#i think magnus would pretend like its no big deal but it Clearly is

[booksandmore]

thinking about this again… it’s the wrongness of the situation, i think, that really gets me. i genuinely cannot imagine this ever going well, nor can i imagine alec ever being happy with someone else, and that is so sweet and so tragic at the same time

i really would not change a single thing about the malec plotline (breakup and all) but sometimes i really do wish we got to see alec date at least one other person yk? and i dont mean that in a pre-cog focing himself to date a woman to hide his sexuality way, i mean in a post-breakup rebound/fling kinda way like i just know the drama would be legendary

[wookieewrites]

“Isolation policy? What do you even mean by that?” Andrew had the uncomfortable sensation that he’d slowly come to realise was the universal translator they’d given him trying to mimic nonverbal communication.

“Humans, you are a complicated species. We have watched that you are possessed of the capacity for great compassion, resourcefulness and wonder. But you are also prone to violence, distrust, and mass hysteria. Despite many opportunities to become unified and work for the betterment of all of you, you have instead continued to fracture and act selfishly.”

The being, which was had enough recognizable human features that it was only on the up slope of the uncanny valley, was interrupted by its partner. Andrew got the impression of an awkward interruption, like the second was trying to let him know that the first wasn’t being entirely honest. Unfortunately names were not something that either of these two had chosen to share with him.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“Everything I said was true, I promise! It’s just, well, there were some other pretty major deciding factors in continuing to let humanity go mostly uncontacted.”

“Mostly?”

“There were some awkward early encounters, and occasionally you figure something out well before we were expecting and intercept signals you weren’t supposed to.”

“Right, anal probing?”

“Don’t focus on that, your species’ hyperfixating on one scientific survey that was unauthorized by the way, well, it’s annoying. We’re not running around ‘probing’ you all the time.”

“You’re still trying to avoid the important part,” its partner said sternly. He thought. The tone thing was not particularly well conveyed, though they seemed to understand his quite clearly.

“Fine! Fine. It’s media, the votes against contacting you happened because of human media.”

“Like, newspapers?”

“On occasion. Mostly the parody ones. Humanity produces the finest, most broadly appreciated entertainment media in the known universe. Various human productions of all kinds are beamed incomprehensible distances, many have localisations numbering in the billions. We have consumed your Jersey Shore, your Breaking Bad, your Hamlet, your Neighbours, your Magnus Archives. Any disruption to the production of human media could destroy the economies of entire galaxies. In fact, that one year that most of your media paused while much of your world battled a virus was the cause of great concern to many. It is the closest that we have ever come to revealing ourselves to you, but ultimately we decided to provide you with vaccines beyond your capability and hope that we could avoid the disruption that first contact would inevitably result in.”

“That’s… a lot to take in, if I’m honest.”

“Don’t waste too much time on it, we’ll like have to wipe your memories if you go back anyway.”

“Personally I’m a big fan of how we were portrayed in Annihilation, very cerebral. It’s not a common kind of lifeform, the one described, and honestly they’re way more annoying to deal with than carbon-based life like you and my partner.”

“You’re not carbon-based?”

“Silicone all the way. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m a highly advanced human robot from one of your sci-fis. I think that would be a fun thing to be.”

[suttttton]

Elias Bouchard vs. Destiny

Febuwhump, Day 4 (alternate): Identity Reveal

***

Working at the Magnus Institute is… surprisingly normal.

At best, Elias expects to see his own terror reflected in his coworkers’ eyes. At worst, he fears they will all be like Wright, their eyes cold and monstrous and hungry. He expects to be brought into a world of darkness, to face true monsters that ordinary people never imagined existed.

Were you drawn here? Against your will?—

Instead, his job is just… paperwork. Spooky paperwork, sure, but still paperwork. He talks to a lot of people on the phone, most of whom admit that the statement they gave was just a prank or a dare or whatever. Even the people who genuinely believe their experiences were real seem… more than a little unhinged.

“It saw me through the pages, it’s coming”—

He avoids James Wright, of course. It isn’t difficult. Wright spends most of his time in his office on the third floor, only occasionally coming down to visit Research. When that happens, it’s easy enough for Elias to excuse himself for a smoke break, avoiding Wright’s eyes the entire way. Elias doesn’t understand why his coworkers don’t do the same, although he imagines it would get very crowded in the alley behind the Institute if all of Research tried to take a smoke break at once.

The first time he sees his line manager return from a meeting with Wright, Elias watches her very closely, looking for… unease. Fear. Anything to reflect the way he feels whenever he so much as catches a glimpse of Wright in the halls.

She notices him looking, and smiles at him. No sign of distress in her whatsoever.

Elias returns to his work, but the moment sticks with him. She’d just spent thirty minutes having a meeting with a monster, and she isn’t the slightest bit disturbed.

Have you ever had an experience that you would consider supernatural?—

They don’t know.

All of these people who work here, who interact with Wright every day, and none of them know. Elias is the only one who sees it. Elias is… different.

Elias doesn’t get much work done, that day.

***

Two months later, Elias’s line manager informs him that he has a performance review scheduled with Mr. Wright.

His mouth is dry. “But—I thought you did my performance reviews.” He tries for a smile, but it’s weak.

“Mr. Wright likes to do an in-person review with everyone at the end of every quarter,” she says. She notices the look on his face, and softens slightly. “It’s no big deal. They usually only take five minutes or so. He just goes over the reviews I submitted, and asks if there’s anything he can do to improve your experience here.” She rolls her eyes. “Standard management stuff.”

“Okay,” Elias says, his voice faint. He has to go into that office again? Sit across from the thing that looks out from behind James Wright’s eyes, and just—what? Pretend he isn’t terrified?

Allan’s lifeless body—

What did they do with his eyes?—

“He won’t fire you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” his line manager says. Her voice is gentle, very different from the thinly-veiled annoyance she usually addresses him with. “Wright hasn’t fired anyone the whole time I’ve been here, and your reviews are fine. You’ll be okay.”

“Right,” Elias manages.

The day of the review, Elias seriously considers going to work high.

He decides against it. Wright would know, and then he’d smile and ask Elias some question that he isn’t prepared for, that no one would be prepared for.

What are you afraid of? A very sensible fear—

Elias wonders what would happen if he just—skipped the review. It would be rescheduled, probably. He could skip it again, obviously, but he isn’t sure Wright would tolerate a farce like that for very long.

So, at 2:00pm, he climbs the stairs to Wright’s office. By now, his terror has faded to a blank numbness, an acceptance that he can’t stop whatever is about to happen. He almost feels like laughing.

“Do you enjoy your work here?” Wright asks, after he’s seated and the little introductions are complete.

“Yes,” Elias says, and it isn’t even a lie. He does enjoy the work. He enjoys the variety involved in followup, enjoys chatting with total strangers on the phone. He gets along with his coworkers, and even his line manager is more tolerable than other bosses he’s had. He’d be planning his career here, if not for James Wright’s unfortunate presence. As it is, he’s just trying to survive each day.

“Is there anything about working here that you… hate?”

Elias is not going to tell James Wright that he hates him. He’s not. That’s clearly what Wright wants, leering at him as he is, but Elias refuses to engage with these games.

“Uh—The commute,” Elias says. “It’s a bit far from my flat, and taking the tube every day isn’t exactly the height of luxury.”

“Yes, I’d imagine it would be difficult for you, dealing with the unwashed masses every day.” Wright is still smiling in that cold, slightly-bored way of his. Like what he’s just said is a normal sentence, and not—

“So many gifts, and you’ve squandered them all”—

“What?” Elias’s voice is soft now.

“Do you miss the luxury?” Wright asks, his smile curling up into something more vicious, and Elias—

“Enough! Your friend died in a tragic murder, and it’s well past time you accepted that!”—

No, no, Allan knew what was going to happen, he told me—

“You had a bad drug trip. That’s all.”—

It wasn’t—I didn’t imagine this, there was a book and—

Elias gasps, suddenly back in the present. Wright’s expression is exactly the same. Elias is trembling. This shouldn’t—Wright shouldn’t be able to—What do these questions have to do with his performance?

“Are we done here?” Elias manages, his voice soft to hide its shaking.

“Not quite,” Wright says brightly. “There’s still the matter of your past reviews.” Elias’ review forms are stacked on Wright’s desk, and Wright picks them up, flicking through them. “In general, Lydia’s feedback is very positive, but there are a few concerning things here. You chronically miss deadlines, and on a few of your cases you’ve neglected to follow very promising leads.”

“I’ll try to do better.” Elias’ voice is flat, toneless. The numbness is returning.

“See that you do,” Wright says. “I hope to see improvement by next quarter.”

Elias nods.

What are they doing to his eyes?—

Wright dismisses him, and he makes his way back downstairs. He should return to his desk, return to his caseload that he’s been largely ignoring in favor of panicking about his review.

But he—can’t.

He goes to the alley instead, lights a cigarette with trembling hands. His shaky legs won’t hold him, even when he leans against the wall, so he ends up sitting on the ground.

The first sob forces its way up his throat, and then—he’s crying.

Sobbing on the filthy ground in the alley behind his less-than-respectable workplace. Pathetic. What would Father say?

Probably, “Elias, I’ll be happy to talk to you once you get help for your drug addiction.” Christ.

While he cries, Elias tries to think of what to do. He could quit, he supposes. But he really does need this job. His bank account had been full when his parents first cut him off, and there were provisions in the trust to provide for his needs when he was still in school. Now, though, his money really is running concerningly low. He needs the paycheck.

His tears are just starting to slow when the door opens. Elias starts, turns his face away, trying to hide the fact that he’s crying while hiding from his job.

“Oh—sorry,” she says. Elias recognizes the voice, they work together in Research. He can’t quite remember her name—Megan, maybe? “I can go, if you want some privacy.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he says, and his voice wobbles. If she didn’t already know he’d been crying, she definitely does now.

She sits down on the step just outside the door. “Um—are you okay?” she asks.

“I’m fine.”

“Right. Yeah, I also like to come out here and cry when I’m feeling fine,” she says, her voice light with humor.

Elias smiles slightly, and wipes some of the wetness from his face. “It’s nothing you need to worry about.”

“I’m all ears,” she says. “Unless you really don’t want to talk about it, in which case, keep your secrets.”

Elias doesn’t respond to that. Doesn’t know how to reply, really. It would be nice, to talk to someone about it, but—It seems cruel, to force someone else into this mess. If she even believed him.

“I just—” She takes a deep breath. “Okay, this is going to sound really weird, but… We look after each other, in Research. A lot of the people who work here don’t really have support networks in our personal lives��ghost stories attract lonely people, I guess—so we try to support each other. So… if you need someone to talk to about this, you can talk to me.

Elias takes a breath. Might as well try. “Have you—noticed anything… off, about Wright?”

“Oh, you mean his whole mind-reading thing? Sure,” she says. She doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t take a moment to consider.

“I—yes,” Elias says, a little unbalanced. She knew? “The way he—drags up all your worst memories.”

“Oh yeah, he’s like that,” she says, wincing. “Did you just have your first performance review? Those can be kind of intense.”

He nods, uncertainly. She’s talking about this as if it’s completely normal.

“You’ll get used to it eventually,” she says. “In research, we like to make jokes about it. She wiggles her fingers at him. “'Ooh, I know everything about you,’” she says mockingly, pitching her voice down.

Elias doesn’t laugh. Just stares. “Aren’t you afraid of him?”

She laughs, really laughs, like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. “What’s he gonna do, fire me? No. Why would I be afraid of him?” Then she sobers. “Are you afraid of him?”

Something sinks in Elias’s chest. He’d assumed that they didn’t know, that Elias was unique in being able to see Wright’s monstrous nature.

Turns out he’s just unique in being frightened by it.

He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Just—had a bad performance review.”

She nods in commiseration, and he excuses himself not long after. Returns to his desk, his heart loud in his ears. He looks around at his co-workers, all of them so happy, so careless. Why aren’t they afraid?

Why did you heed the call?—

He doesn’t know.

He can’t trust them.

***

He asks to be transferred to Artifact Storage, and his request is accepted, albeit with some strange looks. No one requests to go to Artifact Storage.

For him, it’s infinitely preferable to Research. The monsters in Artifact Storage are acknowledged, for one. Feared, treated with caution. Not allowed to run a so-called research institute. Not joked about. For two, the turnover rate is so high that he won’t have to deal with pretend camaraderie. He knows, now, that he can’t trust any of these people. He’s on his own.

For four years, he does his work, cataloging dangerous artifacts, sending the more junior assistants to do the more dangerous tasks. He doesn’t try to be good at his job, he doesn’t want to be good at his job, but after years of working in Artifact Storage, he is by far the most senior member of the staff. He starts to pick up a few tricks. He becomes knowledgeable. People respect him.

His line manager says he’s looking to transfer to the Library, and asks if Elias would like to be recommended for the promotion. Does he want to be Head of Artifact Storage?

He should say no, but some part of him that never quite managed to kill its ambition answers for him. “I’d be honored,” he says.

***

Meetings with Wright never get easier. In four years, he manages to drag up everything Elias would rather keep hidden, everything he doesn’t want to think about. Allan is a popular subject, as are his parents. And there’s always—

He cannot move. He cannot scream. What are they doing to his eyes?—

Elias doesn’t get used to it, and when Wright schedules a meeting with him to discuss his forthcoming promotion, Elias dreads it just as much as that very first performance review.

“I am very impressed with your progress,” Wright says, steepling his fingers over his desk.

“Thank you,” Elias says.

“Nearly five years in Artifact Storage,” Wright says. “I wouldn’t have guessed it, but perhaps I should have. You’re not a brave man by any means, but what does that matter, when you’re running from the most frightening thing you can imagine?”

What are they doing to his eyes?—

Elias swallows. There’s something heavy in the air. He always feels watched, in the Institute, in Wright’s office, but this is—different, somehow. Closer.

“If you were more curious, you actually might have guessed it. If you’d looked into the history of the Institute, investigated the men who preceded me in this position. You might have noticed certain similarities. You’re smart enough to have put the pieces together, but alas.”

—squandered—

“You never were the curious sort, were you? You were more interested in self-preservation than answers. Keeping your distance from anyone who might drag you away from your… destiny.”

Wright stands, and Elias flinches. “I-I don’t—” This is wrong. Something is wrong.

This is the place I know I should be—

But—

“What did you imagine was calling you here?” Wright says, and now he’s close, too close, towering over him. Elias wants to stand, want to retreat, but he doesn’t—He can’t move—

Wright places his hands on the two arms of Jonah’s chair, trapping him. Elias shrinks back, as far as he can get. “Did you think it was something noble, that you were destined to be a hero of light, to put an end to the sickness of this place? You would drive a knife into my eyes, killing the monster and setting everyone free?”

He doesn’t know what he thought. He thought he was destined for something better, to be something more than other people.

“You will be,” Wright says, leaning over him, too close. “Have you figured it out yet?”

He shakes his head wordlessly, a sob gasping from his throat.

Wright smiles. “James Wright didn’t either.”

***

When the thing that now controls his body takes over the Magnus Institute, they all think, nepotism at its finest.

Elias understands why he’s here, now. Understands the thing that called him here. Understands the many paths he could have taken, to reach a different end. Too late.

Elias’ eyes are carved out of his still-breathing body, and the Eye feasts on latent terror, cultivated so perfectly, for so long.

Elias is replaced, and no one misses him. He himself ensured that no one who worked with him knew anything about him. And everyone else is dead already.

James Wright is discarded. Elias Bouchard is taken.

Jonah Magnus lives on.

[squeeneyart]

Breathe in the Salt - Chapter 11

AO3

Beta read by @thesnadger​!

Martin wants to do the right thing.

It's time to make some phone calls.

Martin resigned himself to a day of catch up. The recent circumstances hadn’t been the most conducive to completing his work tasks, but he was employed for the time being. He would wait for the right time to reopen the can of worms upstairs and in the meantime double down on the figures in front of him. The others went to work as well, going through the records they recovered from the library and verifying some information from the storage house.

After some time, he heard Sasha ask, “Martin? This place used to be a bigger fishing town, right? Before the Lukases showed up.”

Martin thought for a moment. “I don’t think it was that great to begin with? I’m sure they didn’t help, but the problem started long before I was born. There may be some people old enough to remember when things were a bit better, but it’s always been a shaky business despite the proximity to the sea.” He paused, then asked, “Is there a reason you’re looking into this? Doesn’t sound very ghost-related.”

Sasha tapped her pen on the table. “It helps to get a timeline of major events. Even if there are coincidences, a broader historical picture often helps with places where the phenomena are… far reaching.”

“What, did the lighthouse eat all the fish?” Martin laughed, but it quickly died as he continued to think about it. “...Could it do that?”

