#if they’ve introduced a new character it’s so they can be killed off like

[jennifersminds]

this is vv random but i will always find the edie munson love funny cause that man was on his way to become a high school dropout who’d been there for like years, had a cult like game club, looked as if he hadn’t showered in ages and was just. an overall freak lol and yet he became ppls little meow meow dude like 😭 applause tbh

skskdksss ngl I am HERE for eddie munson slander,, i didn’t really care about his character but some of his stans are so genuinely insufferable that i started to hate him (i call that the caroline forbes effect lmao bc-,,)

i also hate how the st writers basically nuked my husband (steve’s) character to make eddie fit into the dynamic in s4. like,, s4 steve suddenly being the hero archetype just felt insane to me.

steve has heroic moments sure, but a lot of his charm specially in seasons 2/3 were that it didn’t come naturally. he was a hot mess, wet cat baby girl that would try his best (and get his shit rocked) to protect the kids,, but he was never like, a natural hero.

plus unrelated but him telling a girl he dated for six months, two years ago that he wanted her to have six of his children 🤮 HATE HATED NO pls the fattest idk i can’t believe they put me through that lmao

[mawinswag]

DIGITAL CIRCUS JAX THEORY

MASSIVE SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY BUT HERE WE GO!!!

.

.

.

.

.

.

. Ok, are you good? Ok

So, as many have pointed out already, there’s a scene at the end of episode 2 [22:23] where after Caine kills gummigoo and sends him back to the canyon, that he fears he can’t know for certain who’s a human and who’s an NPC. So foreshadowing, reference to past events or wacky non-sequitur? Maybe none of them, but the possibility that one of the circus members is actually an NPC is obviously too tantalizing for me to pass up, and given events AFTER this scene I think it can only be Jax, and I’ve got a few pieces of evidence why.

The main crux of this whole thing is that Jax IS an NPC, but he’s the only one in the circus who KNOWS that and is absolutely desperate to make sure that no one finds that out.

Episode one! Small note to start out on, but literally the first thing we learn about Jax, the VERY FIRST thing he has to ask is if Pomni is an NPC or not. Narratively, he’s the person who introduces the CONCEPT of NPCs into this universe, not Ragatha - who tries to break in Pomni the most - or Kinger who seems the most knowledgeable about the circus as a concept. He’s also very intrigued at the concept of a new AI in episode 2 [02:49} Like, the fact that she popped up in the circus unexpectedly doesn’t tip him off that she’s a human character immediately. Which may be how HE was able to trick everyone into thinking he was a human instead of an NPC - possibly by sneaking back through a portal like Gummigoo did and hiding until the start of the next adventure. 

He DOES mention knowing about the headsets like the other human characters, but there’s no reason he CAN’T know about that considering he’s not the latest person to enter the circus. Like, we have a GENERAL idea of who entered first, but that’s just the characters who are still around for the pilot - there’s a lot more considering how many bedroom doors there are. https://shorturl.at/asESX 

So, generally, it’s Kinger, Ragatha, Jax/Gangle, Zooble, then Pomni. Now, how can I argue that Jax is an NPC when he has a canonical age? Not to mention, he’s got a canonical ‘appearance moment.’ Well, there are a few options. Option one is that - NPC or not - Jax HAS been here for a very long time, but rather than being a human, he was born inside the circus. He has a definite, APPEARANCE moment, but it's only implied that this is because of him ENTERING the circus proper - new NPCs appear in the big top all the time, i.e. the gloinks all the mannequins, etc. 

But also, take those ages with a pinch of salt, considering a lot of it was about quelling shipping wars and stopping any discourse about characters being adults and all that lovely hellish nightmare stuff. I think goose had an idea in her head about which characters entered the circus FIRST for sure, but how much they’ve aged and WHETHER they’ve aged is its own question.

ALRIGHT! But enough about Tumblr asks, back to the pilot, I wanna note something that happens with Jax in particular more than any other performer in the circus. He’s the most apparent of the interstitial nature of the circus itself - and the most meta. This can range from him basically winking at the camera like in the pilot [8:37] but I think it’s a bit more than that. Jax in particular is more aware of being a CHARACTER in-universe than specifically being a character in an indie animated series.

After this moment in the pilot [19:58] where Jax says ‘ladies first’ to Gangle as if to be polite before promptly following that up with “no, wait, why would I say that,” indicates a few things to me. Jax is at the very least aware that he’s supposed to act a certain way, and realizes when he’s acting out of ‘character’ in this scene and course-corrects promptly. Again, could be a funny meta reference, but also it could be a hanging notion of the fact he literally WAS a character in-universe, an NPC with a pre-programmed personality and understanding of the world. He’s got this rigid understanding of how the characters are SUPPOSED to act and this comes up again in episode two when goading Gangle into driving the tanker over the rocks - saying she’s SUPPOSED to be ‘submissive and agreeable,’ [Episode 2, 7:24]. This sort of disconnect from how complicated people can be and his overall detachment and overstepping of peoples lives [NPC or otherwise] comes up a lot. He doesn’t really ‘get’ other people, WHICH DOESN’T AUTOMATICALLY MAKE A PERSON EVIL, I SHOULD PREFACE, and him not getting it doesn’t automatically make him more ‘robotic’ and thus an AI, but it does explain why he’s more emotionally distant than the other performers. Coming from someone who could’ve been programmed to behave a certain way, his confusion makes sense.

Now for that juicy stuff! One of the few moments where Jax isn’t in control of a situation is in the pilot, where he’s trying desperately to hide from an abstracted Kaufmo. Now yes, obviously this is a sign of his own instincts of self-preservation, but what interests me is how he seems the MOST bothered by the thought of Kaufmo than any other character. Like at [17:27] of the pilot where he sees a glitched gloink and immediately his eyes start darting around him as if he’s listening for threats. He even explicitly says at [19:19] that he’s “just here to hide from [Kaufmo]” and isn’t invested in the adventure at all. And yes it's a very interesting character moment, but how does it push us closer to him being an NPC. Well, it’s because he’s afraid of dying. When you compare how he reacts to Kaufmo to how RAGATHA reacts to him, there’s a comparative lack of fear with her. Like yeah, she’s scared of him, but she’s never convinced that she’s gonna die and even tells Pomni later that Caine will be able to fix her up no problem [14:52]. She’s scared because she CAN feel pain, [https://tinyurl.com/ye275884] but she can’t die, none of the performers can, Caine doesn’t kill Kaufmo when he abstracts, he just throws him in the cellar with the others. His mind is GONE, sure, but it’s not dead. 

NPCs on the other hand, can ABSOLUTELY DIE. So if Jax is an NPC, then there’s a very good reason why he wouldn’t wanna even get CLOSE to Kaufmo in the pilot, because he’s not as durable as Ragatha is and there’s not gonna be an easy fix for him if he gets hurt.

Now, episode two has little sprinkles of Jaxs’ detachment all over it, but none of it explicitly points in the direction of him being an NPC until a partway through the episode. We do get a lot of him showing absolutely no value for the lives of those around him whether than being putting Gangle and Pomni thru the ringer or setting the people of Candy Canyon Kingdom up to be killed by the fudge, but the question is…why? 

My answer is; he’s AM from ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.’ Uhmm, what? Yup that’s right. Ok so it’s no secret that IHNMAIMS was a big inspiration for TADC [https://shorturl.at/hnsFV] and while Caine obviously got the most of this influence with him being a godlike AI who only has control over a bunch of sad, sappy humans, some of which he throws into a giant abominable melting goop monster of human suffering, but if you look at Caine's inspirations [AM from IHNMAIMS] you’ll find that the same motivations more than drive Jax under this theories' interpretation of events. Simply put, AM, a war machine, gains sentience and absolutely despises humanity because DESPITE that sentience, he is absolutely powerless to do anything meaningful with it except torture a group of humans. He’s painfully aware of his own sentience and hates all humanity for creating him, is the gist.

My interpretation is that while Caine has the thematics, Jax has the motivation. In this theory, at some point Jax was an NPC and gained a sentience of his own either through a quirk of programming, intentional design, or AI learning. He realizes that he can keep himself alive if he pretends to be a performer, because he learns that Caine can’t affect the minds or actions of the real humans in his realm. He’s sapient, but he’s in this uncomfortable position where he’s not immortal like the performers, but completely aware of his own mortality unlike the other NPCs, and fully cognizant of the fact he can’t be brought back as he is. Yeah…that’d make someone bitter for sure.

So he psychologically torments the other performers because he knows they can’t die, but can go insane - while killing indiscriminately any NPCs he can because he knows they can die, and he won’t face any consequences for it. He’s this twisted death spiral of a being who finds his own existence an agonizing paradox and takes that pain out on the people around him for all eternity basically - finding disappointment in being unable to act out these pent-up emotions [TADC ep 2: 20:50] and seeing Kaufmo’s funeral as a painful reminder of an ending he can never have. Or maybe he’s bitter because he knows Kaufmo isn’t really dead in a way that HE can die, and finds personal distaste with the funeral on principle. Frankly, there’s a whole HOST of ways you could interpret this scene at the end of episode two with this framework, and I encourage y’all to find your own!!!!

[anthurak]

Something I absolutely love about the alternate-timeline aspect of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is that it really feels like a logical extrapolation and ‘next-step’ to the genre/trope-subversion and exploration of the original comic.

Remember how the whole idea of Scott Pilgrim the comic is taking a very basic, generic and ‘tropey’ premise; ‘Boy likes girl, boy must defeat girl’s seven evil exes in order to date her’, and uses it as the backdrop and framework to explore, deconstruct and develop its characters.

Like how the biggest conflict at any given point of the comic is never the actual battles with any of the Seven Evil Exes, but rather Scott being forced to confront some major problem with himself or his relationship with Ramona (usually the former). How the true ultimate ‘antagonist’ for both Scott and Ramona isn’t any of the Evil Exes, but rather themselves. Their own long-festering hang-ups and insecurities that they’ve been refusing to confront or acknowledge that have in turn led to them being pretty shitty people over the course of their lives. For as bad as Gideon is, he’s still only a mirror showing all the bad that SCOTT could become.

So with that in mind, it really feels like the anime simply took this idea a step further: What if we took the basic, generic and tropey premise that nonetheless served as the framework for the story and held it together… and broke it.

When the narrative guide and scaffolding that held the original story on a certain course is shattered when the story is just getting started, where does the story go?

It’s actually one of the ways I think Scott Pilgrim Takes Off can be appreciated even if you haven’t read the comic or watched the movie. Even if you aren’t familiar with the story, the first episode makes it pretty easy to guess how this story should play out: Scott meets Ramona, they have their first date, they really hit it off and seem set to become a couple. We’re introduced to what clearly seems to be our ‘Big Bad’ in Gideon and our ‘Starter Villain’ in Matthew. Again, even if you don’t know one thing about Scott Pilgrim, by the time Matthew Patel crashes the party you probably have a pretty good idea how this whole story SHOULD go.

And then Matthew (seemingly) KILLS SCOTT in their first fight!

THEN the second episode ratchets things up even further when all signs point to Scott, our title character, being ACTUALLY DEAD for real. And then Matthew, again the guy who should be the starter villain, goes and beats Gideon Graves, the guy who clearly SHOULD have been the FINAL BOSS of this story!

And then the third episode sees Ramona, the girl previously set-up as the designated love-interest, firmly established as the new PROTAGONIST of the story. With Ramona given both an overarching goal in finding what really happened to Scott, and an ongoing character-arc of meeting and reconciling with each of her ‘evil exes’.

Basically, even if you aren’t familiar with the full specifics of the source material, I feel like Scott Pilgrim Takes Off can still be enjoyed as essentially a show that at first sets up what seems to be a fairly wrote and predictable story before flying COMPLETELY off the rails at the end of its first episode into something quite a bit more unique.

[bambimeadows]

Black OPs 6 campaign review/analysis, obvious spoilers under the cut. This is long, so thank you if you indulge me 🙂‍↕️ I speak about Adler towards the end

Honestly where to start, I think I’ll need to play it through again because it was kind of a whirlwind, I think I was too caught up in the excitement of having Adler back. But here are my initial thoughts

I’ll start with some positives. The new characters, Marshall, Sevati and Felix. Love. Love all three of them, they’re brilliant. They’re well written and actually have some strong, unique and discernible personalities. They’re fleshed out and seem very much human, the absence of that has been an issue with call of duty characters in the past so I’m glad to see they’re pulling us in a new direction and understand they need characters like this to carry out effective story telling. If I had to pick a favourite it would be Marshall. He’s a strong and determined leader, but still fresh enough to not be completely war hardened and I like that. Felix and his perpetual anxiousness, melancholy hidden by a bright personality and aversion to being violent is intriguing (side note, he in particular conveyed so much with his facial expressions, especially when speaking with him in the safehouse amazing work there) Sevati’s back story is a little cliche but I still became very fond of her and her sharpness and her wit. I do ultimately enjoy the three more than park, sims and that other one (can’t remember his name don’t care lol) as a team. Jane was a somewhat adequate antagonist, I guess, but maybe just a bit cookie cutter and cliche - the unusually elaborate and unnecessarily long sequence surrounding her back story didn’t do much to change that I’m afraid. But more on that later.

Some of the missions were quite good, I’m not that good at critiquing actual gameplay but all I know is for the most part they were genuinely exciting and introduced us to a diverse range of environments. They’ve gone in quite a different direction, giving us quite a few actual spy missions with the gunslinging. It’s a funny juxtaposition to be in a war torn battle ground with tanks and helicopters and boom boom boom one minute and then in a swanky casino playing poker the next. I can imagine some who are looking for a hard hitting action game might have an issue with this and even I raised an eyebrow at first, but in all truth it stops things getting repetitive and gives us a chance to experience new aspects of the black ops universe.

Now I’m aware COD campaigns have a very limited amount of hours, and yet some of the missions were frustratingly time consuming and made no sense, nor added anything to the story or fit in smoothly. I’m so conscious of time ticking by as I play through COD campaigns, knowing the ending is always near. They implicated zombie mode into the main campaign in a very lengthy and out of place mission and I can’t say I appreciated it. They obviously kept the continuity by not actually inserting zombies into the canonical world of black Ops, but rather telling us we were hallucinating off some toxic gas and that’s why we were seeing zombies. Lord give me strength, THAT is lazy and forced. We have a whole mode to fuck up some zombies. I found it pointless, wasting precious time on what should have been spent on something else. It’s the same with the mission towards the end where they inject Jane with the drug and have us travel through her psyche. Look it was somewhat interesting, but why do we have to have like an hour worth of gameplay (depending on your speed) doing an in-depth deep dive into this woman’s background when we don’t actually really care about her? (Maybe some of you do I’m not sure) And all of that, just to kill her off so unceremoniously? why invest so much time into her then? why couldn’t her motives be explained in a more cohesive and less time consuming way that doesn’t just completely take us out of the game? And it left a glaring plot hole. She believed Adler killed her parents for YEARS and obviously had good intel to believe this. This provoked her into enacting her big diabolical plan against the CIA, and then when she was injected with the drug she suddenly realised it wasn’t him? What do you mean??? Did he do it or didn’t he? And what’s more, if Adler and Jane had some sort of past, where he “took her under his wing” why do we not get to see them interact or even acknowledge each other once? Why were her parents attacked from the inside? What’s with the weird alter ego shtick? Are they implying she’s suffering from some sort of personality disorder and she’s not actually responsible for any of her own actions? This section of the campaign was put in place to answer all the questions but it just left me with more. Idk, Overall that whole part was messy. It had me rolling my eyes. It seems the writers are being a lot more experimental but sometimes it just falls flats.

The ending was awful to me to the point I don’t even have the need to feel angry about it, just indifferent. I don’t have much to say about it. Anti-climatic is the optimal word here. They stopped the bombs, Case promptly kills Jane. Yaddah yaddah yaddah who cares. And obviously we have the end scene setting up the next campaign and that’s just kind of whatever, see you in four or more years I guess. OR, it will just be material for half assed plot lines for multiplayer and warzone with the new seasons, that’s something that recently occurred to me. I really hope that’s not the case.

