#posting again because the og post didn't show up

[sh0ek0]

it's supposed to be fun, turning twenty-one (part 3.5)

please find the other parts via my masterlist or the #sh0ek0 tag, I'm having some trouble with my posts not showing up in the tags and I think the links are messing this up

genre: little bit of angst, dk if this counts even as a hint of fluff given the overall storyline?? just a small drabble content warning: hints of abuse, hints of toxic relationship, emotional dependency, nothing too explicit I guess, aged up characters, college au pairing: Megumi x reader word count: 2.8k A/N: Part III was quite long and almost a year too late and I realized that I don’t love it as much as I thought I would. This one's shorter as I’m not sure if I should continue with the series, the last part didn’t perform as good as the first two and I'm unsure where the story is going from here. Anyways, I hope you’ll enjoy this summary: after the party two weeks ago, the encounter with your ex has left you distraught. You feel re-traumatised and have barely slept or eaten since. Your friends are doing their best to distract you on your birthday, but even after everything he did to you, all you can think about is him.

"Happy birthday!!!" your friends chant in unison.

"Blow out the candles," Nobara squeals as she places the huge cake she and Yuji carried in in front of you.

Tears start to form in the corners of your eyes and a smile spreads across your face as you look at your friends. 'Don't forget to wish for something,' Toge signs to you, and you shake your head, telling him that you could really use a wish right now, before taking a deep breath and blowing out all the candles at once.

"Guys, I don't even know what to say," you croak, obviously touched by the successful surprise.

"You don't have to say anything," Maki says as she leans over to you, "in fact, don't say anything and don't tell us what you wished for, otherwise it won't come true."

You look around you and feel how warm and fuzzy your heart is starting to feel. You had spent your birthday on the couch with Maki today, watching a whole series of Halloween movies in anticipation of next week and eating so many snacks that you already felt sick by the time it was evening. Still, she had managed to convince you to go out for a few drinks to celebrate, so you ended up in your favourite bar. 

And now you were sitting here at your favourite table by the big window in the front, surrounded by your friends who hadn't texted or called you all day to keep up the illusion that they had forgotten your birthday. Maki, Nobara, Yuji, Toge, Yuta and Choso were all gathered around the table, with you in the middle.

Even some of the seniors had shown up, Gojo and Getou and even Hakari and Kirara had stopped by to wish you a happy birthday. Gojo was far too enthusiastic as he hugged you, lifting you off the ground a little as he did.

"You’re officially allowed to drink now, congratulations!" Gojo grins as he sets you back down and Getou just shakes your hand, scratching the back of his head with his other hand as he gives you an apologetic look for his boyfriend. "Happy birthday, y/n, I hope all your wishes come true," he says, squeezing your hand before pulling you into a gentle hug.

"Thank you," you chuckle, but you're quickly distracted by Kirara and Hakari shoving a huge bouquet of flowers into your hands.

"Wow, thank you guys, they’re beautiful." Don’t tear up again, what’s up with you tonight?

"I picked them out, Maki told me which ones were your favourites." You squeal a little as Shoko squeezes in between them. She had just come in and her clothes were still wet, but she hugged you anyway. She was so busy with med school that you hardly ever got to see her. Even though she was two years older than you, you got along really well with her and you loved spending time with her, even though you had far too little of it.

You chat with the others for a moment, listening to Shoko's stories about her day at the university hospital, or Getou's tale of how Gojo drank alcohol for the first time on his twenty-first birthday, and how he was so drunk at the end of the night that Getou had to carry him back to campus, walking for almost half an hour with him slung over his shoulder.

"Hey, I never drank again after that, so you really can't complain," Gojo protested and you saw how Getou squeezed his side, pulling him into his arms.

After a while, the small group decides to move on to the bar, and you thank them again, giving each of them a quick hug before returning to your table to sit with your friends.

As happy as you were at the surprise, and you were so happy, the grin seemed to stay on your face as Nobara handed you the knife to cut the cake, you still noticed how that feeling of emptiness came over you. 

Your cheeks were flushed with excitement, and as the knife slid through the cake and you lifted the first piece out, delighted to see a pink colour under the icing, strawberry being your favourite flavour, you couldn't help but think of Taylor's words.

It’s supposed to be fun, turning twenty-one

But it was only for a split second that you allowed yourself to think of him. Megumi, who wasn't here with you to celebrate your birthday. Your first birthday in two years without him. And yet, for the past two weeks, every time you looked in the mirror, you couldn't help but think of him, because you had to get up two hours earlier to cover the bruises he left on your neck with make-up.

Your skin was now only a pale green, it would heal soon. But the many wounds he had left on your soul didn't want to heal so quickly - almost every night you woke up from your sleep, the first week you had spent in Maki's bed again because you couldn't sleep alone. By now, the situations in which he had left you behind, traumatised and alone… they had piled up. 

Of your friends, only Maki had seen the extent of his actions the morning after the house party, she had spent an hour trying to talk you into reporting him—to no avail. And if the others had noticed how meticulously you'd been covering your neck for the past two weeks, they didn't seem to let it show. Well, except for Choso and Yuji at least, the two brothers were even more protective than they already were before, taking turns in walking you home from your classes.

A few days after your argument, Yuji even came to you and apologised, especially for what he had said to you in the end.

"What he did to you isn't your fault."

How badly you needed to hear those words, even if you had trouble believing them. 

"You always think of the others first, don’t you?", Nobara mumbles as she takes the knife out of your hands, puts a huge piece of cake on your plate and brings you back to the present, "Even on your birthday."

"I was raised to be polite," you say, chuckling as she nudges your side. 