“Doubtful,” Jon said, keeping his eyes glued to his laptop. “It’s possible the family saw an existing, natural decline in job prospects and swooped in to create an even bigger vacuum they could then fill. Nothing supernatural, just horrid people finding a  good opportunity.”

Tim snorted. “While they just so happened to buy and operate a possessed lighthouse?”

Jon looked over his screen. “People can have multiple motivations. For example, Peter Lukas apparently enjoys boating and taking the possessions of others for the fun of it. The two aren’t necessarily related.” His eyes dropped back to his task.

“Fair enough. Maybe someone in the family won it in a bet, then? Swiped it from some evil lighthouse keeper.” Tim wiggled his fingers.

Martin laughed silently through his nose and went back to work, assuming his part of the conversation was completed. If he’d learned anything from the situation earlier that morning, it was to quit before weird personal details about his deadbeat fisherman dad came out and ruined the mood.

The three continued to debate possible motivations and causes, eventually trailing off and lapsing into a focused silence. The scratches of pen on paper mingled with the tapping of the keyboard. It created an arrangement that echoed over itself in a round, filling the space and tunneling upward along the staircase. Despite himself, Martin strained to hear anything that felt out of place, but he could feel no intent in the repetition. It was loud, but it was the normal, unnerving loud he’d become accustomed to over the last few months.

There wouldn’t be anything, as long as he kept the dial in the correct position. Not anything he could perceive, anyway. Were they listening, even if they couldn’t stockpile his words? Were they seething at his decision? Were they-

Martin gritted his teeth, willing himself to focus on the page in front of him. The group would call Naomi soon, and if she responded they would be one step closer to confirming his suspicions. For the time being, he would sit with his churning insides and wait.

Relief came at eleven with his lunch hour, which the others were considerate enough to wait for. He barely tasted the sandwich he’d thrown together that morning. There was a heightened atmosphere spread across him and the others, a buzz of excitement. After hours of necessary but tedious paperwork and discussion, it was time again for action.

Sasha dialed the number and waited, drumming her fingers on a pad of paper in front of her. “Available number,” she mouthed, giving a thumbs up. A few seconds passed, and she frowned and ended the call. “But, of course, it is no longer her number. I would change mine too, if people were tailing me.”

They all slumped in their chairs and braced themselves for a long, slow afternoon as Sasha looked at her pad of paper and dialed the first number on the list of many, many Naomi Hernes.

Some answered with varying levels of politeness, mostly responding with “never heard of the place” or “the name doesn’t ring any bells”. Otherwise, she left a short, scripted voicemail giving little information other than Evan’s name in hopes that Naomi would take the bait. She kept their institute out of it entirely.

When asked why, Sasha explained that this part of the investigation would have to be off record. Evidently, the Magnus Institute encouraged thorough research until it involved digging into its own benefactors. Unless they discovered a lead that didn’t implicate the Lukas family, they would be on their own.

The minutes ticked on, dragging more and more with the lack of success. After thirty minutes of fruitless calls, Sasha said, “It may take a while. We don’t know her schedule or if she’s even on this list. I was able to go off her last recorded location, but that’s about it.” Sasha leaned back in her chair, stretching her shoulders.

Jon pulled his laptop back in front of him. “We’ll need to give her time. If she’s aware of the Lukases keeping tabs on her, she’ll probably be wary of us. Keep going through the list. Tim and I will continue with the rest.”

Martin sat around for the rest of his lunch hour, losing hope with each passing call. He ought to have considered how long it could take to reach her, or that she might not answer at all. Why would she? What reason did she really have to trust a bunch of strangers?

He looked down at his phone, mindlessly flipping between apps before settling on his notes. Under Naomi’s old number was the one for Evan’s mobile, locked safely away in the storage house. Running his thumb up and down the side of his phone, he peeked up at the others through his bangs.

“I know we’re waiting to hear back from Naomi, but-” They looked at him, and he swallowed hard. “We know who it probably is, right? We have something he would know, and we could even-”

“Sorry, Martin, but that’s a big ‘no’ from me,” Tim said, crossing his arms. “If it’s him, he can wait a bit longer. If it’s not, then there could be something bad on the other side that we’re not ready to deal with, something that might even pretend to be him given the opportunity.”

There was an edge to his voice that made Martin shrink sheepishly in his seat. Tim’s face grew soft. “You want to help. I get it, but we should play it safe for now. Once we’re certain of the situation, we’ll do the heroic thing and release his trapped soul or get him out of the sound booth he’s locked himself in or whatever it is that needs to be done.”

Martin nodded glumly and looked back at his phone. After a moment, a notification popped up on the screen.

Tim: and if we get him out and hes as hot as they say he was, then who knows ;)

All the tension in Martin’s shoulders was released with a high-pitched snicker that his hand failed to stifle. The other two turned their gazes on him. Martin’s ears turned beet red at the attention he’d brought upon himself. Jon shot a suspicious glance at Tim, whose broad smile denied nothing.

--

By twenty minutes to four, there had been no sign of the person they were hoping for, ignoring  one response by someone who thought they were being hilarious. Martin had only one task remaining before it was time to leave, and once his things were carefully packed away he walked over to the stairs and placed a hand on the rail. From behind him came the sound of chairs squeaking against hard tile.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw the three had all risen from their seats and were shooting surprised looks at each other.

Martin sighed. “I’m just going up for my normal work stuff. I won’t be touching anything I’m not supposed to.” Not that the thought hadn’t crossed his mind, but if he’d wanted to do anything there in secret, which he didn’t, there was no point in doing so when other people in the building could hear every amplified word.

“Well, I’ll be coming up anyway. Might as well get a better look at what buttons you’re pressing.” Tim jogged over, waving a hand at the other two dismissively and calling over his shoulder, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this. Keep an ear on the phone and text us if something comes up.” Jon and Sasha, who’d clearly been about to walk over and join them, sat down despite their visible apprehension. Tim started up the stairs, leaving Martin to trail behind.

Before long, Tim began to rely more and more on the handrail to keep his balance. About halfway up the stairs, he held up a hand for Martin to stop and dropped his head.

“Okay,” he said, flexing his grip on the rail. He took a moment to breath. “Okay, I’m good. Damn this place, though.”

When they reached the top, Tim faced the stairs and, at a regular speaking volume, said, “Hello? Tim Stoker to Boss Man.” He waited, then checked his phone. “Huh. Guess sound does have limits in this place. Good to know.” Tim smiled at Martin. “Let’s see those switches, then.”

Martin could see that Tim’s eye was just as drawn to the dial as Martin’s as they approached the panel. Martin slowed down his process, taking care to show Tim what he was doing with the different buttons and knobs, and Tim seemed to be taking notes on his phone.

“If it would help, I have a list of everything I do up here on my desk. My handwriting isn’t the best, but it’s legible.” Martin continued to complete the steps without thinking, allowing muscle memory to take over. “Not that I’ve looked at it super recently. I also have the version in my work contract? But that would have to wait ‘til tomorrow.”

Tim nodded, shoving his phone in his pocket. “Sounds like a plan. Who knows, maybe there’s a hidden ‘I cede my right to file a claim against any injury due to imprisoned spirits’ clause or something in the fine print.” Martin laughed weakly but said nothing. Leaning on the side of the panel, Tim looked at him. “You really think it’s the guy? Evan?”

Martin’s finger slipped, missing a button entirely. “...Yeah. I can’t think of anything else it could be? And I get it, there are some things I don’t know about-”

“Lots of things, actually. Look,” Tim stood up straight, crossing his arms. “I’m not usually the lecturing type, but you seem like a well-meaning guy, and this thing could very well be taking that from your voice and turning it back on you.” There was an unmistakable discomfort, though Tim was doing his best to look authoritative. “You’re not used to this stuff, but most of it ends up being not so nice.”

Resuming his task, Martin looked down and asked, “Have you ever… studied something like that?”

From the corner of Martin’s eye, he could see Tim shift a bit and lean against the panel again. “They’re something I’ve worked on, yeah.”

After a final flip of a switch, Martin looked back at Tim whose gaze was firmly centered on the window. Martin rolled his fingertips on the surface of the panel. “Any personal experiences or advice? For my benefit?”

Tim took some time to think, and without taking his eyes from the window responded, “If you can shut them up, make sure they stay that way.” Tim let out a breath through his nose. “And if someone’s got by one, chances are they won’t be kept alive. Once a copy is made, there’s no reason to keep the original.”

The bitter twinge in Tim’s voice warned against the questions forming on the tip of Martin’s tongue. If Tim was talking from experience, the specifics were none of Martin’s business.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Tim shook his head. “So, since I was the one who turned the dial, do me a favor and keep away from it?” When Martin nodded in agreement, Tim uncrossed his arms and pushed himself off the panel. “Good. It’s a deal then. Now, when we get back down, we can pretend to have had a riveting talk about how fish hate your town.”

--

Once they were back on the main floor, disappointment washed over Martin. “Was it too much to expect anything back so soon?” He looked through his bag, making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.

“You get used to it.” Sasha paused from collecting some papers to watch him sulk in his corner. “Can’t tell you how many follow-up calls I’ve made that led to nothing.”

“Or all the numbers we’ve gotten that were for takeout places,” Jon grumbled.

“I dunno, I’ve been pretty lucky with numbers.” Tim winked at Sasha, who shoved some of the papers into his arms.

Martin smiled, though Tim’s comment reeked of forced levity. He zipped up his bag and walked to the door. “Let me know if anything comes up?”

“Of course.” Jon pushed himself out of his chair and walked at a brisk pace to meet him. “Could I have a word with you, before you head home?” He opened the door and gestured outside.

“Oh. Sure?” He avoided Tim’s very pointed eye contact and walked through the door. Jon followed behind with his arms wrapped around himself, his thin, long-sleeved shirt doing nothing for him in the cold. “Do you need to-”

“I’ll be back inside in a moment.” His stubbornness did nothing to protect him from the shivers. “About tonight.”

With all excitement and distraction gone, the weight that had been balancing precariously in Martin’s chest dropped to his stomach like a lead ball. “Is there a way to make this not horrible?”

Jon frowned. “I don’t know the full circumstances, but ultimately, I believe you’ll be doing the right thing.” He placed a tentative hand on Martin’s shoulder and gave it a stiff pat. He immediately retracted his hand and wrapped it back around himself, keeping his eyes on anything but Martin. “You know her better than I do. I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it.”

Martin clung to that confidence and the feeling of pressure from Jon’s hand. “Okay...” He took a large breath. “Okay. I should get going then. No point in putting it off.”

Jon nodded his head and hurried back inside, leaving Martin to walk home with more courage than he’d managed to gather for himself. As the sun drifted closer to its exit, Martin latched onto that little encouragement and thought of what to say.

“Hi, Mum. I found your skin? No, that sounds weird-”

“I know there are things I don’t understand, but-”

“Mum, I found this in the attic. I know it’s yours. Do you want to-”

“A guy from work said to give you this? Wait, no-”

And so he continued, muttering under his breath all the ways he could broach the subject without it being a complete disaster.

This could change things.

Would she scream? He’d never heard her truly scream. It wasn’t her way, but this could unlock something so much worse than he’d known. How dare he bring this to her if she’d hidden it for a good reason? That seemed a likely reaction.

Would she talk to him about her time in the water? Would she reminisce about a time before things went wrong, when he would watch her from the porch? Too hopeful to consider, but nice to think about.

Perhaps she would tell him to return it to the attic, and it would never be spoken of again. Things would be as they always were, just with a new secret to hang over them both. Another weight on their shoulders, another little barrier keeping them from being anything but what they had been for decades now.

Jon had said it would be the right thing to do. He would know about these things more than Martin, right? His word had to be worth something. No matter how she might react, this had to happen sooner or later.

The walk home sped past like nothing. The front door was before him, and then closed behind, and he felt more than ever like he was on a track, being moved from place to place without any consultation of his will. The night proceeded like clockwork, dinner prepared and completed with only his voice and the occasional terse response from his mother for filler noise. It wasn’t yet time.

The fog had rolled in thick as evening turned to night, and they looked out into it from the front porch, her breaths steady and bracing. Through his barely open eyes, Martin saw a hint of rolling waves before the salt brought out the tears and washed away his vision.

He walked his mother back inside and helped her prepare for bed. Once she was settled against the headboard, Martin coughed and began in a low, gentle tone. “Mum. Can I talk to you about something?”

She frowned, tired contempt rippling across her face. “Must you now? You’ve had all night to talk.”

Martin clenched and unclenched his teeth. “It’s important. Please, it’s...it’s about something I found in the attic.”

His mother froze, her hand gripping the quilt on her lap. Annoyance gave way to a wide, blank stare that brushed just over his shoulder. “I did not ask you to retrieve anything from there.”

Martin shrank back. “Yes, I know. I just went up to make sure there hadn’t been a-any issues with the roof after some of the rain recently since we keep some things in storage up there, and I wanted t-”

“Bring it to me. Now.” Her voice was quiet, almost too quiet for him to hear.

“Oh. Right. Of course.” Martin stood too quickly, grabbing the rickety bedside table for balance and causing a loud thump as one of its legs slammed into the ground. The dim lamp on top of it wobbled, creating unnerving shadows on the walls. He winced. “Sorry. I’ll be right back.”

He left the room and let himself breathe. Okay, he thought, this was a good thing. He walked up the stairs two at a time with his long legs, speeding down the hall while keeping his footsteps as quiet as possible. She wanted him to bring it to her. He would do as she ordered. Everything would be okay, he told himself, ignoring the strange sinking feeling in his gut.

It was where he’d left it, folded loosely in the corner to avoid any possible creasing. It pressed heavily into his hands, and he brushed off a little more dust as he walked back down the stairs. At his mother’s door, he paused and adjusted it one more time to a position he felt was the most dignified. Then, he entered the room.

She was looking out her window, through the misted glass and into the fog that surrounded their home. Her hands were limp over the quilt, one placed gently on top of the other. When the door clicked shut behind him, there was an almost imperceptible turn of her head, though he couldn’t see anything but her clenched jaw.

“Mum? I’ve brought it. Do you want me to place it on the bed? I-”

His mother turned to face him fully, and as her eyes locked onto him a torrent of pure fury slammed into his chest. He stumbled, the selkie skin almost escaping his large, clumsy hands.

“Give it to me.” Her rasping voice made Martin’s throat hurt, and her neck seemed to throb with effort. When he failed to move his legs, she forced out, “now, you stupid man!”

He tripped forward, and when he was within reach she snatched the skin from him. She clasped it to her chest just as Jon had that morning, with the same smoothing motion over its surface. Unsure of what to say, he became a statue. Every muffled intake of air burned down into his chest.

Taking in a shuddering breath, his mother whispered, “Leave.”

“What?” There was a painful crack in his voice.

“Leave me alone.”

--

The only thing he could see were his own near-faded footsteps as he climbed up the cliff side, the fog doing well to obscure the surrounding foliage.

He needed to be out of the damned fog. That’s why he’d fled the house, and the beach, and the crashing waves. That’s all it was down there, a house adrift in grey nothing, and he was too loud of a presence to truly give her solitude with his tramping feet on the floorboards upstairs.

It was past sundown when he reached the end of his climb, and the corner lights looked as much as they had the night before. As they had on any other night he’d spent wandering the dark, emptying streets. Pulling his coat more tightly around himself, Martin marched forward, drawn to the only other place to which he had a key.

He looked up before he could think too hard about it, and the sky bore down on him until all he could do was fall back into the gaping pit waiting just behind his heel. Had it felt like this before? Yes, it had, hadn’t it? A giant emptiness in the ground waiting to swallow him whole, and as he had seen it, so from it the vertigo had come. Only now it was polite enough to slow down and let him see the horror below.

He woke up on the ground with a groan, just outside of the florist shop. It was closed for the night, and there was no one inside or out to stare as he lifted himself out of a puddle, the arm of his coat soaked through with water. He was halfway through trying to regain some semblance of focus when he realized his glasses had fallen from his nose and were now lying on the ground beside him.

Relieved that his impaired vision was no worse than usual, he reached over to pick up his glasses. As he did so, he glimpsed at the water’s surface, and for just a moment the blurry vision of his face looked just enough like someone else. He gasped, snatching his glasses and scrambling to sit on the curb.

She’d never called Martin that. She’d had other ways of showing her frustration with him, but that… that had been for someone else. Of course. He hadn’t even thought to warn her of his re-entry, so he had gone into her room and with just that lamp by her bed the doorway must’ve been so dark-

The pounding in his head grew more fervent, and he curled into himself until he faced the ground, head between his knees. As the minutes crawled by, the pain began to subside, and eventually he was able to stand, even if there was a slight shake to his legs.

