#literally no one’s gonna get the reference since half the fandom is dead and no one’s used the reference since 2019

[iiloveethesmiiths]

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Cronch..

[garessta8]

A lore sieve/Disco Elysium fanfiction fact checker (in progress)

Disco Elysium is a huge game, with lots of lore not just about its world, but about its characters... And what puts it apart from other similar large cRPGs is that this lore is split under a bazillion of different conversations which are hard to navigate and easy to miss.

As a result, there are a lot of small from the game perspective, and potentially huge from the fanfic perspective, facts that many people just unaware of and make up their own stuff instead. While others are aware of it and create some vague fandom-spreading fanons and headcanons... The inconsistency irks me a little.

There's an entire lore atlas (endless love to the author), and although it has at least some of those facts, it mostly focuses on geography.

So I'm just gonna drop off some not-always-known facts that I have personally checked through game dialogues on FAYDE. Please, share your own if you remember something like that... I will add more later by editing this post if I stumble on them and then maybe reupload it all.

And yeah, SPOILER WARNING.

Jean Vicquemare's full name is Jean-Heron Vicquemare. It's literally only mentioned in one line of dialogue below. Esprit de Corps - With an agitated gait Satellite-Officer Jean-Heron Vicquemare paces the jetty, 22 kilometres East -- in Martinaise: "What could he *possibly* be doing there for so long," he says.

Jean was (is) an equestrian cop, as in, horse-mounted. However, I found no confirmation that he particularly liked horses as a hobby-thing. Also, from this quote, I assume that Harry's Coupris 40 was *the only* car in Precinct 41. On second thought, I think "we" in this line meant for "the pair of us", as police partners. Jean Vicquemare - "For the record, you pressured us into getting it. 'It'll be cool Jean, we'll have wheels, rapid response...' I was fine being an equestrian cop. I hope you're fine driving a *bicycle*."

The actual name of Kim's dead partner, who was nicknamed "Eyes", was probably Dom or something that starts with Dom. At least this is name put on two cases in Kim's paperwork, which you can peek into if you come to Kim's room after the Tribunal without Kim. I assume that meant to happen if Kim was shot, but I theoretize that you could do that by going to sleep and then just going into the room, since Kim magically disappears after you dismiss him for the night and won't be in his room unless you knock on the outside door. Half-Finished Paperwork - This year, you can see references to: THE CHILD, DOM'S UNFINISHED; DOM'S UNFINISHED 2, MOTORCYCLE EMPTINESS, and THE MAN WITH THE HOLE IN HIS HEAD.

Homosexuality was legalized by communards in '04, which is 8 years before Kim was born. But we all known that society needs much longer to adapt to the thought. The exact details are hard to say. Encyclopedia at least says that there's no actual cults involved. The Deserter - "Lax sexual morals are a bourgeois ploy," he gargles a spit ball. "As to pederasty, the Party legalized it in '04. My Party, not your liberal masters." He spits it out on the dying coals. Encyclopedia - Just pointing it out, we're not talking about some kind of a cult with *members* here, you made it up.

Murder in Martinaise happened at March 4th, '51. Give or take a day. This, so far, is the least important piece of trivia I decided to add. You - "8. Date of death:" Kim Kitsuragi - "We're still going with March 4th, '51."

Motor carriages are controlled by two steering levers, not by a steering wheel. Not only you can see that if you close-up on Kim's Kineema, there are direct quotes about it. Abandoned Lorry - The glass on the side windows is tinted and covered with dust. You can barely make out the shape of a seat and two steering levers. Coupris Kineema - In the cabin you see a set of steering levers, a radio on a hook, a pull-out toolbox and the soft glow of the fuel pre-heater gauge.

I found where from people took "Volta do Mar" as Kim's personal skill. It's something printed on Kim's jacket you can buy as official DE merch. Admittedly, I'm unsure how to interpret this in context of my other post. I still stand by its message, but I can see why even people behind the game might be not. At least not the ones who designed the sellable jacket. Thankfully, this is an issue on which more than one opinion can peacefully coexist. Even within one head.

At some point in his career, for unknown reasons, Kim worked in Processing for a year. They are as bad as he describes them. Kim Kitsuragi - He shakes his head. "I worked as one of these *Processing guys* for a year. They are butchers and clowns. I once saw twenty CODs go misidentified in one week. Chances are slim to none that they'll find anything useful in processing."

The mystery of Kim's glasses. There's one line that says they are "diamond-shaped" despite his portrait. I've seen a comment suggesting it refers to "diamat", as in, dialectic materialism. I think this is false and explains nothing. It feels more like a typo, but why would anyone think Kim's glasses are diamond-shaped when they were round from his earliest (and only) concept art? Kim Kitsuragi - The lieutenant says nothing. You see the machine's glowing frame reflected back from his diamond-shaped glasses. You're free to proceed. Truly a mystery. The case of DIAMOND-ROUND-SHAPED GLASSES will stay unsolved forever.

Kim *isn't* a moralist. Present tense. He *was* a moralist once, but since then, he changed his mind. Now he believes in RCM. He embodies the political stance of "all ideologies suck in their own ways, let's just live our lives here and try do to a good job" (which is *heartily* approve). Kim Kitsuragi - "Yes. I *did* -- when I was younger. In my twenties I considered myself a moralist. *A blue forget-me-not, a piece of the sky*," he quotes. "They're not all that bad." Kim Kitsuragi - "But the years have changed that. I don't know *what* I believe in now...." He thinks, then changes his mind. "No. I believe in the RCM. That's enough for me."

I can't remember any more from the top of my head, but again - please, share what *you* can. Love, peace <3

[jaymber]

First off I wanna preface this by saying I haven’t been in the CP2077 fandom for very long and I’ve been following you for even less time but I absolutely adore your ocs, and seeing them cross my dash makes me smile every time I also love reading the tidbits of lore around them..I truly love them and everything you do and I cannot wait to see more 🖤 -ps do you think you could maybe do a up close of gabby’s tattoos? I’m real curious about them

Welcome to the fandom and thanks so much for your kind words! It means a lot to me!!!! 💜💜💜💜💜

And sure! I can do that, but keep in mind that I can't focus on modding more than like, an hour, so all their tattoos are rushed! Well, Gabby only has one technically, the other marks on their body are either supposed to be a birthmark or scars (I'll get around to make them into real scars eventually but... y'know...)

And hope you don't mind me rambling a little either! So here's a Keep Reading!

Oops, had to make Gabby bald for that one hehe 🤭

I'm gonna preface this by saying I can't draw, all these were taken from free vector sites. These are four different filigree images I put together, plus the sign of Venus (♀).

The thorns filigrees are a reference to Jesus' crown. Gabby got their tattoo after being fired from Militech for blowing their cover as a double agent and left for dead by Arasaka assassins. It's a symbol of their rebirth, but also a symbol they rejected their father's power (he's a descendant of the founder of Militech) to join the "mortals", the lower class.

The two other filigrees I used are inspired by rococco art, which is known to be a pastel and irregular artstyle with too many details. It suits Gabby's personnality.

The sign of Venus is both a nod at their gender (they partially identify as a woman) and their essence as a cambion (half-succubus). Lucifer is the former name of the planet Venus. Their stage name is Venere di Luce, Venus of Light.

Gabby has other markings on their body. Two scars and a birthmark.

Gabby's birthmark is a reference to the number of the Beast. I was inspired by The Omen. So, in some occult beliefs, the term "Antichrist" refers to all children born from a demon and a human, not just Satan. It's just another sign that Gabby isn't fully human.

Their scars are both branding marks made from hot iron and Holy Water. The one on their neck isn't as visible usually, I used Photoshop tools to make it clearer. It's the symbol for the Death's-Head Moth, a XBD "studio" who hired Gabby after they were fired from Militech since they cannot die, making them the "perfect doll" for them to play with.

It was applied to them shortly after they started hanging more and more with Maelstrom. Gabby had agreed for the scene, since they thought the mark would fade away pretty quickly. They didn't know the DHM's leader knew about their demonic nature. It's just there now. Forever. It'll always hurt a little bit.

The second branding scar is a symbol of Maelstrom. Gabby eventually broke their contract from the Death's-Head Moth to work with Maelstrom instead. They didn't want an initiation cause they like their face a little too much for that, so they chose a different approach to make themself an official associate of the gang.

They were publically branded by Royce, and yes, it was extremely painful. The scar looks right on some angles only. I'll make them into real scars eventually!

Also, I'm using your nice ask to say that I've changed Gabby's eyes to give them a more unnatural look! They're literally the goat now 🤭

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

👀👀👀!!!!!!

cheating bc you sent me 3 eyeballs so im gonna give u 3 different answers 😌 :::

the DSMP Lost Boys AU. GOD i was on some shit when i was thinking abt that. it was literally so perfect. i still have the other half of the references buried somewhere deep in my wip folder but i just. never finished it. i was probably never gonna write an actual fic for it but god did i want to do more screenshot redraws . it was so perfect. i still think abt it sometimes when i watch lost boys like. damn .... sam is so tommy coded . i love you annoying little brothers

ANOTHER dsmp one: vengeful spirit. god. fuck . where do i even start. vengeful spirit was my baby i cared about it so much. it was my ghostbur-centric character study fic series where after cwilbur was revived, ghostbur fought his way out of limbo kicking and screaming and then they had to deal with the consequences of both existing in the living world at the same time. very heart player core. something something you hate yourself so much but now there are two of you and youre different people but also youre the same guy and you hate that your brother trusts the dead fish eyes version of you more than the living breathing one. aka ghostbur gets to be angry because i really just wanted to see him snap and punch something. unfortunately the first fic totally flopped and i had nobody to bounce ideas off of so i was the only person in the world to care about vengeful spirit. i had like 12 oneshots planned out and they were each titled with song lyrics from a song in the playlist (which still exists btw) and i made a layout and everything. A LAYOUT. i never outline things dude thats how u KNOW i went hard for this one. another factor in its death tho is i started writing it like.. right after the cwilbur revival when there was a huge lull in lore streams and i was trying to fill in the blanks. but because i am a slow writer eventually canon surpassed me and i was like "hm this is too divergent now and since i am the only one who is going to read this it will simply live in my brain forever" . also i think my time for writing dsmp is way past me now. sad! oh well theres other fandoms.

third one is NOT dsmp related but it IS general minecraft related. fuck dude i have so many ideas about minecraft worldbuilding. its such a perfect game to write about. i have so many minecraft ocs that have super complex lore that will probably never see the light of day bc im like. how the hell do i convey this information without actually showing people my minecraft world. the intricacies. there are so many. i cannot play this game normally i have to make a story every single time. EVEN WHEN im not actually setting out to make a story. even when im just like "hm yeah this is gonna be a casual world im not gonna take it too seriously" and then suddenly ive rebuilt an entire village to protect it from raids and all the villagers have names and im attached. sigh. i think about minecraft religion and also the magic system and how the world works and how mobs interact with each other and . man . theres so much. does anyone want to play miencraft with me i prommy i wont go insane on you

[marvelslut16]

I trust you

Prompt number: 31 “I trust you”

Fandom: Marvel

Paring: Bucky Barnes x reader

Part two to Trust me for once.

Rating: T

Word count: 2.2k

Warnings: Swearing. Mentions blood, violence, and death. A lil angst. 

A/N: I just want to write for Bucky for the rest of fictober, someone stop me please. I don’t know why I love this fic so much, but I do. Maybe it’s my lack of sleep messing with me lmao. I passed 500 followers and I can’t possibly begin to explain how much that means to me and how much I love each and every one of you! When I started my Tumblr last year to write some shitty self indulgent fanfics I never thought anyone would ever read them. I never imagined having 500 people following my shitty blog. 

In the week and a half since Hydra had captured you, Bucky has been spiraling. When he got to the quinjet and turned to look for you, his heart fell into the pit of his stomach when he couldn’t find you. Everything you had said to him in the warehouse started to make more sense, you phrashed things a specific way; ‘so long as it gets you out of here safely.’ He knew you weren’t coming, but he still made Steve keep the quinjet there and wait until it was almost too late and the team was under attack again.

Back at the compound Bucky spends all of his time in his room or down in the gym punching- and breaking- one of the many punching bags, throwing his knives at targets, and working on his shooting. He isn’t sleeping and he isn’t eating, he won’t even talk to Steve when the super soldier tries to get him to talk- whether it be about what happened in the warehouse or anything in general. 

Steve, Sam, and Tony are exhausting every resource they have to find you, Hydra had moved you to another location as soon as the quinjet was out of sight of the base. On the rare occasion Bucky isn’t in the gym or his room, he's hovering over the shoulders of the three men hoping he’ll see something they missed. He doesn’t, and only succeeds in annoying aforementioned men with his brooding stares and silence. 

Bucky has nightmares on a daily basis again, something that his time in Wakanda with Shuri and T’Challa had gotten rid of. The only difference this time is he doesn’t see himself. He sees everything he went through, all the tourture he endured and the innocent bloodshed, but instead of him you’re in his shoes. He watches you get your brain turned into mush in the damn chair. He watches you forgetting everyone- forgetting him- and then going after the Avengers because you don’t know any better. He can never wake up from the nightmares, he’s stuck in them until he watches you die or you kill him. 

Twelve days after you’re taken, Bucky's down in the gym, sitting on a chair because the memories of you in the warehouse are consuming him. You saying that he hates you and to just trust you for once are playing on repeat. How could you think he doesn't trust you?

“I trust you!” he screams into the empty gym, wishing he’d told you so in the warehouse, hurling the knife that was resting in his hand into the wall across from him. He goes to run his hands through his long strands of hair, forgetting he had cut most of it off, something you would refer to as pulling a Britney. He has no idea what that even means, but you say it everytime you or Nat impulsively cut your hair super short. Instead he pushes the palms of his hands into his eyes, trying to push the memories away. “I could never hate you.”

Steve enters the gym quietly, observing his best friend for a few minutes. He’s never seen him this bad before, not even when he was consumed by guilt when he realized all of the innocent lives that were lost by his hands. Steve was aware that Bucky has had feelings for you since he saw you, immediately becoming infatuated with your beauty. His feelings continued to grow when he learned your humor, sarcasm, intelligence, and saw your skill in battle. Steve knew Bucky was intimidated and nervous, not as skilled with the women like he was seventy years ago and that’s why he didn’t talk to you, but Steve never realized that Bucky cared this much. 

“Hey Buck,” Steve finally speaks, causing Bucky to stand up and pretend he wasn’t just having a breakdown. “We’ve got something.”

Bucky doesn’t verbally respond, instead he brushes past Steve and walks out of the gym. Steve quickly leads the way to the lab, filling Bucky in on the new development. Hydra is streaming a live feed of you chained to a chair right to every computer and television screen in the compound. When the two get to the lab, packed with the rest of the Avengers huddling around the same screen, Bucky see’s you for the first time in twelve days. The first time you aren’t a figment of his imagination. You’re bruised and bloody: split lip with dried blood on your chin; dried blood on your forehead from where you must have wiped the blood from the cut on your eyebrow so it didn’t drip into your eyes before you were chained to the chair; you’re left eye black, blue, and bruised; your skin has a yellow hue and your cheeks are hollow from malnutrition. 