"Being polite and considering yourself not important enough are two different things," she hums, and you knew she was right. You were also aware that she was not only referring to the cake here.

It had been raining all day, next week was already Halloween, and soon after that it would start snowing. You weren't ready for the dark season, at least not now, not in your state of mind. You should probably really start talking to someone, maybe even someone whose job it was to talk. You might be able to get some therapy sessions through the college administration and you decide to ask Shoko about it when you have the chance.

You zone out as you overhear your friends gleefully chatting, and you listen in silence as Maki tells the story of how you sulked half the day, between movie marathons and getting ready, because no one had wished you a happy birthday yet. You eat your piece of cake, concentrating so hard on not letting your facade crumble, until...

Ding!

Ding! Ding!

Almost hesitantly, you reach for your phone, but none of your friends had even noticed it. It was far too noisy in here for that, and anyway - it was your birthday. Probably someone who just remembered you and wanted to reach out before the day was over.

If only your eyes hadn't already fallen on the name that popped up on the screen.

Your heart starts beating faster.

You couldn't just walk out now, could you?

It would be utterly foolish of you, after your last encounter, to go out there alone. It was dark and it was raining, and if you told your friends who just messaged you, they wouldn't let...

"Guys, my mum's been trying to call me, but I've got no signal in here," you announce, already rising from the table, though not without first reaching for your jacket, "I'll try to call her back."

"Say hello to her from me," Yuji says and couldn’t help but grin, "and tell her that, despite her doubts, you loved the surprise." 

You look at him, a little confused, but then decide to just smile and nod. Great, it really didn't even take you two seconds to feel guilty about lying to your friends.

As nervous as you already were, you did your best not to trip over your own legs as you made your way through the people scattered all around the bar, laughing and chatting.

Three short messages and you had already forgotten all the nights you woke up next to Maki, drenched in your own sweat. You had forgotten how many meals you had skipped and how many cigarettes you had smoked at your kitchen window. The only thing your brain could focus on at the moment was Megumi waiting for you outside. 

You step out into the cool night air, goosebumps creeping up your spine as you pull your jacket tighter. The rain was beating down on the awning attached to the wall above the entrance to the bar, and as you waited, staring at your phone, a few cars drove by, but otherwise the streets were empty. Unlike the many bars and restaurants in the street, from here you could look into their brightly lit interiors and see couples or whole groups of people sitting around the tables, talking and laughing.

After a few minutes of waiting, you rummage in your purse for a cigarette and a lighter, but when you hear a familiar voice behind you, you flinch and drop it, straight into a puddle.

"Hey." You turn to see Megumi coming towards you in the dim light of a street lamp. You feel your heart pounding in your throat and your palms starting to sweat. He was completely drenched, the hood pulled down over his face, but the rain was dripping from the strands of hair that were sticking out and falling in his face.

"Hey," you reply, barely audible. You felt the anxiety creep up to you for a moment, but you tried to pull yourself together. Still, it seemed to show on your face when your eyes met his, and you weren't surprised at how worried he looked. Worried and tired and somehow — guilty.

For a brief moment you just stared at each other without saying anything. It was so strange, but what was the right thing to do in such a situation? You were confused, your body was sending you so many signals to escape the scene, to go back inside and leave him standing, and at the same time you were longing so much to feel his warmth and to forget everything that had happened.

Then, out of nowhere, Megumi takes a step towards you and pulls you into a tight embrace. You inhaled his scent, completely ignoring how soaked he was. He rested his chin on your head and you felt him take a deep breath before he planted a kiss on your hair.  "I know this doesn't mean shit," he murmured into your hair, "but I'm so sorry, baby." You freeze. "I’m so sorry for hurting you."

He sounded like a broken record. He was sorry every time he hurt you and then he did it again.

"It’s okay," you promise, sounding so heartbroken "it’s okay 'Gumi."

Was it okay? It wasn't like he broke your favourite CD, or stepped on your foot, or forgot about your date. When you looked in the mirror after showering, you could still see the marks of his fingers on your neck.

One,

two,

three,

four.

And a fifth where his thumb had pressed down, keeping you from taking another breath.

You stand there like that for quite a while, motionless, while he just holds you in his arms. You listen to the rain while tears ran down your cheeks, so overwhelmed by your own feelings. You didn't want this moment to end. You didn't want to deal with reality, and you certainly didn't want to deal with what would happen after this. "I missed you," you mumble into his chest, and it was the truth.

He doesn't answer.

He’s quiet, as usual. You always had a hard time reading him, you never knew for sure what was going on inside of him. But right now you could hear his heart beating faster and you feel his hand trembling as he stroked your back soothingly.

"'Told you I’ve got something for you," he mutters, drawing one arm away and fumbling in the pocket of his hoodie.

You pulled back and dared to look at him for real this time. He didn't just look tired, he looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes, his cheeks were sunken and his lean, muscular frame seemed to have lost a little bit of weight.

"Turn around," he whispers as you just stare up at him through big doe eyes. You think about it for a moment, but then you do as you are told. You weren't sure what was going to happen, and as his arms wrap around your body and you feel his fingers first on your collarbone and then on your neck, for a split second you feel panic rising up again.

Until you realize that he is brushing your long hair aside and you feel cold metal and a delicate necklace against your skin.

With skilful hands he closes the clasp at the nape of your neck and your fingers immediately run to the spot on your collarbone to feel for the silvery heart-shaped pendant.

"Happy birthday," he whispers into your ear, sending goosebumps down your spine for the second time tonight. Without a word, you turn around, searching his face for any sign of rejection, but finding none. Your eyes glisten as they meet his and a smile tugs at your lips, before you finally kiss him.

