#i hate how she's three characters in a trenchcoat

[beevean]

The more I think about S4 and how much of a rushjob the Styria plotline was, the more amazed I am at the utter failure that the ring is. When you really, really think in detail about how it works, it's so easy to see the gaps in logic in it.

What were the issues of using Hector to create an army for the Styrian council?

He would be able to create an army for himself that he could sic against the sisters. The ring allows them to assume control of the Night Creatures. We only see this as a short flash when Hector forges a creature, but he has to cut his own finger to force his army to stop attacking Isaac, so the ring solved this. One point!

Striga wants to strike the iron while it's hot and take advantage of the chaos in the region, and Lenore is taking too much time in "domesticating" him with good ol' fashioned gaslighting and manipulation. The ring brutally speeds things up: this could have been a nice plot point to show how prideful and eager to prove herself Lenore is, but in S4's quest to woobiefy her, it goes nowhere. Still, it can be seen as an answer to Striga's issue, so two points.

However, in the same scene, Striga also points out the paradox of relying on dead bodies to make an army when they need living humans to feed. This is straight up an issue with Hector himself, not the way he would be made to work. While we see mercenaries in the castle when Isaac assaults it, this problem never comes up again, and Hector is delivered as many bodies as he needs.

He doesn't want to be there. The ring binds him to the castle. However, considering Hector's plan apparently involved creating an escape channel that would connect his forge to Carmilla's quarters at the top, which he apparently planned to use to run away ("I had to assume I might be running from the top of the castle one day"), it seems that his own magic would have been strong enough to break the spell.

He doesn't want to work for people who hurt him. Lenore was actually doing a good job at convincing him to work for them with solid reasons, such as the fact that they shared the same plan and Lenore was willing to improve his life conditions and, by the time the idea of mercenaries comes up, she liked him enough that she was his only chance of being kept alive... then she raped him to put the ring on him, and as the beginning of S4 shows, Hector can stall for time as much as he wants. He still doesn't want to work, as we see later he's actually doing things behind everyone's backs, and nothing forces him to obey any orders. Lenore, his own mistress, has to plead to get him to move on!

That's two out of five, by the way, and one point only lead to bad consequences.

Lenore really did the exact same thing Carmilla was chastized for, breaking Hector's trust before securing his cooperation, and the story... is odd from now on. If you lay down the events, it seems that the ring's failure was an intentional plot beat: of course Hector would refuse to work for the woman who betrayed him. It looks like an honest mistake on Lenore's part, much like Carmilla beating him and then expecting him to do her bidding. But Hector actually doesn't display any anger like he did for Carmilla, and the two are on good terms... even though he planned to run away and bring back Dracula... even though he also waited for Isaac to kill him... even though he spares Lenore's life because she doesn't deserve to be hurt... even though he completely destroyed her life by causing Carmilla's death...? I honestly don't understand if it's a writing failure or not... which makes it inherently a writing failure lol. At least Carmilla got thoroughly called out for her idiocy.

The more I think about it, the more this mess seems to be caused by two ideas badly meshed together: it's possible that in the first draft, Hector was meant to betray Lenore and the others (remember the foreshadowing with the fireplace), which would explain his plotting behind the scenes, his little "thanks again for that", and the way he caused Styria's downfall... but then someone in the team decided to ship Hector and Lenore together, so the ring got completely nullified to remove as many reminders of her past cruelty as possible and he displays zero emotions other than vague fondness for her. With this in mind, it becomes effectively impossible to determine if the ring's ineffectualness was planned to facilitate Hector's revenge or was a result of rushed writing to facilitate Lenector.

A very, very simple solution to this entire mess would have been revealing that Lenore... never wanted Hector to work in the first place. She didn't like Carmilla's plan, but she wanted to save his life because she found him cute and wanted a sex slave pet, and she knew that the others were waiting for a good reason to get rid of him. So it was for her sake, and in her mind Hector's, but not for the council, who was planning to do something she didn't approve of and doesn't respect her anyway. That would have been nice, fit Lenore's established moral code (to be fair, she does look a little miffed at the idea of keeping humans in pens, and while she tells Hector that it's their plan, it's obvious she's only trying to manipulate him and has no feelings on the matter), and very selfish personality. Who cares about the livestock? She wants this new puppy! And she'll save it from mean Carmilla, because despite all the gaslighting and sexual coercion and trickery, she is a good person and likes feeling good! And if she can stick it to Striga who underestimated her, even better!

In short: no, the ring wasn't meant to work, only keep Hector docile!

I like this idea of Lenore having her own agenda and being with the council only out of mutual convenience: they don't like her but use her, and same goes for her. As long as they live nicely without causing issues, she cooperates, but Carmilla's plan is idiotic, so she snatches the pet for herself: from there, it's easier to have an arc where she grows to care for Hector as a person, without the pressure of the council who she doesn't care for in the first place, being fully aware of being nothing more than a tool to them (hint hint). And Hector can be as torn as he is supposed to be, but ultimately choosing to make Styria fall and only keep Lenore alive, but in a way that crushes her heart.

And since it's common to whitewash Lenore in S3 and assume she was a better person than what she actually was, no, I don't believe this was the intention:

Lenore wouldn't have pitched her deal to Carmilla, which was "he'll work for us in exchange for the castle". She wouldn't have even set up the expectations, because then no shit Carmilla would get "very cross". She could have kept it for herself and agreed with Striga's suggestion to hire mercenaries.

In fact, the very first perk of the ring she mentions is that now Hector's Night Creatures would obey the council as well, eliminating the danger of him using them to attack them. This is literally the only function of the ring that is shown in S4. Lenore expected Hector to work for them and was happy to reassure the sisters that he was no longer a threat.

In the dick jokes scene, Lenore sounds worried that she can't keep Carmilla at bay, but her solution is pleading pretty please for Hector to work, in a tone that implies that it's what she expects from him as well. The complete lack of apology for any morally questionable action she has taken doesn't help assuage the impression - as I have stated multiple times, the show is not subtle, and if Lenore meant to go behind Carmilla's back and was deliberately being twofaced, she would have admitted it.

Related to what above, Lenore keeps insisting that she's loyal to the sisters, and her whole angst is that she feels out of place among them in a way that implies that it's not just about her pride, but because she genuinely cares. Sure, she still comes off as a selfish brat who ragequits life because she lost all her power, but it's safe to say that we weren't meant to interpret her like that lol.

So yes, Lenore really expected Hector to work for her after breaking his heart, and pulled the mother of all shockedpikachufaces.jpg when he didn't. Although he still fell in love with her. Although he still planned to betray all of them. Although he still cared to save her life letting everyone else die.

It's just amazing to me. The more I try to meet the writing from different angles, the more issues I find. true peak.

I guess I can chalk this up to yet another way I could fix the plotline: have Lenore be a wild card in the council, and have her using everyone around her, to the point that no one can trust her, and she's only a Queen because someone like her is best to have as an ally and not as an enemy. Only after Hector betrays her, she starts to regret her actions: because for the first time in her existence, she had grown to care about someone other than herself, but by then, the damage was irreparable.

[open-hearth-rpg]

That Was Dave

CW: Death

On the drive over to the funeral Sherri and I went back through all of Dave’s characters we could remember. His Engineer in Star Trek Adventures, his sorcerer in 13th Age, his Hound in Blades in the Dark, his Gearhead in Mutant Year Zero, Roaming Wolf from Mutants & Masterminds, Master Mummer Sokka Sokka from Libri Vidicos, his Skaven from Arcane Rails, his Runemage from Rolemaster, Lat and Na from the parallel GURPS Fantasy games…

A few others we couldn’t recall the details of like his character from Guards of Abashan, the name of his weird mage from Triad, his characters from the one time I ran D&D, and his earliest characters from various Cyberpunk 2020, Hunter, and Vampire campaigns. He had a type– always a little weird and off-kilter, often with clear vulnerabilities. His weirdo characters could be unpredictable but they never, ever caused pain or discomfort to the rest of the group, to the players at the table. I’ve played with too many folks who made their eccentricities everyone’s problem. But Dave never did that

I met Dave in 1992 or 1993. He was in high school. At the time I helped manage a game store with an attached upstairs game room. He hung around, quiet, in a thin black trenchcoat (as was the style at the time). He had a couple of annoying pals who also hung around– Dave was the best of them. He got involved in Warhammer 40K, started playing ttrpgs, very occasionally played TCGs, and became a regular fixture. When I moved on from there in 1997, he stayed part of the group. I played with him pretty solidly for almost the next twenty-seven years. 

Dave had been born in 1976– so seven years younger than me. That was enough to put a fairly major generation gap between us in terms of how he’d been raised and what he’s been exposed to. He grew up on Nintendo. When I finally went to play the PS version of Final Fantasy VI, he photocopied an entire NES FFIII strategy guide to help me through it. He loved that game. 

I’m not sure entirely what else he loved– like media, games, movies. He was quiet and rarely gave out his opinions on things unless he felt strongly about them. He loved the Fallout series, he hated the Fist of the North Star action game I lent him, he loved Rock Band except when they decided not to have keyboards support anymore. If you suggested things to him he’d nod. Occasionally he’d get back to you that he’d tried them. But he remained quiet, kept to himself, and yet always managed to be a solid, fun and warm presence at every gaming table. 

I have been extraordinary lucky to have a stable gaming group for three+ decades now. I have folks in my extended circles who I’ve played with since 1988. Most I’ve played with for several decades. One I knew in Middle School. The group has changed and shifted– I used to run 2-3 face to face games. Now that’s just one. There are two parallel games with different mixes of people from this connected group, but I’m not part of those. I thought about that today when I saw someone post this from https://www.instagram.com/couldbeworsecomic/ , with comments about the unreality of this…

Dave passed away on Father’s Day. There’s a story there but let me circle around to get to that. 

In thinking about it, one of my biggest regrets was not sitting down and asking Dave how he thought my GMing had evolved and changed. Sherri’s been along for me on this ride, but she’s been privy to all the behind-the-scenes and helped shape my approach. I wish I’d asked him what he thought the differences were and how he liked or didn’t like them. He was a good GM. I twice played in campaigns he ran: a GURPS Fantasy one and a hack of Fallout using the Action Cards system I’d created. He did striking and unique things with that. 

It always struck me how long he thought and planned for his campaigns. For both he’d clearly worked on them for years before he ever suggested he wanted to run. He came to the table with props, new options, and great ideas. He’d done his world building– but it never felt closed off. Like the best GMs, he invited you to both tour and shape the worlds he’d built. It felt like a far cry from me who has been running tons of off the cuff short campaigns over the last several years. 

Though that’s been an online phenomena. In our face to face groups, we’ve mostly focused on longer campaigns. Even short ones have a dozen sessions. So many of the campaigns of mine which Dave played in lasted for years and years. We got to see the characters change, grow, and evolve. I mentioned he would run oddballs– often the character type with the least growth. But his characters always grew and became something better. 

He grew and became something better. In the mid-00’s his wife Chas joined the table. She was and is great: solid and determined. One of those players who makes a choice and lives with it. The two of them together always made things even more fun. 

So I don’t know the full details, but apparently within the last year Dave started to have some mood and personality swings. I only saw him and Chas bi-weekly for our sessions. I didn’t notice anything. But it was serious enough to warrant a separation between the two of them. Again, I didn’t have a real sense of what was happening there. But then Dave passed out in his home and had to go to the ER. He was diabetic so I and others assumed that was a contributing factor when he was released the next day. 

But then a week or so later he had another episode, being again sent to the hospital– this time with seizures. They kept him in for several days of treatment, but again they weren’t sure what was happening. I’m assuming they gave him some meds for that before releasing him again. Less than a week after that, on Father’s Day, he passed out in his bathroom and hit his head, as I understand it. And he died. A wellness check a day later found him. 

After the funeral, Sherri and I again went through the list of his characters, their personalities, and their stories. I remembered when another person from our playgroup died, Barry, back in 2006 at the age of 37. Not long after that I ran a D&D 3.5 campaign which had a sub-story about the PCs rescuing Barry’s character who had sacrificed himself closing a demonic portal at the end of the campaign only a few months previously. That campaign had a riff on Final Fantasy VI, Dave’s favorite video game. 

I’m not sure I can do anything like that for Dave, can do anything like that again. I’m older and the last few years have made me more raw, more easily broken. I’m not sure I can face that pain. I’ve tabled the Star Trek Adventures campaign we’d been in the middle of. I hope we can keep playing, but I don’t think I can run STA, with Dave haunting the table. We will see. 

I don’t have a big conclusion here: maybe keep an eye on your mental health and tell folks when things are getting rocky. But I wanted to write something down. I hunted around for photos of Dave, but I’ve never been a person to take pictures. The images throughout have been from the table and it took me a long time, but I found one. 

That’s Dave there in the middle, hand on mouth, contemplating his next action.

I hope there’s something after we die and, if there is, I get a chance to talk to Dave again.

[brooklynislandgirl]

== BASICS

NAME : Turtle. But some call me... D.

PRONOUNS: She/her

ZODIAC SIGN: Pisces

TAKEN OR SINGLE: Married 

Sexuality: is something I possess.

== THREE FACTS

Commercial fishing kills 100 million sharks each year, where as sharks kill maybe five people in the same amount of time. They have survived five extinction events but now over 100 species are critically endangered by humans. Does that seem right to you?

I read between 15 and 100 books per year.

Misha Collins once admired and wanted my lamby slippers.

== EXPERIENCE

PLATFORMS USED : I began rp when IRC was the only thing. I use discord and tumblr almost exclusively now. I have been doing this pretty much longer than most of my mutuals have been alive.

PLOTTING / WINGING IT / MEMES : All of the above. My primary muse is a female oc and so I have to be as flexible as humanly possible.

== MUSE PREFERENCE

GENDER : Gender doesn’t factor into my muse choice, and I’d like to think I am equally adept at playing any gender the muse, as a person, happens to be. Creation of a muse can take me up to a year, as I find out who they are as a person, and develop them a bit at a time. And in most cases, that development never ends.

MULTI OR SINGLE : For my tastes, I prefer to have one muse per blog, though maybe I should do a multi. There was a short period of time a while back where the anti-cop rhetoric was so strong, I brought Riley to Beth’s blog because I got nothing but hate and bullshit on his.

LEAST FAVOURITE FACECLAIM(S) : Brie Larson. I just kind of wanna slap her in the face with a cast iron skillet. Eric Andre, because I don’t really like his personality. And sometimes it’s weird to play against YT “celebrities” or actual cartoon characters as a “real life” muse but I don’t really judge based off an FC. For me it’s about mun chemistry and muse chemistry. Someone can have an FC that is super attractive {imo} and Beth might not even notice, even if she’s involved with two other people with that same exact FC, if that makes sense?

== FLUFF / ANGST / SMUT

FLUFF: Beth is the definition of fluff. She has brought galactic super villains to their knees with the power of dumb.

ANGST: She used to be so happy, once. Now it’s so much easier to do angst, and it can come from a variety of sources.

SMUT: Only if you’ve got patience. There are several people who can tell you that it’s taken 7+ years to get in her pants. There have been exactly 2 exceptions to this and I don’t even know how to explain them. However, humble brag...if you can make her fall in love with you, I will set your screen on fiyah. But this is the least important of the three categories.

tagged by: tagged by my darling little bee @prettytm

tagging: People who are actually 29 Guppies in a Trenchcoat.

