away the sadness filling his eyes, but you could not so you tried to be sincere with your words, "You're a good person, Lord Xiao, truly."

No, I am not.

If you knew, you wouldn't think so.

“I am not. Hardly. I’m simply dedicated,” Xiao smiled sadly. He opened his mouth as though he had something else to tell but he paused before continuing, "Tell me about you now."

I want to know more about you.

I crave to be closer, is it a sin?

We started off on such a bad note. I didn't expect it would turn out this way.

That is when you laughed, "You can read things about me in the newspaper. People write a lot about me. Sometimes I find out more things about me in there."

But he reached out and tucked your stray hair behind your ear, "I'd rather hear it from you, Lady Y/N."

"Alright,” The weather just got really hot, you wondered quietly. You looked around and saw people enjoying it. Was it only you feeling this sudden warmth? “I'm an orphan, my mother and father both died because of a disease. My family took me in, I stayed with the queen because she had no children of her own. I am thankful for her.” 

“I don't remember my parents too much but there are dreams, maybe they're memories, that tell me that my mother loved to sing me to sleep and my father would read to me stories about faraway lands and mythical creatures." You barely recall your parents and you often wonder if those dreams you have actually happened in real life or was that simply your subconscious telling you that you missed them?

"Perhaps you inherited your desire to travel from your parents." He could see you riding a horse through the meadows of Liyue, and eating up all the books in the many libraries of Sumeru. You were such a beautiful bird in a cage and it was understandable that you wanted to be free. 

Was it cruel of him to even try and lock you in another?

He started trying to argue with himself but somehow that side of his that wanted to see you free was starting to win. If you would be better off locked with the queen, he'd rather not share with you his burdens. You were worth more. 

You deserved more than his ill intentions.

"Maybe." You nodded before taking a glass of juice. He was quiet and you found that weird since he was quite talkative with you. "You know, Lord Xiao, Katheryne is my most trusted friend, she's always eased my worries."

He blinked twice, as though getting dragged back into reality. Xiao managed to give you a smile as if there is nothing wrong. "You are lucky. Not all would have such a blessing."

"I know."

Xiao didn't want to leave your side but he knew that he must. He knew he must. There must be some other way to pay off the debts. "Talking with you feels natural, Lady Y/N." The expression on his face was unreadable but you could feel the sincerity in his tone, "You make it so easy to crave for your presence, too easy to keep on talking to you till dawn." 

Why is it so? This should simply be a relationship for convenience, why is it turning into something more? Why do you make it so easy to trust you so?

You felt the same way and you wanted to tell him that too, "Not all would have such a blessing. We are lucky to have found such kindred souls in each other." Why does it feel like he was saying goodbye though?

"Indeed."

After the picnic, Xiao met Chongyun and Xingqiu as they were heading out. Xingqiu saw the muddled look on his face, being friends for a long time, he gave a look at Chongyun who nodded. The pair joined Xiao in his room in the estate and tried to question him if something bad happened while you two were having the picnic.

"No no, she's perfect." Xiao rubbed his palm on his face. He was the worst kind of person to even have tried to do this to you. You didn't deserve him, even if he wanted to be.

And archons, he wanted to be who you deserved.

He wanted to be by your side, to see you achieve your dreams, to see your satisfaction as you visit places, and to see you as you discover what it means to truly be happy and contented.

But how can he?

He was a sham.

"Then why are you packing? You said she was perfect!" Xingqiu stood before Xiao as he started putting his things in a bag, "You're freaking me out. Did you compromise her? What happened, Xiao? Answer me! Xiao - Chongyun, help me out here!"

Before Chongyun could move, there was a knock on the door. 

Lady Ei opened the door after a few seconds, her eyes wide, "Lord Xiao, a letter." Nothing usually surprises her as she was always two steps ahead, but receiving a letter directly from the queen was something she didn't expect. It would usually be her to inform the queen of the affairs outside the castle, and she kept the stories of her meddling with Lord Xiao and Y/N before she was sure that something is blossoming between you...

How could she have heard?

And why is she only calling for Lord Xiao?

tagging: @macaroniwiththechickenstripz , @scaraslover

[dean-winchester-is-a-warrior]

Green is My Favorite Color Ch. 8

Series Summary: Dean has been her hero from childhood, can she ever get him to be more?

Pairings: Dean x OFC

Warnings: Smut, oral (fem receiving), descriptions of a naked Dean, mentions of slight pain from the night before.

Word Count: 2,546

Chapter Summary: What does the morning after hold for Dean and Julie?

A/N:  The eighth chapter in a longer series. As I’m writing, the story is stretching out a little and I’m thinking it’s going to be at least 20 chapters. Sorry! 😬 It’s what I’ll call cannon adjacent. It will follow the general storylines through the seasons, but I’m creating my own offshoots. 😊

A/N 2: Basically since the last chapter was SO long and because this chapter is so late, I thought I would just make it a short, mostly sweet, and hopefully steamy (literally?) chapter, before I carry on with Chapter 9. (Which will hopefully be out by the end of this weekend coming!) Hope you like it! Oh, and yeah, as stated above, I'm pretty sure this series is gonna last at least 20 chapters now. I'm sorry I keep extending it, but Dean and Julie refuse to be rushed! 😁

Series Master List || Dean Master List || Main Master List || Tag Lists

Julie opened her eyes slowly, a vague, half-awake sense hitting her that something was wrong.

Through eyes clouded with sleep she took in the room around her with it's hideous brown and orange carpet and piles and piles of empty bottles.

It took her nearly a full minute of staring around at the unfamiliar surroundings, her brain still stupid with sleep, for last night to come rushing back to her. She stretched, remembering finally why her body hurt so much and blushing at the memory.

That thought led to the next in her slowly awakening brain.

Where is Dean?

She sat up, looking around the room, but he would be pretty hard to miss in the open space. She got up and threw her t-shirt on, glad it covered her to mid-thigh since she didn't want to put her very ruined panties back on.

"Dean!" She called out as she looked into the bathroom, hoping he was just taking a shower.

A silent shower. A silent shower in the dark.

But, of course, no - he was just gone.

She felt her stomach lurch, hurt squeezing her heart. Trying not to jump to conclusions she got her phone out of her purse to see if he'd sent a text or left her a message. But there were only two messages, both from Sam asking how things were going.

Not wanting Sam to be worried unnecessarily, she very quickly shot off a text responding:

Good. We're both okay. Talk more later.

She wondered if she was lying to Sam. Were they okay? Where the hell was Dean? Would he really just walk away without even a goodbye, after last night?

A little voice in her head (one that sounded an awful lot like the kids who used to taunt and tease her in school) started mocking her.

Why wouldn't he leave? What was last night to Dean? For god's sake it probably wasn't even the first time he got laid this week. Maybe he didn't feel like sticking around and dealing with your clingy virgin ass.

Just as the voices grew loudest in her mind, laughing and reminding her of all her flaws, the orange motel room door cracked open quietly and Dean peered in. When he saw her standing in the middle of the room, he opened the door wide and smiled as he walked in - with two coffees and a bag of something that smelled delicious and obviously contained bacon.

"Hey. You're up."

Julie had never been very good at hiding her emotions and her relief must have shown clearly on her face because Dean's smile faltered slightly and he looked down.

"You thought I took off."

Julie shrugged trying to play it off as no big deal. "I was just curious, I thought maybe I'd slept through you trying to wake me or something. I was pretty exhausted."