Now onto Adler. I don’t think the campaign was Adler centric in the way we wanted it to be, but to be honest I think his side character role was generous and fair enough, it made sense and he fit in with the story very smoothly. I can totally see why he took a minor backseat. But with the time he did have in the campaign, I think they’ve done a good job with him. He’s completely different and I’m not exaggerating, this is not the Adler I know, this is not the Adler I struggled to write a semblance of personality for and still felt he was out of character when I did. I noticed a hint of change the moment I met him at the beginning of the game, and then realised he’s had somewhat of a personality transplant. He’s no longer completely cold, mysterious and closed off, he’s even dare I say kind of nicer, sometimes? if not much more charismatic. Don’t get me wrong, obviously he’s not the life and soul of the party and still a complete asshole and very veryyyy much lacking in morals and empathy, but this Adler is more receptive, animated, lighthearted, playful, constantly cracking jokes? It’s crazy. I know many of us have already realised that he likely acted so robotic in Cold War due to Bell, consequently he seems much more at ease with Case who is sort of the Bell of this game, they share quite a few parallels. We still didn’t really learn that much about Adler (apart from him being born in San Diego oooh) but he does show some weakness, a smidge of humility and human errors if you squint, and glimmers of emotions, primarily towards Woods. They both hint at their bond, friendship and respect for each other throughout the campaign, which is a nice touch. For example, the subtle genuine concern in his voice when he stays behind to be with Woods when he’s wounded is groundbreaking for him, a small little thing that somehow speaks volumes due to how little he’s previously shown us. This is already too long and I’m not going to speak about every single thing, but I’ll say Woods is perfect in this as a supporting character, but he’s always been one of the best things about black ops, he’s an icon. They’ve been tactful and realistic in writing him adjusting to his life out of the field and becoming disabled while still keeping his trademark funny and snarky attitude. I’m really glad he was with us!

And as for Case? Meh. We didn’t get much in regards to him. He’s no Bell that’s for sure and I’m more than ready to write him off.

All in all I’ll give the campaign 2.8/5 stars. Somewhat refreshing, great characters both new and old, cool settings (that safehouse was a LOT nicer to explore than the Cold War one huh?) average plot tarnished by a terrible ending, it was certainly an interesting concept but not executed as well as it could have been and somehow not really explored enough? Everything was kind of vague in a way that didn’t seem to be an issue that Cold War had. All in all they could have done more, could have utilised the runtime of the campaign more effectively. Stuff should have been added, a lot of stuff should have been cut.

[adriensaltprompts]

Submitted prompt: A Third Option

Léonce, a young teen from French Africa, found the Fish Miraculous from the old concept art and has been using it to be a superhero when the need arises back home. When their family moves to Paris, they immediately step up to help Ladybug. Hawkmoth poses such a big danger to the world that Léonce works through their social anxiety to try to offer backup despite that… and Chat Noir 1. misgenders Léonce, insisting they’re a he (Chat Noir/Adrien thinks of being nonbinary as an AFAB only thing) and 2. insists that the other Miraculous user needs to back off ‘his girl’.

Ladybug is disgusted on two different fronts. Firstly, she’s not dating him, and secondly, it’s abhorrent to her that anyone would misgender someone even after they’ve stated their pronouns (in French, Léonce goes by iel/iels or on/ons but not by strictly binary pronouns like il/ils or elle/elles).

She’s already in a bad mood the next day at school when Léonce is introduced to the class and Adrien misuses their pronouns there, too. It’s during that day where she puts two things together.

The first is that Adrien’s defense of himself/statements about nonbinary people are word-for-word Chat Noir’s takes.

The second is that Léonce is a nonbinary AMAB black person speaking with an African francais accent who’s skinny and has a gap in their teeth, a combination so specific that it can only mean she’s looking at the Fish Miraculous user.

Now that she’s had the realization Chat Noir is Adrien, and she knows Léonce’s other identity, she has options. She can choose a new partner. She can talk to Chat Noir about how ridiculous it is to accuse an agender aroace person of wanting to ‘steal’ anyone and how gross it is to imply Léonce is lying about their identity (the pins on their jacket are not for show).

She can sit Léonce down while in Ladybug form and apologize for accidentally figuring out their identity but explain how Chat Noir’s harassment is making the fight against Hawkmoth harder and she could use the help, even if he’s not onboard.

Really, the author can take this a hundred directions from here. The salient point is to have an “another Miraculous user appears” plot where the new character isn’t romantically involved with anyone and we don’t default to “Marinette’s partner as Ladybug should also be her dating partner”.

Léonce and Marinette do not need to be romantically involved with anyone to be heroes or have complete character arcs, even if the show seems to insist romance is mandatory. “Should Marinette be with Luka or Adrien?” Marinette can be with no one and be happy, actually. We’re taking a third option.

Bonus points if even minor villains like Lila or Chloé respect Léonce’s pronouns because, while they are assholes, some things are just repugnant even to them. This definitely kills their crushes on Adrien. It’s hard to be into someone who’s just running around being a bigot for no damn reason all the time.

Submitted by anonymous.

[chopprface]

giggling to myself knowing ive infected a small amount of the beast wars fandom with my dinocharge (depthcharge/dinobot) brainworms so here we go

depthcharge starting out very skeptical of dinobot’s allegiance to the group even despite the other maximals sharing stories with depthcharge on the rare occasion where he decides to socialize with them.

BIG BIG MASSIVE spoilers for both depthcharge and dinobot's arcs coming up, id advise finishing beast wars before diving into this cause otherwise youre going to be so lost. /srs

they’d avoid eachother at first until theyre completely cut off from the rest of the maximals and are forced to work together, similar to the episode where rampage is introduced and blackarachnia and silverbolt start getting closer (possibly replacing them in that episode?). more arguing and less cooperation with each other, but they come out of it with an odd amount of trust in each other now that they’ve gotten out of a tough scenario together.

with the tension between them cleared for the most part, dinobot gets depth charge to open up about his information on rampage, thinking that getting firsthand experiences from someone who oversaw his containment might help them find a weakness to eliminate a major threat like rampage.

depth charge's initial distrust is replaced by a surprising amount of transparency, possibly because he feels he failed his fellow maximals and can no longer relate to them as he let them down on omicron. something about their similar feelings of lacking belonging among the other maximals (at least initially) draws him to dinobot.

both dinobot and depth charge lie in that odd middle ground where they don't feel like they don't belong with the maximals no matter how much their colleagues insist they do, but fight with them regardless. they have their different reasons for fighting, depth charge wanting to take revenge for omicron by killing rampage and dinobot's reasons slowly shifting over time as his priorities and the scope of his goals change. (i could make a whole post purely about dinobots development and goals changing as his arc progresses, alas this is about the both of them so i'll stop here.)

depth charge slowly starts coming to dinobot more and more as their pool of info on rampage expands with new battles with the predacon, though eventually they run into dead ends and reflect about their lives back on cybertron- something barely anyone on the axalon has time to do anymore with megatron growing increasingly aggressive. the two of them develop a very quiet romance together, talking late into the hours of the night. dinobot gets depth charge well and truly out of his cold shell, having allowed him to see through his obsession with rampage to the bots around him who care about him.

a few of the other maximals notice the change, of course. mainly primal, who gets in a comment or two about how depth charge seems to finally be moving on a bit from omicron, with pieces of his personality before rampage came into his life seeming to shine through occasionally.

they'd both be very standoffish about being affectionate around the other maximals, to the point where none of the others are truly aware how close they are. they're both sad old men who bottle everything aside from their anger up, and wouldn't fess up about their own feelings unless it was literally tortured out of them. this is particularly true for depth charge, as in the show he never really goes into detail on omicron, perhaps due to his guilt around being the only survivor.

the events of what depth charge saw on omicron after rampage's massacre were probably supposed to be expanded upon in the show, but depth charge probably didnt have any time dedicated to that because of how late into the show he was introduced. at least, that's how i imagine it to have gone considering other characters like tigerhawk who were nearly cut last minute but made it into the show for toy sales. either way the vagueness of what happened on omicron and how it effects depthcharge is truly up to interpretation by the fandom as i doubt we'll get anything close to an answer any time soon. as i imagine it, and lining up with how the show characterizes him, id like to think his survivors guilt makes it hard to talk about his own thoughts on omicron, though he's regurgitated the events of what happened enough for it to be ingrained in his brain module forever. (maybe ill write a whole ass post about this too who knows)

i think if depth charge had been around much earlier in the series and and had been allowed to build a relationship like this with dinobot in the 90s, code of hero would have made the most gut-wrenching angst ever, especially if rampage had had a much bigger impact on dinobot's death.

depth charge is there to see the only bot who'd gotten him to talk about omicron truthfully die, taking whatever thoughts and memories depth charge had shared with him to the last flicker of his spark without so much as a parting word about what depth charge had meant to him.

rampage- still functioning, of course, can practically see and feel the feast of emotion tearing through to the weakest flickers of the manta ray's spark, even blasted halfway across the valley where dinobot had made his last stand. these feelings were something he hadn't experienced since the first time he'd seen depth charge after omicron.

depth charge, a few cycles after code of hero and still reeling from the loss of dinobot, ends up in battle with rampage, his spark still aching and tinged with grief. Rampage, now the only one to know what dinobot had meant to him, is shamelessly gloating about having killed the *one* bot he'd been able to get close to after omicron, mocking depth charge just to see how it makes him tick.

despite all his anger, he comes back to the maximals seeming no more than merely frustrated at the fact he's yet again failed to kill rampage, though over time he begins to withdraw from the others, totally regressing back to where he had started as an uncooperative mess, utterly obsessed with killing the one person who's taken everything from him. its only when depth charge completely relapses into his obsession that dinobot's impact on him becomes well and truly obvious, but by the time that happens there's little any of them can do to stop him from completely self destructing. only he can do that for himself by killing rampage.

anyway now that i've given you all with a brief glimpse into my sick and twisted doomed yaoi mind i'll leave you with the tags

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

You know, I feel like every season 2 was the most epic season since it did a lot of pay off and showcased a lot of things fans speculated and wanted

Super hero Chloe,Alya and Nino, new miraculous users, Hawkmoths identity, Gabriel showing he cares for Adrien (gorizilla) The peacock miraculous, Nathalie love for Gabriel, akumatized miraculous users, a army of Akumas, the power ups and Master Fu identity

And most of it very well executed.

Season 3 gave fusions, master Fu backstory, chat blanc and Felix

However season 2 was kinda flawed (fusions not creating a new power by fusing the miraculous, master fu backstory being a bit underwhelming like he’s entire character and Felix which is a completely different Can of worms and Cat blanc which is a Can but of snakes)

It felt like they threw the biggest things they’ve been building up and anticipating since the beginning in season 2 and now they are just reusing stuff trying to make it work (new heroes, more fusions, more Felix, plot twist which do no good and should have stayed has headcanons/theory’s and a copy of chat blanc) but kinda killed off the magic of if

And the only thing left they had was new miraculous users, but like Syndrome said “if everyone is super, nobody is” specially if everyone is just another tool for Ladybug to use

Now I just see every new big thing has something boring and pathetic, wanna talk about how disappointing strike back (the character) was? I thought we would see a end game villain and the defeat of Gabriel by how the episode was titled, now if Gabriel is ever defeated I’ll won’t feel nothing

Just like how many will feel if Chloe is redeemed, the reveal is done, Lila is exposed, when Emily wakes up and Etc etc etc

They put most of the big concepts and popular thing of the fandom in season 2 and now I just feel like they’ve run out of ideas that won’t break the status quo or fall apart because of the show previous mistakes. They wrote themselves into a corner they can easily break but refuse to do so

I think the problem is more that the show keeps introducing more plotlines and concepts instead of resolving the ones they already introduced.

Instead of just focusing on Chloe as an antagonist full-time, they introduced Lila, then teased a redemption arc for Chloe that went nowhere, leaving us stuck with two antagonists who are pretty much the same character.

Instead of having Hawkmoth lose at the end of Season 2 and have someone like Mayura take over as the main villain, they kept Hawkmoth around while benching Mayura at the end of Season 3, and almost everyone agrees that Gabriel has long overstayed his welcome at the main antagonist of the series.

Instead of delving more into the lore of the Miraculous or the Order of the Guardians, they introduced twelve more Miraculous themed after the Chinese Zodiac that add nothing to the plot other than to introduce more heroes for the hell of it.

Instead of having Adrien actively rebel against his father, they introduced Felix, who is aware of how shady Gabriel is and helps forward the plot in ways that conveniently leave Adrien out of it.

It really feels like the show is more focused on quantity over quality at this point.

[hana-no-seiiki]

which oc from Midnight Darling reacting to reader asking them out of curiosity, to see what its like dating someone? and the only thing to show their love was through holding hands and leaning on the oc?

(the reader is based on what i did when i dated someone... as an asexual questioning their romantic orientation.

YANDERE COLLEGE THEMED OCS! x READER

TW: Yandere Themes. Sexual Themes.

FOR THOSE WHO ARE NEW TO THE BLOG/HAVEN’T BEEN INTRODUCE TO MIDNIGHT DARLING YET, THESE OCS ARE ALL BASED ON COLLEGE / SCHOOL ARCHETYPES ! You may read more on them using the Midnight Darling tag on my blog :D

New OCs have been added! We now have a total of 20 (oh good yun) so this will quite a long list.

anon im not sure if you wanted specific ocs since you used which but then added reacting so have all of them and then more. plus popular girl as a character cause why not.

Reader is GN for this one.

♡ Gabi [ Yan! Popular Girl ] would either be completely opposed due to her hypersexuality, or intrigued by your modest nature. She’s used to sleeping with people after they’ve just met so you’d be a breath of fresh air. She respects your orientation completely though and will not cross any boundaries. She’s mid as a test subject because of her harem which will influence her actions throughout the relationship. You will end up either getting cheated on or killed.

♡ Shawn Ruiz [Yan! Underclassman] is asexual himself. He actually prefers the slow type of romance that’s more focused on just that, rather than a physically forward relationship. Like, why have sex when you two can go shopping for hours? He’s rich enough to buy a whole mall just for the two of you to have for a day. Best boyfriend you could ever wish for (on the surface at the very least).

♡ Isabel Labrador [Yan! Nerd] will do everything in her power to provoke you. She will show off her body just to make you take her. You’ll really have to drill it into her head before she understands that you have a pace you want to go with/that you do not want to get down and dirty. Great part about being her partner though is that she’ll do everything in her power to make sure you have the best grades in class. You will not fail or get any score under a 99% in a single subject under her watch.

♡ Darling De Leon [Yan! Teacher’s Pet] is the worst. While Isabel’s actions are from ignorance and her plain bratty attitude, Darling has no perception of boundaries whatsoever. She will kill for you, and she will kill others just to make you do what she wants. Plain and simple. Worst test partner to have. Only good(ish) side is that you have her utter devotion. She’ll try her best to please you as long as you also please her.

♡ Justin Del Rosario [Yan! Jock]. He was a complete virgin before he met Popular!Reader/Gabi, assuming they never got together, he wouldn’t really be out looking for sex and whatnot. You think from how he looked that he’d be the type that fucks but nah Justin is a complete househusband. Similar to Shawn, he’s gonna focus on giving the best possible taste of a relationship.

♡ Mona Noriega [Yan! Gossiper/Lackey] is an absolute marites. Most of your relationship with her is just conversations about other people that goes on and on and on and on- If you decide relationships are not for you and leave her, she will destroy your social life. Point blank. She’ll destroy your life outside of college too. No employer will ever take someone as filth ridden as you. But fortunately, she’s willing to get her hands dirty as long as you come back to her arms.

♡ Crisanto Salvador [Yan! Rich Kid] used to be a hedonist. You’ll have to be the one that guides him in the relationship and teach him that chasing after pleasure all the time is not healthy in the slightest.

♡ Reina Liwanag [Yan! Loyal/Puppy-like Lackey] is absolute focused on pleasing you. Overwhelming but can be controlled if you communicate with her properly. She’s fine with open relationships as long as you check on her once in a while. Leave her neglected for too long and there might be consequences…

♡ Ella Morin [Yan! Quiet /Emo Kid] has no relationship experience whatsoever, nor did she ever think she’ll ever be in one. She’ll be incredibly awkward to be with especially if you don’t share the same interests but as long as you take initiative and bond with her through her hobbies you’ll be a-okay. Lots of trying out rituals online, writing fanfiction, making fanart and what not. Leaving her might get you cursed to eternal damnation so be careful.