He seems surprised by your reaction, but after a moment's hesitation he returns the kiss, his hand gently moving upwards to the back of your head, pulling you in even closer.

"Thank you," you mumble against his lips, still smiling, "I love it, it’s so pretty." 

You were not ready to let him go. You were afraid he would leave and you didn't know when you would see him again. Not only had you not heard from him for two weeks, you hadn't seen him on campus either.

"You should really go back inside." You heard Megumi say.

"Please don't go yet," you beg, looking up at him, "I want to see you again."

"You've been out here too long, they'll wonder where you are." He was right. You looked down at the ground, upset that he had managed to get you so completely hooked again in such a short time. How were you going to pretend that everything was all right for the rest of the night?

He looks down at you, trying to read the expression on your face, before pulling you back in, gently brushing a strand of hair from your face. "Text me when you're ready to leave, OK? We'll work something out." Your face lit up immediately upon hearing his words.

He lets go of you, leaving you unsure if you should kiss him again or not, and before you can even decide, he moves away from you. You take a step back too, hurt that he would just leave you like that. But instead of frowning, you just smile at him, without it ever reaching your eyes.

"I'll text you," you say, turning around just as he takes your hand and pulls you back, hugging you tightly and planting another kiss on the top of your head. He holds you for a moment and you can almost feel how hard it is for him to let go of you too, you could sense how bad he was feeling at the moment and how he tried to memorize as much of you as possible. Your scent, the way your body moulded just perfectly into his own, how your soft hair felt against the palm of his hand.

"I love you," he breathed against your hair, almost too quiet for you to hear.

But you heard him. 

For the first time in months, you heard him say it without you saying it first. 

For the first time in months, it felt like he meant it.

[heloflor]

I kind of hinted at it in previous posts but I’m kind of fascinated and very amused by how Peri is low-key a daddy’s boy in New Wish.

For those asking, the things that make me call Peri a daddy’s boy are 1. Cosmo being the more cuddly parents and taking the situation more seriously than Wanda when it comes to their son, 2. Peri taking a lot after Cosmo personality-wise, and 3. looking back Peri seems to have more patience towards Cosmo than he does Wanda, though I definitely think that last point is a bit of a stretch and not something the writers actually intended.

Giving examples for these three elements under the cut (1k words):

1. Cosmo being the more cuddly parent:

- In “Lost and Founder’s Day” he cries about missing his son

- in “Battle of the Dimmsonian” when reuniting with Peri he’s the first to speak and gushes about him

- Same in “Lost in Fairy World” with him taking pictures and being the first to gush about Peri, calling him his and Wanda’s baby boy later on too and also the small hug when talking about the tracking devices

- Again in “Operation Birthday Takeback” he throws himself at Peri at the beginning (granted I see this more as Wanda respecting her son’s boundaries) and then is more openly gushy when Peri agrees to give them a tour (and I still adore this moment, those three are so goddamn cute!!!)

- At the end of “Dig a Little Deeper” when Peri snaps back at Dev, Cosmo joins in to back up his son

- Cosmo spends the whole show hiding behind Wanda when scared and/or stressed out yet in “Best of Luck” he straight up starts a fight, all because Irep was insulting Peri; and while he does also stand up against Vicky in “Operation Birthday Takeback”, 1. He was doing so with Wanda, 2. Vicky was playing the nice act so they didn’t feel in immediate danger and 3. Cosmo brings up Timmy in this scene, Timmy being basically his adopted son so it’s still a show of his paternal instincts

- Oh yeah and at the end of “Best of Luck” Cosmo visibly hugs tighter, tho it’s worth noting Wanda is the one hugging tighter at the beginning of “Lost In Fairy World” (goes against my argument but I like being throughout)

- In “Battle of Big Wand” Wanda tends to Peri by standing next to him and rubbing his back while Cosmo straight up holds him in his arms. Also Cosmo does it for longer than Wanda. Also also when Wanda tries to talk Dev into helping them and starts insulting him a little, Cosmo catches it and calls her out through gritted teeth, taking the situation more seriously than her

2. Peri is a lot like Cosmo:

- The persona he puts on when trying to look professional has been compared by many to Cosmo’s personality in the “Oh Yeah” shorts. Also I stumbled across what’s apparently a tweet of one of the creators confirming that the voice actor took inspiration on either “Oh Yeah” shorts Cosmo or early seasons Cosmo for the voice

- I’ve also seen comments on a “everytime Peri talks” youtube compilation pointing out how his voice is a lot higher-pitched past his introduction scene, comparing it to Cosmo’s voice gradually getting higher-pitched as the og show went on

- Wasn’t sure where to put it but in “Battle of the Dimmsonian” Peri makes a comment about Cosmo having the heebie-jeebies, showing his dad easily comes to his mind (at least when he knows he’s around)

- In “Battle of the Dimmsonian” the potato wish suggestion; like between the body language and things Peri says, this is pure Cosmo right here (and for some reason I find it very funny)

- In a similar but opposite way, at the end of “Lost in Fairy World” when the fairies hug their kids, Cosmo’s nervous comment about the kids being alive is similar to how Peri acts when stressed out

- There’s a few moments of Peri having a similar expression to Cosmo, those being them eating candies at the beginning of “Lost in Fairy World”, while Wanda is talking after teleporting to Jorgen’s office in that same episode, still in that episode them hugging the godkids at the end, the beginning of “Operation Birthday Takeback” right as Peri escapes Cosmo’s hug, and them waiting for Wanda for a hug at the end of the finale. Granted in “Operation Birthday Takeback” Wanda and Peri have a similar expression when the “computer” lights up after Cosmo danced on it (right before Cosmo hides behind Wanda)