Her words reminded her again why her body ached and why, she knew, it was going to hurt to sit down, and she blushed again - deeply.

Somehow the thoughts and memories from the night before were even more vivid and heated with Dean standing barely six feet away, all tall and solid and sexy as hell in the morning light falling through the window.

He set the bag on the table behind her and handed her a coffee. "You know, if you were worried -"

Julie cut him off. "I wasn't worried."

Dean nodded, clearly unconvinced. "Well then, if you were...curious," he amended, "you could have looked out the window and seen that Baby was still here." He pointed to his green duffel bag that was partially pushed under the bed. "Or realized that I wouldn't bolt so quickly that I'd leave all my clothes behind."

Julie felt incredibly stupid for not noticing those very obvious things. She rolled her eyes at her foolishness. "I'm sorry, yeah, I should have noticed."

But Dean shook his head. "No, I'm sorry, I should have left a note or something. But I knew I wouldn't be gone long. Just grabbing food from across the street."

He took a sip of his coffee and sat in one of the green backed vinyl chairs at the table. He leaned back, his long legs stretched out in front of him in a posture that made Julie want to climb into his lap and devour him.

Jesus woman! Julie admonished herself. Pull it together.

She decided the safest bet was to follow Dean's lead, so she sat in the other chair across from him and sipped her coffee. It was sweet and creamy, just how she liked it. It made Julie shake her head. How did he know things like that? She couldn't remember ever telling him, or asking him to make her coffee. He was magic.

She smiled to herself and Dean noticed.

"Thinking about something fun?" His voice was deep and heated and when she looked up, his gaze was penetrating.

She blushed some more and wished there was some way to stop it.

"You're blushing." Dean said, and his grin was knowing and wicked as he pulled two breakfast sandwiches out of the paper bag and handed her one.

Julie shook her head. "Stop." She demanded, her voice much breathier than she'd hoped for. She cleared her throat. "I was thinking about coffee."

Biting into his own sandwich Dean frowned, slightly perplexed. "You're smiling and blushing about coffee?" he asked around a mouthful.

Julie meant to explain and ask him how he'd known her coffee preferences. But then her mind stopped working because a small bit of egg had clung to Dean's bottom lip and he scooped it up with his thumb, pushing it into his mouth and sucking on the tip.

And her mind cleared of any rational thought.

Dean caught her staring at his mouth and smiled again causing more blushing. Desperate to get away before her face just went up in flames, Julie bounded to her feet.

"I have to have a shower." She pointed toward the bathroom behind her, as though he might not know where the shower was kept.

She spun away and quickly closed the bathroom door behind her. She closed it so fast she forgot that the light switch was on the outside, so she was standing in the dark a minute before she slowly cracked the door open just enough to snake her hand through and reach for the switch.

The light flickered on and she closed the door again only to realize one more problem. She opened the door again, poking her head out, to see Dean still sitting in the same position at the table, facing the bathroom door, a look of extreme amusement on his face.

"Something wrong, Sweetheart?" he asked, his smirk sharp and suggestive.

She swung the door wide. "I don't have any clothes."

Dean quirked an eyebrow at her, his gaze raking over her t-shirt clad body.

She shook her head. "I mean underwear. I don't have any clean underwear. Those are...dirty" She pointed to the pair lying on the floor beside the bed.

She knew her face was bright red, but she'd simply given up trying not to blush, her face was very likely going to stay permanently puce.

Dean stood up slowly, and then stooped to pick up her panties, bringing them over to her in the doorway. "You can wash these out in the sink. They should dry fairly quickly."

She nodded and looked up at him. Her stomach clenched at the hungry look on his face as she took the underwear from him.

"You could have just left them there, I could have got them myself."

He stepped closer to her, impossibly close, and his voice was a low rumble when he spoke, honey and heat dripping from every syllable.

"It's alright. I took them off of you, the least I can do is return them."

Julie's breathing hitched and she dropped the underwear back on to the floor as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to slant her mouth over his.

Dean quickly took over, growling as he pushed her back into the bathroom, shoving her up against the sink on the far wall. His hands moved from her waist, to run over her ass, squeezing her and pressing her against the bulge in his jeans.

Julie moaned and pushed the jacket he was still wearing off his shoulders and then sent his green work shirt to land on top of it. She grasped the hem of his t-shirt and pulled it hastily over his head.

"Good god, you wear way too many layers." Julie complained as she was finally able to make contact with his warm skin.

Dean chuckled and yanked her t-shirt off of her. "Unlike you." He brought one hand up to cup her breast, kneading it and making her gasp. "You dress very efficiently. So nice to have easy access." He tweaked her nipple playfully and Julie felt the effect rush through her, her core muscles clenching around nothing.

Dean captured her lips again, delving his tongue deep into her mouth, exploring and tasting her thoroughly. He dropped his hands to her thighs, scooping her up to set her on the bathroom counter.

As she landed a little hard on the Formica countertop, Julie grimaced slightly at the tenderness pervading that very delicate and sensitive skin.

Instantly contrite, Dean flinched with her. "Shit, Jules, I'm sorry."

He kissed her gently and his hands began kneading her thigh muscles. She groaned from the sheer bliss of his strong, callused hands massaging the tightness from her muscles. He kissed her again and then pulled away.

"No." Julie protested thinking he was going to leave. But he shook his head.

"Just gimme a minute."

He went over to the walk-in shower and turned the tap on; steam was soon rolling out from behind the curtain. The shower was large and the water pressure perfect - by far the best thing in the entire motel room.

Dean stripped quickly out of his jeans and boxers and stood naked for a moment, the steam billowing around him. Julie was blown away by the raw power that rolled off of him. Standing naked should have diminished him somehow, made him seem vulnerable, but it didn't.

Every inch of him was just perfectly created. His broad shoulders were round and thick, his arms defined by large, smooth muscles, and his wide chest dusted with freckles before his torso narrowed to a V over his flat stomach. Seeing his muscular hips and thighs brought back to Julie's mind the memory of their power as Dean had slammed into her body the night before, every thrust driving her closer to the edge.

And at the center of him was the long, thick shaft that had brought her such pleasure and caused the pleasant ache she now felt in her core. It was mostly hard and erect, leaning against his stomach, marbled slightly with veins. She remembered the exquisite silkiness of his skin over the hardness and her fingers twitched, desperate to touch it again.

But before she could gain the confidence to go for it, Dean had come back for her, scooping her up and carrying her into the shower. He set her feet down and pushed her forward so that her hands rested against the wall above the taps and the hot water poured down over her sore muscles, slowly releasing the tension there. Her head hung outside the spray of the water, and she felt like she could have stood there for hours.

And then Dean put his hands on her.

She felt his big, rough hands start massaging at her shoulders, applying exactly the right amount of pressure. Moving slowly down her body, his hands touched every inch of her skin, kneaded every knotted muscle in her body.

As he reached her ass and thighs she felt him drop to his knees behind her. He ran his strong fingers up and down her thighs and calves, pressing circles into her flesh. As he got closer to her slick folds, Julie could feel how wet she was, how desperate she was to have him touch her there.

Finally when she thought she might go crazy if he kept her waiting much longer, Dean placed his palm against her lower back and encouraged her to bend further, his other hand hooking around the front of her, positioning her so that her ass was more pushed out, closer to him.

Gently pushing her legs further apart by nudging in one broad shoulder, Dean pressed his forefinger to her clit from the front while simultaneously licking a strip up through her folds.