Bucky wants to scream, he wants to put a fist through a wall, and he wants to kill whoever laid a hand on you. The Avengers watch quietly as he squeezes through the gaps in the group's huddle so he can be by the screen. By you. You aren’t staring at the camera, instead staring straight in front of you, where he imagines Hydra agents are standing. 

“You don’t want another Winter Soldier,” your voice is the exact opposite of your appearance, it’s still so strong and determined. “You want the Winter Soldier. You wanted us to intercept the messages and show up at the base, it was an ambush.” 

“Very good, Ms. (Y/L/N),” a man speaks off screen, he has a thick Russian accent, but Bucky doesn’t recognize it. “The only problem was that you seemed to figure it out that day, and ruined our plans.”

“Oops?” your sarcasm garners another slap, the ring on the man's hand causing a gash on your cheekbone. “It’s been what, over a week? How long are you gonna keep me?”

“Until Soldat switches places with you,” you let out a loud bark of a laugh that echoes off the walls in the small room. 

“Bucky, your Soldat, he won’t sacrifice himself for me,” you laugh at the man interrogating you.

“We learned of his affections for you-” you cut him off with another laugh. 

“You need to fire whoever told you that,” you can’t stop laughing at the absurdity that came out of the Hydra agents mouth. And you don’t care if he becomes angry and annoyed with you, you’re gonna get killed no matter what. Your eyes quickly flick to the camera set up on your left, the one the Hydra agents thought you hadn’t seen, before continuing knowing the Avengers had to be seeing all of this. “The only affection Bucky has for me is hatred. He hates me, there’s no way he’d switch places for little old me. You should have captured literally anyone else if you wanted him to be upset. He can’t stand me! We can’t even hold a simple conversation, and he always leaves the room when I’m in it. We were only paired up on this mission because of a fluke accident. Face it, you fucked up. I’m worthless to your Soldat.”

“That’s not true!” Bucky feels like he’s yelling it at the screen, but his protest is only a whisper. The rest of the team watches him with sad eyes, he’s looking at you so longingly. Trying to will you to understand how he feels about you through the screen. As if on cue, you glance at the camera again, giving it a sd smile, accepting your fate. A loud ping comes from one of the computers in the lab, but Bucky keeps eye contact with you, even though he knows you can’t see. He doesn’t realize he’s doing it until his flesh hand is pressed against the television.

“We’ve got a location!” Tony yells, already calling for his suit. 

“Then you’re worthless to me!” the hydra agent growls, stopping the team in their tracks who were on their way to change. 

“No,” Bucky pleads, when he hears the safety of a gun clicking off.  

“Any last words for your precious Avengers?” the man asks you, gesturing to the camera, he hadn’t noticed you’d already seen it. 

“I’d say tell my family I love them,” you’re openly talking to the camera now. “But I don’t have any. So thank you for being the family I never had, and the family I always wanted. I love every single one of you.”

A tear slips from your non swollen eye, a matching one rolling down Bucky’s cheek. The screen goes black, a gun goes off, and then the feed cuts completely. “No!” he screams, going to punch a hole in the television, but his fist goes right through due to it being Stark technology. 

“Where are you going?” Steve calls as Bucky heads to exit to the lab, no one else moving, too shocked to register everything that just happened. 

“Let’s go kill those bastards,” is his gruff response, heading towards the hanger with the Quinjet since he’s already dressed in his tactical gear from his time in the gym. 

Steve and Tony are the first ones dressed and ready to go, but the latter hangs back so Steve can talk to his best friend privately. Steve doesn’t say anything when he sits beside the brunette, he doesn’t know where to begin. 

“(Y/N) died thinking I hated her Stevie,” Bucky’s voice breaks. “I kept my distance cause I didn’t want to hurt her. And then I saw her with Sam and I was jealous so I started to ignore her more. I pushed her away because I was scared and jealous. And now she’ll never know that I love her.”

--

A shot rings through the small room you’re stuck in, the bullet lodging into the wall beside your head. You glance at the camera, finding the red light off. Your team, your family thinks you're dead. That was his damn plan, he knows they’ll come to avenge you. 

“Sit tight,” he smirks, the barrel of his gun coming into contact with your skull, effectively knocking you out. 

Your head is heavy and pounding in pain when you finally come to. Outside the door you can hear screams and guns going off at rapid speed. You cringe away from the sound when someone uses their body to break open the door to your room. The sound of familiar footsteps clomping towards you causes you to perk up, it’s Bucky. You can’t open your eyes or even move your head towards the sound to alert him that you’re okay, but you hear a whispered “thank god,” when he hears your steady heartbeat. From the crunching sound you can tell Bucky used his vibranium hand to crush the handcuffs keeping you attached to the chair. 

He picks you up bridal style, holding you close to his warm chest. You involuntarily cuddle into the warmth, causing Bucky to smile lovingly down at you. “I’ve got you now,” he whispers, hand caressing your cheek, careful not to put pressure on your many cuts. 

When you wake up again, you're in the familiar sterile medbay at the compound. A heavy weight is on your hand, looking over you notice it’s Bucky's hands clutching yours, his head tipped back on the seat he’s in.

“He hasn’t left your side,” Sam smirks at the scene from the doorway, holding a falcon stuffed animal. You playfully roll your eyes at the gift, but reach for it with your free hand. Bucky starts to stir, so Sam gives you a kiss on the forehead and heads for the door again. “Tinman’s whipped.”

The first thing you notice when you glance at Bucky again is his hair. He cut it all off when you were gone. As much as you loved his luscious locks and thought he was hot with them, he’s undeniably sexy with the short hairstyle. “You cut your hair,” Bucky immediately wakes up the rest of the way at your voice, ocean blue eyes staring into yours. “It looks good on you.”

“You could have died,” his voice exasperated. “And the first thing you mention is my hair. I’ve been worried sick, (Y/N)!”

“I was fine,” you roll your eyes, trying not to think of just how close to death you came. “I’m fine now.” 

“Next mission I get to call the shots,” he grumbles. “I’m not having the woman I love almost die for me again.”

“I love you too Buck,” you ignore the fact that he didn’t mean for you to hear his confession. “Why else would I be willing to die for you?”

He shoots out of his seat, eyes wide as he stares down at you. You push up to a sitting position, moving to the side of the bed, motioning for Bucky to lay beside you. He seems to debate with himself about whether he should or not, before finally laying down and gently pulling you into his arms. You crane your neck up to look into his eyes, he leans down and your lips meet timidly at first. It quickly turns into a slow loving kiss, the two of you wanting to prolong for as long as you can. You reach a hand up, caressing his face before slipping it through his now short locks.

Permanent tags: @crimson-knuckled-queen​ @rexorangecouny​ @mrs-malfoy-always​

[marlborodean]

here’s my analysis of a 14-yr-old supernatural episode

so remember that episode where sam fucked a werewolf? because he related to her unwilling monstrosity? well that episode is actually just about dean starting to come to grips with his childhood and his sexuality.

if you ship w/ncest do not interact. this post is not anti-sam either btw. 

content warning: discussions of childhood trauma, internalized homophobia, guns, killing. 

does include some images with Image Descriptions following them.

[ID: An over-the-shoulder close-up shot from the episode, focused on Madison, the werewolf, as she cries. Dean is standing behind her. They are both looking at Sam, whose shoulder is on the edge of the frame. End ID.]

Brief episode recap just in case u don’t remember. This ep is 2x17 “Heart.” Sam and Dean are hunting a werewolf. They discover that the woman they interviewed, Madison, is a werewolf (not THEE werewolf, but one of them). Sam develops a lil crush on her <3 I wrote the majority of this after watching it for the first time in almost SIX years, so i was just vibing the whole time UNTIL the last shot changed it all for me. So let me explain!

Three important points that i will refer back to:

1. The episode begins with Dean being excited to hunt a werewolf because "what about a human by day, a freak animal killing machine by moonlight don't you understand? I mean, werewolves are badass. We haven't seen one since we were kids."

2. Then the episode centers on Sam and his relationship with the werewolf woman and his own monstrosity: "[Dean: Sam, she's a monster and you're feeling sorry for her?] Maybe I understand her."

3. BUT THEN the last shot of the episode is of Dean crying as music plays (see below for the specific lyrics) and then Dean jumps at the sound of the gunshot. That's it! That's the end of the episode!

[ID: For all three screencaps, Dean is looking torturously sad. Each one is zoomed a little bit closer to his face than the last. In the last image, Dean sheds a single man tear. The captioned lyrics for the first one say "Relax, child, you were there." The second says "but only didn't realize" and the third says "and you were scared." End ID]

Even though the story is supposed to be about Sam and his monstrosity, and partly about his relationship w/romance since this is the first person he’s slept with since Jess died (at least with what is shown on screen)...the Dean Sandwich tells us otherwise. We're supposed to be taking away something about DEAN here. Like, that's the whole purpose behind the last shot focusing solely on Dean instead of Sam who is AT THAT MOMENT, KILLING THE GIRL HE HAS FEELINGS FOR. It's literally a heartbreaking, devastating, super traumatic thing for Sam to be going through, but instead we're watching Dean as a single tear slides down his face lmao. It's because this episode is about DEAN, and furthering his story.

Let’s not queer this just yet. The death of the werewolf is about/representing his loss of innocence. It's a violent disconnect from his childhood. Point # 1 shows that he is fascinated by werewolves because since he was a kid he thought they were badass, not to mention all the werewolf films he references throughout. Then, through the music lyrics over that last scene, they mirror that theme of childhood. They’ve done this before, having the diegetic music directly reference what the characters are going through. No different here: Dean is the child they’re referring to.

I have to reiterate that that's the last thing we hear before the gunshot cuts the music short and then the cut to black. "You were scared" is the last thing we hear before the gunshot, as Dean cries. ALSO I have to reiterate that Dean was looking forward to killing a werewolf and shooting it himself. So it's super fascinating that, not only is Sam the one that kills the werewolf, WE DON’T EVEN SEE IT HAPPEN.

[ID: A medium-close shot of Dean as he looks at Sam, who takes up the right half of the frame. The caption says, “Sammy, I got this one. I’ll do it.” End ID.]

Am i gonna have to say this now? The werewolf is a metaphor, okay? It's a metaphor for his innocence, which is long-dead, forever doomed. I mean, a lot of kids love werewolves because they ARE badass! It's a classic monster that anyone could easily obsess over, and with Dean's childhood it must've seemed even cooler, knowing they're real and having the power to kill this "mythical" beast. So the way he's looking forward to killing one is the way a child imagines themselves as a hero.

But what happens instead is a tragic mercy killing. It's flipping his fantasy completely on its head, and it makes Dean realize that.....his fantasies are just fantasies. They aren't real, never would be. There's nothing heroic about killing this werewolf. It's tragic as hell. When he offers to kill her himself, it's just to relieve Sam's burden, but he's reluctant still. Because, as he keeps saying, he doesn't want to be a hunter! He doesn't want this life! He's tired of killing! And that's also what he's mourning as he cries and startles at the gunshot. His fantasies will never be real and his childhood could never have been normal and he never got a chance to be a kid because being a hunter was thrust on him at such a young age. And now it feels inescapable.

[ID: A gif of the slow zoom on Dean’s face as the single tears slips down his cheek. He jumps at the gunshot, then blinks and his lip wobbles. End ID.]

So now we can queer it :-) Of course all monster stories can be easily queered, but werewolves are popularly queered. The first example that comes to mind is An American Werewolf in London (1981) isn’t an overtly queer film (though it is Jewish!) but it’s definitely read that way by a lot of people!! Anyway the film was directed by John Landis which JUST SO HAPPENS to be the pseudonym Dean goes by in this episode. hmm. (Also, interestingly, the BTVS ep where the first gay character comes out references this film too)

[ID: Sam and Dean are standing close to each other. Sam is in the foreground, not in focus. Dean, behind him, says, “Landis. And Detective Dante.” End ID.]

There’s this essay about the queer werewolf that you can read here (and they also talk about fandom in it! very fascinating), where they say in the intro: “the werewolf seems an obvious choice as a queer monster with its identity-disrupting hybridity, as well as its atavistic, and, thus, disallowable sexuality.” A lot like Kristeva’s theory of the abject body! which is popular in queer theory. 

This episode is then queering Sam—his attraction to the werewolf makes him abject—but it also queers Dean thru the way his attitude towards the werewolf transforms (get it?) throughout the ep. His desire and eagerness to kill the werewolves is obviously ingrained in him from John’s parenting. Consider what he said in 2x03 “Bloodlust”: “And the way he raised us, to hate those things—and man, I hate them, I do.” In conjunction with the monsters in the show being seen as queer allegories (the gorgon, as an example of an explicit comparison), Dean’s excitement to kill the werewolf can be read as internalized homophobia and repressing any of his own feelings. 

Remember, though, right before that line in “Bloodlust,” he also said, “What if we killed things that didn’t deserve killing?” He’s really beginning to question whether all monsters are bad, and what it means to kill them. Is he also questioning what he believes of queer people? What John believed of queer people? The loss of innocence and queering both slot together through that final shot, imo: he’s crying because he realizes his fantasies aren’t real, but he’s also mourning the fact that he never could have had the chance to grow up without John’s control, and now it’s forever tainted his worldview. What else could he have been without that? (The answer is evident in 4x17 “It’s a Terrible Life.”)

Dean was taught to hate queer people but he doesn't want to. He wants to get out of the life but it feels inescapable. He wants to kill a werewolf and then when he has the chance, he doesn't want to. He actually cries as it's killed. It scares him, having to confront that what he thought he knew was wrong, but he knows all the same that he’ll never have the chance to have grown up without that. 

[bookwyrminspiration]

Do you think that anyone is going to die in Book 9? We haven't had a death in a while from the "good guys." (I believe the last one was Forkle 1) The only people I can think of could die would be Dex, Linh, (Maybe that explains the short POV), or maybe Amy. idk, I feel like Sophie is gonna have a hard time in the next book, with the way that the last book left off. But, Shannon might not have time, so I have no idea.

[Image: Screenshot of an anonymous ask. In all caps, it reads: "Sandor will most definitely die at the end of the series I don't want him too but ive been going thru the books and there is so much evidence it will happen." End description.]

I hope you two don't mind me combining these asks, they're just so similar and my thoughts cover both of them!! Because Sandor dying is one of the one's I feel is most plausible in the coming books, rather than talking about it in two different places it's easier to mesh both your asks!

The last death we had was, you're right, Mr. Forkle in Lodestar, but that was in book five and we're coming up on nine, so it's been a considerable length of time. It doesn't feel like we can keep going at this rate and have everyone consistently come out alive at the end of the day. You know all those kids games like Pie Face and Don't Break the Ice? it's like that. the longer things go on, the more the anxiety build because with each passing turn, the game gets more risky and you have a lower chance of escaping unharmed. In the same way, we've been moving along without incident through the series and we're just waiting for everything to blow up in our faces.