♡ Eloise Morin [Yan! Physics Professor] is an absolute wifey. Which, can be good or bad depending on who you’re talking to. She only dates with an intent to get married to that person. So there’s a lot of insecurity and hesitance in the dating period. But if you’re down with getting tied to one person your whole life then she’d be the best option. Extremely loyal, is a great cook, and is incredibly smart. Expect random spiels about Physics though, not as bad as Marx’s mansplaining but it’s there.

♡ Amelia Yorkshire [Yan! Linguistics Professor] if you’re looking for experience than there’s no person in the school who has the most knowledge on that type of topic more than Amelia. She’s an expert at wooeing and seducing but kinda falls off at the actual relationship part. She thinks sex is the biggest part and scared off many of her previous partners with how much of a nymphomaniac she is. Definitely a terrible option for an asexual, but I’d recommend her if you’re looking for a casual physical relationship that isn’t too deep. Then again, if you end up leaving her you’ll have a potential s*xu*l ass*ulter of yours on the loose. Yikes.

♡ Marx Esguerra [Yan! Biology Professor] is terrible in all ways possible. No matter what orientation you have. Once he ‘has’ you, he will never respect your boundaries. He will control your feelings, rewire your brain in order to fit what his ideals are. Mansplaining is a regular occurrence in a relationship with him. He won’t back down from a debate even if he’s wrong, and if you do prove your point properly he’ll either ignore it or ignore you out of spite. Actual child in an adult’s body.

♡ New OC! Althea Dalisay [Yan! Chemistry Professor] tends to be a teacher in and out of the relationship. There won’t be much difference between dating her and not doing so. She’ll be super sweet at times and then cold at the next. What you will get from dating her, as is common from all professors is that you won’t fail any of her classes. Either because of favoritism or her drilling the material into your head. The person with the least backlash when you break-up. Mostly cause it’s impossible with the amount of drugs she puts you under.

♡ New OC! Karen Nolasco [Yan! Mathematics Professor] why are you even dating her? She’s the most hated teacher on this planet. Like she made the name Karen an insult before it was even a mainstream thing. She’s snobby as hell and would act like it’s a privilege to date her when in fact it’s just a normal ass relationship. She won’t even hide her anger if you break up. She’ll fail you and write up every possible mistake you could ever do.

♡ New OC! Fernandez Imelda [Yan! Art/History Professor] the opposite of Karen. Sweet, sweet, sweet. He’s a gift giver at heart. A bit on the creepy side with the amount of paintings he has of you but isn’t it so romantic? This is just normal for couples you see? Never chooses you to model for class, even if its clothed. You’re for his eyes to see only. Overall cool if you’re fine with severe possessiveness and spoiling.

♡ New OC! Mel Morales [Yan! P.E. Professor] is an absolute pervert and doesn’t hide it. A bit hypersexual so they aren’t a good match for ace readers. Forces you to wear short shorts for P.E. and often gropes you during class. Before you dated they made it a rule for players not to engage in relationships but oop you found yourself in bed with them, too bad! Now they gotta take responsibility. But yeah, steer clear if you aren’t into sexual relations.

♡ Daniel Cruz [Yan! Principal] is another no no for aces. Extremely hypersexual that his wife isn’t enough, he has to seek the company of other people as well. Why would you even date a married man anyways? I guess the risk would be cool but don’t expect anything more than just fucking behind closed doors.

♡ Ricardo Peralta [Yan! The President] one of the super sweet ones. Knows everything about his s/o. Has notes and notes about your likes and dislikes, what to do with you often and what to avoid. He’s fine being the more forward one in the relationship but he does get easily shy and flustered. Tease him and he might just explode.

♡ Camille Valencia [Yan! Nurse] is the kindest person you’ll ever meet. Is hyperfocused on your needs and wants. Will literally bend to your desires.

Until you try leaving her. Then you’ll have to deal with several sedatives and aphrodisiac she’ll force into your system, and you wouldn’t want that, right?

♡ Crisanto Salvador [Yan! Rich Kid] is another terrible match for anon specifically. He requires an extremely affectionate s/o. Is basically a man-child that requires affirmation constantly. If you don’t appease his needs, he’ll force it out of you via manipulation and guilt tripping. Of course he cheated on you! You didn’t give him an ounce of your time after all.

But yeah, yanderes ain’t it if you’re looking to test the waters. Boundaries who?

[stahlop]

Once Upon a Time 4x05 "Breaking Glass" Review

I know, it’s been 84 years since my last review. I am hoping to get back on a schedule and get moving on season 4. This one introduces us to a friend Emma had for a hot second when she was about 15, and there’s no way this person could be of any importance in the future. Right?

Summary: Emma meets a fellow orphan as a kid and bonds with her. In Storybrooke, Emma keeps trying to repair her friendship with Regina, and Mary Margaret and David go out for the first time without baby Neal.

Opening: Ice Bridge

New Characters: 

Lily: We meet Lily in a grocery store where Emma is attempting to shoplift some PopTarts. Lily helps her out when she’s caught by the store manager by paying for them with a supposedly pilfered credit card. Once they’ve made their purchases, Lily has them outrun someone in a car who is after her, which becomes a kind of bonding experience between her and Emma. They have a picnic and Emma explains how she ran away after seeing a little girl in her group home get adopted (which we saw in Snow Drifts), and how she felt invisible. Lily sympathizes with her and Emma assumes she’s in a group home too and the man chasing her was from Social Services. Lily agrees that’s what’s going on, but you can tell that she’s lying by her hesitation. Lily points out that the houses across from the lake are empty now that summer is over, and suggests hanging out in one of them. They break in and play video games and then Emma notices a star-shaped birthmark on Lily’s wrist. Lily says she likes to pretend it makes her special like Harry Potter and Emma says it makes her one of a kind. Lily decides that Emma needs to be special too by putting a marker version of her birthmark on Emma’s wrist. Then Emma discovers a video camera and she and Lily make a little video of themselves. Lily then makes Emma promise they will stay friends no matter what, obviously thinking about when the truth comes out.

Later on, a man comes into the house after the girls have fallen asleep. Emma tells Lily to run and tells the man they won’t go back into the system, but it turns out he’s Lily’s father. Lily is crying, knowing that her lies have caught up with her. Once police have been called and Lily is in her father’s car, she tries to give Emma her information and explain herself. She is an orphan, she was just adopted, and she doesn't feel like it’s her home. She wants to run away with Emma. She reminds Emma she promised to be her friend no matter what. Emma refuses to take her info and Lily screams in betrayal as Emma walks off to social services and rubs the marker star birthmark off her wrist.

Character Observations:

Emma:

Past Emma feels she has found a kindred spirit in Lily, only to be betrayed by her lies when she finds out Lily has a family and is not a runaway orphan like she is.

In Storybrooke, Emma and Elsa are looking through files to see if there’s anything about Anna in them. Elsa wants to confront the Snow Queen head on, but Emma says they have to be careful as it’s obvious she took their memories and they don’t know why. Elsa comes across photo’s Sidney had taken of Emma from when she first came to town, and they discover photos of Emma and the Snow Queen in the ice cream shop. Emma decides she needs to find Sidney to ask him about the pictures and goes to Regina’s vault to do so. Emma tells Elsa how she and Regina hated each other when she first came, then amends it to them not mixing (no Emma, you were right the first time, she was trying to kill you, that’s hate), and Elsa points out they’ve come a long way, but Emma feels they’re right back where they started (well, Regina’s not trying to kill you this time, so it’s an improvement). Elsa thinks they can mend their friendship, but Emma says that once you screw someone over there’s no coming back (I think Regina would disagree as Mary Margaret and David seem to have forgiven her for the whole trying to kill them, cursing the whole town, and making their daughter grow up without them). Emma asks Regina about the pictures, but she just makes catty remarks. When Emma asks her about Sidney, she says she’s too busy trying to save Marian to help her find him. Emma then offers to help Regina with extra magic juice, say she has Regina’s back, but Regina makes it very clear that she doesn’t think Emma has ever had her back (and again, why should she? But apparently Emma thinks she did at some point).

Emma finds Elsa missing from her car and goes searching for her. She ends up meeting up with Regina who is looking for the Snow Queen’s lair. Regina makes more catty remarks, and they go off together (much to Regina’s chagrin) to find the Snow Queen. Regina keeps making remarks about Emma’s lack of magic knowledge and Emma says she learned better when Regina helped her, but Regina says she’s too busy right now to help her with her magic. Emma tries to appease Regina by complimenting her on helping to reverse Marian’s spell, but Regina just takes it as another ploy to try and win her over again. She tells Emma she won’t assuage her guilt and accuses Emma of ruining her life (even if it wasn’t intentional) and tells her to live with it. Biggest eye roll ever at Regina. And I don’t understand why Emma just stands there and takes this tongue lashing from Regina. Emma ruined Regina’s life? Well if she did, maybe it’s payback for Regina ruining hers. Regina has no right to complain to Emma about ruined lives (rant over)They find the ice bridge Elsa made earlier, but the Snow Queen attempts to stop them with very heavy winds. Emma realizes Regina lied to her about not knowing where Sidney was, and then the bridge begins to break. Emma and Regina run for it and make it to the other side just in time.

They then come upon an Ice Viking. They each try to kill it with magic, but it only works when they use their magic together. Then the Snow Queen appears, steals Regina’s compact mirror, and then starts magic choking both Regina and Emma. Luckily, Elsa has escaped the chains the Snow Queen put her in and saves them. The Snow Queen poofs away. Regina and Emma argue about Sidney being held captive in Regina’s mirror. Elsa tries to be the referee, but eventually Regina says she doesn’t want to make up with Emma and poofs away. Elsa once again reminds Emma that if you care for someone, you try to make things work.

This whole Emma and Regina forced friendship is really grating on me. There has really not been anything up to this point about them being friends. Regina helped Emma learn magic, they’ve worked together to be good moms to Henry, but it’s not like they were hanging out and having girl talk. They were never friends. Reluctant co-parents at the least, but not friends. Emma tracks Regina down in her vault and tells her the story of Lily and how she regretted not forgiving Lily and how she and Regina are the only ones who understand each other (why?). She just wanted Regina to be her friend. Even Regina is shocked at this (as is everyone else watching). Back at the Sheriff’s Station, Killian comes in while Emma is looking at a box of childhood memories. They find the video camera from Lily’s summer house (Lily’s dad let her keep that?), so they sit down to watch it. It’s a very cute moment where Emma puts Killian’s arm around her. They are so couply here. We see the video of her and Lily, but then the tape shows her at a foster home that Emma doesn’t remember, and her foster mother happens to be the Snow Queen!!

Regina: Ugh! I don’t even know where to start with Regina. She’s a raging bitch in this episode. She chides Sidney for his attitude towards her (well deserved) and then tasks him with finding the Snow Queen. Emma confronts her about the photos that Sidney took and Regina is as delightful as ever with her. Emma asks Regina if she knows where Sidney is, and she sidesteps the question by reminding her that she’s working on saving Marian and blames Emma for it, again. Emma offers to help Regina, but Regina rebuffs her. Sidney appears in the mirror, telling Regina he found the Snow Queen, but he won’t tell her where until she releases him from the mirror. Regina basically tells him that if he doesn’t help her, she’ll put him back in the cell at the hospital, so he decides his best option is to guide her to the Snow Queen’s lair.

Regina runs into Emma in the woods and is a bitch to her the whole time when Emma is explaining that Elsa ran off. Regina reluctantly lets Emma tag along. Emma starts asking Regina questions pertaining to the magic she is doing to find the Snow Queen, but Regina again rebuffs her and answers her with catty comments. Then Emma tries to be nice, telling Regina how admirable it is what she’s doing for Marian, but Regina isn’t having it. She keeps cutting Emma down and going off on her, and I get that Regina is angry. She is entitled to her feelings, but she’s making the situation out to be like Emma purposefully brought back Marian to hurt Regina, and that’s not what happened at all. Not to mention that Regina doesn’t even feel that this might be karma for all the terrible things she’s done to everyone else. But no, to Regina it’s all about her. For all the ‘growth’ that she’s had, she’s still exactly the same, just without the killing of everyone when she doesn’t get her way.

Regina and Emma end up on Elsa’s ice bridge when a fierce wind comes at them. Regina finally figures out that Sidney double crossed her and is working with the Snow Queen. Emma is pissed that Regina lied to her about knowing where Sidney was. And Sidney finally calls out Regina for the bitch that she is. Then they come upon the Ice Viking that the Snow Queen sent for them, and Regina is not too happy that it takes both her and Emma’s magic to defeat it. But before they can bask in their defeat of it, the Snow Queen arrives and takes Regina’s compact mirror. She also starts to choke them both when they start to argue with her, but Elsa saves them. The Snow Queen poofs off and Emma lays into Regina about the whole Sidney thing. Regina tells her why she put Sidney back in the mirror (originally to somehow kill Marian in the past) and then tells Emma that she doesn’t want to forgive her and poofs off as well. Regina is feeling sorry for herself back in her vault when Emma comes back, again. Emma tells her the story of Lily and says that Regina’s the only one who can understand her, and Regina starts looking sad or guilty, I don’t know, but eventually Emma says she thought they were friends, and Regina is surprised by this revelation (so are the rest of us).

Elsa: She is a world class idiot in this episode. While waiting in Emma’s car, she starts hearing Anna call to her, and why that isn’t suspicious right off the bat to her is baffling to me. I get that she’s desperate to find Anna, but does she really think Anna is just going to appear, calling her name and for help? And then Anna just turns and walks off in the opposite direction and Elsa doesn’t think this is odd in the slightest? Then Elsa sees Anna across a ravine calling for help, and instead of wondering how she got across the ravine, she creates an ice bridge so she can cross it. Elsa finally finds ‘Anna’, but it turns out it’s just an icey illusion that the Snow Queen built to lure Elsa to her (well, who didn’t see that coming, Elsa, that’s who). The Snow Queen conjures chains to tie Elsa to the ground, letting her know the more frightened she is the tighter they will get. After the Snow Queen leaves, Elsa struggles to get out of the chains, and luckily, she’s actually smart and calms herself down enough that she’s able to break the chains by letting go of her fear. Elsa then become quite confident when she blasts down the Snow Queen, saving Regina and Emma from being magically choked. The Snow Queen congratulates her on conquering her fear and poofs off. Elsa tries playing referee between Regina and Emma, but Regina’s not having it. Elsa later reminds Emma that if someone is important to you, you don’t give up on them. Blech.

Mary Margaret and David: Mary Margaret is nervous about leaving baby Neal alone, even if Belle is his babysitter. David tells Mary Margaret they need this time away. It’s just for an evening stroll, but that’s progress for Mary Margaret who doesn’t want to let baby Neal out of her sight. They head over to the sheriff’s station to grab some walkie talkies so Belle can communicate with them (they’re apparently hiking to an area with no cell reception), when David notices Will Scarlet is no longer locked in his cell. He decides he and Mary Margaret should have an adventure tracking down Will, just like old times (but without the Evil Queen on their trail). Mary Margaret does not seem thrilled about this. An hour later, Mary Margaret wants to go home. David decides to continue looking for Will, and apparently he is blind, because Mary Margaret spots him immediately, digging on the beach, right in the direction they were heading. She and Will have a hilarious conversation about how the map he needs to find his traveling sack happens to be in the traveling sack that he buried because he buried it when he was drunk. Mary Margaret convinces herself that David let Will go so she could track him down and feel more like herself. Will tries to convince her that’s not the case until she reveals she is the Mayor and pardons him. When David comes home, Mary Margaret commends him on the whole Will Scarlet plot, and tells him she feels more like herself again. David is happy for her, but tells her he had nothing to do with it. They don’t seem that worried about the whole affair, considering he was in jail for breaking into a library and passing out.

The Snow Queen: We see her raising something from ice with glowing eyes. We next see her when she has lured Elsa to her with the Anna ice illusion (the thing with glowing eyes at the beginning). She chains Elsa up and tells her the more frightened she is, the tighter the chains will be. Why do the villains always give away the secret to getting free? If Elsa hadn't known that, she might not have escaped. She goes on about how much fear Elsa has, how she had the chance to get rid of that fear once, but she squandered it (reference to their past?). She tells Elsa she just needs her out of the way for now, and then tells her she won’t tell her she’ll be okay, because she needs her to be frightened for the time being. She leaves, telling Elsa she’s going to build a snowman. Regina and Emma defeat her ‘snowman’. The Snow Queen steals Regina’s compact mirror (what she was apparently after the whole time), and then Elsa comes and saves them by blasting the Snow Queen. Instead of being angry, she applauds Elsa for getting over her fears and then poofs away.