“Twenty years and still you don’t learn.”

He continued without reason, thankful for the empty road ahead, his arm going cold in its dripping sleeve.

[soldieronbarnes]

Malec prompt - My homophobic parents are coming to visit will you pretend to date me as an extra “fuck you”?

Uhhh this…..completely got away from me? It’s a lot longer and a lot angstier than it was supposed to be….sorry? Not sorry? idk.

___

“Okay, what is wrong withyou?”

The question - and particularly the accusingtone of it - shakes Alec out of his stupor. It’s a testament to how out of ithe is that the only response he manages is an intelligent “huh?” 

He blinks, shaking his head to clear his head,but in the end, Magnus Bane is still standing in front of him, a stack of bookshugged to his chest and eyebrows raised and it’s - well, it’s a lot. It’s alwaysa lot, to be the focus of his attention, to be faced with his….everything:his incandescent beauty, his razor sharp wit and brilliant mind, his smoothcharm or his biting contempt. 

Alec flounders. Magnus Bane is the secret starof all his late-night fantasies, his verbal sparring partner in their shared Introduction to Clave Law class andall-around thorn in Alec’s side. 

They snipe at each other a lot.

What they don’t do is talkoutside of class.

Alec quickly runs through a mental inventory ofthings he might have done to offend Magnus so horrendously that he’s corneringhim in the corridor, eyes blazing, and comes up empty. Unless his mouthdeveloped a mind of its own in the last sixty minutes, there’s nothing he couldhave possibly said. And if there’s one thing that Alec knows how to do is makesure nothing unintended ever slips out of his mouth, to keep his closelyguarded secrets.

“I didn’t do anything,” Alec defendshimself. 

“Exactly,” Magnus says irritably. 

“I don’t follow,” Alec admits. 

“You didn’t participate once this session.What, do you want to tell me the professor can drone on and on about thelegitimacy of Downworlder discrimination and you don’t have an opinion on that?No raising your hand to offer your…..valuable insights?”

“What, are you my professor now?” Alec says,snippy. “I don’t need lectures from you on how active participation is abig part of the final grade.”

“That’s not why I’m asking.”

The last thing he needs right now is picking afight with Magnus, but he can’t help it. “Why are you asking?I’m sure you enjoy class less when you don’t have a convenient punching bag foryour arguments, but newsflash: I don’t owe you an explanation on why I don’twanna engage in that. It’s not like it’s any of your business.” 

“Well, I’m sorry for stepping on your toes byexpressing my concern for your general well-being,” Magnus snaps. “GuessI’ll remove my lowly Downworlder self from your presence before I leave a stainon your perfect reputation or something.”

For the third time in their brief conversation,Alec is completely thrown. “I - that’s not - what?” 

Now that he sees actual fury on Magnus’handsome face, covering up a brief flash of something that looked almost likegenuine hurt, he realises that the expression Magnus wore before was lessfurious and more….furiously concerned. 

He doesn’t think he’s ever been this confusedin his life.

“Magnus, wait!” He struggles to catch up withMagnus’ quick strides – he has a head start, and he’s surprisingly tall, but inthe end, as they’re hurrying down the deserted corridor that leads to the notoriouslyill-tempered professor Fell’s office, Alec’s freakishly long legs win out. “Magnus,will you just –“

He grabs him by the biceps, and Magnus whirlsaround faster than lightning. To his credit, he doesn’t punch Alec in the face.Maia, he knows, would have had a much more violent reaction to being seizedlike this. Most Downworlders would – recent attempts to smooth things overbetween the different factions in the Shadow World haven’t done much to assuagerational fears and suspicions based on several centuries of near constantoppression and maltreatment.

“Sorry, I – sorry,” he blurts out, quicklywithdrawing his hand. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not contagious, despite whatyour precious Clave might tell you,” Magnus sneers.

“Can you just stop for a second?” Alec snaps. “Don’tput words in my mouth!”

“Why would I?”

“I’m trying to apologise here!”

That seems to take Magnus aback. “For what?”

Alec takes a deep breath. “I – don’t reallyknow what’s going on here,” he admits, waving his hand around in what he hopesis a sufficiently all-encompassing gesture. “I mean, we don’t really….talk, andI guess I was confused and had my hackles up, because I was having a shit dayanyways but – none of that is your fault, and I shouldn’t have taken it out onyou. So I’m sorry.”

Magnus cocks his head. “I appreciate thethought, but as you so astutely pointed out, you don’t owe me an explanation.”

“I did owe you the apology, though.”

Magnus hums contemplatively, and, against allodds, lingers. Alec knows a challenge when he sees one, or maybe it’s aninvitation – he’s misjudged Magnus’ intentions before. He doesn’t really wantto talk about it but – well, if he’s honest, it does grate on him to not havehis siblings around, constantly needling him until he talks about what’sbothering him, and he doesn’t really have friends here to confide in.

He’s been told that friendships often formbetween roommates just by virtue of being stuck with one person in closequarters for a long time, but his roommate Raj is a grade-a asshole, and otherthan that, his options are limited; there aren’t many Shadowhunters here, andthose that do attend generally think he’s insane for being the only one Nephilimvoluntarily choosing to go to thefirst integrated college when he was good enough to attend theShadowhunter-only and highly acclaimed Idris Academy. The Downworlders, on theother hand, who make up a majority of the student body, are all understandablywary and tend to avoid him when they can. He’s cordial enough with a lot ofpeople, but there’s no one he would say he’s actually close to. He’s gettingthere with Maia, he thinks, who’s brazen enough to yell at him and so fargrudgingly impressed by the lack of times he’s given her an actual incentive tostart a fistfight.

So maybe it’s a need for connection, or maybeit’s the fact that Magnus is everything Alec isn’t while simultaneouslyprobably one of the few people who might understand, that causes Alec to talk.

“Campus tours are next week.”

“I’m aware,” Magnus replies, raising hiseyebrows at the sort of non-sequitur.

“My siblings are thinking about going here aswell and – that means the whole family is coming. Including my parents.”

“I take it that will not be a joyous reunion?”

“Uh, no. They’re still angry with me for not goingto Idris like they wanted and –“ Alec hesitates briefly, and then decides tonot give a fuck. The truth is going to be out there soon one way or another. “Andeven angrier with my ruining the marriage they had arranged for me.”

The first, he had been able to mostly explainaway with logical arguments about Shadowhunter politics – if he was supposed tolead an Institute one day and work with Downworlders, he’d need to get a betterunderstanding of them, especially in the changing political climate. The latter– not so much.

Magnus looks almost at a loss for words. “It ismy understanding that arranged marriages are so traditional for Shadowhuntersthat they are virtually unavoidable,” he says cautiously.

“Basically.”

“Another way for you to rebel, then?” Magnussuggests. “Fighting for more freedom of choice?”

Alec shakes his head. “It’s not the arrangementpart that I couldn’t handle. I know my duties, my responsibilities, that’s not –that wasn’t the problem. Many of the couples end up kind of happy, anyway.”

“What part disagreed with you that much, then?”Magnus asks softly. He can probably see where this is going, judging by the wayhe’s now clearly careful of his words and by the way his entire demeanour seemsto soften.

He takes a deep breath, and steels himself. Hishands are trembling, which is stupid – everyone on campus knows that MagnusBane will judge you for pretty much everything, but not for this.  There’s no one else around – everyone knows tomake a wide berth around professor Fell’s office at all times. “The part whereI was supposed to marry a woman.”

Magnus goes to say something, but Alec barrels on.He’s not sure he could stand to hear some supposedly affirming and supportiveplatitudes right now. “They’ll forgive me for the choice of college eventually,I guess, but – not that. Don’t – please don’t say you’re sorry or whatever.Just – it’s just the way it is. I’ll deal with it.”

Magnus accepts that with a nod, and remainsquiet for a long moment. “So what’s the plan?” is what he eventually asks.

It’s not the question Alec was expecting. “Sorry?”

“For the upcoming visit of hell,” Magnusclarifies.

Alec shakes his head. “There is no plan. Getthrough it, I guess. Izzy and Jace will try to intervene when things get out ofhand or take some of the family heat if possible, but there isn’t much thatwill stop them.” He shrugs a little helplessly.

“So what, you’re just going to keep your head downand take it?”

“You got a problem with that?”

“No,” Magnus says quietly. “It just doesn’tseem like your style. You don’t generally strike me as the type of person to letsomething like this slide without a fight.”

“How would you know?” Alec asks, and oh, he’sgetting defensive again now.

Magnus doesn’t take the bait this time. “Alexander,”he says, “as much as we disagree on howthings should change, or how quickly steps must be taken, I haven’t ever seenyou defend a bigoted law or damaging stereotypes. Why are you willing to defendpeople like me from people like your parents, but not yourself?”

Oh, but he had forgotten how scarily perceptiveMagnus can be. “It probably won’t even be that bad,” Alec says, desperatelytrying to deflect. “I’m sure they’ll just use the fact that I’m single to arguethat I’m just confused and will change my mind and it’ll be fine once theyconvince themselves of that.”

For a brief moment, Magnus looks angry. He doesn’tthink anyone but his siblings has ever been angry on his behalf. It’s a strangeexperience. “Sounds like you need a boyfriend to show off to them to stop thatludicrous line of thinking once and for all.”

“Well, I don’t have a boyfriend, so –“

“You could have a boyfriend,” Magnus sayseasily.

Alec snorts. “Yeah, right. Magnus, half thepeople at school won’t even look at me, and I’m not really good at this kind ofthing anyway. Plus, even if I didfind someone to go out with me – who’d want to meet my parents after a week?”

“It wouldn’t need to be real.”

“What, like, hire someone? No one would go forthat, and if I have to pay someone to date me – well, I’d rather spare myselfthat particular humiliation.”

Magnus bites his lip, almost nervously. “Iwould do it,” he offers hesitantly.

Alec stares.

“For free, even,” Magnus adds. “I’m always infavour of sticking it to homophobic and racist bigots.”

“Uh,” Alec says dumbly. “You do know who myparents are, right?”

“The Lightwoods are rather famous, yes,” Magnus says drily.

“Then you know how they’d react to –“ Wordsfail him. He can only weakly gesture between the two of them.

Magnus smiles bitterly. “They are rather famousfor that as well, so yes.”

“Why would you –“ Alec falters. “Why would youwillingly subject yourself to that? Why would anyone – I mean, they’re my family, it’s not like I have a choice – but you shouldn’t have tosuffer through that. Not ever and – you get enough crap from Shadowhunterswithout painting a huge, deliberate target on your back for me.”

In front of him, Magnus’ eyes hold an infinitesadness that threatens to choke Alec. “You know,” he muses, “when I first heardthat the Lightwood heir was going to go the same school as me, I was expecting –well, I was expecting many things, none of them pleasant. But you – I don’tthink I could have predicted a single thing about you. At every turn, youcontinue to surprise me. Look – “ he continues, “if you don’t want to go for itbecause it’s – too much for you, I get it. But if you’re only turning me downto protect me, don’t bother. I don’t need anyone to protect me. There’s nothingthey could say to me that I haven’t heard a thousand times before.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” Alec argues hotly.“You shouldn’t have to hear it at all.”

“And neither should you,” Magnus points out. “ButI can assure you, in my experience, if it can’t be avoided, then it’s easier ifyou have someone there to help you through it, to have your back. You don’thave to do everything alone, Alec.”

It’s – it’s too much. The magnitude of Magnus’offer sends him reeling. Even worse is the heady feeling of being judged byMagnus Bane and being found worthy when that notion of getting his approval isutterly ludicrous to him. Magnus shouldn’t choose him. Not like this, not ever,maybe. When Alec had run after him he’d at best expected a chance to extend an olivebranch that would help them get back to the way things were. A part of himthink he shouldn’t even be contemplating it, but –

It would be so good to not be alone in this,for once.

He draws in a shaky breath. “It’d be ugly,” hewarns.

Magnus’ smile is small and lopsided, but it’s there.“Fighting for something important usually is.”

“Right.”

“Do you have class now?”

Alec blinks at the sudden change of topic. “Notuntil five.”

“Then how about we get some coffee and just –talk, figure things out?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure, that sounds good.”

Magnus’s smile widens, soft and sweet andgenuine. It’s the first full smile he’s ever directed and Alec, and Alec thinks– if he just keeps smiling at him like that, then Alec can do anything, getthrough everything the world and his parents throw at him.

His heart is fluttering in his chest, and itfeels a lot like hope.

[normal-thoughts-official]

Ok hmmmm fake dating art school au with Malec, Claia, Lukemaryse and (platonic, obviously) garrowbane where hmmm magnus is with an ex at the start and tries setting up Luke with people

well this got really cracky really fast

okay so im gonna go ahead and say that i have no idea how art school works in the US so for the sake of My Convenience™ imma go with the way it is in Brazil, which is "there are numerous kinds of arts going on in the same institute/college"

so im thinking..... clary obviously is doing visual arts, painting, whatever its called (this is probably where i should warn you that i know nothing about visual arts). maia is not really an arts major, but she's doing a course on technical/scientific drawing since shes a biology major and that's useful for her field studies. magnus is on the same course, except hes like an engineering major really. im a slut for inventor Magnus so yeah he wants to be an engineer to develop new kinds of technology so technical drawing is important for him. meliorn (watch me slip meliorn in literally everything i can) is a theatre major, and Luke and Maryse r both studying music

Luke and Maryse r older and like idk how common that is in the US but here in Brazil some ppl (spec retired ppl) come back to college to study something they have Always Wanted To but that wouldnt bring them money. i know that the whole "no free college" thing makes that harder but they can be post-graduates i guess. or Luke is and maryse is a regular major but shes a super rich hotshot lawyer who after the divorce decided to be less stuck up and dedicate herself to things she enjoys, and since shes rich, she has the money to do a major or a music course just for fun

anyway! Magnus is the kind of guy whos friends with everyone from all ages and courses. he quickly becomes friends with maia (shes on his course after all) and meliorn (who is a theatre major but takes classes in everything they can because.... they can)

i just realized maia/meliorn has a LOT of brotp potential but ok anyway

magnus and maia bond greatly over their shared interests (yeah shes a biologist and hes an engineer but magnus' interests vary a lot and also hes a fan of biochemistry. they also have relatively similar life stories and a similar sense of humor, even if maia is sharper at the edges - which is something Magnus likes, really. she's fierce and fun and unafraid and he wishes he were more like her sometimes. they have a mutual admiration and kind of protection pact). meliorn on the other hand is kind of the local queer cryptid in a way, which of course means magnus immediately befriends him, and Maia is just delighted at how much of a trickster they are. magnus also likes meliorn a lot because they're so... chill and easy and unbothered by social conventions to the point of being nearly unaware, which makes Magnus feel so comfortable. and meliorn thinks Magnus is interesting, and they all get along.