Julie's skin was still tender and sensitive from his attentions the night before, but Dean's tongue was soothing, his finger gentle and undemanding as he pressed small, delicate circles onto the little bundle of nerves.

Julie's climax built so slowly and gently that it surprised her when it crested, pulling a shocked cry from her lips as it crashed over her. Dean kept his warm tongue moving skillfully against her, helping her through the high. When it was over, her muscles were liquid again, and all Julie wanted was to sleep.

Dean made quick work of washing her, spreading the soap on the white wash cloth before running it over her skin, and then quickly lathering up her hair and rinsing it out. His blunt fingernails scraped gently across her scalp and Julie sighed deeply, completely soothed.

By the time Dean shut off the water and wrapped a towel around her, Julie felt like she might actually fall asleep standing up. He squeezed the excess water out of her hair and then wrapped a towel around his waist before scooping her up into his arms once again.

The idle thought entered her mind that she should probably be embarrassed about letting Dean care for her as though she was ill, but she just couldn't manage it. There was no room for embarrassment when her heart was so full of love and peace and comfort.

Dean carried her back to the bed and set her down, pulling her towel off and then quickly covering her up with the thick blanket as goosebumps raced across her skin from the cold air. He shed his own towel and then climbed in beside her. He pulled her up against him and Julie felt her chilled limbs melt against his warmth.

Trying to keep her eyes open, Julie attempted to argue against her sleepy brain.

"S'morning." she slurred. "We should be waking up, not going back asleep."

"Says who?" Dean asked, as he kissed her forehead. "Sleep, Sweetheart. The day will still be here when you wake up."

Julie nodded, already mostly asleep. Then suddenly she lifted her head off his chest slightly.

"Don't leave, Dean. Okay? Even to get coffee." She nuzzled back into him. "You scared me." She said, too sleepy now to say anything but the truth.

Dean gripped her tighter in his arms. "I'll be here when you wake up." Julie fell asleep with that promise in her ears, so she missed his next words.

"And then, we'll talk."

Chapter 9

[bestiesenpai]

firsts with Nanami Kento

I would love to share my firsts with Nanami Kento, my soon to be husband who I hope is free this Saturday, that’s correct this coming Saturday a day that I am free and that he hopefully is also free this Saturday-

First meeting

Nanami Kento, ex jujutsu sorcerer turned ex salaryman turned jujutsu sorcerer once again

Even though he hated working, he still had to do it to survive

When he was a salaryman, Nanami allowed himself a few pleasures in life, one being going to a bakery

But now that he’s back to being a sorcerer, he doesn’t really have the time for that like he used to

Sometimes though, he finds the time to squeeze into a bakery, this time one that’s unknown and unfamiliar to him, but apparently Gojo knows all about it

“Hi Satoru!” A friendly voice calls out as the lanky man steps into the warm building. Kento follows suit, a tick in his forehead already appearing at the knowledge that someone is so familiar with Satoru that they’d call him by his first name. Whoever they were, they could only be as annoying as he is.

“Hi (Y/N)!” Satoru says just as happily, singing your name a little bit as he walks to the counter. The bakery is small with a few tables dotted around, flowers in vases sitting in the windowsills and warm wooden walls.

“I see you brought a friend today.” Only when he’s acknowledged does Nanami look up at who’s speaking. You’re standing there with a kind smile and give him a wave when you make eye contact. “Hi.”

“Hello.” Nanami manages to say smoothly, but the attention you’re giving him makes his chest tighten. You haven’t even done anything special yet he can feel himself getting a little warmer under his collar.

“I’m (Y/N), it’s nice to meet you! Are you a friend of Satoru?”

“No-”

“Yes!” Satoru quickly interrupts, wrapping an arm around Kentos shoulders. “We went to school together.” Giving his shoulder a squeeze, Satoru leans closer to Kento. “Introduce yourself.”

Pushing Satoru off, Kento clears his throat and subtly rolls his eyes. Finding himself unable to make full on eye contact with you, Kento settles for looking at your forehead.

“Nanami Kento. It’s nice to meet you.” He can see you working the name out in your head, and a small smile graces your cheeks.

“Nanami, do you like sweets like Satoru?”

“No.” He replies immediately, eyes drifting down to Satoru who is currently leaning over the display case staring at the confections. “Gojo eats enough for the both of us.”

“That’s true!” The man echoes, throwing a thumbs up in the air.

“Good to know.” You giggle, and it’s the sweetest sound Kento’s ever heard. “We make savory food as well, in the other case.” Sweeping your arm to the side, there is indeed another case full of non-sweet treats. “Take your time in picking one out!”

First hangout

He and Gojo didn’t stay long that first day, just a quick stop on their way back to the school

Nanami finds himself looking forward to going to that part of town again though, because he’d like to see you- oop, scratch that not you! The treats! The treats were very good! Totally not you, psshhh where’d you get that idea?

A month goes by before he sees you again, not because he hasn’t been going to the bakery - he has - it’s just you never seem to be there! He goes during normal business hours, but he can’t ever catch you

After a late solo mission, with the sun just beginning to set in the sky and most rush hour traffic having left, Nanami goes to the bakery one more time

And surprisingly, he finds you there

How long had you been sleeping on the counter? You were fully perched on your stool, back bent as your head rested snugly in your arms on the counter. It had probably been a long day of serving customers if you were this tired that you didn’t hear the heavy door open and close, or the chime going off alerting you of a new person.

Kento stood at the counter just watching you for a while. He knew that if someone else walked in, it might be a little creepy for them to see him like this, but if that happened he would deal with it. For now, he was content just looking at you.

Your features were soft and relaxed as you dozed, the apron you usually wore folded up next to you. The creases in your eyes were gone, your mouth relaxed, and the sound of your slow and even breathing filled the quiet room.

Once again Kento wondered, how long had you been asleep? The cases that were usually stocked full were nearly bare, only a few stray pieces of cake or a croissant waiting to be purchased. He almost left the bakery, wanting you to catch up on sleep since you seemed to need it. But instead, he gently shook your shoulder. As much as he wanted to let you rest, he also wanted to talk to you.

“Hm?” With a big yawn and a stretch, you slowly rise to look at Kento with eyes still heavy from sleep. Your eyelids droop closed more than once before you take another deep breath and rest your hands on the counter, back still bowed. “Na-Nanami?” Your eyebrows scrunch up from trying to remember where you were and who was in front of you right now.

“Hello.” His hand remains on your shoulder even though he has to bend forward slightly now. His face is neutral and his eyes are searching you.

“It’s nice to see you again.” Another yawn, and you rub your face drowsily. Kento lets out a little grunt, he thinks it’s cute the way you rub your eyes and sit up further, trying to wake yourself up again. “How long have I been sleeping?” Stretching your neck, you look at the clock behind you and out the window.

“Not too long.” Kento looks outside as well, and notices it’s begun to rain. Your chuckle brings him back to you, and his heart stutters a little at the mischievous look on your face. “What?”

“I heard from Satoru that you’ve been looking for me. Coming to the bakery a lot to come see me.” Kento makes a noise in the back of his throat and his cheeks begin to go pink. “Did you miss me, Nanami?”

“I-” It’s no use, his cheeks are still getting darker. “No comment.” You burst into full laughter and Kento hangs his head, regretting the past month so much he could turn and leave the cafe.

“Well no need to worry, I’m here now!” Throwing your arms open, you hop off the stool and lean against the case housing the savory goods. “Now, what can I get for you?”