[thedelolos]

Neverafter Episode 5 Live Thoughts

Under the cut

I WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE GEMS ARE YOU SILLY MAN 

“The mechanic of confusion” you said it ally

Ooo we got updated icons for the characters that we didn’t see last episode 

Lou Wilson I love you never change 

BEATS TO STUDY TO im cryig 

Seriously the new dome effects are cool as hell

So this is “You and your party walk into a tavern” opening?

I can’t take the cock and toad seriously bro

“A bunch of woodland creatures in a cloak” ah yes three racoons in a trenchcoat

Rosamund’s hair is so curly wow

I really want to know her subclass PLEASE i’m thinking it might be beast now because of the cloak of beasts?

YLFA DRUID

YLFA DRUID???

I AM IN LOVE WHAT SUBCLASS

I’m thinking moon or wildfire? 

The fire on her cloak in her dream makes me think wildfire Also they have another person who can heal thank goodness 

The owl getting scared is really funny

The disappearing glass jar

So pib 

Okay yeah red blowing the fire hotter makes me think wildfire, that’s actually a really cool way of skinning it 

“Why does everyone think I’m flirting?” Gerard got that autistic boy swag 

Lou you're killing me with that description of pinocchio

YES PLEASE TELL THEM ABOUT YOUR MOM

She’s awful and i hate her 

“How did we know to come here?” Zac asking the big brain questions

Calling it now the bad fairy that pinocchio is talking about is the step mother

Psa do not trust the fairies at all 

Do you think brennan practices crow noises just randomly? 

Zac’s little dance when PIb is getting scritches is so cute 

I KNEW IT WAS THE DISH FROM HEY DIDDLE DIDDLE

Ally and Lou playing keep away with the invisible book is so funny

Committed arachnid i’m dead these are so funny

THE SPIDER TALKS

Wait does this mean we’re gonna get miss muffit too??

“Honking like thunder”?? Hmmm the gander??

It’s really funny bc i just finished crown of candy where we had ranger liam and now we have ranger rosamund and it’s just really funny to me

Rangers really are the best in campaigns like this 

Wait does that mean that we don’t get anymore cindy??

Oh okay nvm

Ooo this is very interesting, there’s someone writing in the book

WAIT THIS IS DOPE SCHEHERAZADE

So does this mean that the other owners of the magic books are just people who have collected tales in different cultures? 

WOMEN IN ARMOR AGENDA LET’S GO

Aesop too?? So it think there might be some kind of truth to my theory my game theory

Yes babes pls make a better plan 

Stray together, stay together 

“Im just kinda pushing on your frog abdomen” ALLY

Okay okay so we need to find a laughing dog and a cat with a fiddle 

The goodberry thing is so smart, i’ve never thought of that before

Senator i miss you

Senator i love you keep prancing 

“This is all temporary” okay take a shot he said the thing 

No no con saves only vibes 

WHAT ARE THE BEANS are they like levels of exhaustion that you carry through your lives?? If you hit 6 levels typically you die so maybe at 6 beans the character is perma dead? 

Is the boar one of the 3 little pigs??

I like geese and the gander is terrifying 

Okay okay they got a good stealth let’s just hope that they learn from last time and dont get caught, please y’all be safe 

YO THE DARK LIGHTING THAT’S SO COOL

WE 110 percent are getting the spider that sat next to miss muffet, “nobody wants to be friends with me”, the town name sounds similar to tuffet, i think i’m right???

[iamafanofcartoons]

Huh? What what? Eruption Fang is a Jacques apologist?? I've seen many of his videos where he defends Whitley's character? (By many of his videos I literaly mean I only ever watched his 'Whitley is a victim too' videos because his thirst for certain characters and defensiveness towards Raven, Harriet and Cinder make me mad). But yeah! I guess I am confused by him defending Jacques, could you elaborate please?

Eruptionfang, or Cole as he's known on Twitter, is in love with the idea of emo male sociopaths who talk about moral grayness.

A sociopath has no morals...has no virtues...but they are portrayed in media as charismatic....and people are brainwashed on that trope.

Vergil from Devil May Cry, Vicious from Cowboy Bebop, and Adam Taurus.

All three are trenchcoated men wielding katanas who are emo and hurt other people, often innocent people, and betray others for their personal goals.

Everyone attempts to defend their actions, all 3 of them.

But we first see Adam raiding train, wanting to kill all the passengers...and we see Blake stopping him.

Every single Adam Apologist began accusing Blake of being a war criminal and just as bad as Adam ...simply for standing in his way.

What's more, these people Blame Blake for Adam's actions.

So Sexism and Homophobia is something you'll find a lot of on EruptionFang's discord server...if he has one. He is basically another Adel Aka or Hero Hei...I'm not touching his channel, but word is that he IS a defender of child molester Vic Micnogna, who was Qrow Branwen's first VA.

Now as for Cinder Fall? Basically she's trying to kill the female main protagonist...for Cole, that's enough to put her in his good book.

Raven Branwen? We first meet her after her tribe wiped out a village just to plunder it...Raven began talking about Social Darwinism...which RWBY Critics ascribe to, and EruptionFang was furious to find that Raven's tribe was not as strong as her, because it meant that Raven was using social darwinism as an excuse to do what she wanted.

I like that about RWBY....they cut open "gray morality" and show how it is just an excuse for bad people to do whatever they want...and the fact that women oppose these people upset a lot of men and women who hate the female protagonists and love the male authority-fascist villains.

He loves Harriet because she's basically "Good soldiers follow orders" and we see in The Clone Wars and RWBY how blindly following orders causes problems.

As for Jacques? Despite him slapping Weiss, Cole decided that it had to be Weiss' fault for the slap, and that anything Weiss said against him, from stealing the family legacy, to changing his name as a con-man? Was Weiss needing to be disciplined.

He was also furious at Jacques Death because he wanted Jacques to get a redemption.

You'll see that RWBY Critics HATE the idea of female characters like Ilia Amitola or Emerald Sustrai getting redemptions, but cis white male characters like Adam or Ironwood or Jacques not getting redemptions is apparently character assassination.

At the end of the day, RWBY has more good POC characters than bad...and more POC live to see another day.

Which is ironic considering that the villains that the RWBY Critics defend so passionately are all white men in positions of authority.

This love of fascism, the military industrial complex, unchecked power, and men being allowed to commit whatever atrocities as long as it can be called "tough decisions" or "morally gray" is what led me to have a disdain for RWBY Critics who claim to "care about the show and want it to be better"

No...they want the show to lionize their white male character over the women protagonists.

And when people claim to be "Fixing" RWBY? Their focus is on hurting female main characters by stripping away their characteristics and overfocusing on men...especially the bad ones.

Because between female main characters with optimism vs male authority figure antagonists?

A criticism channel will always choose the male.

And I pity them.

In the meantime, take these to use to block out EF's channel.

[gallusrostromegalus]

The yami facts are *amazing! Can we has more but for kaiba?

Yami Facts for The Power Of Friendship (And This Gun I Found!)

These were harder becuase Seto Kaiba is kind of a fucking mess and most of his "fun" facts are really kind of Depressing lol.

Many People think Seto is ambidexterous because there are a lot of videos of him doing things like casually switching what hand he's writing with, or coming out with right and left-handed duel disks right off the bat, but that's incorrect. He's Ambisinister and they're BOTH his off-hand. He predominantly writes with his left hand out of spite.

Seto has a deep and honestly extremely reasonable fear of horses. Gozaboro signed him up for a bunch of "networking" hobbies so he could learn how to build social ties like a proper Bougie kid, and one of those thing was horseback riding. Unfortunately for Seto, his chernobyl-like background radiation anxiety means horses find his vibes absolutely rancid and they keep trying to Murder the shit out of him.

Seto fucking loves Mangoes. He loves a lot of salty-sour foods because while he did manage to get in the habit of "eight glasses of water a day" he's chronically short on electrolyes. He does not know that mangoes are not supposed to taste like that, and that he is allergic to them.

There is a character that will come up in the fic called "Debbie From Legal". She is the same Debbie as Debbie from Bowling For Soup's hit, 1985, but she is also the protagonist in Mary Chapin-Carpenter's He Thinks He'll Keep Her. Do NOT fuck with Debbie.

Seto has a Pilots Lisence, a Helicopter Lisence, a boating Lisence, but no Driver's Lisence. He does not like Traffic.

Seto has such a severe case of "Just Some Guy" syndrome that he can accidentally Clark Kent himself by taking off his ostentateous trenchcoat.

Seto hired the serial killer for Death-T by putting out a fucking want ad. He got back six promising candidates and hired them all for assorted projects. Five of them are just out-of-work actors who thought it was a movie gig and are refusing to drop the facade because holy shit a steady paycheck. The sixth actually is a serial killer, but also an out-of-work actor that thought this was a movie gig.

Seto personally knows a ton of celebrities from various publicity events, and some of them are things that very nearly qualify as 'friends' because he can talk to them for upwards of three minutes about some Hobby, but he doesn't actually now what they DO. He thinks Henry Cavill is maybe kind of famous for doing a youtube series on building your own PC for the masses because he recognized him in a thumbnail on the site once. Who Knows. Not Seto. He knows Henry because he once proposed that Seto purchase a tabletop miniatures company they both liked the product of, but hated the company, and that struck Seto as a good idea, actually, so it's on his to-do list, right after getting the Duel Monsters IP from pegasus so he can stop having to pay royalties every time he uses the Blue Eyes White Dragon imagery on something.

Seto's secret talent that even he doesn't know about (yet) is that he's actually great at keeping houseplants. Most people kill them by over-watering them, but he sort of forgets they exist until they look sad and then he dumps his coffee into them, which is the exact flavor of abuse most houseplants enjoy.

[theleafpile]

the sandman 1x03 dream a little dream of me thoughts [spoilers]

did anyone else hate the way Jenna Coleman acted? please tell me it felt lifeless and stilted and try hard to someone else. I think the issues that made her character difficult to believe were:

— she looked exactly the same from the '80s to the present day—if this is the case, like with ethel, and she has slow aging, the show please needs to say that—and if it's a case of *they didn't know how to age up or down the actress* then the actress herself needs to do something about it, like act differently in any way oh my god

— she's got this smirk thing going where nothing she says is something she takes seriously, even when it would be so much better to have some gravity. she doesn't have to do it to Dream's face, since it's a facade, but that would become *really* apparently if she said to Ric the Vic, when she said "he's not a man. he's endless" (which ric would have no idea what that means?) if she said it with a bit more awe, or fear, or hesitation, or ANYTHING

— the disparity between the outfit and the apartment/office made her character difficult to parse down. trenchcoat, cool. we love characters with trenchcoats. white trenchcoat? cinched at the waist all of the time? very smart looking, very put together. her hair is done. she pays with a card. this is a woman who has her life in order. then we get to her apartment. she's sleeping on the couch, but she wakes from a nightmare with a face full of perfect makeup, no trace of exhaustion in her eyes or voice. her place is full of junk. she has another room full of stuff, disorderly. but nothing about her suggests disorder! it's so strange. they want her to be like this messy, jaded, exorcist but don't dress her like that and Coleman certainly isn't acting that way.

— last point, an aside not about her acting: THERE ARE NO PEOPLE IN LONDON? where the hell is everyone? is it three in the morning when the princess, also perfectly fresh faced, wants to get married? why is every shot totally devoid of any sense of life? there are no car horns honking, no one yelling, no traffic noise, no music playing, no one else in the apartments rach lives at? it's so empty and weird, and there's no sense of what time it could be, despite the brief convo with the cabbie. (his day could have started at 7pm, for all we know). it could have been fixed by the vicar yawning when she opened the door saying thanks for coming out so late. easy fix.

[charlie-minion]

Could the same SPN finale make a little more sense with some additions/changes?

I’ve had the idea for this post stuck in my head for days now, but with every new conspiracy theory and every new eventuality in the fandom, it became difficult to cool down enough to write something less ship-related and more narrative-focused.

What Supernatural and non-SPN fans have to understand is that a lot of us have expressed disappointment and frustration after 15x20, not because of Destiel (that’s just one part of the whole problem), but because the finale doesn’t make sense. Everything was leading up to something beautifully crafted until the end of 15x19. Beyond that, it’s hard to understand what happened. The story rendered all the character growth irrelevant, invalidated the themes of free will and “family don’t end in blood”, regressed to the original brother codependency they spent 15 years trying to overcome, made a queer non-binary character in a male vessel and a deaf female character basically disposable, and kept the show’s reputation of queerbaiting and misogyny until its very last breath.

That’s not going out with a bang! At least not a positive one. We all were ready to mourn Supernatural, but we wanted to feel proud of its legacy, and somehow TPTB managed to tarnish that legacy in less than 45 minutes. What a way to ruin the other more than 13,600 minutes of story!

It doesn’t matter who is to blame (The CW, Robert Singer, Andrew Dabb). It doesn’t matter why it happened (homophobia, censorship, marketing for Walker, bad writing). What matters is that at the end of the day, the finale that aired is what we got and that’s going to hurt for a long time. It hurts even more when we realize that the same finale could have easily made more sense, even without being perfect.

That’s what I want to do in this post. I want to show you how things would have been less jarring (for the fandom), while still keeping the goal to please the general audience.

Before I begin rewriting 15x20, I have to mention that I talked to my conservative boomer sister about the finale. She hasn’t watched the second half of season 15 yet (she’s waiting for Netflix to have it), but she’s been watching the show for a long time (she introduced me to it 8 years ago). She’s the perfect example of a viewer from the general audience. Loves the show but doesn’t give a second thought to it and definitely isn’t paying attention to character development or themes. Doesn’t engage with fandom, actors, or any of the show’s social media. Pure GA! When I told her the series finale had aired, she asked me about it and I refused to give her spoilers. Because of that, she told me the ending SHE wanted. She said she would be happy with either of two possibilities: the boys retiring and finally living a normal life OR they going to heaven and finding peace at last. She saw Sam and Dean as a unit, which means: both retiring or both going to heaven. AND she saw Cas as part of that, too. She wasn’t so sure about Jack. And for her, we could use the “Eileen who?” and it wouldn’t be a joke. She didn’t remember her.

NOW IT’S TIME TO WRITE A NEW VERSION OF 15X20 (KEEPING 15X18 AND 15X19 EXACTLY THE SAME AS THEY AIRED). This will be a very long post:

The opening remains almost the same. No “Carry on my wayward son” to induce feels. Too soon and too predictable! (Reasoning: Everyone was expecting it to play right there, so it would bring more tears at the end)

In the opening, after the scene where Jack says “People won’t need to pray to me or sacrifice to me”, we also see the scene from 15x19 where he says “I won’t be hands on”. Then we see the rest of the opening as it was. (Reasoning: People needed to be reminded that Jack would NOT intervene and that’s why later on, he would NOT save Dean).

We get the same montage, but when Sam takes a break from his morning run, we see him reading a message on his phone. A simple: “Hey Sam, what’s new?” from Eileen. Sam smiles fondly and begins to type a response we don’t get to see. The next scene continues the same, Sam making breakfast. (Reasoning: A text was a very simple way to show that Eileen was alive and still in communication with Sam).

The montage slowly ends as Sam enters the library (not after he sits down). He seems to be talking on the phone but we only hear an “I’ll tell him. Bye”. As he walks towards the table, he tells Dean: “Charlie says hi. Mentioned something about Stevie’s perfect scrambled eggs we have to try.” Dean’s answer is “Awesome!” (Reasoning: Just ONE line was needed to unbury Charlie and her girlfriend. ONE LINE).