- Peri’s a bit of a cowards, constantly cowering whenever Dev raises his voice (which kills me everytime bc Peri wtf?! You’re a magical godlike creature! Why are you scared of that ten years old child?! And why being so visibly intimidated at the slightest raise of voice?! Who hurt you?!) and as said before Cosmo has a tendency to hide behind Wanda, so yeah he gets it from his dad; and no I’m not including his reaction to Vicky as proof of being scared easily bc there was clearly some trauma here that caused his reaction

- Because I like being throughout, it is worth noting Peri took his mom’s braincells (literally in this show) and flair for the dramatic; but for the most part other than that he seems to take after Cosmo

Also if you imagine that Blonda and Big Daddy changed their names (bc from my understanding Blonda wasn’t always blonde and there’s no way someone named their kid “Big Daddy”) he also took the tendency to get a new name from Wanda’s side of the family

3. Peri is more patient with Cosmo:

Now this one I’m incredibly unsure about as it could just be coincidences but yeah you have some moments in which Peri seems more annoyed with Wanda than Cosmo. For example at the beginning of “Lost in Fairy World”, he tries to escape the camera and looks annoyed when Cosmo gushes about him but doesn’t outright says anything. But when Wanda does the same, he pushes her away and audibly calls her out.

Likewise later on when his parents interrupt him, Peri has a sarcastic laugh with Cosmo but looks more angry with Wanda. Then there’s also “Operation Birthday Takeback” with him trying to escape Cosmo’s hug at the beginning but again not vocally expressing his annoyance, but later on when Wanda makes a cringy comment to the godkids (the “welcome to your dad’s spooky lair”) Peri whines about it.

Now again, those are like three small examples and I don’t think it actually means anything, but since I’m talking about Peri potentially being closer to his dad might as well point this out.

And when I say it doesn’t mean anything, an example from “Lost in Fairy World” I didn’t mention is when Cosmo and Wanda tell Dev he can’t go to Fairy World. Peri doesn’t say anything when Cosmo talks but interrupts when Wanda does. But in that case, I think Peri would have done the same thing to Cosmo had Wanda been the first to talk, it’s more of a coincidence that Wanda was the second to talk here and as a result the one Peri shut down. Hell you could say the same thing about the later scene of them interrupting him, maybe he seems angrier at Wanda because it’s the second time he gets interrupted. So yeah, don’t take that part too seriously.

[invisible-pink-toast]

#to answer my own question: nobody talks about it because it happened in season five of angel#and nobody watched that far

why does nobody ever talk about angel and spike fighting over the shanshu prophecy?

when spike points out that angel views his soul as a curse, as punishment, as being forced to live with the guilt of everything he's done, whereas spike fought for his soul. nearly died for it. the demon with no soul still wanted to do the right thing, to be a good man, so desperately he would destroy himself for the chance.

and then angel says something VERY interesting to spike. spike says he thinks angel hates him because he's a living reminder of his evil. "cause every time you look at me, you see every dirty little thing i've done. all the lives i've taken. because of you. drusilla sired me, but you made me a monster."

and angel, the man who, without his soul, tortures and kills people sadistically for fun and feasting, the man who insists he is not angelus, says, "i didn’t make you, spike. i just opened up the door and let the real you out."

SUCH an interesting thing to say, angel! let's talk about this. no, please—go on. explain how you are better than spike in any way. i'm fascinated. i'd love to hear how you and angelus are different people but the demon who possessed william the poet is somehow the same as the man.

you can't have it both ways, you horrifically catholic man. you aren't a better person just because you've suffered more.

[ericshoney]

Quen's Sister ~ Chris Sturniolo

Summary: When Quen does her video with the Sturniolo triplets, you always appear as a special guest. Chris finds you funny and asks for your number.

Warnings: swearing, flirting, rizz chat 😅, chaos, fluff

a/n: never thought i'd put rizz chat in my stories 😂

Based off these requests

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today Quen was recording another video about feeding starving influencers. You loved the idea and often appeared as a special guest in each video. You were two years younger than your sister and were well known amongst her fandom, as you appeared in her videos, TikToks and occasionally did your own.

You sat on the sofa, waiting for whoever was turning up. Yeah, Quen hadn't told you who she was collabing with today. But she did say you knew them. You originally thought maybe Larray was coming over again, but she said it wasn't him.

Just then, there was a knock at the door. Quen shouted for you to open it as she set up some cameras. You laughed and went to the door, opening it to see the Sturniolo triplets.

"Hey!" You called, making the three smile.

"Hey Y/n, right?" Nick called.

"Yeah. Quen's in the kitchen." You replied, opening the door so they could walk in.

The three smiled as they came in and went to greet Quen. She said her hellos and then looked to you.

"Surprise." She said, making you laugh.

"What's a surprise?" Matt asked.

"Y/n's watched your videos for years, it was her idea for you to come today." Quen answered.

"Oh cool! Chris watches your TikTok's." Nick replied.

"Nick!" Chris shouted, slapping his brother on the shoulder.

You smiled and laughed softly. Quen smiled but didn't say anything.

"Shall we start?" Quen suggested.

They guys nodded as they started recording an intro. You then joined in as the regular special guest. You jumped in and cheered loudly making the group laugh. Quen then started to talk about what you were cooking, which you learned was Matt's suggestion.

When you all started cooking, you asked the guys various questions. That being your main part in the video.

"So what's the hardest part in working together?" You asked.

"Mainly just all being together for ideas, like merch drops. Like I'll get a message I need to share with Nick and Matt, but Nick might be in the shower or Matt is out." Chris answered.