“Where were you?” He says instead. If he’s been caught red handed, he might as well keep digging his grave.

“My sister had a baby! I saved up all my vacation days so I could be with them!” You smiled brightly. Digging your phone out of your pocket, you showed him a picture of you holding a baby in your arms.

“Cute.” He wasn’t sure what was cuter, you with the baby, the baby by itself or just you. As he looked more at it, Kento found himself imagining what it would be like for you to be carrying his baby. Would you even want to start a family? Or perhaps-

“Nanami, are you okay?” Your question broke him out of his little fantasy.

“Huh?”

“Your face got all red, is it too hot in here? I can turn a fan on if you want.”

“N-no.” Clearing his throat, Nanami shook his head. “No. I’m fine.” Finally turning his attention to the case, he looked at what was left. “I’ll have that one.” Pointing to the first thing he saw, he’s surprised you know exactly what he meant.

“Do you want to take it to go? It’d be best for you to get home quickly since it’s raining!” The night sky had fully blanketed the world outside, a nice curtain of rain along with it. Kento didn’t need to think over his decision. He’d be going home in the rain either way, what was the use in just going back to an empty apartment?

“I’ll eat it here. No sense rushing out into the rain to just be alone at home.” With a shrug, his suit jacket came off, and he could see the way you looked at his arms as he pushed his sleeves up. “Besides, someone has to make sure you don’t fall asleep again.”

A little peep left your lips and your face burned with embarrassment. Kento grinned, chuckling to himself and tossing his jacket on a chair near him.

“I’ll have a coffee too, just a small black.”

“No way!” You puff out your cheeks in indignation. “Coffee will keep you up all night! I’ll make you some tea.” Kentos mouth falls open, a little surprised you stood up to him like that. You pay him no mind, turning your back to begin brewing his tea. Closing his mouth, Kento takes a seat in the chair with his jacket.

“Alright, I’ll have tea then.”

First confession

Nanami ended up staying the whole night with you in the bakery, until you had to close

You left the counter and sat with him at the table with your own cup of tea and a seemingly never ending slew of topics to talk about

You were like Gojo, but much more tolerable. A person Nanami could respect, and much cuter than Gojo as well

Somehow, the night had ended with him getting your number, and although he made no promises about being a good correspondent, you still insisted

Any friend of Gojos was a friend of you, apparently

Sometimes you messaged him things about the bakery and he did his best to respond in a timely manner

Others he took the initiative and would message you to ask about your day in the evening or if you were working during the day so he could come see you

And on the lucky chance you were working early in the morning and he had nothing to do, he went to see you

“Hi.” You nearly sang the word when you saw him. He was the first customer of the day, a great way to start an early morning shift.

“How are you?” Kento asks, a soft smile also on his face. Walking right up to the counter, he sees the way you lean against it to be closer to him.

“I’m good! Excited too, we got this new seasonal item.” Your eyes are practically sparkling and with a grin Nanami hums and nods for you to continue. “I know you don’t like sweets, but I really want you to try-”

“(Y/N)!” A crass shout interrupts you and the slamming of the bakery door against the wall makes you jump. Immediately, both you and Kento are looking at the intrusion; Kento in annoyance and you in slight fear.

There are three men waltzing up to the counter, all of them with scary expressions on and clothes that reek of nicotine. The one that had yelled at you was a man with a scar on his lip and a shaved head, tattoos peeking up from his shirt collar. The other two behind him look just as scary, if not more.

“W-what- what do you want?” Kento doesn’t miss the way you’ve started to shake and he takes a subtle step closer to the counter.

“I just wanna know why you’re not returning my calls, that’s it!” This man shouts even though he’s close enough that the sheer volume of his voice makes you flinch. Balling your apron up in your fists, you try not to cower away as he gets right up against the counter.

“I t-told you I-I don’t like you!” You try to raise your voice as well but it doesn’t work. Everyone can see that you’re scared, the trembling of your voice is just more proof.

“Yeah? Well I like you.” The man goes to slap his hand against the counter, but Kento catches his wrist before he can. “Hey, who the fuck are you?”

“A customer that doesn’t like the disturbance you’re causing.” Kento lets the man's wrist go when he pulls on it. Sizing the man up, Kento knows he can take all three of them without an issue, it would be as easy as getting up in the morning. Taking a look at you however, he wanted to avoid causing you anymore distress.

“Like I give a fuck, salaryman.” Flipping him off, the man turns back to you. “Now you li-” Kento punches the man in the face before he can keep talking, sending him flying into the other two.

“I don’t appreciate you talking to (Y/N) like that.” Raising his fists, Kento easily takes down the other two men that charge at him, and he doesn’t break a sweat doing it. The fight - if it could even be called one - lasts all of two minutes.

Making sure the men on the ground won’t move, Kento looks at you. There’s slight tears in your eyes and some on your cheeks and you’re still shaking, but you don’t look as scared as you did. Grabbing the man that had harassed you, Kento forced him to his feet.

“Apologize.”

“As if I’d-” The man starts, but Kento has no patience anymore and swiftly punches him in the liver.

“Try again.”

“I-I’m sorry, (Y/N)!” Choking the words out, the man looks at you with blood in his eyes. “If this psycho is gonna hang around you now, I don’t want any part of you!”

“Good answer.” Dropping him to the floor, Kento kicks him towards the door. “Now get out of here.” He doesn’t have to say it twice for the men to leave. As the door slams closed, Kento hears you break into sobs.

“N-Nanami!” You whine and sob out his name, drawing the last syllable out. Looking at you, Kento coos under his breath seeing your balled up fists near your eyes.

“It’s okay.” He says, watching you walk around the counter and stand in front of him.

“Th-ank yo-you!” The thanks you’re trying to give him barely sounds like real words and in any other situation he’d be embarrassed for you.

“It’s okay.” He says again with a soft sigh, pulling you closer until your head is resting on him. Rubbing a soothing hand on your back, Kento lets you soak his jacket and his shirt with your tears for as long as you need. And by the time you pull away from him, he’s full on hugging you, and you’re hugging him back.

“Sorry.” Your eyes go down to his stained shirt.

“Don’t mind it.” Shaking his head, Kento slowly lets you go. “Who was that, anyway?”

“Just some guy who asked for my number like a week ago.” Wiping away the last of your tears, you look out the window in slight disgust. “I had no idea he would get so...aggressive when I turned him down. It’s not my fault I don’t want to date a criminal.”

“Has he been calling you a lot? He said you weren’t answering.”

“Yeah, I blocked him but he kept calling from different numbers.” Your breathing is back to normal now, the tears that made your lashes cling together were finally drying.

“Give me his number. If he causes you trouble again, I’ll handle it.” Kento holds out his hand, not giving you very much of a choice in the matter. But after seeing how easily he took them down the first time, you weren’t about to withhold it from him.

Ten minutes later, after making sure you’re completely fine and calm, Kento makes an order. He takes two of the seasonal items you’d mentioned, not that he’ll eat both, but he wants to make you feel better.

“I’ll be back to walk you home.” Kento says as he’s leaving, ignoring your shouts that he doesn’t have to. He’d rather not risk those guys following you or doing anything shady.

True to his word he comes back when you’re done for the day, waiting outside for you. When you come, he makes sure you’re standing close to him along the way. It’s silent at first, just the sounds of other people walking by and some traffic one street over filling the air.