Sam sits down, opens his laptop and everything continues the same. The title card shows for the last time.

YOU SEE? In the first 4 minutes they could have acknowledged that THREE WOMEN were alive and safe: Eileen, Charlie and Stevie. It wasn’t hard! Don’t blame bad writing on Covid! Now let’s continue.

Sam and Dean arrive at the Pie Fest just the same. Dean goes to get some “damn pie” and Sam takes out his phone. He dials and when someone picks up, he says “Hey, Jody, how are ya?” We don’t hear the rest of the conversation. The scene moves to Dean coming with his 6 portions of pie. Dean sits down and Sam tells him, “Talked to Jody. The other hunters haven’t had much work lately.” “That’s good, isn’t it?”, Dean says. All we get from Sam is “Yeah.” So, Dean looks at him and asks “what’s wrong?” like it happened in the episode. (Reasoning: Again, a couple of lines to make sure the people that were killed in 15x18 are safe and remembered by the boys in 15x20. Why is this important? Because they’re family!)

The conversation about Sam’s sad face happens the same. Sam is the one that mentions Cas and Jack. (Reasoning: Because this episode was so Sam-centered, it’s obvious he was the protagonist in the finale. If we see him communicating with Eileen, Charlie, and Jody, then it’s NORMAL, even expected of him to be the one to bring up Cas and Jack). Without these additions, it’s harder for people to understand that most of the finale was NOT from Dean’s POV but from Sam’s.

Dean’s “if we don’t keep living, then all that sacrifice is gonna be for nothing” stays the same. (Reasoning: I believe it’s necessary that the show sticks to the importance of “letting go” and “what is dead should stay dead” for the first time ever because the message is “even when you lose someone you love, you can still find some form of happiness and keep living, for you and for them, because that’s what they would have wanted”. Bringing someone back means “I can’t live without you”, and that’s just more codependency. It’s how the demon deals began in the Winchester family –Mary being the first one to do it. This would explain why Dean didn’t ask Jack to bring Cas back, as he asked Chuck. He understood Jack was NOT going to interfere anymore and accepted it. Besides, when Cas saved Dean from hell, Dean thought he didn’t deserve to be saved. This time that Cas saved him, Dean finally feels worthy enough to accept that YES, HE DESERVED TO BE SAVED ALL ALONG, just as much as he deserved to be loved by that angel of the Lord. In this scene, Dean also says that the pain is not gonna go away, which means that from HIS PERPECTIVE, it still hurts that Cas is not there. The problem is that the finale is not showing his POV but Sam’s.  

Sam pies Dean on the face just the same. (Reasoning: That part was just to avoid ending the scene on a sad note).

Everything related to the case happens exactly the same. (Reasoning: At this point, people don’t really care about the MoTW, they care about Sam and Dean).

NOTE 1: The case is important to show that even when the Winchesters are finally free of Chuck’s influence, they CHOOSE to keep hunting. It isn’t something they do out of revenge or because it is their destiny anymore. Maybe they were forced into the life at first, but they’ve learned to find joy in saving people. Being hunters is who they are. However, the fact that a job application was shown on Dean’s desk is also important because it means he was willing to explore what else was there for him besides hunting. Maybe he could find a balance? Maybe he was thinking it was time to quit? We will never know! The thing is that Sam only finds out about it when he goes into Dean’s room after his brother is dead, so maybe that’s when it hits him that Dean wanted to explore his options, and Sam starts to think it’s time for him to do the same.  

NOTE 2: I believe the masks the vampires are wearing is something we can blame on covid. If they had their faces covered, it was easier to use people from the SPN crew for some scenes, instead of using more actors unnecessarily.

NOTE 3: When Sam and Dean arrive at the barn, we get 3 visuals to remember Cas in the same scene (those are for the fandom, not for the general audience): a) the barn, obviously; b) the bag that resembles Cas’ trenchcoat so much that many people thought that’s what it was; and c) two feathers hanging on Dean’s right when he opens the trunk.

The scene with the throwing star happens the same. (Reasoning: The episode is still told from Sam’s point of view, so it makes sense that he fondly sees his brother as a man child).

Jenny the vampire? Uhhh… I mean, it’s not the best piece of writing I’ve ever seen, but it’s not the worst, so okay. That stays the same. (Reasoning: There is none, but she’s not what really ruined the finale, so whatever!)

Dean still dies impaled on a rebar. (Reasoning: OK. HERE ME OUT!!! I hate as much as everyone else that Dean is killed. I think it’s lazy writing, but that’s what we got and I can’t change that in this re-write, so if killing Dean is what we have to work around, then, memes aside, death by rebar is better and here’s why. There’s no one to blame for Dean’s death: no Chuck (the boys were willingly hunting even after Chuck was defeated), no vampires (they were all killed and were no real threat, so it was impossible for Sam to begin a quest for revenge against all vampires. What was Sam going to blame? A rebar? Can you kill it? Hunt it? NO. It was an ordinary death, a stupid accident. Just like any person can die at any moment by slipping on a banana peel. Is it a good death? No, but it’s good to know he doesn’t die trying to save Sam or Cas, because Dean Winchester is NOT willing to give up his life in exchange for anyone else’s anymore.

Sam takes out his phone and says he’ll call for help, but his phone is more visible to the audience. He dials and it’s almost to his ear when Dean stops him and Sam hesitantly hangs up. (Reasoning: People have complained that Sam didn’t call an ambulance, but actually he tried to. It’s just that people missed that part, maybe?)

After Sam puts his phone back in his pocket and says “OK” to Dean, he adds, “I’ll pray to Jack”. Dean’s immediate answer is: “No hands on, remember?” “But Dean”, Sam says, and Dean interrupts him with “OK listen to me” and tells Sam what to do with the kids they rescued. (Reasoning: Jack is God now and how come Sam didn’t remember? The viewers remembered, so it was necessary to include a line that ruled the option out and that showed Dean didn’t want Jack to intervene. The rest was fine).

The lines “You knew it was always gonna end like this for me. It was supposed to end like this, right?” disappear completely from Dean’s monologue. (Reasoning: This is the most problematic part of Dean’s dying speech. He fought God and earned free will, he is no longer controlled by fate or destiny. Accepting that he is supposed to die on a hunt regresses his character development and denies his desire to keep living. This was a total mistake and should be removed).

Instead, if going to heaven is the ending TPTB wanted to give Dean, at least he should say something more empowering. Sam tells him that both of them are going to take the kids somewhere safe. Dean answers and the scene follows like this: “No. Sammy, we made our choice, didn’t we?”, he smiles with difficulty. “We were free to write our own story and we did. We decided to keep saving people, hunting things. Because it’s what we love despite the risks.” (Reasoning: If Dean’s going to die it doesn’t have to feel like it was always meant to be that way. He should die knowing that he exerted his free will until his last breath).

The rest of the dialogue between Sam and Dean happens almost the same. Except that instead of Dean saying “‘cause when it all came down to it, it was always you and me. It’s always been you and me”, he says “’cause when it all came down to it, we’ve always had each other’s backs. Always.” And instead of Sam saying “Don’t leave me”, he says “I still can try to save you.” (Reasoning: It sounds way less codependent without diminishing the importance of their love and support for each other).

Besides, let’s change Dean’s “I’m not leaving you” for “You don’t have to be alone. You’ve still got family.” The rest stays the same word by word. (Reasoning: Dean reminds Sam that “family don’t end in blood” and there are still lots of people out there who love Sam and will be with him).

“I love you so much, my baby brother” stays exactly the same. (Reasoning: Dean always had trouble to express the big L word. I always believed and said many times that before Dean could say “I love you” to Cas or any other character, he had to say it to Sam. So, this is important as part of Dean speaking his truth).

The last part when Dean insists Sam tell him that it’s okay stays the same. (Reasoning: It’s the final moment when the codependency cycle breaks. No more running in circles).

The forehead touch between them stays the same. (Reasoning: I think I would do something similar if my sister were dying. I know there are w*ncest shippers out there, but it shouldn’t matter because the moment feels appropriate for that kind of goodbye). 

See? There are changes but not too many. That’s why I’ve been saying that it was easier to get it right, yet they still managed to screw it up.

The second montage stays the same. (Reasoning: Life goes on, but of course Sam has to mourn).

The call about a case in Austin remains the same. (Reasoning: It’s the only part of the episode where someone from the found family is mentioned, so I think that Donna’s name is perfect in that moment. However, without the other additions I’ve made in this re-write, that off-hand mention feels too little. Its purpose was to tell the viewers that if Donna was alive, so were the others, but the way the episode was executed gave us an isolated Sam, incapable of having friends and a family without Dean).  

After 30 minutes of Sam’s POV, let’s finally see the last bit of Dean’s POV that we’ll ever get.

Dean arrives in Heaven and Bobby receives him. All their conversation stays almost the same, except that after mentioning Rufus and before saying “and your mom and dad…”, Bobby adds an “Ellen and Jo let me borrow their place”. (Reasoning: If you’re gonna put the man outside the Harvelle’s place, at least mention them for Jack’s sake!).

Besides, after Bobby tells Dean that Sam will be along and that time in heaven is different, Dean gives a small smile and says, “Well, there’s no rush. I want him to have a long, happy life.” Bobby answers with: “I would expect nothing less from you, boy” and tells him he got everything he could ever want, etc., just like it happened in the episode, and finishes by asking “What are you gonna do now, Dean?” (Reasoning: It’s important we know for sure that Dean is NOT codependent anymore and that he doesn’t expect to have a miserable afterlife just because his brother is not there yet).

Instead of saying “I think I’ll go for a drive” Dean says, “I think I know what I want” and walks towards baby. Bobby still tells him to have fun. (Reasoning: “Know what I want” is ambiguous enough to help us introduce the last piece of the puzzle, the one thing Dean’s wanted for many seasons and has never been able to express).

 The biggest change is coming:

Dean gets on the Impala and has a moment of silence while he contemplates the wheel. He begins to pray: “Hey, Cas, you got your ears on? I hear you’ve been busy working on this updated Heaven with Jack. You were right about him, Cas. You had faith in him and he saved us all. You could always see the best in everyone, even when they couldn’t see it themselves. Even when I couldn’t see it myself. There’s so much I want to tell you. Maybe you can visit sometime. I hope prayer’s still a thing up here.” (Reasoning: Dean’s side of the confession was unaddressed and that was terrible writing. If there was no way to get him to speak his truth textually, at least take him as close to it as possible).

We listen to a flutter of wings and a “Hello, Dean” from the back seat. We don’t see Cas, but the camera shows us Dean’s cocky smile and he says “Took you long enough.” He turns around slowly. End of scene. (Reasoning: The flutter of wings confirms that angels have their wings back and ties that loose end. The final “hello, Dean” was highly anticipated and it made sense. If Misha couldn’t be there to film, for whatever reason, or if the problem was the kind of conversation Dean and Cas would have, then don’t show it, but leave the door open. Let us know that the two characters were reunited and will talk, but whatever Dean has to say is so private that it’s not for us to hear, only for Cas.  

We finally hear “Carry on my wayward son” and get a montage that begins with Sam playing with his kid. Then we see Dean driving, super happy, and Sam living his life to the fullest. We still get Sam’s Blurry Wife, BUT… we see pictures of Eileen in the living room (not just of John, Mary, Sam, and Dean). We also see photos of Jody, Donna, Charlie, and AU!Bobby. (Reasoning: FAMILY DON’T END IN BLOOD).

The scene where Sam is wearing the party wig and looks miserable inside the Impala is cut and nobody talks about it ever again because it never existed. We get a scene of Sam teaching his son how to fix the car instead. (Reasoning: First of all, don’t give Sam a life where years later he’s still in pain. Second of all, the fucking wig was a crime).

Sam’s dying scene stays the same. The only thing is that his son signs a couple of phrases to him before actually speaking. (Reasoning: More confirmation that Dean Jr. is Eileen’s son).

We hear the final “Evanescence-like Carry on my wayward son”. Again we see the photos and there’s family other than the Winchesters there. (Reasoning: Obvious at this point).

The rest is exactly the same. The show began with two brothers and it’s okay if the last scene is with the two brothers reunited in Heaven. At this point, the other parts of the story are acceptable enough for us to feel happy that they get to see each other again after years of a happy (after)life.

Now look me in the eye and tell me this was too hard to execute. I still think that bad writing is a thing we can’t deny here, adding to the possible meddling of the Network. Maybe Dabb wanted us to hate the finale because he couldn’t get away with what he truly wanted. If that was his intention, then kudos to him. He and The CW really gave us a finale that only 30% of the fandom liked.

I hope you guys have enjoyed this and it helps to give you some peace of mind. In my heart, this was the finale we got. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t drop the ball either.

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Wednesday, September 21

Buffy and Faith are in the Deputy Mayor's office. Faith notices a picture of him with the Mayor. Buffy goes through papers. Faith picks up the picture and stares at it, cradling it gently. FAITH: He came out of nowhere. BUFFY: (sympathetically) I know. FAITH: (annoyed) Whatever. (She puts down the picture.)

~~Consequences~~

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

Waste Of Time by badly_knitted (Buffy, Giles, PG)

A New Man. by Spander_Lover_Plus (Giles/Spike, Xander/Spike, E)

Doomed by Spander_Lover_Plus (Xander/Spike, E)

Ripper by GiveYouAngst (Giles, Warren, T)

Faith Helps Friends [and multiple other stories] by GiveYouAngst (Faith, Tara, T)

[Chaptered Fiction]

Ice Princess 2: Joyce - Ch. 1 by BrennaLynn (Dawn xover Ice Princess, T)

Dawn the Power Ranger - Ch. 1 by BrennaLynn (Dawn xover Power Rangers, T)

Miss World - Ch. 2 by Tasseomancy (Buffy, Dawn, T)

Bound - Ch. 22 by spnae (Spike/Buffy, M)

Fangs Out- Transfer of Control - Ch. 1 by Dynamite (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Ties to the World - Ch. 5 by The Danish Bird (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

The Slayer and the Vampire - Ch. 81 by violettathepiratequeen (Buffy/Spike, PG-13)

Nemesis: To Give What Is Due - Ch. 6 by YouCutYourHair (Buffy/Spike, R)

The Worst Day Since Yesterday - Ch. 4 by Dynamite (NC-17)

Tales From Sunnydale - Ch. 160 by violettathepiratequeen (PG-13)

[Images, Audio & Video]

Artwork: Sailor Spuffy’s Tattoo Parlor - Ch. 1 by cawthraven (Spike/Buffy, worksafe)

Artwork: D-straction Day: All Night Long - Ch. 6 by HappyWhenItRains (Spike/Buffy, VERY NSFW)

Artwork: Can we rest? Art by me. by jamezkelske (Spike, worksafe)

Artwork: We’re slayers, girlfriend. The chosen [two is crossed out]. by doughnutcleric (Faith, Buffy, Kendra, worksafe)

Artwork: I got deadnamed recently and converted that rage into creativity... by boopsterliv (Spike/Buffy, worksafe)

Fanvid: faith lehane // united states of whatever by faith-thee-slayer (Faith, worksafe)

Artwork: Buffy & Spike Studies | Original graphite drawing and digital [1] by NMCIL (Spike/Buffy, worksafe)

Artwork: Buffy & Spike Studies | Original graphite drawing and digital [2] by NMCIL (Spike/Buffy, worksafe)

Artwork: Buffy & Spike Studies | Original graphite drawing and digital by [3] NMCIL (Spike/Buffy, worksafe)

Manip: Buffy & Spike Studies | Fun projects are doing faux commercials by NMCIL (Spike/Buffy, NSFW)

[Reviews & Recaps]

[in comics] On one hand, it's nice to see the fake memory of Dawn crying... by oveliagirlhaditright

Buffy Rewatch 2k22: 4.15 This Year's Girl by handsofabitterman

Buffy Rewatch 2k22: 4.16 Who Are You by handsofabitterman

Buffy Rewatch 2k22: 4.17 Superstar by handsofabitterman

[Fandom Discussions]

Do you think Buffy ever saves Willow.... by three-blogs-in-a-trenchcoat

So Wikipedia is telling me that Spike was called William "the Bloody" ... by rowan94

Between the ages of 14 and 15, Dawn Summers... by nevergonnabemuchmorethanweather

i just really enjoy human villains in fantastic settings [the trio] by juniperhillpatient

Buffy Halloween headcanon: Buffy having been a 18th century woman... by imsorrythatusernameistaken

[discussion on Angel and Spike and Dracula] by disco-tea

In Consequences, when Faith’s trying to justify... by coraniaid

Okay but Angel coming back to Catholicism in ATS... by annyankers

I've always hated how easily the potentials kill the ubervamps (finale) by Mediocre_Paper

Which returning characters potential cameo hurts the most? by kimmycat88

It was like there were only three walls, and not a fourth by gimmesomespace

Question about the ATS episode "Five by Five" that I hope y'all can clear up... by jdean48

“Oh Oedipus Oedipus” by Perfect_Scream

Bargaining Part 1 and Part 2 - I can't believe the Scoobies didn't think about *THAT* crucial detail. by Opening_Knowledge868

"That guy just bugs me." by -intuit-

Watching Angel after watching Buffy, why is Faith so much better in Angel then Buffy? by Fun_Medium_2504

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Join the editor team :)

[luxshine]

Cis Straight man watching Supernatural Update!

and this time? he REALLY earns his “the fan the CW always wanted” title.