maia kind of brings luke into the group. luke is kind of maia's adoptive uncle. she lives alone but once she ran away from home luke was super nice and helpful and also one of the ppl who most encouraged her to go after her major like she wanted

luke and maia are clearly close and have each other's backs, but they also tease each other a lot. so when one day luke teases maia over her crush on clary, she retaliates by looking DIRECTLY at meliorn and being like "he's just jealous. did you ppl know he hasnt been on a single date in years" and meliorn, who thrives on the chaos, is like "oooh we should set him up" and magnus of course jumps at the opportunity

so the three of them keep trying to set ppl up with luke, and it just ...... never works. like doesnt come even close to working. its kind of a disaster actually. its awkward, it never clicks, and at this point luke is begging them to stop but you know thats not gonna happen. so as a last resort, luke lies that he's dating a woman from class. cue him asking maryse, whom hes never talked to in his life but is the only eligible woman his age at class, to like, please do him a solid. and maryse is just so shocked by this random (but handsome) man's life, shes like. lmao sure. look shes a post-divorce woman she wants to be free and cease giving fucks

and maryse kind of has fun pretending to date luke, but she's a busy woman and she doesnt hang out with them often, and they are like [BANGING POTS AND PANS] WE WANT TO ACTUALLY MEET HER

and luke is all like "well maybe if all of yall singles got dates we could have a date together otherwise get out" so maia asks clary out purely out of spite and turns out it works, but Magnus and Meliorn are like "uuuuhhhhh,,,,,,," so meliorn is like "what if we pretend to be together lmao" and Magnus is like shit we're gonna do that aren't we

i know its not exactly Magnus having an ex but look im struggling to put all of this together okay udhdhdbd also im not big on the whole "breaking up because of someone else" trope ya feel

god this is just the setup for malec to meet, im,,,, a mess

so anyway Magnus and Meliorn are determined to totally sell this to luke (maia knows its a scam of course, she can smell bullshit from miles away). and luke and maryse are also totally determined to sell this cuz everyone is an idiot. so they keep having, like,,,,, dates together, until eventually they kind of become a solid group of friends. they all welcome maryse and are really impressed by how critical she is of her pre-divorce self and how it did wonders for her, they think shes really strong. she even shares about how she struggled with her son being gay and her daughter deciding to become a forensic pathologist instead of a lawyer like her, you know. in short they all become good friends

so now everyone (but maia and clary who are happy and drama free and laughing their butts off at Magnus and Meliorn) is in a difficult situation because now theyre all friends! what are they gonna do, confess it was a scam all along? pretend to break up and make the whole thing awkward? they're trapped in their fake dating and it looks like they're just gonna have to, like ... deal with it

and in luke and maryse's situation it's even more complicated because they are kind of getting into each other, and theyre like groaning because theyre grown ass adults they shouldn't be living this trope. and yet

anyway as they become closer they start going to maryse's (shes the only one with a large enough place) and that's when Magnus meets Alec and meliorn meets izzy

which,,,,, despair

because they had been doing a great job of fake dating so far, excuse you, they are partners in crime. they're a well oiled lying machine and they work together flawlessly. magnus is not even a good liar but shit if meliorn didnt teach him every trick on how to not technically lie, and also they are very close and the kind of ppl who are comfortable with sharing affection, so yeah they drape their arms on each others shoulders and hold hands and kiss each others cheeks NO PROBLEM but now theyre both interested in someone else

hell, theyre both interested in maryse's kids

fuck

shit

goddamn

meliorn is all like "i told you we should have pretended to have an open relationship" and Magnus is like luke KNOWS im monogamous he would KNOW we're lying and meliorn is like FUCK and maia and clary are losing their shits

meanwhile luke and maryse are becoming more and more domestic and oblivious to the world. they will b like "you kids put the movie on, we'll make dinner" and be all like fluffy asshole

izzy quickly picks up that its a scheme cuz shes smart, and flirts with meliorn when maryse isnt around, while Alec is like SHIT dude i cant believe ur into a TAKEN MAN what the fuck kind of sad gay stereotype r u

but their pull is like,,, stronk and they frequently find themselves getting lost in their own little world and lowkey flirting and just being a liiiiil too close (especially in alecs case since hes like ..... stoic extraordinaire) and then theyre like AH SHIT WAIT and they jump and pretend nothings happening

and look, izzy would tell Alec about the scam, but she's, como se dice...... having way too much fun at his expense. she and meliorn start dating on like day 1 and make a pact to see how long they can keep the act up and enjoy the show

maia and clary have eaten their combined weight in popcorn by this point

the intrigue. the chaos. the misunderstandings

it gets more and more ridiculous as time goes by but Magnus is still determined to yknow keep the act up and not expose his and meliorn's lies

they just,,,,,,, live like this

it lasts for so long

like ..... months of ridiculousness

and alec is suffering because hes into a taken man whos obviously very in love with his partner and he feels guilty and all of that shit

and magnus just.... doesnt know what to do with his predicament. look he has anxiety this was a bad idea how is he gonna walk up to Alec and b like "hey so I'm not really dating meliorn it was all a scam so we could spy on luke and ur mom but it went too far" and the more time passes the more awkward it gets

the dam probably breaks when magnus finds meliorn and izzy on a date on accident, and hes like rjrhrjrjdnc SO THEY KNOW???? and meliorn is like nah only izzy knows we wanted to see how long itd take for u and alec to get ur shit together. and magnus is like oh my god and meliorn is like "in my defense i didnt think it would take literal months!!!!!! and then it started to feel awkward to just tell you to go for it"

so magnus is like FINE i guess i will TELL ALEC and ask him if he wants to DATE ME IN SECRET so we can keep NOT HAVING TO CONFESS WE LIED TO HIS MOM

and then i guess he tells Alec???? and he still isnt sure whether or not Alec likes him so he isnt planning to ask him out immediately afterwards, just, you know, let him in on the secret, and Alec is like "dude my mom is lying too" and Magnus is like what she and luke are like married

anyway knowing about that gives them full permission to come out as lying bitches so they're like "how dare you lie to us like this.. but also we did the same thing"

eventually luke actually asks maryse out

i dont even know whats happening anymore god im done

this is your fault anon

if anyone wants to actually write this, feel free rjrhdjdn honestly id read it

[anamaleth]

Twins

Summary: Statement of someone unknown, regarding the appearance of something that was not their twin and the events following said appearance. Original statement given April 10th 2011. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Content Warnings: Imposters , people being replaced/showing up and only you notice, paranoia, mental breakdown, brief mention of drugs (no references to actual drugs/drug use!), people forgetting who you are

read on ao3

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Statement of…huh. That’s odd. It doesn’t list a name here.

Well, statement of someone unknown, regarding the appearance of something that was not their twin and the events following said appearance. Original statement given April 10th 2011. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

Before I start this, I need you to know that I am not crazy. I’ve never had any problems with my mental health, and as far as I’m aware, neither has anyone in my family. My childhood was perfectly normal and, despite the occasionally skipped class, I’ve never been much of a troublemaker. I’ve never taken any drugs in my whole life, I’m not the kind of person to get involved in those sorts of things.

I need you to believe me. This isn’t the confused rambling of someone who isn’t thinking clearly – this really happened. Even though no one would ever consider listening to me, much less believe anything I say.

But that’s what you guys do, right? Listen to people’s crazy stories and believe them? Try to help them?

To be honest, I don’t think you can help me. But I do feel like telling you this is the right thing to do. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do. It’s not like I have anywhere else to go.

I’ve been an only child my whole life. When I was younger I used to love it – always being the centre of my parents’ and relatives’ attention, always getting lots of presents on my birthday and on Christmas. It’s such a childish and selfish way to think, isn’t it? I grew out of it, eventually, but it took me quite some time, especially with pretty much all of my friends having siblings and always telling me how jealous they were of me getting so much cool stuff on the holidays.

I was never a jerk about it, though – my parents didn’t raise a spoiled brat. I always shared my stuff with other kids when they came over, always made sure they’d feel “right at home”.

I was about 12, I believe, when I first found myself thinking about wanting to have a sibling. That’s when I met my best friend, or well, former best friend, Charlie Baker. Charlie had…well, has a twin, Alex – and the three of us spent a lot of time together.

Even though Charlie had told me that I was their best friend, I found myself envious of the relationship they had with their twin. They seemed to be – it’s hard to explain. They seemed to be in sync, like two pieces of the same puzzle that fit together perfectly. They teased each other, like siblings always seem to do, and sometimes they fought, but they always had each other’s backs when it mattered.

I wanted nothing more than to have someone like that. A twin. Someone I could be in sync with. I guess I should’ve been more careful what I wished for.

It’s been two months since he…it showed up. I was walking home after having taken the school bus back to my village. I said goodbye to Charlie and Alex, who live just a couple of blocks away from me, turned into my street and walked towards my house. That’s when I realized that I didn’t have my keys with me.

Not that big of a deal, right? I’ve always been pretty forgetful, have been accidentally leaving my keys at home ever since my parents gave them to me. It’s never been a problem though, my mom works from home so she was always there to open the door for me when I needed her to.

I didn’t think much of it when I rang the doorbell and no-one opened the door. I thought “Hey, maybe she just didn’t hear me”, so I rang the bell once more. Again, nothing.

Just when I decided to take out my phone and call her, the door swung open. In front of me, inside of my house, stood someone I didn’t know. Someone who looked almost exactly like me.

I wish I could say that there was something wrong about him that I noticed immediately. But even now that I’m looking back, there was nothing particularly unsettling about him. Nothing that I could remember, at least.

He was completely ordinary, just like me; had the same hair colour as me, a similar hairstyle, the same facial structure, the same height. It was like catching a glimpse of your own reflection in a mirror out of the corner of your eye, without focusing on it.

He - no, it – smiled at me. A smile that was so perfectly normal, so innocuous that it seemed almost artificial. It said four words to me, then, four words before it turned around and left me alone at the doorstep.

“There you are. Finally.”

I didn’t understand what was happening. Panic rushed over me and my breathing began to fasten – not even for a single moment did I consider the possibility that this was all just a terrible joke.

I have been an only child all my life, and I have never been anything but an only child. Yet at that moment, that moment of confusion and horror, it was clear that whatever had opened that door was pretending to be my twin.

In an attempt to make sense of all of this and to rationalize what was happening to me, I ran up the stairs to my mom’s office and barged straight in, not even bothering to knock or wait for permission to enter.

The look of worry on her face when she saw me quickly made me regret that, though. I don’t know what exactly happened after that, but I do remember breaking down crying, demanding to know who that stranger inside our house was who looked just like me; sobbing as my mom held me in her arms, completely overwhelmed.

I doubt that anything I told her had made sense. Even now, putting it into coherent sentences is anything but easy.

She must’ve thought that I had suffered a nervous breakdown. And honestly? After listening to her trying to soothe me for a while, hiding her pain behind calm and steady words, I believed that as well. At least momentarily.

Hearing her talk about me and “my twin”, our apparently shared childhood, and all the memories she clearly seemed to have that I lacked – all that assured me that I was losing my mind. Somehow, something must have happened to me and whatever that was must’ve caused me to fabricate a reality in which my twin didn’t exist.

It was a terrifying thought, but I didn’t see any sense in trying to justify my situation in any other way. I mean, someone who looks exactly like you showing up in your house one day who everyone, if asked, assures you is your twin with an irritated – or worse, pitiful – expression, acting like they’ve known this stranger for their whole life and that the very idea of questioning that is preposterous - that’s not something that just happens, right?!

Of course, I had only talked to my mom about it then, but that was enough to convince me.

I was trying and failing to grapple with my apparent madness when I saw it standing at the door, watching me and my mom - and on its face was that same artificial smile. It was mocking me; it found amusement in my despair.

That’s when I knew that I couldn’t possibly be crazy. Still, it took me way too long to find proof. And even that changed nothing. I should have come to you guys immediately, I suppose. Maybe it could’ve been stopped, then. Not that it matters now.

You know, I’ve never believed in the paranormal. No offence, but all those stories about ghost-sightings and demons or whatever always seemed like crazy talk to me. Most of it is, I think. But not this. Not this.

After it left again, I must’ve made up some excuses about not having slept in a few days and being dehydrated. That was a lie, of course, and not a very good one at that, but I wanted - needed - to get away from everyone.

I went to my room, or what I thought was my room. To my horror, where there had previously been an empty wall, there was now a second bed. It wasn’t a new one either, it looked like it had been there for years. And on it sat that thing pretending to be my twin.

Some part of me honestly considered just packing up my things and running away. Maybe I could’ve stayed with Charlie and Alex for a couple of days. In retrospect, I know that it was already too late for that. But even then, even when I didn’t know the amount of damage that thing had already done, I still had too much goddamn pride to admit defeat like that. Apart from that, I couldn’t just abandon my parents. Sure, my mom was convinced that whatever had invaded our house was her son, but that didn’t mean I would just leave her alone with it. So I stayed.

I did, however, manage to convince my parents to let me sleep in the attic. I don’t know how, really - what with my mom having witnessed that breakdown of mine, but after spitballing a story about “wanting to feel like I’m on an adventure”, they reluctantly agreed. If it hadn’t been for the fact that there was an imposter lurking in my now former room, I think it would’ve felt like a sleepover. A sleepover during which I was sure I was breathing in more dust than air, but a sleep-over nonetheless. Especially because I was barely able to get any sleep.

So, after what felt like hours of lying awake, I gave up and instead did what I could do: I started looking through the boxes we stored up there. It was, unsurprisingly but disappointingly nonetheless, mostly stuff my dad’s parents had owned before they passed away. We had kept most of it, even though I never understood why. I suppose it was nostalgia? It made me feel nostalgic, at least, made me think of all the summers spent in their backyard, playing football with my grandpa or watching birds with my grandma-

Anyway, I guess that doesn’t really matter now, does it? It doesn’t contribute anything to what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t know, it just felt good to talk about clear memories of the past. It’s all been getting so blurry as if it’s fading away from me.

I’m sorry, I’ll get back to it now. So, I looked through those boxes and found an old photo album. I’ll be honest, when I saw those printed out lies – hundreds of photos that showed me and this…thing, I nearly ripped it apart. But eventually, I stumbled across a Polaroid photo of me and my parents. My grandma had taken it way back, said she wanted to “capture some memories”. “Happy family” was written underneath it, in that neat handwriting of hers I had always admired. I burst into tears when I saw it.

We had taken multiple pictures that day and I knew that she had given one of them to me so I could put it into my diary. My diary. I had kept one back then, and if I could find it, if that thing had left it unaltered, that’d be all the proof I would need. And I found it!

It was all in there, all of the diary entries scribbled onto the pages in the scrawly handwriting of my younger self, all the dried flowers and leafs I had put into it, all of the stickers my mom had given to me, and, of course, the polaroid photo of my family and I. My grandparents, my parents and me. We had driven out to the beach and one of the nice people there had offered to take a picture with all of us in it. And all of was documented in blue ink on white paper. I fell asleep reading old diary entries, my face hurting from smiling too much.

But of course, my happiness didn’t last for very long. When I woke up the next morning I realised that while this was enough proof for me to know that I had been right all along and that I wasn’t losing my mind, it certainly wasn’t enough to convince anyone else.

My mom made me and “my brother” walk to the bus stop together. I didn’t have it in me to protest. We didn’t talk, I avoided looking at him as much as possible and for a second, I considered the possibility that maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as I’d feared it would be. I was, of course, proven wrong mere seconds later. When I looked at him briefly, his hair was completely black.

I immediately stopped walking. “Hey, is something wrong?” he asked me as if it didn’t know exactly what was wrong. “Your hair is black“, I stammered, and he had the audacity to laugh.

“Duh, so is yours!” And he…it was right. My hair had always been auburn. Its hair had been auburn yesterday!

This was all its fault, I knew that, and I was just to punch it in its face when I heard Charlie screaming at me to stop whatever I thought I was doing.

Alex pulled me away from “poor Ben”. “Ben” played along, played the victim. And the three of them left.

I will skip over the next couple of weeks for two reasons. The first one being that it’s getting harder and harder to remember all the details, and the second one, well, what I can remember hurts to think about. It hurts so much.

Naturally, Charlie and Alex had sided with the thing that called itself “Ben”. They had abandoned me. Every day when I drove to school, the three of them sat together and talked and laughed while I sat alone in the very back of the bus. They acted as if I didn’t exist.

Do you know what it feels like to helplessly watch as everyone around you starts to forget you? Teachers you’ve known for years not remembering your name, your friends forgetting the things you told them about yourself, acquaintances forgetting your existence? Waking up every day with the knowledge that with every passing hour whatever makes you “you” will fade away more and more and that there is nothing you can do about it?

But do you want to know what hurt the most? The final drop of water in my overflowing barrel of misery!? Coming home late one day, having my mom open the door and her not recognizing me. She smiled as she tore my heart into smithereens with her words: “Good evening. Who are you? Oh, of course, you must be a friend of my son. I’ll go get him!”

I stood there, frozen still until it stood right in front of me. Its lips twisted into that same, artificial smile that it had smiled the day it had invaded my life. And again, it said four words. “Oh. Who are you?”

That’s when I ran away and came to see you guys. It’s been…I don’t know…4 hours, maybe? I’m sitting in this room and no one is looking at me. I brought the photo with me, I suppose you guys can have it. I had kept it with me as some sort of proof that I was still sane, but it feels wrong to keep it. I feel as if the wind is blowing right through me and there isn’t even a window in this room. I don’t know what to do.

My name is M̴̭͔̓ä̴̮͜r̷̹͉͑̏s̶̱̈̚h̶̦̪͘a̷̬̠̕l̷͈̍̉l̵̺͆ ̴̱̱B̸̳̥̅ȱ̶̯͎l̷̜̇͘ṯ̶͝o̸͇̹͛n̷̢̙̂. And I’m ceasing to exist.

Statement ends.

This is an odd one, certainly. Especially since I see to immediately forget Mister…Bolton, was it? Yes, Marshal Bolton. I seem to immediately forget his name after I read it.

We’ve had statements before in which people have been replaced by supernatural entities – creatures we’ve come to refer to as the “Not Them”. This one is different, though – a “person”, if you want to call it that, inserting itself into someone’s life as someone new, instead of replacing someone else. Still, the statement giver seems to be the only one who was able to notice the change.

It’s quite common for the “Not Them” to toy with people’s memories and they have a history of altering photographs and voice-recordings. Polaroid photos, however, seem to be mostly unaffected. The Polaroid photo mister Bolton mentioned has been left with his statement – as he said. It shows a little boy with auburn hair, his parents and his grandparents at a beach.