“Thank you again, Nanami.” You say as you stop at an intersection. You’d messaged him thanks throughout the day, but it still didn’t feel enough. “To be honest, I wasn’t expecting you to do that sort of thing!” Neither was he. It just happened, a snap decision he made to protect you. He liked you, and seeing you shake like that was something he never wanted to see again.

“I’d do it again.” Is what Kento says, looking up as the sun burns orange-yellow streaks across the sky. “I really like you, and I don’t want that sort of thing to ever happen again.” He lets out a sigh, looking at you from the corner of his eye. People are walking around you, but neither of you make a move to cross the street. “If it’s not too much to ask, don’t talk to any other guys, okay?”

Your eyes widen at his question, lips quivering to fight back a pleased smile. You open your mouth once, twice, before closing it and biting your lip, a shy giggle coming out.

“Okay.” You say with a nod.

“Good.” Lowering his head, Kento softly grabs your hand in his. “Let’s get you home now.”

First date

Even though he’d confessed, the two of you had yet to go on a proper date

Nanami was sweeter to you now, holding your hand on your walks home when he came to get you and he’d hug you if you asked(one day he’d take initiative and hug you first lol)

He wants to ask you on a proper date, but he’s worried that you’ll find him boring

The opportunity arises, however, when Gojo texts you from his phone and sets up a date for the two of you in a park, a picnic date on a day he knows Nanami has off

“K-Kento!” You wave at him as you both approach the park from different ways. You’d only just started saying his first name and it made you feel shy every time you did. “You’re dressed so casually!” Gone was his normal suit and tie, Nanami had on a looser button up and some sensible jeans.

“You look nice too.” Kento smiled, he had seen pictures of you not in your uniform, and sometimes you changed out of it after work, but this was the first time you were dressed with the intention to be cute. He could smell the perfume you were wearing as well, wafting pleasantly through the air and surrounding him when he sits down on the blanket you laid out.

“You know, I was surprised you asked me out on a date.” You say shyly as you both settle down.

“I didn’t.” His answer has you confused and you halt your actions. “Gojo did it for me. I was going to do it myself but...I thought you’d think I’m boring.”

“Never!” Your hand lands on top of his and you shake your head. “You’re not boring at all!”

“Hm, okay then.” Nodding at you, he motions towards the basket you’d brought.

“I made treats at home, look!” Excitedly, you take out the food you’d prepared. It’s all wrapped up cutely in butcher paper, and there’s some smiley face stickers keeping the paper together.

“It looks great.” Stretching out his legs, Kento leans his upper body close to you, nearly resting his head on your shoulder. “You did a great job.” He can smell you even better, the heat of your skin is just barely reaching him.

“You haven’t even tried it yet.” With a bashful little laugh, you unwrap a sandwich you’d made and give it to him.

“I can just tell.” Taking it from you, Kento lets himself rest on your shoulder.

First kiss

Sometime during the picnic, after eating, Nanami finds himself a little tired

It’s so relaxing being out with you, and the afternoon sun is just the right temperature for him to slowly slide from your shoulder onto your lap and doze off

Your hand cards through his hair, gently massaging his head and pushing him deeper into slumber

With his body laid out, Nanami doesn’t even realize he’s asleep until a sharp scream from a playing child rouses him, but he keeps his eyes closed in hopes he’ll go back to sleep

There’s a soft pressure on his forehead, you’re bending down over him and the light filtering in through the tree above you is blocked out for a moment before you’re sitting up again. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out you kissed his forehead.

Cracking an eye open, Kento grins at you when you make a surprised noise in the back of your throat and look away from him.

“I-I didn’t know you were awake.” You mutter, embarrassed at being caught. You wouldn’t have kissed him if you’d known; you were too embarrassed to ask for a kiss, and you weren’t sure if Kento even had an interest in taking your relationship there.

He doesn’t answer, instead taking a deep breath through his nose and sitting up slightly. With a light hand, Kento turns you to face him. He doesn’t get up all the way, but as soon as your face is close enough he pushes up a bit more and kisses you properly on the lips, feeling the smooth glide of your lip balm.

When the kiss breaks, neither of you open your eyes for a while. Kento just keeps his face close, brushing his nose against yours a few times before giving you another peck and then laying down again.

“You don’t have to be shy (Y/N), I want you to kiss me.” He’s keeping his eyes closed now, not because of the sun but because his cheeks are blushing and he knows you can see. His arms that were previously at his sides come to cross his chest, and he pushes his head further into your lap. “We’re dating now, so just do what you want.”

A soft gasp is heard above him and Kento grins when you giggle and brush his hair again.

“Okay.” Leaning down, you give him a firmer kiss on the forehead, and one of your hands grabs his.

“Okay.” He echoes, pulling your hand to his lips and kissing the back of it. You squeeze it tightly and giggle again, overwhelmed by the feeling of happiness. Letting out a yawn, Kentos small grin gets even bigger when you cup his cheek and he opens his eyes to look at you. Suddenly, he’s not so tired anymore.

[popculturebuffet]

Amphibia and Owl House Weekly Reviews: Escape to Amphibia and Follies at the Coven Day Parade

Hello all you happy people! I’m Jake I review animation and comics, and today I resume my regular coverage of both amphibia and owl house... at the same time. 

Yup for these titanic shows final seasons, unless disney gives Owl House a fourth season to either make up for past mistakes or to hastily try and make up for them by shoving a distraction in our faces, whatever works, i’m going to be covering them together and given the recent crossover and abudance of refrences hinting a shared universe between these two shows as well as their spirtual poppa gravity falls, it feels right. This does mean while i’ll stilll be giving these eps as much character and plot analysis as humanly possible, I may not do a blow by blow as it’s still an hour of content I have to cover a week, with the finale likely being an hour or 90 minutes itself. I’m still giving the episoides my full attention regardless. 

But before we get this final stretch of normal episodes before a big sized finale for one and three big series ending specials for another, we have some house cleaning to attend to as happens when shows go off the air for several months. Feel free to skip over it and just read the reviews under the cut , otherwiseeee..

1) Don’t Say Gay

Whelp... as usual Disney...

Now if you want some of my first throughts on that, I did a special that covers the topic along with the episodes Fire and Ice from Craig of the Creek and Father Figures From The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder  

But stuff has happened since so if you weren’t aware (which given how gloriously queer my audience seems to be is unlikely), here’s the quick version: Floridia’s state legislation passed a bill that was in short 

Once again holding up that kids aren’t ready to be taught about gay people and shoudln’t know about gay things despite gay parents, teachers and you know CHILDREN existing. 

Naturally people hoped Disney would get involved and they had.. just not in a postive way. As I found out after the say gay all you want special thanks to last week tonight, Disney had not only been backing the senators who got the bill through, made it and fought for it, as I knew when i made the article, but have been doing so for over two years. I’m not suprised, Florida is a conservative state and Disney will play ball with whoever keeps their taxes lowest.. but I am disapointed.

Naturally CEO Bob Chapek.. made things even worse by saying that “we’d change things through our content and we have to remain neutral”, like they were switzerland and not a major fucking country. Esepcailly since as I pointed out in the don’t say gay specail, they have a bad habit of canceling or downplaying queer content to appease bigoted assholes and their wallets... or as my boy alex hirsch put it best

How this affects Owl House should be obvious: Owl House is a heavily queer series with a bisexual protaganist whose love intrest is a lesbian, while also featuring major aromatic and non-binary characters. Disney claimed it wasn’t on brand... which was a thinly veild way of saying not gay enough, as well as part of disney’s long held issues accpeting that shows aimed at kids have multiple demographic appeal much like the MCU and Star Wars. 

