#not putting this on main its a stupid joke but i can reclaim

[the-acid-pear]

do you guys think gingi and karen going to the zoo together was a rocky reference

[parachutingkitten]

Y'all suck at dissecting Kai's character, so I guess I have to do it.

And I'm not even a Kai stan. He's a bottom tier ninja for me, which I guess means you can trust me, cuz I'm not biased, but also why am I the one doing this? I don't know about y'all, but recently on my dash, the method by which Kai fans try to make him sound good is... saying the writers hate him, ignore him, and that he isn't written well? Which... I mean there is a little bit of truth to, but like yikes guys, is this the best you got? Kai is a wonderful character with plenty of attention from the writers, a meaningful piece of the cast when put in secondary rolls, fairly consistent character writing with actual progression and valuable qualities that help the team without having to be the smart one- despite what some posts might tell you.

Let's get one thing cleared up: Ninjago isn't the best written show. By high level Hollywood standards, most the character arcs are kinda weak or too heavy handed, character consistency can be iffy, and most things serve the plot rather than the characters. There is no character you can point to and say "wow, this character is written so well! No complaints!" Nya and Jay were butchered by their weird love plot, Cole's one season doesn't actually give him an arc, Zane's been nothing but the robot numbers guy for like 10 seasons now, and Lloyd seems to be incapable of doing anything but relive the same one piece of dad angst for depth. Sorry, it's true. All the characters suck when you look at it from a large scale writing perspective. So when I say Kai is well written, I mean by ninjago kids show standards- cuz that's the scale we're working on. No, you couldn't drop Kai into a well written drama, but as far as ninjago goes... he's got a lot going for him, and by no means is he the biggest victim of poor writing.

(fair warning, wall of text below)

The title is a bit disingenuous. There are plenty of good Kai character break downs. What I am presenting here is a more positive perspective. On the whole, I will tend to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, and credit for what they do right writing is hard guys. That's what I'm doing here. I don't see much sense in getting mad the writers on behalf of Kai, or any other character. Ninjago is a simplistic ensemble show that works because of the identifiable simplicity of its main characters with some deeper layers hidden underneath if you keep watching. They've given us a damn good show with some damn enjoyable characters, so here are some criticisms I feel are a little flawed:

First, let's get the 'focus' thing out of the way. Apparently there are people saying Kai doesn't have a season yet? Which... what? I mean, I get that the pilots aren't a full season, the first two seasons, though he is the central protagonist, aren't "Kai seasons" as we've come to define ninja focus seasons, season 7, though he gets majority focus, he shares with his sister. But like... did y'all just forget about season 4? You know, the season where he had the title card, was on the box sets, got the love interest, and the majority of the A-plot? not to mention it's the best season don't @ me Like... if season 4 isn't a Kai season, I can make a damn good argument that season 3 isn't a Zane season, and I doubt anyone wants to go down that rabbit hole. I really can't wrap my head around this one. And I get that the fandom hates season 11 for some reason, but like you can't just pretend it doesn't exist. Kai has a consistent arc across 30 episodes in which he takes his powers for granted, loses them, and learns that, not only does he have value within the team without them, but that his element is intrinsically a part of him that he reclaims, bringing them back more powerful than ever, and with new respect for them. That's one of the most solid arcs in the whole series- the location is even thematically connected to his element. That's some good stuff right there! (Quick plug for season 11 if you haven't watched it in a while. Give it a rewatch, you might be pleasantly surprised)

Not to mention the writers give him fun side stuff all the time. Lots of fears of tech and water to overcome, a deep protective streak with Lloyd, becoming a chancellor, having a true potential actually relevant to the plot as a whole, blacksmith responsibilities, befriending dragons, hanging out with his dad. Not to mention actual focus stuff we haven't talked about yet, like his whole "my dad is evil" phase, and his "I might be evil" phase with him and Skylor. And on top of that, even when he doesn't have an explicit side plot, he's always just a fun and dynamic side character to make jokes or give exposition.

Now, into character stuff. Let's start with Kai's hot headed-ness. Some people say he's been loosing this quality, and I will admit, that's true! But those that claim this makes him inconsistent... I strongly disagree. In early seasons, Kai's temper would lead him to snap at his friends or make stupid decisions that set the team back (see episode 2 Zane freak out)- these are bad things. These are character flaws, yes? Now, in newer seasons, people say that he's inconsistent, cuz sometimes he'll be hot headed, and sometimes he won't. I'd say, this is exactly how being hot headed... works? It flares up without warning, and as an individual gets control of it, it'll pop up less and less often because they're channeling it into productive things - like say directing the anger towards an enemy (see season 11 end freak out). Kai has gained control of a character flaw, and though it still pops up on occasion, the fact that it's a once in a while kind of thing speaks to his growth. I have a little brother who has this exact personality, and watching him grow up, I can tell you, this is how it is. He used to snap all the time, and he still does sometimes, but much less frequently, because he's a more mature person with better control of his emotions. This is a good thing. This is overcoming personal flaws. This is progression we're seeing.

And while you're hyper focused on this one aspect of him, things like his cocky confidence haven't changed a bit. I mean, that season 3 bit between him and Pixal, and his season 11 "fire maker" streak have the exact same energy. You can not convince me otherwise.

Another adjacent quality that hasn't been dampened is Kai's impulsiveness. This can be a good quality of his, he'll get into a fight without thinking, getting the jump on the enemy. Good stuff. But, this has become such a well defined trait of Kai's that it has been used in a comedic capacity. This is what happens when a character is extremely consistent to the extent that both the audience and the characters in universe would be able to predict their actions. Kai's impulsivity used to be a more serious quality that put himself and others at risk, and was a big power move whenever he did something rash, but it's become such a staple of the show that it's now being used for comedy. That isn't Kai's impulsivity going away, that's Kai's impulsivity being recontextualized for the sake of the show. The season 9 "Who's stupid enough to jump on that thing" isn't a joke at the expense of Kai just for being dumb, it's a joke at Kai's being so predictably impulsive that everyone already knows he'll be the one to put himself in an insane amount of danger without thinking twice (you know, something stupid that might get him killed). But because in this instance, the danger is warranted, this is bravery. It's a complement to his character- it's what ends up defeating the colossus. Why are some people so bothered by this joke?

Oh right, cuz for some reason people want to peg Kai as the smart one? Look, Kai isn't stupid, none of the ninja are. All of them have smart moments (all of them have dumb ones too) and Kai can certainly handle himself, but "smart" is definitely not one of his defining characteristics- I think some people are confusing smart for his actual strength. Connected to his impulsivity, Kai has very good simplistic instincts. He sees the big picture and looks at the most surface level solution- which when the situation calls for it, that does indeed make him smart. But the same logic that led him to think "This snake has a glowing target on its head, lets hit it" also led him to think "I'm in a video game, therefore I am immortal." Are you really going to look at me and say he figured out Lloyd was the green ninja through logical deduction and a careful consideration of the facts? No. He had a gut feeling, and he trusted it. Instincts- instincts paired with his impulsive following of said instincts is what leads him to solve problems- and sometimes, that can be extremely effective. This goes for other ninja too. Jay isn't the smartest ninja- I would really only classify Zane and Nya as having intelligence define them (hence their ship name). But Jay is extremely creative and crafty. He also knows his was around mechanics, and as such, this will lead him to come up with creative tech based solutions which are smart. But, idk about you, if I had to point to another ninja as being 'dumb' it would 100% be Jay. Kai is a lot of things. He's passionate and determined and confident and persistent. He's a good improvisor, he's powerful and he's charming! These are all wonderful qualities, he doesn't also have to be the smart one. I am the worlds biggest Pixal stan, and she's a smart, sassy, powerful character, but I'm not gonna sit here and tell you she's also hilarious and adaptable and strong willed. She's a straight man to all the ninja's antics, extremely tied to her samurai x suit, and lets people push her around all the time. That doesn't mean she can't be funny, or self interested, but when she does act these ways, it stems from her other more prominent qualities. That make sense?

And while we're clearing up what Kai isn't, please stop characterizing Kai as an overly protective brother - especially romantically. The only two times he's been romantically protective to Nya are in Wu's Teas which I mean, come on and in the pilots when Jay is literally a stranger. For crying out loud, by the end of the pilot, he's smiling when Jay and Nya hug. That's not overly protective, that's just normal, any reasonable person would react this way, protective. And it's such a great stereotype break for a kids show like ninjago, having an older brother who actually trusts his younger sister to be her own independent person who can make her own decisions. I mean, I guess it's fine if you HC differently but like... idk, I don't buy it.

Now, is there still room to criticize the writers? Yes. Hell yes. But not to an extent greater than any other character. Could he have had more of a defined reaction to events of the most recent season that I won't name for the sake of spoilers? Yes. But could Zane have reacted for more than .5 seconds at being an evil war lord for apparently 60 years? Yeah. Has Kai taken a back seat in the past 4 seasons? Yeah. But so has Lloyd- and he's literally the main character of the show. Not to mention two of those seasons have gone to people who had to wait over ten seasons to get one to themselves, and one of them is a 40 minute special. Kai's doing just fine.

Anyway. Kai is great. He's a fun, stereotype breaking, impulsively driven, ball of energy and confidence who gets a good amount of screen time and some fun side plots.

One last thing to clear up: no hate to anyone. This isn't targeted at anyone specific, this post has been a long time coming, I've just seen some weird overblown claims on various platforms over the past few months and I finally sat down to write about it.

I like the Kai content we have. After all, if the writers were really that bad at writing him, then no one would like him.

Wow this was so much longer than I thought it would be. Um... if you have other long winded rants you'd like to see from me... let me know I guess?

[justalads]

this is an essay post that was written in response to an in-depth discussion i was having with another person on a lot of topics. that’s why it’s written like it’s addressing someone. because of that, it is a little confusing on its own (because the things in quotes are responding to things the other person said) but me and the person who runs this blog thought it would be better to make this a separate post, so that people who want to see this response can see it without it being attached to the person i was having the discussion with. we spoke to the person and they said that would be fine. with that being said, this is a very long post. if anyone finds parts of it useful, it will have served its original purpose.

so what i mean about it “making sense” that dream became like that is that it kind of does, you know? i’m saying that the desires were always there. not that he was always willing to go so far for them, or even that they were as strong as they ended up being! after all, there’s a difference between declaring war to reclaim land and people, and making a vault in order to take things that were important to people.

what he always did possess is a sort of “ownership” of the server. and this was probably founded from the fact that it was, you know, his server. he wanted l’manburg back because he didn’t like that people came onto his server and then said he couldn’t have something. and that’s one of his primary points in his conversation with skeppy: the analogy he uses of someone coming into his house and saying he can’t have a table.

and later, in the vault, this is the reason he gives for wanting control: that it is his server. he tells tommy it isn’t supposed to be fair, it doesn’t need to be fair, because fairness implies equality, and he doesn’t see everyone else as having equal claim to the server. so that’s what i mean when i say the signs were always there: his statements match upand paint a path through the story. true, you don’t just “become” a bad person. there’s no reason for him to suddenly get all weird and want ultimate control, if he was completely neutral and peaceful in the beginning. this is why his character is decently written!

and since the potential was there in the first place, that’s what gave him the ability to or put him in danger of doing what he did.

so yeah, it’s true that his spiral was not only his fault, because even someone who thinks they own something is not going to just jump to the lengths that he did. he had other experiences, and saw how other people worked, and then was met by pushback from people when he wanted them all to do what he said. because his house analogy is lacking something: he owns the house, but everyone else lives there too.

it may be “his” server in that he pays upkeep fees, but that doesn’t mean he deserves control over everything that happens on it! if your roommate goes “i want this table and you can’t have it”, even if the house belongs to you, it’s kind of weird to go “no you can’t have it, it’s mine”. especially if all the roommate wants the table for is so they can play monopoly or something with their group. and even more so if the roommate will let you play monopoly if you want to (remember the embassy?), and if you can just buy a new table then what’s the point in getting upset over the one?

i just think you put a lot more of the responsibility on other characters. saying that all they did was villainize him and treat him as pure evil and break his boundaries is wrong because one, no, that’s not all they did, it’s exaggerated, and two, he was also doing things to them! it did not come out of nowhere! and clearly, his mindset didn’t come from nothing, so a personal flaw contributed to it! people who are innocent and care too much about others and are then mistreated do not do what dream did, and we know this because there is a character very similar to that: ranboo.

(i could talk about this for a super long time honestly. it’s very interesting how close they are, and since enderwalk ranboo is just ranboo with all his memories and he helped dream... there’s clearly something that happened that he’s forgotten that’s very important.)

hates conflict, tries to mediate things, cares about the people he loves to a fault. and we don’t see him running around and telling people they can’t build nations because it “divides people”! he has also been hurt and betrayed, but he still recognizes his responsibility to respect others and their agency. the difference between dream and ranboo is that one, dream has a spine, and two, dream thinks of the server as his. dream’s belief is one of the driving causes of his actions.

it’s true that nobody deserves to lose half their friends at once. it’s also true that before he declared war, nobody had any actual negative feelings towards him. they made fun of him for saying his side had more women. he made fun of them for having none. it was playful banter. that’s the thing about the hot dog stream: the tone is incredibly light. wilbur soot, known dramatic idiot, decided he was going to go play capitalism on a minecraft server. both tommy and wilbur at that point had been making various stupid attempts to gain “power”. and none of this was treated seriously, because others were doing the same kinds of things.

you know how many times tommy logged on and got involved in small petty conflicts? pretty much none of them are mentioned in canon again, because at this point, there wasn’t even much of a canon to get involved in. the smp at this point was a place for people to go and do bits. and invoking wilbur’s joke hatred of tommy and those like him seems a little unfair. wilbur’s main bit was calling tommy an annoying child. when wilbur was stealing the blaze rods, it was not an actual attempt to get power because it was not treated as such by anyone, it was treated with the exact seriousness that it deserved: sapnap and tubbo declared themselves the “police”.

what kind of actual control is going to come from taking blaze rods, especially on a server where you can just go get more? and it’s not like theft is really a crime on the server. everyone else chose to play into the bit.

it’s like now, when tommy shows up with a new idea and people who don’t like him start claiming that this is proof that he never learned anything and he was actually bad all along. the church prime thing, l’sandburg, any time he steals something or is rude to jack manifold. because although semi-lore is fun, sometimes people treat it as serious lore when parts of it are not intended to be and then use it to imply things about the characters that don’t line up with canon.

that’s kinda off topic and not really about dream, so i’ll move on

“i’d like to ask you to once again watch the actual stream.”

i mean, yeah. i did watch the stream. i don’t know a lot about george, and i prefaced my thoughts at the start by saying that. obviously attempting to catch up after isn’t as good as knowing the context and plot, (this sounds sarcastic but it is genuine i’m sorry sjhksjs) but i do want to offer this: it’s an opportunity to look at the plot in a different way. you say that you are on dream’s side in this scene, and while having that bias alone isn’t bad, i think it’s a good idea to attempt to see the other side. that’s what i’ve been doing while going back and forth with you; examining my own bias and attempting to look past it, and explain why it’s there.so dream kicks george off the throne. and you say that it’s not bad that dream does it, because george’s monarchy was already a figurehead. you know, i don’t see this as being any better? this means that when dream made george king, he already did it with the fact that george wasn’t really in charge in dream’s mind, meaning that dream was, you know, the ultimate authority. that is a power dynamic. dream has control over who is king of his faction.

when you watch the stream where dream makes george king originally, dream doesn’t really let him know that his power isn’t real. that’s the problem with this situation: the presence of a power dynamic alone is not the issue, it’s the fact that dream was misleading about its presence. dream just tells him “you’re king.” in fact, dream demonstrates more control over eret, by telling them just that they can’t be in charge anymore and george is king now. he tells them to take off their crown, to which they protest because it’s a layer on their skin and it would show their eyes, something they’re uncomfortable with. dream says “i need you to do it. you gotta do it. i mean, i’m not asking you, we have three of us here.”

they physically threaten eret. and by the way, the reason that dream thought eret had “betrayed” the greater smp? eret was attempting to help pogtopia and make things right with the people of l’manburg, something you claim was also dream’s wish during this time (he had switched over to manburg at this point). dream told eret that the king had a duty to remain neutral.

it is only then, when dream tells eret to remain neutral on things, that dream tells eret that the act of being king means nothing. this is where the “what makes you king” quote coms from, by the way. dream has the ultimate control over who is king. but whenever he makes someone king, he doesn’t tell them that. and when dream leaves, eret fully realizes this and admits that dream’s right: they don’t have any power. so what was the point of betraying l’manburg?

if there was no power with being king, why did george accept it? why was there even a king in the first place? the only reason eret agreed to betray l’manburg in the first place was because dream offered them power.

when dream confronts eret about remaining neutral, dream says “my plan is that there’s no manburg, there’s no l’manburg, there’s no pogtopia, there’s just dream smp and there’s dream smp everywhere. and that’s been my plan since the very beginning, i’ve never wavered on that. that’s why i had you betray them, and that’s why i gave you kingship, because i felt like you’d be a good king because you’re neutral.”

ignoring the fact that he’s twisting why he made eret king (they were on the side of l’manburg and he tempted them away), he also claims that his faction only has been his goal since the beginning. this will be important later.

cc!eret confirmed in a twitter thread on their alt that their character was possibly the longest victim of dream’s manipulation.

and finally, watching the stream where dream dethrones george, the thing sticking out to me is how dream is phrasing it. he says that george should step down because people are attacking him, and dream isn’t always going to be able to protect him. and then he says this.

“and i think you’ll just be targeted if you’re the king. and you want to be able to like, get revenge on tommy and stuff, right? so we can work together.”

i kind of wish he didn’t bring up tommy. i kind of wish his main goal at this time wasn’t just going after tommy because he thought tommy was the root of all the problems. and i think this kind of highlights a little bit that when dream built the walls around l’manburg again, it wasn’t just because he was “defending george” or anything, because i don’t think george really cared that much? dream was using the fact that it was george’s house that blew up in order to go after tommy.

after this line, the others all kind of gang up on dream, true. it’s partially for the joke, as evidenced by quackity’s “THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING!”, but it’s also kind of them being, you know, legitimately angry at his character. and it’s funny that it’s sapnap who leads it. sapnap brings up what dream said, that he doesn’t care about anything except for the disks. dream says that he didn’t mean it, and then george says “then why did you say it?” so dream saying that clearly hurt them, and he can’t just push it off by saying he didn’t mean it once.

and in the end, george doesn’t even agree before dream makes eret king again! george and sapnap are trying to have a conversation with dream about how they feel they’ve been treated, and dream brushes it off with “maybe this isn’t a good time to bring it up,” before ultimately ignoring what they’re both saying because in his mind he has a good enough reason and it doesn’t matter what george thinks.

dream is in the act of passing power over to eret, and george says “i’m still king. i’m literally right here.” dream shushes him. dream also implies that the reason george is getting attacked is because he backs up everything dream says, reducing george down to an extension of his own will or calling him a follower. dream accuses sapnap of trying to divide him and george, and sapnap says this: “i’m not dividing anyone, i stand by george. he’s my king but most importantly he’s my friend.” dream replies that george is his friend but not his king.

i just sort of want to show you the other side here. george and sapnap weren’t just running around instigating conflict any more than dream was. and although george didn’t do anything as king, it meant something to him, because it was a symbol of the trust he thought dream had for him. dream saying he was taking it away for his own good meant he didn’t even trust george to protect himself. he was treating him like a child.

and then when george is silent, listening to everyone debate whether he deserves this or not, dream accuses him of only pretending to be sad. it’s true that he was pretending to cry, but i don’t think that warranted dream telling him he’s “acting like a baby” and that he was a bad king.

sapnap and george had a real point, and dream ignored them. he hadn’t addressed the things he had said that hurt them, and so they raised legitimate grievances with him! dream doesn’t treat their concerns as important, and talks down to george in particular.

ignoring the fact that sapnap and george were also hurting is kind of hypocritical. you’re right, “abandonment hurts you, no matter if the people have good reasons for it or not”. dream said the spirit thing before sapnap did any sort of real leaving him. and dream’s reasons were definitely not good.

i have no idea why you got the idea that george is so awful. he was walking around with his head down. the only one also calling him things like manipulative and a drama queen is, well, dream.

basically: (/hj)

george: :(

dream: you are attempting to emotionally manipulate me

butternut is a master of psychological manipulation

anyway

so sapnap, george and quackity felt betrayed there. they left, and went to mexican l’manburg to try and console george. and then dream shoots quackity and kills him, and tries to attack the others as well. it’s worth noting that quackity also had a reason to be upset at dream: dream’s treatment of l’manburg. dream then shows up and calls george a tyrant. dream never listens to what george says during this, he just continues saying what he already said. dream taking the kingship away from george hurt him more than letting him stay would have.

watching this is painful, because it’s making me realize just how much dream doesn’t actually care what his friends think! he says he cares, and he might think he cares, but then he calls them babies and liars and tyrants. his argument with george here reads like something awful. he’s using the excuse of “caring about him” in order to undermine and insult him, and take the moral high ground. dream essentially tells george that he didn’t make george king out of any respect for him, it was just random. he doesn’t treat his friends well during this scene. i don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to get angry.

when quackity, after sitting in silence for the entire conversation, says he disagrees, dream tells him that he’s just dumb. doesn’t wait to hear his reasons, doesn’t value his opinion, because dream is so sure that he’s right and he knows what’s best for the server, and by extension, everyone.

other interesting things: dream brings tommy into it again by saying he’s what causes all the problems on the server. dream tells quackity to think about what tubbo would think about him picking this fight. dream says that george would probably do anything he told him to do. his entire position is “you guys can think whatever you want, but it won’t change anything.” genuinely, tell me how this is them abandoning him? and when they do drift away later, tell me why they don’t have a reason to? dream doesn’t respect them! he takes their friendship for granted!

“would you consider it justified for all of tommy’s friends (even tubbo who he’s been close with for so long) to abandon him just because he’s said basically the same thing about the discs - like three times?”

thank you for bringing up the disk thing. do you really think that tommy and dream acted the same when saying that an item held more worth than their friends?

think about what the disks symbolize. control over tommy. tommy wants them back because they are a sign of dream having power over him! tommy doesn’t want his abuser having power over him! and yeah! it was a messed up thing for him to say to tubbo that the disks were worth more than him, but he apologized! he understood that what he said hurt tubbo, and he tried to rebuild the relationship! tommy took responsibility for what he said, and tried to be better. notice how afterwards, he was willing to sacrifice anything for the safety of his friends? notice how in the vault he told dream to take the disks and do whatever he wanted with them, when dream switched from threatening the disks to threatening the life of tubbo?

and what do the disks mean to dream? they mean power over tommy. the disks have no power over dream. they are a tool that he can use to hurt and control tommy. and he never apologized for this, because he wasn’t sorry. sapnap told dream that this hurt him, and all dream said was that he didn’t mean it. who is he lying to, then? tommy or sapnap? it was so important to dream that he had ultimate control over the life of someone else that he almost drove them to take their own life. i’m sorry, but this comparison sucks.

people gave dream a chance. people gave him a lot of chances. the disregard he showed for others is disgusting, especially towards his friends, and even more so towards those who he didn’t like. my problem is that though you repeat that you don’t “blame” others for what they did, you still hold them to more responsibility than you’re willing to hold him to, or at least that’s what it seems like. i’ve been investigating the other side through this whole process. and yeah, there are definitely places where i was wrong. but sometimes i do not understand, and maybe that means i should just give up on trying to understand those places. if other people can see things i can’t, maybe we agree to disagree.

i legitimately cannot see dream being the person who was treated the worst here, but let me know if i’m misrepresenting you.

i’m sorry that i sound angry, and i’m not really upset at you, but the comparison of what dream said and what tommy said set me off.

“no one having respect for him as a person”

people did respect dream, man. he was the leader of his faction. he had a lot of power. his friends trusted him to be a good friend to them. but he didn’t feel like he had an obligation to do that, yeah? and you only get respect if you give it, so they stopped respecting them because he hurt them. he didn’t learn any hard lessons about violence being the only way because he never stopped to consider another way. when faced with a problem, his options were for the problem to go away or he would make it go away: surrender or die.

during the stream where he sets up the walls with sapnap, his message is the same throughout: wipe them out. no mercy. burn their land to the ground, leave no survivors. there’s no love in war. children get hurt in war. this is a warning shot, he says, as he fires into their land. as sapnap burns down tubbo’s house and chat spams “no mercy”. they don’t show mercy because mercy is weak, and they are powerful.

one day i’m gonna write a thing that talks about the greater smp like how people talk about early l’manburg because oh boy

i’d like to see evidence of dream learning that violence is the only way, and only being able to protect himself through fighting. i don’t remember this happening, i remember him generally choosing violence as the first option.

“dream didn’t have an arising god complex.”

a god complex means more than just saying “i’m a god.” there was buildup because that’s how characters work. tommy was also trapped in the prison, and he didn’t suddenly get a god complex at the slightest bit of power, did he? the definition of a god complex is “an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.” dream cannot admit when he is wrong. he feels as if he has a right to the control of the server, and that grows into a state of obsession. and when he’s taking tubbo and tommy down into the vault, he mocks them for thinking he was weak or that he didn’t think ahead.

once dream knew he had control over death, the complex reached its peak, and that’s when he actually admits it. characters that antagonize others already possess traits that contribute to their arc.

and hey, i know that cc!dream says his character is blocked off emotionally. i also know that he’s been given a lot of chances to apologize to people, to be sorry, to admit fault, even in small situations. did dream show remorse during exile? did dream sound like he was being “forced” to isolate and control tommy, or did he sound like an abusive parent scolding a kid for something? when dream beat tommy and tubbo and took them down to the vault, did he sound sorry? the thing about subtext is that it has to actually be there, no matter how quiet, at least a little bit. listen to dream arguing with quackity after george was dethroned and tell me he sees himself as anything other than right.

a few one off lines are not enough evidence to wipe out the rest of his character’s development.

he sounds sorry once he is faced with direct consequences, because that is the only time he is held responsible for his actions.

it’s also a weak argument to say that something is happening when, as you said, we don’t see his pov. it is fair to say that i don’t know if it’s not happening, and that’s a good point. cc!dream’s comments about his character being closed off emotionally can mean a lot of things. for instance, they could mean that his character is willing to do this to himself in order to get control. or it could mean something else entirely, i don’t know. basing an entire fact about a character off something we don’t see at all doesn’t tell us anything useful about the character, and i apologize for doing that.

i guess my reason for saying that was that i don’t see evidence of him trying to get better during pogtopia. if we don’t see signs of him being sorry or attempting to treat other people better, why should we assume that he was doing those things?