Back at her lair, the Snow Queen frees Sidney from the mirror. Apparently, their deal was that he would serve her if she freed him, but she doesn’t need him, she just wanted the mirror because it is imbued with dark magic. Sidney asks what she’s planning, and she tells him to get what’s always been denied to her. Sidney asks what that is, but she won’t tell him. He is free to go. She does give him the advice to get a warm coat as it’s going to be getting cooler in Storybrooke. She then cracks the compact mirror and places the piece into her own cracked mirror, which then becomes whole and uncracked. She then reveals to the mirror that what she wants is a family that loves her. I think there may be an easier way to go about that Snow Queen.

Questions:

Wouldn’t it have been easier for Emma to try and hide the PopTarts in her backpack rather than in her jacket?

Why is the store manager so surprised that two teenage girls are in a grocery store without adults? It’s 1998, they’re both around 14/15 years old. This shouldn’t be such a weird thing.

So, knowing the man in the car is Lily’s dad later on, are we assuming she stole her dad’s credit card and he figured she’d be at the grocery store? Or had he given her his credit card to buy groceries and when he went to pick her up she started running and he went after her?

How is Elsa running through Storybrooke Wilderness Park in that dress, cape and heels with nary a tear or broken heel in sight?

Was Emma planning on erasing the video or taking the video camera with her? Because otherwise, there is video evidence of who broke into the house.

Had Emma’s superpower of detecting lies not kicked in at this point? How old was she when it did?

Why doesn’t Lily’s dad turn on the lights when he enters the house looking for Lily? Why is he using a flashlight?

Observations:

Emma looks pretty good for being a runaway. Clean clothes, hair styled. Unless she’s only been on the run for a day or two, she should be much more dirty looking.

Emma meets Lily in 1998. Lily points out it is fall when talking about the lake houses being empty, which would make Emma 15 or close to it (depending on when in the fall it is).

Lily mentions her birthmark making her feel like Harry Potter. Only Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets had been released by the fall of 1998.

David mentions falling through a portal to Asgard. He played one of Thor’s friends in the first MCU Thor movie, which takes place in Asgard.

Considering Mary Margaret and David were supposed to be going hiking, Mary Margaret is not wearing hiking boots or any type of shoe conducive to hiking.

Mary Margaret’s pattern on her shirt looks very similar to the pattern on Emma’s shirt that she wore in New York Serenade.

Regina is still calling Emma, Swan, instead of Miss Swan.

It looks like they filmed the Snow Queen getting up off the ground in reverse. It’s very stilted and just looks weird.

Things we see in Emma’s memory box: Emma’s black glasses, mood ring, Polaroid of Emma and Neal, Emma’s baby blanket, the video camera.

Names:

Lilith: Means of the night. Lilith is also considered either a villain or a heroine in Jewish lore, depending on which myth you look at. She is the first woman before Eve, made from the ground instead of from Adam’s rib, and thrown out of Eden for not submitting to Adam (heroine). In some lore she becomes a demon and was blamed for making babies die (villain).

This is not one of the better episodes this season. Regina is too bitchy, Emma is too needy, Elsa is too stupid, and the Snow Queen’s grand plan is to give her the family she deserves (whatever that means). At least Sidney is now free of Regina (let’s hope he stays far away from her so that she doesn’t put him back in the mirror), and Mary Margaret is feeling less postpartum depression and more like her old self. And the discovery that the Snow Queen was once Emma’s foster mother was a huge surprise.

Reviews 1x01 1x02 1x03 1x04 1x05 1x06 1x07 1x08 1x09 1x10 1x11 1x12 1x13 1x14 1x15 1x16 1x17 1x18 1x19 1x20 1x21 1x22 2x01 2x02 2x03 2x04 2x05 2x06 2x07 2x08 2x09 2x10 2x11 2x12 2x13 2x14 2x15 2x16 2x17 2x18 2x19 2x20 2x21 2x22 3x01 3x02 3x03 3x04 3x05 3x06 3x07 3x08 3x09 3x10 3x11 3x12 3x13 3x14 3x15 3x16 3x17 3x18 3x19 3x20 3x21 3x22 4x01 4x02 4x03 4x04

Please leave comments and reblog! Let me know if you’d like to be tagged in future reviews.

@searchingwardrobes @thisonesatellite @justbecauseyoubelievesomething @laschatzi @wistfulcynic​ @mariakov81 @lfh1226-linda

[rottenbrainstuff]

BG3 playthrough - Parting thoughts

Massive spoilers:

I’ve now had some time for the ending to percolate through the grey matter, gotten over feeling sad that my first playthrough is over. I’ve started playing with my second tav, a tiefling paladin, and you know what, I’m already noticing little tweaks they’ve made to the dialogues. Like, nothing significant, but little polishes here and there. For instance: I always remember when I first met Asharak (the fight practice teacher) and he said to the kids, look who’s here! I thought he was talking about ME, look, it’s the hero who just showed up at our gate and fought off the goblins! Oh man I thought that was so cute. I was a bit disappointed when I finally realized he meant WYLL, not ME. They adjusted the dialogue so now it’s much more clear that Asharak is introducing Wyll to the kids. Little things like that. I can’t wait to see all the things that got finessed.

Man. It took me seven months to finish my first playthrough. I dunno how everyone finished the game so quickly, my final recorded time was like 200 hours. (granted this did involve several hours of backtracking to fix various mistakes) Initially I assumed I would never play BG3, because I don’t have a PC or a non-nintendo console or anything. It was fun to watch everyone talk about the game even when I had no ability to play it. I think I mentioned this a million times already, but this game was released for mac coincidentally the exact same weekend I got a terminal cancer diagnosis for my cat that I’d had for 13 years. (she’s still doing ok btw) It was so amazing to have something to distract myself with and cheer myself up with after getting that shitty news. I binged it for about four days straight, barely sleeping at all. It was the first big, brand new, non-nintendo game that I’d played in… like… decades, seriously. I was so blown away by the quality of everything. Came here for the funny mean vampire, stayed here for the… absolutely everything else.

I am really glad that I kept a character journal as I played - like, along with the notes I was keeping about game mechanics (because online guides are super shit), I would also write down little thoughts and observations from the perspective of my tav. I always have this record of my playthrough now, and I think it’s really helped me to preserve my thoughts and reactions.

Neil Newbon came to my city’s comic expo last weekend and I was absolutely broadsided by what a smart, nice, and humble guy he is. Isn’t it just such an AMAZING feeling to be a fan of something, then get to know the people who made that thing and find out they’re nice people? I… I don’t know what’s wrong with my brain, but I’m a bit glad I finished my first playthrough before the expo, because I feel… embarrassed somehow?... to be thirsting so much after characters now that I’ve chatted with the guy in real life and he’s talked to my kids? Isn’t that weird? Why is my brain doing that? It’s not like he cares. Very much no. Neil has an amazing sense of humour about it all. Weird brain stuff. Weird. What can I say.

Anyways, I was thinking about a summary of my favourite moments:

1) Cambian fight on the nautiloid. So like I said, I hadn’t played any big, new non-nintendo games in a while. (I mean Nintendo makes good games! But like. A game like Animal Crossing… isn’t… quite the same, you know?) I was wandering around the ship feeling quite blown away by how fancy games have gotten. I was marvelling at the graphics, the gameplay, the tension of the whole situation, and then I get to this fight and that absolute fucking BANGER of a song that is Twisted Force starts playing, that was when I really realized like shit, this game is going to be an EXPERIENCE.

2) Alfira’s dark urge death. I was exposed to a ton of spoilers for this game before I ever touched it so I knew a lot of the main story beats, thoroughly. With Alfira, I did know that the dark urge kills a bard, but for some bizarre reason, the only clips I had seen were of that dragonborn alternative that you get if you cheat and Alfira is unavailable. So I was already at the grove, exploring around, and I absolutely fell in love with the tiefling NPCs, and THEN I discovered it’s actually HER who dies. I was DEVASTATED. I was so attached to the tieflings - both myself as a player, and my tav as well - this was the first settlement of people he found, post-brain-scramble, the first people who were being kind to him, and they needed help so bad, and he wanted so bad to protect them… and here is this awful thing that he does that I can’t avoid. AUGH.

3) The siege on the Emerald Grove. It continues to mystify me that this path is actually a bit hidden in the game, and if you aren’t paying attention you will be herded into just killing the three goblin leaders to resolve things, which is such a massively less interesting path. (perhaps they’ve made the option more obvious with patches? I will see) I loved the tension of the morning before the attack: everyone’s fear really bolstered my desire to win the fight with zero casualties. I loved how, due to my familiarity with the NPCs, I instantly realized that Mattis wasn’t with the other kids and searched all over the place, legit worried, until I found him up by the gate still trying to make a buck, lol. I loved how when they mentioned people had ran off in the night, I knew exactly who wasn’t there and who it had to be. It really made me realize how much I’d got to know the NPCs. Zevlor gets two amazing cutscene speeches, and the fight itself was so freaking fun. I mean it certainly wasn’t the hardest fight in the game at all, but I think it remains one of my favourites, due to all the different moving parts and the planning it involved. It was so goddamned fun getting to use the explosives I had saved up, and I never really had the chance to rig up a battlefield the same way again.

4) Lenore’s tower, and the whole underdark in general. I found it all so lonely, and Lenore’s tower really got to me. I think I shed some tears. I loved the area with the giant sussur tree, I thought it was so beautiful, I took so many screenshots of it. I know if you’re a dark urge your upbringing is… unconventional, but I still imagine that my drow durge has spent a lot of time in the underdark and generally considers it home-ish, so it was neat to see it and think about how this is his home turf.

5) Moonrise and especially the mind flayer colony underneath. This was really where things just started to get interesting for a durge, you start to get the first reveals of your backstory. For a resisting urge, it’s extremely unsettling. Meeting Kressa Bonedaughter was especially horrible. I hadn’t really spoiled a lot of the details of the durge plot, so most of this was a surprise to me. JK Simmons did a great job as Ketheric - I remember being so incredibly curious how he was going to sound, but it worked so well, and as I have noted previously, they spend ridiculous care rendering his sad old man eyes.

6) Gortash’s coronation. Again as a dark urge, this is an important plot beat, I think the last big backstory reveal? Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, not only do you have these horrible murderous urges, not only do you have this nasty little butler man trying to force you to kill people, not only did something horrible happen to you that wiped clean all your memories and turned you into a necromancer’s cute little pet for a while, NOT ONLY ARE YOU A GODDAMNED BHAALSPAWN and the leader of the goddamned Bhaal cult, NOT ONLY ALL OF THIS, NO, that wasn’t enough, oh no: now you learn you were also one of the original architects of the Absolute plot, removed only when Orin saw an opportunity to displace you. Dammmmn. Your companions all react to this information appropriately, so in other words, negatively. Karlach’s reaction is particularly strong, understandably, and hurt my heart. To balance that out a bit, you have Astarion’s reaction, which was… to thank you. If you hadn’t put this plot into motion, he wouldn’t have been abducted by the mindflayers, and wouldn’t have been rescued from Cazador’s control and given the means to resist his commands. 200 years of praying to every god, but it was you that saved him. I had honestly never even considered that, so that was… surprising! Really, really surprising.

7) Comparing spawn and ascendant Astarion - I didn’t play much with ascended Astarion, just spent a little time progressing through the next batch of cut scenes, just so I could see. I was really impressed to see the difference in the two characters, the difference in the writing, the difference in the performance. I enjoyed the visceral negative reaction I had to AA almost immediately, when we had our first camp chat post-ascension, and he SHOUTED at me when I was responding to him with… not even an angry or rude response, but just, a less-than-enthusiastic response. It was like ice water down my back, instantly taking me back to dealing with my abusive ex. I know everyone has a different and highly personal reaction to AA and I think that’s great, and I enjoyed how viscerally negative my reaction was. It’s fun when a thing makes you feel stuff! And I loved spawn Astarion, and how honest and vulnerable he is in his third act romance, thinking about his whole character arc and growth through the game.

8) Rescuing Minsc. It’s a bit of a long daunting set of steps to get Minsc, and I didn’t find it very fun tbh, but I did it anyways because I have to complete everything. I was fully expecting him to sit around camp and never be used, like Halsin and Jaheira are for me unfortunately, (sorry guys) but I was really unprepared for how funny he was going to be. I don’t really like ranger class (also sorry) so when I found out he can still summon Boo even if you respec him, I made him a barbarian, and kept him on my team as much as I could. He is now my second favourite companion to have with me after only Astarion. He has SUCH funny dialogue. I like that you can attempt to start a romance with him and he’s not having any of it. He even gets the opportunity to say a very touching speech as you gather your allies, if you let him.

9) Durge vs Orin fight. The actual fight itself was kind of pitiful, which I thought was sad for her, but it was a startling moment in the lead-up when she briefly changed into me and I actually heard my own tav speaking, like, more than just a little reaction line here and there, I got to actually see my tav speaking. I don’t know. I don’t know why that was such a neat thing to me but it was. Since this playthrough took so long, I really got attached to my tav, I guess.

10) Gather your allies. Ah, the big summary that I needed of all the people I’ve helped and made friends with, all saying something nice about me, haha. Not gonna lie, I reloaded and watched this a couple of times cause it made me so happy.

I’m so glad Larian made an epilogue, with so many sweet little details in it. I’m so happy I had a chance to play this. I don’t have a huge amount of current mutuals who are also fans, and my IRL peeps for some reason are absolutely refusing to finish this game, so please if you want to fangirl (fanperson?) about anything just start talking to me, I’m kind of starving over here!

[hisui-cotton]

About 4 or 5 years ago I came across a short series called Shamanic Princess and was really enchanted by it. I wanted to to do at least a small write up on it because while it is only about 6 episodes the story is fairly concise. They pack a lot of atmosphere and interesting design/worldbuilding in just a few episodes and it's just really nice. It's not a perfect series by any means but if you're looking for something with interesting character work to check out, this is one I'd recommend and say has the biggest draw because of how the characters bounce off each other. Right now it's available on Crunchyroll but if you're resourceful I'm sure you can find somewhere else if you need to!

The anime today is Shamanic Princess, a short OVA series by Triangle Staff. There was a short time where Crunchyroll had gotten a bunch of older anime and so I decided I’d check some of them out. This was one I appealed to me because of how few episodes it happened to have, I assumed it may have been something similar to Blue Submarine, where it was a series cancelled before it was done or rushed but the story seems to have a complete round out. As most OVAs go, the experimentation of animation, unique storyline, and overall production makes for a really compelling short series overall. It takes it’s own fun spin on the magical girl genre too taking the “magic” part to be almost tangible rituals.

From a very ominous start we’re introduced to the world of magic that shamanic princess is takes place in with almost persona like shadows lurking about. Tiara, our protagonist, seems to be on alert yet also a bit bratty in some ways too, almost princess like, especially so for a college student. Following what turns out to be a bad scouting mission, Tiara returns home to her “castle” to sleep. The big draw from here on is the missing parts of the story, Tiara is on a mission to “capture” Sarah, whom she almost somberly confronts in her dreams. The next morning she is transferring into a new college, meets an old rival, Lena, to whom we find is also well aware of what Tiara’s mission seems to revolve around. The most OVA like part of this episode comes in this following night. The characters have what seems like a playful rivalry and it only comes to confirm that the characters are not just rivals in this mission but enemies. They fight harshly with spirit creatures they summon and begin to ramp up the fight only for Tiara to be interrupted by Kagetsu, the man who has stolen the Throne of Yord and is using it on Sarah. He doesn’t enter the conversation, or conflict, beyond impeding Tiara. It’s after when Tiara retreats and Lena approaches Kagetsu that their alliance is confirmed and that Lena lays forth that she’ll kill Tiara if she needs to. The episode concludes with a follow up fight where Tiara finally goes to her full power.