I’ve asked Tim to look into this statement, and his research has shown no record of anyone called Marshal Bolton having lived near London around the year 2011. He did, however, find one “Benjamin Bolton”. And, as you would expect, he is an only child. Any follow-up requests have been ignored.

I would’ve been keen to brush this whole statement off as a bad joke, presumably by Benjamin who could have found this photograph and decided to make up a scary story about it. However, knowing as much about The Stranger as I do, I doubt that I’m that lucky. Nevertheless, this seems to be a dead end.

Recording Ends.

[sternerstufftoys]

Thunder! Thunder! Thunderwing! Hooooo!

Alright, this one is going to get a little bit personal. See, this guy is a big deal in this house. I've talked about all your favourite leaders, so now let's talk about mine. Let's talk about Thunderwing.

I'd have been about five or six years old when, one Christmas, I got Thunderwing as my Big Present. I was genuinely overjoyed. Not only was this a big name character, a major lead in the comics and everything, but he was a leader. This was like getting a Galvatron or an Optimus Prime (no, I never had anything close to anything like that)... except even better, as Thunderwing was the latest thing. And on top of that, it was the first (arguably only) Pretender toy that didn't suck! That's like... four jackpots in one! My brother had had an Ultra Magnus for a few years now, and at last our Decepticons could have a commander of their own. Oh, it was on.

Six months later I'd lost the bloody thing.

Or rather, not lost exactly, I knew pretty exactly where it was, but being left in the grass on a campsite on the wrong side of the English Channel made rescue attempts apparently too difficult? Whatever, mum. I knew I could do it. If you'd given me the use of a speedboat I could have grabbed him and been back in time for Allo Allo. To make things worse, I didn't lose all of Thunderwing, just the outer shell. You know, the good bit. The bit that is recognisably Thunderwing. The inner robot came home safe and sound with us, and sat in the toy box ever since, taunting me, shaming me, reminding me that he would never be complete again. All in all the experience was a bit of a downer, you know?

Thunderwing's presence in the comics would continue, and hells yes was it ever a highlight for me, even if the experience was somewhat soured by the loss of the toy proper. This was a Decepticon leader who stood out through the virtue of... and it's unusual to be saying this... actually being good at the job. Not only an effective and brutal fighter, but one who actually seemed to give a toss about his underlings. And more to the point, over the course of the Matrix Quest storyline, actually ended up winning. Sure, Ratbat might hold the title for the number of victories (though we still need to consult VAR over that) but Thunderwing's achievement as the only Decepticon to ever use the Matrix itself trumps everything. Everything.

Roughly 4 million years passed, and just as I was starting to find collecting Transformers toys was getting to be something of a drag, what should find its way into the shops but Generations Thunderwing. My jaw dropped. I knew that I needed to get it. I've never ordered anything so quickly in all my life. A brand new super-articulated modern toy of my childhood pride and joy for less than £15, and I could have it delivered right to me? This was a big moment.

So right off the bat I need to make this clear. Generations Thunderwing is a good toy. A great toy, in fact. He fits right in with the other deluxe Decepticon jets that make up a substantial portion of my collection, transforming as he does into a modified F22 with all the zig-zaggy details scratched in (someone at the design desk clearly got a real kick out of those zig-zags). He looks good, poses good, even tips his hat to the old G1 toy by having an extended nosecone that can be removed as an independent drone thingy. So... why am I unsatisfied with him these days?

I've said in the past that deluxe is a good size for a Transformer. I'm totally happy with Bludgeon and Straxus being that size - it doesn't make them feel too small. And I do like my jets in deluxe size, since it's the most common size for them to be released and this way they all match up. And robot mode shouldn't be an issue here, seriously. Made-up toy robots do not have a relative scale. There is no 'proper' size for any of them, since they don't actually exist. If you want to harp on about scale, then real-world alt modes should be your guide. So a deluxe robot can't be the problem either.

Is it the Stormbringer-inspired jaggedy-mouth face? Well, I'm not a fan, but it's not the end of the world either. How about the lack of a mini robot to homage the pretender gimmick properly? It'd be nice, but it's not a deal-breaker. The super-visible arms and feet under the fuselage? Yeah, that's a bit lazy to be honest, especially from the same line that gave us Drift, for crying out loud. Perhaps they used up all the complexity-karma on Straxus. Is it that his G1 toy has a great big sporran on his crotch and therefore must have a growly Scottish accent and this is now reduced to a tiny green wart that probably makes him Welsh or something? Well, yeah. I guess.

Inevitably, it's a bit of all of these things. Especially the sporran. Each little niggle takes him that little bit further away from the toy I'd really like, and with nearly 10 years on the clock our tastes and expectations have changed. Since Siege was in many ways a rehash of Universe 2.0 and Earthrise seems to be cautiously continuing this trend into 2010's Generations, there's a distinct chance we're going to see a new Thunderwing before 2021 is out. And I assure you, I shall be there the day that preorders go up, wallet in hand and ready to go. Ain't nobody gonna keep me from my man, etc. The fact that a cheap-and-easy Titans Return toy wasn't crapped out from the Sky Shadow mould lends credence to this idea. Someone in Hasbro likes Thunderwing enough to want to do him properly.

Sigh. Here's the kicker. So a couple of years ago I discovered Leicester Old And Vintage Toys, and was amazed to see, there on the shelf, right there, a battered and worn-out-looking G1 Thunderwing shell. No inner robot, but that wasn't a problem, right? I had the original at home still! I can finally reunite the two! Cash was exchanged, shell was brought home, and when I looked for my old inner robot... it wasn't there. Or anywhere else I looked. I have literally no idea what happened to it. I still have one of the guns, but not the robot itself.

Honestly, this fresh heartbreak has made it all worse. I still want a new Thunderwing, and now I need a new old Thunderwing to replace my old old Thunderwing who was parted from his old Thunderwing shell only for me to buy a new old Thunderwing shell and and and and and and... am I cursed? I think I'm cursed. God dammit.

[lightsandlostbells]

Druck season 2, episode 8 reaction

Things go to hell pretty quickly, except Björn, who doesn’t go to hell fast enough.

Episode 8

Clip 1 - Happy ending for now

Mia and Alexander head into school together. Their little sideways smiles at each other warm my cold heart, I’ll admit. She hands him his keys so she drove his car. There was a windshield wiper situation, heh. Really I just love how they’re looking at each other, like they’re deeply pleased to be with each other. I know that seems obvious, but for some reason a lot of fictional couples spend so much time having drama that they don’t seem to actually enjoy each other’s company. Something I like about Mia and Alex is that I do think that they enjoy just hanging out and talking to each other about whatever. It’s not just about attraction, I do feel like there’s some inherent compatibility there.

Mia is rocking that red lipstick, by the way. It seems particularly bold today, reflecting her mood, I guess.

Mia and Alex hold hands when they get inside and people stare, I assume because Alexander Hardenberg is holding hands with a girl. He’s dating someone? Not just banging her??? And it’s Alexander Hardenberg of the Hotel Hardenberg fortune, you know, he’s a big deal at this school.

Also, they’re basically announcing themselves as a power couple, lmao. Let me put it this way, if fandom hadn’t come up with Winterberg as a ship name, the students themselves would have, because that couple is a big deal.

LMAO, Druck gets in its own version of the “I’m so hungover from the weekend”/”It’s Wednesday” exchange from Skam when Kiki says she’s still hungover from the Tangore party and Mia says that was two days ago. I fucking love that they managed to work in that iconic line somewhere without totally copying the scene. (Again, I have to ask: what was Julie’s inspiration for that moment? Did those girls win a walk-on contest?)

Mia and Alexander are going to the movies on Thursday, Valentine’s Day. You know, they’ve actually established movies as a thing that both of them enjoy, a common interest? I know liking movies is not exactly an obscure trait, but we’ve seen Mia and Alexander have a movie night where they both discuss movies briefly, and a day where they watch a film in bed together, and now they plan to go to the movies on Thursday. Mia has a pic of an outdoor movie screen on IG. I forgot if there were anything else, but it’s a small detail that makes it feel more like a real relationship.

We get a Kiki/Carlos conversation as they walk away, so super POV break, although not unusual for Druck. Kiki asks Carlos what they’re doing for Valentine’s Day and he says that’s just something the Americans invented, like Halloween. Carlos, I’m not gonna stand for lumping Halloween and Valentine’s Day together like one isn’t an extremely fun day where as a kid you wear a costume and get a lot of free candy and the other isn’t an extremely bleak day where as an adult you wear sweatpants and eat a whole bag of candy you bought yourself while you try not to think about your love life or lack thereof.

Kiki says she likes Halloween, however, and Carlos pretends to be a zombie and attacks her. It is extremely cute. I’m glad the German Magnus/Vilde equivalent proved to be so delightful, I wouldn’t even mind seeing these two being gross at each other. (I mean. Don’t push it.)

Mia hugs Hanna happily, and Hanna says, “Happy Ending?” which in a fictional context with three episodes to go might as well be putting a curse on Mia. She also knows that Mia and Alex are going to the movies on Valentine’s Day. Already? Alex just said that downstairs? Mia says Kiki is unbelievable. So Kiki just texted that to the girls right then and there, in the middle of a zombie attack no less. That is a special skill 

There’s some very cute girl squad interaction, Sam filmed Mia and Alex holding hands, all the girls are so happy that Mia is happy, everybody’s cool with each other, no more drama, yay!

Except some drama, because Mia asks Hanna about Jonas, Hanna is stressed because Jonas is all freaked out because boy Sam flirted with her. I love Jonas but he needs to chill. Poor Hanna has other things to worry about, and you’re not dating anymore so she can flirt with anyone she wants. 

Clip 2 - Violence is not the answer but hit him harder

Alex twirls Mia adorably. I’ve said this before but they’re a really enjoyable couple on just a clip-by-clip basis, watching them interact. A scene of them doing mundane tasks like grocery shopping or doing laundry together would probably be entertaining. Assuming Alexander does not pay someone to deliver his groceries or do his laundry.

He’s taking her to an indoor skate park. He did have that skateboard in his apartment! They managed to work in a skater despite German Jonas being more of a musician.

Alex says he goes here to blow off steam. Mia asks if he means from school, and I do not think he actually means from school, probably all his family and personal drama. He clearly knows some guy there and is friendly with him. It’s great that we see Alexander have like … actual interests and hobbies considering that was one of my gripes about William, I had no idea what he did in his free time.

Lol, watching someone else skate is not the most exciting date, like what a typical sidelined-girlfriend activity. I mean, I do think in a relationship you want to learn about your partner’s hobbies and it’s probably really exciting for Mia getting this insight into Alexander, fun to just watch him when they’re in the glow of their new relationship. But on Skam and the remakes we had the Evas watching their Jonases skate, basically them being passive, the Jonases being active. Though I feel like that was part of the point about that relationship, with Jonas having more of an identity and Eva just being a tag-along, and the context is pretty different here with Mia and Alexander. But damn, what’s with all these dudes bringing their girlfriends to dates where the girls are just spectators to the guys’ fun? Where are all the girls and their skateboards? Or where are all the guys watching their girlfriends play sports? It’s not really a criticism of the show, just an observation. We know Mia is driving Alexander’s car so I’m going to headcanon that she also borrows his skateboard. 

Lol, Mia even sees the women on the sidelines and is like, are you the players wives and girlfriends? There’s a whole group of women just hanging out and watching their guys do stuff! But they seem nice and offer her a drink.

So I actually missed the first time around that there’s a text message where they plan this outing. It’s Mia who asks about watching him skateboard. She also asks if she can try and he teases her by saying it’s just for boys. Lol, I love that it played out like that and that it’s her idea. I’m sure in the future once their relationship heals, Mia will get her own chance with the skateboard. 

We see Alexander skateboarding and being dorky, Mia smiling as she watches him. It’s all fun and games until Björn shows up. The upbeat 50 Cent song fades out and there’s a brief moment where there’s like a tense sound effect as Mia waves to him. It’s gone when Alexander skates over, so it’s like it’s establishing specifically this ominous connection between Björn and Mia, which we know turns into something awful later.

Alexander is pissed and wants to know how Mia knows Björn, and she explains that he was in the flat when she stayed over at Alex’s place. Alexander is being somewhat alarming with his demanding answers from Mia, although his anger obviously is not targeted at her and is motivated by this scumbag not only being in his presence, but having some sort of acquaintance with another person he cares about. After losing Sophie, the thought of losing Mia because of Björn is terrifying. Like I get why Alexander freaks out, knowing that Björn was in his flat, and not only that, but when Mia was alone there and didn’t have a clue who this guy really is and that he’s dangerous.

Alexander walks over and hits Björn with a skateboard twice, so Björn is crumpled on the ground gasping for breath. We get that ringing in the ears sound which is both Björn dealing with getting whacked and Mia having a harsh reality crash into her beautiful love story. People pull Alex away and someone says to call an ambulance, Alexander runs off. He shoots Mia some glances before running, so I’m wondering if he realizes he fucked up, or is just concerned about her well-being, or scared what she thinks of him now, all the thoughts running through his head.

I mean, … violence is not the answer and I do think Alexander should face consequences for that action because that’s just how it works. BUT it’s hard for me to be appalled at this knowing what Björn did to Sophie and later did to Mia. He’s an abuser. Even when this clip first aired and we didn’t have the full story of Björn’s history, I was like, well, if Björn raped/assaulted/did something bad to Alex’s sister, and she’s dead because of it, then I have a hard time judging him for this. 

But I also don’t care for William smashing the bottle over that guy’s head, which is essentially the equivalent scene. Is that hypocritical? I’d argue that they’re two different circumstances, and that William didn’t need to do what he did. I think a big difference is that the situation with the Yakuza boys might have been able to be prevented before it got out of hand just by going to the police, which William dismissed at the time as naive. Alexander didn’t need to attack Björn either, but Björn probably wasn’t ever going to face justice for abusing Sophie and influencing her death. Again, not that it’s justified, but I can admit that on a gut level I get it more.

And honestly, looking at the whole season, a lot of it has to do with the respective degrees of investment in this situation by Mia and Noora. The Yakuza plot seems very impersonal because Noora doesn’t have a solid connection to it herself; the whole time she’s a bystander. She watches Chris get out of the car with a black eye, she sees Isak get into Chris’ car, she observes the fight. Sure, Chris and Jonas get beat up and William might face punishment, but she feels so outside what happened. Mia, on the other hand, gets very personally involved in the Björn drama. Björn preys on her, and even aside from that, Mia is more up close and personal with the effects of Björn’s behavior on Alex such as the panic attack. Ultimately it just feels like the Yakuza dudes are a nebulous menace with nebulous motives, I don’t even know the name of the dude who got a bottle smashed on his head, and that makes less aligned with William and more skeptical of his motives in attacking that guy, but I do have a clear idea of who Björn is, why he’s a bad guy, and what he did to Alexander and his family, and later Mia, and so I just find this more engaging and Alexander more sympathetic, even if I get that these are both inappropriate actions.

Intellectually I’m like: violence is bad, vigilante justice is bad, don’t do that, Alexander needs to learn to control his anger. Emotionally I’m all: kick his ass.

Clip 3 - Someone needs to adopt Michi

Mia comes home and flops on her bed. She’s been texting Alex and trying to get in touch with him to no avail. Alex, dude, that is a bad move. Even if you need to cool off and clear his head, you’re leaving your girlfriend in the dark over an extremely shocking, possibly traumatizing moment. Plus, you know, leaving her open to sympathizing and possibly being manipulated by Björn, the guy who ruined your life and Sophie’s.

Linm comes in and offers her soup in Chinese. Michi comes in because he heard someone offering food. Relatable as fuck, my boomerang friend.

Actually he came in because he said Hans went to get pizza but Michi doesn’t know if he’s coming back. DUDE, Hans, did you really go out for pizza but not see if your boy wanted any? You ditched him?

Also, this seems like a parallel to Mia and Alex, which I thought might happen. Hans ditched Michi like Alex ditched Mia. Michi asks if Alex cheated on Mia, with what seems like a casual tone, like it’s expected, which is depressing if you think he’s used to that in his relationship. Mia asks him to leave, lmao. 

Mia tells what happened at the skate park to Linn. Linn asks what happened to Björn. You can see Mia get an idea. Oh no, don’t talk to Björn before Alex gives you the story! We know where this is going!!