So, he is FURIOUS about what happened to Lisa, absolutely angry since  how dare the writers force Dean to do that.  He also hated that the Professor was killed in season 6, as “why do they keep introducing characters that could be interesting, and then killing them because they’re women?”

LOVES Death and his love for junk food, and has a crush on Tessa still.  

Said: “I don’t think I will ever ship Destiel, but I totally see why it’s a ship. I mean, Cas did everything for Dean, and the whole “get out of my ass” is pretty obvious”

I don’t want to tell him that kind of means he ships them.

Howled with laughter at The French Mistake and was mournful that he wasn’t on time to send a tweet to Misha as a reply to “Hi, Mishamigos”. 

Still thinks Sam is an idiot and that 99% of the issues of season 6 would’ve been solved if people stopped and listened to Dean.

Loved Balthazar, hated he died. Pointed out that Heaven obviously ships Destiel as “you are confusing me with the other angel, the one with a dirty trenchcoat who is in love with you”

Says he’s not that big of a fan but... wants to buy Dean’s hat from the Phoenix episode, and quotes the series

Thinks Bobby is Pan due to his purgatory girlfriend. 

Up to season 6, still shipped Drowley.

HOWEVER, he just called me to tell me he hates Dean as of Season 7, Episode 3

why?

Well, you can guess: How DARE he kill poor innocent Serial Killer Amy Pond since she was “only” killing people no one was going to miss and it was for her sick son?! How could he kill that innocent kitsune who ONLY feed off three men, and didn’t even feed off them, even if she HAD blood in her hands after promising she’d stop?

We had an interesting argument about it, but he is still pretty adamant that Dean did some unthinkable crime. 

And now I am VERY curious about how he’ll react to Emma, Benny and, of course, Sam joining the British Men of Letters...

Told you, he was the fan the CW wanted!

[spnfanficpond]

Pond Diving - that-one-gay-girl

Welcome to today’s Pond Diving Spotlight! We hope that you enjoy this little insight to our members and perhaps even find some useful tips for your own writing. Happy reading!

Want to volunteer, send us an ask! (We've only got a couple more of these socked away, so will need volunteers, soon!) We’re looking forward to learning more about all of you! Not sure what PD is, you can learn more here.

“Don’t Be Koi About It” - All About You

Name: Sydney

Age: 20

Location: Texas, USA

URL: @that-one-gay-girl

Why did you choose your URL: It seemed fitting for me. Being part of the LGBTQIA+ community is a large part of my identity and as the only one in my family who’s a part of the community it seemed fitting to include it in my username.

What inspired you to become a writer: I’ve always loved writing. English was always my favorite class. I got into writing more after the pandemic started and I was spending all of my time at home.

How long have you been writing: I’ve been writing on tumblr for a year now, before that I was just a reader.

What do you do when you are not writing i.e. Job/Hobbies etc? Working with Special Education students. It’s a stressful job but very rewarding. I also love to play the ukulele/sing, do art, I run an Etsy shop which is fun! And I like to crochet.

How long have you been in the SPN Fandom? 9 years

Are you in any other fandoms and do you write for them? I’m also a part of the Marvel, Vampire Diaries, and the Witcher fandoms. I currently do not write for them but I might in the future.

Do you do any writing outside of fanfiction? If so, tell us about it? I don’t write outside of fanfiction, but I’d love to turn my current series Mafia and Morals into a book.

Favorite published author: J.R.R. Tolkien

Have you ever read a book that made an impact on your life? Which one and why?: Fans of the Impossible Life. It really helped me come to terms with my sexuality and how I feel about myself.

Favorite genre of fanfic (smut, angst, fluff, crack, rpf, etc): That’s a hard one. I love myself some smut but I love how angst hurts.

Favorite piece of your own writing: This is a hard one. I’d say my favorite one-shot I’ve written would be Great Heights and my favorite series would be Hunted or Mafia and Morals.

Most underrated fic you have written: The Book Store. It was my first Sam series and one I hold close to my heart. It was therapeutic for me to write.

Story of yours that you’d most like to see turned into a movie/tv show: Mafia and Morals

Favorite Tumblr Writer(s):  ​@deanwanddamons, @winchest09, @wonder-cole, @downanddirtydean, @jensengirl83, @deangirl93, @huffle-pissed, @luci-in-trenchcoats

Favorite fic from another writer:  Ohhhh this is hard. It’s a three way tie between Life for Rent, Regret and Redemption, and Saints and Sinners​

Favorite character to write: Dean

Favorite Pairing to write: Dean x Reader

Least favorite character to write (and why): John, I’ve tried my hand at writing John Winchester fanfiction but I’ve had trouble making him accurate without also letting my hate for him shine through.

Do you have anyone you consider a mentor? @winchest09, @wonder-cole, @deanwanddamons, @huffle-pissed, @soaringeag1e​

Do you have any aspirations involving your writing? Write something memorable and something that makes an emotional impact.

How many work-in-progress stories do you have: 30

What are you currently working on? With starting back to work I am currently only working on my series Mafia and Morals but I have a review one shot in the background coming up.

“Pond Diving” - All About The Writing

What/who has had the biggest influence on your writing? I think @wonder-cole has had the biggest influence on my writing. She’s always been supportive and helping me improve my work.

Best writing advice you've been given: Just do it. Get it out and it can always be fixed later on, but don’t let the fear of not getting likes or attention stop you. Write for yourself.

Biggest obstacle you’ve faced in your writing: It depends what I’m working on, but generally I think it’s details.

What aspects of writing do you find difficult when you write fanfiction? Making sure your characters are accurate.

Is there anything you want to write but are afraid to (and why): There are characters I’ve been afraid to write but I'm slowly branching out.

What inspires/motivates you to write: Being able to create my own world motivates me and music. If I listen to music the story creates itself

How do you deal with self-doubt: I have a support system of friends who help me realize how good my writing is and that I shouldn’t doubt myself.

How do you deal with writer's block: Music. It always helps.

Do you plan/outline your story before you start: If it’s a series, yes. If it’s a one-shot, typically, I let the story flow.

Do you have any weird writing habits: I don’t know about weird but I like to be someplace comfy.

Have you ever received hateful comments on your fic and how do you deal with it? I haven’t. Luckily I haven’t been on the receiving end of hate and hope I never am.

Conversely: what’s been some of your favorite feedback on your fanfic? I can’t pick one but @donnaintx is always writing amazing and long feedback and it’s spurs me on.

If you could give one piece of advice to a new and/or struggling writer, what would it be? Just do it. Write and you’ll be amazed at what happens.

[dreadlord-mr-son]

re: Still unnamed Colony AU

Decided to throw everyone into a Minecraft world just to make it easier to map. This style of world may be heavily-familiar to a couple of the characters, depending on my final picks.

I don’t plan to have it heavily gameified. Things won’t actually be square. Food saturation doesn’t heal you. There’s not an “inventory”. There might be respawning? Haven’t decided yet.

I’ve already picked out a large biomes world and an area in it to drop people.

Now I just have to finalize my character list...

I’ve made two short lists so far. One from my Wynnverse timeslines and one from my older OCs and original projects. There are some canon characters from various media (anime) already in those, as Wolfwood and Roy are both heavily tied into a lot of Wynn’s timelines. But I haven’t yet made the “characters from various media canons and fanfic of those media that I like” yet.

To go briefly over my potential picks from my older OCs and original works...

Forest’s Shadow: A sapient non-human I usually list as a “youkai” when I’m writing character lists. Not because she precisely is one, but because it’s a better term for what she is than others available to me. She’s a horse-sized vaguely canid creature who was going to be one of the main characters in a book I never wrote, where her and a young boy from a Native-American inspired tribe(1) who lost his tribe for plot reasons together gather a following and start a new family that expands into a tribe. Oh gee look there’s those same interests that are leading me to write this very fic right now. (1) This would be set on an alternate earth so no actual real tribes that exist or used to exist on our world would be present. Also it would be set in a time period comparable to thousands of years ago on our world so...

“Roach” (Michael Bradley): Well-off pothead with the coloring of a super-saiyan. His plotline was about him no longer being able to afford his house payments on his own so he gets a roommate who ended up being my self-insert. Basically a dumb self-insert sitcom character. One of my very rare straight male characters. Kind of bland to describe? But I’m fond of him. Nicknamed Roach because of the “pothead” thing. I always think of him as Roach and have to remind myself that his actual name is Michael. His story actually has a title: “Fish and Houseguests”. After the saying “Fish and Houseguests stink after 3 days”, referring to people overstaying their welcome. Thus indicating my long pattern of many of my own characters being supremely unimpressed with me.

Three characters from the same story now: Nathanial Sebastian Creighton (prefers Sebastian, thanks). Keneth Weaver Darlene Gothe A trio of college students from a comic I never drew a ton of titled “Something About Slugs” (an intentional non-sequitur). Sebastian is a rich gay guy whose homophobic parents sent him to college in another country so he could go and be weird and gay and artsy over there where he won’t be publicly visible and embarrass the family. Basically, he gets an allowance to keep his head down and pretend he’s not related to them. Very angtsy. Tall and thin and has super strength. Is a pacifist precisely because of the super strength -- he’s terrified he’ll seriously hurt someone by mistake. Suuuuper pretentious artist. Avoids speaking with contractions and gets poetic when drunk. Favorite forms of art are theatre and painting. He likes to dress in a black trenchcoat with a black sweater under it, even when it’s hot. Always wears long sleeves to hide his self-harm scars from when he was younger. I don’t have enough words for how much I enjoy tormenting this boy and making him chew on his own complicated emotions. :p I have a whole comic where I just drew him talking to a crucified Jesus statue about how he felt about the concept of God and his opinion on “love the sin, hate the sinner”. He is. So fun for me. Keneth Weaver is one of the middle children of a large family with many siblings. Very good at deescalating between his two best friends who... do not get along with each other. :p Always dresses in a puffy winter jacket with a warm knit hat (which he tucks his long blond hair up into) because he frequently gets cold chills. Is an absolute sweetheart and is the one of the trio most likely to go feral and punch a mofo for messing with his friends. Has not yet realized that he’s bi and falling for his best friend Sebastian. Everyone thinks he’s going to get into some nurturing care field of study but ends up getting into law from an idealistic desire to defend the disenfranchised. Darlene Gothe is... aptly named. She’s got a “slutty witch” aesthetic, liking to wear black dresses with ratty bottom hems and her cleavage out and swirly black eye makeup. Self-describes as “playfully bitchy”. Sebastian thinks she hates him because she’s constantly insulting and teasing him because she thinks it’s fun to play with him because of his dry sarcastic whit. So she’s just having fun and he thinks she’s being intentionally mean. Keneth sometimes gets so exhausted dealing with these two, but he does love them both. While Sebastian struggles with his complicated feelings for his disapproving parents, her parents are very supportive of her, but she just doesn’t emotionally connect with them and struggles to understand why family is so important to Sebastian and Keneth. Part of her trouble with sincere emotional connection is from school trauma. She was bullied through grade and highschool and coped with it by becoming sarcastically disconnected and prickly (hence “playfully bitchy”). I’m never going to end up writing the comic for these three but I love them so much.

Um. I’mma cut this off here and reblog my own post with the next batch of characters because I’m not even halfway through.

[nymph1e]

Okay fuck it, I gotta give in, I gotta watch through Supernatural. AFAIK, it's all on Netflix; at least I saw it on there in passing. Going into this, is there anything I should be aware of? Are there any episodes I should skip, any seasons? Should I start from season 4? I know the basic plot and concept, and I know it's very monster-of-the-week. But aside from me highkey shipping Destiel already, that's all.

Well my first piece of advice would be

but uh, let’s fucking ~GO~

If you’re actually jumping into this hellhole (why why why) don’t start at season 4. It’s tempting, but seasons 1-3 are some of the best shit in the whole show, also having context for Sam and Dean’s characters, and their relationship with the supernatural up to season 4 really highlights how fucking wild the introduction of angels is in the show. it’s basically a complete paradigm shift.

I would recommend you watch seasons 1-5 basically as is, though if you’re in a rush, season three is kinda skippable as long as you read a general synopsis. This is the original arc of the show and it shows. A friend of mine, @sammwinchestersdimples​ has said she’d have been fine if the show had ended there, and I can totally see her point. After season five things start to get... uhhhhh... not as good. THAT BEING SAID some really amazing seasons come later, and you’d get nowhere NEAR the Full Destiel Experience without them. What REALLY sucks is that all the seasons have good moments in them, so even if the seasons are generally bad, they’ll have episodes of GOLD. But fuck it, here’s a season-by-season breakdown.

Season 6 - This is the first... “eh” season. There’s a lot of character choices made in this one that I don’t like. The plot also doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with itself and it has no real main villain... or I guess it has a twist villain? This is also the season where they start chucking in the typical “no homos” you get when a show is queerbaiting, so they can point to the no homo bits and claim the queers are delusional.