First, I'll discuss a few of the characters the first ask brought up! Dex is an interesting one; I could see there being an aspect of "he could only cheat death once" in reference to the time he was presumed dead. I think his death, based on how he's incorporated into the story right now, would serve as a way to make Sophie feel guilty and responsible because she wasn't paying enough attention to him. I don't think it would be a satisfying conclusion to his story, though. There's an element in writing when a character dies, generally you want it to be because it's an appropriate ending to that characters journey and story, a culmination of their triumphs and losses and their past. We had this in a sense with the first Forkle because all his accomplishments had led to a meeting with the leaders of the world alongside Sophie, and he had gone down protecting someone else and the future, and while part of that was for its impact on Sophie is does make enough sense with his character to be satisfying. I don't think we're quite there with Dex yet, so maybe it would take more of an approach of those sudden deaths that are meant to show that life isn't a story, that sometimes people die for no reason and you can't do anything about it. But enough about Dex, onto Linh!

Same as Sandor, who I'll talk about later, I think Linh might be more plausible as far as going down protecting her friends. We've seen in Neverseen and Nightfall that she has no problem going past some of her physical limits to ensure the safety of others, so I could see a scene where things are getting intense but she just keeps pushing herself further and further past the edge, just promising herself she'll hold on a little longer, just a little longer for her friends because they're counting on her. I think it'd be the kind of death where no one realizes what's happening to her until it's too late and she's given all she can give. Everyone would be so caught up in the fighting and just trying to survive that they wouldn't realize until a few moments later that no one can find Linh, that she hasn't said a word. I don't think she'd give any sort of final words goodbye, she'd just show her love for the people she surrounded herself with through her actions.

Amy I'm personally a little iffy on, just because we've already had so much drama with Sophie's human family that it might feel like "seriously?? you can't give them a break?" Sophie had to loose her human family, endure them being taken and tortured, then loose them again. Adding Amy's death on top of all that seems a little too close to older events to have the dramatic effect Shannon would want. There's also the matter of her being very disconnected from the elven world and all the drama, so there'd need to be a lot more connection back to her in the next book for this to be something more plausible. But! not completely off the table!

that's not to say all of these are completely improbably and can't happen at all, just that I think there might be some better options for deaths that would have a better effect on the story! But I do like all your suggestions and there's a lot I could talk about for each of them individually!!

So now, onto Sandor. Personally, he's one of the characters I can see dying the most believably. and the reason the second ask found "so much evidence it will happen" is likely because Shannon has literally admitted to planning to kill him off in every book since he's been introduced! I don't remember where exactly she said this, but I do know she shared this lovely bit of information a year or two ago. So not only have there been plans to kill him, there have been hints of those plans throughout the series.

some of my reasoning: he's a bodyguard; his line of work is literally in physical combat and protection, opening him up to a lot more opportunity for injury and disaster. I mean, he's already fallen off a cliff, and that was when he wasn't as emotionally invested in Sophie as he is now. On top of that, both Sophie and the fandom have gotten attached to him--he's been here even longer than Tam and Linh. So it would have that emotional impact and guilt from Sophie that Shannon would want to show us, same as it would have with Dex. The difference here for me, though, is that Sandor's death would be a better ending to his story than Dex's would (not that it was a bad suggestion! there's just a lot to it). In the same way I suggest Linh die protecting her friends, I think Sandor would die protecting Sophie. I simply have trouble imagining there's a more believable way for him to die.

He's been protecting her and getting hurt in her place for so long, I think it would be fitting for him to be doing the same thing he always does, but this time it's just...a little too much. A little too late. A little too bad. I think he'd be the kind to have a few final words instead of Linh, to thank Sophie for his time with her and to remind her that it isn't her fault. The little things like that.

and then jumping back to the first ask to round this out: I think we've had enough time and build up throughout the past eight and a half books that even if number nine is the last one in the series, Sandor could be killed and there would be enough time to figure all that out. he doesn't have a bunch of weird background stuff going on like Kenric or Forkle did that would draw out his death over several books, so I personally think Sandor specifically could be killed in the next book and it would make sense timing wise. All the others feel a little different though, so depending on who Shannon wants to kill, whether or not it would work out would change.

Those are just a few of my thoughts on death in the keeper universe! I don't know if it's possible to keep going and have everyone survive, but the tension has been mounting and we know Shannon is okay killing characters so there's a lot to take into consideration!

[lilmissbacon]

Why Jelsa is Ridiculously Stupid

Let me start off by saying that the idea of this ship was cute at first, I have nothing against it. In fact I have a few ships myself that have nothing to back them up. I am not making this to convince people to be anti, stop the ship itself, or spread any form of hate what so ever.

But this Jelsa fandom has gone too far. And when I say "jelsa shippers," of course I don't mean ALL of them, just about 80% of them.

In fact, I'm very appreciative of the few jelsa shippers who don't go around harassing others because "jelsa is life."

Also, allow me to correct you in saying that I'm not a jelsa hater, I'm a jelsa loather. There's a difference. Most jelsa haters, hate jelsa for the sake of hating it.

I genuinely hate it.

And don't go commenting about, "how do you know you don't like it if you've never tried it?" Because you see, that's where you're wrong. I did used to ship it, when I was 11. I was a child, I was new to the internet, I didn't know better. But I do now!

I am writing this so that some who may not know, will now understand why jelsa is bad and because I need to get all of this out of my system. I am slowly dieing inside.

First; I'm gonna go into how all the excuses to ship this are pointless. Next, I'll talk about just how these two would never work out as a couple. Then, will be what the toxicity has done to not just to the ship itself, but to the big four as well. And finally, I'll go into how uncreative the shippers are and just what horrible/stupid things they've done and are still doing.

1) Excuses are Pointless

Excuse #1: They have the same powers.

...Yeah, that's like saying you ship Lavagirl (Sharboy and Lavagirl) and Bolin (LoK) because they can both control lava. That's not a valid reason to ship anyone. There needs to be actual substance and I'll only say that once because that sentence applies to every excuse here.

Excuse #2: They look alike

🤦🤦🤦 First of all: that's also like saying you ship Tiana (Princess and the Frog) and Frozone (The Incredibles) because they're both black. Second of all: no they don't. It may be because I'm an artist so I notice small details, but here's how it is; Jack's hair is white, Elsa's is platinum blonde. Jack has a square chin, Elsa has a round face. Jack is much paler! THEIR EYES AREN'T EVEN THE SAME SHADE OF BLUE!!! Your excuse is null and void. Even so, if characters do look alike, then they're most likely to be related. Especially in animation.

Excuse #3: Jack can teach Elsa to have fun and Elsa can teach Jack to be serious

This clearly proves the point that jelsa shippers don't know these characters. The job of teaching Elsa how to be social and have fun is already taken by Anna. So if anything, Elsa will see Jack as a younger brother. And Jack wouldn't have been chosen to take on such a responsibility of guardianship if he didn't know when to quit. I don't know what it is about playful characters that make people think they're obnoxious. Jack is an immortal teenager with the heart of a child, that's what makes him a good guardian. But he's been alive for over 300 years, he bound to have the mind capacity of an adult and he does know better. He doesn't play when he's in battle, he's dead serious.

Excuse #4: They understand each other because they were both isolated for a long time

I don't know where you come from but people don't really "bond" over their trauma. Infact, if anything, that would make the relationship more unstable. Plus, Elsa isolated herself for 13 years because she was afraid of her powers. Jack was forced into isolation for 300 years! He has never been afraid of his powers and Elsa could still be seen throughout the day by parents and servants. They would never be able understand what the other went through.

Excuse #5: They both have a sister they love

SO WHAT?! At least half of the population have sisters. Simple as that. It's a horrible excuse.

Excuse #6: They both have an enemy in fear

Bruh, almost every fictional character has to deal with their fears, literal or mental. It's not at all unique to these two.

Excuse #7: Jack can teach Elsa to control her powers

She already has control of them by the end of the movie. And even if you mean prier to that, the reason she couldn't control them was because she feared them. I doubt that even if she could see him and if he showed her his powers, she's be irrational, believing that their powers were different.

Excuse #8: William Joyce says he ships it

Really, you're going to base the possibility of a ship because the writer of the 'books' that "inspired" rotg says he likes it. First: the books and movie are not the same worlds. Two: he most likely stated this in order for jelsa shippers to shut up to him about it. And three: his own canon with the books is a mess as it is. With him adding a bunch on random/unnecessary details on twitter that have no relevance or reference in the books. Even if he does ship it, everything that's going on with Jack's character in the books is weird enough as it is. Plus he's physically 14 in the books. I know age doesn't really matter but Elsa would definitely feel weird about dating someone who looks so young when she's currently 24 by the second movie.

Excuse #9: They could've met before the events of rotg

Not a reason to ship them but whatever 🙄 Even if their stories were based in the same world (which it isn't), Elsa never would've believed in fairy tales. Having to grow up so soon and all. She believes in magic, of course, but you need to believe in the individuals themselves in order to see them. Plus it is very clear in rotg that Jamie is Jack's first believer.

Excuse #10: Now that Frozen 2 is out, they are both spirits who followed the memories of their loved ones. They can live forever together!

Once AGAIN, how does this factor to them being a good couple? Plus the title of spirit is different in the Frozen-verse than the Guardian-verse. Guardian-verse; they are un-aging beings who keep the entire world in balance. Frozen-verse; never confirmed to be immortal (especially since 3 out of 5 spirits are inanimate objects), magical things that keep a single forest secure. The only reason the elements needed a fifth spirit was most likely because the one before Elsa died of old age. Plus the idea of Elsa outliving Anna goes against the theme of sisterly love that both movies strive on. This can be changed in fanfiction but I hate how people lie about her mortality for an excuse to ship.

Excuse #11: They're both single

So what? People ship characters who aren't single with other characters all the time. That's not a reason to ship them. Especially since your statement is false because Tooth is Jack's canon love interest.

It is true that jelsa haters will give reasons to not ship that I necessarily don't agree with.

•Like the age gap — Jack has the mental capacity of an adult, as I've said before. He's smart enough to make his own choices.

•Elsa not being immortal — that doesn't mean they can't still date, even if he outlives her. Plus you can change that in fanfiction.

•They come from different studios and will never be canon — Again, this is fanfiction, we can do whatever we want.

•Elsa is independent and shipping her with someone takes her independence away — for one: most of the world is bound to find love at some point in time. I would imagine that Elsa would want to find love like her sister. Two: Mulan, Pocahontas and Jasmine are very independent and they all still ended up with men. Three: she's not that independent to begin with. Independence isn't relationship status, it's your ability to make it on your own and Elsa is clearly, very dependant on Anna and her safety. Which is actually what pushes her to being a bad sister in Frozen 2. In fact it is because they made her more 'independant' in the sequel that Elsa clearly, no longer loves Anna as much as Anna loves her (you can check out Watso Videos' video on YouTube about how Elsa is a bad sister bc I'm not gonna go into it here).

My god that was ALL just part one. This is gonna take forever 😰

2) How they would never work out

For Elsa, she needs someone who is calm and collected. A rock for her to stand on when she's being irrational. Possibly even someone who is very stoic and straight to the point but with enough sense of humor to lighten the mood. And now that I'm thinking about it, Honeymaren fits that description to a tee. I'm not one to push LGBT+ in anyone's face, but I'm not gonna judge ships on characters assumed sexualities either. Even though Honeymaren didn't have much screen time, her personality still showed through and Elsamaren could very well work.

Jack on the other hand needs someone who would be able to keep up with his playful nature as well as be a rock for him to stand on when he's emotional. Tooth is a good suitor even though I don't really ship it myself. Hiccup, Merida and Rapunzel could also fit in this description.

They don't have the ability to be each other's rocks. They can't be stable if they both need someone to keep them so. If they were to date, the relationship would crumble before it even began.

Plus Jack has to be a guardian and there are a lot of fanfics that go into this idea of Jack being the king of Arendalle? First off: I'm fairly certain that you can't marry into royalty to become king. At least in the real world. Second: Jack wouldn't be able to handle that responsibility with him already being a guardian. And he can't just leave guardianship either, it was what he always was and was ment to be. And Elsa has the responsibility of keeping a magical forest in check, she can't leave to become a guardian.

3) The Toxicity

Oh my God! The fanfiction! As I usually say, you can do whatever you want in fanfiction. But if you have to butcher all the characters so much in EVERY fanfic in order to make the ship work, then there's clearly something wrong here! In every fanfic I've ever seen, the characters are so out of character it's insane. Not just Jack and Elsa, every character.

Olaf for example, is practically in love with Jack first meeting, in every fanfic. If he were to actually meet Jack, he would be apprehensive of him.

It's horrifying in not only that, but jelsa shippers will add Rapunzel a lot, just in spite of Jackunzel. They turn Rapunzel into a needy ex-girlfriend of Jack's when in reality, she's a very sweet and kind soul. Even if she and Jack had dated, they would've split on good terms and stayed friends after. There have also been cases where they do the same but with Tooth. Sometimes even both and it's honestly sick.

And let's talk about the sexism as well HAHA! I swear to God, they will rewrite Frozen but where Jack will save Elsa instead of Anna. They write Elsa as a hormonal teenage girl who falls in love with Jack within seconds.

This is from an actual jelsa shipper, my dude. WTF!!! They make Jack super dominant as well as a douche who cheats on Elsa half the time. Jack is not that dominant, he's a very emotional guy. And he'd be the most faithful boyfriend on the planet. He was alone for 300 years! If anything, he'd be clingy but not too clingy because he also understands personal space.

And if you like angsty fanfiction where a character cheats on the other, there are literally no fanfics where Elsa cheats on Jack. As if a woman couldn't possibly cheat. This is very sexist towards men and women and is toxic as hell.

If anything, Elsa would cheat on Jack, she's not exactly trustworthy in keeping promises or being loyal.

I swear, half of the jelsa shippers has never even seen rotg and just go by what they read in others fanfiction.

Jelsa shippers have gotten so bad about this ship that they've low-key harassed people for not shipping it, as well as start shipping wars within the big four fandom. That's the reason the fandom truly shrunk after 2013. I've seen posts about people admitting to leaving the fandom because it got so bad.

4) The Shippers

Jelsa shippers have literally threatened lives, not just to other fans but even to the creators of the movies. Literally threatening them into making the ship canon. They've made patitions to make it canon as if that would work. They've even harassed a lot of recent shippers to Elsamaren because "jelsa is canon."

Oh look at that, they're homophobic too...

...

...

...

... That's great 🙃

Isn't it a bigger sin to love a celestial being though? Therefore the fact that you –as a toxic christian– ship Elsa with a spirit it worse.

THEY'RE DELUSIONAL!!! So many of them have shipped jelsa so long that legit think it's canon!

Not only all that mess but there are literally more jelsa games on the internet then there are Merida games. I'm specifying this for personal reasons (aka Merida is my fave Disney princess)

And let's continue on with what really aggravates me as an artist. Jelsa shippers, stealing artwork, mostly from Jackunzel. This is not just a rumor, it's very much real.

And it doesn't help when all of their actual original fanart is just them taking scenes from Frozen and adding Jack. Then to add more salt on the wound is that almost all the fanfiction is the same, whether it'd be based during Frozen, rotg or in a highschool au.