Dana Terrance was also utterly rattled, doing a stream with some new original content (which I didn’t get around to listneing to because cold, but will try to by next week), and other nice stuff to combat what her company was doing, looking utterly destroyed by being betrayed by disney for a SECOND time. in a row. jesus christ. 

Thankfully the backlash against Chapek being stupid has worked for once: Chapek walked back his statement, disney is reassesing donor contributions and the company reinstated a gay kiss they pulled from lightyear. The latter is the bare minmum an dwould’ve been a better statement you know, never having removed it to start, so I have my doubts this will stick.. but hopefully this will force disney to put people over profits and it’s very clear the LBGTQ+ community, myself included, are not going to ease up on them anytime soon.

This could mean season 4 or it could mean dana throwing a possible offer in their face for good reason. I dunno. 

2) Merchandising!

Now onto lighter news shortly before their premires BOTH shows got a big announcment: their getting books! For Amphibia we’re getting Marcy’s Journal, which will give me a holy trinity of journals from disney animated properties made real (there is apparently one from ducktales I haven’t gotten so techincally quadrilogy but still). I will be getting this thing as soon as I can... which could be a while but I intend on grabbings it. 

Owl House meanwhile is getting a Light Novel, aka a smaller novel with pictures commonly based around anime, and Dana has confirmed it will be original content not based on any episodes. So while Season 3 is still just three big movies, we may see some things we didn’t get around to in book form. 

So with that we’ve taken care of business, every day, let’s get to the good, the bad and the gravy of this weeks episodes. This is Owl House and Amphibia, together for the last time, full spoilers and analysis under the cut.  Let’s do this!

Escape to Amphibia

Something I noticed about Amphibia after this episode, in part thanks to binging a ton of TotallyNotMark and falling in love with shonen manga all over again, is that when you step back the story is neatly broken down in to 6 parts, sagas, arcs, however you want to put it. We have the first season-long Wartwood arc where Anne slowly grows as a person and we get used to the world, the road trip to get to newtopia, newtopia where we get to know marcy a bit and get to see another side of the world, the temple arc where our heroes return home while also trying to do the same for anne, and with this episode we bring an end to the earth arc, as Anne leaves earth and returns home for the Final Arc, bringing everything together hopefully in a big climax. 

And that’s... why this ep felt off for me. See when the other arcs as they were ended we felt it and there was a bit dramatic moment to make this feel ike the end of one story as it lead us to the next part of the overall epic: Sasha and Grime disappearing with Sasha’s fate and feelings unknown as Anne somberly but hopefully looked to the future with her found family, the Plantars and Anne crying their eyes out as she decides to spend some time with them while Andrias manipulates marcy into his masterplan, and of course andrias winning, stabbing marcy and leaving sasha and grime to unknown fates as our heroes end up stranded on earth. Even season 1a, while not necessarily the end of the wartwood arc, had a big milestone in anne earning most of the town’s love by protecting them while we learned just who sasha was. 

And most of those endings came either at the halfway point or end of a season, a marker to show how far we’d come. And at the time Froggy LIttle Christmas felt like that: terri was building the portal, the it gals and polly were working on frobo, we had setup for the goverment learning more about the plantars via the parade, andrias having his army ready, and anne finally contacting her gf’s parents. All seeds that would surely lead to several more episodes on earth right?

Yeahhhh instead of some more build up before anne goes back... she just goes back after the break, that part of the story ends, and we’re in the final stretch.  And as you can probably wager, I have some mixed emotoins. ON the one hand I do get that matt likely needs the last batch to truly deliver on the end of things, and thus had to rush the earth portion’s ending so he could get to the final battle with andrais. This is what the series has been building to, this is what we’ve been leading to, this is where our energy needs to be. 

On the other.. it feels like they rushed everything BUT anne’s relationship with her parents. Her feeling bad about possibly leaving them again here does work: this time she knows she’s leaving and may not come back and it’s hitting harder, especailly now their closer thanks to her growth as a person. Their gentle acceptance of this and their encouragment when mr. x downtalks her, now having accepted she’s grown into so much more than they coudl’ve imagined, is so fucking beauitful and well thought out. 

That being said it feels weird after mr and mrs b were pumped up so much as characters that they get left behind. It’s for good plot reason, someone needs to tell mr.x what’s really going on and I do feel that’ll play into the climax... but it feels weird leaving these new main characters behind when there’s so much potetial in bringing them to Amphibia. My best guess is Braly might of conisdered it but it cluttered things a bit too much. We’lll see as we go I guess.

The rest of the payoffs though feel luke warm: while Mr. X was an x-cellent nemisis, sending him off after only three episodes not only feels weak, but it felt like they had to make some contrivances for this plot to even work. In his previous apperances he found the plantars thanks to easily found evidence and hard work and at first this ep works on that: for starters his superiors gladly up his budget once he has hard proof and don’t doubt him on a few botched missions: they know he’s hunting people who don’t want to be found and thus they simply outfoxed them. It happens in intellgence. So X and Jenny simply get more toys, some thermal scanners, and catch the frogs when they go to get suplies for terri. That works. 

The problem is he then starts acting stupid. He lets. Anne. Go.

And his reasoning is flawed: “She’s jus ta kid her parents helped her”. He’s directly chased Anne. Nearly beaten her yes, but he knows she’s slippery. And more to the point if that’s the case HE LET HER PARENTS GO. And he sets up a trap at his fbi base expecting her to come to him so why didn’t he just you know CAPTURE HER THEN AND THERE. I expect this from a french moth man ranting in a dome, not from ru fricking paul. And the funniest part is while this is an incredibly weak exit for the character, ranting at a character he shoudln’t be underesitmating when up till now , even if he’d misunderstood the plantars, he’d never overtipped his hand or been a cocky ass. egotistcal yes, but only becaue he deserved it.... I still like the character. I’ve seen blatant and half assed character assasination before

And this ain’t it. It’s just a writing mistep. Trying to add a character flaw that wasn’t quite there. Even if he was assuming Anne was a normal kid like say elliot... he’s had to seen enough 80s movies to know that these kids aren’t incomptent. Matthew Brodrick, teen or not caused and fixed world war three. That alone should tell him maybe don’t underestimate the plucky kid who has been ducking you or blame it all on her parents. 

The other bits likewise feel like they just weren’t paid off right: Frobo is an rc car now.. but got no real build up to being rebuilt and the it gals, while vital to the last two episodes, played no part in him coming back. Wallace Shawn and Molly Jo come back, but don’t reallly do much. It feels like the ep was TRYING to create a sense of finality to the earth stuff.. but hadn’t spent any time actually building it up to earn it. 

And of course most glaringly we, so far, don’t get ANY payoff for th waybrights and wus. We learn nothing about them, they never showed up, the boonchuy’s never bothered contacting them. Easily the most potetial out of the earth stuff utterly wasted and i’ll likely be pissed about that for some time. We could’ve gottne into what they did to look for their daughters, where they are now, why sasha’s parents are divorced, just what their relationships with annes parents were. Instead we got...