Season 7 - The absolute WORST season, imo, is season 7, and it features Cas the least out of all the post season 4 seasons. You can tell the writers genuinely tried to write Cas off here. Not to mention the main plot is completely stupid. HOWEVER this is the season where we get golden things like Cas showing up to Dean’s prayer naked and covered in bees, and the episode where Charlie (best girl) is introduced and Dean subsequently has to flirt with a dude because she, a lesbian, cannot. (Wow so straight, Dean)

Episodes Not To Skip:

6x03 - A good Cas/plot episode (spot the famous destiel quote)

6x04 - A good all-round episode, also Jackles directed it so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

6x09 - This is one of the Batshit Episodes. Definitely watch.

6x10 - On the one hand, Cas episode. On the other, no homo, megstiel episode. Your choice.

6x11 - Good episode.

6x15 - THE ULTIMATE META EPISODE. Sam and Dean are teleported into Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles’ lives on the set of Supernatural and it is so batshit.

6x17 - Jolly good episode, and nice destiel content.

6x18 - Time travel episode, which is always fun.

6x19 - “Baby in a trenchcoat.” ‘Nough said.

6x20 - The Man Who Would Be King is the destiel episode. It is infamous in the fandom, and for good reason. It’s not just a good destiel episode, but one of the best episodes in the series. With banging lines like “Freedom is a length of rope. God wants you to hang yourself with it.” and “For a brief moment, I was me again.”

6x21 & 6x22 - The last two episodes are kind of must-watches after TMWWBK, trust me.

Episodes Not To Skip:

7x01 & 7x02 - follows on from s6 final. You don’t wanna skip.

7x05 - Good general episode

7x06 - Again, good general episode. Sets ups plot for the season.

7x08 - Ugh. So the A plot for this episodes invoves Becky, the insane, stalker, fandom-insert character, roofie Sam into marrying her (and it’s heavily implied they have sex - and it’s treated as a joke despite being LITERAL RAPE). BUT this is the episode where Garth is introduced and Garth is fucking amazing. So. IDEK.

7x10 & 7x11 - Plot important.

7x12 - Time travel episode! See if you can catch the bi!dean moment ;)

7x17 - Cas is back! Or is he???

7x18 - GARTH EPISODE

7x20 - CHARLIE!!!! WATCH THIS EPISODE!!!!

7x21 - Cas episode. It’s... interesting.

7x22 - The tagline for this episode is “Sam and Dean seek out an Alpha” 😭. It’s a Cas episode.

7x23 - If Cas weren’t in this episode I’d say skip it.

Season 8 - A fantastic season. If The Man Who Would Be King is the destiel episode, season 8 is the destiel season. When you watch this, DM me so I can RANT about all the amazing destiel this season. It’s also, again, a great season in general I remember watching it as it was airing it was soooo good. You have the arrival of the Bunker, you have Kevin and Charlie being awesome, some nice sprinkles of batshit episodes, BEST BOY BENNY rocks up in all his glory. Fucking epic season. Only downside it Sam’s character takes a bit of a dive. I’d recommend you watch through all of this season.

Episodes To AVOID:

7x13 - I literally pretend this stupid fucking episode doesn’t exist. Basically Dean impregnates a woman with Super Pregnancy and she has a daughter who becomes an adult within hours and then dies. The end. Everyone hated it. Man fuck this episode. Of course it was written by Buckleming.

Season 9 - Sadly, after how amazing season 8 was, and how spectactularly season 9 was set up, this season is a disappointment. It’s an ok season. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s just a bit all over the place.

I was going to give you the normal episode list to not skip, but looking through, most episodes this season should be watched for one reason or another. Either they’re Cas heavy, they do some interesting character building, or they feature one of the awesome side characters like Charlie or Jody.

This season is probably the height of the war in the writers’ room about destiel. Some writers want to no homo the whole thing and back way off, while other writers want to lean into it hard. So in the same season where SPOILER Cas loses his virginity to a random reaper woman and Dean kicks Cas out of the bunker to fend for himself, you also have Cas’ fatal flaw used as propaganda against him by Metatron being that he’s "in love” with humanity Dean. /SPOILER Whatever you do DON’T SKIP THE FINAL FEW EPISODES. TRUST ME.

Season 10 - Haha oh dear. This season is likely the biggest for wasted potential. You saw the end of season 9, right? You go “HOLY SHIT YES LET’S DO THIS” and then they do... season 10. They really became experts at setting up an awesome season only to fuck it up in delivery, right? Again, not a bad season, per se.

Episodes To AVOID:

9x05 - In which Dean wants to fuck a dog. I am not joking. I wish I were. Basically a spell-gone-wrong makes Dean doglike. it’s weird. it’s batshit. Not the good kind.

Season 11 - Season 11 is a pretty good season! They tried to give Dean a female love interest but Jackles said  ✨No✨ and played Dean as brainwashed and uncomfortable the whole time and I love him for it. Of special note this season is the episode Baby (11x04), which is my favourite episode in the series! It’s funny, it’s heartwarming, it’s weirdly shot. I love it! We also get casifer this season which is awesome! Some episodes are skippable, but they’re generally good episodes.

Episodes NOT to Skip (ignore the 10 year special):

10x01 & 10x02 - Great episodes, Dean in this is *chefs kiss*.

10x04 - *sighs* Fan Fiction. A 200th episode that is simultaneously a love letter to fans and laughing in fans’ faces. I’ve never liked this episode for the second-hand embarressment of it all, but you should watch it and see if you like it.

10x06 - Pretty good episode.

10x07 - Jody AND Donna! Fantastic episode!

10x08 - Dadstiel rears his ugly head. I fucking love how Cas adopts two (2) kids over the course of the series and in both cases Dean eventually goes “ah fuck, I guess I gotta co-parent this thing”. Also we get some KILLER destiel this episode. hey go on a DATE and Cas tells Dean he’s a good person ^_^

10x09 - Good episode. Much destiel.

10x10 - Charlie episode!

10x11 - Teen!Dean! Need I say more?

OK so I just had a look, and you really just need to watch every episode from this point in the season on. Enjoy!

Season 12 - Another example of a TERRRIBLE season, is season 12. Season 12 is also one of the most destiel-heavy seasons in the show. You see the issue? Like, it’s got a stupid plot that makes no sense and has no fucking cohesion, but you also FINALLY have the writers going “fuck it” and all in on the destiel. After this point Dean never has another non-Cas love interest and vice versa, they stop giving us whiplash from baiting and no-homoing. IF the conspiracy theory is true, and the end of the show is shit because of executive meddling, this season is the one where the writers decided they were gonna push for destiel endgame.

I gotta tell you the truth, I skipped this season in my rewatch, so all of my memories are from years ago when it first came out. This seson was the last that I watched live (for a reason). Should you skip it? No. But I’m not well informed enough about this season that I can point out what episodes you should or should not watch.

Season 13 - Congratulations! You’ve reached the point where the show’s gotten consistently good again! (just in time for most of the audience to have already left lol). We start off with SPOILERS Dean mourning Cas like he’s lost the will to fucking live. I’m talking complete despondence, praying for Cas to come back, lashing out in anger at everything, one of the darkest points we’ve ever seen him at on the show, then pulling a 180 and being super happy the second Cas comes back. /SPOILERS They also introduce Jack, who is the SECOND child Cas decides to adopt and Dean ends up co-parenting (Sam too). In fact, Jack is explicity Sam, Cas, and Dean’s kid.

Season 14 - Another good one. My only issue is where they decided to take the plot at the end of the season. I’d recommend watching it all, regardless.

Season 15 - And so we’ve come to the end of the line. This season was... well it was actually pretty good. It started off with what we hellers lovingly refer to as the “divorce arc” where Cas and Dean have a big blow up, and Cas leaves, but that ends with Dean praying on his knees for forgiveness and a nice hug. Honestly this season you can cut the tension between the two of them like a knife, and you can tell Misha and Jensen were doing it deliberately.

I’d say watch up until 15x18, then you decide what to do with the last two episodes. If you want you can watch them to understand just why people put their conspiracy theory hats on, or you can send me another ask and I’ll rec you some post 15x18 finale fics! There’s one fic that’s a replacement for 15x20 written in script format that is particularly good.

Anyway that’s it. It’s kind of left me a little sad, to break down the show in this way. Especially coming up to season 15 nd remembering all the wasted potential. Honestly if you do decide to watch the show, good luck. I hope you enjoy it. I’m also glad you never had to be put through the bullshit false hope that came about after 15x18.

[fanfiction-funtime]

Self insert oc: Alexander Vodka

AKA: Eis Cay'zar

Author of fate

A writer from Schneznaya who was driven from his home for his anti-Tsaritsa paper.

_____________________

Physical description:

A chubby fellow in a 1950's style noir trenchcoat and hat, some would even say he looks like he jumped right out of a noir comic book and into reality. He has brown hair and green eyes, a cowboy mustache, and a pointed beard like some kind of comic book supervillain genius.

He often acts confidently and even a bit egotistical when in places he's recognized and famous in, however in newer places he often seems distant and shys away from almost all contact.

Noone knows where his vision is, but they know he has one because of the cold aura that surrounds him.

At night he'll often trade his outfit for one more reminiscent of demons or vampires.

_____________________

Abilities:

Weapon type: Catalyst

Basic attack-truth: uses his catalyst to shoot a short burst of up to 3 ice shards, can attack in fast succession.

"Truth hurts, especially in bursts"

Charged attack-Bifrost: Alexander quickly makes an ice clone behind the enemy and fires 6 shots, this can increase to 3 clones if charged enough(times: 1 for 1 second, 2 for 2 seconds, and 3 for 2.5 seconds)

"I hate crowds, best company has always been myself"

Elemental ability-ice wall: creates an aura of sheer cold around himself that will damage enemies the more they stay in it, and apply the normal sheer cold to them. Does not affect party.

"My therapist said I put up walls because of trauma, but I couldn't hear them through the wall I had just built"

Elemental burst-a story to be told: Alexander takes out his book and opens to a random page, then randomly summons ice sculptures of one of 8 beings:

"Aster": this summon looks like the flatwoods monster, it surrounds the party in a swirl of ice blades that deal 2X damage as the character for 10 seconds.

"Who needs brawn, when you got brain"

"Ultimate foe": a demonic, pointy being of shadow. Will independently deal 25000 damage to three random foes.

"Meet my penultimate friend"

"Beethoven": a sculpture reminiscent of a ww1 zombie general, calls down a barrage of ice bombs that deal 5000 damage to enemies hit for 7 seconds.

"Good scifi doesn't predict, it prevents"

"Sorrows Joy": an angelic, faceless, robot like humanoid that spawns 25 angel shaped traps that freeze enemies around the character.

"With any luck, you're the only real one I've made"

"Death rider and the magic prince": two statues, one of a mummy like Schneznayan mystic of ancient barbarian times and the other an elven cavalry knight from the myths of mondstadt. The knight gives the party a 45% boost to speed and attack while moving, and the Schneznayan gives +10% damage bonus to elemental skills and +55% damage bonus to Catalyst.

"Feel the wrath of honor long passed"

"Zero point and Lion queen": a knightly man of spiked armor and a golden ottoman warrior woman whose golden chain completely obscures her head. Your enemies become inflicted with pyro and you are surrounded by thorn bushes that deal continuous damage of 1000 for 10 seconds.

"Walk down the way on a moonlit day"

The traveler: a child in a red straight jacket, his binds become undone after 4 seconds at which point all enemies take 10,000 X Alexander's level of damage.

"I uh,wont have to pay any copyrights will I?"

"Giota": a child in pyjamas who looks ready to sleep, this summon is very rare. It fully restores all party members and gives a 200% boost to both defense and damage of your characters.

"This fella's been with me since I was a kid"

"If it is a soldier's duty to escape the confines of a prison, is it not every person's duty to escape reality if even for a moment? A wise man said that, pray that I may one day be like him."

Passive-part the wasteland: Alexander is immune to sheer elements, and Grant's 50% resistance when in the party to all members.

_____________________

Story

Abandoning a dream

As a kid, Alexander was always put down when he said he wanted to write fiction, "there's no money in it" they all said.

He couldn't get into any art schools without support so he focused his mind elsewhere, a place he could hopefully use his writing to do just as much good: the first newspaper in Schneznaya.

Horrible truth

He didn't start as a trouble maker, but the more he sought out the truth the more he couldn't stand back and watch. He published numerous papers about the Tsarista's wrongdoings and the crimes of the fatui, how they would harass merchants in other nations, the unfair taxes many shipping businesses had to keep quiet about, all the way up to the war crimes the Tsarista had done in direct contradiction to her own laws.

Sadly, not many believed him even with evidence, but some got his message.

Those who fight

One day Alexander was approached by a man who claimed to have formed a resistance against the fatui. Alexander had inspired many people to disrupt the organization, and have even begun working with those outside Schneznaya.

With their help he didn't just publish some crimes, he published them all, he even got information that turned the general public against the fatui even if just a little.

In a way h had achieved his dream of helping others with his writing, even if it wasn't how he wanted.

Stop the presses

When the Tsarista started her big move of taking gnosis, she brought the hammer down on dissent like a boulder on a ten year old's wrist. One day a squad of thirty fatui stormed Alexander's home and business to silence him, and while they shut down his business they couldn't catch him.

Alexander fled into the wastelands of ice and snow and wasn't seen for several weeks.

Deus ex Vodka

One day Alexander showed up in Inazuma, a nation that had been oppressed for some time now and had recently reached it's height, yet no resistance had formed.

That was until Alexander came along.

Alexander published numerous books, spreading them throughout Inazuma. All of them spoke of freedom, of bravery, of rising up to achieve your ambitions.

And with those stories he inspired countless to take up arms, and in turn inspired countless to join the resistance.

And with mere fiction he had brought about hope,

And with mere fiction he shall do it again, in every form, and in every nation.

Vision: cold hearted

While wondering the waste Alexander fell down and looked to the skies.

He did not ask celestia why, he did not grieve or blame that he did not do more, instead Alexander did something he hadn't done in a long time:

He imagined.

And after he imagined he took out his notebook and wrote. In the freezing cold for seventeen days he wrote stories of hope and freedom.

For seventeen days the cold did not so much as cause him to flinch as he wrote tales of bravery.

For seventeen days Alexander Vodka lived how he wanted to live.

And at the end, he lied down to die.

Then a light shown, and when he opened his eyes to look he saw that the storm parted around him, and in his hand was an ice blue gem.

But Alexander was too paranoid from years of abuse from his peers as a child to wear it loosely, and far to extra to just get a lock. So instead Alexander shouted to celestia "if I shall have this Vision for my art, then it shall not kill me no matter what I do!"

He then shoved the vision into his heart and fell down.

Before he could bleed out however, a woman appeared.

"Hey Tsari, how ya doin." Alexander said as blood poured out his mouth.

"You dramatic fool," the Tsarista sighed as she put a hand on his chest, "you have my element, do you know how bad it'll look for me if you die by shoving your vision into your heart?"

"Why do you care? We hate eachother, in case you forgot."

The archon sighed, "you're just rebelling against what you see as unjust, just as I am. To be honest I feel a sort of rivalry with you, so it'd be a shame if you just died. Also," she painfully shoved the vision all the way in, painfully, "if your going to die it better be because of me, got it?"

Then Alexander sat up, and the god was gone. Along with the hole in his chest.

"Rival of a god eh?" He sat up, putting his gat back on his head, "I like the sound of that."

_____________________

How is this an insert?

Well his story can't be the exact same as mine, so I took my life and goals and made predictions, then fictionalized those predictions and expanded.

His appearance is pretty close to how I'll likely look based on my current appearance, and his dramatic attitude is exactly how I wanna act.