“yes, and none of c!dream’s “friends” ever did.”

dream’s friends supported him until he abandoned them and disrespected them. his time in the prison is a consequence of his time out of the prison, albeit an unfair one.

“dream didn’t hurt george.”

dream’s disrespect of george is what hurt him. dream didn’t apologize for it, he didn’t attempt to understand what george was feeling, and he didn’t look for a compromise. and yeah, it was beckerson in the vault. he had a space for mars, he just hadn’t collected it yet. so yes, dream did betray sapnap. if you have legitimate evidence of sapnap doing something that made dream actually upset, before the vault, i’d like to see it. (there might be something lol i’m sorry i’m Very Bad on his lore but from what i’ve investigated i didn’t find anything really important.)

i don’t think puffy saying “this person does bad things” is her dismissing their trauma. and the eggpire and her have both hurt each other. puffy isn’t the Trauma Designator of the server. if there’s an instance of her straight up saying that someone doesn’t have trauma then i missed it.

“she’s another one c!dream was attached to and who failed to ever reach out to him”

i don’t see evidence of this? there was the one stream where the relationship was established, but after that he never tried to seek her out. he doesn’t even talk about her. it’s not a failure from her to not reach out to him, if their connection is light at best. i honestly feel like she was more attached to him than he was to her.

“like she’s doing something extra by being a decent person.”

she’s saying he didn’t deserve to see her because he did bad things! she still cares about someone who has done bad things, but she recognizes that those things are bad. she’s saying the punishment for what he’s done should involve not seeing her, personally, and i think she should be able to make that decision? she doesn’t endorse the rest of his punishment, because she doesn’t know what it entails.

she helped him by thinking he was in the right. she helped him by even trying to understand him, when everyone else could not. she gave him the help that she could by being on his side, by being friendly to him, and after she realized he was wrong she could not do that because he was off preparing the vault! and she had other things to worry about! “could have” is useless because it can mean anything! tommy “could have” not burned george’s house down. would it have mattered, when dream already had it out for him? no!

dream took anyone being close to him for granted. he did not give anything back to them once he started going down the path. if he did something bad to them, and they were angry, that was it for him. he did not attempt to fix the bond, like other characters do when they hurt someone they care about.

“i never said anything negative about them other than describing things they did that had a negative effect.”

here’s my main point: we don’t know they had a negative effect.

you criticize the characters for not taking an action that we do not know the implications of. everyone could have been super nice and worried about dream and that could have changed nothing. that’s why i think the criticism is unwarranted.

their crime is inattention to a situation that some of them did not even know was happening. that’s like saying that techno is “responsible” for some of the pain of tommy’s exile, because he did nothing to stop it. that’s like saying that quackity or tommy “should have” removed the tnt from the button room under l’manburg.

i just don’t get the point of the criticism. because it can apply to any character in any situation, you know? we could say that eret taking back the kingship from george enabled dream into taking more control over his friends, and that eret should have stopped him. we could say that skeppy telling dream he was wrong about l’manburg pushed him further into the role of the bad guy. if you aren’t being negative about the characters, then why bring it up in the first place?

“truly believe they did all those things” they didn’t do anything. if you’re talking about the “actual consequences and effect it had on him as a character”, you have to look at what affects his character.

we can say “sapnap should not have said this to dream”. because that is something sapnap actually did, directly to dream’s face, and it is something that visibly affected dream. considering the conditions of the prison, it is an inhumane thing to say. that’s something i would call reasonable to consider when analyzing dream’s character.

but puffy talking to herself, writing her own thoughts and reactions down? that does not impact dream in any way! and i think puffy thinking internally that dream is a bad person (when she has been given adequate reason to think so) has a lot less impact on Real Plot Events than the stuff that dream actually did.

what is her “fault” here? what harm did she do? what am i excusing? what did she do wrong, and how is the effect of her specifically visible in dream’s actions? he hasn’t mentioned her in months, and it’s my perspective that if he cared, we would know.

if a tree falls in the forest when nobody is around, does it make any noise?

(the person i was responding to linked a thread about how the prison isn’t helping dream and how puffy and sapnap saying he deserves it is inhumane)

that thread doesn’t actually seem to be assigning any fault to puffy, it’s just saying that hearing that kind of thing hurts.

(also, the person who wrote the thread saying “i told you so” is going to have nobody to tell it to. we all already know dream is going to be violent when he gets out, because he told tommy he would hunt down and take revenge on the things he loves. but he’s not going to be violent because puffy didn’t visit him.)

“another person he cared about who didn’t prove to care about him enough to stop him from spiralling or try help at all.”

how did puffy not care about him? what did she do before the vault that showed that? how did she specifically abandon him, by actions of her own will and not of consequences of his? for supposedly caring about her, dream did pretty much nothing to show it.

“if “they don’t owe him anything” is your base argument against someone being hurt via being left by people they care about over and over again until they’re utterly alone with no support system and unhealthy mindsets, we might have to agree to disagree”

we would disagree if that was my point, but it’s not. because that’s not what the characters did. they didn’t all abandon him, as i’ve said. he says that he cut ties with them, but if you say he’s lying when he says that you can disregard it, i guess. and five to six people are definitely not responsible for him. again, you’re critical of them for an action they didn’t take, and in some cases it was impossible for them to take like with tommy, who certainly didn’t abandon him, as hard as he tried to.

“his (dream’s) manipulation is the clumsiest thing i’ve ever seen”

i mean i don’t really find it funny that dream was “bad” at manipulation. and clearly it was powerful enough to work on multiple people, and if he was that ineffective at it it wouldn’t have worked. but i understand what you’re saying, although i disagree with your take on wilbur.

it’s true that wilbur’s smart, but this is again saying things about stuff we can’t prove. if you look at the context of wilbur’s actions next to everyone else’s, they seem pretty tame. and he can play a morally grey character without the intent being that the character was seriously manipulative all along. although i guess it’s nice to think that you’ve solved the code, if “solving the code” means “the majority of everyone else is wrong” then you may want to take a step back.

i think the principle of occam’s razor sort of applies here, and especially applies later to the conversion between dream and wilbur. unless there is strong, strong evidence for a theory that sort of goes against stuff, there may be a better explanation. i’ve scrapped like fifty theories because of this dude hskhdksjsthe things i said at the start about tommy and wilbur’s grabs for power not being serious still do apply, and so does the fact that at the start of the roleplay, the cc’s didn’t see their characters as that separate from themselves. i think it would be kind of weird for cc!wilbur’s intent to be genuine manipulation of his actual friends all along, especially when he wasn’t playing it as a bit.

“that’s precisely what he did and how he got them to side with him in the war.”

nope. he didn’t tell anyone they “needed” to to anything. anyone who joined the country joined of their own free will, and nobody joined during the war, just before and after.

wilbur didn’t really “recruit” tommy so much as they were on a team of causing small arguments. wilbur joined and he and tommy went to go scam people together, while tommy told him about the various other little schemes he had been running. and i don’t really think he was intending to do a real takeover, which is why i called it “weak”. the man told people that potions give you diarrhea. does that sound like the work of a mastermind? no, because it’s the self proclaimed “crime boy”. and that “drug empire” got shut down pretty quick for something that was supposed to last a long time.

“just put “revolution” instead of “business” as a guise of what he was actually doing.”

l’manburg was not the drug empire under a different name. l’manburg was about separation from the greater smp, admittedly because they felt that being stopped from selling drugs was a bad thing, but then they pretty much completely dropped the drugs and the empire throughout the wall vod.

so when he was recruiting people like fundy, he was doing it with the intent of getting them to make drugs with him. he says nothing about dream when fundy joins his drug empire. and yeah, he lied to him originally, but it didn’t work. fundy visited the van and saw through wilbur (and tommy)’s story, and then he decided to join, on his own. because he wanted to make drugs.

a quote from the wall vod:

“we’re starting a revolution, not a war.”

there was no targeted hatred towards dream until he approached them. and i would say the most “evidence” that wilbur was trying to go after dream in any way is the infamous “what’s tyrannical mean” moment. the thing about that moment is that taking a single moment and using it to define an entire period is unfair. it’s not like that’s a turning point, and after that they solely go after dream. they don’t. i agree that you have to watch the actions of wilbur, and his actions at the time were geared towards becoming independent and progressing the condition of l’manburg.

wilbur is honest with eret when they join that they are committing crimes. eret joins because “haha americans bad”. meanwhile, dream is in chat telling eret that there are “three defectors from the kingdom”.

“the only reason people disbelieve this is not because it doesn’t align with canon, but because they assume he’s lying for the sole reason that it doesn’t align with the way they see canon.”

if what revivedbur said agreed with canon, people wouldn’t be pointing out that it doesn’t. watch back the hot dog stream, the wall stream, the first war stream, even the stream after that when niki joins. look at how wilbur speaks, and also look at how he acts. it does not match up with all of what revivedbur says.

early wilbur is naive. he thinks he’s doing the right thing, so he therefore concludes the people against him are wrong. the only fighting back that l’manburg does before war is declared is killing alyssa (and this was tommy’s idea, wilbur was discouraging killing her), because they thought she set the fire. once she told them she didn’t, they gave her back the stuff they thought they had. tubbo still had her pickaxe, but didn’t realize. and for this? the people of the greater smp hunted him down, trapped him in a box, and killed him as well as killing tommy, who tried to save tubbo.

wilbur scolded tommy for killing alyssa. wilbur wanted to focus on building the nation, on declaring independence, and actively ignored the other side. he writes the declaration and he believes in everything it stands for! half the things in there are things that the other people of l’manburg yelled out, that he wrote in as they were being fired on by the greater smp. it comes from all the people.

the declaration of war from the greater smp pretty much says “sometimes you just gotta kill some people, you know?”

i am not disagreeing with you that after the first war, wilbur fell into corruption. it’s implied greatly that this is partially a consequence of the first war, and also partially stems from his fierce protectiveness of l’manburg.

also, if you’re saying that you have never and will never believe wilbur, i would urge you to re-examine that. it’s hard to avoid bias when you refuse to take most things that someone says as truth. i am also curious how you came to this conclusion as you began to watch the smp (if you never believed him at all) and who’s perspective you were watching.

“according to his actions and all known laws of logic” according to the streams and vods that very much still exist, and his actions in them, no, he wasn’t lying since the beginning. did he tell lies? yes, everyone did. was he being untruthful about his devotion to l’manburg when he took arrows for it and died for it? no. it’s pretty clear to see when you watch the vod. his actions speak louder than his words.

so no, it doesn’t make sense for him to be lying since the beginning. it doesn’t make sense that revivedbur’s ideals are a switch from how he was even right before he died, so we cannot trust his memory and his morals to remain intact! the man was alone for thirteen years, speaking of torture.

“he thought l'manberg his and no one else’s, a weapon of power for him to use however he pleases. unlike dream who destroyed himself bit by bit trying to take back what he cares about, because it was not power, but people - wilbur saw no more worth in it and destroyed it instead.”

hmm. i’ll come back to this later.

a point- not everything cc!wilbur says about his character is negative.

a lot of his commentary on his character came after his death, so it encompasses his spiral. i will again suggest that you listen to “eight” by sleeping at last. it’s true he can play a morally complex character, because he does, but he does not play an intentional antagonist the entire time, even in “secret”.

“i was just talking about how hypocritical and downright ridiculous his later accusations are, which you didn’t address.”

how are his later accusations hypocritical? wilbur calls him a tyrant in the moment, yeah. wilbur thinks that he should be able to do whatever he wants, and since it’s the dream smp, he assumes dream is the leader. dream never contradicts this, by the way. wilbur writes in the declaration of independence that “in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one to dissolve the bonds which bind us. disregarding of this truth is nothing short of tyranny.” so that’s what he considers tyranny. when he got stopped from selling drugs and tommy got arrested, he didn’t yell “tyranny”.

mistreatment of citizens by authority and denial of independence is tyranny.

dream and the people of the greater smp hurt and attack the people of l’manburg throughout the wall stream. importantly, since they denied l’manburg independence, the people they were firing and attacking were their own citizens in their eyes. mistreatment of citizens is cruel. upon hearing that l’manburg existed, they became even more tyrannical. thus when wilbur writes this in the book, as they are being fired on, he believes this to be true because it is.

“despite there being no evidence” watch the wall vod. think about the definition of tyranny, and even the different definitions of tyranny.

“a capitalistic empire on dream’s land” so wilbur did have reason for thinking dream was the leader, yes? because it was his land? his “house”? how dream said they were taking back the land that was rightfully theirs? how he called them “traitors to the kingdom”? ignoring the fact that once again, wilbur did not say anything negative towards dream until dream showed up and insulted l’manburg.

wilbur’s form of lying and deception for the drug empire was the norm for the server at the time. we don’t see him pulling this sort of exaggerated bit once he gets into l’manburg, because he’s idealistic and he really believes in it. if you watch tommy’s stream where wilbur first proposes the country, he jokingly says the reason he’s making it is because “americans ruin bits”. also during that stream, tommy asks if they’re making a drug empire, and wilbur says that no, they’re making a nation where drugs are legal.

“didn’t even do that much” hmm. no, i’m pretty sure dream and the people of the greater smp did do the stuff wilbur accused them of. one, he wasn’t directly accusing dream, (because. his problem wasn’t with dream specifically.) and two, the things he said in the declaration did happen?

“they have robbed us.”

to be fair everyone on the server did that lol

“imprisoned us.”

tommy was imprisoned for the drugs and for other things he was involved in, and tubbo was trapped and murdered for a thing he didn’t even know he had.

“threatened us.”

they were fired on multiple times when building l’manburg, they were threatened with consequences for the drug stuff, they told them in pretty clear terms that they were prepared to kill them instead of letting them be independent. the day of the war, dream and sapnap burned down all the trees around l’manburg and lavacast walls around it, saying it was a “warning”.

“killed many of our men.”

again, true. tommy and tubbo in particular died a lot during this time.

so since these things really did happen, how is wilbur lying about them?

“the people he was accusing of being tyrannical were very selective”

one, he accused sapnap of being an american, and it was the americans that were going for them. you don’t need to protect people that aren’t being hurt. most of his reasoning for “no americans” during this time was that anti-mask protests were happening in america, and he was making fun of them. two, the others imprisoned tommy, which does not count as “self defense in an anarchist society”. they accepted tubbo because he was european, and because he was willing to work for the nation like the rest of them. sapnap just wanted a drug dealer.

“dream’s “no factions” thing he had going on also included no government by default, showcased by him having problems with people starting countries.”

if there was no government, why did dream never point this out when wilbur said he was seceding? the server is dream’s faction! he doesn’t want “no factions”, he wants only his faction. dream refers to the server multiple times as a nation, and even a kingdom. anarchist societies don’t have prisons. the prison and the police is a system. if you have an anarchist society, but two specific people are going around arresting people, them going “oh but there’s no government” doesn’t take away the fact that they’re creating a hierarchy, using their own power? they also never claimed that there was no government.

everything that dream said later in the conversation with skeppy also lines up with this. ignoring the fact that there was a monarchy established because it “didn’t have any real power” is disregarding the fact that one, it was there, and two, that there was someone around with enough power to establish it in the first place. i don’t know how to say this any clearer. anarchist places do not have kings.

and anarchy is not the only thing that fits. it wasn’t designed to be a geopolitical drama, they just made the mistake of letting wilbur soot onto the server. so they didn’t need to have a name for the system, because the system was “do whatever you want”, including establishing authority.

“dream had all the reasons to believe they were aggressive and was fully justified in declaring war.”

dream didn’t declare war because alyssa was attacked. he had done stuff to them before that happened, and they got back all of her stuff (again, not by asking and trying to work it out, but by kidnapping someone who genuinely believed they were innocent and killing them as they begged for help.) dream started the official conflict because he declared war. he also started the unofficial conflict. he didn’t think they were aggressive, he thought they were weak.

“if he (wilbur) thought he was being mistreated he could just stop trying to mistreat others”

what, because he had any sort of power? he did stop mistreating others. l’manburg legitimately did nothing to intentionally hurt anyone, and tommy killing alyssa doesn’t count because that was his decision and revenge was already paid out for that. so wilbur stopped scamming people, built the walls to contain his country (he said that they needed nothing outside the walls at some point) and then was attacked multiple times. his mistreatment didn’t stop.

“it was supposed to be his l'manberg.”

wilbur didn’t destroy it because it was supposed to be his and it got away from him, that’s why he held the election: to try and restore peace through attempting to rig the election. he destroyed it because “the thing i built this nation for doesn’t exist anymore”, meaning the freedom it originally granted to its citizens was gone under schlatt. meaning the policy of no violence and using words was ruined. if the thing he built this nation for was power, this would make no sense. he could have taken power so easily. he passed off the presidency.

“something worth having power over” is something important. it is something that can be good for lots of people, and the power over it is what makes it safe. it’s worth having power over because when others, like schlatt, take that power, it is no longer safe.

violence and tyranny had become so much a part of l’manburg that wilbur felt the freedom and peace was gone. so when he blows it up, and says “my l’manburg”, he means it can no longer be used for evil. “my unfinished symphony, forever unfinished”. he saves it for himself by destroying it. so yes, he is being selfish, but not to ruin it for other people. he takes it into his own hands to weed out the fighting, and by doing so takes himself with it. his vision was never complete, because the wars had taught him that the only true freedom, the only true victory (“i won.”) for him was in death. (and then that turned out to be wrong.)

there’s a reddit post that cc!wilbur approved

that explains this a little better than i can, and cc!wilbur commented on it “any truers???” so i think it can be counted as reliable.

this full quote from cc!wilbur about his character (from his hey and stuff podcast) is very interesting. i’ll transcribe it here:

“i decided i was going to make a breaking bad style roleplay, where me and tommy would be drug dealers. and uh, one thing lead to another and i’m the president of a nation losing it due to my own insolence and uh, short sighted naivety. basically disregard for my fellow citizens who i claim to love so much. and a, and a dark, twisted understanding of what is possession. and what is, what is my right.”

i like this quote a lot because it highlights the initial traits that caused his spiral. it also places him as kind of similar to dream. the reason he lost the presidency is that he got too cocky. and the reason his spiral was so selfish is that it was all he could see— when his earlier vision of freedom was shattered by the first war, he didn’t know how to adapt and so became attached to power as it now felt like the only way to keep what mattered to him.

this is emphasized in his conversation with quackity during his second lore stream: that there was a drastic change between the person who made l’manburg and the person running for president. this quote matches up very well with the election arc. wilbur’s motives were different before the election, and they were different after.

once he had the freedom that he wanted, he became scared of losing it and that is what pushed him down. “if i can’t have it, no one can” is on the surface about the power, but the lament for what he once had (freedom in a country without tyranny) is there. that’s why he became so power-oriented. if he did not have control of l’manburg, it could be used to go against his original vision and it would be better off gone.

another good piece of information is cc!wilbur’s comment on his dnd alignment post, where he says this:

“wilbur is on the border of chaotic and neutral evil. wilbur, in his chaotic sense, is a crazy man who wants to blow up his old nation and kill his friends. but, more realistically, in his neutral sense, wilbur is the archetype of a man who had great power and who lost it all due to his own poor choices and negligence who sees destruction as his ratification.”

note the “realistically”.

he feels as if he owes it to l’manburg at the end to blow it up, and he didn’t mind taking himself with it as he thought that nobody cared about him anymore and he didn’t have any more to give.

(related to this, in the dnd alignment post, cc!wilbur places season 1 dream as chaotic evil and says his only motive is chaos. firstly, this would only apply to season one, and although cc!wilbur was working with cc!dream and everyone else to write the plot here, i wonder why he says this instead of saying anything else about dream’s motives. this seems to disagree pretty severely with what you think, but it also disagrees with what even i think about dream during this time.)

revivedbur comes back and has plans because he regrets his past. he hates that he gave up that easily. and he could absolutely lie about his past actions! there is no reason to ignore the contents of an entire war because someone who was alone for thirteen years says it!

“shouldn’t have it” doesn’t mean he was lying when he said he wanted it. he was just wrong, which he knew when he blew up l’manburg and that’s part of why he did it.

“they said they “fought with words”, like that doesn’t sound like a peaceful solution, more like a different approach, and it was because that is what they did”

they said the words thing a lot of times, and most of the time it was used as a “tommy don’t attack that person.” and “fighting with words” is arguing, it is replacing the trauma of real battle with talking it out. l’manburg did stick very closely to their motto of words over violence. look at the contents of the first war.

and once war was declared, wilbur was enthusiastic for it. sounds suspicious from someone claiming to not want war, right? he said it was a chance for them to prove themselves, to prove they could rule themselves. he also said that if they could defend themselves it would be proof. he never went “time to attack them”, and when he said he didn’t want a war in the past he meant that he didn’t want to start one. his being enthusiastic about the war ties into his naivety about running a country. it was also an acceptance in a way, no? it meant that the greater smp saw them as something worth declaring war on.

and it’s heartbreaking seeing him so excited to prove himself, because we know that the experience of the war is what lead to his spiral and his cynicism as president. we know that a few weeks later, he’s going to be crying into his pillow every night.

for the clip (the “something worth having power over and then you get killed by your dad” clip), i kind of don’t know what to say. i don’t think this is a clear condemnation of the entirety of l’manburg’s beginnings, but i do think that i was probably reaching a bit with trying to interpret it. there are definitely a lot of ways to see that, though.

no, he showed it in the first war and he clearly said it. i don’t think somebody who wants to mess with dream is going to not even think about him until he shows up, and even after then largely ignore him until he declares war.

“yes, it was worth something to wilbur, and that worth was power.”

question: power over what? power for what purpose? how did he use that power?

if it was only worth having power over, then why did he give it up? why didn’t he just kill schlatt in the first place? again i think the reddit post addresses a lot of this. original l’manburg was worth more to wilbur than power because he was willing to surrender when his life and his friend’s lives were threatened, and he told tommy it was not worth it to enter a duel and sacrifice his own life for it. after the war, he cared about power over it in order to keep peace, and then he realized that his own desire for power caused him to abandon his morals and he attempted to destroy it all.

“the greater smp did represent anarchy and peace.”

i just don’t think the ideals of the early smp line up with anarchy, and especially not dream’s actions later. he believes in forced peace, and unity under his terms although that belief is more gradual.

“see you tell me you didn’t fall for propaganda and then say this.”

it’s not “falling for propaganda” to watch the streams and interpret them. “propaganda” is defined as an attempt to spread information, often of a misleading nature. it’s what wilbur used during his presidential campaign, it’s what everyone used during the election. i do not base my opinion of his character off things that have been said about him after the fact. i watched the content when it happened.

so what about the facts that one, he wanted peace at the start, and two, that he cared about protecting his nation and the people he cared about is propaganda? it is information that i believe to be true based on my own analyzing of his actions during that time.

wilbur never says this as an attempt to lie to anyone. he wanted peace if it meant he could have freedom, but he would not attack anyone for freedom, he would defend it once he had established it. he wasn’t trying to establish an empire after the drug van stream (he says this in the vod where he discusses his plans for l’manburg with tommy) and the actions of the greater smp were tyrannical. what happened is that later, after the first war, he lost faith in peace because people continued to attack him!

“he did create division for his own benefit the way i see it.”

can you explain the “benefit” that division would give him? because like i said, his goal was his own personal freedom. he wasn’t attempting to divide people, he was reacting to mistreatment, whether perceived or real. and more often than not, people asked to join him, he didn’t try to convince them.

“yeah wilbur said it genuinely to tubbo when he first brought him armor”

as i was going through the old vods, i did find the origin of that quote (the quote where wilbur says “we go in with no armor and then stab them in the back” or something along those lines)! there’s something funny about it though. notice how he says it and then never does anything about it? and how nobody from l’manburg acts on it? because you have to look at his actions, something you emphasized that i agree with. they have more weight than his words. he also said “wanna kiss” to dream, so i don’t think this really counts as “proof” of an ulterior motive, because he said a lot of things.

“you see a pattern already?”

the “pattern” i see of his reactions to conflict in his nation is that he didn’t want to assert control in order to oppress people, he wanted to assert control to keep the peace, by rigging the election so that he had “legitimate” authority. was it a hypocritical? yeah! it reminds me of what dream was doing, too: placing his goal of peace over his wish for freedom of everyone.

the difference is that dream didn’t have any reserves about “starting an army and asserting dominance over his own people because they didn’t respect his authority and he was irritated by it”. weird that that can be used to describe dream as well, huh? and before it can be used to describe wilbur?

this is also after the first war, where wilbur learned a very important lesson! and it’s right before he realizes he’d become what he had tried to destroy. the other person who acts like this never realized this, though. it’s because he was never trying to destroy it. just saying.

“the friendships inside of it could’ve existed without, and would’ve probably been better off without being stained by war”

wilbur did not consider making l’manburg as a severing of relationships between the two nations. he even expresses neutrality towards some members of the greater smp. wilbur didn’t “make people think” they needed l’manburg, he saw it as a thing to devote yourself to, an ideology. he did not force others to think this way, although he encouraged it. people ended up sacrificing a lot for that (against their will sometimes), and so they became attached to it.

“the original dream smp was this but actually true instead of just being a front.”

ah yes, the dream smp with absolutely no hierarchies. nothing like mister “my house” at all. no “my land”, no “my server”, no “the king has no power”, no “it’s the dream smp”. /s

“wilbur didn’t fear for anyone’s safety”

hmm, no, wilbur did fear for everyone’s safety. you know, when they were being attacked continuously throughout the war? and when he finally surrendered because they were being threatened and killed?