There's literally nothing original about or going on with this ship, even after Frozen 2 came out, the shippers and fanfiction haven't changed. If anything it made the shippers spike up again.

The only thing that could say is original about jelsa is the frost daughter fanon. Oh boy! What we have to unpack here.

This is something that I recently heard about...

...

I am mortified.

Frost daughters is this little thing that jelsa shippers came up with, believing Jack and Elsa (if they could get pregnant) would have nothing but girls. What's scary about it is they're designs. Like they're trying to be original... But it's not really going great.

Most of them are just young!Elsa copies, some are edits of Elsa with Jack's hair color.

For example:

This is fine, this follows genetrical rules. I'm fine with this.

But what has me low-key petrified are some of the other designs.

Like... WTF IS ALL OF THIS!!! Where are this colors coming from?!! I don't understand 😭 You can see in the screen shots that these are literally titled as daughters of jelsa.

The white haired ones are fine. The ginger is understandable. Got it from Elsa's dad's genes. That's okay. A few are wearing pink? They can wear what ever they want. But wtf I'd going on with Nevada? Why is she black? Jack and Elsa the pastiest of white! And you cannot tell me that she got it from Elsa's mom because this was made BEFORE Frozen 2 and her mother is still white as an adult.

Where tf does the blue and pink hair come from? None of these make sense!

I want to kill myself, just looking at these!

That's gonna be the end of this rant

Now I'll say it again, I really have nothing against the ship itself. I too have casual ships that make no sense. But with ALL the fanfiction and fanart being so unoriginal and most jelsa shippers low-key being dangerous, it's hard for me respect people's opinions about it.

I try, trust me, I do! But it's become so murky in my brain that I can't tell the difference anymore and I'm also just not a fan of Elsa's character in general. And I like ships that actually make sense.

And being that I'm an equalist... it's really hard for me to look at this stuff and not get pissed off. I'm sorry if all of this comes off as aggressive because it kinda is.

I'm just very passionate, okay?

I hope you understand where I'm coming from. None of the pictures I used are mine. And I hope you have a good day?

[onlyhereforangst]

WWR

I really wished I had gotten this done before the rollercoaster that was today. Yeah I’m looking at you NCIS press staff who threw the entire fandom into a spiral with this uploaded then deleted nine second clip that threatens to make us all riot. Looking. At. You. 

Anyways, this is gonna be short in comparison to Sangre because honestly there wasn’t a whole whole lot and also my mind is scrambled 🥴

So Nick at the elevator with Ellie’s firearms scorecard had be dying. Either he knows exactly when she shows up everyday because this is Eleanor Bishop and she’s nothing if not punctual, it’s just who she is. Or they are in such constant contact that she had literally just sent him a text that she was parking and coming up to the bullpen now. Or he’d been standing there for the past half hour while McGee tries to rib him for looking like an idiot and him refusing to move because she has to show up to work eventually. But my bet is the second honestly. Ellie acting coy and giving Nick a hard time is everything though because this is so usually not how it goes. He’s usually the secretive one (up until recently, I’m aware) and now she’s the one who’s all mysterious like yeah I’m a badass shot (and you know this Nick, duhhhh) but I’m not gonna tell you why my score is even better now so good that I maxed it out since it has to do with the training I’m getting from Odette that I *still* haven’t told anyone about. But shockingly enough boy learned his previous mistake last year in the jail cell and dropped it and didn’t ask more questions because he knows Ellie will tell him when Ellie is ready and ok to tell him 🥺 the respect for her and also trust she’d tell him if it was big (which ahem Ellie if this *is* because of Odette, oooooo you done messed up). 

McGee being bitter about not getting the body call had me cackling. Poor dude does not have a poker face 🤣

And then I stayed laughing with Kasie’s little commentary about streets for cars and oceans for sharks (my husband who dabbles in cycling would not be on the same page with the first part but definitely the second Kasie, I hear that). Why does Ellie’s look at the back of Nick’s head and his immediate getting Kasie back on track seem like they’ve just got perfect telepathy and know literally what the other is thinking, they’re just so in sync 😩

More ellick as partners and it’s just adorable as usual I love how they work together, they so efficient they already two steps ahead of McGee with everything. And 🥺 Nick’s catching Ellie’s attention while she’s thinking about Gibbs, that slight worry in his face as he knows this is hard for her because of their relationship. I love how much he cares without showing he cares. He would do everything for her, he wants to wrap her up and protect her from the dangers and hurt of the world. THIS IS WHY YOU’RE NOT LIKE MIGUEL NICK, THIS. YOUR DAD WOULD NEVER. Also Gibbs tells Ellie its not his call so she immediately defers to Nick to see what they should do? Ugh the trust. I love. 

OK so the hotly disputed scene in interrogation with McGee, Bishop and Hannah. I have thoughts and yes I wear ellick-colored glasses while I watch this show so yes I’ll be biased. Just like everyone has their own bias when watching so we can all believe what we want to believe since we also all know that we will never, ever get clarification. NCIS writers would never. Past plot lines coming back up, that’s cute. SO ANYWAYS. I love that it was Ellie’s idea to do the skeptic and hopeless romantic, for being a logical agent she sure is using her heart a lot in recent episodes I see you Ellie you can’t hide that Ms. Big-Hearted Bishop 👀 and yes the shaaaaade she throws out is 100% real you cannot convince me otherwise. Half these guys wouldn’t know love if it smacked them in the face?? yes. agree. A thousand percent agree. SHE SPEAKS FROM EXPERIENCE OK. And then the someone special in her life 🥺🥺🥺 oof we know you love him Ellie it’s ok you can just say it. You can say Nick has wormed his way into your heart with his dancing hips and his smart tongue. We know it he’s special to you he’s more than special he’s your loooooove 😭 and yes the GROWTH Y’ALL. We went from not trusting him with her phone- her pHONE. To now she trusts him with her life???? Because this man vowed from that night in the bullpen in 16x11 to prove to her that she can trust him and ain’t that IT. Good god is someone cutting onions around me?? He stood in the bullpen realizing how much he fucked up and said, that won’t happen again. She will trust me with everything big and small, to the point she’d trust me with her life and it will be my mission in life to prove this to her no matter how long it takes because yes it matters. Boy even pushed her out the way of a speeding car and almost died himself all for this lady and yes nick she knows you risked her life for hers and that’s when she realizes that shit this is so incredibly real and I’d put my life in his hands and he’d put his in mine without hesitation this is love. So yes if he asked her to do something (relating to Hannah here and also I think a piece of her knows that if nick had died, she would have been the one to kill Xavier), she would in a heartbeat. She would do anything for this man and while yes some of this is dramatized and played up a bit to get Hannah to open up, I firmly believe that it comes from a place of truth. That she pulled from experience and what she feels in order to play it best. Also partly why I don’t think this is in reference to Gibbs. She told McGee she was going to play the hopeless romantic card and she’s literally trying to appeal/connect with Hannah who is in a *romantic* relationship with the suspect. So naturally she’s going to mirror that with a romantic angle, not a father-daughter angle (that’s creepy when you think about it tbh - related to a woman who’s in love with a guy by saying you understand because you feel similarly about your “dad’?? No thank you) So yes, I’m in the camp that Ellie was picturing Nick while saying all this and surely she laid it on a little thick for the sake of the interrogation, but there’s an undercurrent of truth to her words and you can pry that out of my dead, cold hands because I will believe this to my grave unless NCIS writers magically remember old plots and prove me wrong. 

Nick busting out Hannah’s rhymes while Nick gives the little head bob yessssss. How many times had they done that before McGee got that update 🤣🤣😅

He’s still at her desk 👀 he’s always at her desk 🥰 and then the celebratory drink part…Nick’s look at Ellie…more silent communication because they’re just on the same page and you honestly did not need to look at each other that long but ok, can’t keep your eyes off one another even though McGee asked a simple question. But the better question is did they still go get that celebratory drink with McGee or did McGee decide to go home since Gibbs screened their call and they went out to get that drink by themselves 👀👀 and really it’s just Ellie drinking and getting flirty throwing some arms around some shoulders 👀👀 I don’t hate this is that why you guys get all cozy in the bullpen next episode huh nick 👀👀 can’t stop it after tipsy Ellie is falling all over you with how close y’all are now I see how it is 👀👀

But yeah tonight’s episode. I’ve gone on a clown rollercoaster today and I can tell you I’m not looking forward to the emotional turmoil that will be tonight- however it turns out. Who am I kidding i live for this shit I’m a clown forever through and through. 

[beinghumcn]

Was that [NATASHA NEGOVANLIS]? Oh no no, that was just [MIRCALLA “CARMILLA” KARNSTEIN], a [CANON CHARACTER] from [CARMILLA]. They are [THREE-HUNDRED-FORTY-ONE] years old and [ARE] aware that they are not actually from Washington DC. Too bad they can’t stray from this city for long.

to use a gif where u can see her face or to use a gif that’s slapstick......... the answer was obvious.

how long has your character been here

roughly a month and a half !

what is your character's job

night shift archivist........ using the excuse that dc is magic and therefore an mlis is totally not required.

where has your character been pulled from in their fandom

towards the end of season two when :\ she still thinks mattie’s dead and no one cares :\ of course, i’m gonna go ahead and hc that the events of s3 have happened and she just... does not remember them bc #magic but... cannot promise the same for the movie because i Do Not Know How to watch it and... we like to pretend she’s still a vampire... which technically was stopped in s3 but shhhhhhh

has any magic affected your character

some memories have been wiped, but that’s about it!

and any other information you might find useful for us and the other members to know!!

triggers: very very brief mention of necrophilia, brief mention of imprisonment, murder, manipulation, abuse, mention of blood (brief but significant), very brief mention of war

not too much is known about her super early life. she was born in styria as mircalla karnstein to a super wealthy father ( and super emotionally unavailable who only saw her as convenient when she was old enough to be used as a bargaining chip ) and... who knows about her mother? ( whenever i refer to her mother throughout the rest of the intro, it’s not her birth mother -- just a psa! )

anyway, she was murdered at a ball, as one is. but it was all good! because her new ‘mother’ found her and resurrected her as a vampire ( for her own nefarious purposes, of course ). however, before she was able to be of any true use to her mother, her undead body was graverobbed by the necrophiliac man she was engaged to marry before her death. he kept her in a literal dungeon. which is so romantic (/s). however, sucks for him! her powers grew stronger and she managed to break free and murder his entire family so he would die sad and alone <3 romance <3

after that ordeal, she was put to work as a lure by her mother. every twenty years, they would return to styria and carmilla -- who would have some different name at that point, but one that was probably an obvious anagram -- would pretend there’d been a carriage accident or abandonment or something. she’d grow close to the girl ( sometimes seduction being involved, leaving it open to have the events of the novella have happened... minus the death ), the girl would grow weak of mind, then she’d hand the girl off to her mother to go away to some certain doom. 

also... because i love her... i want to add that, during this entire time, she had a best friend and sister of sorts ( another woman changed by her mother ) named matska ( ‘mattie’ ) who was much older than her, but humored her more idealistic views. like... man... mattie was really looking forward to killing this guy for no reason, but he’s a sensitive poet, guess she’ll find someone else :\ ( aka i just... needed to mention this legend... )

the game changed when carmilla was enlisted to lure in a girl named ell. unfortunately, she actually fell in love with her :\ their close bond was real :\ she made plans for them to escape to the usa before her mother could find them... but her mother found out about it and revealed carmilla’s vampiric nature to ell. ell, horrified, led carmilla’s mother to where they planned to meet up. and her punishment for her disobedience was, like, the best parenting ever (/s):

she watched ell get dragged away to her doom, then was sealed alive in a coffin full of blood <3 mother of the year <3

she was exhumed towards the end of wwii with all of the explosives unearthing various graves. she was found by her mother again in 1955 and her mother just didn’t have the heart to reinter her, so she was put back to work ( but at least she got to watch the moon landing with the legend mattie <3 ).

this time, she tried to ruin opportunities when she could and, instead of get close to the girl, drive her away. 

i don’t want to get too into the laura (web version) stuff because my love does not hinge on the ship, ja feel? but since she does have some memories of that, it’s important to mention!! she was assigned to go pretend to be a college student and lure various girls and, more specifically, roommates for her mother. laura was an intended target, then she showed carmilla genuine kindness and carmilla was like ‘well. guess i’ve gotta ruin an opportunity #forlove. mother’s gonna hate it but :\’

as a side-note, even though she Does Not Know This from where im pulling her in her canon, it is probably important to note that she found out her mother was actually a goddess! same! the goddess innana! spoiler: and of course you can set an angry malicious goddess free with a hug <3 but yk what fun fact: one of my first critiques over the finale was laura just..... talking for minutes on end without a heart..... but someone looked it up and apparently you can keep functioning for four minutes without a heart so?? get it girls!! also i think in the movie it turns out ell is like... evil?? but we’re ignoring that until i find a way to watch it bc <3 she doesn’t rmr it anyway <3

also some fun + relevant tidbits + hcs:

can shapeshift into a black panther. alexa, play ‘black cat’ by janet jackson. also love some pyrokinesis and potential sonic scream and invulnerability to sunlight. also love the basics of super strength and speed. also love still having to live off of human blood. also love not turning people into vampires with bites like genuinely love that otherwise there’d be a whole army. ~ she’s not like other girls vampires ~

if u cant tell im ignoring the ending ma’am she’s a vampire. apparently the movie turns her back into a vampire which we love but i... don’t have a way to watch it so i’m just going off of what i read.

another big gay. gonna start a club w bismuth.

has canonically seen many vampire movies, including the twilight movies (in which she called edward a ‘sparkly twerp’).

also canonically probably has light knowledge of the harry potter and doctor who franchises bc of laura. very hip with pop culture in spite of being over 300yrs old.

taught herself ancient sumerian because she wanted to read the epic of gilgamesh. love that for her.

inxp (leans te, but not enough for a for sure), 4w5, scorpio sun scorpio moon. affably evil <3

[thewebcomicsreview]

What’s that? I’m talking about Homestuck too much lately? Well, too bad, it updated and I’m-a livebloggin’ it. This chapter contains a content warning for child abuse and I’m thus putting the rest of this post below a Read More, though I’m live blogging and don’t know what the child abuse content actually is. 

Looks like we’re with Jane, so this might be the chapter with Yiffy in it! But probably not, because they’re gonna drag it out. Incidentally, since the rebellion consists of two max-level characters, four god tiers (John, Jake, Rose, and Jade), and now Vriska who is the 8est fighter 8y far, how does Jane even stand a chance? Good thing for her that she pre-emptively took a hostage! 

JANE: (I've always been pretty good at crying on cue.) JANE: (Could I try staging an emotional breakdown?) JANE: (That could work; playing to people's humanity.) JANE: (Or whatever is the more inclusive term.)