Clip 4 - Fuck Valentine’s Day

It’s Valentine’s Day. Mia walks through the rain as we hear her leaving Alex a message about being worried about him. The music has some apropos lyrics: “And if you dream you fix me / And if you stay you hurt”

Mia waits outside of the movie theater, like they planned. They’re showing Casablanca. I’m trying to think up some symbolic reason why it might be that movie, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen Casablanca. Errr, it doesn’t have a happily ever after for the couple? 

The marquee says “Valentine’s Day Surprise” which is not inaccurate, lol, it’s just a fucking shitty surprise for Mia. She waits for him. Another happy couple shows up and rubs their romance in her face. Always a great feeling on V-Day! A dude in an Alex-typical coat and hoodie strolls up just to rub his Alexness in her face. She’s being hit with reminders of her fraught love situation like pies to the face.

Mia gets a call, not from Alex, from Hanna, saying she got a message from Jonas telling her that if she went to Sam’s gig, that’s it for him. WTF, Jonas? “It” as in him and Hanna? Stop being a drama king. You guys broke up. IDK if there’s a clarification in German, but could he also be like his well-being/stability is over if Hanna goes to the gig? Because that’s even more extreme. No matter what, it’s manipulative. He’s putting something about his quality of life on Hanna, like what is she supposed to do? Not go because it will make Jonas upset?

Mia is getting emotional about being stood up on Valentine’s Day and seeing happy couples show up to the theater isn’t helping. She throws away her card and the movie tickets and leaves.

Bad move, Alex. You could have at least sent her a text. Even if you didn’t want to explain, just say you can’t make it to the movie so she doesn’t wait outside in the rain on Valentine’s Day. 

Clip 5 - Happy ending my ass

Mia goes to see Björn, who’s in the hospital. She got the info from a girl at the skate park. The lighting in this room is very warm and bright and I wonder if that’s intentional, to create a sense of security and trustworthiness and to influence us into thinking this guy doesn’t seem so bad. It just struck me immediately when you compare it to Mia outside, or previous clips of her waiting for Alex at the theater. 

Mia wants some answers. Björn says he was dating Sophie, who lived in Bali, and when Mia asks if she came back, Björn is like … she died. Shit, so she is dead. I thought they might make her alive but dealing with serious consequences of being with Björn. I will say I am surprised Mia didn’t find any news of Sophie’s death during her Google stalking, or from people gossiping, but I can also buy that the family tried to keep it quiet, especially because of her manner of death. He says that Alexander told her something totally different, and the way he says it, he’s presenting it like, of course Alexander has lied to her, not surprising, like he knows Alexander is the untrustworthy one. We hear that same ringing sound that happened when Alex was attacking Björn, because again, it’s Mia’s world getting rocked, it’s the happy ending being overturned, she’s learning upsetting things about Alexander.

Mia is upset and Björn comes off all comforting, saying it’s not her fault, the whole family is broken. He tells her about the dysfunctional family dynamic and describes Alex’s charming act. Obviously this applies more to Björn rather than Alexander, down to Sophie falling for the act, but it’s unclear how much Björn knows he’s fucked up or whether he’s just projecting like an IMAX. Or you know, lying. 

Björn says Sophie committed suicide and that she always suffered from depression but it didn’t fit in with the image her family wanted. Björn and Sophie planned to go to Bali and travel after graduation, but the family didn’t like Björn and constantly tried to get her to come back. I bet Mia is reacting to this strongly because of her relationship with her own family. She also has parents who try to get her to fit into their own image and come back to them when she’s living independently, parents who don’t seem to really get her. It seems like they were most concerned about Mia being away from them because of how people talked about it, not necessarily because they missed her.

You can see why Mia believes him, because this dude isn’t like, radiating an evil aura. He’s very convincing in his manipulation. He seems sincere about caring for Sophie and very broken up about what happened to her. And Alex did lie to Mia about Sophie, and he had a sudden incident of violence, and Björn happens to be hitting close to home when he describes Sophie’s relationship with her family. I get that we know as a viewer that Björn is bad news, but Mia? Mia doesn’t have the benefit of knowing she’s on a TV show and that this storyline played out with a Norwegian girl already. 

As Mia leaves, Björn tells her to stay away from Alex, he’s dangerous. And Mia has reason to think this is correct. I mean, she went to meet Björn at a hospital, because Alexander put him there.

When Mia steps outside, she finally gets a text from Alex saying he was at his parents’ place to clear his head and he wants to meet. LMAO, dude, it’s not like you went to a spa to take a break from studying for exams, you ran off and ghosted your girlfriend for days after beating up a guy in front of her. You need to offer a way bigger apology than that. Especially because you want to meet with her? Do you think she necessarily wants to meet up with a guy who’s physically violent?

I like Mia’s face as she walks away. She’s not crying or anything, but she just gives off this sense of being torn and turning over what she just heard in her head. She puts in her earbuds and even though she’s not literally muffling Alexander’s voice like in that previous clip where he meets her in front of her place, in a way it feels like it’s a sign of her blocking him out. She doesn’t wait for his response after she tells him she met Björn, that’s all she needs to say and she’s done.

Social Media/General Comments:

As I mentioned above, Mia and Alexander planned the skateboard date. I wonder what fun activity Alexander will observe of Mia’s? He’s already seen her piano-playing, the true reveal will be when he walks in on her ironing to classical music. Now that tells you a lot about a person.

Mia tried to get answers from boy Sam about Alex’s whereabouts and what the hell happened, but Sam does not tell her anything except to find out from Alex himself. I can respect that, honestly. It might be frustrating for Mia, but Sam isn’t giving away his best friend’s sad backstory without his permission. 

Both of Mia’s parents contact her this week:

Her dad makes small talk and then asks if she knows where her mom went, never a good sign. That makes it seem like the mom walked out on him.

Her mom wants to come to Berlin and hang out with Mia. She complains about Mia’s dad getting on her nerves and how they’re so different and she doesn’t know why she got with him. You know, all stuff that you should maaaaybe not dump on your teenage daughter about her father. Tell that shit to a friend. Also, there’s something childish about it, not just the complaining, but that she wants to hang with Mia as a way to escape Mia’s father, not necessarily because she wants to see her daughter.

Druck conveniently did not have to provide any footage from boy Sam’s secret concert by having the invitation state NO PHOTOS - NO INSTA. Saved them the time and expense of staging a performance just for the SM content.

Jonas was bitter about the concert but what else is new. Stupid sexy Sam and his stupid sexy music, being in proximity to Hanna.

Hanna went ahead and posted a picture of her and boy Sam at the concert despite Jonas warning her that it’d be over if she went, which is a power move if there ever was one. I love Jonas but fuck if Hanna needs to listen to his dramatic ass. 

So Mia had a crappy V-Day where Alex ditched her, Hanna had Jonas drama weighing on her, Amira and Sam seemed unimpressed by Valentine’s Day, judging by IG posts that suggest so. In fact, I think the only couple who had a happy Valentine’s Day, whatever they did, was probably Kiki and Carlos. 

I’m not German so please feel free to correct me on stuff like cultural context and translation issues.

If you got this far, thank you for reading!

[little-fandom]

I’m bad at letting you go - Chapter 1: Some nights I think of you

Alec couldn't be prouder of his sister. She's just finished filming her first movie and is excited to climb the steps of her career. Of course, this time calls for a celebration, and everyone who's ever helped Isabelle achieve her dream should be celebrating with her.

That includes Magnus.

He and Alec broke up, when he left to shoot a movie in LA. They both decided it will be better this way. It was a mutual decision. Or it was supposed to be. Because even after five months, Alec can't stop thinking about him, and the fact that he probably made the worst mistake of his life by letting him go.

But now, Magnus has his life back in Los Angeles, without Alec.

New York has always been his home, and Magnus missed the city for a lot of reasons. Well, mostly because of Alexander, but he's not going to admit it out loud. It's over between them, and there's nothing else he can do about it. They've both agreed on this. But still, it hurts. Very much.

So when they meet again, it turns out the feelings between them have never faded. If so, the emotions only got heightened by the time apart. The question is, will they make it work again, against all odds and misunderstandings.

read on ao3 

“So I was thinking…” Isabelle starts as she takes one last sip of her coffee, but before she gets to say anything more, Alec stops her. They're seated at their favourite little coffee shop, just a few blocks away from Alec's apartment in Manhattan.

“No.” He states firmly almost choking on his drink. “I know that face.”

“What face?” Izzy asks innocently, but they both know what he means.

“That face.” Alec points out at her expression. “You have that look on your face when you’re about to tell me something I won’t like.”

“Well, I’m not sure if you won’t like it…” She says as she flips her hair over her shoulder.

“Just say it.” Alec resorts with an eye roll and his sister begins to explain.

“So I was thinking about inviting Magnus to the party on Friday…” She carries on, probably saying something more, but Alec’s brain goes short circuit as he hears the name.

Magnus.

“What?” He questions and Isabelle stops half sentence, looking at him and clearly noticing his panicked expression, even when he tries to hide it. “I mean, why?”

“Alec,” She exhales heavily and shakes her head a bit. “You know he’s helped me a lot. Both with auditions, learing my lines and he did whisper a good word of me to the director. I probably wouldn’t get this role if it wasn’t for him.”

And Alec gets that. He really does. But of course the person who helped his sister to achieve her biggest dream is his ex-boyfriend.

Not that he wished it ended up this way.

He and Magnus were happy. Really. No matter how hesitant Alec has been at the beginning at dating a famous actor, all of his worries were dismissed in the first few weeks of their relationship. Sure, Magnus was busy. With filming a movie and TV show at the same time, but he still found a while for Alec, at least twice a week. And it was probably the best relationship Alec has ever had. No, it definitely was the best one.

Until it all went to hell.

But it’s true. He did help Izzy a lot. And mostly because of him she gained a leading female role in Raising Hell, probably the most anticipated movie of the summer.

And to see the excitement setting in his sister’s eyes any time someone mentions the movie. It really was what Izzy’s dreamt of. She’s a natural. She already became friends with the crew on her first day on set. And now that the filming is finished, Isabelle decided to throw a party to celebrate her first movie.

So it’s no surprise she wants to invite Magnus.

“Look, Alec,” Izzy starts again, reaching for Alec’s hand across the table. “I know you aren’t in the best place right now-“

“We broke up, Izzy.” Alec states firmly, but does not jerk his hand away from hers. “That’s it. We both decided it will be better this way.”

Or Alec pretended it would be better this way. But what was he supposed to do? Keep Magnus to himself? Keep him away from chasing his dreams? He could never. At least Magnus was happy. Alec will somehow deal with it.

Isabelle only sends him a sympathetic gaze, squeezing his hand lightly. He told her it’s okay thousands of times. That he just needs time to deal with the break up, but to be honest it’s been nearly five months and he still can’t get a grip.

He keeps thinking about Magnus, about their time together. He was so happy, when they were together. They both were, but deep down he knew this probably wouldn’t last. Dating a celebrity, a well-known actor has its pros and cons. As Alec thinks about that, it definitely has more cons. The lack of privacy they experienced, the rumours of their break-ups or affairs. If Alec didn’t love Magnus so much he wouldn’t be able to go through this all.

Because he did love him.

Actually, he still does.

They last time they saw each other… Maybe it wasn’t that unpleasant, they parted in good relations, but it all was just weird. But Magnus did sound sure, when he said it’s for the best. There was nothing left for Alec to do than agree.

But to see him again now, after all this time, all they’ve been through… he’s not sure if he’s ready.

“I know.” Isabelle’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts. “I know you did. So that’s why I’m telling you this. Are you okay with him begin there?” She questions, desperately searching his eyes, but Alec continues to avoid her gaze.

Because the simple, and short answer is no, he’s not okay with that.

But also, there’s something deep down inside him that has been yearning for Magnus. For his touch, his voice, just his presence. And Alec urgently tries to supress that part of him. It doesn’t really work, but he tries.

So if he sees him again…

But there’s also another part, the rational one, that orders him to do the right thing. Because it’s Izzy’s party. His baby sister’s , who just accomplished one of her biggest dreams. And he wants everyone who helped her in one way or another to be there.

No matter if he wants it, or not, that includes Magnus.

That’s the only reason why he says,

“Of course, I’ll be fine.” Isabelle doesn’t look convinced, just throwing him a resigned look. “What? It’ll be okay, it’s not like I need to talk to him, or anything.” His sister continues to eye him curiously, but doesn’t say anything more, so Alec does. “Will he even make it though? He’s probably busy back in LA…”

There is still this slight chance that Magnus just won’t have time to attend the party. As much as Alec knows (not that he has Magnus’ name on Google alerts and reads every single article that comes out about him, no he definitely doesn’t do that. Well, not anymore, at least) after he finished the movie, that required him to move to LA, The Breaking Point this one where he stars with his ex-girlfriend (Alec can’t be sure if it’s still ex) Camille, he began the filming of another movie, The Downworld, which he co-directs with his friend Raphael Santiago. So it’s been quite busy for him. With The Breaking Point becoming quite a success, he must have a lot of things going on.

Isabelle doesn’t speak for a longer moment, before a smirk makes its way to her face and Alec already feels scared about what she might say next.

“Actually, I might have already invited him.” She announces with a grin. “He’ll be able to make it.”

“Oh, so this whole thing,” Alec waves his hand between them as if indicating their conversation. “About wanting to make sure I’m okay with that, was what? Bullshit?”

“Of course not, big bro.” Izzy declares, her expression firm. “If you weren’t okay with it, I’d uninvite him.” She says, as if it was that simple. “But deep down, I knew you’d be fine.” She adds with a smirk.

“And how did you know that?” Alec asks a bit annoyed.

“Look,” Isabelle starts again. “You and Magnus… I don’t think it’s all really over between you two. And I don’t think you both fully believe it too.” Alec opens his mouth to protest, but she doesn’t give him a chance to, as she continues. “And it’s not a bad thing, Alec, really. That you still want him-“

“I don’t.” He cuts in sharply.

He doesn’t want to acknowledge that he does. He’s been pretty down since Magnus left. Threw himself into college and tried to do everything to just not think of him, which ended up having a total opposite result and he just thought about him more. Still does. Almost every day.

“Okay, whatever you say.” Isabelle sighs and drops the subject for now. She knows that it gets Alec all riled up again. “So, just do it for me, okay?”

“Iz, I told you, it’s fine.” Alec’s voice turns softer again. “If you want him there, and I’ll let him be there.”

Isabelle smiles at him warmly and creases his hand.

“You are amazing, big brother.”

And as they indulge in a small talk about the preparations for the party in two days, somehow Alec can’t stop his thoughts from wandering to Magnus.

  No matter how many countries and cities Magnus visited. New York will always feel the most like home.

As he steps of the plane, it feels like a wave of memories floats all over him again.

And he isn’t really surprised when most of them are about Alexander.

He exhales heavily as he moves to the airport, where Catarina and Ragnor should already be waiting for him. He desperately tries to turn his thoughts away from Alec. But the realisation that he’s here, in New York, so close to Alec, closer than he’s been in almost five months… it just doesn’t help.

Then, he finally spots Cat and Ragnor, and shakes his head lightly as he approaches them. Cat’s small smile turns into a wide grin, when she notices him, and even her companion manages something resembling a smile.

“Magnus!” Catarina exclaims and practically runs to embrace him in her arms. Magnus easily returns the hug and Ragnor comes to stand next to him, patting him on the shoulder.

“It’s good to see you, old friend.” He resorts and Magnus smiles as he pulls back from Cat’s hug.

“I missed you guys, really.” He states, still keeping one arm around Cat’s shoulders.

“So, how’s LA treating you?” Ragnor asks, when they move back towards the car, that they drove here.

“It’s been great.” Magnus starts. “Me and Raphael had a great time, doing the movie together. The city itself is also pretty amazing. But nothing feels like home, I guess.” He states and smiles at his friends again.

“You probably need to head out as soon as the party ends, right? You busy man.” Cat chuckles, but her expression falls slightly.

“Actually, no.” Magnus says, as he drops his bag in the trunk of Ragnor’s car. Catarina sends him a confused glare, Ragnor soon mirroring it, and they just stare at each other, before he begins to explain. “I’m staying in New York, for now. I don’t know how long, but me and Raphael have some shoots to do here. We decided that it’ll be good for the movie. And after that, I’m taking some time off. It’s been hectic recently. And still, there will be promotion for the movie… I have stuff to do here.” He nods at his own words.

“That’s great!” Cat exclaims and hugs him again. “Really, Magnus, we felt like you were overworking yourself recently.” She says with concern in her voice.

And the truth is that he kind of did. LA has been busy, but he didn’t mind. He hoped it would take his thoughts of off Alec, but he wasn’t quite right. Alexander kept creeping into his mind every day, no matter how hard he tried not to think about him.