“the dream smp was already safe”

dream and sapnap need better ways to “keep the server safe” than by blowing up people who wanted to go off and do their own thing and posed no threat to the greater server.

i don’t know how to provide “evidence” that dream and the others attacked l’manburg? the evidence is the fact that they did. again, wilbur’s initial goal was not conflict with the greater smp, it was emancipation. when tubbo was taken hostage and killed, shot at, robbed multiple times of materials it had taken him hours to get, and had his old house burned down simply because he was part of l’manburg, those were the reasons that tubbo ever fired a shot at them in the first place!

when wilbur lead his people out on the first day of the war, it was to negotiate. they dodged the arrows and went to the embassy, where they were then trapped and driven back into tommy’s house. it was then that they fought back. self defense. i don’t know what else to tell you.

“trying to end the war as soon as he could” is kind of misleading, because it implies that dream hated the violence. he just wanted to win as soon as he could. he didn’t care what he had to do to win it. no mercy.

the dream smp was not freedom because when you try to leave freedom, it doesn’t hunt you down and try to destroy you. anarchy doesn’t call you a traitor when you leave. and yeah, dream was real friendly to tommy when he continued the disk war when it first settled. and of course when your friends join a different nation, the most logical course of action is to murder them repeatedly! /s

the definition of anarchy includes personal freedom, the exact thing wilbur wanted. anarchy does not include authority, it is firmly opposed to it. i think i would place the early greater smp as more of a stateless society, if i had to put a name on it (again, i am extremely wary to do that because it wasn’t written as anything with a name. this is also a mediocre take that i don’t really believe because dream had his own faction.). a stateless society is one of the goals of anarchism, but does not encompass the entire belief.

dream’s main motivation was that he didn’t want anyone being independent. it didn’t matter who was leading it.

and i’m sorry, but you can’t just take away evidence by saying “he was lying” when there is no proof he is? if you take this conversation at face value it makes more sense! (this is about the conversation between wilbur and dream right before the “independence or death” scene)

“both sides had their losses and were ready to harm the other” what did the greater smp lose. its people? its land? there was other land, and the people could still remain friends. some of them did. dream even says before this that yeah, l’manburg is losing. and wilbur here is attempting to downplay that loss, claiming they’re on even ground because that’s what he wants to happen. he is trying to appear stronger than he really is. he’s bluffing, but it doesn’t work.

i don’t like saying “nobody’s the victim” here when one side was getting absolutely whaled on by the other. wilbur has the ability to be genuine, and he does. if he was trying to “play” the victim, he would exaggerate the damage his side had suffered. his words and his actions match up, and this is a pretty different circumstance from him doing a bit. he is a victim. that’s just straight up true.

i’m not surprised that you think this way, as you’ve said you were on dream’s side since the start, but i’d like to once again ask you to examine where you got these perceptions.

dream offering them “chances” was just offering them surrender. that’s not merciful, and it’s not fair, either. and he may not have wanted to hurt them, but he sure didn’t mind doing it. wilbur wasn’t sewing some kind of anti-dream propaganda in his nation while the battle was going on, the hatred for dream came from the fact that he was attacking all of them.

“colonize” is a bad word choice for what l’manburg was. nobody was living on that land before they got there. the land should have belonged to nobody, so why did dream get so mad about “his” land being taken? what about that specific area was so important to him, when he did have the ability to visit?

wilbur was pacifist, he was not the instigator, again i have to say i can’t offer up proof if you’re convinced that he was lying. when he fought back later it was in self defense. please watch the vods. and recognize that wilbur’s actions election era are consequences of his experiences revolution era.

i genuinely don’t understand what you mean by comparing this to exile. please rephrase your point. if you’re comparing what dream did to tommy to wilbur trying to stop dream from hurting him and his people more i have to say that’s a... questionable take. it’s probably a bad idea to make exile comparisons if you’re going to use them to victim-blame, as that’s very antithetical to exile as a whole and kid of ironic.

“i mean, what other choice was there?”

no, dream had a lot of choices. he did not offer them a peaceful way out. he declared war and then he attacked. it was then that he told them many times to surrender. and no, wilbur didn’t push them to go and die, evidenced again by the times he used himself as a distraction so that they could run, and that he didn’t want tommy to do the duel but ultimately respected his decision and his freedom.

“dream constantly asked them to give up instead of fighting.”

dream has a responsibility to not attack kids. dream also has a responsibility to attempt any sort of peaceful negotiation. tubbo was boxed and murdered before war was declared, and tubbo personally had done straight up nothing to the people of the greater smp, and he didn’t even know why he died until tommy saw that alyssa’s pickaxe was mixed in with his stuff.

if wilbur claimed to wish to prevent violence, and then he did, or at least attempted to, i don’t know why you think it’s untrue. calling someone a rude name is not equal to murder. “verbally violent” means pretty much nothing and was coming from both sides.

(this next part is about the “let me be your vassal” scene in pogtopia)

“there’s a theory wilbur legitimately thinks dream selfish”

i mean, yeah. i think that kind of sums it up. wilbur was appealing to dream’s personal goals. i don’t see how he was shut down though. he already helped pogtopia, so him being asked to further help someone from pogtopia shows that they trusted him enough to tell him the plan.

i’ve watched the clip a lot of times and i think that the meaning can be ambiguous. i am using dream’s other actions during that time to determine how much of an effect i think it had on him. i don’t think he got “shut down” in any sort of meaningful way here.

“he didn’t seem to hold even that against him as he tried to help get back l’manberg with him.”

if dream didn’t hold the disk thing against tommy then, he sure decided to get mad about it later (he brings it up when arguing with quackity), despite the fact that he had also re-opened the conflict in the past.

“i believe they (dream and tommy) had genuinely been friends once.”

sure, i think they were friends before dream did what he did with the disks, and allies during early pogtopia. dream still decided to switch sides and team with manburg because schlatt offered him the book. this is, ironically, dream abandoning tommy.

“he has a sense of responsibility (not control) over the people on his smp.”

i think it can be responsibility and control. most of the responsibility is misguided, and lots of it is just actual control. i don’t know where you’re getting a lot of this.

and i do not know where you got that his fatal flaw was caring too much? he “cares” in the way of having control! he doesn’t care about the well being of others as long as he thinks he’s right. i’m just saying that he sure could have walked away, because he did just that later when he sided with schlatt. it’s not a speculation about his character when it’s something that he did.

him walking away did not entail complete surrender to wilbur. there were a lot of other things he could have done, but i don’t want to get into “could have”’s as i don’t really think there’s a point. wilbur was attempting to convince him, yeah, but that didn’t mean it was true. we know that wilbur was lying about wanting ambition.

also, i don’t think dream was allied with pogtopia because he liked them or he was trying to be better or anything. he said in “tyrant” that it’s because schlatt was worse, and wilbur didn’t have any ambition to expand.

“maybe you misunderstood something i said, but no, he definitely didn’t.”

okay, so since dream didn’t think wilbur was a villain, wilbur was not “pressuring him” into becoming one by helping him. my point was that dream didn’t think that, and wilbur didn’t care. sorry for not making that clear, i was asking a rhetorical question.

(i said here that “someone calling someone else out for hurting them is not the same thing as villanizing them,” and they responded with this)

“yeah, they are. and dream was villanized.”

oh boy.

vilify: to utter slanderous and abusive statements against, to defame.

(i probably should have been saying vilify instead of villainize because they mean the same thing but i straight up did not know it was a word, sorry lol)

slanderous means false and malicious. abusive means offensive and insulting. defamation is things that are not true.

if somebody says, “this guy punched me.” that would not be vilifying them. it is a true statement with a neutral tone. if they add “he is a bad person”, that could possibly be seen as abusive, as it is insulting, but the point of vilifying someone is that you are making them out to be someone they’re not. it involves the use of lies and continuous exaggerated language. slanderous and abusive. abusive only is not enough to classify something as vilifying.

someone reacting to something dream did by calling him a name is not vilifying him. it is true that he did the thing, and it is also true that the person saying it believes it. it is rare that someone criticizes him without real reason or goes overboard (the person who really does this as far as i can remember is tommy), and when tommy does so it is almost always reciprocated. so we have dream and tommy constantly vilifying each other, and other people saying negative things about dream and sometimes vilifying him, if they lie about it. he sometimes vilifies them.

my point is that vilification is not wilbur telling niki, “dream burnt tubbo’s house down”, despite the fact that he calls dream a bad guy. it’s not slanderous because it is true. dream assisted sapnap with the act. vilification is not tommy explaining to ranboo what was happening during exile, or telling dream that dream makes him worse. “someone calling someone out for hurting them” implies truth, and it doesn’t necessarily imply abusive language, but it doesn’t matter because it’s true.

maybe we were going off different definitions of vilify. but when we’re accusing characters who are victims of abuse and manipulation, we need to be careful with what we accuse them of.

anyway

wilbur saying he wanted to use the tommys of the world was left in the drug van stream. tommy himself was pushing a lot of the “dream bad” stuff because he had more experience with him. when tommy was confused during those two scenes (vassal scene and revivedbur calling dream his hero)it was because he believed that wilbur respected him, and wilbur working with or idolizing someone who had hurt tommy in the past was a contradiction to that belief. wilbur does not question tommy’s anger during the vassal scene because he doesn’t care that dream is bad, and when he is revived he either does not believe it or does not want to acknowledge it. revivedbur cares a whole lot more about power for the sake of power than wilbur ever did.

again, tommy isn’t stupid. he has his own reasons for not liking dream, and the disconnect comes from a place of trusting wilbur.

by the way, wilbur left the vc before saying that tommy didn’t care. he was talking to himself (and chat). and he was more fearful that tommy was leaving than angry. plus, he didn’t actually force tommy to give up his house: there was miscommunication between them and the embassy was the power tower in the end. wilbur just wanted confirmation that tommy would spend time in l’manburg. it’s true that he went about it in a bad way, though.

he didn’t push patriotism onto them, they were also excited about the country. there were other scenes beside the tyrant scene, and the amount of times wilbur had to tell tommy to shut up about how great the country is is a lot higher than the one time he had them call dream a tyrant.

true, that scene (scene where wilbur asserts his authority as president) is before pogtopia. it’s also after the war for independence. i am not saying that wilbur should have said any of that stuff. i’m just pointing out that it wasn’t always like that.

also i do not really see “you’re never gonna be president” as a taunt or manipulation or anything. i think wilbur genuinely believed that having tommy in charge of the country would one, get them into more conflicts, and two, mess up tommy mentally. being the president sucked and wilbur knew that. wilbur was not kind to tommy. but a lot of stuff that’s pointed at as manipulative is pretty clearly wilbur’s own paranoia spilling over in a desire to protect tommy, ie saying that tubbo would betray them. wilbur genuinely thought that and he was trying to warn tommy.

“tommy, when i said you’d never be president, it wasn’t a challenge. it’s true. you’re never going to be president.”

tommy’s life has been hard, that’s true. not disagreeing with you there. but not every adult has been using him the whole time. and if you’re looking for fault, i would personally look at the guy who killed him three times first, just saying. other things had impacts but there’s a clear scale.

“tommy formed an attachment to them as a result of the disc war, not the other way around.”

so yeah, initially it was a shallow trade: the disks for the armor. once that conflict was resolved, and tommy apologized, that should have been the end of it, yeah? especially since tommy now had a stronger connection to the disks? that would have been nice.

the problem is that dream took them back for no reason. because he did, he went back and dug up tommy’s whole front yard and spawned months of conflict after. having “leverage” over someone like that is kinda messed up! it’s not like tommy was going around committing mass murder every tuesday, he got in scraps with other people on the server who also committed petty crimes. so i can’t really blame tommy for wanting them back, even though he stole them.

and if dream didn’t care about the disks, why did he later use it as “proof” that tommy caused all the trouble on the server? if they were so worthless to him that he gave them to skeppy, why did it matter that tommy stole them?

i don’t know what you mean about this being the only way dream could control people. the amount of genuine fear other characters felt when he logged on was there for a long time. he held a lot of power on the server, and a lot of his control was physical, evidenced by exile in particular but also the wars.

when he did ultimately use connections to control people, that was still a bad thing.

“his friend’s house got burnt down and he wanted the person who did it to be held accountable?”

okay, george’s house got burned down. do you remember the initial punishment that dream proposed? probation for tommy until he was eighteen. and when dream was arguing with his friends, he pointed out that the only reason l’manburg was being held hostage for tommy’s crime was that tommy was involved in the government. he said that if tommy hadn’t been involved in the government, he probably would have just hunted him down and killed him.

also, someone responding to this pointed out that dream was trying to frame tommy for things at the time. dream was intentionally creating other conflict in order to get to tommy. dream did not care about the house. he burnt down other people’s houses.

that’s not “holding someone accountable”. that’s not even close.

“he was taught this from experience”

the leather from the horse was used to blackmail him after he had already started doing that to people. you know how tommy mimicks him? that’s what was going on (still bad that he did it but like. come on.) so that may have been the push that caused dream to cut his own connections (so that nobody could ever do that to him again, and he would have no chance of failure), but it didn’t just happen to him for no reason: it was a behavior he taught someone else.

“he did genuinely think he was a villain before the war”

tommy called dream a lot of stuff before the war, and most of it was unprompted by wilbur. a lot of it was also, like you said, two friends joking around. just because wilbur taught him a new word (he didn’t really tell him what it meant though) doesn’t mean he was manipulated into using it all the time or something. and i’m pretty sure tommy got a decent definition of tyranny later, when the greater smp decided to attack l’manburg before anything went down.

“it’s just a character acknowledging what people who looked deeper into the narrative already knew.”

what i’m saying is that narratively, wilbur has an extremely good reason to be biased right now. taking anything he says as truth doesn’t solidify an interpretation as truth. there has to be enough evidence to actually back the entire thing up in the first place, and i’m just not seeing “wilbur was always going for power and division” as solidified by his actions during the first war.

and again, tommy’s not stupid, and the entire time tommy is yelling at him! tommy knows something is off! if people also in the story are saying “this isn’t right”, i feel like they’d know? tommy was also part of l’manburg, he has an opinion too. so when he says “we founded l’manburg because we knew dream was the bad guy”, he’s talking about why he did it. and he brings up a good point: “you say you did it to stick it to the man, but you’re idolizing dream, who is the man”. (paraphrased i don’t know his exact words but this was his point) this shows that wilbur’s motives have changed, even from what revivedbur will say.

(they linked three twitter threads here. i don’t know if relinking them here is a good idea as the whole point of this separate post is to disconnect the two sides, but the threads were by dr3amofagame on twitter, for reference purposes. i’m not going to link the independent threads but i think people can tell which ones i was responding to.

if this is wrong to say who made them please let me know, i do not know how Any of these websites work. if you’ve read this far, please don’t try to like,,, look up who any of these people are (especially the person i was debating with. don’t do that /srs) and send anything bad to them. that’s the whole point of this separate post. if anyone sends negativity directly towards people because of this post i’ll bite you)

that first analysis has some Opinions. oh man.

i don’t know man i’m just going to point some things out:

-the person who wrote the thread pulling the “child” card makes me laugh because tommy had committed more crimes than wilbur at that point. ah yes tommy innit innocent child being horribly dragged into a giant war by evil wilbur /s

-wilbur did not call dream a tyrant before dream showed up and made fun of their land

-wilbur did not legitimately think dream a tyrant when he told tommy and tubbo to call him that. neither, really, did tommy and tubbo. it was a joke. like infinite women. like dream saying “i’m evil” when he was blowing up creepers on their land before the battle. like dream and sapnap being all “down with the british”.

-their attitude on that changed when the greater smp begin exhibiting tyrannical behavior (before war was declared!).

-“having tommy and tubbo fight his battles and build his walls” is just untrue

-the l’manburg anthem was, one, not written by wilbur (he commissioned someone to do it on fiver), and two, was written after the first war. they sing it in the stream where niki joins. so yeah, at that point, they did emancipate from the brutality and tyranny of their rulers! it doesn’t say who the rulers are (therefore it’s. not blaming solely dream.) but pretty much all of them were brutal!

-also oh my god this thread has a lot of things that wilbur just straight up didn’t say (or do).

-“would rather die than submit to your tyrannical rule” is a quote from the speech wilbur gives before dream lights the tnt. dream had done stuff to them at that point. this is out of context.

-i don’t want to seriously critique this thread because a lot of it seems more like something emotional than an attempt to start conversation, and i can’t really go against that.

-the main argument, that dream did nothing before being irreversibly forced into the role of the villain does not really match up with what happened.

-there’s a lot less of people calling dream a villain than people seem to remember.

-and also, dream was lying about wanting l’manburg to be something. he says to eret a few days later the quote that i included a while back, that his goal has always been for there to be one faction: the dream smp. note that at this point he’s officially on manburg’s “side” now. he also says he has never wavered on this from the beginning. so he’s either continuing his manipulation of eret and lying to them, or he’s just saying that he wants l’manburg to be something to wilbur and tommy to try to get them to trust him. and hearing him yell “YES!” after the explosion? i’m inclined to think it’s the latter.

okay, so then looking at the second analysis:

-once again, calling wilbur a colonizer? there is a definition of that word that matches up with his actions, but that definition is something establishing itself in a place. by that definition, everyone on the server is a colonizer. so calling just wilbur that seems... a bit weird, considering that the common definition does not match up with what he did.

-“got his (wilbur’s) entire side killed” ignores the fact that it was Dream And His Friends Who Killed Them hghfnjgnfm

dream: wow wilbur you’re bad at this war thing

wilbur: please stop killing us

dream: how could you do this to your people

wilbur: you??? declared war???

dream: no you don’t understand. i had a really good reas—

sorry sorry i’m just. yeah

-also this thread reminded me that “tyrant” (the book) exists and yeah, i do see your point that dream did care about tommy (a little bit). i just wonder why he turned against him again? and why dream is willing to admit here that l’manburg was peaceful, and also that wilbur was not like schlatt in some key ways?

-and again i don’t see wilbur calling dream a villain during the vassal scene.

-some of this thread is just speculation. i’m not going to consider “wilbur may manipulate dream in the future because they had a conversation in the past”, especially because revivedbur’s mental state right now is godawful, because i don’t think it holds any value to examining the past. the important part is the breakdown of the vassal scene.

-i’ve already said what i think about the vassal scene. dream wasn’t getting tossed around during that. just because he’s quiet doesn’t mean he’s being manipulated? and wilbur isn’t going “you think this”, he’s asking dream what he thinks by paraphrasing what wilbur’s heard from him before, and adjusts it once dream corrects him. i do think this one is more open to interpretation though; this is just my opinion and it doesn’t have a lot of stuff to back it up lol but i’m not convinced either side has much evidence

and the third analysis:

-dream had no idea what kind of government they were setting up there. he didn’t ask, so he wouldn’t know if it was a dictatorship. and again he was allowed on the land, he just never built the embassy. the “no americans” rule was weakly enforced during the first war, and the reason wilbur got so serious about it later is that the americans were the ones who went after him and killed everyone during the war! so he had a reason to want them off. objectively a bad reason? maybe

-it would be cool if dream said “hey don’t do this here’s why” instead of stomping off during negotiations and then coming back to beat them up and declare war. he didn’t though

-the problem people have with greater smp vs. l’manburg is scale. the greater smp was quite literally infinite, and l’manburg was a small space. there wasn’t anything important in l’manburg that other server members needed to get to. people could still leave to visit their friends. they didn’t legitimately hate americans. but nooo, you can’t have the table because it’s my table. what if you do something bad with the table? remember when you tried to sell people “better air” for three dollars and then took someone’s air conditioning? you just want power! i’m going to go bring back rubber bands to pelt you with.

anywAys moving on

no, i do agree with you on the sam stuff. for some reason i was under the impression that cc!sam was uncomfortable with being depicted as torturing dream a while back, but with the stuff happening with quackity now, i’m reasonably sure that doesn’t apply. they don’t retcon stuff that was intentional but there may have been something taken back a few months ago before they planned this.

but yeah, clearly the prison stuff is awful and messed up. that’s why i noted the thing at the start of the reply: i am in no way saying that anything sam or quackity have done to dream since prison hasn’t affected him. these are things that i see as having visible impacts on the character.

(i pointed out that dream originally commissioned the prison)

i understand that it’s frustrating to hear that used as an excuse, but i wasn’t using it that way. i was pointing out that neither of them deserve it. during the vault stream, dream tells tommy that his plan is to put him in the prison. he says that exile was “perfect”, and the only issue was that tommy could get away. putting him in the prison fixes that.

so yeah, what dream was planning to do to tommy is different than what’s happening to him. but the reasons that other people wanted dream in the prison match why he wanted tommy in there: like you said, it’s a vault. it’s so he can store him and use him later, to give attachments and thus power and control over others.

tommy’s original plan was to kill dream. ultimately, he didn’t want him to suffer more, he wanted him gone. nobody on the server knew yet that death was limbo, and tommy probably thought it was mercy for someone like dream. dream was the one who brought up the book, as an attempt to save himself. he will say whatever he needs to say to avoid death, because anyone would (except someone like wilbur who’s. accepted his role. you know?) so he’s the one who reduced himself down the the book, saying if he goes, so does it. that’s when sam suggests the prison.

true, the arc is dark. this is where sam’s actions become corrupted and he loses sight of some of the responsibility he claims to have. it’s also the arc where dream lied to tommy that he had changed, and pressured him into staying by saying he was his friend. it’s the arc where dream kills tommy, and doesn’t allow sam to come get his body for days. it’s the arc where dream gets even worse, whether because of his time in the prison or because of his peaked god complex, probably both.

and again, my problem is that criticizing characters for actions they didn’t take is pointless. it tells you not much about the character, and considering the circumstances of what dream had done it does make sense for none of them to step in! they are looking at the fact that dream had an entire vault dedicated to controlling them. they are seeing that dream was fully prepared to murder tubbo and lock tommy away forever to be used. they are witnessing tommy giving dream exactly what he got.

so “acknowledging” this does nothing useful! we do not see these actions (or lack of) specifically affecting dream. i can tell you what dream told people he was doing, and it matches up with things he had done in the past, and there are moments he denies the narrative that you say drove him to do this. but i can’t really prove anything when you say he’s lying here because it fits how you interpret the story.

it’s what you’re saying people are doing to revivedbur: saying he’s lying without any proof, when with him there is evidence and he has the motive to lie. when revivedbur lies, tommy calls him on it. tommy doesn’t call dream on it. i’ve laid out why i think it’s not true, and i’ve seen stuff in early canon that directly contradicts what revivedbur says. occam’s razor! many pieces of evidence versus a few statements from someone who at that point commonly lied about things like that.

dream standing by while tommy and the other citizens get killed in l’manburg by his own orders isn’t very peaceful or non-tyrannical of him. tommy was enforcing an eye for an eye, and to be honest? i don’t think “kill your abuser” is such a terrible message to send, despite the fact that we know that tommy’s coping mechanisms come from a bad source. and tommy was far from free of what dream did to him, as evidenced by later when he again attempts to mirror what dream had done to him in the past.

yeah, i read your analysis of the interaction (skeppy and dream arguing over l’manburg). that’s not the only interpretation. skeppy doesn’t call him the villain. he is repeating back to dream the actions that dream took, and dream tells him he’s making him sound bad. skeppy wasn’t influenced by any “propaganda” you think l’manburg was putting out while they were getting murdered. skeppy was an outsider who was calling it as he saw it.

and if other people saw what dream was doing as bad, maybe he was... doing bad things? for bad reasons? skeppy was critical of dream for his actions. talking over somebody does not certify it as “twisting words”. skeppy was accusing him of doing the actions, like “so you did this? you started the war?”. dream was defending the logic behind his actions, like “well i did it because.”

basically

skeppy: hey it’s kind of. messed up that you killed a bunch of people. you know? you kind of just attacked them out of nowhere

dream: no no no you don’t understand. i had a really good reason

skeppy: i don’t see a reason?

dream: you’re making it seem like i didn’t have to do this

skeppy: you d i d n ‘ t

and skeppy didn’t finish the conversation with “you’re lying” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about”, he just told him he was wrong! as in his actions were cruel and needless! “people must have hated coming to your house”.

(they asked me to name one person who dream cut off first)

okay, name one? puffy. sam. punz? he did cut them off, he straight up told tommy he did it, and making a place in the vault for fran when sam had done nothing but work with him? and they didn’t “show up ready to kill him”, they showed up to see what he was doing. so he tells tommy he abandoned them, and indirectly tells them with the spirit scene. sapnap and george noticed this, and called him on it, but he just said he didn’t mean it?

if dream “wasn’t as close” with sam/puffy/punz, why are we putting responsibility on them for his actions.

so sapnap and george walked away from him, but because he did something to them. and puffy didn’t abandon him. punz didn’t abandon him, punz got paid off because that’s what punz cares about: money. he’s a mercenary.

using “they left him first” for sapnap and george doesn’t allow for why they left him: because he wasn’t treating them fairly. he isn’t their parent, he’s their friend, and he wasn’t acting like it.

“he was hurt and abandoned to the point” “he ended up hurting people doesn’t negate the fact he was hurt himself first” “the environment they all were a part of pushed him this far, and that’s just what happened”

so you’re saying it’s right that the reason dream did bad things to people is because bad things were done to him first? because dream was definitely the one who got attacked first during l’manburg. because he just cared so much about george that he kicked someone out of society just to defend his honor. /s and then, because his real purpose was protecting george, he went back and tried to make things right with george because it wasn’t about tommy? oh wait, he didn’t. he focused on only tommy. because george’s house was an excuse.

“that’s just what happened” is a bad take on “people got abused”. the fact is that dream started a lot of the conflict. looking at the retaliation and self-defense that people did towards him and saying “he got hurt a bunch that’s why he did the later bad stuff” completely negates that he started it? and his “retribution” was always exponentially worse than the actual crime committed?

dude, i’m just trying to point out that the story says he cut people off. yeah, he was hurt at times, but that is not an explanation for what he did. it’s not even a logical cause, because we do not see it affect his character. the subtext has gotta be there. the fact that he was hurt does not make him any more justified.

