#no way they put this on television. NO WAY THIS WAS ON DAYTIME TV IN 1967.

[widowshill]

this scene has been driving me nuts ... what do you mean roger and his niece have gone through the same breakup with the exact same man and the exact same other woman (her aunt) ...

[thesilmarillionblog]

INSTANT CRUSH

Summary: Black Noir wants you to locate and investigate another supe one day while you are working for Vought. You stalk him to Herogasm just after injecting yourself with Temp-V.

Pairing: Black Noir / Reader

Warnings: +18! (MINORS DNI), smut, stalking, awkward Black Noir, dirty talk (one sided obviously), rough Black Noir, choking, multiple orgasms, masked man kink, freak matching, herogasm

Word Count: 2836

A/N: English is not my first language.

⋆ Black Noir - The Boys (TV) Season 1-3 𓆩♡𓆪

It was hard work working for Vought, but it was even harder to ignore a black-suited, masked man whose voice and face you didn't even know.

Sadly, you had a small job in Vought and never really got to see any of the Seven in the daytime; they were all too busy saving America. However, one of them—the masked, voiceless, and faceless man who wandered around like a ghost—captured your attention from the moment you started working there months ago. Perhaps it was your masked man kink, or perhaps Black Noir was the perfect man in your imagination—quiet, mysterious, and unquestionably a walking red flag. However you were color blind anyway and it made him a green flag. He was so good for you.

In this sense, you couldn't dispute that you were also a strange one. Before you saw Noir, in fact, you had no idea that you would be attracted to that kind of man. Even though he had a menacing appearance with his black outfit and small, sharp blades covering his back, you thought it was sweet that he was communicating via paper. You should be alarmed by all of that because he appe

Thankfully, Black Noir came to your aid in the middle of the night when you were given directions to assist him in finding other supers tonight. You wished there were two of you instead of the few individuals in the room with you. It could provide you with a tiny boost in confidence.ared to be a dangerous one. But it did nothing more than arouse you.

“How can I help you, sir?” You attempted to look amused as you inquired, but he sat there doing nothing as you were sitting there in your chair, tapping on the keyboard. You pulled your hands to your sides and waited for him to show you his papers again. You smiled as he lifted the cold lime from your desk and brought the pipe to his mouth. He looked so adorable that all you wanted to do was kiss him until he died away and suffocate him in your own juice.

Your gaze met the plastic object between his knees; you could have easily put it in your mouth because of how near he was. If there was no one else in the room, you were absolutely certain that you would do it without second thought. It was exhausting to get lost in fantasies about him. 

All you wanted was for him to know that you were always up for an office fuck. You knew he could have murdered you in an instant, but you also knew that, at least in the back of your mind, he kind of liked your daring attitude around him. You felt the pull between you. Women always knew. 

You kept your mouth open while you awaited a response. He tilted his head, and you could almost hear him chuckling. And then, slowly, he turned you back to the television and gave you a piece of paper in your hands while gently placing his gloved fingers behind your head. 

You weren't sure if the reason your heart was beating so quickly was because you were frightened he would break your neck or fuck your lips. You were certain, though, that your underwear was as wet as the ocean. Your face reddened as you lost yourself in euphoric fantasies about him and his outfit. 

“You want me to locate that supe, sir?” When you asked for confirmation, he nodded quickly. 

While tracking the unfortunate supe, you also decided to stalk Black Noir when you learned that the supe you were looking for was having fun at Herogasm, a yearly perv party for supes. You were quite fortunate in some way. You felt that Herogasm would be a pleasant way to pass the time at that point. Stealing the Temp-V in his private room months earlier, you waited to use it until the perfect

You took a day off and left Vought Tower, following Noir to the Herogasm, just after pretending like you had suddenly become ill and needed some rest. You felt incredibly bold injecting yourself with Temp-V for the first time in your life because you knew you had one shot and he couldn't hurt you anymore. Oh, fuck. It was definitely something else.

Before you knocked on the door and saw twins, you had to endure waiting outside for five minutes. 

You stumbled and felt a little nervous, saying, “I'm here to... enjoy Herogasm,” and hoped there wasn't a password to get inside.

The woman remarked, “I haven't seen you before,” examining your short outfit and raising an eyebrow in a suspicious manner. 

“Why? I'm here to get raw-fucked. I suck dicks so nice; get them clean, yummy, like a bitch in heat,” you said with an uneasy laugh as you looked them in the eye. “I'm the number one member of Herogasm.”

The man remarked, “I don't forget a raw fucked bitch whenever I watch one,” but his twin immediately gave him an arm punch. 

“Can you stop being a disgusting animal for once?” She asked him angrily.

You practically begged, “Come on, will you take me in? I'm about to die horny right here.”

Finally letting you in, the man muttered, “Fine,” and stepped aside. 

Of course, you weren't expecting something as awful as that. There was undoubtedly no God there because the way things looked was completely weird, featuring supes with hideous dics, naked supe women moaning loudly, and more.

You had to ignore certain supes who were trying to touch you while searching for Black Noir so as not to draw notice from them. Today, you only wanted to fuck one of them.

When you realized he was missing, you quickly started going through each room one by one because you were afraid he would kill the supe, complete his mission, and flee from Herogasm. You soon came into contact with his menacing black suit after opening a door. Noir was choking the supe beneath him with both hands. With no effort, he could have easily killed the Supe, but instead he relished pushing him insane, making him look more pathetic and causing unnecessary agony before his death. God alone knew who had worse mental health issues.

With your hand on the door handle and Noir's head immediately turning to the side, you uttered, “Oh god,” in disbelief. As he choked the man and continued staring at you, your heart raced with both excitement and dread. You offered him an inviting stare and could smell his excited scent.

Temp-V gave you a greater understanding of his facial expressions and smell, which increased your sense of confidence. You kept staring at the insane, mask-wearing sick as he slowly murdered the supe beneath him, and he was undoubtedly hard as an iron beneath his suit.

You both waited for a while, breathing heavily, until Noir acknowledged the man was dead. Then he moved in your direction, and you knew right then that if you allowed him to touch you, he would fuck you. But after giving Noir an encouraging glance and indicating that he would follow you wherever, you exited the room since you didn't want to get fucked raw in a room with a dead body. 

You looked for a room first; you didn't care if he fucked you in front of all those people or in a private room at that precise moment. You would let him use you wherever and however he pleased if you were unable to find one. 

Noir was just behind you when you two entered the room, and you gently shoved him toward the bed without allowing him to take control. Behind his suit, he showed toughness and confidence, but you wanted to be in charge for a brief period of time to drive him insane.

Saying, “Fucking finally,” you forced him to sit while straddling his thigh.

Noir noticed you weren't even wearing underwear, so he quickly lifted your dress up and gasped deeply.

“Why is it so fucking hard to find and fuck you, sir?” As you removed the stupid plastic object from between his legs and placed your hands behind his head, attempting to meet his eyes through the mask's mirror, you murmered. With your lips parted in ecstasy, you began to rub your pussy against his dressed dick. 

“I fucking injected myself some Temp-V just to make you fuck me properly.” You smiled as pleasure caused your pussy to get damp. “I've imagined this moment, getting railed by you for so long; it feels ethereal to be here right now, on top of you.”

He took a deep breath, and at last his gloved hands reached your hips, stopping you. He slammed your back into the bed while groaning in protest, and he instantly jumped on top of you. 

As you widened your legs and he unzipped his pants to reveal his huge, veiny cock, you teased, “So you're in a hurry, right?” He kept staring at your swollen pussy while giving himself brief pumpings to his massive cock, and you licked your lips. 

Rather than entering inside of you, he ascended above you and repeatedly struck your lips and cheeks with his giant cock. You refused to part your lips and let his cock get in just to torture and make him go crazy. Noir lost all patience and became enraged as his cock throbbed with pain. He violently split your lips with his cock and shoved all the way down your throat in one thrust.

You moaned more when he moved on you and began to rapidly fuck your throat. Because of the way his big balls made obscene noises on your chin and dominated your mouth, you were turned on even more. You put one hand against his leg and started to touch your clit with the other. 

Noir started panting ferociously and slamming his balls into your chin and throat harder. He dreamed of this very moment, of you making you go lower in front of him, between his knees this morning, and fucking your face in the office. He had smelled your cunt's arousal, so he knew you clearly longed for a hard, deep fuck.

Noir was aware that you would have permitted him to do whatever he pleased, regardless of whether you were being watched by others, in a busy office, or in a more private setting. You were always ready to get fucked by him. 

You could feel him approaching closer and about to spill on your throat while you stroked your clit more vigorously. In an attempt to satisfy him and get him to fill your mouth with his spent, you began to use your tongue as much as you could. 

You wanted to use your hands to help Noir cum in your mouth, but he pushed your hands away. 

You pleaded with him, “Come on,” opening your mouth as you watched him panting fiercely and stroking his massive cock with gloved hands against your face. “Fill my mouth with your cum.” 

Noir, however, disregarded your pleadings because he didn't want to cum in your mouth at that precise moment. It's unfortunate that he wasn't able to tell you that you were a wonderful cumslut whom he could fuck and spill himself. He knew he ought to have slipped into you sooner. But from now on, he was going to see to it that you spent his spent however he pleased. He would make you his cocksucker. 

He began to come on your face with his thick, white ropes and let out a deep moan as you orgasmed beneath your own hands. Noir took several minutes to completely spill himself into your face, causing your legs to quiver with delight. His spent paint was all on your face. Still, he was as hard as a rock, which must be a special supe thing. 

Noir chuckled when he saw your face covered in his sperm and he split your shaking legs, giving you a single, rough thrust that left you speechless. 

You groaned beneath him as he began to penetrate you quickly and deeply, asking, “You love that, right? Do you enjoy looking at my cum-covered face while you fuck me? Wanna spill yourself inside my pussy? Would you just watch me wander around, full of your cum?”

His movements sped as you continued to talk dirty, and he gave you a quick nod. Afterwards, he slightly moved over you and placed his hands on your face, palming his own spent. Noir, who was panting like a beast, took some of his sperm and put it in your mouth so you could taste him. 

“You look like a shy one, but in fact, you're a beast, huh?” You let out a loud groan as you sucked his gloved fingers and swallowed his cum. “I don't even know your face or voice, and that fucking turns me on so much.”

Noir began to fuck you harder and wrapped his hand around your neck, strangling you as you clutched around his thick cock. He was so pleased with the way you had spoken to him. Your legs were shaking with pleasure as he continued to fuck you senselessly, like a beast, and his firm hands around your neck were making it harder for you to scream. 

“You sick fuck, it feels sensitive; be careful. Slow down a little bit,” you cried out as he thrust you in the way of another orgasm, repeatedly hitting your G-spot as your body trembled wildly from one orgasm to the next. “Fuck. Come inside me already.”

But Noir wasn't happy with the way you spoke to him, so he quickly took his dick out and turned you, pressing your face against the sheets. This time, you moaned loudly as he smashed the back of your neck against the sheets and began thrusting quickly and deeply inside of you. He appeared to be difficult to get to cum. It was obvious he was a fine fuck. Always fear the shy ones.

You were turned on even further as he squeezed his fingers around your hips so hard that you heard him gasp softly beneath his mask. You tried to pull away from his harsh grip on your neck by holding onto his wrist, but he wasn't impressed. Eventually, he let you go, and you let out a loud cry till your throat hurt. 

His strong thrusts and the several orgasms he gave you made your pussy feel extremely sensitive, so you tightened around his big cock as much as you could. Not that you were whining, but whenever the effects of Temp-V subsided, you knew it would hurt like hell. 

Following a few brief but forceful thrusts, he tightened his hold around your hips and began to release his thick white ropes inside your pussy while releasing a loud groan. You would have believed it would take several minutes because he was taking so long to empty himself while he came inside of you. 

When he softened and you were both gasping for air and attempting to regain your breath, Noir drew away from you. 

Once you turned to face him at last, you saw that he was looking at your pussy and his spent, leaking to your legs. You place his cum back inside your pussy and spread your legs out in front of him on the bed. You knew he liked it very much. 

As you played with your clit and watched him tucking himself inside his suit with heavy breaths, you talked playfully, “I knew you would be a beast. It was a fine conversation.” 

He chuckled at your word choice and helped you stand up and tenderly adjust your clothing. 

You asked, “Can we leave now?” and he nodded quickly. 

Without a doubt, you will take another Temp-V soon. 

⋆⋅☆⋆☆⋅⋆──────⋆⋅☆⋅⋆──────⋆⋅☆⋅⋆──────⋆⋅☆⋆☆⋅⋆

A/N: Sorry, I was high writing this. You can check my MASTERLIST for more.

Taglist: @anundyingfidelity @believeinthefireflies95

[thenyoumightaswellwrestleangels]

This shadow is not my shape anymore (and I fear it will swallow me whole)

and I will do the best I can, with the little that I know - series masterlist here

pairing: tim drake x reader x conner kent

length: 1.4k

genre: fluff, hurt/comfort

warnings: there's a bit of conflict among the three of them but it's not so bad, uuuuuh actual hints of plot here wowie

a/n: womp womp established relationship flash forward wtf else is new

Tim has realized, over the passing months, that juggling a daytime life in Metropolis and a vigilante life in Gotham is just as difficult as you'd told him it would be. Realistically, he'd known you were right, but there was a stubbornness in him that had rooted his feet to the ground every time the topic came up. 

There was no part of him that thought he could ever really leave Gotham. Most of the time, he's sure it's got to be some type of curse - the way the city wraps around you and pulls you closer, closer, under. No matter how many times he leaves, he can't seem to stay away forever. He always finds his way back. 

That part, for some reason, you'd agreed with. Something about how the past always drags itself back to you on broken, bloody legs had made you drop the conversation. 

Red Robin sighs, rolling his neck slightly as a stiffness begins to set in, an ache that never seems to fully go away. Kon is in Metropolis right now, no doubt, being every bit the hero he's fought so hard to be, shining in Superman's shadow. Tim wonders if he'll ever fully outgrow it. As the figure of Batman passes over him, Red Robin straightens, wondering if he'll ever outgrow this shadow of his own.

"Bruce?" Is the only thing you say when you answer your phone, puzzlement passing over your features as you step away from the conversation you'd been in, slipping away to find a quiet corner to deal with whatever news he's about to give you.

"We need to talk," is his only answer.

"I'm - it's not really a good time right now," you say, glancing around at the S.T.A.R. Labs employees bustling around you. "I'm, uh, working."

"I know," Bruce responds firmly. "That's what this is about."

Tim is already home when you unlock the door later that evening, throwing your keys onto the side table and toeing off your shoes quietly. He's got that scowl on his face, that furrow in his brow as he sits slouched on the couch, headphones covering his ears and eyes focused on his laptop.

You think back to the conversation you'd had with Bruce, about his assurance that he'd distracted Tim before he noticed anything and your counter that Tim always picks up a bit more than he'd let on. As he looks up at you, pulling the headphones off his ears, you hope Gotham's streets are dark enough to bury your secrets for just a bit longer.

"Do you think Batman's better than me?" If Tim's words hadn't caught you so off guard, you'd have laughed at the way his hair sits, flattened under where his headphones were.

"What?" Tim just looks down at your bewildered response, fiddling with the keys on his laptop as he pretends he'd never spoken. Slowly, you move to sit next to him, picking up the TV remote and idly flipping through channels with the volume on low.

"I don't want to be Batman's sidekick forever," he murmurs, and you pause, letting the TV stay on whatever news station it's on as you put the remote down on the coffee table.

"You're not a sidekick anymore," you point out patiently. "You're not Robin anymore."