Catarina send him a knowing look, as if she knows exactly what he thinks about, but she doesn’t say anything. And for now, he’s grateful she doesn’t.

“So yeah,” He begins to stop this kind of awkward silence. “The rest of my stuff will be delivered here tomorrow, and Raphael has a flight tomorrow morning too. He still needed to settled some things back in LA about the movie.”

“It’s been a while since we saw him too.” Ragnor resorts. “It’ll be great to catch up.”

Magnus nods and just as they’re about to move back to the car, he hears someone say, or more yell, his name.

“Oh, my God! It’s Magnus Bane!” Some girl screams and heads towards him. “Could I please have your autograph?” She asks, barely able to hold back her excitement.

“Sure, my dear.” Magnus replies and the girl beams with happiness.

Soon, more people seems to recognise him, and he’s surrounded by his fans, a wave of questions being thrown at him.

“What are you doing in New York?”

“How long are you staying?”

“Is your latest movie done?”

“Where’s Camille?”

He dismissed most of them, saying that he’s just visiting some friends. But when a reporter asks about Camille, he swallows a groan, and politely ignores the question. Yes, Camille is his co-star, but he said dozens of times, that they’re not a couple, not anymore. They used to be, long ago, when he was just climbing the stairs of this whole movie business. But their relationship wasn’t even long. Camille just used him and was basically awful. She cheated on him, repeatedly, and even is Magnus can stand a lot of things, he certainly can’t stand something like this. But of course, that’s not how the media paint Camille. In the public’s eyes she’s just an amazing, loyal and kind actress. But Magnus is not vicious. He won’t ruin her career. And even if he wanted to, the media can be not very favourable of him, since he’s an openly bisexual man, and he never really hid his relationships. Either with men or women. So the media often paints him as the lothario and playboy.

Shortly, after some more autographs and pictures, he finally joins Cat and Ragnor back in the car, and gets some time to exhale.

“The perks of being famous, I guess.” Ragnor states as he starts the car and Catarina chuckles from the front seat.

Magnus just sends them a sarcastic glare, and turns to open Twitter on his phone.

Sure, there already are pictures of him at the airport, along with some comments from the reporters.

 @TMZ: Surprising arrival of actor Magnus Bane in New York.

The tweet is followed with a few pictures taken when he was giving out the autographs by the car, and of course a big amount of replies already follows.

 @baneslover: omg!!! he’s back in ny, my baby so close to me

 @mbfans: has the movie in la finished filming @magnusbane?

 @belcourtshipper: where’s Camille tho :(

He closes the app with a groan as he reads the tweet about Camille. He’s really so done with these people sometimes.

Soon, they finally reach his apartment and God, he didn’t really know how much he’s missed the loft, since he opened the door.

The place hasn’t changed at all. He knows Cat and Ragnor kept it all in check, and he’s really thankful.

He goes straight for the couch and stretches out, finally able to relax and let all the tension slide over him.

“Well, since we know that you’re safe and back home, not swallowed by some hoards of fans, we can go.” Ragnor says, as pleasant as always, to which Catarina sends him a sharp glare. “What? Some of us need to work, and I have dozen of books of Egyptian history waiting for me back at home. The research won’t do itself.” He resorts simply and shrugs.

“Go,” Magnus says from where he’s still sprawled on the couch. “we’ll catch up later. I’m pretty worn out myself. Thank you for picking me up.”

“Anything for a friend!” Ragnor calls out as he already heads to the door, which makes both Cat and Magnus chuckle.

For a moment, none of them says anything. Both just content in each other’s company. Catarina seats herself in the armchair next to the sofa, and soon begins to speak.

“Do you want me to go, so you can get some rest?” She asks softly. “I have a shift at the hospital in two hours, but I can-“

“No, my dear. Stay.” Magnus states a she sits up on the couch to face his friend more properly. “It’s been so long.”

“Yeah.” Cat chuckles as she moves to sit beside him. “So, how have you been doing?”

The indulge into some small talk about their days. They spoke a lot on the phone and made video calls, so Magnus doesn’t really feel like he missed out on a lot of his friend’s lives. But still, it’s much better to be able to sit and talk face to face.

A bit later their conversation dies down, and Magnus finally builds up the courage to ask something, that has been on his mind basically since he arrived.

“Have you…” He starts hesitantly, looking down from his friend’s face. “Have you spoken to Alexander at all?” He questions, still not meeting her eyes.

“A bit.” Catarina answers and he looks up. Alec and Cat had become quite good friends during their relationship. But he wasn’t sure, if the friendship survived after they parted. “At the beginning, at least.” Cat continues. “Now rarely, but still a little. Just basic conversations. Nothing much.”

She says and smiles sympathetically at him.

Magnus is glad she doesn’t question anything. She knows him better than ever, and even after his and Alec’s break up, she could see that Magnus was not happy with how things have escalated. There’s no point in denying that he still feels a lot for Alec. That maybe he still even loves him. Deep down, he knows he does. And he can’t stop himself form thinking, that it was a terrible mistake to leave Alec like that. He thought he was doing the right thing back then. That it would be another disaster if they tried to keep the long-distance relationship going. He didn’t want to stop Alec, to somehow limit him, make him wait for him, especially when he didn’t really know if he when he would be back. Or if he would be back at all. Alexander deserves way better than that.

Los Angeles holds much more opportunities for young actors. That’s a fact. And Magnus did feel good there. Great, even. But New York is different. It’s his home, and he can’t deny that he felt a bit homesick back in LA.

He wishes it wouldn’t have anything to do with Alexander, but he knows it does.

“How is he doing?” He prompts then.

“Alright, I guess.” Catarina shrugs. “Busy with studying and stuff.”

Magnus nods lightly, remembering how seriously Alexander takes collage. He’s on third year of law school now, and Magnus knows without a doubt, that he will become the best lawyer ever. He's really focused and ambitious. Magnus recalls Alec studying for his exams right here, on Magnus’ couch. How stressed and nervous he was. How Magnus would just keep his arm around him and kiss his neck, releasing some of the tension.

He shakes his head, trying to get back to reality.

“Does he,” Magnus tries again after a while. “Does he have someone?” He asks even more insecurely.

Cat takes his hand and squeezes it lightly, which make Magnus look up again.

“Not that I know of. No.” She replies, her smile widening a bit, and Magnus can’t help to smile back.

He knows that Cat is rutting for them. She has been from the start. She said she can see how Alec makes him happy. More than ever, really. And  Magnus is grateful for her support. What he felt with Alec … there are really not words to explain this. The joy, happiness… of course, there were hard times, crises maybe, but they somehow always worked it out.

Magnus really hopes that this time they would too.

Because he still wants Alec. But there is a big chance that Alec doesn’t want him back. He did let him go. Without fighting really. He just agreed that they shouldn’t force it. Their relationship. That maybe it’s how it was supposed to be for them. He remembers when they got together at the beginning. How hesitant Alec was, and how he didn’t really know what he got himself into in the first place. Paparazzi following them, fans screaming around when they just saw him. Magnus thought that Alec got used to it along the way. To him being busy and occupied a lot of time. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe Alec just got tired of him not begin there.

“I’m sure he’ll be at the party.” Catarina offers him another smile. “Isabelle is his sister after all.”

“Yeah.” Magnus nods and sends her a tight smile.

He’s not sure how to act, when he’ll see Alec. Of course, he’s happy that he received an invitation to Isabelle’s party. He’s incredibly proud of her and pleased that she’s finished her first movie ever. He knows she’s an amazing actress and it’s really just a beginning of her career.

“I should get going.” Cat states then as she gets up from the couch. “My shift starts soon.”

Magnus hasn’t even noticed how late it’s got and that Cat indeed needs to go now. He stands up alongside her and moves to hug her one more time, before she heads to the door.

“Call me if you need anything!” She calls out as she leaves, catching Magnus nodding at her words.

Magnus exhales as she’s out of the loft, stretching on the couch and pulling his phone out again.

His sight hoovers over Alec’s contact name for a while. Maybe if the met and talked to each other before the party, he’d make sure they wouldn’t cause any scene. Alec is not really a man for drama, but Magnus has no idea how he’ll act when they see each other again.

No. He dismisses this idea firmly. He and Alec broke up. It was a mutual decision, and there’s no one to blame. There’s no reason to cause any scene.

He closes his contact page and opens twitter again instead, seeing even more pictures from the airport and comments from his fans. There’s a lot of praise for his outfit. Which was just casual, so it’s nice. Again, a few mentions of Camille, which he quickly scrolls through, not paying attention to. But there’s also one tweet that catches his eye.

 @malecforever: magnus is back in ny, alec lives in ny. Do the math ;)

He smiles and barely resists himself from replying something. But in the end just sighs and closes the app again.

He’s aware of how his fans follow his love life. He never really restrained from posting pictures or cute tweets about his dates. So yes, his relationship with Alec was pretty public. But Alec never said he minded. Most people didn’t recognized him if he wasn’t with Magnus anyway. But they never really made their break up public. It just kind of hurt too much to reveal it to the world. Magnus knows that his fans are not stupid. When he moved to LA, and it was clear that Alec stayed back in New York, and with Magnus not posting any pictures or tweets about them, they did figure out it was probably over between them.

He exhales heavily again, and moves to pour himself a drink, again thankful that Cat and Ragnor kept his alcohol stock full.

It’s good to be back home.

[malecsecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, @squidpro-quo!

A Very Malec Christmas

It was a month from Christmas and one night as Magnus rested his head on his Shadowhunter’s broad shoulder, he could sense that Alec was deep in thought about something.

“Alright, Alexander, out with it. I can practically hear the cogs turning in your head. What is it?” Magnus asked him, raising himself up on one elbow.

“I’ve been thinking, babe, and being it’s our first Christmas together, I’d sort of like to have everyone around for Christmas dinner.” Alec told him. Magnus’ face brightened.

“Oh, my love, I think that’s a wonderful idea. We could get a tree, put up some decorations, invite Catarina and Madzie, I could conjure a big feast………” Magnus started to say but Alec put a fingertip to his perfect lips to silence him.

“Yes, to all that, but, well, I kind of want to do the cooking myself. I haven’t had a proper Christmas dinner with all the trimmings for years. I’m usually at the Institute and its Jace and I sitting in the cafeteria eating a turkey roll. But this year I want to do it properly.” He explained.

Magnus’ smile broadened and he looked up at his handsome boyfriend with such tenderness that Alec almost blushed. He reached out one slender hand and ran it over his cheek before leaning in to place a soft kiss on his lips.

“Darling, I think that’s a wonderful idea. How about I be in charge of the decorating and you do the cooking? Deal?” He said. Alec’s face lit up and he bent forward and kissed him, still smiling.

“Deal. I cant wait this is going to be so great.” Alec said, as they settled back down and held each other close as they drifted off into sleep.

Over the next two weeks, Alec combed the internet for recipes and even managed to organise invitations for Jace and Clary, Izzy and Raphael, Miah and Simon and Luke.  Max was now living at the Institute for his training and loved getting his own personal invite. Even Maryse and Robert seemed pleased to get one. Catarina and Madzie replied almost straight away that they wouldn’t miss it for the world.  

It was no time at all till the big day arrived. Alec even relented, after much encouragement from Magnus, to take the day off and leave the Institute in Jace’s capable hands for the day.  Alec wasn’t happy about it, but he gave in anyway.

The day started off slowly, also not Alec’s idea. He woke up beside Magnus and saw his beaming face inches from his own.

“Merry Christmas, my love.” He said softly, and leaned in to place a soft kiss on Alec’s lips. It wasn’t long before the kisses started to heat up and Alec pulled back, tyring to ignore what those golden cat’s eyes of Magnus’ did to him.

“Babe, we have to get going. We have a house full of people coming later today.” He reminded him.

“Oh, I’m sure we have plenty of time for everything, Alexander. Besides, it’s law that you have to kiss me.” Alec said, making a pretend hurt face. He knew his boyfriend only too well. Alec could never resist his pouty face.

“Babe, I don’t think there are any laws about kissing at Christmas.” Alec gave him a lop-sided grin.

“Oh yes there is, look up.”

Ale frowned a little and turned his head to look above him. Suspended in the air as a few stems of a green leafed plant, a red ribbon tied them together. Alec had to laugh. Magnus would try anything to get what he wanted.

“Mistletoe? Really, Magnus? You’ll stop at nothing.” Alec said shaking his head, but it ended up being another half an hour before he managed to convince Magnus that they really had to get up.

Alec started heading for the bathroom which sparked a whole new debate about the need for Magnus to join him. It ended with Alec leaving Magnus standing in the bathroom door way calling him a Grinch.

After a quick breakfast and a few make up kisses, Alec went to the kitchen to begin the cooking. Magnus stayed in the living room and began moving furniture around and replacing it with a large table and chairs and then with a snap of his fingers and a few flourishing movements, a large Christmas tree appeared to one side of the fireplace, each and every branch covered in decorations and lights.

With a few more waves, Magnus hung more decorations around the room and also strategically placed a few bunches of mistletoe. He was standing back admiring his handiwork when a series of angry sounding noises came from the kitchen. He turned and went in and made it to the door way to see his boyfriend wrestling with a large turkey while trying to turn down the heat on the saucepans that were bubbling over on the stove. Magnus had to stifle a giggle, he had never seen his Shadow hunter more adorable.

“Is everything alright, Alexander?” He asked when clearly it wasn’t.  Alec turned around and Magnus could see smudges of flour on his face and black really wasn’t a great colour to be cooking in.

“Yeah fine. I’ve got this, babe. How’s the decorating going?” Alec asked, continuing to stuff the turkey with a lumpy looking mixture that Magnus was rather worried about what it actually contained.

“Yes, its all done, just have to set the table. Are you sure you don’t want any help, my love?” he asked again, looking worriedly at the mess in the kitchen.

“No, no, its fine. Go set the table while I finish up here.” Alec reassured him as he stopped a glob of stuffing from escaping from the cavity of the turkey.

Magnus gave him a smile and then turned back to the living room. Seeing the disorganised mess in there, he wondered just how much cooking Alec had ever actually done. The temptation to step in and help him was almost overwhelming but he knew Alec was determined to do it on his own.

It was another two hours before Alec emerged from the kitchen, looking like he had been it a fierce food fight with someone. Magnus grinned up at him did his best not to laugh.

“All done. Geez, why does it take twice as long to clean up as it does to do the cooking? I’m going to change, babe then we can sit down together before everyone gets here.”  Alec said, giving Magnus a quick kiss before heading for the bedroom.

Magnus waited until he was out of sight before he got up and went into the kitchen to check on things.

Well, he thought, he had done a great job at cleaning up, at least. He took the lid off the nearest pot on the stove and saw a very lumpy looking gravy that looked and acted like brown lava. Oh boy, well, maybe it would taste better then it looked. The other pots contained vegetables, and which didn’t look very appetizing either. Magnus winced as he peeked in the oven. The large bird was roasting well, too well. At this rate, they’d be eating charcoaled turkey by the time the other got there. He poked his head around the corner into the living room and then turned down the temperature on the oven. The rest of the meal was going to need some magical intervention but at least he might be able to save the turkey.

Magnus couldn’t help smiling as we went back out to the living room to quickly take his seat before Alec returned. He loved the tall Shadowhunter more than anything, but it seemed even though he had put in a solid effort, cooking didn’t seem to be a family skill.

Everyone arrived on time, baring gifts and bright smiles. Even Maryse and Robert seemed happy to be there. Magnus had dimmed the lights and the loft was bathed in a soft golden glow from the many well-placed candles and Christmas lights. The table looked wonderful, set with white plates edged with gold and Magnus had even conjured gold coloured cutlery. Sparkling crystal glasses caught the light and it looked magical.

“Your house looks very pretty Magnus.” Madzie told him when he picked the little girl up and hugged her.

“Thank you, Madzie. Did Santa Claus visit you last night?” He asked her. A wide smile brightened the child’s face.

“Yes, and look he gave me a new doll.” She said, proudly holding out the toy that she had tucked under one arm.

“Well that’s wonderful, I’m so glad. Are you ready for Alec’s delicious special dinner?”

“Yes, I’m starving.” She said, and clutched at her middle dramatically. Magnus couldn’t help but laugh.

Alec had gone into the kitchen to start preparing the dinner while Magnus had ensured everyone had a drink. He went into the kitchen to find Alec staring helplessly at the various serving dishes of food. Oh dear, he’d been afraid of this.

“Magnus, I’ve ruined dinner. Look at it, we can’t eat this, it’s a disaster.  I don’t know what made me think I could do this in the first place.” Alec said, his deep voice was full of sadness and anger at himself and Magnus felt so sorry for him.

He walked over to where his boyfriend was standing and took him in his arms and leaned up and kissed his softly.