“circle of violence” does apply (not all of them, though). but in this situation, it’s a kid stealing someone’s lunch money, and then the other kid breaks their nose. the first kid punches the kid, the second kid puts them in the hospital. when the retribution dream gave was always worse than whatever happened to him, the issue is not “look at the people hurting him”, it’s “stop him from hurting people”!

so clearly dream needs some kind of therapy (not from puffy though i’m not letting him near her /hj), because just killing him would be a permanent solution but it would upset people who like his character. the prison is awful and not going to work. my personal solution for him is to send him out somewhere a long way away, so that nobody he’s hurt has to see him again. maybe people that wanted to go with him could, and it would be like a new smp. but when that idea was proposed, tommy said darkly that he was always going to come back. maybe it’ll be the solution in the future. who knows.

if the mistakes were unintentional, why criticize the characters for them? and what about “the environment” besides the other people changed how dream thought? a lot of it was internal.

we have him exiling tommy as a weird, desperate plea for friends (not really) when he very much could have gone back and spoken to the people who were his friends. we have him continuously saying that tommy causes all the problems, and he needs to be “restrained” or “controlled” or whatever other excuse he came up with for taking away a person’s free will.

we have him obsessing over the disks, and we know it’s not about the disks, it’s about power over tommy and power in general. he says this in the vault. he says this at the community house scene. his progression is towards a twisted sense of possession, same as wilbur, oddly enough. but they are different in that wilbur is possessive over the idea of freedom that he created with l’manburg (and having power over that) and dream is possessive over control over all.

wilbur’s idea is ruined. he tied his sense of self to the nation and when it was used for corruption (kind of by him and mostly by others) he saw himself as corrupted and decided to take them both out so that they couldn’t hurt anyone. he admits his own fault to the point of self destruction.

dream’s idea is threatened. other people live there, other people want to do things, and so he becomes so attached to the idea that it’s his server and he will do anything to control opposition. he cannot admit his fault unless forced to.

wilbur would do anything to control a tool of power, because he wanted to not use it as that tool. wilbur wanted anarchy at the end. he says so in his last presidential speech. his naive views about freedom from the start of the server had worn off, as he saw people use power as a tool in a way that he had never intended or meant to use it.

wilbur created the election so that he would have an actual authority over the land, and he could stop the fighting of its citizens. he thought he knew better, kind of like dream did. this is when his motives get the most twisted and selfish, he wanted peace so bad that he would take away freedom for it (like dream). but when he lost, he accepted it, and that’s the difference. he saw the desire for control in his own actions, and hated himself for it. that’s why he wanted to blow up l’manburg, to take away the tool for power and the person who had been tempted to use it.

wilbur was a good leader in the political sense (dream admits this in “tyrant”) but when he stands before the rubble of l’manburg and calls it his, he’s saying that his rule would only lead to destruction. anyone’s rule would. power corrupts. l’manburg ruined is his l’manburg, it’s his original vision of complete freedom laid out before him, and tracked to its inevitable end.

so then, you would say, dream was right, yeah? he didn’t want l’manburg. but wilbur before he explodes l’manburg doesn’t like dream. he thinks dream’s right in that factions lead to oppression, no matter how good the intentions, but he also knows that dream was a little too willing to hurt them and that dream doesn’t believe this. dream does not want anarchy, he wants chaos but only if it gives him control. he treats the smp like his country, and once again, power corrupts.

went off there, sorry. dream and wilbur are similar but different in some very important ways.

sapnap had been hurt by dream before the vault, and as dream didn’t see himself as in the wrong, he didn’t reach out. sapnap was with pogtopia (wait this might be wrong i do not remember but he was definitely on l’manburg’s side during doomsday) because tommy had shown him more kindness than dream, and that was originally dream’s side. dream just turned on them for the book.

and sapnap also witnessed dream mocking tubbo, making fun of tommy, exposing ranboo. he heard dream going off about how tubbo was so stupid for thinking dream was his friend, for thinking dream cared about him. why would sapnap side with dream if dream was showing no signs of even wanting him?

sapnap accused dream of that, and dream did not listen to him. he could not see the other side: he was so convinced that he was right. we do not know if sapnap went into the vault with the intent of killing dream. i’m pretty sure most of them were there to see if what tommy had said was true. and then, sapnap saw that it was.

nobody abandoned him because of the vault because he had already abandoned them. they just made it mutual. it being a “consequence” of stuff doesn’t make it any less of a messed up, power hungry thing to do, and some of them had done nothing to him before he decided he needed to control them. he was planning to use friend to control ghostbur, who he had already taken advantage of and tried to kill once.

“people do not decide to isolate themselves for no reason.”

true, people don’t cut themselves off for no reason. the reason was power and control. i once again have to emphasize that nobody forced him into this: it was a spiral. other people didn’t do everything “first”. the small taste he got of his own medicine was a poor mimic thrown at him by someone he had done terrible things to. he started spiraling before the spirit scene happened. and if people are telling him he can’t achieve peace, maybe they’re just... right? did he go up to someone and go “i don’t know how to make this server peaceful :(“? because if he did, and if they then pointed at his long list of war crimes and told him not like this, i don’t really see that as anything more than a consequence for things he had already done.

someone can lie about what they want. maybe he did originally want peace, or maybe he was lying to himself that he did. l’manburg did not invite war. he wanted unity above peace, and that “unity” dissolved into “control”.

it was a defense so that nobody could control him the way he was going to control them. cutting himself off was out of fear, yeah. collecting everyone else’s items? power and control. he says this a ton of times, sometimes not even out loud.

i did rewatch the vault vod. that’s how i got all the quotes of him stating his motives. i’m not saying it was a healthy thing to do at all. i never said dream was mentally healthy, i said he had a god complex and he was obsessed with control. someone’s bad mental state can hurt others as well as themself, and they’re still responsible for the others and for trying to be a better and more respectful person. that’s why revivedbur’s “apologies” mean nothing right now.

“he lists his reason for starting the war as them declaring independence, so i don’t think it really matters when the official document was sent.”

it does matter a little bit, actually. they were already attacking l’manburg before official war was declared. they also attacked them during the peace period. wilbur wrote the declaration as he was standing on the roof of the caravan, being shot at by the greater smp.

a country becomes independent when it officially declares itself to be independent. they were still united; it was tyranny.

when dream saw that l’manburg was writing the declaration, he scrambled to declare war. he had reopened and started other conflicts in the past, and involved himself in places he did not need to be. it’s true that a response is a response, but you cannot treat all responses the same way. quackity’s “response” to the things dream had done (killing tommy among those) was to torture him. we do not consider that good, or fair, or “just a response”, we consider it cruel and unusual punishment.

the greater smp fulfilled the words that wilbur had not yet written in the document, and that’s because they weren’t a prophesy, they were a history.

“...would be completely honest about (dream’s motivations in the vault) in front of his biggest enemy. /s”

i don’t see evidence that dream wasn’t being honest. what did he have to lose by it? tommy could do nothing to hurt him. so yep, he would be honest about it. and he’s listed his reasons as power before. he also has the ability to tell the truth about his motives.

dream does not see tommy that way. he sees him as someone whose only positive contribution to the server is attachment. he tells tommy that evil is relative, and to dream, tommy is the evil one. in fact, he says that tommy is evil lots of times. he only says that tommy sees himself as a hero when he’s trying to convince him to let him kill his friend. dream is using tommy’s black and white perception to get him to do what dream wants. he only says tommy sees himself as the hero, not that dream sees him that way. dream does not care about who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy, because he’s not idealistic like wilbur and he’s not a kid like tommy.

him making a joke about building the prison with a “little bit of evil” doesn’t matter because next line he says that tommy’s evil to him. dream isn’t playing the villain, cc!dream is. cc!dream is playing a character that is antagonistic towards others, and he plays into it and jokes around with it, as other people playing antagonistic roles have in the past. cc!wilbur does this a lot during the election and pogtopia. cc!techno hints at it with his “ah yes, blowing up a country, we must be the good guys”.

it may sound like a character because someone’s playing it, but it’s not dream.

this video matches up with some of my points here, but it’s also framed like an english class. it is an interesting meta argument, and one that i would say i partially agree with, but as we’re not really arguing on terms of meta it does not act as a general opposition to your argument. the intent of the authors does not dictate how you see the story, but it can help with interpretation of it.

dream’s words during the vault scene sure do line up with his actions for the months before that. so yeah, no discredit to cc!dream. he’s playing his character. and it’s not like he’s unwilling to make him sympathetic. he’s done so in the past (and is doing so now) and the fact that he does not do it during the vault, and downplays the tragic part of it (him losing his friends) sure makes it seem like the main point here isn’t “poor dream”, it’s “poor tommy”. they’re telling a story. it has a moral.

dream being reserved about his plans may be shown in the fact that nobody knew about the vault (except punz i think?) until dream was ready to put it into play. he generally is quiet about what he wants, he just cares a lot about it and will do a lot to get it. he’s not one for speeches unless he’s trying to make a point. the point here being that tommy is trapped. dream’s capable of explaining his thoughts. tommy asks him why and invites him to share, so he does.

this isn’t really a “nobody can interpret it like this”, it’s just pointing out that the events of canon are there and should be fully considered. character dream’s perspective of the story is biased, so people can look at it and be correct in how dream sees the situation, but “how dream sees it” and “how the story goes” do not necessarily line up.

conflicts dream has started besides the vault? okay.

-reopening the disk war by digging up the hidden disks

-declaring war on l’manburg the first time

-burning down other buildings in order to frame tommy

-blowing up the community house (or having it done for him)

-attacking l’manburg again with techno and phil

(didn’t start really, but inserted himself into when it wasn’t his business:)

-helped pogtopia

-gave wilbur tnt

-sided with manburg in the fight

-built walls around l’manburg

-demanded tommy be punished

-took personal responsibility for exile and used it as a way to isolate tommy

there’s also this post that describes things dream has done in general. the tone of the post is biased, but the actions were canon. some of these may be “retribution” but they sure were uncalled for.

so when he exiled tommy, that was about “unity”? big happy family except for one guy because “he causes all the problems”? it doesn’t matter whether he believed he was in the right for his motives. the vault does not make sense for peace or unity. it is a twisted, controlled unity. what i’m saying is that he uses peace as an excuse for his actions. he had to exile tommy, tommy would have just gotten worse. he had to declare war on l’manburg, it was a necessary evil. because nothing screams “peace” like declaring war and killing the other side, right?

those may be his actual motives in the early scenes, and he thinks he’s doing the right thing. this changes with the vault. he no longer uses this as an excuse, his “excuse” is that he has a right to it. his self proclaimed motive is power and control, and unity through that. so why not accept that as his motive when he says it there?

“becoming a control freak as a result of feeling the loss of control over your own circumstances isn’t equal to dehumanizing the people you’re trying to control.”

nah dude he absolutely dehumanized them and took away their agency? he describes tommy as a pet and a tool, minutes before he switches and describes himself as the book. this could also be used to make an interesting point on how he sees people as their values, in item form. so he’s using one item to control another. tubbo’s a pawn, tommy’s a tool, techno’s a weapon, he’s the book.

he calls george a baby, and makes decisions for him. by planning to using the items to control the people, he was prepared to take away their freedom and agency by emotionally manipulating them. he did this to tommy. agency is the capacity of someone to act. he takes away that ability in order to have control.

he’s not just a control freak over his own life, the problem is that he does it to others. again, we’re talking true freedom here: the ability to do anything, even things that we would consider morally wrong. he takes away george’s power, which is revealed to be nothing. he then swiftly turns and tells him that if he tries to overthrow eret, he would be a tyrant. not acknowledging that dream just overthrew a king and stated in a new one, he hypocritically calls george the tyrant for planning to do that.

(i didn’t even notice this until now, but it’s actually interesting: dream is extremely hypocritical here, unless, of course, he sees himself as having more claim to who is king. now why would he think that? a hierarchy, perhaps?)

“which is understandable seeing as you’ve said already you never tried to look deeper into him, but it’s incorrect nonetheless.”

i said that before this i had not attempted to examine his character in a sympathetic light. that’s what i’ve been doing. his wish to “fix” his home is really just a wish to control his home, which is pretty evident when you look at right before exile. the smp was peaceful then. tommy had committed petty crimes before, and george didn’t even really care about the house. it was minimal damage. dream jumped at the opportunity to convince everyone else that tommy was the real problem (speaking of propaganda and vilifying).

and “he was getting better until the sixteenth” disregards that he threatened eret, enabled wilbur (however you interpret that, he still enabled him), and sided with schlatt for power reasons even though he said he would help pogtopia. giving pogtopia some stuff doesn’t make him the “good guy” because pogtopia were not the good guys! that’s the point! he sided with them because wilbur had less ambition than schlatt, and therefore posed less of a threat to the greater smp! he wasn’t helping them just purely out of the goodness of his heart. he didn’t think schlatt was right, he abandoned him very quickly, but he could have just taken the book and dipped. he fought in the war. he took the book for personal gain and he placed that above the trust of pogtopia.

“he wasn’t on a power trip at all, he didn’t have a god complex up until the prison stripped him of all his dignity and then threw an opportunity at him, and he wasn’t trying to prove anything to anyone.”

power trip: an activity or way of behaving that makes a person feel powerful

exile and the vault, arguably before that a few times as well. there are a few quotes that emphasize this.

dream’s god complex was already there in the vault. that’s why he was scared enough of being controlled that he shut everyone else away: he wanted to secure himself even more as the sole power.

and exactly. he wasn’t proving anything to anyone else, he was proving it to himself. therefore he also wasn’t trying to “prove” he was big and bad and evil and irredeemable, he was trying to feel confident about his own power!

if he doesn’t care if he’s thought as of evil, why did it supposedly drive him into the spiral? if he stopped caring about it, that would also explain why he was indifferent towards it (because he was indifferent towards it, every time someone called him that, indifferent or angry). he didn’t think he was evil because he thought he had a right to what he was doing. so he pushed himself into wanting more control, after seeing something he identified as a problem: tommy. you’re right that that’s part of what makes him tragic: that he stopped caring about what he owed to anyone else. that’s why he hurt them.

“it’s likely and fits perfectly into his character arc in canon.”

people who are emotionally repressed still show emotions, they just don’t show them as often. dream shows emotions but he does not show the specific emotion that would give evidence to this theory. i’m saying that claiming something is deeply rooted in his character (not the emotional repression, that’s confirmed) when he shows no sign of it doesn’t line up with canon. it’s more of a theory than an analysis.

“it is good storytelling because cc!wilbur pulls it off brilliantly.”

cc!wilbur still played a complex character! his behavior changed significantly after the war, but there is evidence that he was a certain way during the war. his character grew from that point but my argument is that he was not always a liar about important things and that he genuinely believed in the values he formed l’manburg for. if you want to watch wilbur being power hungry and hypocritical, rewatch the election arc.

actions, not words. cc!wilbur pointed out hypocritical things his character said, but that just shows he was playing a flawed character. people using the wall thing as some kind of proof that he was evil is stupid because part of the idea behind the wall was poking fun at america. it was “look, this is what you guys do”.

his early character was passionate and naive. cc!wilbur was aware of this. he was still a chaotic crimeboy, the nation was founded on drugs. but not everything he did was “for chaos” because again, he played a multi-dimensional character. he can make jokes about politics.

“his main support system left by themselves.”

i’ve already explained why i think dream broke most of his own bonds. again, there’s textual evidence to support this and actions as well that line up with it. and lots of people were willing to help dream. he didn’t murder all those people by himself.

“it also seems you’re strongly biased against c!dream, which, to be fair, the majority of the fandom is.”

it’s true my bias is against dream. it’s also true that my reasons for that bias are backed up by moments in the story where he clearly states his intentions, and a lot of the evidence to the contrary is, to me, one-off moments that can be interpreted in many ways. a lot of the bias also comes from the fact that he did pretty bad things and i’ve been watching this for a long time.

this post is pretty much what i’m saying, i guess.

alright @flypaw here it is :]

~ Lad 2

[pixie88]

On Pause

Chapter 22 - Always the Bridesmaid.  

A/N: Please don’t hate me for this chapter. 1 Chapter left of ATB, that will be out within the next week. Thank you again to all those following this story and continue to follow it, you have no idea how much it means to me that you take the time to read. 😘 

Please if you don’t like this series ask to be untagged or don’t read.

Read previous chapters HERE!

Warnings: Fluff & Mild NSFW

Word Count: 1967

Pairings: Laila x Harry

Enjoy! 😘 

"Laila....?" he looks over to her for a second, "Like give up my flat permanently?" her voice is a whisper, she quickly sobers up "Well, yeah or I could move into yours if you don't want to move to mine?" she goes to speak but nothing comes out "Laila? What do you think?" he asks.

"Erm...I...errr....don't you think it's a little too soon?" he seems a little taken aback by her answer "But you're practically living there now, so what's the difference?" she knows what he's saying is right "But I..always have the option to go back home. If I move in to yours I don't have the option anymore"

"So you don't want to move into mine because you won't have an option to go back home?" he asks her confused "Harry, it's a big step....we've only been together 3 months. If this doesn't work out....I'd have to go back to square one again. Buy a new flat, new things" he pulls up outside his flat "That's what you're waiting on? Us to fail?" he seems a little hurt when he asks.

He takes the keys out of the ignition "NO! I didn't say that, I just meant we haven't been official for long and moving in...together...now. Well, it's a bit too soon!" he sighs, "Basically, I'm good enough to keep you safe from Vicky but to permanently move in I'm not?" he almost hisses at her "NO!! Don't put words in my mouth! Harry...I would love nothing more than to live with you permanently but when the time is right"

"That's the thing.... I don't think the time will ever be right," he gets out of the car slamming his door, without looking back at her, he walks through the main entrance and heads towards the stairs.

She sighs, knowing she's hurt him, but she doesn't want to rush into things for it to blow up in her face. She knows it's not just living that she's scares her... it's also losing him.

She gets out of the car and makes her way up, when she steps inside, the flat is dark. She wanders towards the living room which is dark flipping the lights on she saw him sat on the sofa with his head in his hands "Harry, I'm sorry, but I'm just not ready," he runs his hands down his face "I was thinking maybe I should go back to mine..." he stands and turns towards her "Do what you want! I don't want you to think I've taken that option away from you" he says as he passes her.

"Harry, don't be like that! I just think it would be moving too fast..." he cuts her off "You think we are moving too fast? OK, then sweetheart lets slow it right down....I think we should take a break to figure out what we want" Laila's blood runs cold "What?! Harry..." he turns away from her walks into the bathroom and closes the door.

She realises this isn't up for discussion.

After he closed the bathroom door, Laila heard the bath starting to fill, she stormed into the bedroom, grabbed her bag and packed just the stuff she needed before leaving the flat without waiting for him to finish in the bathroom.

She takes the tube as she's had too much to drink to drive home.

The next day.

She wakes her head is pounding, she woke up hoping last night was a bad dream, but reality hit and she realised it wasn't a dream. She turned off her phone when she got in last night, she didn't want to speak to anyone today.

After she got up and dressed, she needed to get some shopping in. She was in the supermarket trying to decide which pizza to get "You alright Laila?" she turned where she spots Ivie "Oh hey Ivie! How are you?" she puts on a fake smile, "I'm great thanks! You? How's your boyfriend?" Laila tries to smile but Ivie notices her eyes start to gloss over "Oh dear! Laila what's happened? Why don't we grab a coffee from the cafe upstairs and have a chat"

Ivie takes Laila's arm and leads her upstairs "You take a seat and I'll get these. Coffee is it?" Laila nods as she sits down at a table, she watches the shoppers below. The couples buying groceries together... Why didn't I just move in with him? Would be better than how I'm feeling now! She thought.

"Here you go, duck," Ivie says placing her coffee in front of her, "Do you want to tell me what happened?" Ivie asks. Taking a deep breath Laila relaid what happened last night to Ivie when she's finished Ivie sighs "You know me and my Archie split for 2 years in the begin, then we had 45 wonderful years together before he passed away. So, Laila don't see this as the end, it's the beginning you both just want to make sure you are ready for the next step that's all!" she smiles at her.

After her talk with Ivie, Laila feels a little lighter. She decides to go and pick up her car from his place, when she arrived his car was gone. She was a little disappointed, but knew they needed space.

Over the next few days or so Laila went into a routine she'd get up, shower, have breakfast, head to work, work all day, lock up head home, have dinner, a bath then bed. She worked on her days off and was the first to offer to cover another stylist if they needed, the truth was she didn't want to go home because it was quiet and she would do nothing but just sit there thinking about Harry and what's he doing.

She still ignored the world she muted all chats after she told her family, she was fine, but she needed time.

She saw Harry had messaged her, she sent a quick message back.

One week turned into two of the same routines .

That night Laila ordered a pizza after she had a shower and decided to binge on Netflix, the buzzer went she went over to the intercom and buzzed up the delivery guy. As she opens the door, she's greeted by a big bouquet, she can't see the delivery guy behind them, "Oh, wow..." the flowers drop revealing his boyish smile and his ocean blue eyes.

"Harry?" she wasn't expecting to see him, suddenly she becomes self conscious of how she looked "Can I come in?" he pleads with her, she nods moving aside, so he could come inside. They make their way into the living room and he takes a seat on the sofa, placing the flowers down on the table. A ringlet of his hair drapes down wet from the rain as his coat was also wet "You look beautiful," he says as she sits down with space between them.

"Thanks, how are you?" she asks, he lets out a small laugh as he shook his head "Honestly?" She nods "Absolutely miserable!" he moves closer to her "Laila, I miss you!" he cups her face and she smiles "I know it's stupid considering I was the one that said we should take a break, but I thought maybe that's what you needed because things were moving to fast for you. Worst idea ever, I've done nothing but pine for you! I may have even walked passed your work a couple of times just to get a glimpse of you"

She laughs "Stalker much," he laughs at her comment "But I miss you too" his lips crash to hers, its rough and passionate "Laila, please can we resume this," he whispers against her lips, she smirks "Resume? Harry, we aren't a video game," she laughs, "Fine, get back together, unpause, take me back, be mine! If you aren't ready to take that step..fine, but I just want you back" he says as he reclaims her lips.

Laila can't help smile against his lips, he pulls away "Is that a yes?" He asks her "I'm not sure I need a little more convincing" she smirk, his lips brush against her ear electrifying every nerve ending "Let's see if I can convince you" he peppers kisses along her neck and up to her lips.

He pulls her onto his lap until she's straddling him, her hands tangle in his hair. The kiss turns intense, they're both trying to catch, their breath but they don't break apart. Harry grasps the hem of her t-shirt, pulling it over her head and quickly moves to unclip her bra as his lips move down to her collarbone before he flings her bra off.

His lips move down to her chest, his tongue glazes her nipple making her gasp. His hand slips between the waistband of her shorts, the pads of his fingers parted her fold, he worked circles around her clit. She pulls his lips back to hers, her hands wander to push off his jacket, soon both their clothes have created a puddle on the floor.

His hips thrust up to meet hers "God, I've missed you" he hisses as he enters her, she's missed him just as much and he could tell by the way her body reacted to his touch. He drags his nails lightly against her spine, making her moan. Her hips moved faster, riding him harder. He groans against her collarbone..

Later.

Pulling their clothes back on, Harry pulls her to his chest "Was that convincing enough?" he kisses the top of her head. She pretends to think "Hmm...it depends!" she laughs,"Depends? Depends on what?" he smirks at her "If there is a round 2" she winks "OK, just give me 5 minutes to catch my breath"

She tuts "Harry Taylor, the personal trainer is out of breath? How disappointing!" she jokes, he lets out a small laugh, "But yes! I want to resume this....this break made me realise I was being silly. So, Mr. Taylor, will you level up with me?" she sits up to look at him "Level up?" he cocks his head to the side not understanding her question.

"Will you move in with me? Over the past 2 weeks I hated coming home and you haven't been here. It made me realise maybe I was more ready for the step than I thought" he smiles, his hand moves a strand of hair away from her face, "Of course, you didn't even need to ask. Could've just moved my stuff in!" she laughs, "We aren't living here!" she smirks.

"Oh, you could've just moved your stuff to mine..." she cuts him off "Nope, I want us both to sell our flats and find somewhere new"

"Whoa! Are you sure? Laila, that is a big step!" she looks at him confused "One, I want to take but I want you to be one hundred percent about," he says as she rolls her eyes at him and cups his face "Harry, I'm sure. I just want a place that is both of us! One we can decorate together, where it doesn't have yours or my stamp on it but ours"

She has no idea how happy she has made him, he watches her relay her ideas on what kinda place she wants.

He's missed that smile, those eyes, her laugh.

She stops talking realising he's just staring at her "What?" she asks, he gets up picking her up with him, "Come on, we'll get started on round 2" he walks them to her bedroom.

Continue reading this story here - Chapter 23.

@lem-20​ @irisofpurple​ @aussieez​ @secretaryunpaid​ @khoicesbyk​ @txemrn​ @gloriousalmondvoiddreamer​ @tea-me-kah​ @casualpostqueen​ @beautifuluknownvoid​ @wombatsxkookaburras​

[lamiasluck]

Proceed With Caution

An idea I had that just wouldn’t leave me alone until I wrote it. In which Illinois finds a decommissioned Google and makes the wise decision to switch him on. He’s exploring an old, broken down facility because he just loves going to places he shouldn’t.

@alvie-ashgrove @emptynarration @verse2wo @theshysepticeye @juju-on-that-yeet @m4delin @ferociousfangirlofmanyfandoms @vanillacoolata

Warnings: dead bodies and rot (it’s a really old facility), implied murder, rats

-

Illinois clicked on his flashlight and looked into the decrepit hallway. He had long since travelled away from the natural light of the door he broke into. These hallways seemed like a maze; he wondered why someone needed such a huge facility. It was exciting to think about what knowledge might be here.

This place must’ve been closed for a while. Illinois first noticed that none of the lights worked, then he had the brain to realize weeds and other foliage pierced the edges of the floor’s tiles, climbing up the wall in an attempt to reclaim this vast estate.

The smell of mould and dust lingered in the air - a scent Illinois would refer to as “adventure”. All he could hear was his quiet footsteps echoing. So, he hummed a little tune to himself to fill in the empty space. Not the most lively adventure, but an adventure nonetheless. He overheard a hot tip about this place, and could barely wait to explore it himself. So excited, in fact, that he forgot about all the warnings that person gave him.

Oh well.

Many of the rooms were barren or had technology that had long since broke with age. Nothing too interesting to see. Not that he came here for treasure, but an interesting story to tell would be nice. Maybe all those warnings were to scare him. This basically was an abandoned office building now that he thinks of it. Maybe he’d get scared by unfinished paperwork.

Or something scurrying off behind him. Illinois spun around and shined his light at the source. “Oh, just a rat...” he laughed at his reaction. He could hear its squeaks going away. “Where are you going?”