"I don't think I'll ever get away from being Robin," he says lowly, turning to look at you with those eyes of his, wide and sad and still trying to grow up. On the television, some news anchor talks about how Superman saved Metropolis yet again - and then goes on about some little Superboy trailing behind him during the event. You click your tongue in annoyance and glance over, but there's a solemn sort of grievance in Tim's face that makes you hesitate.

"Timmy?" You say gently, reaching to brush a stray piece of hair out of his face. "I don't think…" You're almost relieved at the front door slamming open, Kon's stomping and huffing distracting you both from the way you'd been so desperately searching for the right thing to say. When Kon comes in and sees the TV, he scowls more, slouching down into an armchair and glaring. 

You reach to turn off the TV, but Kon's already opened his mouth to speak.

"It must be nice," he says harshly. You pause.

"What?"

"Kon…" Tim sighs warningly and you bristle - there's something about the way he says it, like this is a conversation they've had before.

"No," you say. "What?"

"It's just that it must be nice, is all," Kon shrugs. "Not to have someone's shadow to live in." Something thumps painfully in your chest at his words and Tim sighs again, closing his laptop and placing it on the coffee table slowly.

"I don't think that's fair," you respond, and you can't help but wish there was a little less bite in your voice. "I didn't ask to have to do this alone."

"Yea, but you get to, anyway," Kon bites back, and you straighten as Tim shoots him a warning look.

"Kon, drop it-" he starts, but Kon's stubbornness, the iron set of his stance, is something that you're both too familiar with to believe that he'll back down now.

"You've said it, too, Tim," he points out, and when you look imploringly at Tim, he shifts where he sits and glances over at you.

"Not like that," he says to you. "I just - sure, we're both, I don't know… you don't have anyone like Batman - or Superman tying you down, keeping you small." Your fists clench where they rest on your thighs as your eyes flit between the two of them, Kon's hard look and Tim's guilty one.

"You're right," you say, biting your tongue like it'll stop your voice from wavering. "I don't have anyone. I wish I did, most of the time." Kon sighs, letting his posture loosen as he says your name gently.

"We didn't mean it like that. It's just…" He trails off, glancing at Tim for help.

"Difficult?" You supply, and the two of them shrink a bit more under your hard stare. "It's… what? Hard, having a mentor? Someone who cares about you, who's looking out for you, who's trying to help you make sure you're doing this right?" Tim shifts where he sits again, his hand twitching as he tries to decide whether to reach out to you, whether to try to help you through the hurt that he's caused. 

Kon, in his usual fashion, stands abruptly and makes his way over to you, kneeling before where you sit on the couch and holding your hands firmly in his. Taking his cue, Tim reaches over to smooth your hair down and run a knuckle across your cheek gently.

"I'm sorry," Kon says honestly. "It's not fair of us… to… you know," he trails off and you can't help but huff out a laugh.

"I guess it's human nature for us to always want what we don't have," you supply.

"I'm only half human."

"I know, you freak." Tim snorts at your words and Kon tips forward to bury his face in your lap, letting you pat his head for a moment before you give his hair a little tug, urging him to look up at you.

"These shadows you're in won't swallow you whole," you say seriously. "You won't let that happen to each other - and neither will I." Tim leans to press a delicate kiss to your cheek before resting his forehead against your temple, whispering an I love you against the skin there. Kon lifts your interlaced hands to leave kisses across all your knuckles, in turn.

"You won't get lost out there," Tim says, pulling away to look at you. "We won't let you." You glance away from him when he speaks, letting your eyes flit over your phone where it rests on the coffee table, your conversation with Bruce about the mistakes of your past that you've been trying to bury replaying in your mind. If either of them notice the waver in your smile, though, they say nothing, letting you rest your head against Tim's shoulder with ease.

"Well," you sigh, squeezing Kon's hands gently. "What could go wrong then, really?"

[vashtijoy]

fic excerpt: goro and his mother

I keep needing to refer to this one, so here it is. WARNINGS for childhood abuse (poor, poor Mamakechi is not at her best here).

* * *

The summer Goro turns six, his mother packs their few things into plastic laundry bags, and she ties up their futon and quilt with string, and the two of them leave their single room in Shinjuku for a single room some way to the east, in a place called Yoshiwara. Asakusa and the huge red lantern of Senso-ji Temple are nearby to the south, but Goro and his mother don’t live anywhere so rarefied.

The other rooms in the house hold students, casual workers, foreigners. Goro peeps out of their door to talk to them all. Some ignore him, and he ignores them in return. Others are nice—the older boy who lends him manga, the girl who gives him sweets and ties ribbons in his hair, the foreigners whose words he only sometimes understands. And then there’s the old lady who lives on the top floor by herself.

Her name is Migata-san. She has her own kitchen and her own bathroom, when the rest of them have to share, just like in Goro’s old home. She wears a puffy, quilted vest all the time, and sits in front of her TV. Goro doesn’t have a TV any more; in the winter his mother took it away and it never came back. And since the landlord—who is strident and impatient and everything Migata-san is not—shouts at him when he sees him, Goro often finds himself creeping straight upstairs to Migata-san’s tiny apartment.

His mother leaves him there every afternoon anyway. He reads anything he can find, or takes his borrowed manga, or he sits in front of the TV, and Migata-san feeds him riceballs and cake. The TV rotates through daytime dramas, talk shows, adverts and news, but when something good comes on, Migata-san will let him watch it. Fly, Feather Swan! No, Grey Pigeon, I won’t forgive you!

“I could do that,” he tells Migata-san, watching the Feathermen fly about against a painted-looking stormy sky, and she laughs at Goro while he scowls.

“Oh, no,” she tells him, in the stupid grown-up voice. “Those things only happen on television. How about some milk?”

He accepts the milk, still sulking. But he doesn’t drop the idea.

* * *

When his mother finally comes home in the evenings, she’s tired and seems sick; things aren’t like they used to be. Instead of talking to him while she makes soup and rice over a tiny electric ring, she brings frozen boxes from the konbini and puts them in the microwave. They eat side by side in silence, sitting on the rolled futon.

Goro eats his frozen curry steadily, glancing sideways to his mother. She’s picking at her food like she doesn’t want it. “Why are you sad?” he dares to ask, afraid of upsetting her.

His mother doesn’t look at him. “I’m not sad, Goro-chan. Eat your food.”

He looks back to his bowl. The curry is bright orange. He picks some into his mouth: little red chopsticks, with the rubber grip holding them together. It tastes of a lot, but he doesn’t complain, not when she’s sad.

Are we going home soon? He can’t ask her that, either. He tries to think of something to tell her, making his slow way through his curry. Nothing that will make her lonely. Nothing that will make her cry. Nothing that will make her—

“I’m going to be a superhero,” he says brightly.

She glances to him. She looks right into his eyes and she smiles. “Is that what you’ve been doing today?”

“Mm-hm,” he tells her, riveted to that tiny, flickering smile. “Then you won’t have to work all the time, right? I’ll do everything. I’ll look after you and I’ll fight evil”—sharp eyes staring from a soapbox, a face he used to point out on the TV before the TV vanished, a name he still remembers with a child’s fascination—“and I’ll keep you safe for always, and I’ll always win!”

He runs out of breath and laughs, caught up in the brilliant future he’s painting for her, that he more than half believes in. He only remembers the point of it all when she laughs too, leaning back against the wall. “My little hero,” she tells him. And, still as if she’s terribly tired, she reaches for Goro’s blanket—a new, soft, blue blanket, small enough for him to wear around his shoulders, one of the new things that has made its way into their room.

She removes the brooch pinned at her collar, a glittering snowflake left from their old life, and she pins the blanket around his neck, folding the excess down into a collar. One thin hand gentles his hair aside, strokes his face; he presses against her like a kitten, and she lifts his bowl from his suddenly precarious lap.

Goro feels her happiness like his own. “There,” she says, glowing. “Now you have a cape.”

He beams at her. “Is it a bird cape? I want to be a bird superhero. Like Feather Hawk.”

“Ah, that depends,” his mother says, taking his chopsticks and propelling some curry into his mouth. “Can you fly?”

Goro opens his mouth to reply, and she closes it with her free hand; that’s another thing that’s new. He chews dutifully and swallows. “Of course I can fly,” he dictates. “All the Feathermen can fly.”

“Are you sure?” she asks him. “Maybe you aren’t as good as Feather Hawk, hm?” And then she pops another scoop of curry into his mouth, so he can’t even protest, other than through closed lips; she laughs and kisses him on top of his head.

“I am as good as Feather Hawk,” he informs her when he can talk. “I’m better.”

“Of course you are,” she tells him, with another kiss, feeding him the last of his curry. Her own bowl lies half-full beside her. “You’re my little boy. And you’re going to save the world.”

* * *

After that, Goro plays hero a lot. He wraps himself in his blanket cape and shouts Feather Wing Star Formation!, until the landlord knocks on the door. His mother sleeps all morning, while Goro reads the manga she brings him herself now, and she vanishes to work in the afternoon, when Goro goes upstairs to Migata-san; upstairs to wonder where his mother is, why he can’t stay alone in their room when she works any more, like he always did.

One morning, while his mother is dead asleep, Goro finishes his manga and looks around for something else to read, eventually pulling his mother’s glossy magazine from the table. He isn’t supposed to read it, for reasons that to him seem wholly arbitrary, so he’s careful to leaf through the pages as quietly as he can.

The magazine is creased and old-looking like his manga, and full of tiny text, much of which Goro cannot understand. So he guesses the words he doesn’t know: stories about fashion models and clothes and makeup and dragons, although something tells him he’s read “dragons” wrong. The whole thing smells like his mother. At least—it smells like his mother used to smell, like her perfume. These days she just smells of soap and sweat.

She doesn’t send Goro out by himself at night any more, either. That’s probably good, he thinks uncertainly; it was scary to run down the back alleys by himself, scarier to hide behind the bins so the police wouldn’t see him. But he misses the bathhouse. He misses Boss, who'd let Goro sit up front as his assistant, who’d set out piles of coins for him to count and watched him in the bath.

Looking down unhappily, he spies a piece of paper poking out from under the unrolled futon.

Part-curious, and very bored, he gives it a tug. It moves. Another, more careful tug, and the paper is in his hand. It’s a letter in his mother’s writing. A date, on the left—he knows from Migata-san’s TV that it’s yesterday’s���and a name, lots of big kanji, he can’t begin to make them out. But he sees his mother’s name right next to it, Akechi Mari, half of his own name right next to her loopy kana. At the top, there’s something about frost, and then the writing gets much worse—fortunately most of it is still kana.

The letter talks to somebody called Masa-sama. She talks about their room, he thinks, and about her job; she makes them sound bad. We have no money, he reads, over and over. Goro is a beautiful boy. He’s obedient and clever. Any man would be proud to call him his son. He reaches out, with one tentative hand, to touch those words.

The letter has been crumpled into a ball, and then unfolded; he tries to flatten it, with careful strokes of his baby hands. He reads it again, and again, and again. Any man would be proud to call him his son.

He has no idea his mother is awake. Not until a hard hand grabs his shoulder and shakes him, tearing the letter from him. “Give me that!” his mother yells as she hits him, right around his head, hard against his ear with the flat of her hand. Goro screams and falls to the floor, clutching the side of his head, and as he dissolves into tears and confusion he sees his mother crying too, tearing the letter like a typhoon, smaller and smaller and smaller pieces that she throws and screams at and hurls into the bin.

* * *

Before long, Migata-san comes downstairs, and she knocks on the door, and without a word she takes Goro upstairs, still sobbing, while his mother sobs in a heap on their floor. He sits on his usual cushion, still hiccuping sobs, as Migata-san clucks to him and washes his face and hands.

“There we are,” she says, beady eyes like a bird. “How about some hot milk? And a cake?” Goro nods his head yes, not meeting her eye.

He’s clever. You’d be proud of him. Was that letter to his father?

Your father is a monster! he remembers her shouting, back at the old room when he was small. She had hit him then, too.

Why is his mother writing to a monster? When even talking about him makes her so upset she cries and she hits Goro? They must be in terrible trouble. Is that why she’s asking Goro’s father for money?

… has his father got money?

Goro doesn’t realise that he and his mother are poor. But he knows they aren’t rich, that his mother works every day, works so hard she sleeps all the time and has no time for him. He adds it to his picture of his father: a monster, a rich man. A man who’s somewhere else when he should be with Goro and his mother. A man his mother calls Masa-sama, like he’s a king.

And that evening, when he’s finally home, when his mother is in the toilet and not coming out, he sneaks the fragments of paper with his father’s name out of the bin.

[justforbooks]

The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks

These posthumously published essays range from psychiatry to plagiarism to near-death experiences

One March in the mid 1990s I checked into a hotel in Helsinki. I dropped my bag on the floor and, wondering what Finnish daytime television was like, switched on the TV. A darkened room with a dining table came into focus, and around it were six people having a conversation. To my surprise, all were speaking English, then a face I knew filled the screen – it was Oliver Sacks. Then another, Stephen Jay Gould, and another, Daniel Dennett. I had books by all three. It was snowing outside, and Helsinki seemed suddenly less inviting; I sat down on the bed and began to watch.

A Dutch TV company had assembled these men, together with Freeman Dyson, Stephen Toulmin and Rupert Sheldrake, for the round-table finale of a documentary series on science and the meaning of life. The series, A Glorious Accident, didn’t seem to have invited any women to take part but even so I watched it to the end – three hours later. The participants’ areas of expertise were diverse: biology, physics, palaeontology, neuroscience, philosophy. As the only practising clinician, Sacks made perceptive and valuable contributions – and was clearly having fun.

Sacks died nine years ago in August 30, 2015. A melanoma of the eye, diagnosed nine years earlier, had recurred and metastasised to his liver. The New York Times had referred to Sacks as the “poet laureate of medicine”, and carried an obituary that said that neurological conditions were for him occasions “for eloquent meditations on consciousness and the human condition”. In his last year he put the finishing touches to a memoir (On the Move), and completed some final magazine essays collected soon after his death (Gratitude). In one of his last newspaper pieces he wrote: “I have several other books nearly finished.” We might expect further posthumous essay collections to be on the way.

Millions of Sacks’s books have been printed around the world, and he once spoke of receiving 200 letters a week from admirers. For those thousands of correspondents, The River of Consciousness will feel like a reprieve – we get to spend time again with Sacks the botanist, the historian of science, the marine biologist and, of course, the neurologist. There are 10 essays here, the majority published previously in the New York Review of Books (the collection is dedicated to its late editor Robert Silvers). Their subject matter reflects the agility of Sacks’s enthusiasms, moving from forgetting and neglect in science to Freud’s early work on the neuroanatomy of fish; from the mental lives of plants and invertebrates to the malleability of our perception of speed.

The essay on speed has some characteristic flourishes: of Parkinson’s disease, Sacks writes that “being in a slowed state is like being stuck in a vat of peanut butter, while being in an accelerated state is like being on ice”. He is as good on near-death experiences: “There is an intense sense of immediacy and reality, and a dramatic acceleration of thought and perception and reaction.” Sacks has a Jain-like reverence for insects, and delights in comparative neuroanatomical facts: an octopus may have six times more neurons than a mouse; many plants possess nervous systems that move at a thousandth the speed of our own.

Plagiarism troubled Sacks, and an essay on memory dovetails with one on creativity, examining how someone can copy another’s work through unconscious repatternings of memory. “Memory arises not only from experience,” he concludes, “but from the intercourse of many minds.” He quotes the letters between Mark Twain and Helen Keller on plagiarism, and his own correspondence with Harold Pinter (whose play A Kind of Alaska was inspired by Sacks’s Awakenings). Most of his books are mentioned in passing, and the chosen essays stand as a kind of testament or gazetteer to their range. Reading them, I was reminded of something Annie Dillard said about the essay form: “The essay is, and has been, all over the map. There’s nothing you cannot do with it; no subject matter is forbidden, no structure is proscribed.”