So was there anything I actually liked about the episode? Yes. Yes there was. Anne’s parents are a delight as always, and the look mr. b gave his wife while driving... so fucking cute. The fight in the spendco was also fun as hell, as was the accidental marcy refrence. And there were plenty of other good runners from Terry just going with the massive amount of snacks she needed being mistaken for portal ingrdeints, hop pops justified avacado obession, and Molly Jo.. not being a tall suprised frog man is a frog. It wasn’t the worst i’ve seen.. it was just disapointing especially since the season has been batting a thousand up to this point. The pacing was pitch perfect and everything was going fine so to sloppily rush this stuff this close to the finish line worries me a bit especailly since the last time I saw an arc try to sloppily wrap up a bunch of stuff towards the finish it.. it was star vs

So you can forgive me for being a bit gunshy after that fiasco. I still have hope the rest will be good as one mistep in a story does not ruin it.. many do an dthe final shot of the episode does bring hope that it was just that... our heroes returning to amphibia.. and finding it being scoured and stripmined by the forces of the empire. The sheer pain on their faces is beautifully animated as our heroes realize their home.. but their as outnumbered and lost as they were coming here. It’s powerful stuff not only showing how far andrias’ destruction has spread but now letting our heroes soak it in. It gives me as much hope for the final act as it gives them disapair for it. 

Overall: Not a great episode, by any stretch, but it had i’ts moments, including one I didn’t get to which deserves meinoing which is anne pulling a 

It’s not a TERRRIBLE episode but it is deeply disapointing and hopefully i’ts just a bumpin the road and not a sign of things to come. 

Follies at the Coven Day Parade:

In contrast while Amphibia had a bit of a rough rentry, Owl House made a hell of an entrance as it set a deadline for the finale, set up yet another intriguging and terrifying coven head, gave Luz, Amity and Eda all some great moments and FINALLY gave me some solid willow content, and we haven’t even gotten to her headlining episode coming up. 

For starters as i’m pretty sure i’m said before but in case I haven’t I just love this title: it’s goofy, it’s hilarious, and it fits the show well, while also nicely hiding just how much of a gutpunch this episode is. Well barely it came after the mid season finale and even before seeing said finale, it was obvoius just by placing it’d have some underlying issues to adress.

The show does so marvelously. For starters it dances a little sidestep over telling king and eda as she already did offscreen. I do wish we’d actually seen their reactoins and them dealing with it, but I get sometimes you have to compress for time. I’m more forgiving here than with escape to amphibia because it’s compressing one plot point realistically, of course King and Eda would both talk her out of a “you have to choose one or the other” mindset and back her up and of course eda would figure her out if she even tried, versus trying to cram several episodes worth of payoff into one episode and not really landing any of it. Here it’s just the shortcuts you sometimes need to take in storytelling to tell it in the time you have. 

So what I worried might be episodes of Luz trying to hide her angst becomes her dealing with it out front... mostly as she hasn’t told Gus, Willow or Amity yet. Though we do get some prime bits of the Co as Gus and Willow speculate on Bellos face (lovingly spoofing us the fans), and Amity calls Luz a sweet potato, because Gus, being Gus, canm’t tell a spanish to english cookbook from a spanlish to english dictonary. But hey still a cute nickname so it sticks and we see the two be cute together. It’s adorable.

Things soon get less adorable though as Amity finds Luz’s phone, wonders what the video she’s working on (”A it’s not so bad here once you ignore the suplpher” tour that included a hooty skeleton so it’s not working so well), and we have Amity’s b-plot as she ends up with Luz’s phone: invade her girlfriends privacy to try and help her or respect it and leave it entirely. So while Luz is dealing with stuff we’ll get to in a moment, amity visits her only other friend. Willow. Well I mean I guess Gus too but their more friends by proximity. Amity is friends with all his friends, Gus is friends with all hers, they kinda HAVE to hang out together but it’s not the sorta person you go to when you need deep romantic advice. 

It’s also intresting not just because we see willow with her hair up, my baby child, but because it’s the first time they really HAVE hung out since reconclinig and it’s still awkward as hell. But it’s nice to see this fracturced friendship get focus: it was a major part of both characters arc last season and i’ts nice to see it has repaired somewhat: all willow asks for her help is to braid her hair like they used to, which is sweet. It’s a small moment but a powerful one and judging by the outcome, Amity returning just in time to help luz in the climax and having not watched it, Willow gave good advice. And judging by Willows new hair amity gives good braids. EVERYONE WINS. But it leaves a question of if these two are fully good and if they can ever get back what Amity’s parents took from them. It’s this level of writing why I love the show: that the characters have become so developed that just watching one braid the other’s hair is rife with past character stuff, tension and joy. Though I also have to admit after spending two nights out of every week the last few weeks binging miraculous ladybug, i’m up to season 4 full review in april ya’ll, it’s also just refreshing to have plots that don’t rely on the characters being braindead about obvious clues, breaking into their love intrest house multiple times, suddenly undoing their character development or making out with a manequin but OOPSY IT’S YOUR LOVE INTREST AND HE STILL DOSEN’T GET YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON HIM. And yes that last thing actually happened. You can see now why competient writing has me so happy after that. 

As for Luz she and Eda get an episode together that advances both Luz’s issues with her mom and the overarching “Day of Unity’ plot driving the season.. starting with what fans have been waiting for since Eda’s Requieum, me included: King and Luz finding out about Raine. Well King already found out because he read Eda’s diary which leads to the expected reaction

.... fine it dosen’t lead to that but it shoudl’ve. But it does lead to King spilling the tea, finding out he didn’t read the horrifying endinG, rahine’s capture and disappearnce over the past month after the fight with the coven heads, and Luz having a happy shippy coma I get into every time we get more lumity content. 

So Luz naturally agrees to help Eda, who was having her poltergeist pi, god that’d be a godo spinoff, just get david haselhoff to voice him and nights will never be the same, track him (”Eda’s stalking her ex” as king put it). Turns out Rahine is back in the public eye with this week’s celebration of coven day aka EVERYONE LOOK AT HOW GREAT I, EMPREROR BELOS AM AND DON’T QUESTION MY OMNIOUS PLOT DAY. And having overheard Kikimora being given an ultimatium, either visit her family and leave her job or keep her job and her life but be cut out of the family by not visiting palm stings, decides to include her and get her to palm stings. Maybe not the best idea, she might find that ole timeloop cave. She has enough problems without going insane groundhog day style. 

I didn’t expect this but I did thoughtly enjoy it: it took someone whose tried to murder a teenager multiple times out of envy and made her heartbreakingly sympathetic. Does it make the attempted teenager murders okay? 

But it gives them context: She’s been giving EVERYTHING to a job where she gets no respect, her coworkers literally walk over her, and her family dosen’t appricate how hard she’s worked for it. No wonder she resents hunter: to her he’s some brat whose gotten everything she ever wanted just by being born.  Belos has never once planned to kill him... granted that’s because he plans to human sacrifice him instead, but still, being in constant danger of loosing EVERYTHING for one mistake while your boss reguarly forgives some punk kid you hate.... it’s a lot. Again cool motive still murder, but just because a character’s sympathetic dosen’t mean you have to like them or their actoins. It just means you understand them better. 

It also leads to Luz coming up with a crazy plan to make her, eda and kiki very happy: She’s going to straight up kidnap raine and kiki from the parade. The plan isn’t.. AS bad as it sounds: she makes them disappear in a way that isn’t suspscious so Eda gets her person back and Kiki can go on vacation. 