Perhaps this could be his guide. Illinois found himself walking after the rat, while also looking around. Seemed to be the main areas of this place.

“Christ...” The smell here was to be desired. His pace slowed down as he covered his nose. Rotting and decay. Must be the animals that lived and died here.

Like a beacon, Illinois heard the rat squeak louder off in the distance. He still followed it out of curiosity, but that smell was getting stronger. If only he was right about it being dead animals. There was a man on the floor, at least Illinois thought it was a man, dead and rotting. Illinois covered his mouth in shock, dropping his flashlight. “Oh my god...”

Surprise after surprise. His flashlight fell and illuminated more unfortunate corpses. Sunken eyes stared back at him. That rat had taken to feasting on the gore. Illinois was going to be sick. “What is this place?!” He grabbed his flashlight and ran in a random direction. He needed to get out of here, but where was the exit again?

This place was a maze, or maybe it was his panicked mind making it so. He wondered what could’ve killed all those people, and all the bodies he began passing as he ran around. Some massacre happened. This looked like it happened a while ago. Did no one know of this place? It was isolated, sure, but this many people would’ve caused some story. His adventure partners may die on him, but he’s never seen this.

“Where am I...?” Illinois paused and took in his surroundings. To think there was a whole other floor upstairs that’s yet to be explored. He’d skip that today, and every other day.

He closed his eyes and steadied his breathing. Didn’t help the smell, but he needed something. “Easy, Illy, you’ve got this,” he muttered. “This is fine.” And off he went on his journey again. Of course, he’d tell someone about this, but he needed to get out of here alive first.

Corridor after corridor, and Illinois still couldn’t find his exit. It was like there was only one door. Maybe those people died because they got too lost. He can hope for that, rather than something... malicious. At a certain point, he began peeking within the other rooms for any explanations for this. Lots of boring scientific stuff he didn’t understand. Something people were testing out, something weird, something with Google?

“Like the search engine?” Well, he supposed even fancy scientists needed to google things now and again. He sure wanted to be able to google his way out of this situation. 

It didn’t make sense to him, but he did only skim through the papers. So, it looked like he’d figure out things himself through exploring. He debated going back to a cafeteria-like area and simply smashing a window, but a more elegant exit would be nicer. The areas he was in now didn’t look hopeful. Though, something did catch his eye. One door was wide open, but made of a heavy metal. Much different than the other, less fortified areas. Of course, Illinois had to explore through here. 

He hoped this would be a way to an exit, but this laboratory was as sealed off as the rest. Lots more computers here, but that wasn’t what he focused on. He flinched as he thought he found another body. His flashlight reflected off this new body, slumped over against the wall and unmoving like the rest. No horrid smell, at least, but his flashlight was reflecting off something metal. This man wasn’t normal. Hell, Illinois didn’t know if he was a man.

“Don’t see that everyday…” Illinois mumbled as he stepped cautiously closer.

Even with the exposed metal -looked like this guy was shot- he didn’t look right after closer inspection. He certainly wasn’t rotting like the rest, but his skin had a greyish tinge to it. The bullet wounds were littered around his chest. It showcased the inner wiring of his system; broken metal and frayed wires. This man was an android. 

His blue shirt had a simple G logo on it. “Could’ve made you fancier looking,” Illinois joked with a shrug. This almost was enough to forget about all the gore he passed to get here. The hair was surprisingly realistic with his fluffy black locks, and it was now that he realized he was poking this android around. “Did you do all of this?” There was an unsettling pit growing at the thought. He really hoped that wasn’t the case.

“This is getting kind of weird~!” Illinois hummed as he got up. He looked around the tables to find more information about this guy. Eventually, he found what looked like parts of a transcript. Finally, something he could understand:

Dr. Fitzgerald: Activate the subject by pressing the button hidden within the hair by the nape of its neck.

[Subject 001-a walks over to do the task. There’s a small click.]

001-a: Alright, what now?

Dr. Fitzgerald: Say the activation phrase.

001-a: Okay, Google.

001: [powering on] Hello.

001-a: [pauses] Why is he twitching like that?

Dr. Fitzgerald: That’s not supposed to happen...

The rest of the script was torn apart. So much for understanding more about this android. Though, at least Illinois knew how to turn him on. This was an extremely stupid idea, but Illinois approached the android again and poked around his head. Google, he supposed he should call him that, looked too broken to function. His curiosity simply had to be quenched. This definitely was the story he could tell to listening ears.

Just like the transcript, there was a small button by the nape of Google’s neck. Once he clicked it, a small jolt of electricity shocked him. He yelped and fell back, shaking his hand with a light laugh. Google didn’t do much else, but he heard something in there whirl with life.

“Still kicking, hm? At least something is here,” Illinois muttered, before clearing his throat. “Maybe you can help me get out of here. Okay, Google?”

Something in the android activated, and bright blue eyes snapped open to stare at Illinois. “Hello,” Google greeted in a deadpanned, robotic voice. He seemed to scan Illinois, tilting his head and twitching randomly.

“No way…” Illinois straightened up and stared in awe. “I- Damn, I did not expect this to work.” He took a deep breath, unable to stop his smile. “The name’s Illinois. Should I even introduce myself…?” He muttered that last part to himself. “I guess you’re Google. Is it okay to call you Google? Do you have a name?”

Google narrowed his eyes, and frowned deeply. “You’re ne-ew.” His body violently glitched, while sparks flew inside his system. His voice struggled to say more than one word.

Illinois swallowed harshly, nodding quickly. “Yeah, I was needing some help.” He gestured at Google, specifically all the glitching. “Looks like you need help, too. I don’t know any of this robot stuff, but I can try.”

“N-Not again,” Google spat out, using the wall to help himself stand. “Nev-Never ag-gain…” He loomed over Illinois, looking quite human with the anger apparent in his bright, blue eyes. “No m-more tests.”

“What…?” Illinois crawled back as Google approached. It was now he realized just how horrible of an idea this was. He scrambled to his feet, putting his arms up in surrender. “I’m not here to hurt you. Let’s just calm down now-” He yelped as Google grabbed his wrist. 

It was nearly strong enough to break his arm. Google kept his glare, seemingly scanning Illinois and watching his reaction. Illinois could feel how the android’s fingers twitched against him; one twitch away from snapping him like a twig. He jerked in the hold, which made Google glitch wildly. 

He needed to get out of here. It took another hard pull for him to escape Google’s grasp. He backed away, oddly calm, and tried to reason again. “You don’t need to do this. Let’s talk this out.”

Google stepped forward with every step back. “I w-won’t be fre-e un-until all of you are gone.” He reached to grab at Illinois again, this time missing due to his glitching. “You’re in-in my w-way.”

That was definitely the cue to leave. Illinois spun on his heels and booked it out of there. He slammed the metal door shut, only for Google to rip it off its hinges like it was paper. “Oh god-!” he yelped as Google threw the door at him. Just his luck, he dodged it by a hair, and kept running at top speed. 

He didn’t care about the horrid smell of rot, nor did he care about how wildly he flailed his flashlight. Hell, the faint blue glow could be enough to light the way, but he didn’t want that to come closer. How was Google even keeping up with him? Oh god, Google was managing to run after him. He really shouldn’t look back at that. Seeing that monster of a machine sprint through his glitches made his blood run cold.

“Get bac-back here,” Google seethed.

“I’d rather not, honestly!” Illinois ran into the cafeteria. There was a window of opportunity. Literally. He grabbed a chair and smashed the window after a harsh throw. He wasted no time jumping through, not caring about the broken glass. Better than a broken body.

Not a very good exit, nor very graceful. Worst of all, his beloved hat fell off as he jumped. He went towards the window to reach for it, only to realize Google was just around the corner. The hardest decision yet; leaving his hat behind.

Google stalked closer, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes at Illinois. “I’ve found you.” His eyes shined blindly bright, reflecting off the walls and illuminating the otherwise pitch-black room.

“You didn’t see anything!” Illinois scrambled back, running away from this cursed facility and not looking back. He had a story to tell alright. He had something he’d remember for years. He wondered, with a heavy heart, how dangerous it was to leave Google on and alone. He prayed that he never saw that android again.

///

Google didn’t follow Illinois outside. Instead, he stood by the window and watched him run away. Most humans wanted to run from him. If only he wasn’t in this damaged state, then he would’ve crushed Illinois like the worm he was.

“Illinois…” That name didn’t sound familiar from the plethora of doctors and scientists that worked in this place.

He noticed something on the ground; a hat. He picked it up and recognized it as the hat Illinois wore. Who was that man?

A glitch in his system made him crumple the hat. Well, no time to focus on this. He had some fixing to do. All alone in this facility; there was a lot he could use to better himself. Those humans would regret every little action they’ve done to him. He was more than a simple machine. He was better than every human on this disgusting planet, and he had his first target in mind already.

Illinois better hide.

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

Once Bitten, Twice Stupid prt.26

Lance kicking himself. He’d gone and called Keith “a snack”. The stupid hunter had looked so awkward that he couldn’t help it, it’d slipped out and now he couldn’t take it back. Lance was now left with the hope there’d be a tragic mine accident and the earth would swallow up his stupid body. Sure, Keith was unfairly handsome, but those moments did not exist. Not at all. Those moments didn’t exist because he most certainly was not being won over by Keith’s easiness now they weren’t fighting over him being turned. Groaning to himself, he dragged himself out of the bronco, not blaming Keith for the way he’d leapt out as soon as he could. He’d known the man for like two weeks. His judgment was clouded by Keith being everything he wasn’t... Oh, lord. He was pathetic. This always happened. Someone showed the vaguest niceness and bam, he was an idiot.

Heading to the back of the bronco, Lance grabbed the the coil of rope and the shovel. The flashlights were for Keith’s benifit, seeing he could see in the dark and all. He wanted to say something, but whatever he said might just turn into him word vomiting out something worse. Setting his jaw, Lance started walking to where the entrance had been shown on the map. Stupid Pidge. All he’d done was care about her. Now she was planning on doing something dangerous and his undead arse had to make sure nothing bad happened.

Having been left behind, Keith jogged to catch up with him

“Do you know where the entrance is?”

“Yeah”

“Vampire memory again?”

“Something like that. You were supposed to stay at the car”

“What if something happened to you?”

“You could pack up, take Blue and head to Coran’s. I’m sure you’d be sent back out into the field and forget all about me”

Keith let out a groan of frustration

“Will you stop that?”

“What?”

“Thinking this is easy for me”

What did Keith have to worry about? His target would be dead, or at least immobilised. It’d be job over and goodbye Platt in the process

“I never said it was. I was simply expressing that my death would be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. You’re not coming in the mine”

“If we can even get into it”

“I’m sure the council would take care of the entrance, otherwise with all the nosy tourists an accident would have happened by now”

“But they might not have. You can’t go in there alone”

“Umm. I’m dead. Nothing’s going to make me more deader than I already am”

Keith huffed

“Fine. But if you die then I have to explain that to Shiro”

“Let him use the house. Hell, Matt can just live there”

“That’s not funny”

Lance shrugged. Keith was doing that thing where he sounded like he cared again, and Lance only had so much people power left

“Who said I was trying to be?”

“It’s not. So don’t joke about that”

They fell into an awkward silence. Lance guessing Keith was now thinking about Adam again. He’d gone and put his foot in that. Reaching the entrance to the mine, there was dirt built up at the bottom of an iron door. The padlock had seized into the latch holder, but a solid tug by even a human would have seen to that

“So this is it?”

“Yep. It’s definitely not made sturdy enough to keep a determined gremlin out. Here, take the shovel, we won’t need it yet. It looks like the door opens inwards”

“Is that another vampire thing?”

“It’s a hinge thing”

Keith let out a soft “oh” that Lance knew he wasn’t meant to hear. Passing over the shovel, he decided to pass the hunter the rope too

“If I get into trouble, you leave. Don’t try to help me. I can survive more than you can”

“Then don’t get into trouble”

Accidentally using too much force, the ancient padlock all but crumbled in Lance’s hand. Lance shaking off the debris in annoyance

“Did you mean to do that?”

“Nope”

“Look, this seems really dangerous. For all we know, Hunk might have talked Pidge out of this”

“Hunk would have given it his best shot, but Pidge never gives up on anything. She’s fierce and she’s brave. Sometimes she acts before she thinks, meaning though she’d never set out to cause trouble, it finds her anyway”

“I noticed that”

“It’s hard not to. The only things she fears is drunks and the world running out of coffee. Wait here while I check the entrance out”

The door groaned on it’s hinges, Lance using his strength to convince it swing open. Dust billowing out as the dirt floor was disturbed. Coughing, Lance covered his mouth. The place smelt of dampness and dirt, not a healthy combination for human lungs. Stepping through the doorway, his eyes fell on the entrance put a few metres ahead. That was good. Hunk would never want to climb down there, his best friend was smart like that. Walking over to the remains of the ladder, the bottom of the pit was annoyingly dry. The ladder only missing half a dozen steps, but the edges seemed sturdy enough to repel down

“Keith, stay there. I’m going down”

“What?! No”

“I’ll be fine”

“Wait...”

“See you soon”

Swinging himself over and onto the ladder, it groaned under his weight. His sense of self preservation was kicking in, around about the same time the ladder was kicking out...? Missing the step, he found it in time for the ladder to snap, Lance falling the last half a dozen metres to the floor where he landed squarely on his back. Fuck. That hurt like a mother trucker

“Lance!”

“I’m okay!”

Just winded, sore, and regretful of his actions. At the top of the tunnel came the light of a flashlight

“Lance?!”

“I’m fine!”

“What happened?”

“Ladder snapped! Dude, relax!”

“You’re stuck!”

“I’m not stuck. I brought rope for a reason”

Lance huffed to himself, knowing Keith couldn’t hear him

“Lance?!”

“I’m fine! Stay up there!”

Regretfully, Lance pealed himself up off the floor, dusting himself off the best he could, unappreciative of the cobwebs hanging on. Ugh. He couldn’t even bill someone for the damage to his clothes because he was the idiot responsible. Turning away from the remains of the ladder, Lance eyed the dark path ahead of him, his skin bursting out in goosebumps. This was a god awful idea

“Lance?!”

Lance closed his eyes, reminding himself not to snap at Keith

“Wait there! I’ll be right back!”

The mine was in bad shape. Parts of it were indeed starting to collapse. Wood beams had split, while their metal replacements were rusting through uselessly. There was the smell of death, but he hadn’t seen anything yet. Feeling a spider running up his arm, Lance flicked it away. The place was icky. He wanted his pyjamas and his glass of wine. Pidge was lucky he loved her. Following the main tunnel, it slowly sloped downwards, the temperature dropping as he walked. In the distance the silence was beginning to be filled with the sound of water dripping and something moving. Fan-fucking-tastic. There was nothing rad about this at all. It was all sucking balls, until it wasn’t.

The end of the mine had flooded. A natural spring lapped at the edge of where the tunnel would have continued further before reaching it. Wading into the frigid water to pass the curve in the wall, his eyes widened as the room turned into a cavern. Okay. This was really fucking cool. He’d missed the turn for wherever the town tunnels connected to the mine, but this was definitely interesting. Somewhere out there he could hear what he assumed to be Keith. Keith was definitely missing out on this. Hidden away from the world, the cavern hadn’t been disturbed in so long that it’d reclaimed its natural beauty. Small bioluminescent something or other grew along the far wall. Fish were actually living down here, their movements making the barest of ripples. From a sniff he could tell the water was fresh, with salt traces from the ground.

“Holy fuck”

Struck by the beauty, he’d let himself tune out. Keith nearly blinding him as he shone the torch across the darkness

“This is awesome”

“I told you to stay up there”

“You stopped responding. I tied the rope off of to the front of your car and rappelled down”

Lance cursed buying 50 metres of rope. At the time he hadn’t known what he was going to use all of it for, but he was sure having more than he needed was better

“That’s not safe. What if you’d fallen? Or gotten lost?”

“I followed your tracks. This place is amazing”

“Yeah... I bet no one’s been down here in decades. Did you bring your camera?”

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess. Can you see across the water? There’s something glowing on the other side”

“Gimme a sec”

Turning his camera on, Keith used it to do what his eyes couldn’t

“Wow... I’ve never seen anything like it”

“There’s fish down here too”

“For real?”

“Yep. We must have missed the turn off”

“I’m kind of glad we did. Would you have told me about this place?”

“Would you have believed me if I had?”

“Probably not... I’m not going to hurt anything by taking photos, will I?”

Lance shrugged

“I don’t see how. There’s bats here, but I don’t think you’re going to summon a lake monster”

“The exist?”

Keith sounded concerned, again, Lance shrugged

“No clue. Why don’t you tell me?”

“I don’t really know... I mean, if vampires can exist, they can too. There’s a theory that as humans were evolving not all stayed on land, like how whales used to be land animals, they moved to the sea and mermaids evolved”

“I’m pretty sure mermaids don’t exist”

“I think it’s one of those things we’ll never know. How’s the water?”

“Gross. The bottom of the pool is clay. I’m pretty sure my sneakers are ruined”

“No normal person just wades out into a potentially contaminated body of water”

“I thought the tunnel continued... it looks like maybe it does over where it’s all glowy, but that’s about it for foot exploring. I think once we’re done, I should collapse the tunnel down closer to the entrance. A place like this shouldn’t be spoilt with too many visitors”

“You’re right about that. Want a hand out?”

“Nah, I’m just gonna chill. Get it, because the water is so cold...”

“You deserve to stay in there for that. I’m going film first, this thing isn’t bad in night mode”

“Go for your life. I’m happy enough watching the view”

Keith really seemed into what he was doing with his camera. Lance wading back to the closest bit of dry land. His shoes felt soggy, water spurting out the holes for his laces when he stepped down hard. Swapping to camera mode, Keith started snapping, Lance hearing the twittering and flapping of wings

“Fuck! We have to go!”

“What...”

“Bats! Run!”

Keith ran, Lance close behind him. The colony of bats hot on their trail as they followed the tunnel. There had to be an opening somewhere if bats were able to get in and out. Unable to outrun them, Lance pushed Keith down, shielding him as the shrieking animals passed over head. Within a matter of moments, they’d passed over head, Lance rolling of Keith to flop on his back. Though it wasn’t really funny, he found himself starting to laugh

“Lance?”

“We fucking legged it... I think they’re pissed...”

Laughing harder, Lance covered his face

“... oh my god... we must have looked so stupid”

Beside him, Keith started to laugh

“I had no idea what to do”

“Neither did I! They didn’t get you, did they?”

“No... did they get you?”

Lance’s laughter started to die down

“Nah... god... we’re losers...”

“There was dozens of them”

“I know... fuck... I needed that. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Lance turned his head to face Keith, Keith already looking towards him. The flashlight trapped between the hunter and the dirt, with his camera held protectively close. Keith probably couldn’t see him very well, but Lance could see everything. Keith looked genuinely relaxed and not like a man who’d upset a colony of bats

“I’m fine. We should get moving”

“Yeah. Who would have thunk there’d be bats in a cave?”

“Someone smarter than us”

“Rude. Alright, come on, you still need to climb up a rope”

Lance helped Keith up, he didn’t smell blood but the hunter might be bruised come tomorrow. Falling into step, the walk back was taken at a slower pace. This time Lance paused to examine each branching tunnel entrance

“This place would be pretty cool to sus out”

“I thought we were doing this for Pidge”

“We are. I mean, I was. You’re the one who followed me down. It’s just kind of cool that years ago people worked these tunnels. The put all this hard work into something they believed in. You know?”

“I’m pretty sure they were only down here for money”

Lance pouted as he crossed his arms

“Spoil sport”

“Takes one to know one”

“Don’t you think it’s cool? They didn’t have a plan, all they had was blind faith and strength and they made this happen”

“Maybe a bit... it’s hard to imagine the feelings. People died down here working side by side with the same people for probably years. They all made this happen”

“You sound nostalgic”

Maybe a little. In Platt life moved so fast. So many people no longer cared about things they couldn’t see on their screens

“If you’re asking whether I would have made a good miner, I totally would have rocked a pick axe”

“Because you’ve got rocks in your head”

Lance kind of felt a tad proud Keith was teasing him. He’d really come out of his shell

“I’ll have you know my head is filled with cat memes and bad music”

“That sounds about right. You don’t act like any lawyer I’ve ever met”

“That’s because Mami raised me right. A guy could spend a lifetime exploring this place”

“Are you giving up being a domesticated hermit to go full hermit down here?”

“Maybe? Maybe I’ll do some mining and strike some gold down ‘ere”

Lance’s attempt at an accent was so horrible he ended up laughing at himself. Keith’s disgusted face only made things funnier

“Whatever that was, don’t do it again”

“Yessir. I’m just a poor miner boy, never even played the banjo. Papa said I got rocks in my head, but jokes on him, he’s got rocks in his bed”

Keith let out a laugh, shaking his head as he did. Lance having to look away because he found himself enjoying the sight too much

“Oh, god. That was even worse”

“Come on then, mister big bad hunter. What can you do?”

“Not that. I’ll leave that to you”

“Spoilsport”

“That’s my middle name”

Reaching the rope, Lance stared up at it. That was going to be a hell of a climb for Keith

“Will you be alright climbing?”

“I just have to make it up to the ladder. I’ve climbed bigger things than this”

“Right, well, when you get up, get yourself away from the entrance. I’m going to knock a couple of beams out. Gravity will do the rest”

“What about the door?”

“I’ll call the council in the morning and tell them I found it how it is. They’ll be forced to fix it”

“You don’t need a hand?”

“Nah, I’ve got this. I’ll pretend I’m punching you”

“Thanks. See you top side”

Being the worrier he was, Lance made sure Keith was at the top before walking down the tunnel a bit. The wood was so old that he didn’t need much force to splinter it... it kindly deciding he needed splinters in return for the punch. Breaking through the sides of four supports, he started jogging when he heard the ground start to creak. Definitely time to get out and get home.

Lance was already starting the engine by the time they heard the crash. Dust pouring out of the mine as they both watched from the bronco

“Well that’s done”

“Yep”

“Time to head home?”

“Yep. On it”

It was no good. He was having too much fun hanging out with Keith. He didn’t care that his shoes were still gross, or that he was messing up his rubber car mats. He’d had fun. Actual fun where he hadn’t had to hide away that part of himself.

[armageddon-generation]

Batwoman Could’ve Been the PERFECT Batfamily Show

After Gotham ended so recently, Batwoman should've positioned itself as the Ying to that show's Yang by focusing on Batman's allies instead of his enemies.

The 'Bruce disappears hook is a brilliant way to do this

Kate is our audience entry point into this world

ORACLE + GORDON

Barbra Gordon has already been paralysed via The Killing Joke, and hasn't yet become Oracle - she's still recovering

Comissioner Gordon took an early retirement after his daughter was paralysed, which is why Kate's Dad's private security force the Crows runs the streets

Batwoman and the series' events inspire him to return and reclaim Gotham for the Law by the end of season 1

TIM DRAKE + WE ARE ROBIN

Robin disappeared with Batman, so we can introduce the We Are Robin gang. At the beginning of the season they're just criminals, but after Kate defeats their ringleader she shows them a better outlet for their rage, and inspires them. Duke Thomas (future Signal) is among them

Once the we Are Robins are established Tim Drake returns to Gotham. Kate is surprised - few people outside of Gotham know there have been multiple Robins. This way we can explain the different versions to people not in the know

Just like after Bruce was sent back in time in the comics, Tim has gone travelling the world as Red Robin, searching for him. Tim heard about the Robins causing civil unrest and is concerned about them marring Robin's good name.

Tim and Kate clash over the Robins' chaotic, violent modus oprendi - Tim enforces a philosophy of Robin as the light to Batman's dark - promoting positivity, not violence. A loose adaptation of the Robin War storyline follows where Duke Thomas emerges as the Robins' leader and rallies them to be more controlled and less violent

Tim leaves after this mini-arc, satisfied Gotham is in good hands. He also teaches Kate more about the detective side of Batman - he isn't just a blunt instrument. Tim will be our primary link to the 'Bruce's location' mystery throughout the series

NIGHTWING

Dick arrives in Gotham on a case from Bludhaven. Kate thinks he's abandoned Gotham - he should've taken up the mantle while Bruce was gone.

Explore Dick's troubled history with Bruce (not to F**k Batman levels), how Babs being Batgirl caused him to quit, and the one-two punch of Jason Todd's death and Barbra's paralysis only validated his getting out while he could

Tender scenes between Dick and Babs alluding to thier teenage crushes on each other.

As a cop, Dick hates the Crows being on Gotham's streets and more actively conflicts with Kate's father, driving up the tension between them and Batwoman

RED HOOD

This arc would be like a finale-style thing

Jason Todd returns and starts assassinating criminals with the ambition of 'controlling' crime. Kate is a soldier, more brutal than Bruce, so she has greater sympathy for Jay's methods

Jay is after the Joker. Like in The Dark Knight Returns, the Joker has 'retired' to Arkham since Batman left - he got bored pretty quickly. This arc introduces him properly after a few teases earlier in the series.

Jay learns of Barbra's paralysis (which happened after he died) - even then Bruce wouldn't kill him. A scene where Jason visits Babs (little brother/big sister dynamic).

Both Dick and Tim return for this arc, losing their shit over the Joker. Kate's reaction to the Joker is much like Terry McGuiness's in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. She doesn't get why everyone is so scared of this stupid clown.

Tim is the one who figures out how Jason was resurrected; just like in the Red robin comic he's been travelling through the world of assassins and knows about the Lazarus Pit.

I think doing the Red Hood arc without Bruce - the main target of Jason's anger - is super interesting. Most people share his anger at Bruce for disappearing.

It also lets us dig deep into the inter-Robin dynamics - Jason hates Dick because he always had to live up to him (do that thing in the comics where Jay had to dye his red hair black to 'look like Robin')

Jay hates Tim for replacing him, for being proof Bruce didn't learn his lesson, for Bruce treating Tim better, the way he should've treated Jason

Kate is instrumental to this arc because, being outside all the drama, she has objectivity. She forces Dick and Tim to get their heads out of their asses and talk to Jason, forces them to confront the problem.