Some of the slighter pieces here suffer from being placed between more substantial work, and in one, only one, Sacks’s argument loses coherence. But even then I was conscious of the great premium he placed on flights of ideas: “If the stream of thought is too fast, it may lose itself, break into a torrent of superficial distractions and tangents, dissolve into a brilliant incoherence, a phantasmagoric, almost dreamlike delirium.”

Sacks was deliriously in love with details – to the irritation of his editors – and he crammed his books with them. When the text couldn’t take any more, he spilled them over to the bottom of the page. It’s in the footnotes that his treasures are often to be found: in a two-page footnote to his essay “Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science”, Sacks outlines how urgent is the need for reconciliation between psychiatry and neurology, divided now for nearly a century. A “scotoma” is a blind spot in the vision, an area of darkness conjured by irregularities in brain or retinal function:

If one looks at the charts of patients institutionalized in asylums and state hospitals in the 1920s and 1930s, one finds extremely detailed clinical and phenomenological observations, often embedded in narratives of an almost novelistic richness and density ... this richness and detail and phenomenological openness have disappeared, and one finds instead meagre notes that give no real picture of the patient or his world.

Through the course of the 20th century, the US Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (a book conceived to facilitate health insurance billing) has, Sacks insists, impoverished clinical language. “Present-day psychiatric charts in hospitals are almost completely devoid of the depth and density of information one finds in the older charts, and will be of little use in helping us to bring about the synthesis of neuroscience with psychiatric knowledge that we so need.” Earlier in the book he singled out one of the defining moments of that schism, when in 1893 Freud gave up looking for elements of brain pathology that might be relevant to mental health: “The lesion in hysterical paralyses must be completely independent of the nervous system,” Freud wrote, “since in its paralyses and other manifestations hysteria behaves as though anatomy did not exist or as though it had no knowledge of it.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[layce2015]

Supernatural (Dean Winchester x Female!Reader)

Ghostfacers

Masterlist

(A/N: So the way this episode is gonna be written is gonna be different. I forgot about this episode and when I watched it the other night I was like 'well, crap! How am I gonna do this?' So it's gonna be a mix of how my book is normally written but when the characters are 'speaking to the camera' it's gonna be written like how a play is written. But when Harry and Ed speak to the camera or voice over, Ed is in italics and Harry's in bold. Hopefully that makes sense.)

Hello. I am Harry Spangler

And I am Ed Zeddmore. Now if you have received this tape, you must be some sort of bigwig network executive. Well, today is your lucky day, mister.

Because the unsolicited pilot you are about to watch is the bold new future of "reality TV."

Mmmm. We know you've had it hard during the crippling writer's strike.

Lazy fat cats.

Who needs writers when you've got guys like us? Our team faced horrible horrors to bring you the footage that will change your world forever. So strap in for the scariest hour in the history of television.

In the history of your life...

Strap in for...

Ghostfacers! 

Harry and Ed exit an AMC Gremlin with Wisconsin license plate, each carrying a metal briefcase with a "Ghostfacers" sticker.

You know, it can get kind of hard balancing our daytime careers with our nighttime missions.

Yeah, but Ed and I pretty much call the shots at the Kinko's where we work, so we can usually pretty much get off by six every night?

Yeah, six o'clock. It used to be just, you know, you and I taking on the cases -- just Harry and me.

Two lone wolves.

And two lone wolves need, uh...other wolves.

PHASE 1: THE HOMEWORK

"Morning, 'facers." Ed greets the gang as he and Harry enter the Ghostfacers office. "Good morning, Ghostfacers." Harry greets. "It's seven p.m., dude." Spruce, one of their teammates, informs. "It's morning to a Ghostfacer. Corbett, what do we got, buddy?" Harry asked the younger man.

"Oh, I'm just putting up some of the --" Corbett stammers before Ed speaks up. "Yeah, this has got to go up here. That's got to go here...got to see the whole field. Markers, eraser -- good job." He said as he looks over the board.

Corbett: I first saw Ed putting up flyers down at the -- the outlet mall in Scogan, so I-I read one, and I thought to myself, "huh. Where do ghosts come from?" And now here I am.

"Ed, your sister's abusing staff." Harry groaned as Maggie rolls her eyes at him while she sat in front of the computer. "That's adopted sister, thank you very much." Ed corrected him.

Maggie: Ed has been obsessed with the supernatural since we were kids, you know, and then he meets Harry at computer camp...and love at first geek.

Spruce: Spruce here. What up, playaaa? I am 15/16 Jew, 1/16 Cherokee. My grandfather is a mohel, my great-grandfather was a tallis maker, and my great-great-grandfather was a degenerate gambler and had a peyote addiction.

"Okay, people. Let's cut the chatter and get on a mission. Okay? Morton house...one of our big fish. All right, we all know the legend. Every four years, supposedly, this becomes the most haunted place in America." Ed explained to the team. "The leap year ghost, some call it. The ghost returns at midnight just as February 29th begins." Harry adds.

"And no one has ever stayed the night, right?" Maggie asked. "Yeah, well, every testimony that we dug up, every eyewitness has cut and run well before midnight." Harry tells her. "Well, that's all about to change, baby." Ed said, cockily. "Absolutely true, Ed. Absolutely true." Harry said as Ed drinks his cup of coffee then hums approvingly.

"Mmm. That's good." he compliments as he looks over F Corbett. "It's French vanilla, 'cause the other day, you said how much you liked it, so..." Corbett said, bashful, and Ed nods. "Thank you." He said. "You are welcome." Corbett said, awkwardly.

I like Corbett. I do. Shows up early, does his job, lot of good hustle out -- I think he's got the hots for Ed, and that could spell trouble for the whole team.

Corbett: Ed's kind of the more rugged, with that really golden...beautiful sort of beard. Definitely nice. Uh, and Harry's nice.

"29th is this Friday, facers. We want this mission, we got to move on it now, or guess what -- He's gone for another four years." Ed tells the team when there was a sudden loud noise. Ed's whiteboard crashes to the ground, caused by the garage door it was attached to opening up.

"Oh, watch out!"

"Who is that?"

"Dad! Come on!" Ed yells as his dad tries to pull in the garage and looks around in confusion. "Just cut the cameras. We don't need that. We don't need this part. We don't --" Harry tells Spruce before he turns the camera off.

PHASE II: INFILTRATION

"Stay low. Follow formation." Ed tells the team as they walk up to the chain linked fence at the Morton house. "Okay, as suspected. A lot of people have tried to break into the Morton house. The local authorities have just gotten fed up." Ed explained to them. "Looks like the cops have got this place pretty well fenced off." Harry said as he begins to pull out the wire cutters.

"Wait. Didn't you guys get, like, a permit or something?" Maggie asked them, making Ed and Harry look at her. "A permit?" Harry said, confused, then he and Ed share a look. "That's a good idea for next time." said Harry and Ed nods. "Yeah." He said and they start to cut the chain when Spruce shouts. "Car!"

"Car. shh, shh! Flashlights off." Harry tells the others and the team turns their flashlights off. "Keep totally still." Maggie whispers as the loud rumble of a car engine approaching, along with a radio playing "We're an American Band."

The car pulls up and they could see three people inside of it. The passenger and backseat driver stick their head out and pull out their flashlights. They shined them towards the Morton House for a few moments before they drive away.

"It's okay. Not cops -- just hicks." Spruce informed him friend as Ed opens the gate with the wire cutters. "Ed's got it." Harry said and everyone gets up. "Guys, let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Go! go!" Harry said and they start to make their way to the house.

"Hear that, people? Let's keep it quiet." Ed tells the team as they make their way deeper into house after they make it inside of the buildings. "There's the kitchen sink." Harry tells Ed. "Copy that. Copy that." Ed said as they make it to the living room area. "All right, everybody. Ghostfacers, let's line up. Everybody. We'll set up camp right here. This is command center one." Ed said and everyone sets down the equipment on the floor. "We're gonna call this the Eagle's Nest." Harry said and everyone starts setting up equipment.  

"Hallway cam one up and running." Corbett said after he sets up the camera in one of the hallways. "Looking good, Corbett." Ed compliments from the main base, through the walkie. "Copy that, Ed." Corbett said, smiling, while Ed seemed baffled. "Uh...uh, you're welcome." He stammers.

'All right, Spruce, how are we doing there, buddy?" Ed asked Spruce through his walkie. "Checking basement camera two, mein fuhrer." Spruce replied. "Maggie, I got no visual on you, Maggie." Ed said. "This is Maggie. Do you copy?" Maggie's voice asked through the walkie. "There you are. Hello. Harry, are you alive?" Ed said. "Upstairs, Ed. Camera one." Harry replied.

"Looking good. I can smell syndication. All right, fellas. Let's regroup at the Eagle's Nest." Ed said to the others.

Morton House

10:40PM

Base Camp

"All right, Spangler. Battery check, battery check. Check. Okay." Harry said as they check their equipment. "Check. Check. Yo, Corbett, dude." Spruce said as he looks through the camera and at Corbett, who has a flashlight strapped to his head. "Lookin' good, Corbett." Harry said.

"You're Robocop." Spruce said to Corbett. "R-robocop? You think I -- you think I look like Robocop?" Corbett asked but before Spruce could reply, Ed speaks up. "Everybody, bring it in. Bring it in." Ed said and everyone gather up in a circle..

"We've all been here before. Standard walk-through. Team one, west. Team two, east. Spin the tires, light the fires. Ghostfacers on three. 1, 2, 3..." Ed said then all of them shout. "Ghostfacers!"

PHASE III: FACE TIME

Morton House

10:51 PM

1st Floor

"Hello! I'm speaking to the restless spirits of the Morton house!" Ed calls out as he and Corbett walk around the first floor. "Okay." Corbett mutters as they continue on. "Hello! My name's Ed." Ed shouts then he turns to Corbett. "Careful. Watch my back." He said to him. "Okay. Okay." Corbett said.

"What's your name?" Ed calls out as he looks at his EMF meter. ".3, .29." he reads out. "Is there an entity or entities here with us now? Can you give us a sign of your presence?" Corbett asked, quickly, without taking a breath. "You got to breathe, buddy." Ed tries to calm him.

"I can't breathe." Corbett said, slightly panicked. "Corbett, night vision." Ed tells him and Corbett nods. "Okay. Okay. Yeah." He whispers as he flips the night vision on the camera. "Calm down, buddy. Breathe, all right? Calm the whirlwinds of your mind." Ed tells him, calmly.

2nd Floor

"We're doing a basic EMF, EVP, temp-flux sweep. Looks like we've got all of our ducks in a row here." Harry said as he, Spruce and Maggie walk down the hall. But then there was camera interference on Spruce's camera just as the EMF makes a noise.

"What?" Harry said, shocked. "I don't know. It's weird." Spruce said but then it quit. "It's gone." He said then they come up to a door. 'All right. Get this. Get this." Harry said and he tries unsuccessfully to kick in the door.

"Turn the knob." Spruce tells him. "All right...that's a good idea." Harry said and he opens door then jumps back and runs away. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" He exclaims, fearfully. "It's just a rat, dude." Spruce said, unfazed.

I don't really like rats. They're gross. Rats are like the... rats of the world.

"What -- was that an apparition? Was that a spectral -- was that a .4? What do we got, 'cause the EMP was just off the --" Harry asked as he comes back but then Spruce throws a dead rat at him. "Oh, God! Oh, that is so not funny, Spruce!" Harry screams as Spruce chuckles.

1st Floor 

"Oh, God. Okay, it was just...I think it was just this branch...Okay...in the window." Corbett said, shakily.. "This is spooky, man. This place..." Ed started to say when they were confronted by three figures, approaching them with flashlights. "Freeze! police officers! don't move!" A male voice shouts. "Oh no!" Corbett exclaims. "All right. All right. All right. Take it easy, take it easy." A different male voice assures them as Ed and Corbett start to freak out.

"Let's see some identification. Come on. Let's see some i.d." a female voice demanded as Corbet hands in his ID. "What -- are we under -- under arrest?" He asked, fearfully, as Ed said. "We are unarmed."

"Want to explain that weirdo outfit, Mr., uh, Corbett?" the man asked as he looks at the ID but Ed stops and realized that these three people looked familiar. "I know you." Ed said and the first man, Dean, looks up at him. "Yeah, sure you do. Give me some identification." Dean demands but Ed shakes his head. "Yeah, ho-- whoa, hold on a second." He said as he looks between the three people, shining his flashlight at them.

"I know all three of you. Yeah." said Ed as he looks between Dean, Sam and (y/n). "What?" Corbett said, confused, as Ed nodded while (y/n)'s eyes widen in recognition. "Holy sh--!" She said and Dean looks over at her. "What?" Dean asked as Sam's eyes widen in recognition too. "Sh--!" Sam mutters as (y/n) turns to Dean.

"Uh, West Texas...the...the tulpa we had to take out. Those two goofballs that almost got us killed...The hellhounds or something?" She said and Dean looks over at Ed. "F--- me." Dean grumbles. "Yeah, we're not hellhounds anymore, okay? It didn't test that well." Ed snapped at them.

"Ed, what's going on?" Corbett asked Ed. "They're not cops, buddy -- no, not at all." Ed tells him. "Ed, you had a partner, too, didn't you -- A different guy?" Dean asked him. "Oh, yeah, yeah." Ed replied. "Is he around here somewhere?" Dean asked him. "He's running around, chasing ghosts." Ed replied. "Okay, well, listen, you and Rambo need to get your girlfriends and get out of here." Dean tells them and Ed gets annoyed.

"All right. Listen here, chisel chest, okay? We were here first. We've already set up base camp. We beat you." he said then Dean turns to Sam and (y/n). "They were here first." He said to them as Ed nods. But then Dean grabs Ed and pushes him up against the wall. "Oh, God." Ed exclaimed.

"Ed..." Dean said in a low voice. "Yeah?" Ed said, unsure. "...where's your partner?" Dean asked again.

​​​2nd Floor

"10.6. 10.7, guys. The EMF is really spiking here." Harry said as he and his team walk down the hall. "Temperature's down, like, 11 degrees." Maggie informs as she holds the thermometer. "All right, all right, keep your eyes peeled. This could be it." Harry said then he turns to Maggie. "Maggie, can I get a reading in here, please?" He asked when Spruce noticed the camera interference. "Something keeps messing with the chip. I don't know what's going on here." Spruce said as there was more interference, then suddenly a man in 50s-style suit and hat appears.

"Guys. Guys. Guys." he shouts and Maggie and Harry turn and see an apparition of the man. "Look buddy, I'm sorry. That's it. I'm telling you, that's all the money I --" the apparition said until gunshots ring out and the apparition of the man falls and disappears, making the three Ghostfacers jump.

​​​1st Floor

"What are you doing in the Morton House, Ed - on leap year -- what are you thinking?" Dean asked Ed, angrily. "We're here to spend the night, okay? It's for our TV show." Ed replied. "What? Great. Perfect." Sam grumbles. "Yeah, nobody's ever spent the night before." Corbett said and the three hunters turn to them. "Uh, actually, yeah, they have." (Y/n) said. "Uh, we've never heard of them." Ed said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Yeah, you know why? 'Cause the ones that have haven't lived to talk about it!" (y/n) said to them, loudly. "Oh, come on, I don't believe you." Ed said, exasperated. "Look -- missing-persons reports going back almost a half century. John Graham stayed on a dare -- gone. Julie Wilkerson -- gone. There are tons more. All of them came to just stay the night through, always on a leap year. The only body they ever found was the last owner, Freeman Daggett." Sam explained to them as he shows the reports to Ed and Corbett.