"That makes sense, but even with all the silly arguments you have, it either over french toast, pancakes or waffles, it must be fun filming with your brothers." You replied.

The guys laughed, Nick groaning slightly, as Quen looked a bit confused. You said you would show her the video later.

"Can I ask you a question?" Chris asked.

"You just did, but go ahead." You replied.

"Kid throwing the bad jokes in there." Matt said with a laugh.

"When did you start watching our videos?" Chris asked.

"Well as Quen said earlier. Years. Probably just after you started posting on YouTube." You answered.

"Damn okay! OG fan!" Chris exclaimed.

You smiled as they continued cooking. You watched a bit and couldn't help but laugh as Matt screamed at Miso who walked in to see what was going on.

"Hi Miso." You cooed to the cat, she purred as she brushed up against her leg before wandering off again.

"Where is the rest of your body!" Nick shouted.

You then helped Matt with the pancakes, seeing it had turned out like a dough and not a batter. He was trying to read the box for any help.

"Dude it's not going to work, the damage is done." You said.

He laughed as Nick came over to help. You stepped back and saw Miso now on the counter and Chris fussing her.

"Miso doesn't like anyone." Quen mentioned.

"Really, she came up to me like this." He replied, mimicking what the cat did.

"It's probably because you didn't insult her body and haircut." You said, making him laugh loudly.

"I'm sorry your sister has a demogorgon as a fucking cat!" Nick shouted.

"Hey I just asked if the grooming was free." Matt said, putting his hands up.

You laughed as Miso ran off again. Chris smiled down at you, which sent butterflies to your stomach. You smiled back as he went to help Nick.

Quen then asked the guys some questions as you helped cut some of the potatoes. Quen started talking about fan edits and Matt's answer made you laugh loudly at how simple but honest it was.

"I get where he's coming from and I don't even fucking have as many fans as you all do." You said.

"You have a good following!" Chris cheered.

"Yeah I guess so. But I love just scrolling through TikTok and finding funny videos." You responded.

"Some of them are fucking weird." Quen said.

You laughed and pulled out your phone and showed the guys one of your favourite TikTok's. The three laughed as Quen shook her head.

"Can I get your number?" Chris then blurted out.

Quen, Matt and Nick fell quiet as they shared a look. You smiled and took Chris' phone and put your number in it before saving his in yours.

"Was that rizz chat?" He asked, before bursting out laughing.

You all laughed too the kitchen becoming even more chaotic. All of you joked about rizz and how kids these days were brain rot.

A while later, with many more jokes, teasing and some decent cooking, you all had a plate full of food. You dug in, happily eating and praised the guys cooking skills before finally wrapping up the video.

"That was a fun video." Matt said.

"Yeah the fans are going to have so much fun." Nick added.

"Especially over your flirting." Quen added, pointing between you and Chris.

Neither of you said anything but shared a look, smiling wide at each other. The guys then said their goodbyes, Nick and Matt giving you a friendly hug.

"Do you um maybe wanna hang out sometime?" Chris then asked you.

"I'd love too." You said, smiling.

"Awesome. I'll text you." He replied, also smiling.

You said bye, hugging him as well, Nick and Matt dragging him out the door, which made you laugh. He waved as they got in the car and drove off. Quen gave you a knowing smile.

"You like Chris and he likes you." She said.

"Maybe." You said, sitting on the sofa and scrolling through your phone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags:

@lgbtq-girl @mattsfavbigtitties @onelesslonelygirlbieber6 @riowritesitall @sturniolo-fann

[doverstar]

I'd love to defend Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life for a minute (I don't usually make long posts and may delete this later for that reason) because I feel like writing something inconsequential.

Other people get lots of comfort watching the original show (especially in the fall). I feel cozier watching AYITL. The characters are much older; the dizzy, flighty, still-growing-up feelings for Lorelai and Rory have faded, and it's full of moments that make it clear that certain things in their lives are definitely always going to be there. Constants. Luke, Stars Hollow, family, Kirk, Taylor, the changing of the seasons. Now - for my defense. (I'm rambling.)

Okay, many, many people don't like the revival. I understand. It's different in a lot of ways from the original show, and lots of expectations were not met. When I first saw it, it threw me too. But I didn't dislike it. In fact, the more I rewatched it, the more I thought it was almost better than the first show. The leading ladies are not flashy young stars anymore - Rory is Lorelai's age when the OG show first began, and Lorelai is gracefully and fabulously careening toward grandma times with all her wit and charm, all her most comfy habits, and it makes me want to hang out with her more than Season 1 of the show ever did. And I think the fact that ASP came back to write for these characters again and end it on her terms, at last, was an absolute win, and I love how she did it because it fixed so many things I thought were wrong in the show.

Lorelai is self-centered, terrified of commitment, and has no idea how to put others before herself and not run away during the hard times - unless something involves Rory.

Rory is self-centered, thinks she is special, and has no idea how to deal with not getting what she wants. The consequences of her actions almost never directly affect her, and when they do, said consequences are quickly stamped on and snuffed out by her mother/friends/family.

Emily is self-centered, desperate to be in control, and finds her worth in what other people think, in how things look, and that includes what Richard thinks.

In the show, Lorelai has moments where she learns to stay and learns to put other people who are not Rory before herself. Those moments don't last. She definitely has good intentions, but they're all conditional. She only has good intentions up to a point - and that point is usually when someone or something threatens her happiness and feeling of safety, or Rory's happiness and feelings of safety (understandable; that's her child).