Him being shy in new places with strangers is me exactly as I am now really, however I do believe I'd act confidently if I were famous so he does as well.

Him being Catalyst is because I'm not athletic at all, and I figured a dps Catalyst would be cool. His main ability and resistance/immunity to sheer cold is based on how I wrap up in warm blankets when it's cold, and his ultimate is made up of characters I've made.

_____________________

Tagging: @genshin-obsessed, @golden-wingseos, @storytravelled, and @love-psxlm

[avengerscompound]

It’s You and Me - Chapter 8

It’s You and Me: A Hawkeye Fanfic

Series Masterlist PREVIOUS //

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing:  Clint Barton x  F!Reader

Word Count:  1724

Rating:  E

Warnings:  Mentions of past abuse

Synopsis: You and Clint Barton go way back.  Since you joined the circus as a child, he took it upon himself to keep you away from the people who really wanted to hurt you.  For years the two of you danced a line between dark and light.

When he chooses light the two of you go your separate ways.

Fifteen years later he tracks you down.  Those feelings the two of you shared never went away, but now he is not only an Avengers but a single father.  Can the two of you make it work after all this time when your lives have gone in such different directions?

A series told in flashbacks and current day.

Chapter 9: Then

“Welcome to the ring, the man who can’t miss - Hawkeye!”

The crowd cheered and Clint cantered his horse out into the ring, he climbed up, so he was standing and waved to the crowd as he did a lap.

“And the girl he can’t seem to hit, Sugar Snap!”

You rode out, first flipping off the front of your horse and then back on again, before bringing your horse up beside his, so the two of you were riding, standing up, side-by-side.  “Ready?”  Clint said.

“Always,” you replied.

You sat back down and spurred the horse on.  As you took the lead on Clint, you collected your bow and an arrow from one of the clowns standing at the side of the ring.  Clint did the same as he passed them and watched as you got into the handstand position on your moving horse.  The crowd went deadly silent as you knocked your arrow with your feet, Clint got into the same position.  You loosed the arrow as you passed the target, hitting it dead center.  The crowd erupted in applause but before it even reached its peak, Clint loosed his arrow with his feet and it hit yours, splitting the shaft right down the middle.

The crowd went berserk.  You and Clint, both vaulted off your horses and landed side by side in the middle of the ring, your arms raised.  You bowed together, first to one side of the crowd and then the other, soaking in the applause.

You were 18 now, and the act was flawless.  The ringmaster always had you opening these days, and it had been a long time since anyone had approached either of you about doing any of their criminal dealings.  There had been an incident a year back where Clint had discovered Jacques with a load of stolen money and when he’d gone to turn the swordsman in, Jacques attempted to kill him.  Clint had ended up with two broken legs, and his brother Barney had left the circus to go to college to get away from everything the circus was not long after that.  He had asked Clint to go with him, but Clint had been so high on this rush of what he could only call fame, that there was no way he could let it go now.

Besides, he had Eden and he knew that if he left the circus it would mean leaving her too and he was not willing to do that.

Some of the clowns brought the rest of the equipment in and Clint put his quiver on his back and grabbed his bow.  The next part of the act was about precision archery, acrobatics, perfect timing, and making sure he selected the correct arrow for each shot.

He turned and aimed an arrow so it looked as if it was aiming at you, but was in fact aiming at a small target stuck to one of the tent poles just next to the audience.  Close enough that they could all see how he hit the target and that it would feel like they were at risk, but not so close that there was in any risk at all.

You ran backward and did a backflip, just as you launched yourself up off the ground, Clint loosed the arrow and it sailed under you, hitting the center of the target with a thud as you landed back on your feet.  You began to run around the outside of the arena, and he loosed arrow after arrow in front of you, and you flipped over each one again and again, to the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ of the crowd while each arrow hit the target perfectly.

When you reached the target board, Clint changed the arrows.  He began to loose them so each hit about a foot apart and a foot higher than the last, forming steps up the board.  You climbed them as they hit, so it appeared as if you were stepping into the air and he was catching you with the arrows.  When you reached the high wire platform above, Clint moved into a different routine.

He hit moving targets, including pinning three small targets that swung down from three different directions and pinning them together with one arrow.  He hit targets while he was flipping from one platform to another.  All the while soaking in the attention from the crowd.  Above him, you were getting into a harness that would only be visible to the keenest of eyes.

When you were secure, you began dropping things on him.  He started by quickly loosing arrows, sometimes three or four at a time, and pinning each item you dropped to a different target around the tent.  Then he switched, dropping his bow and arrow and picking up a sword, as each item fell from above he sliced it in half.

A few of the clowns came out with big trench coats on and carrying umbrellas.  You began dropping water balloons on them and while everyone was distracted, Clint put on his special trenchcoat and hat. It was the one designed for the finale of the routine.  It had a locking mechanism in the arm that allowed him to catch you on the blade of a sword without his arm jerking on impact.

A huge bag of confetti dropped and exploded, queuing the clowns to scatter.  You dropped a few more things down on him, letting Clint use his left arm to slice them in two, to show the crowd that the sword was real and not blunt.

Then you jumped.  You spun in the air, corkscrewing down toward him, he brandished his sword, and when you hit the springboard, you jumped up and flipped.  Clint switched hands and lunged forward, the elbow mechanism locking in place so the flat of the blade was facing up.  You landed on it, sending a shock through his arm.  Everyone clapped and you curtsied while standing on the blade.  Clint moved to grab you in a large over-exaggerated way and you backflipped catching the brim of his hate with your toe and flipping it off his head.  You landed and ran forward, catching the hat on your head.

The crowd erupted, everyone getting to their feet and cheering for you both.  You helped Clint off with his coat and both of you bowed as your horses cantered back into the ring.  You each ran to your horse and vaulted onto it’s back, taking a lap.  Maynard entered the ring with his whip and took his spot on a podium in the middle as the clowns rushed in and cleaned up.  “Let’s hear it again, for Hawkeye and Sugar Snap!’

The crowd applauded more and Clint followed you out of the ring.  “And now, our very own Garden of Eden!”  Maynard called, and Eden ran out past Clint, winking as she passed him.

Clint got off his horse and rolled his shoulders as you approached him.  “I think I need to work on that first jump.  I felt that arrow,” you said.

“You always say that, and I always tell you it’s in your head,” Clint teased.  He walked over to the lip of the curtain and looked out at Eden as she did her contortion act.  You stepped up beside him.

“Just before I came out, Jacques approached her and said something about some art job,” you said.

Clint bristled.  He’d been hearing rumors about an art job for the past few days.  He wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, mostly because he just tried to steer clear of all of that.  There had definitely been a meeting with some art guy and the Ringmaster.  Clint had remembered seeing the bald man with his black turtleneck and rectangular framed glasses talking to Tiboldt about the circus performers coming to some art museum as part of a charity gig.  “She’s probably going to be part of that charity gig.”

You shrugged.  “Yeah, maybe.”

Clint turned and looked at you.  “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing,” you said, though he wasn’t convinced.

Clint had managed to get you to legal age without any more explicit photos being taken, but he knew Jacques still had a habit of sniffing around you.  Barely legal wasn’t as good as illegal, but it would still make him money, and you had other things to offer now.  The ability to parkour was a huge advantage to them, and you were very good with a blade.  Clint knew that while the act was as good as it was, Jacques couldn’t threaten to have you kicked out, but he could offer you things and Clint wasn’t totally sure if you would always say no.  Not if it was something like breaking and entering, and if this was some scam being organized by Tiboldt, then he was the boss, and if he said jump, you jumped.

“Sugar?”  Clint pressed.

You huffed.  “Wanted me to help him break in and help them steal some art.  Said Tiboldt wanted everyone on the job.”

“Sugar!”  Clint yelped.

“I said no!”  You said.  “Who wants a bunch of dusty old paintings anyway?”

“You think he’s trying to recruit Eden?”  Clint asked.

You shrugged again.  “Probably.  Or Tiboldt already has and he was just passing on a message.”

Clint sighed, he wanted to believe that she wouldn’t be involved in anything like that, but love and trust were not things that were linked very strongly for him.  “She wouldn't, would she?”  He asked.

You shrugged again.  “I dunno, Clint.  You know her better than me.  I do know that just about everyone else here would.”

He shook his head and stepped away from the curtain.  “I’m gonna take a shower.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”

You nodded and didn’t say anything.  Just as he moved away he looked back at you.  “Hey… thanks… you know…?  For letting me know.”

You nodded and folded your hands over your chest.  “Anytime, Clint.  You know that.  It’s me and you.”

Clint wasn’t so sure about that.  He’d believed it before about other people who had let him down.  But as he sized you up, he thought maybe of all the people in this circus he was supposed to think of as family, you might be the one that fit the description best.

// NEXT

[mwolf0epsilon]

“Eps’s Notes on The Illusion of Living”

It's taken me nearly three months to get this done due to writer’s block kicking my sorry butt. But, as promised, here are my notes on the "Illusion of Living". Good god has this been painful… But I did have a lot of stuff I initially thought of Joey somewhat confirmed for me, and got a few extra interesting tidbits of info that I feel are very curious...

--{Key}--

Italics are my opinion

--{Key}--

--{Quick retelling of the book’s contents}--

    The Drews were among the more impoverished families in New Jersey, and Joey's father briefly worked in the silk industry to make end's meet before opening his own shoe store (that his mother oversaw profits for as the accountant). As such there were obvious limitations to a lot of Joey’s upbringing (like a lack of toys to entertain him with, and very few family vacations/trips that were memorable).

According to Joey, the shoes sold at his family’s store were primarily designed for people in the working class (clunky shoes and boots that would endure wear and tear rather than be flashy or comfortable to wear, which Joey complained never really fit him right), and had one singular design that was simply improved upon rather than any variety (I suppose the saying here would be “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” but Joey really seemed to have some sort of issue with this, as he disliked his father’s works).

    Joey's mother was a hardworking housewife and the primary parent when it came to rearing her child. She educated and played with him more than his father, so Joey was much fonder and emotionally close to her than to him and, while Joey’s father wasn’t an absent parent by any means, he was definitely more engrossed in working to sustain the family.

This family dynamic definitely had some impact on Joey, especially since his mother got him interested in the art of storytelling in general, and he seemed to have a lot more respect for her than for his father. In fact he even had a few reservations regarding his father’s mental integrity when he discovered his talent for making voices in a rather odd manner.

It should be noted here that, while Joey's father was strong, he looked deceptively frail and wasn't considered a particularly brave man by any means. He was however regarded as a bit of an entrepreneur, and Joey was very concerned that he may not be sane (which was a bit of taboo at the time, considering treatment for mental health issues hadn’t advanced past lobotomies and other disturbing medical malpractices) because he talked and sang to himself in curious little voices while he worked. Curiously enough, while a patient and loving man, Joey's father wasn't aversed to cursing around his young son (although Joey himself doesn't seem to use crass language, even if it was normalized in the household). Another curious thing to note is that Joey greatly dislikes mud, and especially hated it as a child (alluding to his later obsessive cleanliness as an adult).

    Because of the financial issues his family suffered through, Joey didn't have a radio or many books growing up, and was thus more fond of Vaudevilles (specifically theatrical comedy, tragedy, and bizarre/surreal acts) which were pretty common in his city of birth. This interest for theatrics and third person story perspectives mixed terribly with later events in his life, like how at age 10 he witnessed a potential murder/suicide (Jesus christ...). Through this event he realized that there were different kinds of people in specific situations, especially when faced with the finality of death. Joey goes so far as to describe how theatrical the death was (Almost sounding disconnected from the reality of the situation as he noted that the crowd and even his own father seemed more like characters to him than real people). However, since Joey's neighborhood was ripe with strange people, he wasn't unfamiliar with bizarre events happening around him. Seeing a motorized ambulance was more amazing to a 10 year old him than actually caring for the death of a stranger at the front of his father's store.

    At age 12, Joey went to Coney Island for the first time, and the journey excited him greatly since he didn't get to leave home very often. The trip to Coney Island was magical in a sense, and later in life he hoped to replicate it in Bendyland to a more permanent degree (the trip back home ruptured the magical effect, which he didn't want to happen with Bendyland).

Joey has his own set of rules he plays by which he considers his life’s philosophy that he calls "The Illusion of Living". This was inspired by several events in his life, including his father passing the time by playing make believe (the Shoemaker and the Elves). This unique perception of what illusion and reality are (“the same thing”), seems to point to Joey having developed a dissociative personality disorder from a young age, which got progressively worse as he grew older. This in addition with the ADHD patterns he displays in his confusing rambling writing (and Joey rambles a LOT), and the almost OCD behaviour in regards to cleaning up after himself, indicates Joey lacked impulse control and was more prone to listening to intrusive thoughts.

Joey's view of reality was often confusing to others and he greatly enjoyed poking fun out of slowly getting them to his point of view. Conversations with Joey were thus quite frustrating to some, but no less curious to others that actually tried to understand what the “Illusion of Living” was about (Like Nathan). According to Joey, only a few people ever got close to understanding it.

    Joey enlisted to fight in the first war after he lied about his age (He was 15 years old, a year younger than the required age to enlist at the time). Out of all the positions in the army, he seemed most interested in comms, and considered himself more decent in communicating than actually fighting in the front lines.

It seems like Joey greatly enjoyed how he looked in uniform, and was also particularly finicky about his looks in general despite being in boot camp.

He made friends in the army, Private Donaldson and Private Eckhart, which Nathan (who worked at the tech lab that Joey later worked for) attests to being accurately described in the book. They were slightly older than Joey and were also interested in communication tech and shared his sense of humor. They also influenced Joey's social life, and tried to get him to date some gals that he wasn’t remotely interested in (the first indication that he may not be straight).

    Another close friend Joey had in the army was Lottie (a communications officer) and he used to "chaperone" her whenever the four went out to party. He seemed to have a considerable amount of respect for her (which is likely a result of growing up observing his mother, thus understanding that women were competent in positions where other men would scoff at the idea of them working at all). As such he was quite supportive of the War's “Hello Girls” (comms female officers). Interestingly enough this contradicts Joey's sexist persona that he seems to take on in Dream Come to Life (a mask that seems to be among many others he employs to fit in with the rest of society).

Lottie was his special gal pal in the platonic sense and, while he often ate alone to be left with his thoughts, she usually sought him out to talk to.

Joey only ever empathized with people he was close to, often reserving telling stories to comfort his friends specifically. It was the only way he could brighten their day (which later supposedly helped a disillusioned Lottie when she was sent to serve in London). What one could take away from Joey’s days as a soldier was that he was incredibly perceptive in terms of studying people. He easily recognized people’s handwriting, and was greatly fascinated by others’s personalities.

He could also easily charm people just from reading into what they might be interested in, and liked the thought of subliminally impressing others (which he later incorporated into his cartoons). It’s never mentioned, but Joey was likely honorably discharged since the war ended in 1918 and didn’t need to return to the service of the military when the second world war hit (keeping in mind Joey appears to have mobility issues later in life, he might have not been fit for field duty).