I do like that Jane, a genocidal human-supremacist dictator, is worried about being “inclusive” in her propaganda. I wonder if she’s starting to drift from Trumphitler into Nancy Pelosi, now. Also interesting: She’s apparently using Gamzee’s death for propaganda value, cool and all, but her superpower is literally raising the dead. I can buy that Jane would rather use her ex-boyfriend for propaganda than revive him, but won’t the people of Earth C have questions? 

DIRK: Dude, the bowl. JAKE: Hm? JAKE: Oh, right. JANE: What is it now, Jake. JAKE: I brought something for our guest as well. JANE: You mean the prisoner. JAKE: Y...es.

I realize that Yiffygate made the patreon rocket to the stratosphere, but I hope we’re not actually getting to see her so soon. It’s more fun to speculate. For instance, she’s apparently getting meals in a dog bowl. Is that because she’s literally half dog, moreso than Jade, and is feral in some way? That’s been hinted at a little, but it’s also possible Jane’s just tormenting her to be a bitch. As we saw when she was Crockerfied in Act 6, Jane’s got a bit of a sadistic streak in her.

Well, that was answered pretty fucking fast! Okay, let’s not click next just yet. If we’re only getting one panel to speculate, let’s milk it like a dying webcomic franchise: Preppy bording school outfit, but with cleats, so she’s apparently an athlete. Lots of pink highlights on her outfit (shoes/socks/tie). She’s got a black dog tail, but appears to have light hair? I like this design, actually, or what little of it we’re seeing. I was half-expecting Yiffy to be a full-on Deviantart parody, but I think the angle we’re going here is “a mostly normal girl, besides being part dog, who’s just been absolutely shit on by life and every adult she’s ever encountered”. It’s not her fault her name is Yiffany, y’know? She didn’t ask for this. 

Let’s see how right I am.

JANE: Well, go on then. JANE: She's over in the corner. JANE: Don't worry, she won't bite. JANE: I've seen to that already.

The fact that this chapter had a content warning for child abuse makes this read a lot more “Yikes” than it might’ve otherwise.

DIRK: Jake. DIRK: You put the food in a fucking dog bowl. JAKE: (It was all there was, ok???)

I feel like this is actually worse than if Jane put the food in a dog bowl to torment Yiffy.

I told you we’d fall in love with her. I told you dog.

....I don’t know if the MSPA art style lends itself to slightly raised camera angles like this, it looks like Yiffy’s face is 50% forehead. 

*Lore hat on*

Okay, first off, dick move electrocuting a child. That out of the way. Yiffy is communicating in wolf howls (she must be a big fan of Toast, from my webcomic Saffron and Sage!), but she’s also literally being electrocuted so lets cut her some slack. What’s more interesting is that her Awoos are in red. 

Vrissy shares a font color with Vriska, who she’s trying to emulate. They even use the same CSS class in the site code. Tavros shares his with Gamzee, his abusive uncle (and doesn’t have the same CSS class). Harry Anderson has a unique font color that’s pretty close to his dad’s, but isn’t quite the same (possible to make Harry/John chats more readable, whereas Vriska and Vrissy being hard to distinguish is the joke?). Yiffy, however, does not speak in either Jade’s green or Rose’s purple, she speaks in red. It’s a unique shade of red, I checked, and while it could potentially be in reference to Dave, let’s get real

Obviously, she’s the new Handmaid. This was obvious enough that I was making that comparison even before we learned her red text and rebellious personality. So I’m starting to see what they’re going for here (and, god help me, I’m starting to come around to Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley as a concept). She’s not a one-dimensional joke of a character, she’s just a normal girl having a fucking rough time of it right now and also always. Speaking of time, red is connected to the Time aspect, which isn’t confirmation of anything but a little note to put in the back of your pocket.

Also to put in your back pocket, Jane’s the new Condesce and Yiffy’s the new Handmaid. The Condesce killed the Handmaid. 

JANE: You've been a thorn in my side ever since I agreed to enroll you at the academy, little madam. JANE: Back then, I was doing a favor for two old friends who made a disgusting mistake. JANE: I'm no longer going to play nice with you just because of your parents, however. JANE: That truce is over.

That’s some efficient expositing! 

Man, I really am coming around to this Yiffy thing, holy shit. I actually think her reveal last chapter was actively designed to get fans to hate the concept as much as possible, and not just from a Controversy Creates Ca$h kind of way (though that didn’t hurt).The entire fandom has been calling Yiffy a disgusting mistake for three weeks, and now here’s Jane doing it, and we’re being asked to consider this from Yiffy’s perspective: Given a stupid name as a joke, shunted off to boarding school by parents who were ashamed of her existence, repeatedly told she’s a disgusting mistake and tortured, even the fans all hate her on sight, and she literally hasn’t said a word yet! That’s....legitimately pretty cool writing, right there. A deft and entirely intentional juking of the fandom’s emotional state to get us to hate a character conceptually so that now when the comic’s trying to get us to sympathize with her it’s an easier sell because we feel a bit guilty. I dig it. Shit like this is why I still read Homestuck, it can be very clever at times, even now.

(Pierced ears, in case the punky aesthetic wasn’t obvious). Also, the page with a gif of everything going dark as Yiffy passes out has a black background, which is a nice touch.

TG: but seriously, do you? AG: Not really. TG: not even about... you know? TG: her? AG: No. TG: ... are you sure? AG: A8solutely. AG: What are you, my moirail? AG: Just leave it, Harry. TG: ok.

Then we cut to a chatlog (with the all-black background, which is just really nice here at selling the mood), and even Vrissy doesn’t want to talk about Yiffany.

AG: It was Cute, 8lright???????? AG: Or, at the very least, a 8*cketload less vomit worthy than everything else that Went Down with our parents.

She’s “vomit-worthy”

I think the update that introduced the Candy Kids was the most enjoyable, but this was, by miles, the best thing to come out of the Homestuck EU. It completely redeemed everything this comic did with Yiffy so far and made it all work. And this black-background-no-image gimmick, while simple, was shockingly effective at conveying the lonely empty mood they were going for (admittedly it probably helped that I was already listening to spooky music), and it’s something Homestuck had never done. This was....

This chapter was great. This was Act 5 great. Like, it’s literally just beating up a child for a whole chapter, but in terms of getting the emotional response they wanted, this is Homestuck at its absolute best. It wasn’t just “here’s a cute girl, let’s beat her up a bit for sympathy”, all the stuff in the last chapter, infuriating the fandom like nothing I’ve seen in webcomics in years, Jade’s dog dick, it was all for this. It was all to get us predisposed to fucking hate Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley so that they could flip the switch and make us love her, make the very fact that we hated her so much part of the reason we love her now. No other webcomic would do that, no other webcomic would have the balls to do that. This is why I read Homestuck, this is why I’m still hanging on to this rock has the wave of cheating dog dicks keeps smacking me in the face. This is avant-fucking-garde, man. I’ve done a full 180 on Homestuck 2. I’m sold. I stan. I’m Homestuck trash again. 

EDIT

Oh, and Vrissy suddenly passed out mid-sentence right around the same time Yiffy passed out (hmmm!), and apparently she’s narcoleptic like Jade (hmmm!)

[ziracona]

Could you elaborate on that Gordon fan theory about him being an inside mole? I haven't heard of it before and it sounds intriguing. Plus ever since the small reference to him on the memorial in ILM, I've been wondering what your thoughts were on how he ended up

Oof, okay, buckle up. This will be the abridged version but that’s still gonna be long. (Don’t read if you want to avoid spoilers for the Saw franchise).

So, in Saw, Gordon is a fkn anomaly to most of the fanbase. Becuase he has a wildly solidified character. You watch Gordon & Adam both go through three different character arcs back to back, and trauma bond, and the second to last scene in Saw is this fkn devestating & beautiful one where—let me back up. So. Quick Saw summary. Two people wake up chained by the ankle to pipes in a small nasty abandoned bathroom with a corpse on the floor between them. They’re each left a tape recorder which tells them why they’ve been targeted (Gordon because he doesn’t value life enough which is evidenced by...? — real reason is he’s literally just the unfortunate Doctor who told John he had Cancer, and John Kramer is that petty of a stupid bitch. & Adam is grabbed becuase...Literally he didn’t even bump into John Kramer or something. The guy took him because he’s a starving early 20s kid who is a photographer, and John thinks his occupation & he are pathetic. I’m not joking. Or exaggerating. This is quite literally the given reason for torturing & killing Adam being fine to John). Anyway, Gordon’s wife and like 7 year old daughter have been kidnapped and are being held at gunpoint. Gordon is told that if he finds a way to murder Adam by six (poor Fkn Adam is 6 feet away & hears this whole tape) on the clock, they and he go free. Adam is told if he can stay alive until after six, he wins and can go free.

They spend then the remaineder of Saw trying, like you’d hope good, decent, or even medium or somewhat shitty people would, to help each other escape, rather than Gordon trying to kill Adam at all. They attempt to fake Adam’s death & fail bc they didn’t realize their shackles were wired & they could be zapped, which makes playing dead really hard. Initially they are frustrated by each other, especially Gordon, who is an adult & levelheaded, by Adam who is young and jouvenile and freaking out & being a pain at first, but they bond through attempting to escape & to figure out what’s happened to them, and also learn more truth about each other. Meanwhile you also get backstory on Jigsaw & the case, and follow Detective Tapp’s story through a few investigated murders, the loss of his partner, and to where he is following Gordon, whom he is convinced is Jigsaw, now. Back in the bathroom, Adam and Gordon reach 6 on the clock, and Gordon gets a phone call where the man holding his wife at gunpoint makes her tell him he failed his game & now she and their daughter have to die. His wife bites the man’s hand, and they fight, but all Gordon hears is screaming in his wife and child’s voices and gunshots, and he has a mental breakdown believing they’re being murdered on the other end of the phone. Then is electrocuted. Adam flips out and tries to throw small stones at Gordon’s body to wake him up, terrified he’s dead, and succeeds. Adam is overcome with relief, but Gordon has a full mental breakdown, almost having died and believing his family is dead, then swapping immediately to denial and convincing himself it’s not too late and he can still save them. Adam tries desperately to apologize and calm him down, then to in horror talk him into stopping while he watched Gordon begin to saw off his foot (Adam was given a saw for this purpose too, but his broke early on before they realized the saws were meant for their feet instead of the chains). Gordon does not stop, and Adam watches in horror as he cuts off his foot, crawls to the gun the dead body on the floor has been holding, and puts the one bullet he was given into it. He tells Adam while crying and breaking down that he’s sorry but he has to die he has to save his family. Adam begs him not to shoot, but he does.

Meanwhile, Bc he’s staking out Gordon’s home, Tapp hears shots, runs in, and is able to chase off the killer and save Gordon’s wife and daughter. He pursues the killer to the meat packing plan, where he is ambushed, struggles, and then is shot in the stomach and left for dead. The man, Zepp, makes it to the bathroom where Gordon tries to shoot him with the bow empty gun & screams at him for what he did to his family, who he still believes are dead, then breaks down crying again. Zepp takes out a gun and tells him he failed to kill Adam by 6, so he has to die. Gordon asks hopeless why, and he tells him those are the rules, then goes to shoot him while Gordon tries to shut his eyes and brace for death. Adam, who is not dead, grabs Zepp’s feet and drags him down in a surprise attack, rips the toilet bowl lid off the toilet, and beats him to death with it, saving Gordon, who watches in shock and then crawls over and puts a hand on his shoulder and gets him to stop beating the dead corpse. Adam is wounded & criying because gunshot wounds fkn hurt, & Gordon tries to comfort him. Tells him it’s just a flesh wound—it’s his shoulder—he’ll be okay. Just keep pressure on it. He has to go get help. Adam begs him not to leave him alone in the bathroom, but Gordon says he has to or he’s going to bleed to death (which is incredibly visually apparent). Adam tries to keep him, then watches him crawl and pleads for him to wait and asks if they’re going to be okay? Gordon tells him “I wouldn’t lie to you.” and gives him a reassuring smile while half dead and crawls out to look for help. Adam is left alone and searches Zepp’s corpse for keys to his shackle, then finds a tape exactly like his & Gordon’s. He plays it, and realizes to his horror this man Zepp was another victim, not Jigsaw. He was poisoned and told to kidnap Gordon’s family & shoot them both & Gordon if Gordon lost to earn an antidote, or just accept death and refuse to participate. While the tape plays, the corpse in the room with them stands up, and Adam realizes to overwhelming horror it has been alive the whole time, and it is Jigsaw, who wanted a front row seat to their torture, suffering, and death. He tries to grab Zepp’s gun & shooot him, but Jigsaw/John electrocutes him w a remote (the shackles are wired) and leaves, congratulating him on winning & telling him where his key is (it got flushed down a drain when Adam woke up, which John no doubt planned), then telling him “Game Over” and locking him alone in the bathroom because John’s a fake ass piece of shit who doesn’t even keep his promises & let the winners go.

The end scene between Adam and Gordon is phenomenal & heart wrenching (Saw is an amazing character piece of a film, & the first film is the reason it became a modern horror staple! Watch here if you’re curious! :’-]

While Gordon does eventually, under extreme duress, shoot Adam, he never wants to kill him, and they are definitely close by the end of the film (which is clear both from the way they treat each other, and their more decisive actions, like Adam risking his life to save Gordon after being shot by him & never seeking recompense for the gunshot, Gordon trying to help Adam & comfort him as well as get help for them both). This is the central relationship of Saw 1, and it’s really well done.

Then, in Saw 2, there’s just no mention of Gordon going back to save Adam. We wonder what happened, until Amanda & Danny stumble to the bathroom form Saw 1 & you are greeted by Adam’s decaying corpse still chained there. It’s later revealed that Gordon escaped the bathroom, cauterized his wound on a hot pipe because he knew he was going to die otherwise, then passed out from pain. John found him and took him to his workshop, where he nursed him back to health & gave him a prosthetic leg, before convincing him to join the team.

Understandably, this did not sit well with any of the Saw fandom. We fight about all kinds of stuff, but the one thing I’ve like, never seen disagreement on, is that it makes no fkn sense for Gordon to betray Adam like that after how close they were, and it makes even less sense he’d willingly join the man who super tried to murder his wife and kid. If it wasn’t for Tapp and Adam, Gordon, his wife, and his child would be dead now. John endangered all 3 intentionally, and did not save or spare any of them.

Still with me? So. Because of that, people started digging. Now, out of Jigsaw’s apprentices, Gordon is the only one who never takes a very active roll. He did not run games or kidnap people. Becuase he was a doctor, John called him in to do medical work for tests, such as sewing a key into the eye of the man from the cold open to Saw II. The only active work he takes is catching Hoffman at the end of Saw 3D & locking him in the basement, which John asked him to do if Hoffman killed Jill (which Hoffman does). This together with Gordon’s character led to a massive fan theory. Let me try to break it down.