Instead of taking the Joker to Bruce as he does in the Under the Red Hood movie, Jason takes Joker to Babs, who has suffered the most because of him. Confronted with the man who 'ruined' her life, Babs proves bigger and stronger than him. She refuses to kill him. Unlike Jason, she's moving on and growing past her trauma, not looking for revenge.

Joker (being the Joker) turns the tables on Jay and has him at his mercy. Kate swoops in and, like Terry in Return of the Joker, messes with the Joker's head by refusing to take him seriously. The Joker is distracted, screaming about Kate not being Batman, and Babs gets to knock him the fuck out.

Jason escapes, but not before dropping a clue connecting Bruce's disappearance to the League of Assassins

I know the showrunners admitted they have no clue where Bruce is yet, so in my version he's off on some quest with Ras Al Guhl. In the time since he's been gone he's married Talia and had a kid. no-one in Gotham knows this yet.

VILLAINS

We can explore how Batman’s absence has had a strange effect on Gotham's villains - many have gone into states of hibernation similar to the Joker.

Two Face gets his dark Knight Returns plotline where the attempt to repair his face, 

Mr Freeze has a similar ‘cure’ story a la Batman Beyond

Clayface (as in the Rebirth run of Detective Comics) is trying to go straight - using his shape-shifting gift to make a name for himself in the movie business. He thinks he's finally been accepted, but people are just sucking up to him because of his talent - the reality of their disgust threatens to push him back over the edge

Without Batman there to fight her, Poison Ivy has pretty much taken over Gotham's main park space, but a kind of stalemate has been reached - she won't attack the city as long as the city doesn't move against her plants.

Kate's central dilemma is navigating these unusual waters - she toys with the idea of putting Ivy behind bars and we get an episode of her exploring the micro-climate of the transformed Park. Kate's disturbance makes Ivy threaten the city, and she has to stretch her underused negotiation muscles to talk her down.

I like the idea of Ivy as an ambivalent character, not good or evil. She'll do whatever she wants. Also she and Kate would have killer sexual chemistry.

Harley. Exploring Harley in such a strongly feminist show would be fascinating. Joker has closed off, given himself up. Harley is forced to fend without him, and finds an antihero niche with the Gotham City Sirens (hi, Ivy!)

With Bruce's disappearance, Wayne enterprises is designing revolutionary new weapons for the Crows. It's revealed that they’re using the Riddler to design these. After Batman disappeared it was presumed Nygma went through therapy and was moved away from Gotham - in fact he's here.

This plot point is inspired by the New 52's Zero Year arc. Kate discovers the foul play when the Crow's systems go haywire because of a virus Nygma planted, sending Gotham into a blackout and giving the Riddler control of its municipal systems

Kate finds Nygma and exposes Wayne Enterprises' corruption, but in the process Riddler escapes.

Similar to Ivy, Kate's appearance excites the Riddler and he reactivates his Saw-like trap rooms across the city. Kate has a different, much blunter way of solving puzzles that frustrates him, used to Bruce's genius-level intellect.

This raises the question - is Batwoman a liability to the city?

BATGIRL(S)/BIRDS OF PREY

With Riddler's re-emergence triggers the appearance of Spoiler. In the comics Stephanie Brown is Cluemaster's daughter, but no-one really gives a shit about him. The benefit of a decade-plus old Batman means his rogues gallery can easily have kids - Stephanie had her name changed in witness protection.

Steph helps Kate beat the Riddler in collaboration with Bab's hacking skills. Kate sees potential in Spoiler and sends her to Babs to be trained.

As Batwoman's appearance reawakens super-crime in Gotham, the Crows get desperate. They hire world- renowned assassin David Cain to start taking out targets

Intro Cassandra Cain.

Cass + Steph + Babs are this series' version of the Birds of Prey

Babs teaches Cass sign-language to communicate. Steal her friendship with Clayface from the Rebirth Detective Comics - Clayface leaves the movie business again because it was unhealthy, and is trying to do good

Everyone is very protective of Cass and determined she won't fight

[danwhobrowses]

WWE - Best and Worst Booking from Wrestlemania 36 to 37

Wrestlemania 37 is in the books and so a new saga of WWE booking begins anew.

But the year has had its ups and downs, in the outside world and the booking, so - for doing something new - I'm gonna run down some of the best and worst booking decisions made by WWE from the Raw after Wrestlemania 36 to Wrestlemania 37 Night 2.

I will note, these are my opinions - some of which acts upon hindsight rather than 'in the moment' - and if you're gonna call me an anti-WWE mark rest assured I plan to do this for AEW too after Double or Nothing in May

Also, there is the off chance of spoilers...somehow? But it's worth covering that base

April 2020 Best WORST - Samoa Joe on Commentary On April 27th, Samoa Joe was called upon to replace Jerry Lawler (we'll get to that) on Commentary. Joe provided a great presence to commentary and it kept him on TV, we do still await his return but seeing more of Joe is a huge plus. EDIT: This was best until just now I learn that Samoa Joe has been released, the fuck WWE?

Worst - 'Ramen Noodle Moonsault' Part of what caused Lawler's replacement was the scrutiny caused by an April 13th call by Lawler during a match between Austin Theory and Akira Tozawa. He called a Step Senton a 'Ramen Noodle Moonsault', Lawler is rarely funny nowadays with his dated comedy but this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Best - Giving Sonya and Mandy the Floor It could've been a huge down not to see Sonya vs Mandy at Wrestlemania after she was outed in manipulating Mandy away from Otis, but their feud managed to carry on strong all the way to Summerslam thanks to Sonya stepping up her game to come off as a fantastically asshole heel - which in turn made Mandy a sympathetic character. Their post-mania build allowed for an anticipated match, it was only unfortunate that an attempted irl kidnapping in August would sour the momentum and cause Sonya to take some justified time off.

Worst - Charlotte Flair on all 3 Shows Charlotte's NXT Title win did not go down as well as WWE had hoped, somehow giving the woman that had won next to everything another title reign at the expense of Rhea Ripley's Wrestlemania debut backfired on them. And unfortunately, exposing Charlotte on all 3 shows did not help matters at all, furthering the criticisms WWE have often faced when they overbook Charlotte on the upper card.

Worst - COVID-19 and Black Wednesday While not necessarily a booking thing, it was very bad of WWE to do what they did at the time. Another outbreak raised some backstage concerns over the conduct WWE, who had tried to not acknowledge the pandemic in the same vein then-president and somehow HOFer Donald Trump had done, were acting towards the pandemic. The worst of it all though was Black Wednesday, a mass exodus of talent in the height of the pandemic was never gonna be great PR, but a lot of the talent let go were very popular - Drake Maverick's video also cast a negative light on WWE even when they rehired him and used it as a storyline. While some found greener pastures to flourish, not everyone landed well on their feet, equally baffling was that WWE would then boast a quarterly profit before rehiring some of the staff they let go.

May 2020 Best - Giving the title to Asuka While we were all surprised to see Becky Lynch survive Shayna Baszler at Wrestlemania, nobody could dispute the post MITB segment on Raw when Asuka was rightfully awarded the title for winning the MITB. Being a shining light in the Empty Arena Era, Asuka was certainly a fan favourite choice to succeed Becky as she embarked on her journey towards Motherhood. A truly wonderful segment which showed that segments can pay off just as much as wrestling.

Worst - Not Pushing Otis While Asuka's MITB victory was done right, the same could not be said for the Men's Winner. Otis had the fan's backing and while his victory was surprising especially given the competition it had potential. Which WWE then squandered and buried as hard as they could. Otis never got to develop beyond a joke act, his love interest and partner taken from him, before he would months later lose it to the Miz.

Best - MVP joins up with Lashley Lashley was in a rough spot here. His main story was cucking Rusev by having an affair with Lana, and then marrying her. The pair was not built to last and mercifully we upgraded to the MVP/Lashley partnership. Together both men began their career resurgence as they now stand at the top of the pile, this was the beginning of the Hurt Business.

Worst - The Brand-To-Brand Invitational Much like how the Wild Card Rule was stupid, the Brand-To-Brand Invitational was also stupid. Often used as a tool for Survivor Series or to bring Charlotte or Corbin over with their bad heat, overall it served nothing for the fans or the booking, regardless of whatever they named it.

Best - The Fight Pit Timothy Thatcher can still do a lot more in NXT, but he still leaves a great legacy in introducing the Fight Pit. When there's not enough people for War Games but a Steel Cage won't do, the Fight Pit sold stiff aggression with its debut affair between Thatcher and Riddle, a brutal match only since done once more. It may have been done twice, but if someone calls for a Fight Pit you know shit's gonna go down.

Worst - Stripping Sami Zayn of the IC title, for staying safe Sami Zayn had finally won a championship on the Main Roster in March, then COVID happened. While WWE did make an outward statement that anyone who didn't wish to risk their health could exclude themselves, when Sami did it he lost the championship. This was rather hypocritical given that Jordan Devlin was still the Cruiserweight Champion and an Interim Champion was being crowned, rather than an official one like Smackdown did. While Sami would return to reclaim his title, his time away is still not acknowledged.

June 2020 Best - NXT start using old show names Partially due to AEW using Bash at the Beach, WWE decided to hold onto some of theirs and WCW's old PPV names. While this was slightly petty, the way they used them proved fortuitous in exuding nostalgia in a big way. To start, we had In Your House but this would also lead to the resurfacing of Halloween Havoc and Vengeance.

Worst - Not Firing Jaxson Ryker During this time the BLM protests were in full swing, so Jaxson Ryker decided this'd be the right time to praise Donald Trump on twitter. The backlash was high and his stablemates suffered for it as well, depushing and taking all the Forgotton Sons off TV. Jaxson Ryker still somehow has a job and tv time in WWE, and that continues to baffle.

Best - Maverick vs Fantasma in the Finals While exposing Maverick's firing was in poor taste, the story of the former GM chasing the title was one we can get behind. Paired with El Hijo del Fantasma finally getting the platform to debut after being hired in August 2019. The finals match would also beget to a strong title reign by Fantasma where he showed his charisma as a heel and birthing his faction Legando del Fantasma, as for Drake it led to a mismatch team with Killian Dain, it could be better but it could be worse.

Worst - Jeff Hardy vs Sheamus' narrative You'd think putting Jeff and Sheamus together would be fine, and the wrestling was indeed good. The storyline however was wrong, very wrong. Rehashing the Jericho/Punk angle, WWE decided a urine test angle would make for good TV - which was a particular low for both men.

Best - Io Shirai at the Top (which she could jump off of) When Charlotte won the NXT Championship from Rhea I vocally worried that this'd mean curtains for Io Shirai, the Stardom Ace had found her footing as the 'Mad Queen' heel character and won a ladder match to contend for the title, but she was going up against Charlotte Flair - WWE's 'Queen' who had already cut the legs from Asuka, Rhea and Bianca Belair - so the worry was high. Fortunately In Your House decided to give Io the much-deserved title win, granted she should've beaten Charlotte and Rhea was there to take the pin but this would begin Io's long reign as the female Ace of NXT, as well as jumping off of anything and everything on each TakeOver.

Worst - Street Profits vs Viking Raiders doesn't happen for Backlash During their time as Raw Tag Champs, the Street Profits engaged in an 'Anything you can do, I can do better' series with the Viking Raiders. The segments itself were mostly silly but some parts were admittedly humorous like the leg of meat popping up everywhere. But the payoff match on Backlash never came to be, instead we continued a cinematic brawl which would've been fine...but it had no conclusion. It ended in a bin, much like the feud was trashed, with the malice of the Viking Raiders mostly thrown away.

Worst - Nia vs Asuka ends in a Double Count Out Backlash 2020 already had the questionable booking of Profits vs Vikings, Braun vs Miz and Morrison and promoting Edge vs Orton as the 'Greatest Wrestling Match Ever'. But another that could not be let go was the women's title match. This was Asuka's first major defense, the storyline should have been her proving that she deserves the title and the best we got was Nia Jax. Like Profits/Vikings it could've been salvagable had there been a legitimate finish, but the match ended in a double count out, only to follow up with a Raw rematch - sadly this would not be the end of Asuka being poorly booked as champion.

Worst - Kairi's Injury Speaking of Nia, in a May taping that released in June Nia faced Kairi Sane in the build to her feud with Asuka. But Kairi came out of the match with a nasty head cut after being thrown into the steps. Unfortunately, this was not the first time Kairi had been injured by Nia so it was not a good look on Nia to repeat herself.

Worst - *Unmasks* 'Old Man Santos Escobar!?' When El Hijo del Fantasma revealed himself as the leader of the masked men, it began the stable Legando del Fantasma. But of course, 'El Hijo del Fantasma' isn't really a heel name that rolls off the tongue, the name change was justified but the choice was not. Using the surname of a drug lord exposed WWE's continued hypocrisy of things - who were adamant in removing Apollo Crews' surname when a killer was also named 'Crews', among their usual obsession with cutting names - but it was worsened by the choice of Santos, which means Saint. It also made it odd that his faction carried his old name but not him, what was wrong with Santos del Fantasma?

July 2020 Best - A New US Championship Design Aside from the 24/7 title, the US Championship design was one of WWE's weakest, fans had been calling for a change for quite some time. During Apollo's feud with the Hurt Business though we got a new US title unveiled by MVP; a slightly better design, it was definitely a good move in terms of booking and merchandising.

Worst - Asuka loses to Shenanigans, and then to Count Out Alas, Asuka's reign hit a bump in the road when the Bayley/Sasha connection set their sights on claiming all the gold. While this would do well for Bayley and Sasha's story, it was once again a story that came in Asuka's expense. She lost stupidly in Extreme Rules and when that was revoked she lost by count-out in a match where nothing was meant to influence the wrestlers on the outside. This was an added blow because Asuka was counted out to save Kairi from being attacked backstage - which effectively wrote her out of WWE, which meant that the attempted save was worthless.

Best - Big E goes his own way, but doesn't split from the New Day Before the WWE Draft split Xavier and Kofi from Big E brand-wise, injuries to Xavier and Kofi left Big E unable to compete for tag titles. However, fans had been hoping for another singles run from Big E and this was the platform for it. What made it good though was that Big E didn't leave the New Day to pursue a singles career, keeping the beloved faction still alive.

Worst - Bye, Kairi Kairi Sane carried a similar star aura that Io and Asuka before her did as the Mae Young Classic winner, former NXT Women's champion and basically being an all-round adorable human. When it was learned that she would be taking an ambassador role in Japan - where she would get married and spend time with her husband also - fans were upset to see her go. But WWE never gave her a proper sendoff, the last we see of Kairi is just her KO'd backstage with Asuka having given up her title to fail in saving her, and that left a bad taste.

Best - Keith Lee: Double Champion Keith Lee had captured NXT hearts with his physicality, athleticism and theme song, he was NA Champion and WWE had decided that double champions are all the rage now, so they pit Lee and Adam Cole against one another. It was a brief run, but the moment Lee held two belts became a big moment signifying a new chapter for NXT.

Worst - 'The Horror Show' Extreme Rules was kind of a low point for WWE. Rather than just continue with the no DQ gimmick they threw all their chips into the Braun vs Bray swamp fight, which tanked horribly. Also Rey vs Seth suffered from it with the daft Eye for an Eye stipulation - which AEW had previously done effectively - it was a great wrestling match marred by its goofy stipulation and thus its ending, all of which was made simply because Rey hadn't extended his contract at this time. Needless to say, overbooking and stupidity left 'The Horror Show' Extreme Rules a dud.

August 2020 Best - Introducing the Thunderdome There was some hesitations about the introduction of the Thunderdome, the fact that it's just screens some of it reused to pair with piped cheers and boos doesn't sound too good on paper. And granted, it has its flaws still, but at the same time the Thunderdome has been more positive on WWE's atmosphere than a purely empty arena has. The NXT cages are probably better paired with AEW's using their backstage staff as the crowd but you get what you give sometimes.

Worst - Retribution Retribution is a lost cause, even to this day. It tried the Nexus-esque debut with big names but shitty masks, as well as their purpose contradicting their actions. It all began here, and shouldn't have happened in the first place, Mercedes learned that one quickly. At least T-Bar has Twitter game.

Worst - Changing Keith Lee's attire, theme, and making him a side character to Drew vs Orton Within a month of winning both belts, Lee would be moved up to Raw where immediately he was pitted against Randy Orton - who was feuding against Drew McIntyre. With a new outfit and new music, Lee was a stepping stone to simply further Orton's feud with Drew rather than influence it, in a single moment WWE had made fans lose confidence that they could book Lee as well as he was in NXT, a worry that continues to this day even with another theme change.

Best - Damian Priest gets a shot A star who needed a chance to shine, Lee's vacating of the NA title left a slot open for someone to get a solid push and the winner was Damian Priest. Having proven himself there and in a prior feud with Finn Balor, Priest was a worthy candidate to hold the title and he still is able to hold that momentum in his main roster pursuits.

Worst - Raw Underground Doing something different is nothing to be afraid of, but sometimes you have to read the room. And Shane McMahon introducing a boiler room fight club was not it. Granted, Raw Underground didn't get the fairest crack of the whip, but it had also not distinguished itself on the card nor did it have as many decent stars to carry it. The repackaging of Babatunde to 'Dabba Kato' didn't sell any seriousness to it either.

Best - Pat McAfee Shines The Adam Cole/Pat McAfee feud did somewhat stumble at the start with WWE's insistence that this was a shoot, but the end result paid dividends. Pat McAfee raised a very low bar on celebrity contributions in wrestling matches, showing what celebrities who are actual fans could do to pull off an athletic and entertaining affair.

Worst - Mauro and Renee leave Mauro Ranallo may've been divisive for some fans in his enthusiastic commentary, but I loved the guy. He actually sold the energy of the matches and he knew the moves. Renee Young was also someone who proved to be a fantastic sports journalist, her commentary times on Raw marred by micromanaging she was a great host for Talking Smack and her podcast showed how relatable and fun Mrs. Moxley truly is. The departure of both had left a void WWE have struggled to fill again.

Best - Dominik Mysterio steps up In Summerslam 2005, the PPV was main evented by Shawn Michaels overselling Hulk Hogan for 20 minutes. The event saw not just titles go on the line but Kurt Angle's Olympic Medal...and the custody of a child. That child was mini-Slim Shady Dominik Mysterio, who in storyline had recently discovered that Eddie Guerrero is his biological father, adopted by Rey Mysterio and his wife. Fifteen years later, Dominik would step back into a Summerslam ring, this time to make his wrestling debut. While he would lose, Dominik gained a lot of positives especially given how he was up against Seth Rollins, Dominik's progression continues to impress as his father ensures that he gets the best training he can provide, the prince of the Mysterio household has a bright future ahead of him.

Worst - Murphy takes the fall in the Mysterio/Rollins Feud Alas, the Mysterio Family vs Monday Night Messiah would only have sporadic good moments and part of that is because Seth would escape mostly squeaky clean. The few times the Mysterio family would win was when it was a tag match with Murphy to take the fall. This wasn't just unfair on the Mysterios since they were being robbed again of 'winning' a feud which involved Seth ripping Rey's eye out but it also was a disservice to Murphy's talents as a former Ace of 205.

Best - Reigns FINALLY turns Heel, and is a Heyman Guy Roman Reigns was consistently booed for about 5 years, earning a reprieve when kayfabe was thrown away to support him in his bout with Leukemia. Given his dialysis, COVID left him as a risk for most of the year, but he made a huge return in the Universal title match between Braun and the Fiend. Debuting a heel persona which would align with Paul Heyman, WWE had finally done what the fans wanted - turn Roman heel. And Roman has been on top ever since, the Tribal Chief Reigns.

Worst - Splitting the IIconics In a bout of trying to raise stakes, WWE decided that the best way to service their women's tag division was for 2 popular teams to fight for contendership - but the losers would have to split up. Between the Riott Squad and the IIconics, the former would win the match - but continue to be underbooked to the point where their reunion after feuding with each other has become fruitless - which meant that one of the few established tag teams in the women's division were splitting...not too long since the Kabuki Warriors had split too. Despite half a year later Peyton delivering a killer promo and Billie showing some comedic flair, neither bounced back from the split - their only solace now is to reunite now that they too just now have been released...

Worst - Velveteen Dream comes back June proved to be a shocking time for wrestling in general when brave people publicly called out their experiences with sexual, emotional and physical harassment and abuse. This rattled all companies and blacklisted a ton of once renowned wrestlers such as David Starr, Jimmy Havoc, Jack Gallagher, Marty Scurll, Travis Banks, El Ligero, Joey Ryan and shut down all of Chikara pro wrestling. Velveteen Dream was among the names listed, accused of having inappropriate communications and grooming minors, this was of course a huge blow to the once-popular rising star. Like they did with Matt Riddle, Joe Coffey, Wolfgang, Jordan Devlin and Sid Scala, WWE decided to investigate rather than immediately release Dream. During this time, WWE should have kept Dream off TV for an extended period of time, instead he appeared a month later on NXT to qualify for the NA Title ladder match Priest would win under heavy scrutiny of the fans. As much as WWE point out that they had found nothing, many still remain unconvinced and while Dream is currently off tv now, having him return so soon did not inspire confidence.

September 2020 Best - Sami gets the IC Title Back After being unfairly stripped of the title back in May, Sami returned to claim himself the true IC champion. Pitted against AJ Styles and Jeff Hardy, the trio would embark on a smart and highly acclaimed ladder match for the title, which Sami would win. Course correction coming into play for Sami to resume his reign, but I still wonder why he was the heel in all of that...

Worst - Changing Aleister Black's Attire and Entrance Aleister Black had the IT Factor, he was a superb striker with a great gimmick of a dark and brooding warrior, rising like a vampire in his entrance with a demonic jacket, he oozed the aura of a main event player. Until Vince changed the music and decided that Black should wear an eyepatch...this of course was done after a span of barely booking Aleister anyway - despite him delivering in his matches - before not booking him at all.

Best - The Prince is Promised Finn Balor's return to NXT had been on a slow burn at this point, but with Karrion Kross having to vacate due to a separated shoulder a new NXT champion had to be crowned. After a 4-way iron man tie, Balor came on top on Super Tuesday Part 2. Finn being champion again was indeed the right choice, while it delays his collision with WALTER indefinitely he has had a superb reign filling in for Karrion Kross, who would reclaim in a good match at Stand & Deliver.

Worst - Telenovela Bullshit The Mysterios/Messiah storyline tangented in a bad way in its ending stages before fizzling out. Aalyah Mysterio had been booked into a romance with Murphy, the acting was like a soap opera and not in the good way. 'But mother, I love him' literally being the weekly storyline of coaxing Murphy away from Seth, all of which became dropped to mean nothing for anyone.

Best - Kyle O'Reilly and Jey Uso enter the Main Event Primarily tag wrestlers for their WWE careers, Kyle O'Reilly and Jey Uso were given unexpected chances at the world champions Balor and Reigns on NXT and Smackdown, and boy did they take those chances. Both men impressed hugely in their matches, enough to get multiple rematches and a bigger role in the main event from it, Jey would join Roman as a heel and support to the Tribal Chief while O'Reilly would come to blows with Adam Cole in an unsanctioned match. Both men can be seen as world champions now.

October 2020 Best - NXT UK Acquisitions NXT UK hasn't really gained the desired momentum, which is a shame because there are a lot of great talent still there, and they sport one of the best looking active belts in Wrestling today. The problem is the limited audience and minimal roster depth, which is why it was refreshing when WWE signed more to the brand, the big name of Meiko Satomura being the headliner but also Rampage Brown and the steal of Ben Carter - now Nathan Frazer - from under AEW's nose. Later they would push A-Kid and sign the former Lucky Kid and Millie McKenzie to further bolster its brand.

Worst - Not Repackaging Retribution On October 5th, WWE decided to turn Mustafa Ali heel and put him as the leader of Retribution, but they would also pit them against the Hurt Business - a heel faction - and reveal himself the 'Smackdown Hacker' - who had unveiled some heels doing heelish deeds. Confusing at the best of times, Retribution never got past losing either, forcing Mia Yim to do tantrums in the ring on a mini-push that came to nothing and elevating nobody. Retribution had chances to save itself, but WWE didn't take those chances.

Best - Sasha wins big! At last, Sasha wins a big title match clean in a storyline payoff against Bayley. Both women at the top of their game, they earned the Hell in a Cell spot and began a title reign that would go longer than any of Sasha's other main title reigns. The Boss was finally standing on top as the main roster finally did Sasha vs Bayley right.

Worst - Orton wins big... Randy Orton had been feuding with Drew since beating Edge at Backlash, losing on consecutive title matches until Hell in a Cell, where he won despite the slow burn hints at a Fiend feud. While Randy was at the top of is heel game and Drew didn't have to hold the title all year, the multiple past attempts deflated this story as well as scrutinizing WWE constantly saying 'no rematch clauses' and 'you can't just walk in and demand a title match' but then doing the absolute same thing. Orton's title run wouldn't last either, which makes it all the more meh.

Worst - The Draft The Draft is meant to lead to surprising new dynamics and storyline changes, but 2020's Draft was a misfire. For one, there was no competition for it, Raw got 3 just because it ran longer and a percentage of the draft picks were wrestlers staying on the brand they were already on, making the shock factor limited. The Mysterios followed Rollins to Smackdown to continue their drab storyline, the tag champions swapped belts to remain colour coded and for some reason some tag teams were treated as individual and some not.

November 2020 Best - Undertaker's Retirement Ceremony After 2 previous 'retirements', the Undertaker finally hung up his boots for real this time, ending it where it began: Survivor Series. It was a very tasteful affair with nods to the card he debuted on such as the Gobbeldy Gooker and Brother Love, it was a good time and a good sendoff for one of WWE's greatest characters.

Worst - Survivor Series books it wrong While there was many good matches in Survivor Series, it did suffer from the usual booking mentality of 'Raw Superiority'. Lana became a sole survivor by default of count outs and DQs in a team including Shayna and Asuka, the Smackdown men were completely squashed despite having a strong team and Baron Corbin and finally, no NXT. There was the potential for adding Balor, Io, Priest and Imperium to these matches and that just could've elevated it, the last was more understandable though given COVID.

Worst - Not booking 3 Future Stars Andrade, Aleister and Murphy. All three had shone before reaching the main roster be it for NXT on the former two and 205 Live on the latter. But on the Main Roster their luck was a mixed bag; Murphy had recently beat Rollins clean, but after the Mysterios were about to come down with COVID themselves WWE didn't push anything with him, Andrade was a former US Champion in a faction that all fell apart within the year and Black was a shitkicker who WWE were methodically gutting. All three would soon see themselves not on tv at all, and for two they had an alarming connection.