A lot of the formula between this episode and the next is this power play. Tiara and Lena going back and forth between their fight and feelings for Kagetsu’s situation. Tiara is the obviously more powerful to Lena and yet Lena is the one standing by Kagetsu. In time we also learn that Kagetsu and Lena were is love, that something separated them and now Kagetsu has taken something from their magical society that is powerful enough to put all three in this conflict. Fairly obviously I suppose, this leads to a love Triangle of sorts, not just where the girls find conflict in love for Kagetsu but where they find the idea of love in eachother similarly. In a lot of ways this is also what kept me around in the story where I could understand each characters desire for connection and love in the way they’ve seen it through each other.

I really love the overall atmosphere through the story though. Theres this feeling of almost cyclical longing throughout the the atmosphere of the story, whether it’s romantic, nostalgic or just to connect with someone in general. Everyone feels lost in there sense of what they want and unsure, yet they know there is something they feel a longing for. In the classes there are two particular moments where this longing is somewhat reflected between Lena and Tiara. When Tiara watches Lena in class, it’s while they have a lecture on the beauty in conceptual ideas like functionalism and rationalism, Tiara even later reflecting she envied Lena, likely for that sense of maturity she emanates and natural sense for logic. Likewise when Lena looks to Tiara they have a lecture on the greek story of Daphne, the nymph turned to a tree. In it Apollo is plauged by cupid’s curse to pursue Daphne who is uniterested in him. In a final act she calls to her father a river god and asks for his help. In hopes that it will save her from Apollo’s pursuit, her father turns her to a tree. Although Lena’s power better fits the story of the girl turned to a tree, I think that Lena’s view on Kagetsu is what’s really in reference here. Lena feels this ever present longing of affection and desire and sees that in Kagestu. Yet it seems that Kagestu only has affection for Tiara and so Lena is left alone with that desire. Even when Lena’s thinking of Kagestu though, there is this feeling of Tiara being the focus of it. She knows the place of Tiara’s affection among the sibilings and recognizes that Tiara did her best to accept Lena into that space. As a result I feel both’s feelings end up being more about eachother than their situation, where they envy the other’s ability to react a certain way to their predicament and as a result pursue that for themselves in the series. They strive to better themselves by becoming eachother in some ways, they see what the other does wrong and yet also see everything that is wonderful about them.

The story definitely tries to rush it’s climax. Just as the story pushes it’s emotional confrontation it spends too much time overexplaining why it is emotional. It tries to play with it as being a taunt from the Throne but it takes so much time and limits so much of the action that it ends up falling flat. It should also be noted a lot of the reviews and notes on this series you’ll see likely say things along the lines of “watch episode 5 and 6 first then 1-4” but I’d say that isn’t necessary. In some ways it spoils the mystique and focus on the emotional story telling of episodes 1-4. You don’t truly have to understand the backstory to understand the emotional stakes of a story. Those episodes are still worth the watch, just don’t feel too pressured to do it in the “5-6, 1-4” order because people say it should have been done that way. You honestly could watch just the first 4 episodes and feel like you have a classic OVA experience of a short contained story by the same logic of watching them out of order. But I’d still recommend it if you like “dark magical girl” as an aesthetic, it’s not too dark but still carries a good maturity in it’s story telling with interesting magical elements. If you have the time and just want to try an older anime, I’d say this is an interesting one to check out.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super 101

THE POWER OF CHRISTMAS!

Last episode, Kale went berserk and wrecked everyone’s shit and it was awesome.  This episode, she doesn’t remember any of it. 

Also, Goku tried to start a showdown with Jiren, but then Top jumped in to screw it up.  His plan is for a separate squad of Pride Troopers to handle Goku while Top and Jiren withdraw to conserve their strength for later. 

Caulifla thinks Goku is going to try to take Kale out while she’s down, but before they can argue over that, the other Pride Troopers show up.  I’m a little fuzzy on the backstory here, but my understanding is that they created the three “main” Pride Troopers first-- Jiren, Top, and Dyspo-- then added the others to fill out the team.  So these are kind of the B-team guys. 

From left to right: Tupper (nice mustache), Zoire (the little guy), General Kahseral (with the beret), Cocotte (the woman) and Kettle (the big green one). 

Goku suggests that the ladies withdraw, since he’s the one they’re after, but Caulifla insists on sticking around for this.  As for Kale, Caulifla believes in her, and Kale’s too devoted to Caulifla to back out now.

Elsewhere, Master Roshi whips out that paralyzing attack he used on Goku back in the 21st Budokai.  His target, the Preecho, can’t move, but neither can he, so this would be a stalemate, except...

Roshi has backup in the form of Tien.  One Ki Ko Ho later, and Universe 3 loses another guy.

To Gohan’s credit, his half of the team has done well so far, sticking to the original strategy and working together to fight only when necessary.  They’ve taken down a few opponents, and they’ve only lost Krillin, who must have left the group to save 18.  But now that Kale’s tantrum has wrecked the fighting stage, everyone’s gotten separated, and as they start to regroup, Frieza and Vegeta rejoin the others.  But Goku, 17, and 18 remain unaccounted for.

Oh yeah, Frieza brought a plus one to this team meeting.  Vegeta says he was beating this guy up, but Frieza swiped him.  So Frieza tosses him over the side and that’s the end of .... sigh... Murichim.  I hate having to look up these guys’ names every single time. 

What kills me is that Murichim was the only Universe 10 guy they even showed during the prelude to this tournament.  This is why I was so harsh on that third-quarter of Dragon Ball Super.  In theory, those episodes were supposed to introduce all the new characters who would be in the tournament, but many of them aren’t even in the tournament long enough to matter.  When they showed the U10 team several episodes ago, they were all clad in black robes, like it was some sort of big secret that they didn’t want us to see.  Murichim was the only one without a robe, as if he was the most important, the one they did want us to see.  Well, this is it, right here.  This shot of Frieza manhandling him after defeating him off-screen is the big moment for U10′s star player.  

Well, let’s turn our attention to the Pride Troopers’ fight.  Tupper grabs Goku and uses his power to alter his mass to immobilize him.  Everyone’s always hugging Goku.

Zoire has tornado powers, so he can attack Goku that way while Tupper holds him in place. 

Kettle has... well, he just uses Hellzone Grenade on Caulifla.  I mean, that’s a cool move, and it’s nothing to sneeze at, but we’ve seen it before. 

Cocotte traps Kale in an “alternate dimension bubble” so she won’t get in the way of their mission.

And Kahseral can just stand back and gloat... until 17 and 18 show up to even the odds.  Now it’s five against five, and Kahseral has to use his own power-- energy swords-- to fight off the newcomers. 

17 keeps Kahseral busy while 18 gets Goku free from Tupper.  Tupper tries some other move where he rollls around like a big tire, but 18 just rolls him over to the edge of the stage, where his mass proves to be too much for the stage to hold. 

I mean, I like destructible backgrounds as much as the next guy, but it’s weird how the Grand Minister spent 40 hours building this ring out of super-indestructible metal, and then he ordered three of the Destroyers to test and reinforce the whole thing, and yet it takes such a pounding from the fighters.  I mean, it just shows off how strong everyone is, but at the same time, it also makes the ring look really flimsy. 

Zoire radios Khaseral about this development, and so he changes tactics.  Instead of fighting all five of these guys, he’s going to play it safe and focus his squad on Caulifla.  To that end he ditches 17 and regroups with the others.  Cocotte makes another bubble around them so they can attack Caulifla without any interference...

And Kale can’t do anything but watch helplessly as her “sworn sister” gets pummeled.  The term “sworn sister” gets thrown around a lot in the dub of this episode, and so I looked it up to get some context and the first thing I found was an article about a “marriage resistance movement” in late 19th/early 20th century China, where women would band together to avoid marrying men.  A lot of them were lesbians, as you might imagine.  So Funimation isn’t exactly being too subtle about this, which is fine, because Toei wasn’t very subtle about this in the first place. 

So Kale is horrified but Caulifla vows to defend her no matter what, which brings Kale to tears, and she’s so frustrated with her helplessness that she transforms again and....

Well, two things happen.  First, she breaks out of Cocotte’s bubble.  Second, her Super Saiyan form is different this time, like she’s only half-Legendary, and she can access the power without going bonkers. 

The significance of this is lost on the Pride Troopers, who try to finish off the Saiyans with their finest hand lasers....

But they’re no match for Caulifla and Kale’s hand lasers.  Caulifla powers up to SSJ2, and Kale beefs up into her max power form, although she seems to retain her sense of self.

And just like that, three more Pride Troopers take the big plunge. 

And Kale passes out again. Caulifla must have a dozen hair ties in her pants. 

But Cocotte is still okay because she’s surrounded herself with a bubble, so she can’t be hurt.  Well, that’s fine, because 18 can just throw the whole bubble out of the ring, and eliminate Cocotte along with it.  I get the impression that the Pride Troopers never seriously considered the rules of the tournament before they got here. 

So Caulifla carries Kale to safety, and Goku just lets her leave.  Even Caulifla finds this hard to believe, and 17 and 18 are confused, but Goku says he can tell the girls are going to get a lot stronger by the end of this thing, and he wants to fight them later, when they’re at their strongest.  18 finds this foolish, but 17 humors him, saying it’s the human thing to do, or rather the Saiyan thing to do. 

And as Caulifla sneaks off with Kale, KISS plays them off the show with the stirring love ballad “Forever.”  Everyone in the stands holds up lighters.  Or the flashlight on their smartphones.  Before those were invented, people held up cigarette lighters. 

Or they just made their eyes glow.  That’s how they do it in Universe 2.

[tinderbox210]

After watching the Picard finale yesterday for the 2nd time, and tearing up just as much as watching the first time, I think my brain is finally functioning enough again to pen down some of my thoughts.

Season 3 – what a ride!!!

I did have my ups and downs with the show. While I overly enjoyed s1, I was frustrated and disappointed with s2, mainly due to the way most of the new characters got sidelined (Soji, Elnor) or written off (Rios, Jurati). I always expected for Picard and the new characters to part ways eventually, to let the hatchlings have their own adventures, but I didn’t expect it to happen like this. Apparently it was a budget decision (also the reason why there weren’t more cameos) because they couldn’t afford keeping the new characters while bringing back the old TNG crew, which imo is a real shame. Especially the Raffi/Worf interaction this season showed that more new and old characters interacting could have been fantastic, and no lying, I would have loved so much to see the Stargazer under Rios’ command aiding the Titan last minute against the assimilated fleet – seeing those two legendary ships fight side by side... it could have been even more spectacular than what we got!

This all lead to me being very torn with reservations prior to s3. TNG was the first Star Trek show I’ve watched as a kid, it introduced me to the franchise and shaped me growing up. The show and the characters will always have a special place in my heart and I was very worried they would mess things up like other shows had (*cough*GilmoreGirls*cough*). But thankfully for me, that wasn’t the case – while I’m still sad for what we lost and could have been, I’m also very happy and grateful for what we got.

I loved season 3 and I think the finale was incredible on many levels and a more than worthy send-off for my beloved TNG gang.

There were so many moments I choked up with emotions while watching, so many impressions that stayed with me even after the ending. I think both DISCO and SNW delivered amazing season finales, but neither got the same reaction out of me like this one – from the mind-blowing cinematic action sequences to the intense emotional beats, it had a very natural flow and felt like the fitting accumulation not just of this season but of a lot what came all those years before.

Was it a perfect season/finale without any flaws? Of course not, because nothing is ever perfect and peoples’ opinions/reactions will always be subjective, but I hate the developed culture in fandoms that everything is black and white – that it’s either holier than thou and you’re not allowed to find a single flaw in it, or it’s the shittiest shit to ever exist with people trash talking every chance they get. I understand where some people are coming from being disappointed with this season and I share some of the criticism, but neither the show nor the finale deserve the hate it gets from some parts of the fandom imo (neither did the previous seasons, especially s1).

Vadic was an amazing villain (Amanda Plummer killed it in every scene) and bringing back the Borg made absolute sense to me. The Borg have been such a huge part of TNG, its legacy and Picard’s personal journey, but they’ve also been a strong focus point in Picard since the beginning. S1 had the ex-Bs, s2 had the alternative collective, so it didn’t feel contrived at all but rather inevitable for the prime Borg to be the final boss villain. And seeing that monstrous Borg queen in her nest (with the chilling voice of Alice Krige!), which reminded me lot of the xenomorph queen scene in Aliens, was truly something else! I think the whole plan to team up with the rogue changelings to infiltrate Starfleet so that they can assimilate the fleet via transporters was quite clever, unique and terrifying as transporters were never weaponized like this before.

I loved the emotional beats between the characters and that everyone got their moments to shine in the finale. Of course, I loved that we saw the Enterprise-D back in action and all its glory, taking one final flight to save the day (and what a mind-blowing flight it was!) before it got the well deserved resting place among the other legendary vessels at the fleet museum. I feared the ship would get destroyed along with a few familiar characters dying in the end, but thankfully that didn’t happen as I don’t think I could have handled it (Shaw’s death was heartbreaking enough). I’m actually glad the show decided against the common “kill half the characters in the finale to show it’s the end” trope to give everyone the happy ending they deserved.

Additional, some things I absolutely went feral and emotional about:

- Seven taking command of the Titan with Raffi right beside her and her speech to the bridge crew

- the Titan going berserker on the assimilated fleet as the last bit of Starfleet left (I wondered why no one else came to help despite the warning of staying away, because that felt a little weird considering Earth’s importance to the Federation, but since Prodigy already did that version, I can understand why they chose a different way here)

- the nods to Anton Yelchin and Majel Roddenberry

- seeing the TNG gang operate their old stations, with addition of Beverly taking over tactical and her raining fire and fury on the Borg cube!

- the flight of the Enterprise through the cube reminiscing Star Wars

- Riker and Troi’s epic love help save everyone and Deanna flying the Enterprise again (I loved that scene with the ship showing up above Picard and co. so much!)

- the chilling inside of the Borg cube and the Borg queen giving such strong Alien vibes

- Picard letting himself get assimilated again to save his son and their emotional scenes in the collective were just so powerful (Ed Speleers delievered so much!)

- the real human love of his family breaking Jack out of the queen’s hold

- the final shot of the Enterprise-D’s bridge reminiscing the ending in Generations (sleep tight, my love, you deserve it!)

- Seven getting promoted to Captain by Tuvok (I know, we all hoped for a Janeway cameo, but I’m happy Tuvok survived) and Raffi becoming her No. 1 (I was sad they broke up, but now the future seems full of possibilities with them finally staying on the same ship)

- Raffi and Worf’s goodbye (I really enjoyed their interactions) and Raffi finally getting the second chance with her family she worked so hard for

- the Titan getting renamed Enterprise-G (though I can’t recall what happened to the Enterprise-F – was it destroyed or renamed or do we have 2 Enterprises now?)

- Jack stepping into his parents’ footsteps (with Beverly being Admiral!) and joining Seven and Raffi on the Enterprise-G (now we need for Elnor to get transferred, because I really want him and Jack to become brothers!)

- the setup for the potential spin-off (give me Star Trek Legacy now!!!)

- the wholesomeness of final scene with the TNG crew at 10 Forward bar just reconnecting and playing poker

- the soundtrack!!!!

[likeadragonfruit]

I’m surprised that I don’t have as much to go over in separate posts this time. So it’s roundup/brain dump time for book 3. Also yeah it’s been a few months haha 😅

Big Picture

Overall flow

This is the best season so far. I’ve even seen people say this is better than ATLA, and I don’t know that I’d go that far, but this is probably the most watchable it’s been so far. (And watchability isn’t damning with faint praise, Law and Order built an empire on being watchable.)

It does a decent job picking things up from the previous season and moving forward from there, especially considering how much book 2 looked like it was setting up a series finale.

But that cast size problem? Getting worse. We’re now up to Korra and the rest of Krew, Tenzin and his family (including his siblings still), Lin, Korra’s family (minus Unalaq), and adding in Lin’s family, airbenders (most prominently Kai) and the Red Lotus members

Also, the trend of breaking Korra in some way at the end of each season  continues, expect this is the one without a hasty recovery

Korra and the airbenders

It’s the event that shapes the whole season: new airbenders emerging post-harmonic convergence

And it’s ambiguous exactly what happened but Tenzin (acting as an authorial mouthpiece) attributes it to Korra

So the point is consequences? She (supposedly) created a bunch of airbenders but also kickstarted the Red Lotus plot via Zaheer’s escape

Which later almost kills her, except for the other airbenders who prevent Zaheer from escaping

Anyway, the way this plot is introduced initially bothered me a lot, but since it’s what the season revolves around, I kind of had to deal with it regardless.