    At age 19 Joey ended up involved in investigating the murder case of Walter Richmond, a signal corps soldier Joey met briefly in his service days. The victim in question was responsible for documenting the war efforts, not being necessarily that great of a photographer, but taking a certain amount of pleasure in capturing the most viscerally gruesome pictures possible for shock value. How Joey got involved was a curious thing in of itself, since he didn’t know the victim all that well, nor cared to get to know him. Detective Adam Sinclair (a tall hulking man wearing the typical trenchcoat and fedora combo, who’s most noticeable features were his aged face and unshaven 5’o’clock shadow) tracked him down to his little minimalistic (and obsessively clean and tidy) apartment to question him. Joey was initially unsurprised that an ex-soldier ended up dead (not from the war, but likely ptsd), and was instead surprised that it was a murder case. He ended up inserting himself into the case as Sinclair’s shadow to help solve it. The reason was mostly out of self-interest, but his perspective did seem useful to the detective in the end. Throughout the investigation Joey displayed a few particular traits that indicate his attentive and peculiar nature, such as the way he reads others (their way of dressing and upkeep of posture), the manner of which he judges a good handshake, his distaste for smoking (which was taught to him via the idea that if something smells bad it’s usually bad for you) and drinking (he tries to be careful with alcohol intake in general, as he’s more accustomed to beer than drinks like champagne which one could over-indulge recklessly without noticing). Joey’s fascination for taboo subjects (war, violence, and death specifically) is also noted when he observes the victim’s photographic works.

This is a prevalent theme in an art gallery event where these particular subjects seemed to linger strongly in his mind, to the point where he noticed when one of the photos he recalls having seen before during his brief meeting with Richmond, appeared to be missing from the display. A detail that appeared to be dismissed by others, but of great interest to Sinclair.

    During this same gallery event, there was an incident set up by the murderer that involved a firecracker and a crowbar that set off a lot of panic. Joey’s work at the signal corps labs saved him from the brutality of the trenches, but he's apparently familiar with the effects of severe PTSD (And ironically notes that reliving the same painful event over and over again is his definition of true horror/personal hell).

It became very apparent to both Joey and Sinclair that the murderer was amongst them, and that this onslaught of panic was a message: That the murder of the frontline photographer was personal.

They did in fact come into contact with the perpetrator and, after a while of radio silence between Joey and Sinclair, the case was solved with...Minimal success. While Sinclair knew who killed Walter Richmond, he unfortunatelly did not have enough proof to convict her (the sister of a casualty of war that could have easily been saved, had Richmond not left him for dead because it fit his narrative of the war just fine), thus allowing her to get away with literal murder. Worse yet, the resolution of the case seemed to further disconnect Joey from reality and consequence. He gained a disdain for Adam Sinclair where once he’d respected him as an authority figure of sorts, finding that he’d accomplished his role and still failed miserably. In the end, the only thing to come out of teaming up with Sinclair was learning a social skill that Joey employed later on, by mirroring back certain aspects of a person so they’d be more comfortable around him. Otherwise the detective became nothing more than a distant memory. Unimportant in Joey’s later narrative.

    Two years later, Joey started working for a bookstore where he began satiating his vast hunger for knowledge, now that he had access to all sorts of books he could never afford as a child. Joey is fairly well read with an interest in various genres, although it was previously noted that during his army service people made fun of him for especially liking fictional novels. Joey being Joey however, wasn’t overly fussed about others’s opinions on what he sought enjoyment from, especially when it came to storytelling. Aside from getting his reading quota filled out, his bookstore job also helped him develop his salesperson skills through reading his customers. Through his experiences with his father’s shop and shadowing Sinclair, he had by now understood that people were highly superficial, and that he could apply whatever knowledge he gathered from them into how he sold his pitch to them. His charisma seemed to lure in customers.

    While working at the store he met Abby Lambert who he immediately noticed had an eye for art. Joey quickly became friends with her and seemed to greatly appreciate her no-nonsense attitude towards life in general, going so far as to respect her capabilities as a working lady where other men would be disdained with her difficult attitude. In fact, he wondered why anyone wouldn’t hire her to do a job she could clearly handle, just because she was a woman (again contradicting his sexist persona). As a connoisseur of the arts, Abby was the one to fully introduce Joey to her favourite craft. He especially took an interest in Impressionism and its influences.

Abby also supposedly introduced Henry to Joey, which the latter insists wasn’t really that remarkable of an event since Henry was “unimaginative” and “lacking in talent” due to his specialty in cartoon caricatures, and not the richer awe inspiring paintings Joey seemed to prefer (basically Joey spends any given time in the book trying to make Henry seem as insignificant as possible out of pure unadulterated pettiness, which physically pains me).

Ironically, in terms of entertainment, Joey later favoured cartoons as the more appealing form of films since most other mediums didn’t really spark his interest, even if the genres were ones he found fascinating (I suppose that despite films being works of fiction most times, Joey likely thought real life actors were far too limited in their acts due to the natural limitations of the human body).

Returning to Abby, her friendship seemed to be more impactful to Joey than most others. Like with how he preferred his mother’s company to his father’s, Abby seemed to be one of few people he actually felt comfortable around, to the point where her criticism didn’t bother him. She was also mindful of him, where she could recognize Joey’s “preferences” and made it a point to clarify to him that their outings were purely platonic so he wouldn’t get uncomfortable in those situations.

    Three years after meeting Abby and Henry, Joey became a manager at the bookstore and Henry began working there as well (by Joey’s suggestion it seems), and only then did they sort of start developing a meek little friendship of sorts (although Joey seems very dismissive about it and focuses primarily on Abby).

During that time, the idea to start his own business came about from two different events that happened that year. The first being his first ever theatrical script that he wrote and performed with Abby at a gallery event. During the performance of this little play (the theme of which was an angel and a demon discussing their role in influencing a mortal’s life), Joey discovered that he greatly enjoyed controlling situations and got way too into it (even considers what he could get away with in the name of entertainment, such as if he could act out actual violent or scandalous behaviours if he proclaimed it a part of the show).

The second event was his father sending him shoes once a year (which, because Joey disliked the make of his father’s shoes, he tried to get him to stop by pretending they weren’t arriving at his address or that they were getting stolen). As a means to ensure he got them, Joey's father started sending the packages to the bookstore. A doodle and writing on the package ended up inspiring Joey to create his own studio as he wanted to take flight in the entertainment industry.

    Having thus decided that he wanted to open up a film studio of some kind, Joey immediately set off to get himself a memorable mascot. He had a vague idea of what he needed and what might be appealing to an audience, but he wasn’t particularly skilled in character design and openly admitted to this. Abby, who was also not particularly good at drawing cartoons, understood that her more realistic style wouldn’t really help (or appeal to) Joey, so she enlisted Henry’s help. Knowing that Joey was a bit picky in regards to how he evaluated art, she thought perhaps she could persuade him to take a liking to Henry’s works (which he wasn’t particularly fond of, due to Henry mostly working with pen-drawings of cartoon characters and caricatures that looked very unremarkable to him) if he could only see him actually work his “magic”. Joey was reluctant to bring Henry into his business plan, but upon actually reaching a design within a few minutes (that took a few tries experimenting with animal and human features in more detailed and then simplified ways) of Joey giving some directions, he seemed to be sold on bringing Henry on board.

Henry designing the company mascot was thus the final push to open up Joey Drew Studios.

The two began their partnership not too long after, and from then on out things got interesting very quickly.

    The history behind the studio is...Not an easy one to validate in terms of whether or not Joey is sincere or even really knows certain dates (the more I look into the beginning of the book and the later exposition of information, the more I realized either Joey was starting to trip himself up on dates or his memory was visibly failing him). There are a lot of discrepancies in the dates provided, with some going back on how long Henry remained in the studio (even claiming to have at some point surrounded him with other animators and even a lead artist a year prior to his departure), when Sammy and Jack were hired (He says he hired Sammy in 1929 during the Wallstreet Crash, but later says he hired both him and Jack after the Wallstreet Crash), among other things... Joey Drew Studios was primarily funded by Mrs. Richmond (the mother of Walter Richmond), as Joey had forged friendships with the people involved in the case he’d helped Sinclair investigate (including the murderer whom he had grown to respect).

While other investors aren’t really brought up, it’s implied Nathan also had a hand in helping the studio taking off, as Joey often met up with him at the Russian Tearoom whenever he could. During these private meetings, Nathan would impart advice on Joey. Advice which he seemed to not care for, as he already had his own concerns at the time.

It seemed that his main plan was to acquire a talented and capable team to achieve his dream. A team Joey thought he wouldn’t need to "baby-sit", as he specifically wanted to hire individuals that were as studious and capable as he saw himself (curiously Joey mentions that Henry’s work ethic was exactly what he wanted, as Henry had never held work back or needed to be checked up on, which to Joey was an invaluable attribute).

For at least two years, the Bendy Cartoons were nothing but silence and sound effects (something we actually see in-game in BatIM Chapter One when the projector suddenly turns on and we hear nothing but the clicking of the projector and Joey’s whistling), which put them at a bit of a disadvantage when it came to competing with other animation studios.

This soon changed when Joey came across Sammy Lawrence and Jack Fain at a party he was attending on his 30th birthday (which he wasn’t celebrating, the party was a completely different event so supposedly Joey doesn’t care much for his own birthday).

He was already familiar with Sammy’s musical skills (mostly playing the piano quite masterfully), as he’d seen him perform at the theater when Sammy was still a teenager. Noticing him and Jack at the party was entirely accidental and was mostly due to the fact that, while Sammy was trying to keep out of the spotlight as he played, Jack’s showmanship shone through and caught Joey’s eye with how boisterous he was in their musical performance.

Joey approached them once their act was done and managed to convince them to work for him. Jack seemed to be immediately on board, while Sammy was a little more guarded in his agreement and immediately set up his stipulations for the job. This seemed to lean Joey’s interest towards Sammy (who Joey was unhealthily fascinated with because he was clearly not an easy man to control) more than Jack (who he likely considered too easy a read in terms of character, thus not much of a challenge to sway or condition).

     By 1933 Joey officially bought the entire building the studio was set up in (which up until then was occupied by other people seeking their own ventures). Expansion and new hires likely started a year or so later and continued on despite financial instability, and between 1941 and 1942 Joey was already starting to work out how he’d get Bendyland to be just as perfect and spectacular as he had always envisioned (which was difficult because he never really got it to feel just right in his eyes, and something felt off to him).

In between listing several different projects, vaguely describing an innovative techniques (Sillyvision which seems to be linked with the Golden Ink?), and even setting up his own 7 rules on how to animate to help set up a guide for aspiring animators, Joey slowly drifts away from the studio topic and finalizes his book rather abruptly.

He insinuates there’s a lot more for him to tell but little to no connection with the “Illusion of Living” philosophy and he’d rather focus on his actual physical work with the Studio than sit down and write further, so he finishes off on a rather...Vague note.

--{On Joey Drew}--

Year of Birth - 1901 (Day and month are never mentioned, but it's possible that his favouring of the autumnal season alludes to a fall month) Year of Death - ??? (Supposedly he's died, hence why Nathan claimed the Bendy IP) Birth City: Born and raised in Paterson "Silk City", New Jersey (Joey doesn't seem to have an accent, so he likely masks it, or made an effort to lose it). Physical Characteristics: As a child he used to have curly hair (Considering the era’s general fashion and style, it’s very likely that Joey either cut his hair too short to see the curls, or simply uses too much gel to seem more presentable) Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Homosexual with Demiromantic subtones (Joey seems to be closed off in general, but more appreciative of the male figure. Could be interpreted as demisexual however, since Joey himself doesn't seem to like wasting time around people he doesn't have much of a bond with) Notes: Here are several notes I’ve compiled about Joey and his opinions on certain things and people. There’s a lot to look at as this man rambles like an old lady at a friday night bingo event, and thus I had a lot to take in!

Laughter is important to him.

Seems to be a dog person.

Likes Cheerios (yes this was a super necessary detail I had to jot down).

Considers having his ideas disclosed without permission to be disloyal.

Seems to have some sort of dissociative personality disorder (likely brought on by trauma or another undiagnosed mental disorder).

People-Watcher by nature.

Was taught by his father that the shoe makes the man (aka the art of studying people through their shoes).

Joey believes in the saying "The Truth is in the Pudding", a saying his mother often employed.

Never had enough money to own a pair of nice fitting shoes until he was 26.

Is narcissistically vain. Easily takes insult if people assume he can't look presentable.

His service in the army gave him experience with "experimental tech".

Enjoys music a lot, and he was considered a great dancer.

Finds modern feminine fashion standards appealing.

Disliked the way those with money romanticized lacking material gains. Found it personally disrespectful in a way, since he himself came from a poor family.

Seems appalled by too much color on one's wear (Joey is the goddamn fashion police).

Very picky about the arts.

Apparently disliked Henry's art style(???).

Lets people believe Henry is the creator of the toons, in an act of being holier than thou. (You lying son of a gun, stop lying to everyone and yourself whaddahell).

Joey's analogy of Henry starting a journey but Joey being the one to reap the benefits, is likely the truest thing he's said in this nightmare of a novel (boastful bastard...).

Thinks of Bendy as his firstborn, muse and messenger.

Took an art class with Abby (likely not a full art course, just a simple class to get the gist of it?).

Considers art the doorway to immortality.

Doesn't like post-mortem success (it frightens him, even). He'd rather be successful in his lifetime.

Admits to making mistakes, but not many. He also thinks mistakes don't need to be permanent.

Doesn't know what true rest is like, and is unsure if he'll ever be content enough to rest. On that same note he seems to really hate sitting still and his mind tends to wander, which he notes Nathan recognized with ease, even reserving a specific look for him (It’s the ADHD baby).

His friend Kyle was a lazy person and a gossip, which were traits Joey found annoying.

On their first meeting, Joey described having a desire to shove Sammy off a roof to see a more human reaction from him.

Assumes Jack is jealous of the attention he gives Sammy, or that the duo's relationship is strained, despite him barging into their lives out of the blue and making him feel like a third wheel.

Seems to think of himself as some sort of a messenger (going so far as to akin himself to the god, Mercury). His life’s mission is to help those who don't know they need to be helped (mostly through spreading happiness and laughter in such a dark and dreary era of human history). Bendyland is essentially Joey's means to fulfil this desire, as well as to chase his own need for a properly realized mixture of immersion and illusion.

He wanted Bendyland to be perfect, even the plot of land it might be built in needed to be perfect, so he inspected it himself with Nathan once he bought the deed.

Appears to refuse to call Bertrum by his proper name once he’s corrected the first time. Referring to him instead as either Bertie or Bert (toying with him perhaps? Testing boundaries?)

Doesn't drive. He instead hired a personal driver, Simmons.

For a little while he was living the American Dream, but thought of how he lived as less of a shared goal and more of a personal one (again setting himself apart from others).

His days were quite flexible and he seemed to despise set routines. He also doesn't like sleeping in. He liked to take a walk in central park early in the morning.

Joey used to make his rounds around the studio but the installation of the Ink Machine changed that habit a bit.

Nonchalantly notes that Shawn Flynn got a little defensive if he needed to be corrected on his work (OCD much, Joey? He was painting a lot of dolls by hand, slipups happen...).

He had priority meetings with Sammy, "meetings" with Jack (Sir what are these quotation marks for, are you snogging Jack while no one’s watching???), then met with the art department preceding the writing department, and finally he met with Grant Cohen in accounting to discuss finances and budget.

He had the final say in ALL paperwork regarding studio affairs.

Upon reading about it, found the concept of bringing in real animals to produce Disney's Bambi as funny, and joked about how trying to do so with Bendy and Boris would be chaotic.