“Alexander, it’s alright. I can fix this, but it doesn’t matter. The point is you tried and that’s what counts. Christmas is about getting together with family and friends, it doesn’t matter what was eaten, it’s the company that’s important. Now, let’s get this food looking and tasting as good as I’m sure it was supposed to look like.”

Magnus gave him one final kiss and then with a click of his fingers and a wave of his hand, the serving dishes were filled with food that looked like it belonged in a banquet hall of a palace.

Alec gave Magnus a smile and bent his head and kissed him before they picked up the dishes and headed out to the table.

“Thank you, babe. You saved the day. I love you.” He said, and Magnus’ face lit up from his words.

When they took the dishes out, everyone oohed and aahhed at the feast that was placed before them.

“Wow, this looks great. You sure know your way around the kitchen, Magnus.” Izzy said.

Alec was about to say something about his failed attempt at cooking when Magnus cut him off with a look.

“I’m afraid I can’t take credit for all the hard work, Isabelle. Your brother was in charge of the cooking and I think he’s done a fabulous job.” Magnus said, smiling at Alec.

Alec was about to disagree and saw the barely perceptible shake of Magnus’ head and gave him a shy smile.

“Well done, big brother, I can’t wait to taste it.” Izzy said.

They all tucked into the food and in no time, there was much happy laughter and conversation. Everyone had a great time and Magus grabbed Alec’s hand and pulled him close.

“Merry Christmas, Alexander. Here’s to our first Christmas and many more to come.” He said softly, and leaned in and kissed him gently.

“Merry Christmas to you too, Magnus. And next year, lets get the whole thing catered.” Alec said, smiling.

“I have a better idea. Why don’t I give you some lessons? And maybe next year, we can do it together?”  Alec laughed and nodded his head before kissing him once more.

[oncethrown]

Shadowhunters is Finally Getting Good: A Writer’s Perspective

This is going to get long, so basically this is where I’m going:

1. Shadowhunters is still finding itself, similar to how Buffy the Vampire Slayer kinda sucked until it grabbed onto its “Monsters as Life Metaphors” structure halfway through Season 2.

2. Because The Mortal Instruments series is such a catastrophic narrative failure, Shadowhunters doesn’t have compelling plot points to string their own original story between, the way True Blood was able to do with their own sub-par source material.

3. The strong character writing is just starting to free the show from the restrictions of its source material.

Where We Are Now

-The company that owns the rights to The Mortal Instruments is using Shadowhunters to return on a damaged investment. They bought the rights to a popular book series, and made a movie that bombed so hard that when the numbers came in, they stopped production on the sequel within weeks. They lost a shit ton of money on what should have been a good investment, and were unwilling to throw too much good money after bad, which is why there wasn’t much investment in the first season. The first season’s low budget affects more than the special effects. It plays into who they can hire, how long they have to rehearse, how long they have to shoot, every element of production.

-The source material is shit, and it’s an albatross around the show’s neck. The movie sucked so hard because it was a pretty faithful adaption of the books, which are torturously long, and full of one note characters who only exist to spout faux-clever dialogue, or facilitate CC’s incest fantasies. They are driven by entirely by plot, not character, which makes for flat fiction.

-The first season had to be, to an extent, experimental. They had to figure out the right mix between what they had to keep to engage book fans, and what they had to add to make it possible for it to be a TV show, because the book doesn’t have enough material to be a couple seasons of TV.

-The first season worked to clear the very low bar of of being less racist, tokenist, slut-shaming, girl-hating, bi-phobic, and all around disgusting than the books. They succeeded. Yay.

-Successfully moving past the tragedy of the movie into an expanded episode order and expanded budget mean that season two is essentially a brand new show.

- That season is trying to fight its way free of what it had to be in the first season, and the failure of the movie, and the ball and chain of the books.

The Problems

1. The Show Has Turned Every Pointless, Cardboard Dialogue Spouter from the Books into a Compelling, Nuanced Character, and Now There Are Too Many

The book characters have interesting things on their character sheets, but never become interesting. The show has recomposited characters out of the character elements used in the books, and created complex, compelling, nuanced characters, who have ties and relationships to eachother, who are impacted by the world around them, and who make decisions and affect the world around them and eachother, instead of just waiting around for Clary to discover her special rune magic, or for Magnus to portal them somewhere.

Unfortunately, a bunch of cardboard cutouts creating obstacles to, and eventually enabling brother-sister fucking don’t suck up too much plot time, but 11 suddenly worth-while characters (Clary, Simon, Alec, Isabelle, Jace, Maryse, Jocelyn, Luke, Raphael, Maia, Magnus) plus a few new additions we are invested in to some degree (Lydia, Aldertree, Iris), and a few random additions that don’t seem to do much but create more dialogue and scoot plots along (Valentine, Meliorn, Raj, Max, Dot, Gretel, Suspiciously Important Girl With Glasses) all end up battling for screen time, to the detriment of each other.

For every charming interaction between Maia and Simon, we don’t get to see Luke dealing with Jocelyn’s death. When we get a glimpse into the tenderness of Magnus and Raphael’s relationship, there’s less time to see Magnus and Alec learn where they cross and divide. When we see that Alec and Maryse still love each other, even if the have so much shit left to work through , that takes potential minutes away from someone trying to talk to Jace about being abducted and tortured. There is so much potential, and it’s not possible to turn all of it into plot when there are only 45 minutes a week to work with.

1A. Except Valentine, Who is A Spectacularly Shitty Villain

Valentine is one long HHHHHHHZZZZZZMMMMMMMHHHHHhhzzzzmmmmhhhh on an evil kazoo.

A good villain is the hero of their own story, but they have to be more than that. A good villain has to taunt you with the possibility that they could be the hero of your story. They have to want something in a way that you can understand the wanting, even if what they want isn’t something you would want.

Kylo Ren is a good villain. He wants to be a super powerful Jedi and big deal leader in the Empire and the movie shows you that he wants that because he’s actually a pathetic little snot streak, drowning in his inability to live up to the standards of toxic masculinity around him, while wearing a silly helmet. The desire makes sense.

Spider-Man Villains are good villains. They are typically super smart scientists trying to solve a problem, but their science gives them some sort of mutation that casts them out of the society they were trying to improve.

Magneto is a great villain. A holocaust survivor who believes he sees the writing on the wall and won’t let history repeat itself.  

(Quick fact about Oncethrown: I went to go see the Johnny Depp version of Sweeny Todd in theaters in college and didn’t realize he was the villain until the very last scene. (The last last scene. Even after he throws Mrs. Lovett in the oven) Because he was unfairly jailed by a man who wanted him gone so that he could rape Sweeny todd’s wife to be raped into insanity and leave her out on the street to rot, and I was totally onboard with the quest for vengeance up until the moment the blood started pouring out if his neck.)

Valentine is just generically evil. He was born into the most powerful class in his world, was annoyed that his society wouldn’t let him become even more powerful, and now is experimenting on a class he already could kill with little to no repercussions, and working to eradicate them… because he can?

He doesn’t love or care about anyone either. There’s nothing to hold onto about Valentine. He’s just an opposing force. He could be a block of wood with angry eyebrows and the effect on the plot would be about the same.

1B. Except Aldertree, Who We Were Promised Would Be And Interesting Villain is Just A Random Force For Bad.

Aldertree came in to bring the erratic New York Institute back under Clave control. And he started out doing that. He threw the downworlders out of the Institute, he left Jace to rot in jail because he wouldn’t swear total fealty to the Clave, he nearly let Alec die because he threatened very important Shadowhunter traditions by refusing to marry a suitable woman in order to date a man, and a downworlder.

The yin-fen plot line originally was in this same functional but boring vein, until the last episode (spoilers) where he was clearly trying to get Izzy to trade sex for drugs (end spoilers). Generic Rapist Evil not interesting either. All he ended up doing was giving Alec a “Reclaiming the Institute Plotline” which would have been a really, really good piece in that whole “Effects of Institutionalizing Discrimination” theme… if any time had been devoted to it at all this season. Like… Alec originally ceded his authority to Lydia. The way he came for Aldertree just wasn’t given the building blocks to be satisfying.

2. The Books Didn’t Have Layers, and the Show is Trying to Graft an Interesting Theme Onto the Book’s Pocked and Diseased Foundation

The books are just an excuse for incest. The show is attempting to develop a narrative about institutionalized discrimination and oppression, and how characters are influenced by the way that affects their societies, upbringings, relationships and lives.

There is a really underdeveloped attempt at this in the books which more or less boils down to “Shadowhunters are mean to downworlders, and it’s not totally fair, but they are still the heroes, because they are all described as sexually attractive.”

The show is running into a lot of complications as they try to smoosh this theme onto the source material they have to work with.

-The main plot of “Evil McEvil is a Racist Who Wants To Start A Genocide Because Of Evil and Overt Racism”is sucking up all the air in the room for more compelling and important elements of the show,  such as every idea presented in Maia and Simon’s conversation about how Shadowhunters pretend that everyone is on the same team, but don’t understand what the daily existence of downworlders is really like in a world that Shadowhunters essentially rule.

Or Alec’s struggle to be both a Shadowhunter and a gay man falling in love with a downworlder.

Or Isabelle and Lydia’s season one speaking out about Law vs. Justice in the Shadowhunter world.

Or Clary’s 10 minute plot about not being trained well enough to be a real shadowhunter, but knowing too much to ever be a mundane again

The adherence to the main plot of book one and two is one of the things turning Clary into a mess of a white savior who doesn’t learn from her mistakes. She’s the entry point character, she’s bringing us into this world, and she’s the hero of the story. So... she’s white and straight with magic powers, trying to solve racism and homophobia in a story where the whole society she enters into is built around it, and has been for centuries.

3. The Clusterfuck of Potential We Are Working Out Of Now

So 2.08 and 2.09 I think prove that we are watching a show that is just about to get there. Both of these episodes had insular plots solved within the confines of the episode while also having consequences in the season stretching story.

Good characters are interacting with each other in interesting ways. (Except Lydia. Where is Lydia? I love her and I want her back) There are some growing pain failures (everything Izzy has said and done all season), some serious fuck ups (the lack of consent before the lack of malec sex scene) and a lot of unfortunate leaning on shitty and easy tropes (Izzy and Raphael fall into a drug fueled affair, Alec pushes Magnus into sex in a 3 minute side plot, Valentine exists and we have to watch him) But they are setting up more and more really solid pieces with places to go and I’m excited to see it happen.

4. The Things They Need to Fix (this is mostly rambling)

-Give fewer characters better plots per episode instead of trying to give everyone a couple minutes of screen time.

-Give characters goal and personality and development driven season arcs that create plots instead of having them constantly reacting to plot elements that are not character driven (purely from a writing standpoint, this is the biggest flaw with Isabelle’s plot line. The addiction drives her plot, not her personality, and Aldertree doesn’t have a character based reason to give her the drug to being with. “Just because I’m an asshole” isn’t really good enough. That’s why Alec is the best part of season 1. Everything he says and does is driven by a couple easily defined elements of his character.)

-If you are going to sell the diversity aspect of your show, be aware of the full context of the plot lines you are assigning your actors. It’s not great that there are 4 latinx actors, and the two of them with accents are in a drug dealing/addiction/sex for drugs plot line. It’s great that your only canon couple is a gay interracial couple. It’s great that they got a really sweet build up, and they have great communication scenes and they are really building a strong relationship. It’s not great that they do not touch while a lot of totally gratuitous sex is happening around them.

-Figure out who you really need, and jettison the dead weight. -Why is Raj still on this show? All he does is say nasty shit about women. He’s disgusting, he’s boring, and he’s pointless. Literally every single time he’s on screen he could be replaced by someone we care about and it would tighten the episode. -We ditched Robert because as far as the impact on the main characters goes, he’s a redundancy on Maryse’s storyline, and she has all the good elements. -Aldertree is pointless. Maryse could have had Aldertree’s “WE ARE REALLY FUCKING GOING WITH WHAT THE CLAVE SAYS” storyline and it would have been a lot more interesting with the rest of the plot.Lydia could have had that plot too. “You fucked up at the wedding, reign in this nonsense or we are shipping you our to wrangle island”

[tanoraqui]

okay, I need to talk theories and spoilers a little before I start The Suffering Game. I can’t pretend I don’t have certain information. Not-very-quick run-through:

I know the original seven Red Robes were Taako, Merle, Magnus, Lucretia, Lup (probably Chalupa, Taako’s twin sister), Barry Bluejeans (possibly has a mad crush on Lup), and Davenport

that last is surprising but actually makes sense because it did occur to me to be suspiscious that he’s trusted to touch all the Relics in order to put them in the lead case. On the other hand, he might be temptation-proof on account of being a simpleton, but that’s probably a magical effect from some horrible incident - or he’s faking and can, in fact, say things other than his name.

Possibly from whichever Relic is Enchantment-based? We’ve yet to see that one.

By my reckoning, the Gauntlet was Conjuration, the monocle Illusion, the Sash Evocation, the Stone Transmutation, and the Chalice...Abjuration or maybe Necromancy (just because it fucked up so much against the natural order.) 

From what I know of hte SG arc, I think we’ll be facing the Enchantment RElic, but idk.

What’s off is that there’re seven Red Robes and Relics but 8 schools of magic. Idk if hat was messy worldbuilding early on or there’s actually something extra we should be looking out for. Or both - Davenport just saying “Davenport” started as a slip-up and a joke, after all, and it’s definitely a part of the larger plot, now.

I’m very much looking forwad to finding out wtf is up with Magnus, actually, because by all appearances he isn’t a spellcaster at all, so...did he still take part in the mad science Relic-building? How?

okay so a big dark devouring nothingness called “the Hunger” is eating the planes, including making stars go out (a trope I love.) It’s fought by this bright white light thing which is a force of...creation? Vs. the Hunger’s destruction and nothingness?

“A brilliant light heralded by seven birds” - the birds (in their red robes) (hey, Roswell took the form of a red bird - nice stealth clue) - herald the creative force, that is, they precede, announce, indicate it’s incoming. I wonder intensely: do they do this on every...not plane, because there are circles of planes, but every reality, I guess? Every circle of planes? Is it always the same people, the same souls - continuously, or reincarnated? Or is it just this one time? How many memories are they missing, truly.

For all intents and purposes, I think we should treat it as just this once, because if it’s not, they clearly don’t remember, and I suspect that’s more a feature of the greater system than the Baby Voidfish that Lucretia definitely has in a secret back room somewhere. (Part theory, part spoiler, Idk which.) I think our heroes the Red Robes did a shit-ton of research, including inventing a fucking spaceship (to go to the Voidfish planet), and somehow harnessed and broke apart hte white light instead of just letting it do its thing.

Which may have been temporarily calamitous, but also, I get it: the usual course of events, per prophecy, evidently involves the planes of each reality succumbing to destruction, and only the force of pure creation escaping. People who live on said planes would naturally be Opposed. The goal of this story is to break the pattern - it’s just, they kinda did it horribly wrong hte first time. The Relics, the creative force, got misused.

But I bet so much money that Lucretia isn’t actually destroying them. We’re going to need to reunite them in order to save reality.

I have no idea who the man on fire Taako is going to need to look to in his moment of need is (per Pamela’s prophecy.)

I trust the Red Robe lich who keeps appearing - I’m 99% certain it’s Barry and he’s trying o help. I don’t know what he thinks about Lucretia’s whole organization. I assume that she set up her baby voidfish so that none of her former compatriots would remember anything, but then Barry died and, as established, that negates the effects. Oooh, it IS relevant that none of the boys have touched into the Astral Plane during their temporary deaths! Thanks, Kravitz!

I’ve seen a couple arts and one comment indicating that Lucretia is the “lonely journal-keeper”, which means Kravitz was a red herring for that, which I can respect. Though I’m still not certain the original Red Robes are going to turn out to be the birds of Maureen’s vision. We might have to shake things up for the final...battle? with the Hunger.

I’m actually rather confused about this secret underground lair from the epilogue. I know we’re going to find a Magnus body in the tank and I THINK it’s also where we’re going to find a fabled red robe and pair of worn blue jeans, which of course was a climactic reveal recently...but my impression at the moment is that Garfield the Deals Warlock is the one building a clone of Magnus. Perhaps they’re actually working together?

I’m also not sure why Magnus getting hints that he was a Red Robe makes probably-Barry less able to protect him.

I’m not sure what the fuck happened at the eclipse. It sounding like music made my first guess be that that was somehow all the information hte Voidfish has swallowed given at once, but that doesn’t make sense. What throws me most is the white lights being described as “eyes”, because otherwise I would guess it was souls of the Astral plane somehow pushed right up against ours, all screaming at once.