Unfortunately for her, Bellos is already on top of it and already saw this sort of plan coming from a mile away. Given there was a mysterious I love belos float in the parade, to be piloted by king’s ablitity to annoy and hooty’s god complex, it wasn’t that hard to figure out but he was still not only 9 moves ahead with raine, so he never had to worry there, but is able to easily pivot to prevent their turning of kiki with the simple addition of one operative to the float: Terra Snapdragon, head of the plant coven and easily the most terrifying of the four coven heads so far. And given what Darius and Abberwolf were capable of think about that. But in the span of one episode she manages to show herself not only to be stronger but far more terrifying and far less quirky. Terra is expertly played by Debra Wilson who i don’t recognize from anything in paticular but has played amanda waller a few times so yeah, that tracks. 

Terra reveals just how Bellos planned on using Rahne against his will: brainwashing. Yeah if gaslighting his own son-figure wasn’t enough, Bellos isn’t above outright rewriting rahne’s memoreis so they and eda never reconnected and more dammingly Rahne was never unloyal to the bard’s coven. It’s barely holding granted, but it’s enough that when the plan goes off, we get one of the most heartbreaking fights i’ve seen in animation: Rahne Vs Eda. Eda refusing to back down, clearly getting what’s going on and Rahne equally refusing to realize they’ve been used and had their life rewrittten, given bitterness towards Eda that was never there before. While it’s awesome to see the two fight evenly, with Eda not even using harpy mode and only using her glyps defenstively, i’ts heartbreaking: eda KNOWS he’s being braniwashed but is forced to flee and Rahne tells her to go and never return. Resucing them isn’t an option and both are broken up about it. 

Somehow even more heartbreaking is what happens with Kiki. All Terra has to do is dangle a promotion over her head and despite everything luz has done to try and help her and Amity pitching in just to help luz.... she turns on both and tried to kill them. Luz did the right thing, if for selfish reasons , if to prove something to herself, she still tried to help a struggling person make the right choice.. and learned the same hard lesson amity did with hunter: you can only help someone whose ready to be helped. Kiki is too entrenched in her need to be seen and her job to give up on it, too beliving in belos to turn her back on him despite Belos not giving a damn if she lives or dies and gladly letting Terra undermine her. Terra stops the fight which thankfully saves luz.. but also leaves us with two chillling revelations: Luz is ONLY alive because Belos needs her (and amity because dead children is bad pr), and that the promotion.. is getting to live. Kikii would’ve died had she tried to leave, meaning in the end, this was all for nothing. 

Our heroes end the defeated, though at least getting some moral victories. Amity is confident enough in her relationship to do the hard work.. and tell luz she knows she lied, though still does the right thing and didn’t look at the video. In turn Luz realizes she can’t hide this and is honest with her girlfriend even if the truth, that they may have to seperate , hurts a HELL of a lot. 

So we get our final scene which is utterly painful and awesome: our heroes lost, the villians stand on a float proud with only kiki doubtful, and the worst part? Belos gets yet ANOTHER victory , the one he’d been building to all day , with the public: he takes off his mask. What Eda thought was simply a move to distract from their shenanigans.. is instead an earnest attempt to show the people how much he cares. As evil as he is Belos was fearfeul his people would see his cursed face (though in another nice possible fandom nod , just like us Gus and willow are barely phased), but feels warmed enough by their support to show it.. and gets nothing but thunderous applause showing that despite pockets of people against the coven.. the public at large love and support their dictator and whatever he has planned for the “day of unity”. So our heroes are not only facing the strongest witch on the isle, not only are they fighting 12 of the most powerful and deadly witches in existance with only four children, a harpy and a king, and MAYBE another harpy and a powerful other witch, but they have to go against the public. It’s a powerful note of despair to begin this block on: our heroes are outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, out planned... and an all out stand may not be enough... but Luz is ready to face it one day at a time.. even if she clearly dosen’t know how.. and she only has one month to figure it out. 

Final Thoughts:

if it wasn’t obvious this episode was awesome. Tightly paced, greatly characterized and with an impactful ending that leaves us guessing as we approach the finale and the day of unity. Truly tremndous stuff that badly needs to continue from here. 

Next Week: The episode Jess has been waiting for as Luz and Lilith go hunting for some juicy PHILLIP LORE. Meanwhile in amphibia anne is bad at leading and we get some shipping. EVERYONE WINS. 

If you enjoyed this review, consider joining my patreon, link is right here and every bit helps and next goal is owl house. 

[biomic]

Not a PR fan but those excuses don't fly. There were other PR seasons with a big cast, so Kyu should be doable, esp since they could create the first canon gay Ranger couple with it. Or they go the boring route and make Silver a girl because there aren't enough on the team. Also they don't have to brand the LuPats as cops and robbers. Just make them secret agents (or members of the military) and the Lupins aristocrats or some other rich peeps. These people are working a creative job, so they should be able to make things work instead of finding excuses that only makes them look lazy in the eyes of the fans.

part of the creative process is being able to step back and know your limitations. that's why "kill your darlings" is such common writing advice. everyone WANTS kyuranger and lupat adaptions, but don't really think about what needs to be done to make them actually work. saying "well you're in a creative job, just figure it out" feels more like a copout than skipping the seasons does

i mean, i've explained why kyuranger wouldn't adapt well. kyu had a full, uninterrupted year and still had trouble giving everyone in the cast proper focus. now, i adore kyuranger, it's one of my favorites, and i think the stuff it excels at is more than enough to overcome its flaws, but translating that large of a cast over to power rangers? with just 40 episodes at your disposal, awkwardly stretched out over two years and forced into nickelodeon's cramped schedules and constant hiatuses? you'd have the same issues that kyuranger did but multiplied tenfold. could it be done? sure. would it be as good as everyone wants it to be? probably not. that's not a testament to the creators being lazy, it's just an extremely difficult task that most writers would struggle with. you only have to look at kamen rider saber's first arc to realize that cramming as many characters and toys into a small amount of episodes early on can fuck up the rhythm of an entire show (as much as i love that one, too)

and lupat... well first of all, you could maybe fudge the lupinrangers but the patrangers are very clearly, visibly police officers. they have police badges stamped on their foreheads and megaphone nightsticks as weapons. their mech has sirens on it. they're cops, and trying to pretend they're not just ends up creating too big a disconnect between page and screen

and really, at that point, is it even worth it? if you have to pretend the thief rangers aren't thieves and the cop rangers aren't cops, what is the appeal of adapting lupat in the first place? you're stripping it of what made it unique in the first place, so why do people still want it so badly when it's clear that hasbro and nickelodeon wouldn't let it fly anyway? is it just so we can say those suits exist in the PR universe? because, hey, everyone sure did want gokaiger to be adapted huh, and boy that turned out great didn't it? hold on this entire paragraph is questions

power ranger fans have a problem of entitlement and demanding that showrunners do this and that without actually thinking about the challenges of running a show like this and the hurdles the production has to jump through to make this shit work. we got gokaiger adapted just like everyone wanted, and they scrubbed clean everything that made that show special until it was completely and utterly soulless. we got go-busters adapted just like everyone wanted, and while beast morphers doesn't seem like a Bad™ show, i don't hear as much glowing praise for it as you would think for all the hype surrounding its source material finally being brought over. as long as power rangers is going to follow this outdated adaptation process (and hopefully we're almost done with that), the focus should be on making a quality show, not trying to fit square pegs in round holes trying to appease a fanbase who will just end up complaining about it anyway

and finally, i will reiterate,

simon bennett does not choose which season gets adapted. hasbro does.