After Saw 1, Gordon joins a support group for Jigsaw game survivors, and returns to his family. We get very little info about him period until Saw 3D though. However! Pre Saw 1, Jigsaw basically never lost, the cops never even got close. Suddenly after Saw 1, the entire gang falls apart, starting with Amanda and John, then finally Hoffman & Jill. In Saw 3, it’s revealed Amanda went back to the bathroom to kill Adam when he survived his test. She promises she’s there to help him when he wakes up scared and half dead in the dark, and then puts a plastic bag over his head and smothers him while he fights. This lead to a fan theory that Gordon went back to save Adam once he could (able to walk & not being shadowed by Jigsaw), but was too late, and decided to take revenge very carefully. However, Amanda has a shit track record of thinking she killed someone & not checking for a pulse (see Eric Matthews, who she thought she beat to death), so the even more popular theory is that Adam was not dead by the time Gordon got to him, and Gordon saved him and replaced his corpse with another. This theory is backed by the fact that Adam was shot in the shoulder, but when the body is seen in other films, it is both too decayed to be recognizable, and the gunshot wound is in the stomach (where Tapp was shot). Furthermore, when Amanda & Danny find Zepp and “Adam”’s bodies in Saw 2, Zepp, who was already partially bald, still has hair, yet Adam’s corpse is completely bald. The shackle is also on the wrong foot now, which would indicate it was removed and then replaced by someone in a hurry. Now, obviously it’s possible this was just a continuity error, but given that Saw usually has a good track record with continuity (and uses them a lot for big reveals), that gives more weight than usual to the theory.

So, this led to the idea that Gordon was able to either save Adam, or at least remove his body & bury it, replaced it with a fake (possibly Tapp? but considering the bodies wouldn’t be decayed enough for the skin to be missed if he did it when Adam was alive or in decent preserve even, and Tapp is considerably taller, I’d assume he, as a doctor, didn’t have too much trouble stealing a John Doe cadaver from the hospital) corpse in Adam’s clothes, then agreed to help Jigsaw becuase he was smart enough to know if he didn’t play along, John would kill him (he would, and has. He never lets people with dangerous information go). John also tends to have failsafes in place, like “if Gordon betrays me, kill his daughter” kind of stuff, so the theory is Gordon played along to keep his family safe, instead of going to the cops, since he knew at least Hoffman worked for Jigsaw already, and there might be more plants, and did his best to engineer the breakdown and eventual demises of the whole team from Saw 1 on. (Was the one who gave Hoffman the idea to threaten Amanda or the info to do it, intentionally failed to protect Jill from Hoffman to have an easy excuse to kill/see both dead, etc). Makes double sense if Adam was alive, becuase if Gordon revealed himself as mole, first thing Jigsaw & co would check is what else he messed with, and they knew he was close to Adam.

There’s a lot more details to it, but that’s the short version. Most people I know in the Saw fandom ascribe to it in a weird kind of “Look I know it’s probably just inconsistent character writing and in that case fuck Gordon he can go to hell, but since I truly don’t believe Saw 1 Lawrence Gordon would do this & there’s enough evidence for reasonable doubt, I choose to believe the convoluted theory that makes him make sense & also means Adam could maybe be alive” way. Including me. If Gordon really decides he has no issue with John after what he did to him, his baby girl, Adam, and his poor wife, joins him willingly & helps, then he’s as bad as Amanda & Hoffman & fuck that guy. But since the characterization doesn’t match /at all/ & there’s never an explanation given, & fan theory makes more sense, I tend to think of Gordon as if the fan theory is right? Although if you don’t & thus hate Gordon, 100% respect. I just cannot watch Saw 1 & believe Lawrence would join up for any reason but revenge & long con to keep family safe. I mean, he tried to kill a /friend/ to save his family. You’re really going to try to convince me the man who cut off his own foot by hand to try to save his wife and daughter would ever be cool with or forgive the man who tried to execute them for no reason? Uhhh, to quote Dr. Gordon himself,

I mean.

💁🏻‍♀️ You can’t convince me the man this hellbent on destroying the man who was threatening his family did not make him pay, and just decided to be pals. You can’t. It’s inconsistent writing. :’-] anyway, there’s other info too—one of the disguised figures who helps Lawrence take out Hoffman is the exact height Adam was, the plastic bag from Amanda is gone & the corpse in a different position, etc—been like 2 years so I don’t even remember it all, but it’s very fascinating. & that’s the short yet somehow still too long version of the Gordon theory I definitely did not proof read at all for which I apologize! It’s more convincing than I write it I swear I am just exhausted. :’-] But yeah, most saw fans ascribe to it, which is why we all seem to still like Gordon, and he’s so often shipped with Adam, both of which would probably otherwise seem massively confusing. Hope it helps!

(Oh! & in ILM, since i ascribe to that theory, I wrote him that way. Failed to save Adam, buried his body, then took slow, careful revenge on Jigsaw & co. to keep his family safe. Knows there are deaths he is not blameless for becuase of that, and is full of guilt over wondering if going to the police wouldn’t have saved people, even if he had understandable doubts & reasons for what he did. Is especially guilty for Adam’s death. Seeks to make reparations slowly his own way. [tho also soemtimes secretive characters lie to me until it becomes necessary for me to know, so it’s possible Gordon saved Adam & is hiding it, but given the whole gang is dead, I don’t know why he still would be, so I think ILM verse all he could do was bury the body]).

[ghost-chance]

Fanfiction Recommendation: “Fat. Beautiful. Tasty. Ravenous” by MoofyKitten

Title: Fat. Beautiful. Tasty. Ravenous Author: MoofyKitten on AO3/FFN/Wattpad Fandom: BNHA/My Hero Academia Rating: M/MA for a reason. (Detailed sex in over half the posted chapters. Perv away only if you’re of age!) Pairing(s): Fat Gum [Toyomitsu Taishirou] / OFC Found on: AO3

Deets Expect some light spoilers and a mini-rant.

I am an unrepentant fanfiction addict; this is no secret. There are fics I read to wind down after a rough day, fics I read to put myself to sleep in hopes of pleasant dreams, and fics I read to tear my hear into teeny tiny fragments then build it back again better than before. THEN there are fics that don’t fit the mold – the kind that I become so invested in that I physically cannot put off reading that update. THIS, my lovelies, is one of THOSE fics, and it’s earned that place from the early chapters. This story has almost everything I need from a fanfiction, and I have a feeling the rest is just around the corner.

Let’s get the basics out of the way.

The Spelling, grammar, and punctuation are all excellent – I have yet to notice a single error, so either the author and her betas are a force to be reckoned with or I’m just getting so sucked into the story an elephant could sit on me and I’d never notice. The formatting is effective and easy to follow, and the chapters have all been of a nice meaty length, perfect for plowing through in a single sitting only to realize you missed a meal and it’s time for bed and your brain is hopelessly lost in ship-land daydreaming about what’s up next. ...wait, that’s just me? My bad.

Syntax – This one requires an entire section of its own. The fact that I’m having to actually think about how well the author’s varying their syntax says they’re effing nailing it. If a story’s syntax is at all static or the sentence even the slightest bit predictable, it’s easy enough for me to recall it because I’m mentally rearranging the bits that irk or don’t impress me as I read. I can’t even get through a bleepin’ news article or an online recipe without itching to push what I’m reading up to the standards my professors held. It sounds harsh, I know, but please take  my word for it when I say I’m not criticizing anyone. Suffice it to say, if my classes did anything, they made editing so instinctive I can’t turn it off. Confession: I have never found myself rearranging a single phrase in this masterpiece. Arguing with the characters? Encouraging the characters? Begging, pleading, and berating the characters for breaking my heart time and time again by stopping just short of the sugary fluff I can just smell right around the corner? Oh, Hell yes. I’ve done all of that and more, but I’ve never found myself with the urge to grab my red pen and strike out or scooch even a single word.

Something that strikes me about this story above others I’ve given the same rating (Spoiler: there are VERY FEW!) is the sheer variety of the scenes and environments. Sounds silly? Probably, but romances often develop a certain amount of location stagnation, and I know from personal experience how difficult it can be to bust through those patterns. (I mean, the majority of “A New Lease on Life” takes place in the Lair in some room, most commonly a bedroom, the lab, or the kitchen.) This story takes the couple off of familiar and ‘safe’ turf like homes and offices and drags them through countless other places without regard for their sense of comfort. Each scene feels real and multi-dimensional and directly or indirectly influences the characters’ behavior and reactions. It’s awesome. That’s a sign the author has done her people-watching!

Now, about that OC. I’ll readily admit, in the first chapter, I had my reservations. At first glance she seemed shallow, obsessed with appearances and her own view of the world, and – strange as it may sound – too skinny and too attractive. Yes, there’s some personal bias involved there, but the majority was practical rather than emotional. BUT! Because the writer of this story is the same who unleashed the beautiful Kacchako torment Hot-Headed upon me without a single breath of remorse, I gave Aiko a chance. Sure enough, my first impressions were entirely incorrect. The things that bothered me about Aiko? They all had explanation or purpose, and she’s turned out to be a pretty well-fleshed out character...pun intended. As the story progresses we’re seeing sides of her that I hoped for but didn’t expect and each chapter leaves me wondering what we’ll learn next.

Romantic connection. First word: “OOFTA.” The second word, I’d spell out, but it’s a shrill, wordless, begging whine that I cannot translate into English for the life of me. This pairing starts without any sort of romantic connection; it skips straight to the shenanigans and leaves hope that the snugglebunnies will follow eventually. Friends…if you’ve read any of my writing before, you’ll know that I. LIVE. For. The. FLUFF. The awkward mush, the sweaty palms, the am-I-gonna-barf-or-do-I-have-a-crush, the absolutely tooth-rotting sweetness capable of sending a reader headlong into diabetes with a dopey grin and heart eyes - they’re my crack and I love them. This story started with no fluff but it’s been slowly developing in the background. It’s an entirely new situation for me! I feel like I’ve gotten used to eating my dessert first then digging into an equally sweet dinner without a moment to cleanse my palate. This story? It’s like gorging on smoky, meaty St. Louie barbecue for weeks on end with literally just a smear of something sweet as an afterthought. Mind. Frackin’. BLOWN. It turns out I’m more masochistic as a reader than I ever suspected.

Another relationship I want to cover is the building friendship between Aiko and Fat Gum – because nope, she has not managed to mentally connect the half-starved Taishiro she’s climbing like a tree with the big-and-beautiful Fat Gum who owns the agency. Yep. She thinks she’s boning Fat’s beefy little brother. It’d be funny if my heart wasn’t whining for fluff. While frustrating to fluff-starved readers, Aiko not knowing the beefcake and the brother are one and the same provides an intriguing and natural way for her to build an actual relationship with him. This means none of the fetishistic bullarkey rampant in other stories pairing plus-sized male characters with OCs.

What sort of fetishistic bullarkey am I talking about? To name a handful: I love you so lose weight. I love you because you’re big. I’m fat too so it’s okay if we’re together. Blatant fat-fetish disguised as romance. Fat character’s life absolutely revolves around food and it’s gross/nvm it’s okay. Lastly, OC’s only chance at being loved by fat character is feeding them. Maybe to thin folks those don’t sound negative but to those of us who fit the description? NOPE. These don’t make healthy relationships. Using these can turn a well-meaning pairing toxic and frankly, it tends to piss off those of us who – GASP! - accept ourselves no matter our size. These...tropes, let’s call them, have made me hesitant to even try fiction involving plus sized male characters because I’ve been let down so many times. Finding plus sized female characters is easy, especially OCs, but appreciation for the chonky bois isn’t nearly as common. They need love too, dammit!

Ahem. Rant over.

As mentioned before, I ain’t seen any of that crap in this story. This author is treating Fat Gum like she would any other character instead of focusing on the fat. I wish with all my heart that more authors were capable of (and willing to) do the same with Fat Gum, and with other plus sized male characters. I can’t even put into words how much it means to me that she’s doing such a fantastic job portraying a character type that so many writers bungle without ever realizing it. I’ve needed this story my entire life and never realized it wasn’t there; I shudder to think of how long I might have been waiting for it if this author never found the inspiration to do so.

If I don’t shut up now, I fear I never will. I love this story that much. Moving on.

Warnings

Explicit sexual content – do NOT read this around your family unless you have a stronger will than I and can do so without creeping them out. (According to my husband, when I read smut I “look like a demented vulture staring down at a half-flattened ‘possum waiting for it to take its last breath,” complete with hunched shoulders and heavy breathing. Flattering, I know.) The smut scenes, while not my usual cuppa tea, wreck. My brain? Broke. Chapter four’s budding romance? It’s goin’ on my headstone ‘cuz I’m dead.

There are mentions of human trafficking and the future may include more about it. Slut-shaming comes up a few times because men are assholes and asshole exes are the ultimate assholes. Situational fat-shaming and lack of body confidence come up as Aiko comes to recognize Fat Gum for who he is instead of what he is; on the other end of the tag, Fat is also doing a lot of it to himself even when it isn’t spelled out. You can see it behind some of his reasoning in his POV chapters and since the writer is kickass at portraying thoughts and feelings without ever breaking out of restricted POV, you can also see hints in other chapters. That said, if the shaming was really bad without any redeeming purpose, I’d have noped my way right out’a that fic and never looked back. It has a purpose, and it’s not that bad. Give it a chance.

Recommendation level

This story lacks purple prose and excessive fluff, and I haven’t seen any signs of the pop culture, literary, and music references I love so dearly, but the rating remains the same:

Ten. Out. of. Farking. TEN!

YES! I’ve finally found another 10/10!!! A quick reminder for anyone who’s managed to not see my other reading recc posts, I don’t even need both hands to count off all the 10/10s I’ve read. Congratulations, Ms. MoofyKitten – your story rocks my world and I have an addiction I do not care to shake!

[mythandlaur]

A Change in the Weather

[AO3]

Fandom: Terraria Pairing: Guide/Dryad Rating: Gen WC: 2945

Description: Another cycle has come and gone, but in the interim, a friend appears to offer comfort and show the Guide something that may indicate change is near. (References to 1.4 spoilers.)

With a twang of his bowstring, another flying fish fell from the sky, its remains quickly absorbed back into the earth leaving nothing but a few scattered coins behind.

A brief scan of the sky revealed no more of the creatures in the immediate vicinity, and the Guide turned to continue walking down the hill, not bothering to retrieve his arrow--he’d always have more when he needed them, anyway. One of the few perks.

It was times like these that he wished he had something more to do in the cycle’s dull periods than idle target practice. He didn’t mind the aimless wandering, of course, and it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to it after all this time, but he tended to get restless after a cycle’s end, especially an end like this one. He couldn’t ever be sure how much of that restlessness was his.

The rain was beginning to come down harder, now, the wind picking up, forcing Guide to take refuge under a tree. Perhaps not the best idea, if the thunder in the distance was any indication, but the worst that could happen would be him getting fried by lightning, which would be more of a nice change of pace than anything else. His shirt clung to his skin, his drenched hair fell in his face, and he had no doubt that the pitiful ring of flowers on his head was rapidly disintegrating--but even so, the rain didn’t bother him. It was a bit of a comfort, even.

Things didn’t burn as easily in the rain.

And besides, Guide was quite used to being out in the thick of it without a refuge, whether that was due to his own wanderings or a particularly mean-spirited hero who would either never give him anywhere to live or fill his entire living quarters with a thin layer of lava (really, he knew--or at least hoped--it was a coincidence, but it was one he’d prefer not to deal with more than he already had to, given the apparent love of hackey-sack he could only assume by now that most demons possessed.)