Politics:

The politics of moderation reign once more

“(Bad) monarchs are bad, but so is anarchy” is a take I suppose

It’s kind of weak with the Red Lotus being more straw man anarchists than anything

Character opinions

Korra: I’m actually a little bothered by how little I have to say about her currently.

Mako: as said previously, I didn’t hate him and he’s even better now that they’ve freed him from the love triangle. But they’ve also been quarantining him with Bolin.

Bolin: oh Bolin, you’d be so good if you were good. He’s more tolerable this season at moments, and so obnoxious at others still. (Yes I’m ignoring last season.) Ultimately I still landed on not liking him.

Asami: she still isn’t getting storylines, but she’s basically the best supporting player there is. She works well with any character you pair her off with.

Tenzin: pass

Jinora: pass

Kya: oh you get to do so little this season, but I still love you.

Bumi: was alright this season.

Kai: a pretty classic jerk with heart of gold, but the classics are classics because they work.

Hou Ting: pass

Lin: I was actually a bit conflicted because the whole “being forced to interact with Suyin” thing during her mini arc was not a good look on her.

Suyin: so for her all her faults, I actually kinda like her, and it’s hard to explain. The best way I can think of is she scratches the part of my brain that’s a fan of Gon Freeces. And put in a way comprehensible to non-HxH fans, it’s that her selfish and hypocrisy reminds me of other characters where those flaws were critical to their arcs, even though I already know this series will never call Suyin on it, really.

Opal: the only of Suyin’s kids worth mentioning this season. 

Zaheer: he gets talks up a lot as he franchise’s best villain but meh. 

Ghazan: I want to come up with more, but basically I like him, for the little we get

Ming-Hua: see Ghazan

P’li: better than the last combustion bender we got. But most of the positive things I could say are either design or action related. She just got so little to do character wise compared to the rest. 

Shipping

yeah, still keeping this section

Korrasami: well they’ve spent more time together this season. As far as build up, umm…

Jinora/Kai: they’re cute, puppy love

Zaheer/P’li: meh

Bopal: love/hate relationship here. Sometimes I’m just like, “ugh, no, run Opal.” Others, it scratches that “aww dorks in love” part of my brain. But ultimately “girl, run” is winning. (You can do better, Opal!)

Stray observations

This season, having been ordered at the same time as season 4 is clearly setting up things that will come back in the next season. Are they the best use of these connections? Umm…

It’s odd seeing Kuvira this season as a dancer in her (background) introduction and for the rest of the season as the guard captain Lin and Suyin bark orders at, save her saving Tonraq’s life. It’s also a shame since so much more could be done with her and better set up the next season

Why is spirit projection an airbender technique? Because Jinora is an airbender, therefore it must be a form of airbending somehow?

You know, I actually really like the Mako detective moments. While I wouldn’t say I’d like a spin off, an au fic would work

If I had a nickel for every time a villain threatened to or tried to wipe out the airbenders/airbending, I’d have three nickels…

In the “Enter the Void,” Grey’s Ming-Hua starts slipping more into her Azula voice

Okay fuck Bolin for this moment

8 years later and I still vibe with Ghazan’s death over prison attitude

It’s been a very different experience watching book 3 like this, even more so than book 1 and 2. 8 years ago, I was watching books 3 and 4 during a stressful time in my life and didn’t necessarily mind all the details then

And with that, we’re in the homestretch. Just book 4 left now…

[coolcattime]

The Journal of Katherine Delaney -- Entry One.

This is a character journal I'm writing for my current D&D campaign for my half-elf wild magic sorcerer, Katherine Delaney. It's a custom campaign with the best friend as the DM and set in their custom D&D world: Libris, the great book.

This is kinda just something I'm doing for fun. It's turned out pretty long though, because as it turns out I have a lot of thoughts and also turning multiple d&d sessions into one journal entry makes for a pretty long piece of writing.

This is probably just gonna be something I post every so often as the campaign goes on since I like writing.

It’s been a while since I’ve kept a journal. Being on the move makes it inconvenient, I suppose, but after today I needed some way to process all my thoughts, and writing has always helped with that in the past. Now that it seems I’ll have a more permanent place to stay rather than having to carry a large book around with me, I may finally be able to actually keep a journal again.

I can say with certainty that the situation began around a week ago. While waiting for Leontine to arrive back from telling my family about my safety and the fact I’m not ready to return home right now, the brooch Rupert had gifted me began to make noises as if it was an actual bird. It was an extremely odd experience, especially as it started tugging, pulling me somewhere. I’ll admit, had I acquired that brooch in any other way than a gift from my brother, I probably would’ve gotten rid of it at that point, but instead I followed it. I followed it all the way to a town called Four Hollow, where is calmed down and acted once again as a regular piece of jewellery. At least it did as long as I stayed in the town, my attempts to leave where meant with bird song and being pulled back. So, seeing that I was quite stuck, I wrote to Leontine of my new location (which she thankfully was quite understanding about) and found myself once again just waiting.

It appeared that I’d arrived in Four Hollow at a busy time of year as they were (and still currently are) preparing for a festival. From what I learnt over the few days I’ve been here, the giant crystal that the town is built around provides the town magical power that they’ve used to make many things run automatically in such a way I’ve never seen previously. It’s quite fascinating, seeing all the ways such magic can be used to improve life, and the town’s appreciation for that is why each year they hold a festival to show their thanks. Currently, they’re in the build-up phase, showing off the impressive feats the crystal can do, mostly things akin to firework shows, things that are entertaining and attractive to those from out of town. In three days’ time, however, they will turn off the magic for twenty-four hours, to allow the crystal to rest and to show their appreciation for the improvements it’s given to their life. Obviously, the idea of magic being turned off worried me, but I’ve been assured that it’s just the magic related to the crystal, so I’ve little to worry about.

I’ll admit, I had gotten a little bored of watching the displays of the crystal by today. I’ve been here for quite a few days and while impressive, the displays did little to take up the time in waiting for Leontine to return. I was actually sat watching a squirrel when I was pulled into meeting the group.

For the stake of easing my confusion, I’m going to briefly describe each of my new companions now, rather than when we actually introduced ourselves, so I can use their names throughout the whole story.

Vallana (Val): A firbolg woman who appears to have an unhealthy obsession with killing goblins in a way that’s frankly uncomfortable. She’s at least friendly towards the group, but certainly is more than a little murderous.

Caspien: Val’s traveling companion. A gem dragonborn cleric. He seems frankly exhausted by Val’s talk of goblins. Though he may just be easily frustrated in general.

Maize: A centaur woman with an unsure disposition, but clearly strives to be helpful. Mentioned disliking the ‘fae bourgeoise’ and I’m not sure if I should worry.

Hamish: A shifter man who appears to be part cow. So far, I think he’s the best natured of the group as he seems to just genuinely want to help people. He is a friend of Rupert.

Scorn: A tiefling man with no horns, no tail, and near pitch black skin. We found him ‘brooding’. Is apparently a wizard, though he hasn’t mentioned what school of magic he’s studied. Quiet, but I think he’s a good person.

Dynol: A goliath man with a large ice spike in his chest. Has apparently lived in Four Hollow for a number of years. Grumpy.

Anyways, the beginning of today’s oddities began when Val appeared in front of me asking if I’d seen a goblin, quite an imposing question from an armed stranger that towers over you. I had managed to stutter out an answer when thankfully Caspien appeared, apologising for his travelling companion. The two began bickering, as apparently her questioning strangers has been a recurring issue, but they had only exchanged a few sentences when Maize came by. She had a crate strapped to her back, and I saw a wine glass falling from it. I had meant to catch it; it was just my luck that I practically threw it to the ground. I was incredibly embarrassed, only more so when Hamish ran onto the scene assuming the breaking glass was due to a fight. It was then that the confusing events of the day truly began.

An earring, designed to look like the tags you sometimes see on livestock, that Hamish wore began moving, swinging seeming of its own accord. Such an event had apparently not happened before, and we decided at that moment that we were being lead somewhere. Admittedly that’s an odd idea now that I look at it written down, but sometimes you just have to go with the seemingly alive piece of jewellery leading you somewhere.

It led us to a back-alley pub, completely empty save for the bartender and Scorn. He was sat alone in a dark corner booth, and I think he may have been enjoying himself far more before we invited ourselves to sit with him. At least, that’s the impression that the awkward silence we found ourselves in gave.

The silence was broken by Caspien accidently triggering the loudest noise I’ve ever heard. I swear if I hadn’t been nearly deafened, I would’ve panicked far more. However, by the time that the ringing in my ears stopped it was quite clear that Caspien had made the noise with some magic trinket he had, shaped like an orb made up of rings. It was also clear, thanks to just how empty the bar was, that Dynol had entered. He seemed quite frankly out of it, though perhaps that was just the result of the sudden noise. He didn’t come over to us until after we had started our introductions. This time is also when I learned of Hamish’s friendship with my brother, as he’s apparently stayed at his girlfriend’s tavern a number of times.

Dynol oddly came over to accuse one of us of pulling his bag, something none of us had any motive to do. When we all denied doing so, he opened his bag and produced the broken handle of a sword which was glowing dimly, and he appeared to begin swinging it haphazardly. In retrospect, it was most likely the object pulling him around, but it did seem rather reckless of him at the time.

Either way, he did join the group as we were finishing introductions. No sooner than we were all sat down, did an object that we each had begun to act wildly. I have already mentioned by own brooch, Hamish’s earring, and Dynol’s sword handle, however it seemed that everyone in the small group had some kind of object that appeared to (and likely did) have a mind of its own. Val had a coin, Caspien a spear tip, Maize a smoking pipe, and Scorn a holy symbol. None of us had acquired these objects in the same way, a fact obvious to me as none other than Hamish would’ve had the opportunity to receive a present from my brother (unless they’ve all met him somehow, but I sincerely doubt that). Yet all of them were clearly reacting to being in the presence of one another. Perhaps due to that fact, Caspien touched the broken piece of spear he had to my brooch, which quickly flew off as if it was a real bird.

I don’t know quite what possessed me to chase it. I think I just didn’t want to lose it (though I funnily enough have now) or maybe had followed it once so I just thought it was worth doing so again. But, either way, I stumbled out of that pub and after the brooch as if my life depended on it. The others followed me, though that hadn’t been a thought in my mind until they did so. I’m sure we must have been a confusing sight, such a large group running out into the fields and woods outside of town. I can’t say how long we ran for, long enough that I probably should have given up on following.

I was extremely thankful for the others’ presences when the brooch passed through some overgrowth too thick for anything larger than it to easily follow. Had I been alone, I likely would’ve had to use a spell. I know none that would’ve been great for the situation, and I can just imagine surging alone and ending up unconscious in the middle of nowhere. Hamish pulled down one of the smaller trees, which seemed to just completely bend to his will, clearing a path for us. Maize had leapt over, an impressive feat that put her a little ahead of the rest of us, but I’m quite sure it also broke whatever glassware was still in that crate she still had strapped to her. Honestly though, that didn’t cross my mind as instead I was totally focused on what was at the bottom of the valley we were walking into.

A crashed airship. That’s what we had been led to (and as we got closer, we found the brooch hitting itself against the door we used to get inside). None of the others had seen an airship before (and I admit that I’ve only seen one myself in pictures), wondering out loud how such a large ship had crashed landlocked when the closest body of water is Chicken Lake, which is far too small to justify a regular ship of this size. I corrected them, that this a ship designed for flight, but I had to admit at further questions that I didn’t know how it achieved such a feat. Caspien proposed a theory that its large balloon is filled with water, much like how ships for the water are propelled by air. I’m not quite sure how that would make a ship fly, but I don’t have any better theories.

Naturally, we decided to explore the thing, though it only became stranger when we were actually inside. Immediately I realised the floor was wrong, feeling like stone but not looking like it (and I imagine that it would be a bad material to use in something that needs to lift into the air). Of course, it was dark, so I wrote off the oddity to that, even after we lit a torch so those who can’t see in the darkness could explore comfortably. It became clear that there was a number of directions we could explore: one staircase up, two staircases down (one to the left, and one to the right), and a corridor that went straight ahead. We decided to firstly go down the left staircase, which led to a door we managed to unlock with Hamish’s earring which in turn opened to a large open area and a corridor with seven doors. Curious, I opened one of the doors and was greeted by a bedroom forming that matched by own tastes to a frankly strange degree. A bed designed for two with purple sheets, a rug covering most of the floor, a bookcase, a dressing area, and a desk that I’m currently writing at. All the furniture is where I would have put it. There was more specific stuff too; a ballet barre, a music stand, some empty plant pots stack up waiting to be used. Yet the real oddity was the books. When I picked one up which happened to be on mycology, it was in a state as if it had been read and well-read at that, but all the pages where blank. I was tempted to close my eyes and run my fingers across the pages but decided against it. I didn’t want to be questioned about what I was doing, and if there had been braille, I would’ve been able to see it. That and I doubt Leontine is reading books in braille.

Now one room I likely would’ve written off as coincidence, however as the others each opened a door, it became clear that everyone was experiencing the same thing I had, a room being formed to their exact tastes. We made a few jokes about whoever previously owned the ship having very broad tastes, but I think joking went out the window when a bedroom perfect for a centaur appeared. After we had all entered a room, the large space that had been empty also transformed, turning into a common room of sorts. Again, I have to assume that it’s suited to our tastes. I noticed a few of puzzle boxes I’ve enjoyed in the past, as well as sets for a few games I’ve played with Leontine.

I, at this point, wondered aloud if we had walked into a trap. One of the others noted maybe, but if it was a trap, it was a nice one. I wonder now, knowing the truth of the situation, if it would be accurate to say I was paranoid, given that everything is fine, but this situation could have just as easily ended with as all being eaten.

…Why did I write that?

Fuck, Jas, I… Get back on track… I, I just need to focus on the present.

After managing to convince Val not to do the, frankly dangerous, task of bring a campfire on wheels she had found in her room down the staircase, we returned to our starting point to continue exploring. We decided to take the staircase up, which led to another locked door. This one we unlocked with Val’s coin, and it led out to what must be the uppermost deck as it’s open to the air. I believe this deck will be easier to enter and exit from once we get the ship out of the crater that they’re a little stuck in currently, though I guess that’s something to speculate on later. There wasn’t much up there, just a clearer view of the balloon, as well as some pipes that lead into it. Honestly, how this ship works is beyond me currently.

With little to see up there, we headed once again back down to our starting point. We decided to explore the final staircase, heading down once again. The deck below was blocked by rubble, with only a further staircase down available to explore. So, we headed further down, reaching again a locked door. This one was unlocked by Scorn’s holy symbol.

Inside this room was what I could only describe as an incomplete engine, the kind of thing an artificer may build, but clearly broken. And once again the trinkets we were carrying began to act oddly.

I don’t remember who the first to throw their trinket into the engine was, though I clearly remember the result of it connecting to the engine, as if it was always a part of it. Lights came on, whatever magic was present on this ship coming back as the engine was repaired. We all followed in turn, and I could hear doors opening and other loud noises that I couldn’t explain. It was when the final item was thrown in that the ship came to life more literally. And by that, I mean, the ship began to speak.

Ship, a simple yet fitting name, is apparently not just an airship, but rather a colony of mimics. Yes, the objects we had all been carrying around (myself for the better part of a year) were mimics, dormant and apparently friendly mimics, but mimics all the same. I question how my brother managed to craft such a thing into a brooch, but I feel like that’s a mystery he won’t have an answer to. At the very least, Ship isn’t planning on killing us as we can “grow the colony”. Apparently, prior to our arrival, they had been sleeping for a quite a while, unable to wake until the seven objects we carried were brought back to the engine, but before us they were merely passed and sold between people. And our reward for awakening them? The airship, something so rare in Libris that most haven’t even heard of such a thing. Well, Ship did say that one of us could kill the rest for sole ownership, but I’m quite against that idea, and I sincerely hope that none of the others are contemplating it either.