In the show, Rory is told she is the sweetest kid in the whole world. Rory is told she'd never do anything to hurt anybody. Rory is told she's special, she's smarter than her peers, she's not like other girls. Rory 100% believes that. She also probably has a bit of a problem with living up to that image - she wants to be all of those things, and thinks she is, and can't handle it when it seems like people think she's not. (That may or may not have something to do with Christopher, who always had somewhere more important to be, or with Lorelai, who was so cool and strong and sure of Rory.)

And the show has moments, too, where Lorelai has to face the music and see that she's screwed up or is hurting someone with her behavior (Max, Chris, Luke, Jason, Emily, Richard, Sookie), but very very often, Lorelai breezes her way through that music and keeps moving, and flits to the next thing or person that will make her happy, because she does not know how to stay and stand and fix what she's broken. Because it only matters if she is happy and if Rory is happy. (The same thing goes for Rory in the show - consequences come, but Rory rarely has to properly deal with them herself. She is coddled and propped up the whole way.)

Now, to my point!

I watched AYITL and noticed something was different right away. Lorelai is with Luke (she should be), who is the opposite of her - constant, loyal, selfless, determined to stay no matter how hard things get. But they're not married. Lorelai is scared to really commit, and marriage is one of the hardest things you can commit to - ever. And Lorelai is not happy. Rory, for her part, is not perfectly settled as a reporter or a journalist or any of the things she was always told she could be. And she's not happy. And Emily, bless her, has lost her husband and her false sense of control is spinning away, and of course, she is not happy.

And A Year In The Life takes the show's clumsy half-arc of these three Gilmore women and perfectly completes it.

Lorelai's fear of commitment and habit of bolting when things get hard drives her to push every new chef out of the Dragonfly, refuse to expand the inn to better accommodate Michel's needs, shun Rory's tell-all of her past mistakes, shame Richard at his funeral and break Emily's heart, and worst of all, nearly wreck the closest thing to a proper relationship she's ever had: the one she has with Luke. She can't face that she misses her father, loved her father, and that maybe her mother is right about her relationship status. She can't face that people might read Rory's writing and see all her flaws and all her mistakes growing up in printed ink, and she can't run from that. And when Rory insists, Lorelai cuts ties. Lorelai has spent years avoiding marriage with Luke. She has spent years hurting her mother in an effort to defend herself at all costs. And she has spent years ensuring the Dragonfly Inn is exactly what she wants it to be; because changing it would be uncomfortable, and as a result, she won't commit to a new chef, she won't expand, and she's about to lose Michel the way she lost Sookie.

Rory's bubble of self-centeredness and assurance that she's special is popped with the needle of reality at last: she is not special. She's a young woman who has to actually work hard to find a job and make some money, like everyone her age. She is talented and she is smart, but she's not God's gift to journalism, and people keep saying no, and people keep asking her to prove her skills and her merit, and she doesn't know how to deal with that because everyone has always told her she can do anything she wants and she's the best. She wants a distinguished career and can't find anyone who will take her on; she tries to write for a raging batty feminist (hello Alex Kingston I love your work) and that goes sideways; she wants Logan Huntzberger but she turned down his proposal and now he's engaged and it has to be a secret; she wants somewhere to live - just not Stars Hollow because she's better than the thirty-somethings stuck back home. She wants Lorelai to approve of her book and insists her mother give her this, as if Lorelai hasn't always given her whatever she could. And when Lorelai says no, Rory does what she wants anyway and almost fractures their relationship over it.

Emily's control is completely gone - she can't control her emotions, she can't control her tongue, she can't control her maid or her maid's handy family, she can't even control a stupid painting of her late husband. She's on a downward spiral and her anchor is dead. She tries to regain a sense of worth, because surely that will bring happiness back. She tries to gain it from how many possessions she has, that doesn't work. She tries to gain it from Jack, who is not well-suited to her but he makes a matching accessory to the life other people will see. That doesn’t work. She tries to gain it from therapy with Lorelai, control her daughter at last, that doesn't work. She tries to control Richard's headstone, that doesn't work. She even tries to find solace with her beloved D.A.R, and she finds that emptiest of all.

A Year In The Life has these women finally face their flaws head-on and grow. The way characters should.

Rory: Rory is confronted with the fact that she is not special and has to move home like everyone else her age and get a job she does not want, because that's life, and that's what everyone else has to do in the real world. And when she's at her lowest, pouting, she gets advice from someone who has faced his own flaws long ago and has grown and who knows her at her best, and encourages her to get up and work hard (Jess Mariano, ladies and gentlemen). And she does. Rory hits bottom and takes Jess's advice and works at understanding her mother, who is not perfect, and even goes to interview her father, who is also not perfect. She fights with Lorelai over the book and insists on her own way, and when Lorelai refuses, Rory can only blame herself. She has a rabble-rousing night with her LaDB boys and winds up sleeping with Logan in one more bubble of fantasy, one more umbrella-jump of escapism, like the old days, because Logan is her weakness. And when she wakes up the next morning, Rory turns and walks away from Logan and the affair and her insistence on having what she wants regardless of who she hurts (hello, Dean Forrester and her affinity for taking spoken-for men) for the final time. And the consequences of her desires? She’s pregnant. (Come on, we all know the baby is Logan’s; Rory’s life rhymes with Lorelai’s.) She goes to Christopher to interview him for the book and is subtly asking her father why he wasn’t in her life, because she needs to know what to do with her baby and her lover. She didn’t go to Lorelai to figure that out. She went to her dad, because the truth is, Rory didn’t have her father, and part of dealing with the consequences of her actions is to work out how to take care of this baby and whether or not that means involving the father. She’s owning up. She goes to Lorelai and offers to give up this book; she doesn’t make excuses or whine, she wrote the book anyway because she believes in it, but when she’s gotten three chapters in, she respectfully goes to her mother and asks her to read it and then, for the sake of Lorelai, not herself, Rory promises to quit and throw the book out if Lorelai does not approve. Because Lorelai is more important to her than herself. Rory has worked hard and made mistakes and gotten pregnant and she has stared the world in the eyes and seen she’s not special. And she has to deal with that. And she does, finally, deal with it. And she’s happy.