He let himself slide down the trunk of the tree until he was sitting in the mud, casting his bow off beside him and pulling off his glasses in a pitiful attempt to clean them on his soaked shirt. While the rain wasn’t a problem, the thunder in the distance and the growing wind was a bit of a concern--he hadn’t seen it storming like this in quite some time. He could try and head back the way he came, towards the little village he’d just departed, but he wasn’t certain if getting caught in a thunderstorm was better or worse than the looks he’d get and the amount of questions he’d have to give half-baked answers to.

No, on second thought, the thunderstorm was by far the better option.

Guide closed his eyes and prepared to settle in for the afternoon--not to sleep, of course, but to enjoy the sound of the rain from the refuge of the tree, the moisture under his hands, the sweet smell of life in the air. There was a comforting familiarity to it that brought to mind fonder memories, and he idly reached up a hand, almost afraid to touch the garland that sat there for fear it had dissolved.

To his surprise, not only was the garland still there, but as he touched it, the stem of one of the flowers messily sticking out from it spontaneously curled around his finger.

Guide blinked his eyes open, squinting through the rain and standing up, one hand still on the garland. A rustling sounded from above him, and his gaze turned upwards, though the top of the tree was just an indistinct blob of green with his wet glasses still in his other hand.

��If you’re gonna attack me, be my guest,” he said to the leaves, opening his arms to his sides with a bemused smirk.

More rustling, and then--a mass of lighter green seemed to practically melt out of the leaves, forming a humanoid figure that landed in a crouch on the earth with the grace of a cat. Guide slipped his glasses back on as the figure stood, and even through the raindrop trails on the lenses, he could see green hair and clothes of leaves and vines.

Most dryads looked the same, but the even brighter green eyes of this one and the style of her hair and clothes left her unmistakable.

A wry smile replaced the smirk, and he held out his arms wider. “Offer’s still open, you know.”

Alalia scoffed, though a smile as light as a spring breeze touched the corners of her lips as she shook her head. “No, no. We’ve already been through that, remember?”

“Listen, I’ve got a lot of things on my mind. You expect me to remember one dryad trying to kill me--oh, wait.” A hand went playfully to his chin, and Alalia laughed. As soft as it was, the sound alone seemed to cause all the weight and tension to drop out of his shoulders, and he couldn’t help but laugh in turn.

“Should you be out in this weather?” Alalia asked, once she’d collected herself. A tone of amusement still sang under her words. “I spoke to my sister from your hero’s village--she said you were faring well. Shouldn’t you…”

She trailed off, likely noticing all of the mirth fall off of his face. “Yeah, about that…” Guide’s gaze pointedly dropped to the ground, and he could see Alalia cringe out of the corner of his eye. He let out a heavy sigh. “Last night. Even managed to warn this one, but, you know...summoners.” The unspoken truth hung in the air for a few moments, even the sound of the rain gaining a more solemn edge. Guide glanced up and tried to force a signature smirk. “Couldn’t have waited a few more hours, huh? Inconsiderate.”

Alalia’s brows knit in concern. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine, I guess.” At her reproachful gaze, he relented. “Been better. This one died quick, at least.”

“Yes...at least…”

She trailed off. The thick, humid air between them was suddenly much less comforting, seeming to collect in his mouth to choke him as he avoided her gaze. He hated this. He hated having to keep telling her this. He hated having to go through cycle after cycle with nothing changing, always ending the same way, and him always stupidly having some spark of hope that things would be different this time around.

Honestly, he was surprised that it hadn’t squashed all the hope and humanity he had left out of him yet.

Alalia’s gentle touch to his wrist brought him out of his spiraling thoughts, and Guide looked up. Her eyes were full of concern. “Do you want to stay out here in the rain?”

Guide opened his mouth to wave off her concerns, probably with a cheeky quip, but a flicker of lightning and the low rumble of thunder immediately after made him reconsider. “...You know what, actually, nah, I’d rather not go back to being dead so fast.”

“Good.” The tight edges of her expression softened ever so slightly as her hand gripped his. “I had something to show you, anyway. You will be interested.”

The little cave entrance was as good a shelter as any, and truthfully, Guide felt a lot safer with a spirit of Terraria itself guarding him from whatever wayward creatures might appear at the opening. He sat with his back against the wall, Alalia beside him, the flickering light of a torch he’d affixed to the dirt above illuminating their refuge even as the clouds outside made it nearly dark as night.

“...Can’t remember the last time it stormed this bad,” Guide observed, still trying ineffectively to dry off his glasses. “I mean, can’t say I pay a whole lot of attention to the rain, anymore, but…”

“No, you’re right.” Alalia was turned away from him, knees curled up to her chest as she stared intently out of the cave. For a while, she didn’t elaborate, letting her statement be punctuated only by the now near-constant grumble of the sky. “...There has been a change.”

“A change?” Guide puts his glasses back on and sits up straighter. “I--we would’ve noticed something.”

“Not a large one. Not one that would have affected...it, much less you. But the world is always shifting, however slightly.” Alalia turns back to him. “Or perhaps this shift did affect it. I wanted you to take a look at something.”

“Looking at things is, quite literally, my job.”

She gave a quiet snort, and pulled out, seemingly from nowhere, a small glass jar, holding it out towards him without another word. He leaned in for a better look at the contents, squinting through the raindrops still stubbornly resting on his glasses. A leaf from a jungle tree, still budding with moisture, had been placed carefully on the bottom of the jar. On top of that was sprinkled a few blades of what he recognized as wilted Hallowed grass, and on top of that…He didn’t immediately recognize the creature. It would be easy to mistake for a common butterfly, were it not for the brilliant, vivid colors that still shone along its body and pearlescent wings, seeming to glow with a multicolored light of its own even though the creature was clearly dead.

Alalia nudged the jar closer to him, and he reached out to rest a hand against it. His eyebrows shot up as the world’s knowledge flowed through him. “A prismatic lacewing…”

“As I thought.” Alalia gave the jar and the creature within a sad smile. “The fae queen’s favorite.”

“But how?” Guide took his hand from the jar, turning his gaze back to Alalia. “No one’s seen one of these things in...well.”

“One of my sisters told me. A very small patch of Hallow reappeared at the edge of one of the jungles, clearly trying to regrow. We are not sure why. Errant souls, perhaps?” She closed her eyes and sighed. “It...did not last long, of course. It was only a few pixies and this poor creature. It died when the Hallow faded. I wanted you to see it before I returned it to the earth, since…”

She trailed off, but the implication was a heavy weight in the air. If the Hallow were to ever exist again, it would be in a world where he was well and truly dead.

“...It’s beautiful,” he managed. “I wish I could’ve seen it alive.”

“I do, too.”

Alalia offered him the jar again, and he took it in both hands, setting it in his lap and peering down at it. There was a certain roiling that grew in the pit of his stomach upon looking at a Hallowed creature, something he desperately swallowed down because he knew the feeling wasn’t his. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, made a concerted effort to relax and force the feeling back down his throat.

The creature was beautiful, regardless of its origins. He would stand by that. It was his opinion, and his alone that mattered.

Guide opened his eyes again, only to see Alalia staring at the ground with an air of melancholy about her. He glanced over in her direction, waiting for her to say something. If she wanted to, she would.

“...Do you know anything about the fae queen,” she asked, eventually. “I was very young when the Hallow vanished.”

“The Empress.” He pursed his lips, wracking his brain. “...You know I don’t remember a whole lot about...before.” Before the seal. Before the cycles. Before his role. Before it. Even his name from back then had been long lost. Perhaps that was for the best. “But I have read some things. They say she was a tyrant…”

“You know how they speak of all things Hallowed.”

“It wasn’t good, Layli. I mean--it was good. But it was too much.” His shoulders slumped, and his gaze dropped back to the butterfly. “You know about the things in the dark, but...too much light can blind a person. There’s gotta be balance.”

“I know. I just...suppose I wish that were not the way of things, at times.”

“I wish I could pretend sometimes, too. I’d be over the moon--” A brief grimace of pain crossed his face. “--okay, poor choice of words. I’d be thrilled if the world didn’t have any dark in it. Of course I would. But…”

“...it is not something someone in your position can choose to ignore,” Alalia finished.

Guide nodded. “I don’t know why they did it. Sealed the whole thing away. But...I’ve gotta believe there was a reason. I can’t not believe there was a reason.”

Alalia bit her lip, crossing her legs under her. Guide just watched the butterfly, as if it would start moving again if he stared at it long enough. They were quickly swallowed by the sound of the rain and thunder, seeming to wrap around them in a thick blanket.

“...Do you think she is...alive? The Empress? That she has not been...consumed?”

“I don’t want to ask.”

“Then don’t ask.” She watched him with a sudden, acute intensity that never failed to bring a warmth to his face. “What do you think?”

“...I think…” It took him a moment. “...I think if it couldn’t get rid of the dark souls, it couldn’t get rid of the light ones, either. From what I know, she wouldn’t go down without a fight. Maybe you’ll see her again.” And hopefully you won’t regret it.

“Yes, perhaps…” There was a slight sadness to her tone that eluded him, and she turned to stare out the cave entrance again. Another silence. Another slow, languid roll of thunder. And then; “Since when did you make flower crowns?”

Guide jolted, a bit taken aback as his hand flew to his head. He’d nearly forgotten about that. “I--uh--there’ve been a lot more flowers around lately. I needed something to do, and it, uh…” He ducked his head, suddenly unable to look directly at her. “...it made me feel better. About the whole thing.” Because it made me think of you.

When he dared to glance up, she was smiling gently at him, though there was a look in her eyes all the knowledge of the world can’t help him place. “It is a mess,” she chuckled.

“Not all of us can just grow them,” he pouted.

She reached over and plucked the garland off his head, ignoring his whine of protest and setting it down on the ground in front of them. It did look rough, now that he could see it. “I will help you make another once the storm is through.”

“I’d like that.”

They lapsed into silence once more. The thunder was growing more distant, the rain less intense, though the sky was still dark, and truthfully, Guide didn’t particularly feel like getting up and heading back out there. Even if he’d just come back to life, he was still utterly exhausted, and the gentler sound of the rain was soothing. He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the dirt wall. He’d gotten very good at just drifting without actually sleeping. Sleeping was too dangerous. But it was so tempting…

It took him a moment to realize he’d rolled his head to the side so it was resting on Alalia’s shoulder. Guide abruptly sat up straight, scooting away from the dryad down the wall. She immediately turned to stare at him in puzzlement as his face heated up again.

“Guide.” Her voice was stern. “When was the last time you slept.”

“Last night. I was dead.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“You know how it is.” The lord of eternal nightmares was no easy curse to bear. Truthfully, he’d slept a few nights ago, unable to resist the call of a bed this hero had generously given him--and apparently, he’d gotten up in his sleep, walked out the front door, and started mowing down zombies with hellfire arrows, which was concerning on a number of levels. He hadn’t known it could do that.

It was getting stronger. Or perhaps he was finally getting weaker. It had taken long enough, he supposed.

Alalia reached out her arm towards him, the look on her face leaving no room for argument. Face still burning, he moved over to her--and as soon as he was within her reach, she wrapped an arm around his back and pulled him in so his head was resting on her shoulder. She smelled of flowers and earth and the world after rain. He thought he might drown in it.

“Rest,” she insisted, reaching up to pluck his glasses off his face. “You are safe.”

They both knew that wasn’t true. But he appreciated the sentiment.

He closed his eyes and relaxed against her, still clutching the lacewing jar in his hands. His body felt like it weighed a ton, and even though he was reluctant, the pull of sleep was too strong.

His dreams were the same as ever; flickers of fire and rage and screaming, blurry flashes of things that were wrong and awful and not meant for his waking mind to know. But even when primal fear gripped him, its hold and the images that came with it always quickly melted away, into the sound of pattering rain and the smell of petrichor.

[mittensmorgul]

I don't understand, jack is back but dean is fine with him but he will be at odds with cas because he blames him for his mom's death? I'm trying to make sense of this, after all jack was the killer

Hi there! I’m assuming (since sdcc was like a month ago) that you’re referring to one of the garbage clickbait articles going around in the last few weeks pretending to be new “interviews.” I’ve seen a couple of them, not linking here because I refuse to drive traffic to any of those sites. That’s what those sites exist for-- to post clickbaity articles that will get people worked up enough to talk about incessantly and profiting off ad revenue.

They’re a mishmosh of out of context quotes slightly reworked from other journalists’ SDCC Roundtable Q&A sessions. So not only are the quotes worthless out of context, they’re also nearly a month old. It’s stale news, even for the bits that actually come out sounding even remotely accurate.

This particular comment was made by Robert Singer at sdcc... but for CONTEXT, please have SEVERAL different tables (and remember these interviews run about 5 minutes per table, with multiple reporters at each table who are all basically asking the same questions that these guys literally are not allowed to answer honestly...) enjoy this bit of tap dancing:

1. In this video, the question is posed about how the season starts (at approximately 2:05), and at about 2:45 he mentions that there’s “a bit of housekeeping” to be done in Dean and Cas’s relationship. He doesn’t say the CAUSE, which is not “Mary’s Death,” but the actual fallout of 14.20 where DEAN WAS LITERALLY ABOUT TO MURDER JACK, and Cas had LITERALLY PUT HIMSELF BETWEEN DEAN AND JACK TO STOP HIM. They’re not still stuck back in 14.18 here...

2. In this video, he’s asked about the relationship between Sam, Dean, and Cas in the final episodes of s14, (at approximately 5.10), with the reporter asking about how their relationship “became fractured because of Jack,” asking about how CAS felt betrayed that Dean could’ve killed Jack... and you can see in the video (sorry for the angle in this one, you can’t really see the confusion on Singer’s face here...), and then he starts freaking waffling like mad...

“Well, conflict makes drama,” and “it’s gonna take a while for that rift to heal,” and “they will come together.” Mentioning it’s one of the goals of the first part of the season.

(reminder that earlier in these videos, he mentioned they only had the first six scripts at this point, so “a while” to him happens at some point during those episodes).

Let’s also be clear here, that the out of context articles have taken his quotes out of context, that in these interviews he’s SPECIFICALLY referring to the rift caused in 14.20 (which I might remind everyone they ended literally standing back to back, i.e. UNITED TOGETHER with zero evidence of any sort of “rift.”) And yet... when journalists repeatedly ask him about this... part of the job of PR is to... shuffle and answer with SOMETHING. If the audience thinks there’s emotional drama, as he said, Conflict Makes Drama. 