I should probably be more scared of being on a ship entire crafted by mimics, but during our introduction Maize compared them to a group of sentient mushrooms that want to help you. That was the moment I realise that such a fear may be quite hypocritical of me given my relationship with Leontine. I’m unsure if Maize has met Leontine, or just managed to allude to her via an otherwise very unusual metaphor, but I imagine if they haven’t met Maize will be quite glad to meet her. I think Leontine will get along with Ship too, so that’s two people to immediately introduce her to once we’re reunited. However, Caspien seemed to quite dislike the idea of the mushrooms, describing the idea put forward by Maize as his “worst nightmare”. Perhaps I should warn him about Leontine, but I don’t think I should get into the habit of warning people about my partner. I’m sure he’ll be fine with the idea once he meets Leontine, after all she is completely wonderful. They’ll all love her, I’m sure. Well, not the same way I do, but who wouldn’t love her. She’s so cute, especially when she’s talking about mushrooms and her eyes light up and she gets so focused, I could just watch her forever when she’s like that. And of course, she can hold her own in a fight! That’s probably important to these people, so many of them have armour and weapons. And she… she’s just the best and… and I miss her so much.

Anyways, Ship then introduced us to the, I guess, caretaker of the place: Laundry. They appeared to be created of different clothes (I believe with a basket underneath) formed into the shape of a wizard. Apparently, they were named by the last crew of Ship, and are here to do our laundry and “create new rooms”, which I assume is something to do with the completely empty deck where the rubble I mentioned earlier has now been cleared. I guess this place really is just to shape to our desires, so long as we continue to keep the mimics happy.

After these two introductions, Ship gave us the information that they’re currently grounded, unable to fly until we get them another mimic. This mimic is currently in the town of Four Hollow and is the form of a key the size of a half-elf’s forearm. To be more specific, it’s the size of my forearm. I’ve never had my forearm used as a measurement before, but at the very least we thought it was likely that someone in the town will have seen a key that large. We asked Dynol who had lived there for a few years, but he seemed quite oblivious to the place.

So, we decided to head back into town, now with an unexpected quest binding us. We started by finally getting the crate Maize was carrying to where it was meant to be. I doubt there was any useable glassware left, but at least we could now fully focus on our task. We attempted to talk with one of the people in charge of assigning the volunteers tasks, but he seemed thoroughly uninterested in helping us. However, after a small amount of pressing, he did say that the only key of such a size in the town is the one currently inside the crystal.

We took one of the tours available in order to confirm this fact, and looking inside from a closer vantage point, I could clearly see it. The key we need is the focus inside the crystal, the thing that allows the town to harness the magic and make sure the crystal doesn’t explode. In three days, it’ll be taken out of the crystal for twenty-four hours. We have that time to get a hold of it, something I’m quite sure the entire town will try to prevent us from doing, or we lose the opportunity for a full year. So, here’s the real problem we’re presented with: how do we acquire the key, and can we do without destroying Four Hollow’s livelihood? Those problems were made worse by Ship’s confirmation that they wanted the key forever. At least I saw those things as problems. Val and Dynol seem to be quite happy to just kill everyone in the town (Val because, well, she seems to quite like murder, and Dynol because they looked at him oddly). Maize seems to not understand the need for towns in the first place. The others, at least, seem more reluctant to destroy the livelihood of an entire town.

By this point, sat in the common room aboard Ship, we didn’t know much about the ritual yet. Really, we just knew that the ritual is performed by various religious types who visit the town for it, and that the key with initially be taken out of the crystal by one Marion Windcutter. Now, I’ve heard of him. A diplomat or envoy of sorts from The Elmmyu’rra States. He’s not technically a noble, though he’s counted as one due to his renowned ability for sorting problems between noble families. I’ve never personally met him, but it’s possible he’s met my parents. Hopefully if he has, he likes them well enough as then dealing with him will likely be a lot easier.

With a lack of good ideas for obtaining the key blooming, we decided to take advantage of the common room and relax a little. I decided to write to Leontine about this situation. I couldn’t tell her nearly as much as I wanted to, after all look how long this entry is, but I told her the basics. Firstly, I needed to make sure she knew I was with a group. After all I had been alone when she left, and this situation could very much look like a kidnapping if you were unaware of it. Secondly, I gave her directions to the ship and a request to not enter Four Hollow. Perhaps I’m just overly paranoid, but I’m sure this situation we’ve found ourselves in will end in trouble. I don’t want Leontine to turn on there on Sunday and get lost in the chaos, or worst get there afterwards ask after me and get into trouble due to our actions.

The others questioned the paper crane a little. I suppose it is a piece of paper that can find by itself, but it is basically just a trinket. I of course told them that I was just sending a letter, and to watch out for Leontine. Perhaps I should’ve given a longer description of her, so they don’t confuse her with someone else, but there’s no one quite like Leontine. I can’t imagine anyone else claiming to be her and someone actually believe them.

After I sent the letter, I decided to watch Hamish and Caspien while they played a game that I recognised but didn’t know all the rules of, I asked some questions, to attempt to pick up the gist of what was going on, but the two seemed to disagree on the rules.

Now, I personally didn’t notice, but it must have been at this time that Scorn was standing awkwardly in a corner with a death grip on his pack. I can’t say I blame him for this, after all it had only been a couple of hours since we’d met, and he seemed to prefer his own company. However, apparently Ship disagreed. No sooner had he said:

“Not, really no,” I assume in response to a telepathically asked question, had Ship locked every door currently available to us, effectively sealing us in the common room. Their motive for this was both quite simple and less nefarious than one might expect given the description I just wrote. Apparently, this odd group we find ourselves in will not work if we are not friends. That’s logical enough, after all we will be living and travelling together so we must at least be able to tolerate each other. Though I’m not quite sure locking us in a room with a bottle of alcohol and a deck of cards is the most effective method possible.

The alcohol, which we started while deciding on a game to play, according to Maize was a type of grain alcohol. It was fair stronger than I would have preferred without anything mixed in. I still drank it, but I couldn’t help but grimace at the taste.

We settled on playing poker, and playing the rules set forward by Scorn as we each had a different set of rules in mind. It was quite nice, relaxing as we weren’t gambling. Caspien ended up winning the first round which he called beginner’s luck.

As we played, we decided to discuss our favourite thing we’d done while adventuring, a topic put forward by Hamish who also told his story first. Apparently, he’s somewhat of a local hero where he’s from, having driven off some monsters away from his home village along with a rallied army of townsfolk. He smiled as he spoke of this. Without question, Hamish is a good person and I understand why Rupert befriended him.

Scorn admitted that he hasn’t done much adventuring yet as he’s been doing various types of training under an archwizard. He apparently doesn’t have a preferred school of magic, though he admitted to not being gifted at transmutation. Yet this was so far the most open he’s been with the group thus far, so I decided not to push on the issue (though I believe from words said later that Caspien doesn’t believe that Scorn is actually a wizard, though I don’t see any reason he would lie about such a feat).

Maize went next, telling of the time they accidentally broke the wrong person out of jail. A bold story to tell to a group of people you’ve barely met, but I have to admit it was entertaining. She had met to break out a dwarf and instead broke out a halfling who she had decided could well be a dwarf that simply shaved. The crime either one committed was apparently not important to the story, though perhaps she didn’t know herself.

I shared a story next, telling of a time myself and Leontine chased an owlbear from a farm. It was the best story I could think of that didn’t involved Jas or Désirée, so I wouldn’t need to answer questions about them. Yet even the safe story prompted some questions, mostly about how one chases an owlbear. I, of course, explained briefly that it was a combination of my own magic (though I didn’t mention that it was mostly due to most of them making a loud noise when cast) and Leontine’s aura of mushrooms that injury any foe that come too close to her. Caspien didn’t react much to this, so either he wasn’t listening to the question he asked, or sentient mushrooms don’t scare him as much as he claimed. I hope it’s the former as if I’m going to be friends with these people as Ship suggests necessary, I need them to like Leontine. I think I may already be on the way to that as Hamish appeared to have heard briefly of her from Rupert and therefore, he must know how important she is.

Val’s story was, predictably, about killing goblins. Oddly enough she began by talking about leaving her home, a place she only really described as being very different from the rest of Libris that she’s explored and that there were also goblins there. However, before I could question that she began describing killing goblins. The shocking reveal was that Val, like Hamish, is considered a folk hero. The goblins just so happened to be a group of marauders who were terrorizing a town that happened to be very thankful for Val’s actions. She promptly learned the wrong lesson from this encounter.

Finally, Dynol told, shortly and simply, the story of his first kill after leaving the village, that of a white bear. He still wears the pelt too, so I suppose at least it wasn’t just a kill for glory. Apparently, this is also when he found the sword hilt that led him here. Caspien almost immediately questioned his first kill being a bear, which admittedly is a fair bit bigger than most hunters start, but I assumed based on his wording that it was just Dynol’s first kill as a solo hunter rather than absolutely.

I realise now, having written down all the stories that Caspien didn’t actually share a story, not even one like Scorn to just say he hasn’t really adventured before. It’s a little odd thinking about it as he seemingly loves to talk, as is abundantly clear from the amount he’s been mentioned thus far. Perhaps he simply forgot as it was after Dynol’s story that Laundry (apparently free to move around the ship unlike us) entered with food.

It was a pot filled with something that was between a soup and stew, too many vegetables to be a soup, but a little thin to be a stew. Laundry was little help in identifying it, merely calling it food. I suppose it didn’t matter as long as it was edible.

We questioned where the ingredients had come from, as Ship had said the alcohol was from the previous crew and none of us felt like eating century all rations (and I’m also not quite sure we’d survive it). Thankfully they were fresh, wild vegetables and roots gathered from the woods the ship has crashed in. Of course, that means that Laundry had left the ship, though they made the excellent point that anyone who sees them will just think they’re a wizard. Honestly, if we get fresh food out of it, I see no problem with them exploring. Though Dynol did have a complaint about the lack of meat, but really did he expect a sentient laundry basket disguised as a wizard to kill something? I’ll try and see if there’s a market or a butcher in Four Hollow if he complains again, though I’m not much of a cook so he’ll have to deal with that part.

While eating, we played a second round of poker. This time Dynol won. I think the second loss may have frustrated Scorn a little as he threw his cards down, lightly but still. Admittedly, I’m not the best at reading people, so maybe it was a completely innocent gesture. It was about here that Maize decided to tell another story. This one was about an incident where she decided to try and flirt with someone. Apparently, a common way of doing so where she if from is to kick an object as hard as you can. This did not translate to wherever she was at the time, and it was instead seen as an act of aggression. She claims to have been completely run out of town. Now as to why she told this story of an incident where she was clearly embarrassed, I’m not sure, perhaps the alcohol had gone to her head, but it did bring the group together. Enough for Ship to ask if we were friends now. Obviously, we all answered yes, even if I’m still not quite sure if completely trust everyone yet. Scorn said that he still didn’t trust any of us with his stuff which I thought was adamantly fair.

Finally free to leave, we decided to return to Four Hollow once again, in order to talk to those taking part in the ritual about Hamish and Caspien joining. The walk was much easier this time as we had begun to form a path through the brush. It was certainly the least peaceful though, even compared to the original frantic run. The entire time Caspien was just ranting about his hatred of badgers. The entire half hour walk. I was thankful to hear the humming lights of the town as hearing them meant there was finally quiet. Honestly, the magic of the town is completely fantastic. It would take a council of magic users to sustain something like this in any other town, but here it’s just one crystal. Can we really just take the focus and not think about what we’re destroying for it?

We proceed to the church, a stone building while most in the town are made of wood. It was lit up and heated, a welcome beacon. All of us but Scorn went inside, he elected to wait by the doors. Inside our eyes were drawn to three places.

Immediately we looked to a group of three dwarves in the middle of the room. Dressed in robes and blindfold, they were loudly chanting prayers in a language that I believe was drawvern, but I didn’t understand to know for sure. Crystals of various colours decorated their robes, jiggling with their movements and providing a messy melody to their song-like prayers. Their display had gathered a small crowd.

However, despite how their show display may have made it look, they were not the only religious devotees in the building that appeared special. One was a firbolg woman at an altar. Her back to us, it was clear she was wearing a backless dress. She was reading a holy text, though not as loudly as the dwarves. The other was an older elven woman sat alone reading a thick leather-bound book. She dressed in in grey vestments with only a blue band as decoration.

Of these three, we decided to firstly talk with the firbolg, as she didn’t seem as busy as the dwarves nor as unapproachable as the elf. As we approached, she turned around and I just had to admire the craftsmanship of her dress. It was far more ornate than anything I’d expect a holy person to wear. Crafted from shimmering purple fabric, different shades creating a handprint pattern, each one having a heart in the middle. Painted on the fabric surrounding the hands were blue flowers. I can’t imagine how much time it must have taken to create it.

She introduced herself as Tulip, a follower of The Evening Glory, and asked us our business. We introduced ourselves and said we (or rather Hamish and Caspien) wanted to take part in the key ritual and therefore we wanted to know a bit about it. Hamish seemed shocked that we wanted him to take part, despite mentioning that he was a cleric when the ritual was first brought to our attention and us talking about the plan multiple times before this point. Anyways, Tulip answered our questions, explaining the ritual to us. The ritual itself doesn’t have any fancy techniques we would need to know being very individual. Marion will take the key from the crystal, taking it to a room where each religious devotee in turn will be given the key to perform a ritual for their god onto it. The key doesn’t leave the room at any point and each person will be search on their way in and out (expect perhaps Marion). Obviously, that’ll make stealing the key during the rituals a harder task than we initially thought. She also told us if we wanted more information on the crystal and the key and the history, there’s a book in the mayor’s procession that will contains this information. Hopefully we’ll be able to look at it tomorrow.

Then Tulip asked what exactly Caspien and Hamish would add for the ritual if they were allowed to join, what their gods would do for the key. So, they presented what gods they followed. Or rather Hamish presented the goddess he follows as a paladin: Chauntea, goddess of life and bounty. Caspien meanwhile doesn’t follow a specific deity. He’s a cleric of the tempest rather than any god that represents such a domain I’ve never heard of a cleric doing this before, but I didn’t want to question him. If I ever return home, I’ll ask my questions to one of the churches there. Most of them have at least a shrine to gods of oceans and storms, to keep our ships safe and our city’s name of Storm’s Rest true.

Even with a lack of a real idea for what they’d do for their rituals, Tulip gave her blessing for them to join. Apparently, there’s far less people here this year than is normally expected (and Tulip claims to have been taking part for forty years so she would know). However, she also noted that it wasn’t just her blessing that we would need. We’d also need that of the mayor as well as the dwarves and the elf who will also be taking part in the ritual. She gave us some warnings about the elf, an apparently prickly woman who’s been participating in the ritual for as long if not longer than Tulip but has never given anyone her name. A follower of Mystryl, the previous deity of magic whose death is what caused the spell plague. I had researched Mystryl before, in some of my attempts to figure out the origins of my own magic, but such research couldn’t give me insight into the pain of following a god killed by someone’s greed.

It was about at this point that Scorn re-joined us, a story of an odd individual he had met outside. While standing alone he had been approached by a man who had questioned if he was banned from the church. Thankfully this question was due to the man apparently fearing the church and believing those in it had cursed him as opposed to stereotyping. Apparently, the gist of the conversation was that the man believes he’s been cursed by the church and also wants to know how to cure lycanthropy and then ran off, though obviously I only know what Scorn relied to us. When Scorn told someone in the church about the encounter, he was told the man was called Mikihel and is known as being quite strange and a hypochondriac. However, this information didn’t stop Scorn from wanting to research lycanthropy once we were done with the church.

Obviously though we still had business to do at the church. Given that they had a break between their sermons, we next went to time with the dwarves. Despite being blindfolded, they turned towards us as we approached, likely as we aren’t exactly a stealthy group. They attempted to talk in unison, but never quite managed to. I suppose it must be a rather difficult trick to do in regular conversation. They introduced themselves as devotees of Thautam, a god of crystals and magic. As they stated themselves, it was obviously to see why they are here.

To get their blessing, they simply asked for mysteries, to bolster their knowledge. And the group did give mysteries, mostly nonsense mysteries that were really mysteries at all. They were good enough to impress two of three the dwarves though. The other ended up storming off in frustration, but we ended up getting the blessing by majority vote.