"These look legit." Ed said, shocked. "They are legit." (y/n) said, annoyed. "Look, Ed, we ain't got much time here, buddy. Starting at midnight, your friends are going to die." Sam said when Harry, Maggie, and Spruce run down the stairs and into the living room.

"Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Guys! Guys! Oh, my god! Oh, my god! We got one! Corbett! Corbett, we saw one! We saw one!" Harry shouts to Ed and Corbett, frantically. "Get outta here!" Ed said, amazed. "It was a full apparition! It was like a class four. It was a spectral illumination! It..." Harry said before Maggie speaks up. "It was amazing!" she said then Harry noticed Dean, Sam and (y/n).

"Hey, aren't those the a------s from Texas?" Harry asked. "Yes." replied Ed. "All right, let's have this reunion across the street, guys." Dean tells them.

"Crap. What are you guys doing here?" Harry asked as Sam, Dean and (y/n) try to usher them out of the building. "Come on, come on. We'll get you ice cream -- our treat. What do you say? Let's go." (Y/n) said but Harry stands his ground. "Yeah, I say no." He said and Maggie goes over to Ed.

'Look at this. Look, look. Ed, Ed. No. No. Look at this. Okay, honest-to-god proof, all right?" Maggie said as she shows the group their footage on the laptop. "Are you kidding me?" Ed said, shocked. "Yeah. No, not kidding." Harry said, smiling.

"What kind of reading did we get?" Spruce asked. "Uh, it was a 10.9." Harry replied. "10.9?" Ed said, shocked. "Yeah, it was 10.9. It was almost 11. I came out, and I was like, 'what's going on?' And I was like -- wait, watch this. Oh! He got blasted. It was crazy." Harry exclaimed while Sam, Dean and (y/n) walk away from the group and talk amongst themselves.

Spruce follows them, still recording them on his camera.

"Think we were off on this? I mean, that was just a death echo." Sam said. "Yeah, but what's it doing here? Did anybody get shot here?" Dean asked his brother and girlfriend. "No, not that Sam and I could find." she replied as Sam shakes his head.

"What's a death echo?" Spruce asked and the trio look over at him. "Look, we got a problem here. That ghost ain't it." Sam said. "Yeah, that's real. Like, that happened." Harry said, pointing at the laptop. "What's a death echo?" Spruce asked again. "Echoes are trapped in a loop, okay? They keep replaying how they died over and over and over again, usually in the place where they were ganked. It's about as dangerous as a scary movie." Dean replied.

"So maybe the echo's not dangerous, but maybe something else is." (y/n) said and Dean turns back to her and Sam. "You're right." he mutters then he turns to the Ghostfacers. 

"All right, we need to get out of here, guys. Come on. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Pack it up." Dean shouts. "Guys, time is running out!" Sam said as the trio go to try and move them out. "We're moving!" (Y/n) shouts.

"What about all of our equipment? What are we gonna..." Maggie asked but the trio usher them out of the room. "Lots of fun. Let's go." Dean orders while Harry talks over him. "We got more material. We got all kinds of stuff. We'll make you guys recurring guest stars." He said but Ed looks around and shouts. "Wait! Wait! Where's Corbett?"

2nd Floor

"I wish to communicate with the restless spirits here." Corbett said as he stands in a room by himself. Then there was camera interference. "Uh, lights out? Oh, I think I got night vision here." Corbett mutters and he switches to night vision. "That's better." He said as he points the camera to himself, not realizing a tall figure standing behind him.

Living Room

"No man left behind." Ed said when they hear an anguished scream in the distance. "That was Corbett." Harry and Ed said then they run up the stairs while Dean, Sam and (y/n) protest. "We'll get him! Go back!" Dean shouts. "Guys!" Sam shouts. "Damn it!" (Y/n) growls in anger.

2nd Floor

"No! where are you, dude? Tell us where you are! Corbett!" Ed shouts as they run. "Let me go! Guys!" Corbett shouts but they couldn't find him at all, just hear him. "Corbett, you need to come back, Corbett." Ed shouts then they hear Corbett screaming. "Hey! Hey! Hey! Come on." Dean said to Ed, stopping him from going anywhere as they hear Corbett's screams continue, fading away.

"Corbett's...He's not here. Let's go. Let's go." Sam encourages the Ghostfacers but Harry shakes his head. "No. No. No. No, that was Corbett. Didn't you hear that?" Harry asked while Dean, Sam and (y/n) usher the others back to the living room. But the clock had already midnight.

"Oh, god, what's happened? Oh, god. He's gone. He just disappeared." Ed mutters, devastated. "Okay, let's just go through all the angles. Let's go through all the cameras we have." Harry said while Sam, Dean and (y/n) walk off to the side.

"Well, it's 12:04, boys." (Y/n) said and Sam sighs then turns to Dean. "You good? You happy?" he asked him. "Yeah, I am happy." Dean said, sarcastically. "Let's go hunt the Morton house, you said, it's our Grand Canyon." Sam mocks. "Sam, I don't want to hear this." Dean growls.

"You got two months left, Dean. Instead, we're gonna die tonight." (Y/n) said, annoyed, as Sam picks up a chair and smashes it against the sealed front door. "Whoa! what the hell is going on, guys?" Spruce asked and the trio turn to him. 

"I'll tell you what's going on. Every door, every window, I'm guessing every exit out of this house -- they're all sealed." Sam replied. "But w-why are they sealed?" Maggie asked, scared. "It's a supernatural lockdown, okay? Whatever took Corbett doesn't want us to leave, and it's no death echo. This is a bad mother, and it wants us scared." (Y/n) explained. "Or it just wants us." Maggie said when the sound of the EMF detector goes off.

"Uh, guys, the camera's fritzing again." Spruce said as there was interference on his camera. "Whoa. Whoa. Guys, the EMF's starting to spike. This is a big one!" Ed said as Harry and Maggie walked to the middle of the room, both of them secretly holding hands

"Everybody, stay close. There's something coming." Sam said when another apparition appears. "Woah!" the Ghostfacers shout. "Is this the same echo you guys saw earlier?" Dean asked Harry. "No, it's a different guy." Harry replied and Dean looks over at Sam and (y/n).

"Multiple echoes? What the hell's going on?" he asked them. 'Beats me." Sam said as (y/n) shrugs. "Okay. All right. All right. All right." Dean said then he goes up to the apparition and starts to yell at it. "Uh, hey, buddy! Hey. Hey. Wake up. You're dead! Hello!"

"What's he doing? What's he doing?" Harry asked Sam and (y/n) as Dean continues to shout at the apparition. "It's rare, but sometimes you can shock an echo out of its loop if you can talk to the part of the ghost that's still human, but usually you have to have some kind of connection to the deceased." (Y/n) explains while Dean shouts.  Come on! Wake up! Be dead!"

The apparition flickers and turns around as everyone hears a noise. 'You guys hear that?" Harry asked. "What's that sound?" Ed asked as Dean shouts.  Snap out of it, buddy, huh? Come on, what are you waiting for? You're gonzo! You're dead!" 

A bright light shines on the apparition and the sound of a car horn approaching. The apparition flies backwards, as if hit by an invisible vehicle. "Where the hell did it go?" Harry asked as everyone looks around, confused.

The group follow Sam, Dean and (y/n) down the hallway of the 2nd floor. "Dude, there's no records of any of this here. No one got shot here. Obviously, no one got run over by a freaking train." Dean grumbles to Sam and (y/n). "Stay close." Sam said to the others as they walk on.

"Did the echoes take Corbett?" Maggie asked them. "Yes. No. I don't know. We don't know what's doing what here; that's what we're trying to figure out, okay?" Dean said, annoyed. "All right, stay close." (Y/n) tells them before Sam turns to the others.

"Okay, look, um, death echoes are ghosts, okay? Now, ghosts -- they usually haunt places where they lived or where they died." he explains. 'Except these mooks didn't live or die here." Dean added. "Right." (y/n) agreed.

"So, what are they doing here?" Maggie asked. "Hey, give the lady a cigar." Dean exclaims and (y/n) turns to her and see Maggie still holding a camera. 'All right, seriously, does looking at this nightmare through that camera make you feel better or something? I mean..." she said and Maggie stammers. "Um...I, uh... Well, yeah. Uh, yeah. I think so." She said and (y/n) huffs at this as they continue to walk through house. 

They enter a room full of stuffed animal heads on the walls, as well as file cabinets. Sam goes over and holds up a broken framed certificate. "Freeman Daggett, house's last owner, officially commended for 20 years of fine service at the Gamble General Hospital." he said. "He was a Doctor?" Dean asked. "Janitor." Sam corrected as (y/n) looks around the room.

"This looks like his den. When'd you say he died -- '64?" she asked him. "Yeah, heart attack." Sam replied. "What are these, c-rations?" Maggie asked as she points out something that looked like food trays. "Yeah, army-issued, three squares -- like a lifetime supply." Dean said.

"God, is that all he ate?" Maggie asked. "One-stop shopping." (Y/n) said as they continued to look around the room.

"Oh, come on, guys. This is ridiculous. I mean, how the hell is this supposed to find Corbett, huh? We should be digging up the friggin' floorboards right now." Ed said as Sam holds up a dusty pamphlet. "Huh. Survival Under Atomic Attack. An optimist." He said then there's a loud BANG as Dean pries the safe open then he and (y/n) leaf through the file box.

"Crap. Crap. Taxidermy. Okay. You said Daggett was a hospital janitor?" Dean asked Sam. "Yeah." Sam Reid when (y/n) found something. "Ewww. Got three toe tags here -- one, death by gunshots, train accident, and suicide." she said and Sam and Dean's face scrunch up in disgust. "Ewwwwww!" they said, disgusted. 

"What?" Harry asked. "Well, that explains why all the death echoes are here. They're here because their bodies are here...somewhere in the house." Sam said. "Daggett brought the remains home from the morgue. To play." Dean simplified then Harry and Ed made the same face. 

"Ewwwww! Ugh!" they exclaimed, disgusted. "That's nasty, dude." Spruce said. "Right." Sam said and Dean looks around. "Wait a minute." He said, realizing Maggie was missing. 

"Corbett." Maggie said as she walks around another room. Then she startles herself by coming across her own reflection in a mirror. "Okay, Maggie." She mutters and she swings the camera around, frightened, to reveal Dean. "Closer to the herd, okay?" Dean said as Harry runs in. "Maggie? Maggie?" He calls out. "She's fine." Dean assures him.

"Harry. Harry, I got an 8.6 and climbing fast. Something huge is coming. Look. Something big is coming." Ed exclaims. "It's past 11, you guys." Harry said as Spruce's camera got interference. 'What? Nobody move! Hold on. Hold on. Stay quiet." Dean said, quickly, as there was more camera interference.

Then suddenly (y/n), standing between Sam and Dean, disappears into thin air. "It's really cold in here." Ed said. "Harry?" Maggie said, worried, while Dean and Sam look between them to see (y/n) was gone.

"(Y/n)?" Sam said, confused, while Dean was taken aback by this. "Some kind of surge." Ed said. "(Y/n)?" Dean calls out but no answer. "Where'd she go?" Spruce asked. "Oh, no." Maggie whispers as Dean finds (y/n)'s dropped flashlight and picks it up.

"(Y/n)!" Dean shouts, panicked and worried.

"(Y/n)!" Sam calls out as they walk down the hallway. "Corbett!" Ed shouts. "(Y/n)!" Dean yells, his heart beating against his throat. "Corbett! Talk to us!" Harry shouts as they look around as well. "(Y/n)!" Sam and Dean shout just as Maggie and Harry stopped in a spot in the middle of the room, Spruce turns his camera to them.

"God, I am so scared. I'm so scared." Maggie said, fearfully. "It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay, Maggie." Harry assures her. They share a look before Maggie and Harry start to kiss.

"Corbett!" Ed's voice called while Maggie and Harry were still making out. "Bom-chicka-bow-wow...woah." Spruce whispers behind his camera until Ed finds Maggie and Harry. "My best friend... And my best sister." Ed shouts and Harry and Maggie break their kiss and embrace.

"Ed."

"Harry."

"Ed."

"Harry."

"Ed. listen, Ed." Harry said, trying to sound calm. "Are you banging my sister?" Ed asked Harry, angrily. "No! No!" Harry said then Ed takes off his glasses and turns to Spruce. "Hold my glasses." Ed tells him. "You got it." Spruce said as he takes Ed's glasses. "Ed." Harry said but then Ed attacks Harry. "Ed! Ed! Ed! Ed! Ed!" Harry shouts. "Guys!" Spruce shouts as Maggie screams. "Get off Harry!"

Then Dean and Sam show up and break up the fight. "What the f--- are you doing?! Cut it out!" Dean yells at them. "We're down by two people." Sam tells them then he and Dean turn away. "(Y/n)!" Sam shouts as he walks out. "(Y/n)!" Dean shouts.

"Great." Maggie grumbles as Harry and Ed look at each other. "Sorry." Harry said to Ed. "I'm sorry." Ed said then he turns to Spruce. "Give me my glasses. Did he knock my -- my tooth there?" Ed asked Spruce as he hands the glasses back to Ed. "Uh, no." Spruce said.

"I won that, right?" Ed asked him. "Yep. You're good." Spruce said, which annoyed Harry. "Thanks, Spruce." Harry said, sarcastically. "Yeah, it's my fault." Spruce grumbles. "That's real great. That's nice. Thanks." Maggie said as she walks off.

Meanwhile, in the basement, the song, It's My Party was playing in the background. In the middle was a table with cake and confetti and what looked like people gathered around. Corbett, who was at one end of the table, starts to come to consciousness when he heard a voice call out to him. 

"Corbett. Corbett. Hey. Corbett, hey." the voice said and he raises his head to see (y/n) across the table, she was tied to a chair just like he is. "(Y/n)?" Corbett said, confused. "Corbett, hey, you got to keep listening to my voice, okay? I'm right here. Stay awake." (y/n) said but then another voice comes in.

"Don't listen." a deep voice said and Corbett and (y/n) look up to see Daggett as he picks up a knife. "It stops hurting, so don't worry." Daggett said as he goes around Corbett and stands behind him, which started to make (y/n) panic but she does her best to stay cool. 

"Corbett, stay with me. Stay with me, you got it? I'm right here." she said to Corbett, who looks straight at her, and she could tell that he was beyond terrified. "Hey. Stay with me. Don't. Don't." (y/n) shouts at Daggett but it was too late as Daggett stabs Corbett through the throat. "No. Corbett! No! Corbett!" (y/n) screams as blood pours out of Corbett's wound and she watches him die in front of her.

"Corbett! Where'd you guys go?" Harry calls out as Dean and Sam look around. "Where are you guys?" Maggie calls out when Harry looks over at Dean. "Dean, what are you doing?" He asked. "Okay, so Daggett was a cold war nut, okay? He was -- he was an amateur taxidermist. He liked to slow dance with cadavers, and all he ate were c-rations, so what the hell are we looking for?!" Dean growls.

"Horrible little life." Maggie suggests. "Yeah, a lonely life...A cold war life. He was scared." Sam said but then he stops as he realized something. "He was scared...he was scared." Sam said as he and his brother share a look and both of them came to the same conclusion. 

"Scared of what? What?" Harry asked but Sam and Dean run off. "Guys, where are you going?" Harry asked as he follows them. "Wait, don't leave me in here, you guys." Maggie said as she catches up to them.