Emily: Emily is confronted with the fact that nothing is inside her control—except what she does. Worth does not come from what she owns or who she’s with or what she’s wearing, and it didn’t come from her marriage, either. That wasn’t why she married Richard anyway. She is miserable and alone, and part of that is her fault. She married Richard because she loved him, and she keeps coming back to Lorelai because she loves her, and she opens up her house to Rory when Rory needs a place to write because she loves her. Emily looks around at what she has and recognizes what has worth and what doesn’t, maybe for the first time, with clear vision. She recognizes that she can’t control everything. At first, that fact keeps her down. She forgets what day it is, the curtains are closed, and she doesn’t get up in the morning. No Richard, no Lorelai, no reason to move. And then Lorelai calls her, and tells her about who Richard was and what Richard did and how it mattered, and that inspires Emily. She can get up. She buys a place on Cape Cod, totally opposite of the sort of life everyone admires and expects to have worth, and she does what she’s really always been best at—she loves. She takes care. She took care of Richard, she took care of Lorelai and Rory when they needed it, and she takes care of Berta and her wonderful family, instead of having a maid take care of her needs. She packs up and moves out, she sends Jack away, she reveals the D.A.R. for what it is and quits them forever, and she takes a job at a whaling museum because she just likes it. It’s nothing fancy, and neither is her oceanic house or the music she plays in it or the clothing she wears, because none of that is worth anything anyway. Her family is. Her friends are. She gets the painting of Richard done right and brings it with her, and she gives up attempting control of everything and only takes control of how she behaves. She gives Lorelai what Lorelai needs for the Dragonfly, and her only stipulation is that she gets to spend more time with her daughter and Luke. She loves, she takes care of others, she helps. And she’s happy. And now, the best for last. The star.

Lorelai: Lorelai sits in that stupid Stars Hollow Musical and hears a song that perfectly describes her problem—it’s never or now. Make a commitment. Do something hard. Make your life about something other than your momentary present happiness and comfort, the way you do with just Rory, sometimes, but make it a permanent change. Make change permanent! Don’t run away! …And then she runs away. She’s been miserable, she’s hit bottom, like her mother before her and her daughter after her. She’s losing friends, she’s losing Luke, she’s losing Emily, she’s losing Rory over the manuscript, and it’s all her fault. Lorelai tries to breeze past it. She does Wild. She does what she’s never done before, she does something hard and uncomfortable, but she does it for herself, and therefore it doesn’t quite work. She tries to hike, Dipper Pines won’t let her hike, she meets other women her age who think this hike is gonna fix things, it doesn’t, and she gives up and goes to get coffee because that’s her go-to. (Coffee is speedy, bad for you, and only a temporary rush—kind of everything Lorelai clings to, actually.) But the coffee shop is closed, and when Lorelai is denied that allegorical Band Aid, she goes around back and sees a great view and finally finds clarity. She didn’t need the hike—she needed to think. She needed a moment of silence and introspection to gain the insane courage to finally stop moving, stick around, and face her fears. To put her eyes on herself and then take her eyes off herself and onto other people—namely the people she loves. Lorelai calls Emily and cries, because it’s hard to do this, it hurts, but with one story, she proves she loved her father, and she knows her father loved her, and the fact that she’s calling shows that she knows Emily loves her too, and she loves Emily, and has loved them both all along. It gives Emily the strength she needs to get out of bed. That was hard, but Lorelai did it. And now she’s going to do more hard things—she’s going to commit. It’s never or now, and Lorelai chooses now. She goes home and the first thing she does is propose to Luke and become Lorelai Danes overnight. Hard. Scary. Just right. She patches things up with her daughter, and chooses Rory over herself—for the hundredth time, yes, but when it’s at its hardest for her to do. “I’ll read it when it’s done.” Lorelai expands the Dragonfly. She goes to Emily for help, which is also super hard, but this time it’s not for Rory – it’s for her, and it’s for Michel, and it’s for the Dragonfly. And she accepts Emily’s affectionate terms. Lorelai chooses Rory, Luke, Emily, and Michel over herself, and commits, and she doesn’t run away. And she’s happy.

And all of it is earned. Finally earned.

I could talk more about the incredible writing, about ASP at her best, about the perfect themes and scenery and the very intentional end to Paris, Lane, Kirk, Taylor, Dean, Jess, Logan, Chris, and the general cast’s stories, but I’ve already rambled for too long.

Suffice it to say: A Year in the Life is my Gilmore Girls. It’s best version of the story. I think it was expertly done. Not perfect, but an ending that was earned.