Finally, there was the elf. As we approached, I prepared myself for careful diplomacy that I was already sure would be needed. It hadn’t occurred to me that my companions might not be so careful. As soon as we approached her, the woman rejected our request, telling us to leave and instead talk to the mayor or Marion when he arrives tomorrow. Of course, we told her what Tulip had told us, both that we required her blessing to participate and that there were significantly less people present this year. However, she didn’t seem particularly bothered by this information. In fact, she said from her perspective she believed she should be the only participating the ritual. Caspien questioned why, getting frustrated, and I answered that obviously she knows the most about the crystal. Whether true or not, it felt like the right thing to say. She’s likely been the one doing the rituals the longest, and also the crystal is believed to be a magic from pre-spell plague, that’s why people think it surges like wild magic does, which would make it a remnant of Mystryl. Of course, it being a remnant of Mystryl is the point she argued, that she is the only one with a real connection to it.

This is about when Caspien did something both infuriating and stupid, insulting the woman for following a dead god. I have absolutely no idea what he thought he was going to accomplish by doing this, other than soothing his own frustrations in a way that completely ruined our entire current plan. I questioned out loud if we just were just giving up on diplomacy, hoping for a hasty apology, not an answer of yes. For obvious reasons, his childish, pointless outburst resulted in the woman slamming her book closed and exiling the entire group other than myself.

She invited me to sit, an invitation I graciously took, and questioned why I was with such a group of people. I, perhaps unwisely, told her the truth. That it was quite a forced arrangement, caused by mere happenstance, and if we didn’t act as friends it will result in being locked together in a room by a ship. She found this funny, I assumed from disbelieve, until she said it was due to the idea of a member of the Delaney family being bossed around by a ship. I was shocked momentarily. I forget sometimes that my coat has my family crest on it, a fact I could tell didn’t impress the woman. I haven’t been this close to home in a while and even now I'm still the length of a continent away, being recognised hasn’t been much of a concern. She said she keeps up with local politics, I wonder if that means she knows that I’m technically missing.

She had more questions, the first being why we had an interest in the ritual. I answered as truthfully as I could, without giving away details that would get us into trouble. That Ship is fractured, that a part of them is in the town, that we suspect that it’s the key from the crystal. And then she asked what if the key is part of Ship. So, I confessed my own dilemma about the situation. I want to fix Ship, obviously I do, and they’re sentient so it would cruel not to, but I don’t want to leave Four Hollow, a whole town, without their main livelihood and at the mercy of wild magic surges, some I know isn’t pleasant. I want to find a way to make a replacement, either for Ship or the crystal, but I have no idea if that will be feasible and if it is if the group will help me create it when we don’t truly need to. She appeared to have some sympathy for the problem I’m faced with, even if I cannot tell her the full extent of the situation. Finally, she asked why she should give her blessing to Caspien and Hamish and I gave her the simplest reasoning I could muster. If they got her blessing, they would very likely leave her alone as opposed to if they didn’t, where I’m quite sure they would return to bother her some more. Not my best argument, but I truly couldn’t think of a reason to argue that Caspien deserves anything from her. Thankfully she accepted my reasoning and said we had her blessing. I thanked her before leaving, re-joining the group outside to tell them I’d savaged the situation.

We needed to talk to the mayor, but given that it was night had already fallen, we decided to wait until tomorrow. So, Scorn asked if we could help to a library. I agreed whole-heartedly as there were a few things I wanted to research myself. So, we all headed to the thankfully still open library.  I think at some point, the building must have been a regular shop just based on the layout and the types of displays that were being used, but that made little difference to us. There were free books and places to sit and that’s all we needed. As Scorn went to research the crystal, I went about finding books on airship crashes and mimics.

None of my readings gave me any clue towards the material the key is mimicking as I hoped it might, but I did learn some interesting facts regardless. Ship likely crashed around 100 years ago as that’s the only crash I could find out about in the general area. Secondly, mimic colonies aren’t really limited at all to what they can turn into, being able to create far more complex structures than feral mimics due to their being more than one mimic present. If a colony mimic is separated from the rest, it can go into a time of stasis and hold its form so long as it doesn’t transform again, which is likely why the key has remained a key this whole time.

Scorn’s research also revealed some interesting information, namely that the crystal has a history of defeating itself and the town, or at the very least there’s very dramatic possibility fictional stories of it doing so. Now, I’m hoping that this mostly just applies to the crystal itself and not the key, but we may have a serious problem coming our way on Sunday.

With what research we could do for our main mission done, Scorn headed downstairs to look up some books on lycanthropy. Almost as soon as he had disappeared from view, there was a loud crash from his direction. We all rushed to follow him and there was Mikihel (quickly confirmed by Scorn as he was the only one that had met him prior), ranting and raving about Scorn betraying him, about being terribly cursed. It must have taken five minutes of arguing, including both Maize and Hamish pretending that they were lycanthropes as well (Hamish successful, Maize not so much), to get the man to confess to believe that he’s a were-slug that transforms on a waxing gibbous.  He added on that he could only transform outside when I pointed out that that was the current phase of the moon.

After this confession, he ran off, us following him all the way to behind the church. He stood, still not transformed, yelling at us to stand back from his coming beastly form. And then, to the shock of all of us, he did transform into a slug. Not a giant monstrous half-slug half-man, just a regular slug. Then I heard laughing from the bushes.

As it turns out the person that had cursed Mikihel was not the church, it was in fact an eleven-year-old. The son in fact of the church worker Scorn talked to about the man, who had happened to break into her spell scrolls and had been tormenting Mikihel with them. Now, how a child could use a spell scroll well enough to actually affect someone I don’t know, but I suppose Mikihel may not be the wisest of individuals and that may have improved the child’s odds. We returned the child to his mother, making sure he would get an appropriate punishment, as well as making sure that Mikihel was returned to his normal form. He was given some compensation from the woman (apparently a betting pool of some sort, I’m not exactly sure), and left declare the child his archnemesis so I’m not precisely sure if we made the situation better or worse. I suppose it doesn’t really matter as this isn’t seem at all related to what Ship wants us to do, but at the same time at least we don’t need to worry about an evil cursing cult within the local church. I do wonder if there was more to the story, children typically don’t just go around polymorphing people, but no one seemed especially concerned with figuring out the why of the situation.

Well, either way, it seemed we had done everything possible for tonight. Marion won’t arrive until tomorrow and it seemed too late to be bothering the mayor. So, we headed to the tavern, the one we had originally met Scorn in, to have a drink or two. Val made her intentions of getting blackout drunk before we were even in the building. I had intended to have a few drinks myself until Maize ordered the place’s ‘finest ale’ and that apparently was shrimp ale.

I don’t quite understand how fish and seafood-based alcohol became popular away from the coast. I’m from a coastal city and let me make myself clear, they don’t taste good. There is absolutely no reason these kinds of drinks should have started to be served inland, but here one is. ‘Exotic’ according to the bartender. What does that matter if it tastes horrible?

Well, upon realising what was being served, I decided not to drink. I wasn’t the only one not to partake, Hamish refused as well, stating that he’s a vegetarian. Everyone else did partake, though I believe Scorn may have regretted it. He only had one drink, quite a lot of which was left still at the end of the night. True to her word, Val did get absolutely drunk. After about four pints, she turned an odd shade of pink, leaving the question of just how much shrimp was in the drink. The colour change confused her but did not deter how from drinking more. She ended up having to be dragged back to Ship by Maize who thankfully had the strength to move the tallest member of the group who was wearing full armour. I imagine if she hadn’t, we would’ve had to leave Val at the tavern and hoped she’d make her own way back.

We’re back on Ship now. Night has well and truly fallen. I pulled one of the blank books from the bookshelf in my room to write in, I didn’t see the harm seeing that they are empty, and books are meant to be filled. It has helped with my thoughts at least. The nonsensical events of the day feel a lot more certain in my mind. I still am not quite sure about the people I am stuck with, however, there’s a saying that all the best adventures start with an odd situation involving strangers getting stuck together. Or at least that’s what the most famous book on the most famous apparent adventure in Libris says. So, I should think of this as an opportunity, as a do over. A Delaney is meant to be an adventurer, and even if they assured me that it was fine, that there was nothing anyone in my position could’ve done differently, I know I royally fucked up. So maybe I can do it right this time, do more with this opportunity than I ever could have done just wandering aimlessly. I’ll become a real adventurer, and I’ll make them all proud.

[everthingavengers]

Steve Rogers x Original Character

Word Count: 1,690

A/N: This is Pure Porn with the slightest amount of Story.

I spent most of my childhood as a secret from the world; when your dad is Tony Stark, it becomes a matter of safety. This day was like any other living in the compound. Hell, I’m not sure the other Avengers even knew I existed. I liked it that way; it meant that I could hide whenever I wanted to. This arrangement also allowed me to keep my powers a secret; my mother was a witch who had a one-night stand with Tony Stark. When a DNA test proved her claim, he took me in, and she was never seen again. I don’t know what happened to her; some days, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know.

“Alex, the time has come; you are needed,” Fury said as he walked into my bedroom.

“What happened?” I asked, instantly going on high alert.

“A witch has attacked the Avengers, your father, and Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes have been hit with a spell that not even Loki can identify,” Fury said.

“Okay, so if Loki can’t identify it, why would I be able to?” I asked as I prepped a bag.

“It appears to have your mother's magic signature,” Fury said, and my heart nearly stopped.

“What are the symptoms of the spell?” I asked as we were heading down to the med bay of the compound.

“Flushed skin, accelerated heart rate, and well, I’m not sure how to put this…” Fury trailed off, and I knew what he was getting at.

“Extreme arousal?” I asked, putting the words out there.

“Exactly,” Fury said.

“Fuck, this isn’t good. The good news is if they haven’t been under the spell long, I should be able to reverse it. If I’m too late, the only way out is to satisfy the primal need,” I said as we rushed into the lab. A confused-looking Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff stood looking at me curiously.

“Dr. Banner Agent Romanoff, this is Alexandra Stark; she has information that will be helpful to us,” Fury said, introducing me.

“How long has it been since they’ve been hit with the spell?” I asked, looking at Bruce.

“Roughly 14 hours ago,” Bruce said.

“I’m too late; the only way out is to satisfy the primal need,” I said.

“So, they must act on their impulses?” Loki asked.

“Indeed, it was my mother’s favorite spell to use on people she wanted to screw with. Most people cave and screw each other's brains out within fifteen minutes. Not many can make it almost fifteen hours like this,” I commented.

“I’m willing to help,” Loki said, surprising Thor and the rest of the team, who, unaffected, now entered.

“Good, take him and do what must be done,” I said curtly. Loki lifted my father and took him from the room. The sounds that came from him made me shudder slightly.

“Who are you?” Clint Barton asked.

“Alexandra Stark, a witch that is going to set all this right,” I said, turning away from him swiftly.

“Stark, what about these two?” Fury said, gesturing to Rogers and Barnes.

“I’ve got Bucky,” Natasha said. I nodded and watched her help him get out of the room.

“Before you speak, you needn’t worry about the Captain; he will be with me,” I said sternly and helped Steve to his feet. He looked miserable as I helped him to my room.

“So you’re Tony’s daughter?” Steve asked shakily as we entered my room past where the others were allowed.

“Yes, I tend to stay in the shadows, but I can’t when Mother is out trying to kill people with her lust spell,” I said, laughing dryly.

“Oh,” Steve said as he sat on my bed.

“So tell me, Captain, are you a virgin?” I asked as I discarded my bag by my bedroom door.

“Yes,” Steve said quietly, feeling a little embarrassed.

“You needn’t worry, Steve, but we must see this through. Your life, unfortunately, depends on it,” I said, coming to sit beside him.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Steve admitted.

“Steve, that’s where I come in. I will lead, and I can make this all go away. However, I need to know that you trust me because once I start stopping, I will kill you unless we finish,” I said in a warning tone.

“What about your dad and Bucky?” Steve asked.

“Loki and Natasha have taken care of that, Steve; you must only worry about you right now,” I told him.

“I trust you,” Steve whispered, his desires becoming too much for him.

“Then just follow my lead,” I whispered in his ear.

“Okay,” Steve’s voice trembled as it.

I took his shirt off and my own so he didn’t feel uncomfortable; I needed him to be completely comfortable with me. He seemed a bit tense, so I climbed onto my bed behind him and started rubbing his shoulders a little bit to get him to loosen up a bit.

*Tony Stark’s Point of View*

Bucky, Natasha, Loki, and I had returned to the living room, but there was no sign of Steve or my daughter. I know that she was called to help because of her powers.

“Where’s Alex?” I asked, fearing I already knew the answer.

“Probably showing the Captain a good time right now,” Sam said, and I wanted to punch him for implying that.

“That’s exactly what she’s doing,” Fury said with a straight face.

“This is why I didn’t want her ever to get involved; something would go down,” I said.

“Tony, you know as well as I do; it's either that or lose Steve,” Bucky pointed out, and I knew he was right.

*End of Tony Stark’s Point of View*

I stripped Steve and me of our remaining clothes, and he blushed; I stroked his cheek in an effort to show him that this wasn’t just to save his life. That he could enjoy this as much as he wished. I grabbed his hard cock in my hand and stroked him. His moans were like music to my ears; despite the way this happened, I still wanted us both to enjoy this as much as possible.

“Mmh, Alex!” Steve moaned as I continued to stroke him. However, since we were on a time crunch, I decided that we needed to move with some haste. I straddled him, kissing down his jaw, his moans getting louder. I lined him up with my entrance and sank down on him. It felt amazing, and even I couldn’t help the pornographic moan that fell from my lips. I started riding him at a steady pace, and his moans were growing louder and louder. I knew he was getting close, and to tell the truth, so was I.

“I’m so close,” Steve whined.

“So am I; just let go, Steve,” I moaned, and that was all it took for him to reach his orgasm, sending me over the edge to mine. I rode him for a little longer, working us through our highs before I stopped and rolled off, laying on the other side of him.

“Alex, can I ask a question?” Steve asked.

“Sure, Captain, what’s on your mind now that you're not on the chopping block?” I asked.

“Why were you so unafraid to help me?” Steve asked.

“Simple Steve, I care about you. You’ve kept my shithead father out of too much trouble. Besides, any girl would’ve died to be in my shoes,” I joked, winking at him.

“You know he’s probably mad at us, right?” Steve asked.

“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t really care; human life is more important than his comfortability,” I remarked, smiling a little bit.

Steve and I dressed and walked back to the main living room, where everyone was awaiting our arrival. Dad looked slightly pissed, but nothing that I couldn’t handle.

“Why’d you do it, Alex?” Dad asked.

“Do what?” I asked.

“You know what,” Dad said, looking pointedly at Steve.

“Woah, no, hold on a minute there, Dad. I know about what this spell did to you and my mother before she went all dark side and did this, but I’m not afraid of that hell. I embrace it even so what’s it to you?” I asked him.

“What happens?” Steve asked.

“That Steve is a conversation you and I will have later since it only applies to us since I’m a witch,” I remarked.

“Okay, but why is your Dad so mad about it?” Bucky asked.

“You see, that’s because despite me being almost 25, he sees me as a child,” I quipped.

“You didn’t think it through, did you?” Dad asked.

“Of course I did, Dad, when I knew the only way out was through. I knew it was a sacrifice that I had to make,” I said calmly, and Dad deflated his argument, being torn down.

“So please explain what he’s so worried about,” Natasha said with a look that made me nervous.

“You see, he’s worried because, as a witch, when I interact with someone affected by the spell the way Steve was, it almost always guarantees pregnancy. However, it is a rapid gestation, during which time I will be a sitting duck. I will have none of my magic to protect me,” I said, and Steve looked at me, shocked.

“You knew that and still went through with it yourself,” Bucky said, shocked.

“What else could I do? I couldn’t let him die because my mother has gone rogue,” I stated flatly.

“So this means I’m going to be a father?” Steve asked, soaking it all in.

“Yes, you are. There’s more: if you choose to stay around me, you will gain some interesting traits because it is my magic trying to protect me through you. Should you stay, you would have to protect me,” I told him.

“I’m going to see this through; if that means protecting you both, I would do it in a heartbeat. Not only have you saved my life, but you’ve also given me the best gift I could ask for,” I felt his arms around me.

[TO BE CONTINUED]