"Get away from me." (Y/n) growls at the man as he walks up to her. "This won't hurt. It's okay. It's okay. Relax. Relax." Daggett assures her and he straps a party hat onto her head while Corbett slumps dead at the other end of the table.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where are you going?" Maggie asked Dean and Sam as they start to walk towards the door of the basement. "Guys like Daggett back then, the ones who were really scared of the Russkies -- they built bomb shelters. We're guessing he's got one. I'll bet you it's in the basement." Dean said and Spruce follows him when the door slams behind Dean, cutting him and Spruce off from Harry, Ed, Sam and Maggie.

"Woah!" Harry shouts. "Woah! That is not funny!" Ed said, shocked, while Sam goes to the doorknob and tries to open it but it wouldn't budge.

"Um, who closed the door?" Spruce asked Dean, nervously. "It did. It wants to separate us." Dean replied and goes up to the door. "Sam!" He yells. "Dean! You okay?" Sam asked. "Yeah, listen to me! There's some salt in my duffle. Make a circle and get inside." Dean said. "Okay." Sam said and he walks away from the door while Ed, Harry and Maggie look at him, confused.

"Inside? Inside his duffle bag?" Ed asked Sam. "In the salt!" Sam shouts at him. "Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah." Ed said and they make their way back to base. Dean continues down the basement stairs.

"Okay. Get in the circle. Get in the circle." Sam tells the others after making a salt circle. "Come on. Come on. Quick, quick." Ed said as Harry and Maggie get into the circle with Sam and Ed. "Guys, guys, I don't want to die, okay, and I don't want you to die." Harry cried. "Harry, listen -- listen to me, okay? listen. If we don't die...it's totally okay if you, uh, do my sister." Ed said and Maggie pushes Ed. 

"Hey, hey, stopped." Sam yells when Maggie realized there was another interference on her camera. "Hey guys, hey guys, it's coming again." she tells them. "Oh, god. Oh, OK. Oh god, oh god." Ed stammers when the lights continue to flicker.

Then the group sees Corbett standing in front of them, bloody and unable to speak. "Oh. Oh, C-Corbett." Ed said, sadly, as they all look at him.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" Spruce asked Dean as they make their way around the basement. "What?" Dean asked. "Earlier, you, (y/n) and Sam -- she said you had two months left?" Spruce asked. "Yeah, it's complicated. A while ago, (y/n)..." Dean started to say but stops himself and shakes his head.

"No. No. No. I'm not gonna whine about my b------- problems to some b------- reality show. I'm gonna do my f------ job." he tells Spruce and he looks around some more. "Is it cancer?" Spruce asked. "Shut up." Dean growls then he stops as he hears music.

"You hear that?" he asked Spruce.

"I've been waiting for some more friends." Daggett said to (y/n) as he leans down to her. "I get lonely. But you're coming to my party, aren't you?" He asked her as she tries to pull back as much as she could in her chair.

"Is that music?" Spruce asked as Dean goes up to a cabinet. "Yeah, it's coming from behind this wall." Dean said and he singlehandedly pushes a cabinet away from the wall. "Wow, you're strong." Spruce said with sarcasm and Dean flips a middle finger to Spruce's camera.

"You'll stay a good, long time." Daggett said to (y/n) and he raises his knife until Dean breaks the door open to the bomb shelter. "(Y/n)!" Dean shouts and he shoots Daggett, who disappears, then unties (y/n). "Oh god." Spruce mutters, horrified, as he sees the whole birthday table, with the party guests of old corpses and one new corpse: Corbett. "Oh, no, Corbett." He whispers.

,

Ed, Harry, Sam and Maggie were still in the salt ring as Corbett's death echo happens again. "Oh god, what have we done? Oh god." Ed mutters. "Keep calm." Sam said to them. "Ed. Ed. Corbett's a -- he's a death echo. He's reliving his own murder." Harry tells him. "Over and over forever." Maggie said, sadly.

"What's this Daggett guy's problem anyway?" Spruce asked Dean and (y/n) as they walk out of the room.

"Loneliness." (y/n) replied.

"What, he's never heard of a Realdoll?" Dean asked. "No, no, no, Daggett was the Norman Bates, stuff-your-mother kind of lonely. I mean, that's why he lifted these bodies from the morgue, threw himself a birthday party, except they were the only ones who would come. Anyway, so, at midnight, he sealed them in the bomb shelter and went upstairs and o.d.'d on horse tranqs." (Y/n) informed and Dean looks at her, confused.

"How do you know this?" he asked her. "'Cause he told me." She replied. "Oh. yeah. Okay, so now that he's dead, what? Same song, different verse, trying to get people to come to his party?" Dean said. "Pretty much, yeah. Stay forever." (Y/n) said and Dean starts to load his gun

"Are those real bullets?" Spruce asked him. "It's rock salt." Dean replied.

Harry sings the Ghostfacers theme song that they made up as they stand there until Corbett's apparition appears again. "Guys, it's -- it's Corbett. He's -- he's -- he's trapped. He's in a lot of pain, you know? We got to try and...we got to try and pull him out of his loop. We have to." Ed said as he stands up and faces Corbett. "Ed." Sam and Harry said. "Corbett. Corbett, it's -- Oh, god." Ed said as he looks down at the salt line.

"Don't cross the line of salt." Harry said. Ed hesitates, then steps over the salt line, confronting the ghost of Corbett. "I gotta do it, Harry." Ed said. Harry looks over at Sam, who nods, and Ed turns to Corbett. "Corbett, listen to me. Okay, I'm not gonna hurt you. Listen. Listen. Oh, god. Corbett. Oh." Ed said but then the ghost starts to flicker.

"Get back!" Harry shouts and Ed quickly retreats. "oh, god. Whoa. Oh, I can't, okay? He's not hearing me, okay? He won't stop dying." Ed said, fearfully.

Meanwhile, Dean is attempting to break down the basement door that's still separating Dean, (y/n) and Spruce from the others. (y/n) turns and sees that Spruce was still holding his camera and he had it aimed at her ass. "Hey!" She growls and he moves the camera back to her face. "Eyes up here, buddy. And are you seriously still shooting?" She asked. "It makes him feel better. Don't ask." Dean said when there was camera interference and flickering in Spruce's camera.

"Ah, hell, guys. Get in your ghost-role thing. Something's coming." Spruce said as he spins around and sees Daggett. Daggett then knocks Spruce and his camera to the ground, causing him to roll and scream. Spruce screamed as Daggett approaches Spruce, but is shot and dissipated by (y/n).

"I...I know how we can get through to him." Harry said. "How?" Sam asked him and Harry looks over at Ed. "Ed...He had feelings for you." He said and Ed gives him a bewildered and shocked look. "He wanted you." Harry said. "Wa-- wanted me to what?" Ed said, confused. "You know..." Harry said then he demonstrates with a slight grunt and pelvic thrust

"And you know what you've got to do. You can do it, Ed. You've always been the brave one. Yes, you can. You make us brave -- Maggie, right?" Harry said to her. "Yeah. Yeah you do. You totally do." Maggie said as Ed looks between them. "Ed...You got to go be gay for that poor, dead intern. You got to send him into the light." Harry said then Ed looks over at Sam.

"It should work." Sam said and then Ed approaches the ghost of Corbett again. "Corbett." Ed said as he steps over the salt line. "Corbett, look. Hey, it's just Ed, buddy. It's just me. Hey, hey, Corbett, listen to me. Listen to me." Ed said as he approaches Corbett..

"I -- we...Okay. You meant...Corbett, you meant a lot to the team. You meant...You meant a lot to me. You know, never back down...Never say a bad word, okay? I remember that, Corbett. I-I remember that. I remember because I love you, Corbett. I really, truly love you. Do you remember that? do you?" Ed asked, a tear running down his face, and then Corbett looks over at Ed.

"Hey. Ed?" he asked. "Yeah. Yeah, Corbett, it's...Corbett, yeah, it's me. It's me. look at me. You got to help us, man. you have to help us, Corbett. Please. please. Please help us right now." Ed begs as Corbett stares at Ed.

"Take it easy. You all right?" (y/n) asked Spruce when there was camera interference and flickering in Spruce's camera. The ghost of Daggett appears behind Dean. "Uh, guys..." Spruce said then Daggett throws Dean, then (y/n) against the wall and was about to attack Spruce.

"This is bad -- very bad." Spruce stammers, fearfully, when Corbett appears behind Daggett. "Corbett?" Spruce said, confused, then Corbett's ghost attacks Daggett and they both disappear in a blinding flash of light.

"You all right, guys?" Spruce asked as (y/n) and Dean pick themselves up off the floor. "You all right?" Spruce asked he comes up to the couple. "God." (Y/n) groans while Dean looks back at the camera, covering the lens with his hand.

Morning came as the door to the Morton House opens, and Ed, Sam, Dean, (y/n), Harry and Maggie exit. Harry and Maggie pause to hug, while Sam gives Ed his phone number on a scrap of paper and Dean checks on (y/n). Then they start to load up and leave

Leap year, February 29th, the Morton House. A tragic day. A day of souls bound in torment, of lives held in cruel balance. But the Ghostfacers, they did the best that they could.

We lost a beloved friend, but we gained new allies.

We know this much: that every day, including today, is a new beginning. We learned more than we can say in the brutal feat of the Morton House.

The Ghostfacers were forced to face something far more scary than ghosts. They were forced to face themselves.

War changes Man.

 And Maggie and (y/n).

War changes man. And two women...You know Corbett, we just...ah gosh, we just like to think that you're out there, watching over us.

As far as we're concerned, you're not an intern anymore. You have more than earned full Ghostfacer status. Plus, it would be cool to have a ghost on the team.

Yeah. Heh heh. And here we were thinking that, you know, we were teaching you and all this time you were teaching us, about heart, about dedication, and about how gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the day. Thank you, Alan J. Corbett.

Go well into that starry night, young Turk. Go well.

"Come on, Spruce, I gotta get all this stuff packed up!" Corbett said as he and Spruce load up the van, getting ready to head to the Morton house. "So, pack and talk!" Spruce said as he aims the camera at him. "I don't know what to say." Corbett said. "Say what comes to mind. This is one of our confessional moments, Corbett, so confess. What did you think was going to happen tonight? What do you think is going to happen on this trip?" Spruce asked him.

Corbett sighs then thinks before he speaks up. "I think tonight, I really do, I think all of our dreams are going to come true." He replies then looks over at Spruce. "Does that sound stupid?" He asked. "Kind of does, yeah." Spruce said and the two chuckle a bit.

In Memory of Alan J. Corbett,

1985-2008

King of the Impossible 

*(y/n)'s POV*

"So, guys, what do you think? Are you alright?" Ed asked us as the boys and I say there and finished watching Ed and Harry's show. "You know, I kind of think it was half-awesome." Dean replies. "Half-awesome? That - that's full-on good, right?" Maggie said, excited.

"Yeah, um, I mean it's bizarre how you all are able to honor Corbett's memory while grossly exploiting the manner of his death. Well done." Sam said as Dean secretly slips the device into a backpack under the table. "Yeah. It's a real tight rope you guys are walking there." I said. "Yeah, all right guys." Sam mutters.

"Nah, that's reality, man. Yeah, Corbett gave his life searching for the truth, and it's our job over here to share it with the world." Ed said. "Right. Well, um, our experience, you know what you get when you show the world the truth?" Sam asked him. "A straightjacket." I said. "Or a punch in the face. Sometimes both." Dean adds. "Right." Sam said.

"Oh come on, guys, don't be 'facer haters just because we happen to have gotten the footage of the century." Harry exclaims. "Oh yeah." Ed said. "You got us there." I said, shrugging. "Yeah." Sam said. "Yeah, well we'll see you guys around." Sam said as we start to head towards the door.

"Peace out." Spruce said as Sam, Dean and I leave and Ed shuts the door behind us.

"We clean?" Sam asked as we get to the Impala. Suddenly, we hear Ed shout. "No! are you kidding me?"

"Electromagnet wiped out every tape and hard drive that they have." Dean said, smiling. "The world just isn't ready for the Ghostfacers." I said as we get into the car. "It's too bad. I kinda liked the show." Dean said. "It had its moments." Sam said and I nod. "Yeah, it was pretty entertaining." I added then Dean starts the Impala and we drive off.

@rach5ive @kitsun369 @itzabbyxx @cevans-winchester @ellie-andthemachine

[sporco-filth]

Superhero to superslob: part the second

You could pretty easily skip part one and just start with this one.

Synopsis: After a villain fires a mysterious raybeam at him, a superhero begins to lose his strength. But the change is slow, so the villain decides to work on a way to speed things up a bit.

Justin Steele (aka Cascade Fall's beloved superhero Jupiter) was lying on the couch, watching TV. This was not normal. Why have I been so… he tried to think of the word as he turned into a more comfortable position. Tired? Is this what tiredness feels like? Justin, being gifted with super endurance but also thanks to his meticulously healthy lifestyle, had never really been tired before. Sure, he'd been exhausted after an intense work-out or fighting a tough supervillain or rampaging monster, but never lethargic, never woken up lacking any desire to so much as get dressed let alone go out for his morning session at the gym. Hence why he was stuck on the couch, watching daytime television. I need to get up, he thought. I think if I just get some fresh air I'll feel better. With Herculean effort, Jupiter pushed himself up from the couch and shook his head clear. With determination, he put his runners on and strode out the door. He had heard of Superheroes who'd gotten slack over time, fallen prey to vices or become jaded, ending up forgotten or, worse, pitied by those they had sworn to protect. That won't be Jupiter, he thought. I'm not going to let myself fall so easily!

Corruptor was pacing in his lair. On a screen in front of him was footage of inside Jupiter's empty apartment. "The ray's clearly had an effect," he said to his lackey Glob. "I think we need to strike!" "No, no," Glob shook her head. "I keep telling you: we need to be patient! The longer you wait, the greater the effect and the easier it'll be to win." Corruptor scowled. "But how long will that be?" Glob sighed. "I don't know…" She thought for a minute and then slammed her fist into her palm, eyes bright with inspiration. "I've got it!" She rushed out of the room and into her lab, leaving a baffled Corruptor. "What? What have you got?" Corruptor vainly called out. "You have to stop running out of the room before explaining things!" Glob poked her head around the door. "I've got an idea for something that should speed up the process! I just need to run a few tests. Can you go grab me a couple of rats?" Corruptor frowned to himself as Glob shut the door again. "Why do I always get rat collection duty… I thought we agreed on a roster…"

A few days later, Justin was about to do some dusting (he'd put it off all week and had finally worked up the motivation to start), when the doorbell rang. Not expecting guests, he looked at the security camera to see a man with a large beard, sunglasses and a cap. In his hands was what looked like a pizza box. Justin opened the door. "I'm sorry, but there must be a mistake, I didn't order a pizza." "Are you sure?" the man asked. There was something familiar about the voice, but Justin's mind was a bit groggy and in his befuddlement over the pizza he let it slide. "I'm sure. I don't order take out." "Well, the address on the order form is yours." Justin looked at it. Even his name was correct. "Is this some kind of prank?" he wondered aloud. "Well, I don't want this pizza to go to waste," the guy said. "You can have it on the house as an apology for the annoyance." "Oh, no, please," Justin shook his head. "I really shouldn't." "Aw, come on," the guy smiled. "If you're on a diet, I'm sure one pizza won't hurt." The scent of the fresh pizza hit Justin's nostrils. As if his body was acting against his will, he stepped aside and let the pizza guy in. "O-OK…" Sitting down on the couch, Justin watched as the deliveryman opened the box. Before him was a pizza oozing with cheese, laden with meat and sauce. He sucked up a bit of saliva that had begun to form in his mouth. "I… uh…" "Here, try it," the deliveryman said, a hint of something darker laced his voice, but by now Jupiter was too focused on the disc of cheesy goodness to pay attention. The deliveryman pulled up a slice, its oil glistened in the light and long strands of melted cheese dangled from it. Jupiter opened his mouth, allowing the piece to be lowered into his waiting maw, and took a bite. He moaned in pleasure. "There, it's good, isn't it?" the pizza guy smiled. Jupiter didn't even acknowledge him, reaching for a second slice in such a hurry a few globules of sauce and grease dripped down onto his pristine white shirt. With a grin, the deliveryman made his exit, leaving Jupiter to enjoy himself. Outside the apartment, he pulled off his beard. "Ugh, that thing itches," Corruptor growled. "This plan better work." As he returned to his vehicle (the unoriginally-named Corruptormobile), his mobile communication device (what non-supervillains might refer to as a 'phone') rang. "So, did the plan work?" "Well, he ate the pizza, so the ultratempting smell thingy part worked. I don't know about the real part of the plan." In the lab, Glob peered into a glass enclosure wherein sat a number of fat rats. "The chemical had 100% effectiveness on the rats, so I'm pretty sure it'll reduce the metabolism of a human." "I know, but he's a superhuman." Glob flicked through her notes. "There's incredibly limited research on superhumans, and every case is unique, but I've seen reports where they've had even stronger reactions to things than a normal person, so maybe we'll be even luckier and he'll be fatter and lazier quicker than expected." Corruptor got into the seat of the Corruptormobile and turned it on. "You better hope you're right. I'll be back soon, over and out." He hung up and zoomed off down the streets.