*HEAVY SIGHING*

This is like 9 things I hate all mixed up in a big pot: 

PR is not Showrunning. 

these interviews are FUN but they’re in no way SPOILERS for the season.

if you listen to all six roundtable interviews (well, there’s video of five for Singer specifically), you can hear him answering half a dozen similar questions in ways that he attempts to make sound slightly different without changing the underlying meaning of what he said. That’s how this weird form of PR works, and it’s a really interesting exercise in understanding what is actually the concrete truth IN CONTEXT.

here go try it for yourselves have a complete list of interviews from sdcc... https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186598314405/sdcc-2019-spn-roundtables

oh right, people don’t actually watch them all because it would literally take HOURS (something just shy of five hours total, I believe? delivered in 5-10 minute snippets for each of the 9 participants being interviewed across six different tables) and it gets BORING watching the same people answer the same questions over and over again...

spoiler alert: I watched them all, which is how I knew these new “interviews” being published this week were garbage clickbait because they read like someone put all these videos in a blender.

When you remove the CONTEXT for a reply (i.e. the question asked, and often the question asked BEFORE the question that led to it, and often the FOLLOW UP) you can make it sound like the people being interviewed said ANYTHING THAT SUITS YOUR AGENDA!

the agenda of these clickbait sites IS TO GET YOUR CLICK! to get you worked up enough to talk about their article enough to link back to it and drive OTHER people to click their link. That’s the point of clickbait. They don’t care if what they’re presenting is HONEST, just that you CLICK. That’s how they get PAID.

Go back and read the actual articles written by the actual journalists who conducted these interviews in the first place immediately after SDCC, and you can see ACTUAL CONTEXT!

Wow I think that’s at least 10 things that irk me about this situation.

As a fandom can we PLEASE stop falling for this BS? Have we already forgotten s14 canon? Is that why people are willing to believe this garbage?

After 14.20 aired (and heck, even after 14.18 aired), I was writing about how Dean and Cas may have had some conflict there, but in the language of the show, the rift between Dean and Cas is already on the road to healing. If it wasn’t, Cas wouldn’t have been standing by their side in that final scene of 14.18. Dean wouldn’t have admitted he did the EXACT SAME THING to Sam, of failing to express his concerns about Jack to either Sam or Cas more clearly.

Did they have a big heart to heart conversation about it on screen? NO! BECAUSE WHEN DO THEY EVER?! And yet... they all continue to work together as if they had come to an understanding, and we-the-audience are supposed to understand that they are not actually “dead to me.” In an episode where we spend like 2/3 of it being reminded that things happen offscreen (sometimes MAJOR things, via the flashbacks to Mary’s life) and where the beginning and ending are mirrored like bookends with Dean’s line about what they’re going to do now (evolving from “get her back” to “let her go” over the course of the episode), we’re given to understand that Dean and Cas are finally able to “let it go.”

We saw them talk about Cas’s trip to Heaven, how he’d begged to be allowed to resurrect Mary and was told no, because he saw her at peace in her own Heaven. Dean knows he tried... and knows that Mary’s happy at last. In ShowSpeak, there is no conflict there anymore. Dean’s anger is at the situation, and not at Cas. Do you see the difference? Because he’s about to have a REAL target for what’s ACTUALLY behind ALL of this suffering...

By 14.20, Dean-- out of his own personal sense of guilt, and not any sort of anger with Cas-- believes he has no choice but to kill Jack himself using Chuck’s horrific weapon. Cas goes to Jack directly in his frustration, hoping he can convince Jack of what Mary failed to-- that there is something very dangerously wrong with him. Jack finally agrees, and acknowledges that he doesn’t feel anymore. And Cas is literally trying to save BOTH of their lives, because if Dean uses that magic gun on Jack, they will both be dead...

Cas’s anger isn’t at Dean, it’s at CHUCK, for refusing to fix this problem and healing Jack, despite clearly having the power to do so. Dean isn’t angry at Jack, because in the end he can’t bring himself to shoot Jack-- not even when Chuck shows up and eggs him on, and Jack kneels down perfectly willing to accept his fate. Not even when Chuck offers to resurrect Mary as a reward...

WHERE THE HECK IS THIS NOTION OF A CONFLICT BETWEEN THEM COMING FROM?!

I mean, any more so than like... the “conflict” between them at the beginning of s11? Which also devolved into this same sort of scenario with them both feeling guilty while neither blamed the other, and their nonpology involved Dean refusing to let Cas heal him for a few episodes so he could wallow in his own guilt a little longer. The acknowledgement of their mutual guilt served as their “apology,” and the fact they both kept standing by each other throughout it proves their relationship was never actually in trouble in the first place. This is the language of the show.

I don’t blame Singer for this one, I blame the reporters who asked those questions and made those implications, that he then scrambled to answer with a bit of tap dancing.

CAN WE ALL PLEASE COLLECTIVELY CHILL NOW?!

[weaselbeaselpants]

Hazbin Hotel Review part 2: Mistakes were made please don’t kill me

This pilot is polarizing at the moment. In between the two sides of the anti-fanbase (ppl crying “if you like HH you’re homophobic”, or the BWW with it’s cringey politics), you have lots of fans who are falling over themselves about how good this is. If you love Hazbin unconditionally that’s fine, but here’s the thing:

I like it too.

I’m the kind of person who’s naturally critical, pokes harmless fun at what I like, and is always rewriting and reimagining things within the fandoms I like. I want to be a ‘Hazbin’ fan but I don’t know if I’m allowed to since the fanbase can be so staunchly overprotective and Viv herself has said she doesn’t like criticism, no matter how valid or done in good faith.

Tbh, that’s why the drama revolving around @frootrollup1​ upsets me: the fandom is fine with lumping all criticism or redesign stuff in the realm of ignorant hate, when redesign, rewrites, revamps and other fan dribble are kind of a labor of love onto itself in other fandoms. Guess that’s a talk for later though.

With all this in mind, let me go over my thoughts:

There’s no PROPER establishment of Hell as a place, setting, world, or proper establishment of the characters.

The armor-piercing question Hazbin needs to be asked is this:

“is this a generic version of Hell we should all be familiar with and need no introduction to, OR is this a unique take that requires it’s own rules?”

^ It feels like the latter but we don’t get a good rundown of said rules. Besides that, characters are one note and serve either no purpose or become flies on the wall to other characters’ purpose.

Things were said and places were shown but we honestly don’t get a good idea of Hell by the end of the pilot. It’s a ritzy(?) place where souls of the damned literally become demons and then get purged. I THINK. I THINK, that’s what the writer’s were going for here. TBH, it feels like they’re skipping ahead and thinking of the show as a finished, fully realized product with developed characters and plots already, and not an introduction to a series/standalone piece.

If I didn’t have some inkling or the lore prior to watching it, I wouldn’t have known that the demons sans-Charlie were once human. Angel says in passing in the car that he’s already dead, but really references to the fact that they were once human are rare.

Now I’m a simple woman - I ain’t picky with mah demonology - But, call me crazy, when I think Hell I don’t think of the people who end up there turning into demons, I think of people going there to be tortured. That’s the hell I’m used to seeing and is prevelant in like every religion that has a hell. Taking a spin on that and making demons the souls of sinners trapped in hell? A-okay, but I NEED MORE. Instead of talking in a car or spending time on this lolsofuny demon turf war, we really needed more time given to the fact that Vaggie, Angel, and others were once human. No, I don’t want a full flashback, but it would give us a better grasp of the mechanics of sin in this world if these two characters told a little bit more themselves than just having some lines offhandedly explaining how everything works. 

EX- How to do revamp of a familiar setting right while still leaving certain details vague? One Word: Hadestown. 

Hadestown doesn’t need to give you all the details of it’s setting cause that’s not the point. You don’t need to know if the workers of Hadestown are literally dead, metaphorically dead, or both or where other gods live. Those aren’t the things we need to know for the musical to progress. What we need to know is Hades’ underworld is a mining colony of doom, that Hades buys peoples souls so the workers can never leave, that Persephone and Hades are on the rocks which is messing up the seasons, and that oop! Eurydice had to go back. Between the commonplace to complex knowledge westerners have of Greek mythology and the revamped Prohibition-era setting, all is explained that we the audience need explained.

I have the feeling Hazbin Hotel wanted the same thing: explain what needs to be explained for the currant plot and leave bits and pieces in the dark. It just didn’t really work.

The flow of the narrative was bad.

So apparently on the PizzaPartyPodcast Vivziepop admitted there were things that were moved around or turned out rushed.

Fair enough but even with that excuse can someone please tell me why they thought it was a good idea to start the story after Angel has already been made a patron of the hotel?

Getting to know not only how the world works first and foremost, but who our main character (Charlie) is and what she is doing (the hotel), would be the easiest way to drop us into the action of the story and get the ball rolling. But instead we start off with an intro song that sort of shows us what this world is like but doesn’t explain anything about who or what we’re seeing until the newscasters come in. Angel’s introduced in this time and the build up and execution of this character is poor, rushed, and feels more like writers fudging around with a character they like than giving us, the audience, a proper introduction*.

After that, I’m sorry to say the spots where the story picks up, drifts off, lulls about, or comes around all kind of melt into this big slurry the characters are drowning in, without any real care for telling a story. BUT THIS IS A STORY!!!

This is not a little menagerie of random characters ala the Pastoral Symphony from Fantasia. This is not a collection of little things just for the fun of it to get to to know these people (it does a bad job at getting you to know these guys). This is a three act structure. I can tell where the intro, rising action, climax, and falling action are SUPPOSED to be, but they don’t stand out, don’t do their job, and melt into the fluff in a way that makes the emotional impact we’re supposed to feel null somehow...

The pacing was bad. 

While some scenes go by far too quickly others go on for faaaaaaar too long. These are the bits that don’t surprise me when I hear this pilot was changed around, cut down, or fudged with a bit.

Scenes like this include Charlie’s back and forth with Katie Killjoy before and after her song, Charlie and Vaggie’s fight in the car, Alastor explaining himself to Charlie and Vaggie trying to talk him out of it, ALL of the Ser Pentious/Cherry Bomb terf fight bits.

Oddly, it feels like these parts are trying REALLY hard to get a point across but they end up being more of a hindrance to this otherwise snappy dialogue and supposedly simple set up. This pilot is 20+ minutes, but the bits we need to endear ourselves to our main cast are squandered on what the writers thought was “fun to write” at the time.

Too many characters, even in a 20 minute pilot. 

Instead of getting a good idea of our leads, everyone is treated with the same level of importance or interest in a world that hasn’t even been fully introduced yet.

The truly important supporting characters to Charlie, Vaggie, Angel, and Alastor are Husk, Katie, and Nifty. Katie provides conflict to the first half of Charlie’s story, while Husk and Nifty are hires by Alastor for the hotel; they establish his power over other demons and his influence on the hotel and it’s success. Sir Pentious and Cherry Bomb needed to be cameos. Their characters should be glorified plot contrivances/resolutions, No More. I ain’t gonna care about a cast of billions from the start. We gotta start small first. Not only do we have four mains, we also have a bunch of little guys who need to eat up screen time...except they absolutely don’t need to and should be simple background cameos for now.

Sir Pentious and Cherry Bomb get as much character time as the four mains even though Angel is underdeveloped and Alastor is overdeveloped. When it comes to storytelling - unconventional or otherwise - priorities, is what this pilot needs.

Angel basically does nothing after Alastor is introduced. 

Of all the characters in Hazbin to get left in the dust (lol) and be underdeveloped, Angel Dust would be my last guess. He’s popular with his creator and with the fandom but because of how the pilot is set up, his character falls to the back-burners and is kind of unnecessary: (Charlie uses him as an experiment to see if she can reform a sinner but he doesn’t hold up, so when Alastor comes into play the focus of Charlie’s plan switches almost entirely to Alastor and Angel is unneeded). If this were two episodes of a series; one about Charlie getting to know and trying to “fix” Angel, and another about Alastor coming in and taking over, that’d be fine. But this is a pilot so the plot and character development is kinda crushed in and neither Angel nor his existence amounts to much of anything.

I honestly forgot Angel was even in the latter half of the pilot. The poor demon-spider whore dies on the way to his home planet.

Not to fan-blurb here but I think it’d be more interesting if the conflict in the latter half wasn’t Vaggie trying to warn Charlie away from Alastor but Angel feeling shown up by Alastor and him being the one protesting to Alastor’s take-over of the hotel. It would have given Angel more to do and would cement him as one of our four leads.

Alastor gets a backstory because he is A) not the character I thought they were going for, or B), they’re jumping the gun on him. Alastor is a maddening character in my book because if he’s the character I thought he was supposed to be - our main villain - then they royally messed up a good villain by explaining his story. If he ISN’T the main villain, than color me confused on what he’s supposed to be. 

It goes without saying that a good villain should remain somewhat mysterious throughout the rising action, which is what the pilot is building up to (I think?). Alastor’s personality makes him an absolutely wonderful villain and probably the most outwardly “demon”-like of anyone in Hell. Him being a rogue demon that scares the inhabitants of Hell should be alluded to, not stated.

Vaggie and Angel get passing “we dead” bg but our villain gets a backstory dumped on him? For the standalone pilot this episode is, his backstory doesn’t do anything for the plot. For the rest of the series, this feels like a big waste to reveal this guy’s history over anyone else. The rest of the HH cast are sorta small stereotypes and cliches that the writers want to endear to us because of what they do and what they go through, though since there’s too many of them they end up just being there. Alastor, on the other hand, is where they hit gold and really have a character who oozes personality and the feel of their show...but they kind of taint him by giving him an unneeded (at this point) history.

Big problem with him not only being explained but him outright stating his intentions with the hotel.

Maybe I’m wrong and Alastor is not the bigbadvillain in a cast of villains...in which case I don’t know what the pilot wants us to think of him or where the show’s going with him. Is he a demonic version of Harold Hill who learns to care about ppl and gets redeemed? Maybe that will change with future episodes....

Hazbin is confusing as a person not privy to the franchise/development prior ,and feels disappointing from the pov of someone getting hyped for these characters. As a follower of the project it feels like a let down to the respective characters and plots we’ve been anticipating. While, as newcomer, it’s hard to care about anyone. My sister, who had far less info on the pilot than me, was watching it the whole time going “who are you?” and by the end said “why should I care?” Really good summary from this IMDB review here:

Little harsh but my thoughts exactly.

TL;DR: The writers need to really rethink how to introduce their world to newcomers AND fans alike. -

There’s so much passion in Hazbin Hotel but I feel it’s misaimed and a prime example of why “write/draw what you like and what sounds ‘fun’!!!!” isn’t a good idea for storytelling.

There’s technically a story in Hazbin Hotel, but because of the bad pacing and lackluster approach to world and character development, for the kind of project that it is, it’s not very good. 

-

Again, for the people in the back: if you think I’m a bully because I happen to be harsh with my criticism, sorry but harsh critique isn’t the same thing as bad faith criticism (CinemaSins, NC, Bad Webcomics Wiki) and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t lump me in with those turds because I don’t love every second of this. I may not be the best writer, but storytelling is my passion and I think this dropped the ball. IT DOESN’T MEAN I HATE IT. - Alternatively, if you love Hazbin unconditionally or disagree with me on these things: great! Like what you like as long as everything’s safe, which it is. Stuff is problematic but hey so is everything look at the stuff I like. Also, if you’re one of those people who unironically says “if you like HH than I’m blocking you teehee unfollow me”, you fittingly have a very special seat in hell set up for you. Don’t threaten my friends cause you don’t like something they like. =)