Noted that Abby and Sammy were likely the only two people who closely understand the philosophy of the illusion of living, but not quite…

Was terrified of being misunderstood. Joey didn’t want to only be able to show half-truths, like a mirror reflecting the world darkly. Rather ironic considering he was quite deceitful in his adult life.

His desire for the world to love Bendy seems to be a projection of wanting to feel loved himself (quite honestly if one were to apply the theory of the id, ego and superego, it seems to me that Bendy is essentially Joey’s id, while Joey himself could be considered the Superego. The chameleonic social mask he wears is thus the ego. At the end of the day Bendy and Joey are and aren’t the same entity...).

Originally he didn't want to make a memoir (likely because he can't be direct and needs to work around the truth to fit him). It could also be that Joey didn’t want to linger on the past nor in death. He wasn't sure where it fit with his philosophy and thus tried not to explore too deep into it (existential dread?).

He wore custom tailored suits, and as of beginning writing TioL he had recently taken to wearing cravats (ever the vain man I suppose…).

Despite considering revisiting the past unnecessary, he couldn’t deny doing so if the time called for it. In fact, the Archives are Joey's memories of the past and he's sentimental enough to collect mementos of bygone eras.

Joey has trophies at home, the deeply personal things he couldn’t bare part with. Like the first sketch of Bendy, a napkin with the design of Bendyland, a letter from Henry, a ticket from a Vaudeville show, and his set of shoes he wore when he was surveying the plot of land where he planned to build Bendyland.

--{On Bendy}--

Notes: Here are a few notes I’ve compiled about the Little Devil Darling himself, and a few curiosities about his creation and the inspiration behind his character.

Bendy was officially created in 1928. According to Joey he was born of a dream, supposedly out of necessity, and he always had this idea of a little devil character doing mischief.

Bendy started off as a realistic little boy with a tail and horns (Abby’s attempt to bring to life Joey’s vague idea). Then, when Henry got involved, he became a cartoonish goat creature. The concepts were quickly worked out from a toony clothed amalgamation of both previous concepts, to a more intermediate design more closely resembling Bendy, and then finally, after Joey requested a simpler more shapely and less detailed toon, Bendy became the iconic  little imp clad in only gloves and bowtie.

Joey named him upon seeing the completed design. There are two origins for his name: That of Walter Benjamin Richmond, who’s nickname in life was “Bendy” (a rather morbid homage considering what happened to him), and the mere fact that in Joey’s eyes, his little cartoon imp “bent all the rules”. Henry seemed to appreciate the name.

Bendy is meant to be the devil on one’s shoulders, much like the devil in Joey’s first theatrical play. He is however, a lot more like a little kid playing pranks on people. He is also a sort of embodiment of both the population and human morality (society at its most flawed point, but also quite relatable).

Buster Keaton was an inspiration for Bendy’s many shenanigans and movements, which were always meant to be fluid and a bit bouncy.

--{On Henry Stein}--

Year of Birth - ??? (It’s never mentioned how old Henry is, but I assume he’s around the same age group as Abby, since they were friends and likely went to the same art course. It’s likely that he’s younger than Joey, but not likely by much.) Year of Death - 1963 (It’s not really confirmed if Henry died when he was put into the Cycle, as he doesn’t seem to notice anything odd about himself, but it’s safe to assume the process very likely involves human sacrifice). Birth City: ??? (Unknown, it could be that he was born and raised in New York but Henry lacks a noticeable accent) Physical Characteristics: Average looking? (Irrelevant, he could honestly look like anyone really...) Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Presumably Heterosexual (He’s a married man in the 1930s-1960s, he’s either straight or hiding his sexuality, he seems to really like Linda however so could go either way really...) Notes: Here the few notes I could gather of the Henry info we got from TioL. It’s not much but its at least something to work with!

Henry is unremarkable appearance wise (to the point Joey forgot his face easily at first).

The way Henry dressed (mismatched and ill-fitted) indicates he likely grew up in poverty and likely only had hand-me-downs.

He mostly worked with pen-drawn cartoon character designs that were unremarkable but distinctly caricature-like (the Butcher Gang concepts were likely displayed in the gallery Joey attended, as noted by a comment he makes about them). Even if Joey apparently didn’t particularly like his style, Henry’s artwork was one of the final inspirations for the creation of Joey Drew Studios.

He is described as able to draw quite fast, great at taking directions, and as being a good animator. Overall Henry never really had any real need for someone to keep an eye on him which made him an exemplary worker.

According to Joey, Henry used to give pep-talks before he left the studio. This seemed to annoy Joey considerably for some reason (perhaps he was envious that Henry was generally a more likeable person).

Henry is remembered as forgettable, whereas Joey is flashier and more memorable.

Interestingly enough, Henry never claimed to own the design of Bendy, and was more interested in being business partners with Joey than starting a fuss about who owned the rights to Bendy’s creation (It’s very likely that he willingly gave Joey the design because Bendy was his character, and that instead the designs Joey did steal were that of Boris the Wolf, Alice Angel, and the Butcher Gang, the five other more notorious characters in the Bendy franchise).

--{On Abby Lambert}--

Year of Birth - ??? (It’s never mentioned how old Abby is, but I assume she’s around the same age group as Henry, since they were friends and likely went to the same art course. It’s likely that she’s younger than Joey, but not likely by much.) Year of Death - Possibly 1946 (Upon finally losing himself to the ink, Sammy seemed to have been actively hunting the Art Department and any stragglers that he encountered in the studio, so it can be assumed she died in the chaos) Birth City: ??? (Unknown but more likely to be born and raised in New York than Henry) Physical Characteristics: Frizzy hair, even when bobbed. Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Potentially Bisexual (She seemed to be acutely aware of Joey’s “peculiarities” so it’s possible she’s either a member of the LGBTQ community or perhaps an ally. Whatever the case it’s up for debate and interpretation.) Notes: Here are several notes I’ve compiled about Abby and some of her traits and mannerisms. There was surprisingly a lot more to work with than I expected.

She wasn’t really into the typical female fashion of the time. In fact, Abby wasn’t exactly fond of the typical mannerisms associated with women and was both notoriously rude and dressed herself in a “scandalously” modern manner (which is basically code for more practical less femenine clothing).

According to Joey, Abby is a very focused and determined person, which is why he admired her greatly. She didn’t know when to quit, however, and sometimes took things too far or involved others in situations or projects they didn’t want to be involved in.

She wasn’t very good at drawing original cartoon characters, and Joey was apparently not overly fond of her attempts at putting his ideas to paper due to her more realistic art style.

Abby was very insistent on Joey looking at Henry's works, even if he wasn't particularly interested in them (While it’s never said if she enjoys his art herself, it can be assumed she appreciates it enough that she’d want their mutual friend to see the potential Henry had).

She didn’t join the studio as the replacement Director of the Art Department until 1931, as during its founding she was still finishing art school. She and Henry never worked together. Despite this, she and Henry remained in touch even after he left for Pasadena.

--{On Sammy Lawrence}--

Year of Birth - ??? (From how Joey describes him, it can be assume Sammy was a teenager around either Joey’s early or late 20s before they officially met on Joey’s 30th birthday) Year of Death - 1946? (Sammy is one of few people who was turned without being killed first so it’s hard to tell if he’s really dead even within the Cycle since it’s a time loop...) Birth City: ??? (Sammy lacks a noticeable accent so it’s hard to tell where he’s from). Physical Characteristics: Has been described as bird-like and insect-like, with either brown or blond hair that’s kept longer than the typical fashion of the time (Not much more is known about his actual appearance but it can be assumed he’s either average sized or on the tall side considering his in-game height and build) Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Potentially Biromantic with a lot of Demiromantic subtones. Possibly Asexual? (Again this is pure speculation on my part because he did seem interested in Susie but isn’t really a people person in general. Does seem to know how to reign in people tho, so ???) Notes: Here are a few curious notes I’ve compiled about Sammy, the circumstances behind his hiring, and how much control he actually had as the music director.

He has an unusual appearance that, while not necessarily described as ugly, was clearly outstanding enough that some people were put off (Buddy) and others thought him handsome (Susie). His hair is also described as messy.

Sammy is an avid smoker.

He was among a few other musicians employed by the theater to drown out projector sounds and match the mood in silent films. Because he was good at improvising music on the spot, Sammy was excellent at carrying the story presented on screen through his melodies, which was what caught Joey’s eye when he first saw Sammy perform.

Sammy also recognized Joey and didn’t believe his dismissal that he was a “town person”. In fact, Sammy pinpointed the recognition to the fact Joey was that one loner that sat in the front row of the theater he played at.

It becomes very apparent that Sammy is suspicious of people in general. The way he observes others indicates he’s had some sort of struggle growing up. As such, he’s not big on sustaining conversations and he managed to aggravate Joey slightly by the way he addressed him on their first proper meeting.

Sammy had a songbook he shared with Jack, meaning they had a strong trust bond, which is why he only agrees to work for Joey based on Jack’s willingness to also be hired. Even so, he immediately set up professional boundaries for his position. He hired his own people without Joey’s interference, and he only ever indulged him if Joey was being particularly exasperating.

It’s very likely that since Sammy was the one hiring who worked for the music department, that he was the one who hired Norman Polk. This theory is made stronger by the fact he immediately demanded a projector and projectionist booth so he could better do his job.

Despite his surly disposition, Sammy is a no nonsense sort who wants things done and over with, rather than sit around and stall. As such Joey considered him one of the best decisions he made in terms of career.

Funnily enough, because the band seemed to be skittish around Joey, Sammy specifically prohibited his presence in the music department unless they had a scheduled meeting. This likely meant Joey was scarcely ever seen in the music department so as to not aggravate Sammy in person.

Alice Angel’s bigger (and failed) presence in the franchise is likely a consequence of another one of Sammy’s stipulations upon being hired. He had immediately noted that if the studio wanted to go anywhere, they’d need a female character (Perhaps Sammy really believed what he told Susie due to despising Bendy and actually favouring Alice as a character).

--{On Jack Fain}--

Year of Birth - ??? (Possibly around the same age as Sammy or a little older?) Year of Death - ??? (He was gone long before a few other people in the studio, likely in the first few experiments Joey performed) Birth City: ??? (Hard to tell, he doesn’t have an easily identifiable accent). Physical Characteristics: Has been described as an atrocious dresser (This man likes wearing bright colors!) Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Potentially Homosexual subtones (Not enough information provided to tell) Notes: Sadly lacking in the information department for Jack.

Jack is incredibly sociable and trusts easily. He's described as making bad jokes but laughing genuinely at them. His smiles are contagious.

Jack is an optimist sort who sees the good in any situation (even when being led around in a dark creepy room by a peculiar stranger).

--{On Bertrum Piedmont}--

Year of Birth - ??? (He was retired, so it’s likely he was around his 60s or early 70s when Joey first met him) Year of Death - ??? (It’s unknown when exactly he ended up in the Ink Machine but it’s very possible he was killed when all hell broke loose in the studio) Birth City: ??? (No clue). Physical Characteristics: Joey describes him (rather rudely) as a very portly man. Sexual/Romantic Preferences: ??? (No idea, chief...) Notes: Lacking in the information department like Jack, but what we get is a lot more substantial.

Bertrum was actually retired when Joey managed to get a hold of him. It took a bit of detective work on Mrs. Rodriguez's (Joey's secretary) part to actually find him as well, so he was not an easy man to get an appointment with.

His creative vision impressed Joey enough that the latter he ignored his apparent dislike for reminiscing so as to get him on board of the Bendyland project.

While discussing the Bendyland Project, Bertrum confidently jokes about it being quite the catch. He agrees to joining forces with Joey as long as he gets full creative control of the entire project. Although Joey agreed to this, he still managed to fight Bertrum on a few ideas, which annoyed him greatly.

It’s very likely that it didn’t take long for their initially friendly relationship to sour into open hostility on Bertrum’s part.

--{On Wally Franks}--

Year of Birth - ??? (No clue, but he was very likely in his late teens or early adult years when he was first hired as the studio Janitor) Year of Death - Supposedly still alive (I really do hope he got outta there like the letter insinuates...) Birth City: Brooklyn, New York. Physical Characteristics: ??? (All we know is he likely wears overalls and a sport’s cap) Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Possibly Heterosexual (Unless the letter is a forgery, he apparently has a wife, kids and grandkids) Notes: I’ll admit I didn’t expect to get Wally lore, but here we are!

Wally's actually quite skilled with maintenance. He can tinker with the projectors, other machinery and even plumbing. His schedule is a little off however, but Joey turns a blind eye to it because he gets the job done without question.

--{On Allison Pendle}--

Year of Birth - ??? (No idea! But she was relatively well known when she was hired!) Year of Death - ??? (She was likely lured back to the studio after everything went down but before Henry) Birth City: ??? Physical Characteristics: She’s a beautiful tall blonde according to DCTL Sexual/Romantic Preferences: ??? (She and Thomas are married but I honestly have no clue how to feel about her, she’s a mystery to me.) Notes: Extra minimal Allison lore for your Allison Pendle lore needs.

She was a famous Broadway actress before joining the studio. Interestingly enough, Joey was the one to hire her to replace Susie, not only breaking Sammy’s stipulation on the matter but also stirring Susie into becoming resentful towards Sammy and actually trying to recover her former role at all costs (even her own life).

--{On Nathan Arch}--

Year of Birth - ??? (He was likely a little older than Joey since they were in the army at the same time but Joey lied about his age to enlist earlier) Year of Death - N/A (Still alive and kicking) Birth City: ??? Physical Characteristics: ??? (I guess Boswell Lotsabucks is sorta modeled after him so go off on that???) Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Heterosexual (He has a wife and son and doesn’t give me any other vibes besides and overall instinctual distrust) Notes: Oh boy...I do NOT trust this man...

Immediately upon beginning reading TioL you get the impression that Nathan is not only trying to appear friendly and trustworthy by referring to himself as Nate A, but also that he’s trying to cover for Joey and make him appear more personable to the reader. But to what gain exactly?

Nathan is, like Joey, very narcissistically vain, and is also writing a book of his own (an autobiography maybe?)

He’s a smoker and prefers cigars.

When Joey discusses his childhood, Nathan is unable to contradict or confirm anything as he noted that Joey was always very private about his origins.

Nathan seemed truly surprised and impressed with Joey’s ability to make up uncannily believable stories, even suspecting that his accounts of “Lottie” might have been false as he couldn’t find any of the supposed letters Joey sent her when he started working on republishing TioL (it’s likely he could see that Joey often lied to himself just as much as he lied to others).

It seemed to Nathan that Joey was rather oblivious of subtle compliments.

By the manner of which Nathan phrases it, he seems to think of Joey as a professional and kind man, capable of seeing the good in others. That said, Nathan remarks that Henry's departure was a great betrayal for his friend, and that the latter shouldn't have been so "gracious" and "forgiving" towards him…

When the studio began to struggle financially, Nathan worried that Joey might not be aware of the issue at all, or that perhaps he was lying to himself to cope. He also later notes that Joey’s memories seemed to have deteriorated in his old age. He was often mixing up information and seemed rather guilty, which Nathan considering to be very unbecoming of the man he knew Joey to be.

A lot of the deeply philosophical Joey and Nathan interactions seen in the book might actually have occured between Joey and Henry (the "I think therefore I am" conversation is an especially telling one for me), hence why Nathan doesn't recall them. It also seems more likely because they contradict the way Joey portrays Nathan, but seem to fit his portrayal of Henry better.