[ollieinoue]

Ogden Thanksgiving. The beginning of the night. [ @jessehart ]

"Oh! Oh my god, hang on," Ollie grabbed the edges of his mom's and Gabriel's shirts pulling them in around him and his dad so the four of them could form a little discussion circle, after he spotted Jesse, and his dad lingering close by. "Okay, so this guy up here-- we hate him, okay?" They all looked behind Ollie, much more obviously than he would have liked. Gabriel the only one being subtle while his parents might as well have been gawking at Jesse and Donovan Hart. "Guys…" Ollie said, putting his hand on the side of his Dad's head and pushing it back, making his parents both laugh. "Come on."

"Do we hate both of them?" His mom asked, "or…?"

"No, that's Jesse. We're really good friends. We hate his dad," Ollie said, nodding his head.

"He's on the television," Gabriel said, and Ollie nodded.

"Yes! He is! He's got like one of those shitty doctor talk shows," he said if his parents didn't know, which they didn't. Most of their time was not spent watching daytime TV as they were probably working most of the time. But being disabled, and out of work, of course Gabriel probably knew. "So, like be really subtle about not liking him though. Like just be chill, and pretend you don't know who he is, and undercut his ego. That's what I've been doing. Okay?" They all nodded, and Ollie gave a responding nod. Plan made he turned back towards the Hart's and lead his family that way. "Hey bro," He greeted Jesse with a smile, and putting a hand on his shoulder, using his free one to motion to the three people with him. "I wanted to introduce you to my family! I don't think you've ever gotten to meet them before." A lot of people had whether it was when they visited campus, or if they came with Ollie to NYC for one reason or the other, but he didn't think Jesse ever had.

"This is my mom Faye," the small currently blonde and curly headed woman gave a casual nod in Jesse's direction. "and my dad Ren," the tall Japanese man waved with a cheerful smile. "And this is Gabriel Jiménez! He's Sam's grandfather," he added with a bright smile. Like it wouldn't be weird, or a controversial decision at all to bring him along to the school's thanksgiving dinner, held right in the commons. Like he wasn't doing it to send some sort of message -- whatever that might be. "I don't know if you ever really met her, but…" he said, waving his hand in dismissal. Though that was a lie. Sam said her and Jesse were friends, of course how good of friends was probably up in the air, but they had known each other, and she did consider him a friend (she considered everyone a friend). Either way Ollie thought it was probably a bad idea to draw any connections between Jesse and Sam in front of Jesse's dad.

"Everyone this is my friend Jesse!" He said, smiling brightly, then moved his hand in the direction of Jesse's dad. "And this is Jesse's dad -- uhm," he held his hand out in the direction of the older man, pausing for a few beats, like he forgot his name and was trying to remember it. "Mr. Hart -- I'm sorry I don't remember… Well, I don't think we've ever actually met, anyway." That was not true, he'd definitely done an interview with him before, which definitely went really really badly. But if he was being honest, he didn't really remember many of those details. He'd been extremely high at the time, so maybe he wasn't lying too much there. "I'm Ollie Inoue, one of Jesse's friends, it's nice to meet you!"

[fandomsnstuff]

We're two weeks in team! Have some simple blupjeans chatter

Day 14: celebrity au

Barry's just trying to buy a new tv for their bedroom, but Lup wants to talk about his celebrity status.

Read it on AO3

Barry considers the different tvs in front of him. “The 45 should be enough for where we're putting it. What do you think, babe?” He looks at Lup, but she's looking off in some other direction. “Lup?” 

She turns to him. “Hm?” 

“The tv?” 

“Oh, yeah, whatever you want is fine.” She looks away again. 

“Alright, uh,” he turns back to the sales associate helping them, “we'll go with the 45 inch one then.” 

“Great! Just wait right here and I'll go grah the box from the back.” 

They walk away, and Barry says to Lup, “what has you so distracted.” 

She glances at him and grins. She links her arm through his and points to a tv nearby, “look.” 

It's playing an episode of a cheesy mafia-themed soap opera. The same mafia-themed soap opera Barry was cast in 30 years ago to play the mob boss's fifteen year old son. The scene playing at the moment is from a recent season, showing Barry all done up in a suit, surveying some sort of shipment. 

He rolls his eyes. “You're ridiculous.” 

She laughs. “You're probably the only mainstream celebrity who comes to Best Buy for his tvs.” 

“There's no way I'm mainstream. I'm like a T-list celebrity at best."

“Oh, come on. You're on Netflix!” 

“Have you seen some of the shit on there? It's like finding an old can of beans from 1962 at the back of your grandma's cupboard sometimes. Plus,” he gestures vaguely at the tv, “the show's been running for over 30 years now, some streaming service was bound to pick it up eventually. It's not an indication of my celebrity status.” 

Lup tuts. “You're selling yourself short, Bluejeans. You've gotta be at least E-list. The kids are getting into older shows nowadays.”

“I never get recognized in public.” 

“Bullshit. There was that one time-” 

“On the rare occasion that I do, they're almost always over the age of 60.” He gives Lup a look as he cuts her off, knowing she was going to mention that time they were on a road trip and a table of older women recognized him in a diner. She purses her lips, thinking. “You get recognized more than I do,” he says. “You're more of a celebrity than I am.” 

“There's no way a YouTube channel makes me more famous than you, who's been a staple of daytime television since you were fifteen.” 

“Oh yeah?” He tilts his head to indicate behind her, “six o'clock.” 

“Excuse me?” Right on cue, a 20-something customer comes up to them. “I'm so sorry, but are you Lup Taaco?” 

Barry takes a picture for them, and Lup talks to them for a few quick minutes until the sales associate comes back with their tv. The fan thanks her and scurries away. Barry takes the flat cart from the associate and starts driving it to the cash registers. “Told you,” he says.

“Shut up.” She crosses her arms. “I refuse to accept this slander to your popularity.” 

“Lup, I'm a pudgy white guy in his 40s wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I'm practically set decoration when I'm in public. Now, if I walked around in a suit and waved a gun around going,” he makes a finger gun and does a silly impression of his tv self, “give me my fuckin’ money or I'll kill ya! Then I might get a little more attention.” 

Lup considers this. “I don't think people would appreciate that.” 

“No, I don't think they would. Unfortunately tv is pretend and I don't actually run the seedy underbelly of a major city.” 

They get to the register, and Lup digs into her purse for her wallet. “Well at least we don't have to worry about the paps following us around.” 

“And we can go to Best Buy for tvs.” 

[tinybeebo]

A Timelord’s Weakness

Little! 11 and Caregiver! Ponds

Word count: 1.1k

A/n: This part of a one-shot series I'm writing on Ao3. In which I am currently taking request over there!

AO3

Having the TARDIS crash into their front yard was definitely not in the Pond's plans for their Sunday afternoon.

Alast, it was something they were quite used to.

Maybe not crashing into their lawn and taking out several garden gnomes bit.

Amy watched as the Doctor stumbled out clumsily, her hand on her hip in mild disapproval.

The Doctor's grin spread across his face when he locked eyes with Amy, he hurried across the yard.

“Amy!” he engulfed her in a hug, squeezing her tightly.

Amy reciprocated but frowned.

“Doctor, you're burning up!”

The Doctor pulled away and Amy got to see the Doctor close up.

He was coated in sweat, his hair sticking to his forehead, and his face flushed red.

The Doctor's breathing was labored, yet he still managed to give Amy a lopsided smile.

“Are you sick?” she asked, confused.

“Uhhh yes, I believe so?” the Doctor said, scratching his arm nervously.

“I thought timelords had “superior biology” and couldn’t get sick.” She made air quotes and crossed her arms.

“Well yes, but-”

The Doctor passed out.

Luckily, Amy managed to catch him.

“Rory!”

Rory ran out of their home, hair wet from the shower and barefooted. He rushed to Amy,

“I’ll grab his arms and you’ll get his legs” Amy instructed.

Rory moved to grab the Doctor’s legs, hooking underneath his knees, he frowned when he saw the state of the garden gnomes.

“I just bought those gnomes,” he sulked.

“Rory!”

“Right, yes. The Doctor.”

_______________

He stirred uncomfortably and whined. The Doctor had decided he did not like basketball shorts and struggled to squirm out of them, but eventually managed to free himself. He threw the offensive article of clothing to the ground and sat up.

He could hear someone in the kitchen and took it upon himself to investigate, although his body wasn’t quite cooperating with him.

He stood on wobbly legs, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders. He leaned against the wall for support and slowly made his way to the kitchen.

He managed to get to the doorway and leaned against it for a moment of rest.

Amy places down the tea kettle, dropping a few sugar cubes into her mug before greeting the Doctor.

“Welcome back to the world, Doctor.”

“Mmmmh” The Doctor groaned and pressed his forehead against the cool wall.

Amy tisked and walked over to guide the Doctor back to the couch.

She sat him down on the couch,

“Doctor, where did your shorts go?” She looked around for the missing article of clothing.

“Didn't like them.” He shrugged

Amy gives up on the search for the shorts, instead, grabbing the remote. She turned on the television, leaving it on whatever daytime soap opera was playing.

The Doctor sat and watched for a few moments, expression rather unclear.

“Boring!” He said with a huff.

Amy was quite surprised at the outburst. She had only put on the TV for white noise, having not expected the Doctor to even watch it.

She picked back up the remote, flicking through the channels slowly, watching the Doctor's reaction to each one.

“Stop.” The Doctor said firmly

She landed on CBeebies, which was currently playing an episode of Peter Rabbit.

The Doctor was completely invested in the show.

Amy had known the Doctor to be childish, but today he was different.

More than childish. It was more like he was an actual child.

Amy heard of people going into a regressed state like this from Rory. She recalls him telling her a story about a patient who was convinced she was 5 years old. At first, Amy thought you had to be completely mad to believe something like that.

But that, of course, was before the Doctor.

Amy moves to get up, assuming the Doctor would be fine without her.

Boy, was she wrong.

The Doctor snapped his head away from the TV to protest her departure.

“Amy, no leave!” He cried out, his eyes welling up with tears.

Amy sat back down and the Doctor immediately crawled onto her, snuggling against her. He brought his attention back to the television, sniffling occasions.

Amy rubbed the Doctor’s back, taking note of how hot he still was.

She pulled out her phone and sent Rory a message to grab children's medicine instead.

_____________

The Doctor cried and turned away from Rory, who was currently holding a syringe full of cherry-flavored cold medicine.

“Doctor, you have to take your medicine to feel better!” Rory said, exasperated.

The Doctor shook his head, and hid in the crook of Amy’s neck, crying harder.

“Maybe if ya mixed it with something. Then he won't know what it is!” Amy suggested tiredly.

Rory sighs and marches off to the kitchen. Coming back a moment later with a cup of grape juice.

“Doctor, look! Rory brought you juice.” She said in a chippy whisper.

The Doctor picked up his head, studying the cup.

Rory held it out, The Doctor looked up at him confused.

Amy waited a moment before intervening.

“Oh, just give it here!”

She took the cup from Rory and held it up to the Doctor’s mouth. The Doctor attempted to take a few small snips but ended up spilling the drink all over himself. This caused him to go into another crying fit.

Amy shushed him while Rory ran to grab a washcloth and a clean shirt for the Doctor.

It took a while for Rory to come back, Amy was growing very impatient, as was the Doctor.

Finally, Rory returns with a warm washcloth and one of his old T-shirts.

Once the Doctor was wiped down and redressed, Rory handed Amy a baby bottle filled with the grape juice medicine mix from earlier.

Amy cocked her head in confusion, yet took the bottle and held it up to the Doctor, he latched on and suckled.

“Where did you get this?” Amy said softly, careful not to disturb the now sluggish Doctor.

“Figured I’d grab one after you asked for children's medicine. Seems to have been the right choice.” Rory said, joining the Doctor and Amy on the couch.

“Seems to have been indeed.” She says, pushing back the Doctor’s hair from his forehead, his eyes fighting to stay open as he drinks from the bottle.

“It’s okay, my love. You can sleep now.” She chuckles

The Doctor finishes the bottle and wedges himself in between Rory and Amy before falling into a peaceful sleep.

[tiny-buzz]

Regis Philbin and Jim from the Office (Actor John Krasinski) were not longtime friends. In fact, despite working at the same studio in New York City, it wasn't until 2011, close to Regis's retirement, that the two men's paths would cross outside 30 Rockefeller Center.

"Well I was always a huge fan of Regis growing up as a kid" [Jim from The Office is responding to a question that was presented off screen] "So it caught me off guard that he was a fan of my work as well. I remember him saying how he and his wife would watch my show every Tuesday at 9:30 pm EST on NBC. He was blushing slightly, asking the type of questions I was used to hearing at Office fan conventions, like 'Hey, how did you get Dwight's Stapler suspending in Jello like that' and 'So when Kevin spilled the chili, was that real, or just "TV Magic"?' [Jim does a startling skilled impression of Regis here]. Filming for the day had wrapped at that point, and I offered to buy Regis a cup of coffee, so we could continue our conversation further. At that point in my life, my career was ascendant, so I had stopped off in my dressing room to put on what were my usual disguises I would wear in public to obfuscate my identity (A giant scarf with a checkered pattern that reflects back the flash of any Paparazzi cameras, large dark moon-shaped sunglasses, and a plain burlap coat devoid of any logos or symbols and thick enough to hide the shape of my body). I asked Regis whether he would be wearing his disguise and he laughed a deep belly laugh before telling me that he loves his fans, and wouldn't have it any other way. I soon found this to be true when, during our walk, excited passersby would gawk and stare, fully enraptured by Regis' presence. Regis would catch their eye and ask them if they were looking for 'a photo, an autograph, or just a smile'. I remember in a clever bit of role reversal, multiple Spidermen stopped to ask *him* to pose for a photograph. I'll never forget the way Regis joked with the Spidermen, coaxing them to flex their biceps and exclaiming about how strong they were, all the while insisting that they, not him, were the real heroes."