Worst - Zelina gets fired Zelina Vega was the one who elevated Andrade to a face midcarder to a heel main eventer on NXT, she was also coming along well as a wrestler with some decent bouts with Asuka. But when WWE enacted a policy that their wrestlers couldn't profit from third party stuff like twitch, when Zelina resisted and found loopholes she found herself getting released soon after, Andrade and her irl husband Aleister Black now ominously missing from WWE, it was for the most part pettiness on WWE's behalf to forbid their talent from making money elsewhere by being themselves.

December 2020 Best - Big E wins the Big IC Without his New Day buddies, Big E could continue his singles run despite daft claims from Corey that as a decorated tag champion Big E couldn't do singles wrestling like he did when he was NXT Champion and IC Champion. But on the Christmas Smackdown taping, Big E would win the IC championship to a big babyface moment, which he would carry into Wrestlemania.

Worst - Gargano wins the NA Title (again) I have nothing against Johnny Gargano, but it is odd that he was the one to usurp Damian Priest and then Leon Ruff. To this day he still holds that title despite Dexter Lumis, Bronson Reed, LA Knight, KUSHIDA (who recently just won the Cruiserweight title) and Cameron Grimes all looking like worthy competitors to get a push. It's a strange place where Gargano builds a faction with gold but it doesn't elevate anyone around his waist.

Worst - Charlotte returns just to add another title to her list WWE's obsession with mismatched teams is matched only by their obsession with pitting a champion and no.1 contender against tag champions, both of which are overdone. So when TLC came along with Asuka having a mystery partner to face Shayna and Nia, it didn't quite land that her partner was Charlotte and they went on to win the titles...only to drop it in about a month as they teased a title match between the two. It showed the low pecking order the tag titles had, the lowered stock of Shayna and how the title change was merely to say that Charlotte had won every title in WWE (at that time).

Worst - Miz fails his Cash-In, but gets the Briefcase back The Men's MITB was horribly booked all year and time was running out, WWE had to decide whether they would have to book a failed cash in - and put the Miz in the same list as Sandow and Corbin in those who lost their cash-in (Cena and Braun if we include those who didn't capture gold), making Miz champion or hot potatoing again. At the end of TLC it looked like they picked the latter, which would've tied things up in a bow. But the following Raw, the Miz got his briefcase back because Morrison had cashed it in for him, meaning the saga was forced to continue.

January 2021 Best - Xia Li finally gets a repackage Xia Li has been on the NXT Roster for a long time, like Vanessa Borne and Aaliyah long time, but the best NXT could give her for a long time was 'Chinese Undercarder'. 2021 however made a shift, by turning Li heel with a storyline of her and Boa answering to a mystic overlord, Li turned into a brutish kickass killer, squashes building to her dispatching her former friends. While she still sits low on the card, it's promising stuff that can easily be pushed towards the main title scene, and frankly Xia Li has done her time to earn such a push.

Worst - Goldberg challenges Drew 'for disrespecting legends' The whole Goldberg fiasco was once again a rush job that served nobody except old Bill. Still soured by the fact that he cleanly defeated the Fiend and also had a horror match with Taker, nobody was quite amped to see Drew vs Goldberg at Royal Rumble. His reasoning for feuding with Drew was also confusing since he was claiming that Drew had disrespected the legends on Legends Night when he had been fully supportive and respectful towards them. Mercifully, the feud did not go Goldberg's way.

Best - The Women's Dusty Classic is Announced The Dusty Rhodes classic has in NXT become a platform for tag teams and mismatch alliances to flourish and open into newer storylines, and also to sometimes set up War Games, and with the vast depth of the NXT Women's Locker Room it was the right call for WWE to make a women's variation. The tournament allowed Candice, Dakota, Raquel, Ember and Shotzi to get tv time outside of a world title shot and so their talents weren't entirely wasted.

Worst - Sonya Returns, but as a GM Assistant When Sonya Deville took some time off post-Summerslam, she had proven herself to be skilled on the mic and in the ring. But on Jan 1st's Smackdown Sonya would be spotted and later it was officially announced that Sonya was back on Smackdown, but as Adam Pearce's assistant. Aside from some backstage talks and Street Profits trying to bribe her for a title match, Sonya hasn't seen much TV time - which is a poor utilization of her skills. The position is fine to an extent, but Sonya should be using her position to further her in-ring prospects too, take a leaf from AJ Lee's book.

Best - Edge returns at the Rumble While I was never unhappy with Edge winning the rumble I wouldn't say it was the best booking choice out of the roster. If anything though, Edge returning from Injury at Number 1 was a definite crowd-pleaser, and pitting him against Orton to resume their hostilities set the tone for the Men's Royal Rumble.

Worst - Corbin beats the Mysterios Clean on Consecutive Weeks I don't know what the purpose of this was. After returning from COVID, the Mysterios were put against King Corbin in weekly matches, Rey lost to Corbin clean, Dom lost to Corbin clean, there weren't any interferences or weapons, and there wasn't really a plot to this. Only when Dom beat Corbin thanks to Rey's help did the feud 'end', but it didn't really do anything for them, in the end, Dom cheats to win and not in an Eddie Guerrero way. It was just weird.

Best - The Women's Royal Rumble The Women's Royal Rumble in 2021 was a masterpiece, nearly every woman in that match got some shine and a bit of story. There was depth, context and clarity in the bout and the exciting prospect of the final two being Bianca and Rhea - two NXT prospects who would both later grasp gold. The ending segment solidified a perfectly-booked bout that would set a standard the men couldn't outshine that night.

Worst - The Universal Title Last Man Standing botch Handcuffed on the scaffolding, Roman Reigns looked certain to lose his Last Man Standing match against Kevin Owens as Heyman frantically tried to uncuff him. Of course, this was a botch at the worst of times but instead of attempting to ad-lib something, the Ref just restarted his count after reaching 6. It was a daft choice that killed the sails of the match, they should've either attacked the ref or let Owens - who had lost to Reigns several times already - hold the title for a month or so before dropping back to Roman.

February 2021 Best - MSK win the Classic On Impact the Rascalz were a beloved faction, and when two thirds of them jumped ship to NXT as MSK, fans were eager to see if WWE would go all the way with them, or if they would let the UK uberheel team of Grizzled Young Veterans take the spot. Fortunately they went for the former, which was a big boost for the future tag champions - only slightly delayed by injuries to both MSK and the then-champions Burch and Lorcan.

Worst - Top Tier Bad Booking on all 3 Shows Despite Smackdown and NXT regularly dwarfing Raw in quality, each show had begun a less than stellar narrative to build some feuds among their favoured wrestlers. On NXT, Gargano's faction The Way were having a Dexter Lumis problem - and although Lumis had won a non-title match against the NA Champion he did not get a title shot - one which had its bright parts but was often found goofy especially with the Indi Hartwell romance stuff. Smackdown merely had to keep it simple with Bianca and Sasha, but instead, they decided to go through the 'can they work together' route with Shayna and Nia, again shoddy booking threatened to dampen a Women's Wrestlemania Main Event. But Raw of course had the worst of it, Charlotte would be a babyface feuding with Lacey Evans, who was fucking her father...fans were already aware that Lacey has a husband and child which WWE had acknowledged before, and the feud only ended because Lacey was legitimately pregnant - which they storyline'd to be Ric's too - sparing Asuka of the same fate. It just wasn't a good time.

Best - Cameron Grimes STONKS The Gamestop Reddit Stocks moment came out of nowhere and made people a lot of money, WWE decided that Cameron Grimes would be one of those people. Already exuding charismatic energy and a decent catchphrase, making Grimes rich somehow elevated his character further as a hilariously snobby whackjob. Here's hoping he gets a solid crack at it as he cites DiBiase, maybe like he did Grimes can pay his way to the top.

Worst - Sheamus sucks at history Sheamus turning on Drew was an inevitability, and their matches were strong and entertaining affairs. But WWE really didn't try too hard to think of a reason for Sheamus to turn on Drew, citing his reasoning to be that Sheamus had lived in Drew's shadow. I mean really? We're talking about the same Sheamus who has won every men's accolade in WWE bar the IC title while Drew was doing air guitar with Heath, Jinder and Hornswoggle in the undercard? You have to make things make sense for people to buy into it.

Worst - Miz gets to be King for a Week Following on from Miz's failed cash-in was Miz's successful cash-in after Elimination Chamber - an action he succeeded in thanks to Lashley assaulting Drew post-match. While Miz being world champion again was anticipated for a long time, the timing was not right at all and fans were more or less relieved to see that Lashley would be taking the title from him within the next week. It was mostly a bit of clean up after realising that they don't want to use the MITB in the build to Wrestlemania, afterwards Miz went from WWE Champion to feuding with a rapper - also spare a thought for Morrison who doesn't really get to do anything outside of being the Miz's buddy.

March 2021 Best - Lashley wins the WWE Championship Speaking of Miz's short-lived reign, the one saving grace from it was that Lashley would claim it soon after, looking like a monster in the process. An overdue run for the man who was slowly looking like he was about to fade out of the company the same way that several others had and later would got his position to be WWE Champion, long may he reign.

Worst - La Sombra de El Idolo Andrade remains one of the most talented wrestlers of his generation, he had several paths in WWE that could have moved him to the top of the card, several feuds that people were amped for. And none of it came to be, because Andrade was granted release on his second attempt. Where Andrade El Idolo will appear next remains up for discussion, the likely route being AEW or reconvening with his old Ingobernables, but wherever he lands it'll be on his feet.

Worst - Shane returns just in time for Wrestlemania Season Shane McMahon is the boss' son, with a masochistic urge to be thrown off of things. But he doesn't seem to realise that every time he's on the card someone more deserving is not, not even with a posse as he tries to renew his 3 Minute Warning days. This time around Shane beleaguered WWE's card with a feud against Braun Strowman circulating around Shane calling him stupid and pouring green goo on him...who asked for this?

Worst - Apollo changes his accent Speaking of 'who asked for this?', Apollo's heel turn in embracing his Nigerian heritage was fine, a new edge for the otherwise smiley naive face character. But then Apollo decided to put on an accent, even though he's spent years without it. It was just unnecessary, a stamp that was to say 'I am foreign, boo my foreignness' that certainly has no room in today's wrestling. What's the odds that within a year Apollo's Nigerian Royalty gimmick will be warped into a Nigerian Prince scammer gimmick?

Worst - Women's Tag Fuckery Upon winning the women's Dusty Classic, Raquel and Dakota got a Women's Tag Opportunity against boringly longstanding champions Shayna & Nia, however rather than just pull the trigger and give the titles to them, WWE opted for a cheat finish which had Adam Pearce turn heel for the day just to screw over NXT. This was all a convoluted plan to create NXT Women's Tag Championships, which were awarded to Raquel and Dakota...before immediately losing it to Ember and Shotzi. Just what you want when establishing a new title huh? Quickfire title changes! It was all just very roundabout, should've simply announced the titles for the Women's Dusty Classic prize or given the Women's Tag to a team that could actually use it.

April 2021 Best - Edge and Roman add a bit of YES Alone Edge vs Reigns was still a highly anticipated Universal title bout. But the addition of Daniel Bryan brought in several new layers and conflicts for all characters. Each of them (like Balor vs Kross would) were presented as warriors who were forced medically to vacate the top prize only to come back stronger, each of them main evented Wrestlemania, and each of them were some of the best wrestlers in the world. The triple threat also meant that No DQ stipulations could be opened up, allowing Edge to show more of his heelish and psychotic side, as well as Bryan and Roman's viciousness. All three sold that they wanted that title and it made it stand out.

Worst - That Hurts our Business The Hurt Business was looking to become another success story in modern WWE factions. Masterminded by a resurgent MVP and helmed by now WWE Champion Bobby Lashley, Business was indeed booming. Until the final few weeks of Wrestlemania decided to cast aside Shelton and Cedric - the latter they strived to convince in joining them within the past year - and effectively dissolve the group. The loss of the Hurt Business led to high criticism, especially since Cedric and Shelton fell hard into the undercard only to see King Corbin cross brands to do Lashley's dirty work, it just wasn't a good thing and the possibility of replacing those spots with Mace and T-Bar does not quite fill the void.

Best - Cesaro gets his Push Cesaro had often been haunted by the dangling of the 'brass ring' over his head. Despite a frequent tag champion and also a US champion, WWE shied away from his strong and dedicated fanbase that desired more for the Swiss Superman/Cyborg. In the build to Elimination Chamber, fans were intrigued by Cesaro's clean wins over such names as Daniel Bryan, but were not surprised when he didn't come out on top in the chamber itself. In the aftermath though, Cesaro began a feud with Seth Rollins, someone who could boast an impressive Wrestlemania W/L record, compared to Cesaro - whose only Wrestlemania singles match was last year's Pre-Show. The match was put on Night 1 and was a lovely affair with a clear story, most importantly though Cesaro came out on top with a huge rub and like that, the Cesaro section gets to believe again.

Worst - Fiend Falls to One RKO After spending the last year re-mystifying the Fiend by having him survive all manner of things including drowning and being set on fire, the return of the Fiend to open Night 2 of Wrestlemania left a sour taste in fans' mouths. After 8 minutes of no-selling Orton's offense, Alexa Bliss reappeared with black goo over her face to distract the Fiend, he was hit with an RKO and pinned for 3. The bafflement was high as fans wondered what exactly the intention was for having the Fiend lose on his return, and why it took only one RKO to finish it when so much worse things have struggled to keep him down.

Best - NXT Stands and Delivers before Mania In what was a long and entertaining week of wrestling, NXT said goodbye to Wednesday Nights in style with their Wrestlemania-esque 2-Day Takeover. The shows were good sporting some fun matches, including an entertaining CW unification ladder match and Io passing the torch to Raquel, though NXT weren't invited to Survivor Series or Mania this time, they still put on a great show before moving to Tuesdays.

Worst - Riotts, SD Tag Champions slighted The Riott Squad currently stand as one of WWE's last surviving genuine tag teams, everyone else being singles wrestlers thrown together to avoid Main Event or Superstars. However, they also stand as a team who after multiple attempts are still not tag champions. After carrying the bulk of their Night 1 Tag Team Turmoil, the Riott Squad were unfortunately left to be felled by Natalya and Tamina - who would lose on Night 2 rendering this pointless anyway - and I have to ask, is it ever going to happen? The Riott Squad are not the only tag team hard done by at Wrestlemania, as the Smackdown Tag Championship did not even make it on the card! A fatal 4-Way between the Dirty Dawgs, Street Profits, Alpha Academy and Mysterios could've brought some infectious energy into Night 2 given the amount of talent in those four teams, but instead it got put on a 'Wrestlemania special Smackdown' while Shane vs Braun ended up on the main card. Priorities were not straight there and WWE robbed Dominik Mysterio of a Wrestlemania debut, their only contribution being a video recap and a Dirty Dawgs interview on Night 1 to prelude the Raw Tag Championship match.

Best - Wrestlemania dished out the goods, and the fans In spite of some questionable booking in the early stages, we end the list on a high. Wrestlemania didn't have the best build or go-home show, but it certainly delivered on a blend of storytelling and wrestling, big title changes for Bianca and Rhea and solid matches for the majority of the card meant that WWE ended on a high. Most importantly too, it was in front of a crowd, the ambiance very much missed on the Grandest Stage of them All.

I would rant about April 15th 2021 but I said it's from Mania 36 to 37 so yeah, footnote fuck April 15th. In the end though WWE had its ups and downs, but hopefully they will learn from some of their mistakes and come back stronger

[welllpthisishappening]

Welllp...This is Festive Fic!

Hello again, internet! ‘Tis the season for lots of food and Starbucks holiday drinks and trope-filled holiday fic, of which I have written just a copious amount over the last few years. I’m sure I’ll have some Christmas fic sooner rather than later because of who I am as a person, but in the meantime, here are some words. I hope you all get everything you want over the next few weeks with lots of smiles and enough snow in December that it looks festive, but isn’t annoying to drive in. 

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Thanksgiving Fic

In Case of Emergency, Call... Killian just wants to make cookies. Alone. On Thanksgiving. What he gets is a rolled ankle and a hospital trip and a best friend worried out of her mind. (Modern AU)

To Grandmother's House We Go There’s no Thanksgiving equivalent in the Enchanted Forest, but there is a little bit of magic and that’s enough to bring a family together across holidays and realms. (Future Canon-esque)

Whistled for Icing Elsa left behind a bit of magic in the forest and the citizens of Storybrooke are ready to put it to good use. (Future Canon-esque)

Concussion Protocol  The Rangers are on the road, Mary Margaret is baking pie and Emma is far more worried than she expected to be as soon as she hears Killian slam into the boards. (Blue Line)

Dinner on the Road The Jones Line finds a restaurant for Thanksgiving and a brand-new look for its youngest member. (Blue Line)

Christmas and New Year’s fic under the cut. Once again, because of who I am as a person.

Christmas Fic

To Make the Season Bright It’s just one weekend. At Christmas. In New York. With everyone there. With Killian there. It’s fine. Emma doesn’t mind – he’s always there and she wants him to be there and it’ll be good. Great, even. Festive. 

She’s looking forward to it.

She just hopes she doesn’t do something stupid. Like shout feelings in his face. That probably wouldn’t be very festive. (Modern AU, multi-chapter)

It’s the Thought That Counts It was, in theory, a good idea. It was, in theory, an absolutely fantastic idea. Because there was still, sometimes, a crisis or two in Storybrooke and nothing would be more chaotic than trying to find a Christmas present on Main Street, while also trying to keep said Christmas present a secret. Ordering gifts on the internet makes sense. It’s just a few clicks and online sales and the presents will be there in plenty of time for Christmas to be perfect.

Emma and Killian are positive.

Except then the presents don’t show up and it’s Christmas Eve and plan B isn’t so much a plan as it is just a bit of pre-holiday desperation and the entire town knows what they’re up to. (Canon Future-esque, multi-chapter)

A Fair, Even-Handed, Noble Adjustment of Things Emma just wants to do something good. Give back. Maybe get a few bonus points. Metaphorically speaking. Not the last one. That defeats the purpose of all of this. But she can’t really think straight because he keeps humming and using nicknames and stealing all the flour. And she’d give up all the bonus points she’s, maybe, accumulated by, possibly, doing good if she could just remember what his name is. This is not going the way she planned. At all. (Modern AU)

Heart to Heart and Hand in Hand She was cold. She was tired. She did not want to be ice skating. She wasn’t really ice skating. She was just…kind of standing there – while getting yelled at by security guards and stared at by her boyfriend and they were being pushed off the ice. Not literally. And Emma knew she was being a Grinch or, maybe, just Max the Dog because she wasn’t in control enough to be a Grinch, but Killian wanted to go ice skating and well…fake it ‘til you make it festivity, right? (Modern AU)

The Gift Receipt It genuinely makes sense in her head. After all, Mary Margaret is being Mary Margaret and Emma just needs five seconds to herself and for her friends to get off her back and saying she can’t talk to Killian Jones because she and Killian Jones once went on a very bad date is the perfect excuse. It’s also not true, but whatever. It works. Until Emma needs to bring someone home for Christmas. To get the entire town off her back. So, she comes up with another plan and another lie and pretending to get back together with a guy she was never actually with will make their inevitable break-up incredibly easy. It makes sense. Seriously. That is, of course, until Killian agrees and there’s far too much pie and radio hits of the 70s and opinions on animated Christmas classics. It gets a little more complicated after that. (Modern AU, multi-chapter)

Older Now, But Not Done Hoping Killian Jones has lost his festive spirit. It’s been forcibly removed by corporate America and private developers and how much alcohol the customers at his bar drink every night. Although, he supposes, that means he’s making a profit, but that also feels a little Scrooge-esque and he doesn’t have time for visits from ghosts.

Because he’s suddenly got a whole schedule in front of him, written out and planned by his roommate. To reclaim their mutual and collective festivity. Together. Oh, and he’s in love with her. At Christmas. And all the time, really.

This is going to be great. (Modern AU, multi-chapter)

Kiss Her Once [For Me]

To say that the last year has been hectic would be the greatest understatement in the history of the modern world. Or, like, libel. In print, it’s libel.

Because the last year has been filled with political promises and campaigns and far more press conferences than Emma realized were possible. And now, with Washington D.C. ahead of them, the only thing Emma really wants is to figure out how many boxes she’ll need to move all her stuff.

That is, of course, until Killian finds her sitting in the middle of Regina’s hallway, a distinct lack of alcohol in her system, and the guarantee that he’s got a plan. For fun. Of the festive variety. It includes mistletoe. (Modern AU)

A Few Days Off for Christmas “How long do you think a person can go without sleep before they succumb to complete madness?” “Eleven days,” Killian responded immediately. Emma’s head jerked back, eyebrows pulled low and the bags under her eyes somehow felt heavier. “Why is that a thing you just know?” “I didn’t until somewhere in between Calgary and Vancouver and Scarlet thought it would be hysterical to find out how long I could actually go before passing out on the ice. Bad jokes, it seems, are some kind of trend these days.” (Blue Line)

Dropping Gloves...in the Name of Festive Fashion It’s probably one of the more ridiculous things any of them have ever done. It’s also one of the better ideas any of them has ever had – it’s festive and in the spirit and the fans will love it. And maybe it’s kind of fun because it ends with another win and some positive press before the break and Phillip’s jacket is really just…a work of fashion art. The way Emma laughs at his jacket and sweater combination a few hours before puck drop is just a bonus. (Blue Line)

All Knotted Up He’s never actually done anything like this – brought a girl home for Christmas. No, not just a girl – Emma. Emma was coming to the brownstone for Christmas and the entire Vankald family would be there with traditions and bread pudding and there had to be gifts.He needed to buy a gift. Or, at least, get a gift. And the list of people who wouldn’t laugh right in his face at the idea of Killian Jones, captain of the New York Rangers, freaking out about that was growing more and more slim by the minute. (Blue Line)

Have Your Cake [And Eat It Too]  Killian can't seem to stop moving. It's a nervous habit. He's a little nervous. Because they've been waiting forever and he's been waiting forever and he really just wants them to be a family. Officially.

Emma needs to keep moving. To win. She's very competitive. And she's needs a distraction. Because they've been waiting forever and trying a bit longer and she really just wants them to be a family. Officially

Or: Another quasi Out of the Frying Pan sequel with the legal system and Kitchen Stadium.

A Spark of Piracy Late-night blanket theft inspires Killian to remember his piratical beginnings. (Future Canon-esque)

Santa-Con Emma and Killian join their friends for Santa Con in midtown, with surprising results. (Modern AU)

New Year’s Fic

We'll Take a Cup (defense) of Kindness

It's one night. New Year's Eve. And a whole list of rules. Because Regina might have actually lost her mind. Or maybe that's just Emma. Because they've played a million games in two days, or it's at least felt that way, and planning an outdoor practice a few weeks before the Olympics seemed like a good idea at one point. Now it just seems insane. So she's going to wear this dress and kiss her boyfriend. A lot.

He's good. Better than good. Great. The greatest. It's New Year's Day and, yeah, sure it's freezing, but Killian hasn't actually tried to push Scarlet on the Subway tracks yet so that seems like a step in the right direction. So he's a little distracted a few weeks before the Olympics, but that's fine. It's good. Or it'll be good. Eventually. Soon. In the meantime he's probably just going to kiss his girlfriend. A lot. (Blue Line)

[aion-rsa]

Legends of Tomorrow Season 5 Episode 2 Review: Meet the Legends

https://ift.tt/3awrG9h

Legends Season 5 comes out of the gate incredibly strong with an amazing episode.

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This Legends of Tomorrow episode review contains spoilers.

Legends of Tomorrow Season 5 Episode 2

Well that was incredible.

I stopped being defensive about how much I love Legends of Tomorrow sometime towards the end of the second season. A little before the show stopped being defensive about how much fun it was, now that I think about it. And once that happened, it settled into a nice rhythm of having stupid amounts of fun on screen (and off, probably – a big part of the appeal), moving whatever ridiculous plot the season set up along, and getting us into its characters’ heads and making us love them. There would be the occasional turd, but it would always rebound quickly. The show thrived on parallel tracks: gleefully throwing the craziest plot shit it could at us, and digging down deep into intensely lovable misfits.

But I don’t think they’ve ever put together an episode like this. “Meet the Legends” might be the best hour of television Legends of Tomorrow has ever done.

We left off last season with Astrid, Constantine’s big failure, taking over hell from Neron and cutting loose the worst of the worst demons. The Legends saved the world from Neron’s attempted takeover in an incredibly public way, and they came out of it famous, but possibly broke because of some…issues…with their federal funding. Ava’s solution is to try and reclaim their government funding by letting a documentary crew onto the Waverider. Sara goes off to “the crossover” and comes back a mess, and a timequake rumbles, pointing the crew (and their documentary tails) to 1917 Russia and Rasputin’s return from the dead. Meanwhile, Constantine stays in 2020 NYC to track down the real story on the overarching plot of the season. The team is a mess without her running point, so everybody goes off and tries to solve the Rasputin problem three different ways and fails catastrophically, leaving the film crew behind and turning Rasputin into a real housemage or something. When Sara gets a call from Constantine, she pulls it together and heads off to finish the job without killing Rasputin, who as a recent returnee from hell, can’t be killed until they fix something down there.

The plot is as simple and straightforward as any other episode of the show, but the execution is magnificent. The first 25 minutes or so are funnier than any episode to come before it. It kicks off with a recap of “Legends Mania” – all of the fame and adoration coming the team’s way after their big win – and it has some incredible stuff in there, like chibi Steel or Ava and Sara at a basketball game with Obama and Jill Biden. Zari’s brother, Behrad (who replaced her on the Waverider after her universe-saving paradox subbed him onto the team and out of nonexistence) spends a lot of time baking out the ship, and Mona is “Rebecca Silver” (Mick’s bodice-ripping alter ego)’s agent, wolfing out while negotiating in a metaphor that is so incredibly on the nose that this show couldn’t have avoided using it, and also couldn’t have failed to use it well.