"WE talked for hours after arriving at the coffee shop. He shared his triumphs, his regrets, and the things he wasn't quite sure how to feel about after nearly a half century on television. 'Now don't get me wrong', Regis explained, 'I wouldn't trade one second of it'. As our conversation stretched into the evening, he began to tell me stories that I had never heard, either in the trades our through gossip. He confided that he had had many children out of wedlock, about the overflowing tensions between himself and Kelly Ripa which almost made him question his love of daytime TV hosting, and how he often wondered if Meredith Vieira had the 'Zing' necessary to pull Who Wants To Be A Millionaire US franchise out of its ratings slump."

"EVENTUALLY, apologetically, our barista let us know that they would be closing soon and Regis thanked her with a picture, an autograph, and a $200 cash tip. Regis registered my surprise. 'You want to make it big enough to make it happy, but not so much to make headlines you know what I mean?' he said, gently ribbing me with his elbow. As we waited outside for a cab (this was before Uber really took off), we began saying our goodbyes, exchanging contact information with promises of meeting again someday in the future. When a driver finally arrived he opened the back door began staring into my eyes, looking for something that I wasn't sure was there before telling me that there was 'something I'd like you to see.'"

"I took off my disguise once entering the cab. Though I was initially worried that I would be recognized for my role as Jim, I should have known by now that Regis was the star, and I was merely a satellite in his orbit. Regis opened by giving his home address and then adding that it was his 'final answer'. From the rest of the trip home, our driver was starstruck. He, like me, had grown up watching Regis' glow emanate from the TV screen in his home, seemingly there, in the background of every pivotal life moment, separated by only a thin piece of glass. When we arrived, Regis let him take a photo, then handed him an autograph alongside a very large tip, thereby earning not only the drivers loyalty, but his undying reverence.

"REGIS'S manse was at both times massive, and yet still reflective of his working class upbringing in the Bronx. As we walked through to his study I marveled at all the TV memorabilia that lined the halls: the collar from the original Lassie, the intercom from Charlie's angels, a piece of the Challenger Space Shuttle, as well as an original sketch of Bart Simpson's shorts. 'This!' Regis exclaimed, unlocking the drawer to his large polished oak desk, 'This is what I wanted to show you!'. Regis slowly spread out what appeared to be an old naval map from the 19th, no, the 18th century. 'I want to go here', Regis said, pointing to coast of the colony of North Carolina, 'That's where the best clam fishing is! The problem is, the sandbars are too high for most motor fishing boats. So we're going to have to get creative!' Thinking back on it, I'm almost certain that Regis never asked me if I wanted to join his voyage. Perhaps he didn't need to. I think we both knew from the time I stepped into his home that I was with him no matter where his adventure took us and that that was my final answer."

"WE stayed up late into the night, drinking fermented clam juice, speculating on what the media would say if it ever got out that two of TV's biggest stars would soon be legendary Clam-haulers. Regis spoke passionately at length about his Irish background and the history and fortitude of the Philbin Clan. We made plan to set sail 6:00 a.m. on Friday morning to set sail on the SS Regis Weekend.

"WHEN I arrived at the docks, I immediately felt myself to be ill-suited to the task, especially when compared to the other members of the crew. There was "John" Regis Jr Ripa, a young and jovial burly man with bleach blonde windswept hair fastening a large sail with the Philbin family sigil to the ships mast, Louis Lee, John's half brother, 6 years his senior, checking the ships inventory, a mostly silent man known only as "King" who appeared very much like Regis, only more squat and muscular with large tribal face tattoos, and Regina, the ship's cook, a short and homely woman of unknown parentage. 'So what do you say? Are you ready?' Regis asked, playfully slapping me on the back. Not long after I agreed, I was put to work, and we soon set sail after, due South, where Regis's great bounty awaited us.

"IT was two days in when the storm set upon us. We were all of us, the crew, feasting and drinking in the galley, listening to Regis regale us with tales of what Oprah Winfrey was really like behind the scenes when King burst in. Hurried, he warned us that the severe winds had contracted the sail, and if it was not properly extended, our ship would be blown off course. Spry and nimble, Regis rushed to the ships helm while we Men braved the harsh winds, pulling rope and tying knots to extend the sail of the Regis Weekend. A large wave burrowed and then crept across the deck of the ship, sweeping us away off our feet, and then up and back again from the right side. Encased in a wall of rain, I lost sight of John and Louis, and only saw King again as he was pulled me up after I found myself dangling from the ships side. It was only after the storm had subsided that we realized they had been swallowed by the cruel sea.

"REGIS mourned his lost sons for all of Saturday evening and most of Sunday morning. During that time he retreated often to the captains quarters, making me question whether his entire expedition had been folly. I had grown ill as well, my constitution weakened by a lack of vitamin C after our fruit rations were depleted. I had by then resolved to confront Regis, to turn the Weekend around and return to New York City. That was when I heard it. First a thump, then a rattling, a clicking and finally Regis crying out 'Wowie!'

"On the deck of the weekend were dozens, if not hundreds of clams, leaping from the ocean and onto the SS Regis Weekend. 'Bet you didn't see this coming did ya?' Regis beamed, 'This is just fantastic! Wow!' King and I ushered the deck clams into the cargo hold, then set out nets on the port of the ship to collect the rest. When our holds were filled, Regina cooked a full feast of fresh baked clams and later that night we set course due North. Home"

"THOUGH our rewards were great, our losses were greater. Regis had finally proven that 19th century clam fishing techniques were still viable in the modern era, but in the process lost his two bastard sons. Regis would go on to host five more shows before retiring and I continued in my TV career and beyond, eventually starring and directing in feature film 'The Quiet Place' which contains a tribute to Louis Lee and John Ripa."

This was the only known encounter between Mr. Krasinski and Regis Philbin and only became public following Regis's death in 2020. Every year, on the anniversary of this event [September 9th], Mr. Krasinski will put out a public statement reading simply:

Regis Weekend Has Been Extended For The Next 24 Hours And Will Expire On September 10th.

[lyinginahammock]

DC - The Reigning King of TV Superhero Animation

Let’s get this out of the way - on September 7, 1992, DC won the battle for TV superhero animation for all time with the premiere of the Batman: The Animated Series season 1, episode 14, “Heart of Ice”. The heartbreaking tale of Mr. Freeze’s origin, it won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Writing in an Animated Program. Honestly, if nothing DC every put on broadcast TV ever again was any good, this episode would still be talked about as one of the greatest pieces of animated TV ever. 

But instead of resting on their laurels, DC decided to keep kicking ass. “Beware The Grey Ghost,” “Almost Got ‘Im”, “Trial”, “Mad Love”, “Growing Pains”, “Over the Edge”, “Old Wounds” - all amazing episodes of animated television from Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures. 

Then, in 1999, DC decided to go for (and pull off) a Batman hat trick with the debut of Batman Beyond, a series originally designed to sell toys that the writers decided to make kick ass. But still, it eventually had to come to an end, and Marvel breathed a sigh of relief. 

Until November 7, 2001, when DC dropkicked them with the premiere of The Justice League, which transitioned into Justice League Unlimited with grace and style and was similarly amazing, but appeared to end that run of successes. 

At the same time, DC released the series that sealed their eternal victory and proved them the king of superhero animations - Teen Titans. An anime-infused take on the superhero team of the same name, it featured DC’s trademark complicated storytelling and ran for five years, followed by a pretty good movie. And the theme song fucking slapped, both in English and Japanese.

Also running concurrently was The Batman, another interesting take on the caped crusader which reimagined the origins and appearances of his rogues gallery and had some absolutely heartbreaking twists and turns.

After that came Batman: The Brave and the Bold. I’ll die on this fucking hill - the show is better than people online give it credit for. It focused on the campy elements of comic books of yore, but also gave us the amazing episode “Chill of the Night!”, an examination of what it means to be the Batman.

Then came Young Justice, a wholly original take on a number of DC heroes and villains and marked the TV premier of fucking Superboy. The first season is, in my mind, damn near perfect.

Of course, you have stuff like Teen Titans Go! but that isn't conducive to my point, so I'm ignoring it.

Finally, we get to the present day with programming like The Harley Quinn Show and My Adventures With Superman, the former of which has gained a strong fan base and the latter of which shows amazing potential.

So, why does DC's animation devision have so many absolute fucking bangers under its belt while Marvel doesn't have nearly the same track record? Well, I have a theory.

Marvel hit it big with the MCU and thus have a sort of cannon and, as such, the characterization of their characters has to be pretty consistent across mediums, even animation. DC, however, doesn't have anything like that and can reimagine their characters any way they want. That and their animation department has been kicking ass so long they've proven that, left to their own devices, they'll pump out quality material.

So, yeah.

[snaillamp]

JOD - day 12

Sorta based on my own experience this one. The crutches at least. I had to use them on and off for three years due to leg surgeries. Crutches are an awesome underused tool in whump imo. I was also thinking a lot about Scheiderweiher Lake when i wrote this idky, I miss that place, I should go back one day.

************************************************************

Masterlist

Day 12: “It’s no use.” | Explosion | Fainting | Trembling |

Hero hunched over on their crutches. Their armpits hurt from using them all day. Making their way over to their couch, they eased their way onto it, wincing at the pain in their thigh as they lay down. They had been dealing with the broken leg for a week now, and it wasn’t getting any better and on top of that their left ear was hurting too. Their femur ached as they lay back, the pressure of the leg resting on the cushion already too much. “Damn it.” Hero winced, trying to lift it, as a jolt of pain shot through their body.

Sidekick heard the complaint from across the house and wandered over to their injured friend. “You alright Hero?” Their tone was sympathetic, they knew how much Hero hated being hurt, but also how much being stuck on crutches made them frustrated. They felt infantilised when everyone was offering to do things for them, telling them to stay put and such. 

Hero shot them a warning glare and Sidekick raised their hands in mock surrender. “Just checking you’re okay.” They turned to leave, Hero mumbling, while moving around, trying to get comfy. “It’s no use. Stupid crutches are making my arms hurt more than my leg, but when I sit down…” Sidekick heard a bump and then an agonised yell.

They turned to see that Hero was on the floor, clutching their broken leg. “Hero!” Sidekick rushed to their side, lifting their mentor back onto the couch. They pulled the coffee table closer to Hero and gently brought their leg to rest on it. “I know you hate asking for help, but you can’t do everything by yourself Hero. You need to rest and heal, not base jump off couches.” Hero let out a grunt in reply, followed by a louder, pained yell, that they tried to mask by gritting their teeth.

Their hand clutched their leg as the pain shot through them like lightning. 

“Let me get you something for the pain. You still have some painkillers left.” Sidekick rose to grab the bottle, only for Hero to grab their wrist. Hero growled through ragged breaths, “No meds.” Sidekick noticed the shadows under Hero’s eyes. “Did you at least want help getting to your bed? You could try and sleep it off?”

The look Sidekick received from Hero was enough of an answer. “Fine. Suit yourself grumpy.” They reached forward, grabbing the TV remote and sat back on the sofa, pressing the ‘on’ button.

The channel it landed on was some travel show, a man in a fancy suit and an obnoxiously large, straw hat was walking along a path talking about Santorini. He had pretentious sounding British accent that Sidekick had a feeling was fake as well as a heavy lisp. His skin was pink from heat to toe, having obviously spent too much time outside and not enough time applying sunscreen.



Hero groaned, “Nooooo. Change it, I can’t stand this guy. His stupid accent makes me want to kick him down a flight of stairs.” Sidekick chuckled, Hero had spent the past few days living on the couch, watching endless amounts of TV, and they apparently did not enjoy ‘Europe with Daryl Travers’ that much.

They flicked through another few channels, infomercials, some reality show, cooking show, another travel show. “Damn, these suck. Has daytime television always been this… bad?” Exclaimed Sidekick, poor Hero had been watching this mind numbing trash for days. The next channel was a brightly coloured kids cartoon. A little purple bear was swimming underwater with an old fashioned diving helmet on.

‘Click’

A dated looking western from the 1960’s: A group of outlaws were aiming guns at an approaching war party. The warwhoops were cut off as the channel changed again.

‘Click’

Cooking competition.

“Screw this, I’m going to the bathroom.” Hero muttered reaching for their crutches. They gently lifted their leg off the coffee table and pulled themself up. “Let me know if you need anything.” Sidekick called out as the sound of their clicking crutches disappeared from the room.

Minutes passed, Sidekick had moved onto a documentary about whales.

They wondered where Hero was, they were taking their sweet time. They heard a moan and then clattering sound from the bathroom. Getting up from the couch, they made their way towards it, where they found Hero hunched over the bathroom vanity, one of the crutches on the floor. There were tears falling down Hero’s face as they squeezed their eyes shut.

“Hero?” Sidekick asked softly, approaching them slowly. They reached out a hand to touch Hero, “Don’t touch me.” they snapped. Their body was heaving with each breath, as they tried to keep their head up. “Okay, did you need the crutch?” Sidekick’s tone was suspicious as they slowly knelt down to grab the fallen crutch. “I-I can’t move…” Hero’s voice shook as they whispered into the mirror. Sidekick frowned, picking up the crutch, leaning it against the vanity. “What’s wrong?”

Hero felt a wave of nausea wash over them. Their left ear was ringing loudly and the room felt like it was sliding under their feet. They gripped the edge of the sink as they tilted to one side. They tried to put their leg out to stop the fall, but when they put weight on it a bolt of pain shot through them. They threw their head back with a yelp, before falling backwards, spots dancing in front of their eyes.

Sidekick’s arms shot out before they even realised what was happening, catching the falling Hero. They lowered them to the ground, and worriedly stared into the eyes of their friend. The sound of the other crutch clattering against the tiles rattled around in Hero’s head as their eyes slid shut.

Hero suddenly went limp in Sidekick’s arms, own arm slipping from around their waist and falling to the floor. Sidekick shook them, trying to rouse them from their unconsciousness. With a start, Hero gasped, opening their eyes. “What?” They asked groggily.

“Hero, you fainted.” Hero’s eyes rolled back, “Everything is spinni…” they couldn’t finish their sentence before they were out again. Sidekick jumped up from the floor, racing to find their phone. They dialled the number of Hero’s doctor, who answered, only to immediately hang up when Sidekick spoke the two words, “Hero fainted.”

Minutes later, the doctor barged into the house, asking where Hero was. Leading her to the bathroom, the doctor shined a light into Hero’s eyes, then checked a pulse. “Carry them to the living room, I need more space.” She instructed Sidekick, who lifted Hero from the ground with ease. They gently cradled their limp friend as they walked over to the couch. Hero’s arm flopped over the side of the couch their knuckles grazing the floor, as Sidekick placed them down gently. The doctor performed a few more tests, but everything was coming up normal, except a slightly high temperature.

A few minutes later, Hero came around. They groaned as they lifted an hand to their forehead, the ringing in their ear was louder now.

 “Hero?” The doctor asked. “Doctor? What happened?” Hero’s eyes were unfocused as they tilted their head towards the two blurry faces hovering over them. They blinked as the world lurched suddenly beneath them. “Lets sit you up, hey?” The doctor suggested softly.

Sidekick and the doctor gently sat Hero up. They lay back with a glassy eyed stare for a second, before their eyes began to roll back again. “Woah… Okay, no sitting up.” The doctor lowered Hero back down. “Everything is spinning. I keep feeling like I’m about to fall through the floor.” They gripped their left ear, but their right one had started ringing too.


The doctor frowned, “Vertigo. Hero, are you having any issues with your ears? You keep touching them.” Hero nodded, “They’re ringing…” The doctor looked down Hero’s ears with a scope. “Yeah, that’s a nasty ear infection Hero. That’s what’s causing you all this grief. I’ll give you some meds to take and it should clear up in a week, but for now, you need to stay bed bound, every time you’re upright you pass out.” Hero slowly closed their eyes, grimacing in frustration.