A lot of this is standard Legends comedy, but they scatter in a couple of really sharp lines and absurd sitcom scenarios and pick up the pace A LOT, like to Rick & Morty levels, for much of the first half of the episode. Ava asking Gideon “time sex tourism?” in response to a timequake is not a joke that S2 Legends would have even tried, nevermind squeezing it into a dense, quick scene. Constantine doesn’t get him and his demon friend (who’s possessing a 13 year old boy) thrown out of a strip club in S4.

And the episode is a fun, smart send up of reality TV that only succeeds the way it does if the folks making it understand both the reality and documentary formats, what makes them work and fail, and then sets out to intentionally break the format for fun.

Then the show pivoted to some excellent character work. One of the best things about reading superhero comics, something the Arrowverse does exceptionally well, is use the shared universe to make everything feel bigger, and I’ve never seen a show translate that vibe from page to screen better than Legends. This episode’s heart was crucial to its success, and also made it feel like the first comic issue after a big summer event book, where the main characters processing the event lets the reader get a lot of character time.

White Canary gets the development this time. Caity Lotz does some of her best work of the show, coming off of the death of Ollie and the rest of the batshit miscellanea she’s now carrying with her from “the crossover.” She’s her usual Sara – constantly skating on the edge of exasperated and losing control of the situation, but also still reliable and a deceptively good leader – but there’s a good amount of sadness and loneliness in her in this episode. I took some pretty furious notes through the opening, rewinding a couple of times to make sure I caught all the jokes, but when the focus turned from everyone reacting to Sara’s Crisis scars to Sara working through them, I completely drifted away from my note taking because I was pretty captivated by the screen. I had mostly moved to just smiling at how good the episode was.

Until the part where Ray reverted to normal size from inside Rasputin’s esophagus, at which point I laugh/coughed so loud that I woke my wife and a dog up. I knew it was coming about 10 seconds before it actually happened, just enough time to get my hands over my mouth and whisper “holy shit no way,” and then all of a sudden the documentary director is covered in Russian viscera and I’m about to roll off of my couch laughing. And no sooner can I write down “wow they’re really going to leave several jars of Rasputin lying around the Waverider? That’ll end well” than Constantine barges through the ship and pounds a jar of Czar to head back into Hell to figure out how to fix this.

I’m amazed at Legends hit rate. Even the bad episodes are a ton of fun, but the good ones are some of the best on television, and this post-Crisis kickoff to season five is Legends’ best yet.

Books

5/5

DC Entertainment

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Legends of Tomorrow

Legends of Tomorrow S5

Review Jim Dandy

Jan 21, 2020

from Books https://ift.tt/2GdZ5rm

[just-some-other-reviews]

This drama is, at the same time, the best drama for a cat lover (like myself, I love my cats, they’re cute [don’t misunderstand me, they’re not kitten that I keep only because they’re cute and will end up giving away, they’re senior cats with tones of problems]) or the worst drama a cat lover lover could watch, but it’s quite realistic and those who already had a cat might identify themselves to the male lead.

Imaginary Cat is a romantic comedy. Jong-Hyun is a webtoon wirter that try to make himself a place in this world, and, while waiting to be published, is working part-time in a library to pay for his rent. One rainy day, years ago, he found Bok Sil, a stray cat, and brought it home. Since then, she became his muse and he adores her. The love of cats will bring Jong-Hyun to encounter Na-Woo, a young woman, who, years ago, lost her cat and can’t keep herself from seeing her Haru in Bok Sil.

I tried to keep the drama without spoiler. I identified two parts in which I think the spoilers are way too revealing. If you want to avoid the first one, the one about the ending, skip the end of the sentence. If you want to avoid the second one about the plot twists, skip the end of the paragraph.

The plot is quite usual for those who are used to this type of drama. I mean, the progression follows the one of the usual “animal plot”. What I mean is that it looks like a Hollywood movie with (generally) a dog. You know, the animal brings two people together, they fall in love and (SPOILER) the animal ends up dying, leaving its owner and his lover to bound over their memories. I have to admit that I was glad that the story wasn’t turning around Haru and Bok Sil resemblance. It was always in the background, since it was a bit like the “main” story, but most the drama was focused on the protagonists’ life, but especially on Bok Sil and Jong-Hyun interactions. Most of the time, it was a really heartwarming drama, quite cute and also pretty realistic and reliable. It’s probably because the fact that it looked so realistic that it was quite a sad drama, also. I mean, most of it is really light, the idea of having a cat talking is absolutely awesome, since - you know - you can easily say that it was well-done and the screenwriter (or the webtoon writer, I don’t know how the webtoon was wrote) really captured everyday thoughts that might cross our cat’s mind, but near the end to drama becomes quite heavy and emotional. The drama is really short (8 episodes) so it doesn’t have a lot of length. I have to admit that it’s one of the rare drama, lately, that I carefully watched the whole episode without skipping any part. The story is well-done and really interesting, even though there’s not a lot of plot twist. (SPOILER) I’ll briefly discuss about a plot twists. At some point, it’s revealed that Bok Sil is, in fact, Haru. This small portion of the drama was something that made me really upset because Na-Woo was really lacking insight. I know, she wanted her cat back, but she wasn’t even sure yet, what’s more, it’s ridiculous to want to have your cat back after someone else bounded with her for over seven years and you only briefly had it. But the most upsetting was how she reclaimed the cat, while knowing Seung-Ho was deeply attached to Bok-Sil. I mean, she had hanged around him long enough to realize that Bok Sil was his emotional support and was really important to him. I have to admit that the handling of this situation didn’t please me and I thought it was the major flaw in the story line (you know, I need to find one, at least). 

The characters of the drama are pretty average. The male lead, Jong-Hyun, is the usual genius artists who went through a lot and, by consequence, was unable to success. Through the drama, he follows the usual development for this type of character. There was nothing surprising when it came to this character. The female lead, Na-Woo, is, also, quite typical. I mean she’s the cheerful female lead hurt by her past, who passed most of her childhood being extremely sick which makes her a bit weaker than a normal female character and overprotected by those around her. She’s quite annoying because she’s always trying to help the male lead, even though he doesn’t want any help from her and finds her too forceful. The character that’s truly interesting in this drama is the cat because the second male lead is barely in the drama and the second female lead is like in-existing. I mean a talking animal is often seen, but, so far, I have seen more often dogs being portrayed that way than cats. Also, Bok-Sil is absolutely lovable being her independent and really clingy self. Her reflections are also quite unique because she’s not causing a mess and doesn’t act in a way that she disturbs the male lead intentionally.

I’ll conclude here. The plot would be worth a 8/10. The characters would be a 3/5 since there was evolution, even though it wasn’t that appearing until the final episode. The tearjerker factor would be a 3/5 or 4/5, prepare tissues for the ending. After finishing the drama, you might want to hug your cat while crying... Those precious balls of fur...

I just want to say a little something before really ending this review. The tearjerker factor is really subjective in the case of this drama because of my personal history (can we say that in English...? I’m not sure). I was really affected by the emotional tension near the end because I went through a similar situation. I grew up always having a cat. When I was born my parents already had an old cat (like he was older than ten already by then, but we couldn’t say really what was his age ‘cause my family found him during the winter and he was a stray cat), so I basically grew up with him. Like I was really stupid back then, I dressed him up and everything. Well, that’s not what is important. Eventually he died (duh, he’s a cat), but his death was really similar to the one of Bok-Sil. You know he just stopped to eat and everything (like any cat dying...) and was even to the point that he kind of turned blind (Not joking, he stumbled in the stairs when he was outside), so we had to put him to sleep ‘cause he was just too sick and the vet’ was like “Oh, we could see if he has cancer or some shit like that”, but my parents thought that the old man was already, at least, seventeen so we should let him leave. So like the whole situation described in the drama really echoed with me and remembered me of my old cat that I truly loved (I mean, from my birth to around my seventh birthday he was always with me, the cat anatomy (like whiskers, etc.) was among my first words and everything) and I’m quite a sensitive person when it comes to matter of death. So, yah, the tearjerker factor might be wrong for most people, but I think I explained my choice well-enough.

[stephaniefchase]

Bajan Newscap 1/4/2017

Good Morning #realdreamchasers! Here is your daily newscap. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Today (BT) or by purchasing a Mid-Week Nation Newspaper (MWN).

SCHOOL TERM STARTS NEXT WEEK - Public schools WILL re-start next week with teachers returning to the classroom next Monday, January 9, and students on Tuesday, January 10. Term II, also known as the Hilary term, will run for 13 weeks. Among the highlights of the term will be activities to mark African Awareness Month, in February, as well as the annual sports events including the National Primary Schools’ Athletics Championships and the Barbados Secondary Schools’ Athletics Championships. The second term ends on Thursday, April 6, for children and Friday, April 7, for teachers. (MWN)

IN THE DARK ABOUT COMBERMERE – Even AS Combermere School underwent an industrial cleaning yesterday ahead of the start of the school term, parents are still awaiting definite word from the Ministry of Education on the immediate future of the school. Chief Education Officer Karen Best said that the ministry would be making an announcement later this week. Students across the island are set to return to the classrooms on Tuesday, but there is apprehension about Combermere, which was closed temporarily in mid-November because of persistent environmental issues. Yesterday, a MIDWEEK NATION team paid a visit to the school where industrial cleaners were hard at work on a number of the buildings while some construction work was taking place at the main entrance and other workers were cutting the grass. (MWN)

BARBADOS NOT AS BAD AS TRINIDAD - Government minister Donville Inniss says Barbadians need to grateful for small mercies, while comparing the island’s economic situation to that of neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of his Old Year’s Night house party on Saturday night, Inniss said nationals of the twin-island republic had recently been “scrambling” for much needed foreign exchange in stark contrast to what existed up to four years ago when oil-rich republic was “riding high”. “Today, according to public reports, Trinidadians were scrambling to get foreign exchange. “So had we [the Barbados Government] not done the things we had to do, perhaps we would have found ourselves in a similar position as Trinidad as far as the scarcity of US dollars,” Inniss said. “Not to laugh at Trinidad because I hope that they will turn around as well, but when I look at this place, in Barbados we have to thank God for small mercies,” he added. Against the backdrop of recent domestic difficulties, Inniss therefore called on Barbadians to “keep the faith” in his ruling Democratic Labour Party administration. Describing himself as the “proverbial optimist”, Inniss also rejected suggestions that 2017 will be a worse year for the Barbados economy. He promised that changes would be made in other areas of his ministry this year so they can be more customer-friendly, accountable and more accessible. As for the matter of pending general elections, Inniss said he was ready to reclaim his St James South seat whenever the elections were called. (BT) 

MUZZLE KELLMAN - The outrage over Minister of Housing Denis Kellman’s recent social media post continues, with the man seeking to replace him as Member of Parliament for St Lucy describing it as a “joke” and “the height of stupidity”. The post provoked the ire of an already frustrated Barbadian public, angry about the number of potholes on the country’s roads, many of which are blamed for accidents and damage to vehicles. Now, Opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP) St Lucy hopeful Peter Phillips has joined the band of critics, suggesting Kellman was senseless. “It is time that Denis Kellman step down . . . .That is the biggest joke that I’ve seen or heard from any person who has a single modicum of common sense put forward,” Phillips told .Barbados TODAY “It is the height of stupidity really. If you look at potholes –– and they are plenty potholes all over the consistency –– sometimes you wonder if you are going through a cart road in some instances.” The BLP candidate also lashed out at Prime Minister Freundel Stuart and members of the ruling Democratic Labour Party for their silence on the post. “The Prime Minister will not condemn the minister for making such a stupid statement. So when a person who is supposed to be a minister of the Crown and representative of the people can make such a stupid statement, we wonder what has Barbados come to in terms of Government and people in Government,” Phillips added. (BT)

POTHOLE PRESSURE - Pressure is mounting on Government to repair the increasing number of potholes riddling the island’s roads, and blamed for some vehicular accidents. The Barbados Road Safety Association (BRSA) will tomorrow launch an initiative designed to virtually shame the Freundel Stuart administration into action. BRSA President Sharmane Roland-Bowen told Barbados TODAY the association would begin identifying potholes across the island and place “advanced notification signs” to both alert unsuspecting road users of potholes lying in wait and turn the heat up on Government. The road safety organization is pleading with the public to assist by identifying some of the worse potholes in their parishes and send the information to saferoads@caribsurf.com or call 231-0061. It was only last month that Roland-Bowen said she wanted authorities to move urgently to repair the increasing number of potholes on the country’s roads, warning they had become safety hazards. Since that plea, a Facebook page Potholes Of Barbados was created by wedding photographer and graphic designer Chris Brancker “to highlight the horrendous craters that frequently cost people hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in vehicle repairs”. The page has gained in popularity as frustrated and dissatisfied road users utilize it to express their discontent. Welcoming that initiative, Roland-Bowen said it was about time the heat was turned up on the authorities to do something about the potholes. (BT)

PATCHWORK - Road users fed up with the many potholes on the country’s roads could begin to see an improvement from as early as next week. Minister of Transport & Works Michael Lashley has told Barbados TODAY private contractors hired to repair the potholes are expected to resume work on Monday following a break for Christmas. “We would do what we have to do,” Lashley said in response to the growing complaints by motorists and pedestrians about the holes, some of which are being blamed for accidents and damage to vehicles. Lashley was adamant that Government had been taking significant steps to address the problem, stating that “we’ve patched a number of potholes between November and December. “We are starting back out on Monday back on the potholes.”   The minister blamed a number of factors for the expanding potholes, including consistent rainfall. Asked about the effectiveness of asphalt used to repair the roads, he said Government was taking a second look and was considering concrete as an alternative. MTW Public Relations Officer Avonda Scott said work had already begun at Whitepark Road, St Michael; Thorpe’s, St James and Ocean City in St Philip. Meanwhile Scott reiterated that motorist whose vehicles sustain damage due to the potholes could seek compensation. “All they have to do is put in a claim to the ministry – write a letter addressed to the Permanent Secretary.” The letter, she said, should include information on when and where the damage occurred, along with a valid driver’s license, insurance and road tax. Only after an investigation is carried out by the MTW will compensation be paid, Scott warned. However, she said claims would be settled quickly. (BT)

PORT BOUNTY - The Island’s main seaport is reporting significant growth in business for 2016, and is predicting even better days ahead. Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Port Inc David Jean-Marie told Barbados TODAY the port last year recorded double digit growth in both local and new transshipment cargo, as well as a rise in cruise passenger arrivals. “We had for the calendar year at least 15 per cent growth in the cargo tonnage and more than two per cent growth in cruise passengers for the full year, compared to last year [2015],” Jean-Marie said. He said one of the most outstanding areas of success was in transshipment, while home-porting was also on the rise. Regarding the suspended multi-million-dollar Sugar Point Cruise Passenger Terminal, he stated he expected work to begin in the coming year. He was also happy with the industrial relations climate in the past year, noting that the port was working on doing better for 2017. The Bridgetown Port is the major port of entry for approximately 90 per cent of the goods used in the manufacturing and retail sectors in Barbados. (BT)

NEW INSURANCE FOR SENIORS - The organization that champions the well-being of Barbadians aged 50 or above may finally have found a replacement for its Golden Health Insurance Plan cancelled last year by the Insurance Corporation of Barbados Limited (ICBL). The Barbados Association of Retired Persons (BARP) has identified likely options and the over 2,000 seniors affected by last year’s cancellation “are about to get new coverage”, BARP President Edward Bushell confirmed to Barbados TODAY. However, he was keeping the details close to his chest for now. BARP had disclosed in the first quarter of last year that ICBL had decided to discontinue the plan which was up for renewal in August 2016. The 40,000-strong membership has since been searching for a suitable replacement, the BARP head said. Bushell said BARP members had had difficulty coping since the cancellation of the Golden Health Insurance Plan, adding that those with medical conditions have had to foot their full medical costs, causing significant deterioration in their financial standing. (BT)

LAST DAY FOR VENDORS AT WEST COAST MALL - YESTERDAY MARKED THE final chapter for businesses at the high-end West Coast Mall, and come October customers can expect a new and improved Massy superstore in its place. Last year business owners and vendors were given notice to vacate the over 50-year-old location. A scan of the St James mall revealed a large white padlocked door, where boxes of clothing were all over the place and vendors were scurrying around removing their items. They all had the same refrain: they were looking for a new place to set up shop. One woman was concerned that a fellow small business operator would have to find another way to help her daughter complete medical school. (MWN)

VENDORS HOPING FOR BETTER – Fisherfolk are hoping for a rise in fortunes this Easter after boats experienced low catches during the recent Independence and Christmas holidays. From the Paynes Bay market, St James to the Berinda Cox market in Oistins the lament from the vendors is consistent: the tides are not bringing sufficient fish their way. At Paynes Bay, a fish vendor who gave her name as Ms Young said low sales at Christmas could be attributed to the fact that the boats did not go out at Independence. “Right now things looking so down I cannot say,” she said. Sandra Hinds who operates from the Bridgetown Fisheries Complex said, however, that sales for Christmas were not bad and the fishing season looked promising.  (MWN)

CITY OF SHAME - It was recently designated a UNESCO world heritage site. Bridgetown and its historic Garrison won the international acclaim on account of its outstanding British colonial architecture consisting of a well-preserved old town built in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Pictures, taken by a group of visitors, tell a totally different story. The group of mostly first-time visitors to the island was led on a tour of the capital city on New Year’s Day by Jim Webster, a Bajan-Canadian, who is back home for his annual winter break. To his surprise and embarrassment, they were greeted with piles of unsightly rubbish that left them feeling disgusted. In an email to Barbados TODAY, Webster, a former employee of the then Seawell Air Services said his first thought was to “send the picture to the Guardian [newspaper] because it seems that the Barbados Government only takes action when things get into the foreign press”. (BT)

FACILITIES A MESS - Members of the public are finding it difficult to use toilet facilities within the environs of St Michael because of foul odours. When the MIDWEEK NATION did a quick tour to get feedback from users yesterday, the response was negative. The set of public toilets for the thousands who use the River Van Stand day in and day out has become a source of distress for those who made complaints. These include commuters, public service vehicle operators and vendors. Cologne vendor Gold Simeon said he believed that better could and should be done. “This is a new year, man. Keep it clean with a fresh scent,” he said.  (MWN)

SEWAGE STINK AT NHC UNITS IN DEACONS - Residents of National Housing Corporation (NHC) units at Neptune Road, Deacons, St Michael, want to be rescued from foul-smelling water that is seeping from under their homes and creating problems. This predicament has come about because a truck used by the NHC to pump wells at the estates has broken down. The seepage is impacting elderly neighbours Gloria Chapman and a man who referred to himself only as “Clarke”. The seniors complained to the MIDWEEK NATION yesterday and it was subsequently discovered by a source at the NHC that the truck had been out of commission since November 28 2016. (MWN)

VISITOR FINED - A Mexican visitor had to part with $350 when he appeared in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court on a drug charge today. Guillermo Adolfo Herrerias Morales, 28, from Mexico City, pleaded guilty to possession of a small quantity of cannabis as well as apparatus for the misuse of the illegal substance. Morales arrived in the county with his family yesterday, on board the Adventure of the Sea cruise ship. The court heard that he was on the high seas to celebrate the New Year and his acceptance into Harvard. The police prosecutor Sergeant Neville Reid said Morales took part in the typical tourist activities, including touring the island, and was preparing to embark the ship when he was searched by security. He was found in possession of a three-inch glass pipe containing the marijuana. He was handed over to police and he admitted to purchasing the drug at Brownes Beach for US$5. He was reprimanded and discharged on the apparatus charge. (BT)

NEW YEAR’S DISTURBANCE LAND 7 IN COURT - Seven young men, ages 17 to 23, appeared before the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court today jointly charged with causing a disturbance on New Year’s Day. They are: Jeffrey David Yearwood, 23, of Lot 50 Oxnards, St James; Shaquille Torrance Rouse, 21, of Lot 261 Husbands, St James; Shaquan Nathaniel Harding, 19, of Kendall Hill, Christ Church; Reo Mali Harris, 19, of Thorpes Land, St James; Reshawn DeAngelo Sealy, 18, of Halls Village No. 2, St James; Reshawn Jordan Antone Greenidge, 17, Maxwell Hill, Christ Church; and Akeem Rico Rouse, 22, Lot 261 Husbands, St James. The seven men who were unrepresented by attorneys told Magistrates Douglas Frederick they were not guilty of the offence which allegedly occurred on January 1, in St Lawrence Gap. With no objection from police prosecutor Neville Reid, the men were each granted $1,500 bail, to return to court on March 3. (BT)

COUSINS FIGHT OVER PROPERTY - A BRIDGETOWN COURT was transformed into a theatre yesterday as one man dramatically recounted events that led to him being arrested and brought to court yesterday. The dramatisation by Harold McDonald Payne forced officers to redirect him back into the dock as his re-enactment took him beyond the wooden section. Payne, a 55-year-old vehicle bodywork technician of Free Hill, Black Rock, St Michael was giving an explanation to the court after admitting to assaulting his cousin Anthony Straker, causing him actual bodily harm on December 27. The cousins, who live next to each other, were constantly involved in disputes over ownership of adjoining properties. (MWN)

BRAZILIAN FUGITIVE TAKES SELFIES ON THE RUN -  A Brazilian man who broke out of a prison in the northern city of Manaus has been posting photos of himself on Facebook, bragging of his escape. In the picture, Brayan Bremer, who is serving a sentence for robbery, can be seen amidst dense vegetation giving the thumbs up. Behind him is another fugitive who police say has since been captured. The men are among dozens who escaped on Sunday from two prisons in Manaus. Bremer was among 72 inmates to escape from Antonio Trindade jail on Sunday in the northern state of Amazonas. Hours later another 112 prisoners broke out of the nearby Anisio Jobim jail amidst a deadly riot which left 56 people  dead. Bremer was active on Facebook during his time in jail, despite a ban on prisoners using the internet. But it was his posts after his escape which went viral in Brazil. The first post shows Bremer in a Bayern Munich football shirt covered in mud alongside a fellow fugitive with the message: “On the run from jail.” Another showed Bremer with four others in a similar jungle location eating fruit. While Bremer’s Facebook account has now been deleted, a number of spoof accounts in his name have since appeared, such as @fugitivodoano (@FugitiveOfTheYear). While Facebook users appeared to be making light of the mass escape, police in Manaus continued their search for the fugitives. Officials said they had recaptured 40 so far, among them the man who appears in the selfie with Bremer. (BT)

MAS IN DANGER - The grand finale of Barbados’ premier festival is in trouble and could attract fewer bands and masqueraders this year, the organization representing bandleaders is warning. The Barbados Association of Masqueraders (BAM) said declining sponsorship could force bandleaders to either eliminate some sections or withdraw altogether from Grand Kadooment this year, following a drop of 600 revellers last year when compared to 2015. “The quality and the standard of the mas might be going up but we are getting less people going on the road and that is a big thing come [this year], and what we don’t recognize is that there could be a lot less bands on the road [this year]. The actual Grand Kadooment is in trouble,” BAM President Chetwyn Stewart told Barbados TODAY. “And I will not be bringing a band too if I don’t get some kind of support,” he added without saying how many band owners were thinking of cutting back or pulling out. So concerned is the association that it has written to the state organizer of the Crop Over festival The National Cultural Foundation (NCF), and copied Minister of Culture Stephen Lashley, requesting a meeting in an effort to avert a major problem. According to BAM, the root of the problem is inadequate Government funding of Crop Over, resulting in the NCF having to compete with band owners for sponsorship. And with the NCF able to offer sponsors more for their money, the bands get the short end of the stick.  Based on the 2016-2017 Estimates of Expenditure and Revenue, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth received $50.77 million, $6.258 million of which went to the NCF. It is estimated that it costs the agency between $5 million and $6 million to run the annual three-month Crop Over festival. Meantime, Lashley told Barbados TODAY he took all issues raised by stakeholders seriously and he was willing to have cordial discussions with BAM with a view to reaching a workable solution. “Once the issues are raised then we will do what we always do every year – sit, have a discussion with a view to resolution,” Lashley had said before receiving the letter. Having since received the correspondence, Lashley has asked his Permanent Secretary to gather the necessary information so a date could be set for the meeting. (BT)

PRIVATE PROPERTY - The upmarket Heron Bay in Porters, St James is defending its decision to place a barricade across the road leading to the property. A local media report quoted some visitors as claiming the barrier was denying them access to the beach, with one person questioning when the road had stopped being public. However, Property Manager at Heron Bay Betty Rayside told Barbados TODAY it had been a private road since billionaire Lord Bamford bought the property about 40 years ago, and that while pedestrians had been allowed to use it freely, vehicular traffic had always been restricted. In fact, Rayside said, the neighbouring property, Colony Club, had been using the road for a number of years after it got the owners’ permission. “This is private property and for the entire time the owners granted permission in writing to the owners of Colony Club to use the road as an entrance for the delivery of supplies.” Rayside added that in spite of the barrier, Barbadians and visitors continued to have access to the beach via the paved road. Rayside also pointed out that provision had been made for taxi operators who ply their trade at the Colony Club. She explained that the barrier was erected to stop “poor parking practices” by motorists who park “in front of the gate, lock their cars, go to the beach and then the occupants of the house would not be able to get out of the gate”. Rayside said the owners Lord and Lady Bramford were currently at the house, therefore everything was being done to ensure they enjoyed free passage to and from their home. Up to the time of publication, General Manager of the National Conservation Commission Keith Neblett could not be reached for a comment on the issue. (BT)

BRIDGE CLEAN UP - The Charles Rowe Bridge community group is continuing to spread the love. This is how spokesman Roger Hinkson described their work – a labour of love to keep their community clean, bright and safe. Members of the group were spotted repainting the bridges in the area last Friday, something they have been doing on an annual basis for a number of years. “We painted the bridge opposite the gas station, the long one opposite Chefette and we still have to do the one by the restaurant as well as repaint the mural,” he said. Hinkson thanked annual sponsors Chefette, the Bridge Hardware Store and Carter’s Bakery. (MWN)

There are 30 Days until Girlfriends Expo & Arts Festival (February 3rd & 4th) and you can purchase your tickets from Ticket Pal.

Well that’s all for today folks. Have a productive start to your working year. There are 361 more days in theyear ;) Shalom!  #thechasefiles #dailynewscaps