Sidekick came in later to see Hero lying on the couch, forlorn and bored. “How you going Hero?” Hero looked away from the TV, “Kill me. I’m so bored, just do me a favour and put me out of my misery.”

Sidekick sat on the ground near Hero’s head and brushed some hair out of their face. “You know, I’m enjoying this side of you Hero. You need to slow down and relax more.” “Sadist.” Hero replied, half joking. They looked up at the TV, Daryl Travers was standing on the banks of Schiederweiher Lake, with the snow capped mountains in the background. It was quite beautiful. “You know, that view doesn’t look half bad.” Hero remarked, a small smile flashing across their face. Maybe Daryl wasn’t so bad after all.

[postguiltypleasures]

My Peak TV Journey *Succession*

So much has been written about Succession and its final season. I am not sure what if anything I can add to it. It was great. I’s other talents into multiple episodes a week. The distain for soaps allowed for kind of denigration of family drama stories, which was unfair both to the story type and In accounting for the particular quirks of the soap that I don’t always like but respect and make account Succession with ten or fewer episodes per season over a short four season got to pace itself in a deliberate way. In retrospect, it set up a lot that reached a payoff in the finale. It didn’t always feel that way while watching, but even on an episodic basis it felt like it was giving a secret knowledge while not giving viewers really anyone to cheer for. m still thinking of it and looking forward to people who haven’t gotten around to it

Inspired by The Atlantic article I want to write about the most underrated aspect of how Succession is of and not of the soap opera genre. I don’t think people put enough emphasis the approximately three hundred episodes per year that are made on a daytime soap, or twenty plus that nighttime soaps traditionally have. I feel like most discussion of soaps by people who never really watched them don’t take into account the demands of that kind of episode count, and how that affects the pacing, cast size and plot direction. At their best they’re a kind of variety show, offering drips of drama, comedy and occasionally find an excuse to incorporate the casts’s other talents into multiple episodes a week. The distain for soaps allowed for kind of denigration of family drama stories, which was unfair both to the story type and In accounting for the particular quirks of the soap that I don’t always like but respect and make account Succession with ten or fewer episodes per season over a short four season got to pace itself in a deliberate way. In retrospect, it set up a lot that reached a payoff in the finale. It didn’t always feel that way while watching, but even on an episodic basis it felt like it was giving a secret knowledge while not giving viewers really anyone to cheer for. 

In someways that balancing act freed it from the pitfalls of more soaps. When I compare it to soaps I’ve watched it’s impressive how they were able to make Logan a forceful presence without ever doing something to convince the viewers that he is charming on any level. Even the most imposing daytime soap patriarchs have romantic lives that the audience is invited to cheer for. They need viewers to enjoy spending time with him week in and week out, undercut any serious concern about him doing irreparable harm. Part of the appeal of Logan dying so early in the season is seeing his lasting harm out live him. 

I have never seen a marriage like Shiv and Tom’s on a soap, or any other kind of television series. It doesn’t ask you to choose sides. We meet them after they’ve been together a while but have not gotten engaged. The circumstances that came before are always a little murky, other than Shiv having been “a mess” and knowing Tom as ambitious, but not too embedded member of her family’s company. She cheats on him , but we’re not given any reason to invest in those affairs. We learn more about Tom in his mentoring/hazing of Greg. It’s funny and painful but it gives nothing to cheer for, especially after Greg agrees to “sell his soul” to be close to Tom’s ascension. Despite all of this, when Tom betrays Shiv at the end of season 3 the effect is painful for both Shiv and the audience. Their continued relationship unsettles as they stay together.

Connor continued to stay on the periphery. I wondered if his third party candidacy would lead to splitting the difference from the Roman backed fascist Mencken. It didn’t. If if anything the sub plot seemed to exist to show that even somewhat distance from the family, a decent marriage, and a detached view on reality does not create circumstances where someone looses the entitlement of the Roy upbringing. It does not make recognizing the danger that they pose greater.

Succession was about how the show would get you to hope characters would become the best versions of themselves and then never do it. (I am adapting this from something I read earlier, but don’t remember where). A reality check on “[So and so] can change” or “[So and so] is decent deep down.” This is especially clear whither the characters of Roman and Kendal. Roman wears his wounds close to the surface, like he’s asking for sympathy. But then he dives into his nihilism and becomes gung-ho over the fascist candidate Mencken. He’s so in for this candidate that he illegally fires a film executive for suggesting that people she works with are worried about the affect he will have. It goes downhill from there, especially when it becomes clear that he doesn’t have the influence over Mencken that he hoped.

Ultimately, Kendal was always the central character, and therefore it was mostly his sins coming back that created the finale twists. He had good reason to reject Mencken, but he didn’t, at the expense of his relationship with his daughter and ex wife. But he didn’t, because taking over Waystar Royco and his father’s legacy is too important to him, even though it’s also obviously toxic waste. It is his tragedy, he earned it. He may be free at the end, but with no where to go with that freedom.

Thinking of the world within the series going forward, I find myself thinking that under GoJo lead by Mattson and Tom, Waystar would undergo the brand dilution and dismantling that HBO is having under Discovery and David Zsazlov. After all, Tom’s hostility toward Karl and Frank clearly shows it’s going to be a rocky transition. GoJo is less liquid than it presented itself as. Somethings are inevitable, but also a different story.

Speaking of other stories, I have sympathy for complaints, that the show undercut it’s critique of wealth buy not showing how the Roys actions affected the world. It didn’t do enough to make viewers in the same income set as the Roys uncomfortable or want to change. But I mostly agree that this was to better highlight how rarely they have dealt with people outside their set and emphasize how meaningless their lives are.

[papermoonloveslucy]

CURTAIN UP!

Lucy on Stage ~ Epilogue

Lucille Ball has influenced theatrical stage plays as part of her legacy to the entertainment industry.  There have been theatrical presentations that merely mention her name, or present her as a character. Here are a just a few examples. 

I Love Lucy ~ A three-act comedy adapted by Christopher Sergel from the television program by Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, and Bob Carroll Jr. 

Act One opens in the Ricardos’ messy living room, based on the TV show’s eighth episode, “Men Are Messy.” Lucy and Ricky argue over finances. Lucy changes the subject by wanting to look up Ricky’s horoscope, from “The Séance.” She does this to encourage Ricky to ask Mr. Littlefield, owner of the Tropicana nightclub, for a raise (from “Ricky Asks for a Raise”). Peggy and Arthur, “The Young Fans” are also in the cast. Later, Mr. Littlefield comes over to the messy apartment and wonders how Ricky can manage the Tropicana if he can’t manage his own wife.

It is reported that in 1954, before television was widely available in Hawaii, Hilo High School put on the “I Love Lucy” play!  The sister of a Hilo High School teacher living in Hollywood met with the publicity manager for Lucy and Desi and told them about the approaching production. Lucille Ball was reportedly “thrilled,” and asked for pictures of the Hilo High School cast. The “I Love Lucy” senior play had four daytime student performances and one night showing for the community. It was also staged at the Kilauea Military Reservation. The Arnazes sent them a congratulatory telegram.

“If you want to laugh until tears run down your cheeks and your sides ache go see ‘I Love Lucy,’ the hilarious comedy production by Hilo High School’s senior class. The cast literally had its audience rolling in the aisles.” ~ Thelma Olival in the Hilo Tribune Herald

After a few local and community performances, the Sergel script was withdrawn and is no longer in print. 

In 1955, after “I Love Lucy” concluded its European Tour episodes, Hedda Hopper reported that Lucille Ball and Desi Aranz were in talks to appear in a stage musical produced by Rogers and Hammerstein. 

“They're figuring on an original story to fit their personalities, and it will bring these two back to the stage for the first time in 15 years. Desi was in ‘Too Many Girls’ in 1940 and Lucille road-toured in ‘Dream Girl’ after she quit Metro. ~ Hedda Hopper, July 11, 1955

Needless to say, the project never materialized. Instead, Lucy and Desi opted for a sixth season of “I Love Lucy” set in Connecticut. 

Bells Are Ringing (1956) is a Broadway musical by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Jule Styne, which focuses on Ella Peterson (originally played by Judy Holliday), who works in the basement office of a telephone answering service. At a party attended by snobbish New Yorkers, the ensemble sings “Drop that Name”. One of the names dropped is Lucille Ball. The 1960 film adaptation (also starring Holliday and Lucille Ball’s friend Dean Martin) was directed by Vincente Minnelli, who had directed Ball in The Long, Long Trailer (1954). 

“That's the way you play the game, Drop that name!”

Little Shop of Horrors (1982) by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman follows a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that feeds on human blood and flesh. He has a romance with a fragile beauty named Audrey, who dreams of “Somewhere That’s Green.” The lyrics of the song imagine Audrey and Seymour married, settled down, and watching “I Love Lucy” with their children.  When the film was made in 1986, the song was turned into a dream sequence that featured footage of “I Love Lucy’s” famous chocolate factory scene from “Job Switching” (1952).

“We snuggle watchin' Lucy On our big, enormous twelve-inch screen!”

Baby (1983) is a Broadway musical by David Shire, Richard Matlby Jr, and Sybille Pearson that dealt with the effects of motherhood on three couples. During the song “I Want It All” the three expectant mothers (originally Liz Calloway, Catherine Cox, and Beth Fowler) sing about the famous and powerful women they emulate.. including Lucille Ball. 

“I want to be Mother Teresa, Sally Ride, Lucille Ball I want it all!”

Senator Joe (1989) was a Broadway ‘popera’ by Tom O'Horgan and Perry Arthur Kroeger that dealt with famous red-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy. The show closed in previews due to accusations of financial misconduct by its producer. 

(Photo courtesy of Perry Arthur Kroeger. Used by permission.)

Lucille Ball was accused of being a communist by McCarthy in 1953. The show featured large cut-out heads of Lucy and Desi (as well as Jackie Gleason and Howdy Doody), with their dialogue voiced by Michelle Fleischer and Tom Desrocher. The show played at the the Neil Simon (formerly the Alvin), the same venue where Lucille Ball’s name was dropped in Bells Are Ringing and Ball made her only Broadway appearance in 1960′s Wildcat. When Ball suddenly died in 1989, news reporters stood outside the theatre, which still displayed the marquee for “Senator Joe”!  

I Loved Lucy is a play by Lee Tannen, based on his 2001 book of the same title about his friendship with Lucille Ball. The two person play (Lucy and Lee)  presents their developing relationship over a series of conversations and backgammon games during the last years of her life. 

The play has had numerous productions, including New York City and London, where it starred Sandra Dickinson as Ball and Matthew Scott as Lee. Tannen has also played himself in some productions. 

An Evening With Lucille Ball: Thank You for Asking is a one woman show starring Suzanne LaRusch as Lucy, written and directed by Lucie Arnaz. It is structured after a series of real-life Q&As and seminars Lucille Ball conducted in the 1970s, enhanced with flashbacks to earlier periods in the actress's astonishing career and silent home movies. LaRusch was originally a strolling Lucy impersonator at Universal Studios who parlayed her uncanny imitation into this unique ‘sanctioned’ show as well as playing ‘Lucy’ in the 1997 feature film Timecop. 

Lucy Loves Desi: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sitcom is a staged radio play produced by L.A. Theatre Works from a script by Gregg Oppenheimer, son of “I Love Lucy” creator Jess Oppenheimer.  

Originally an audio play, the show has since been staged and toured. Six performers play Lucy, Desi, Jess Oppenheimer, and the other central figures responsible for the launch of the series. The show employs projections and music. 

The Cuban and the Redhead is a musical by Robert Bartley and Danny Whitman deals with the tumultuous relationship of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and the creation of the television show that was their legacy.  

The musical has had numerous readings and regional productions. 

I Love Lucy: Live On Stage is a theatrical presentation of “I Love Lucy” scripts staged by Rick Sparks. 

The show has toured extensively in the USA and Canada. The settings, costumes, and wardrobe contribute to bringing the television program vividly to life. 

The Cher Show (2017) is a jukebox musical with a book by Rick Elice that tells the story of the life and career of Cher, using songs that she performed throughout her career. The part of Cher is played by three actresses. One actress (originally Emily Skinner) plays Cher’s mother Georgia Holt, and Lucille Ball. Holt was a background performer on “I Love Lucy” and “The Lucy Show.”  

Everybody Loves Lucy by Elise McCann and Richard Carroll. In the cabaret show Francine Cain brings Lucille Ball to life, revealing the woman behind the image. As well as playing Ball, Cain also plays Edie, an amalgam of  the women who watched “I Love Lucy” in the 1950s.

SIdekicked by Kim Powers is a one-woman about Vivian Vance. Set on March 2, 1960, Vance is about to turn herself into Ethel Mertz, America's most beloved side kick, for the final time. Although Lucille Ball is not represented on stage, she is the center of Vance’s world at the time. 

The play has had several regional productions, including at Cape May Stage (NJ) where Sally Mayes (above) played Vance. 

Love! Valour! Compassion! (1994) by Terrence McNally is a play about a group of gay friends that escape to a lakeside house. The character of Buzz (originally Nathan Lane) tells the audience that he owes his very existence to Lucille Ball. In the 1997 film version, Buzz was played by Jason Alexander. 

Corpus Christi (1997) by Terrence McNally is a modern retelling of the story of Jesus' birth, ministry, and death. McNally mentions Lucille Ball in a scene between Joshua (the Jesus prototype) and a room service waiter. 

Bring it On: The Musical (2011) is a musical with music by Tom Kitt and Lin-Manuel Miranda, lyrics by Amanda Green and Miranda, and book by Jeff Whitty loosely based on the 2000 film of the same name. It focuses on the competitive world of cheerleading and over-the-top team rivalries.  During the song "I Got You" Lucy and Desi are mentioned. The song was performed during the televised Macy's Parade on Thanksgiving Day 2012.  

MISCELLANEOUS LUCY 

[pink-paper-cranes]

There will always be bad representation. Movies and film and tv and media will always have rep that is lacking in some way and that is a good thing. When you have an increasing sample size the probability of getting shit rep is higher and that is fine because we are getting MORE.

This one lesbian character’s experience doesn’t mirror your own? That is fine, it reflect’s someone else’s. This one POC character in a US setting doesn’t feel the effects of racism as strongly as you have? There are people out there who have not, and the story is not about racism.

Wanting characters that are relatable to you are absolutely necessary and normal to want. I also have issues with monotonic representation (think overly sexualized bisexual character, savant genius autistic boy, anti slavery/oppression black films, queer/black trauma porn, etc etc) and I want to get a full body of representation, a rainbow of experiences.

Not everything has to be perfect to be good rep, or rep at all. The potentiality of rep being bad should not be a deterrent for creators to put out their characters. This is how you get no rep - when people are too scared to write about anyone other than themselves because they don’t want to be crucified for “bad representation”.

Characters and stories should no longer be responsible for carrying the weight of their entire identity’s representation on their back. We have grown past having 1 non-romantic female lead in a superhero movie, 1 queer character in daytime television, 1 black character in every major film. Captain Marvel shouldn’t be determining if we have another female-led marvel film, miles morales isn’t the measure of whether or not we can have a black superhero, Crowley and Aziraphale aren’t supposed to mimic the experience of every gay American couple — these are characters and shouldn’t have to tackle everything these communities has to tackle.

Characters with different identities should be allowed to be weird and funky and fun and sad and angry and evil without it having to deal with how it represents its community. I’m not just talking about your run of the mill racism and anti-rep tirade, but those in the community that relentlessly criticise every minority character for living up to some unattainable standard.

How can we expect more from media when we do not allow it to exist on its own?

So, just curious how many writers and creators will have to be forcibly outed by relentless harassment before we acknowledge that "This queer characters was written by a cishet person and that's why they're bad" is not good criticism.