[beforetimes]

feel like this gets overshadowed by the fact that ekko saved jinx at her very lowest, but i think that their relationship 100% works both ways when it comes to helping the other. and the way jinx helps ekko would be in helping him to loosen up / free him of this massive sense of guilt and responsibility he carries himself with.

we see this thematically in s2ep7 and s2ep9 mostly. when ekko goes to the alternate timeline we get the line that it was his tip that lead to vi's death. which i've mentioned in a previous post as something that i think the og ekko would carry as a source of guilt that guided him to throwing himself into helping the people of zaun, a way to work through his remorse.

and in that deleted scene where ekko goes after powder only for her to say she doesn't want to be saved and that she's jinx now, i feel ekko would have blamed himself for that and internalized it both by using it to fuel his guilt complex but also by painting her as someone past saving. in essence he thinks he killed powder and created jinx. someone who only hurts the undercity by working as silco.

but after his dive into the alternate timeline where he sees and connects with powder and realizes all the potential she has when she grows up, i think he realizes that there is still someone to save back in his original world. that jinx couldn't possibly erase everything that made alternate timeline powder who she is because powder reminds him of their childhood and things left unsaid and how things could be different if they both chose forgiveness (sort of elaborated on here).

anyway, i think jinx's role in accepting ekko's proposal to help out with the war on piltover/zaun would be to show ekko a) that he didn't kill powder completely and that jinx was never truly 100% metamorphosized by this job that he sent them on that indirectly 'killed' her and b) shows that she (in his minds eye) chooses to forgive him, relieving a large part of his guilt, and build something better. which is what ekko has been all about. not necessarily forgiving, but building something better. its what he does with the firelights and their commune.

now, how is freeing him communicated in the show?

i think that they show the way jinx's character allows him to be more free in expressing himself through the change in wardrobe. it is more visually vibrant in comparison to his large jackets in the first season when we see him, but there's also less smoke-screening and secrecy. no more masks, no more gloves, no more large jackets that hide the form. everything is on display now! abdomen and face, skin exposed. and jinx's impact on this change from the first season is visually marked by the x on his shirt. she is directly involved in his evolution into this freer, unburdened self.

i felt in this, the artists were showing how jinx's refusal to stay within the lines would affect ekko in making him freer as well. not just physically revealing himself but also maybe through the way her acceptance of his offer to save her again (after the failed deleted scene mentioned) frees him of the guilt of failing the first time + guilt over what led to him thinking he killed powder.

so while timebomb does feel skewed in showcasing ekko primarly as her saviour and jinx as someone who needed saving, i think that there is a reciprocal nature to the type of healing they can offer each other. ekko through his belief that jinx can be good without needing her to be the way she was before and jinx through her relieving ekko of guilt that has ruled his life since he was a child.

[starry-bi-sky]

For the Danyal Al Ghul AU: How would Danyal react to other canon events like when Sam wishes she never met Danny, Tucker wishes for powers, the christmas episode, or other DP canon events?

(Also, I assume Danyal's cover is blown by the reality Gaunlet event.)

Ohooho I love this question. So im only gonna respond to the episodes you mentioned, since it's been a while since i actually watched the show and I don't remember all the episodes. And also since I don't remember them fully, I'm gonna get details wrong. I am fine with that, it still gets the gist down lol. I've got the tvtropes recap page pulled up, so i'll be using that to try and hit the major points it mentions.

So, Memory Blank! Man I've thought about that one, and its the one I'm frankly most excited to answer because it gets to show just how much of a positive impact being friends with Sam and Tucker had on Danyal. So where to start? Their fight goes differently than in canon, but I'm going to start from after Sam makes her wish.

Firstly; she and Tucker are friends, but the two of them are not friends with Danny. He's on his own. In this au, the three of them became friends when they were 11 and Danny's been in Amity Park for about a year.

They met in the beginning with Sam trying to befriend him at first because she realized that they shared similar ideals on environmentalism, but he rebuffed her pretty harshly due to a combination of grief over leaving his home, trying to process the fact that he can never return and will never see his brother again or meet his father, and just plain League arrogance lmao. He really hated being in Amity Park just in general because it wasn't his home and it was the city too.

So he was really rather unapproachable in the beginning. People kept a pretty wide berth of him due to Fenton association and his own vibes.

But Danny's still a kid, and they want socialization with their peers. At 11 he didn't have any friends, and was frankly quite lonely. He decided to approach Sam and Tucker after deeming them "acceptable allies", although Sam wasn't really interested at first up until he did the equivalent of apologizing. Tucker warmed up first afterwards, but Sam really wasn't too far behind.

So thats how they became friends, post-wish though? Lets say that Sam didn't accept the apology and rebuffed Danny, and kinda intimidated Tucker into doing the thing. Danyal closed down, backed off, and then never approached them again because he decided right then and there he wasn't going to chase it. Wasn't worth his effort or time.

Then he just. never approached another person after that because he didn't want to get rebuffed again (he wouldn't admit that it hurt a bit), and he could already tell his efforts wouldn't work. He turned his attention to other stuff. In this timeline it wasn't too difficult to find him at events dedicated to combatting climate change, deforestation, light pollution, animal cruelty, etc. the LOA is an environmentalist group, after all. They just also happen to be eco-fascist assassins-for-hire.

In summary, Sam and Tucker helped Danyal realize the flaws in some of the League's beliefs (the fascism) to the point where he could deconstruct it on his own. Being friends with them made him realize that, frankly, genocide was not the answer to environmental equilibrium, and that the people outside of the League had lives worth living. They also helped quell his arrogance, and just in general influenced him to become kinder even if it doesn't look like that all the time to other people. Sam and Tucker make him laugh, and smile, and just happy.

OG Danyal: wears pretty casual teen clothes. More punky-aesthetic. Has multiple ear piercings. These were self-done. Will have a lip piercing by the time he reunites with Damian, mark my words. Can and will wear muscle tees. Makes puns, jokes, is generally sassy with his friends. Can, will, and has climbed shit he shouldn't be because he enjoys the challenge of scaling a building. It's also very funny seeing Tucker and Sam reenact the "Gregory! HOW DID YOU GET UP THERE?!" meme. Still has a questionable moral compass, but like, he's not an eco-fascist.

This Timeline Danyal: dresses much more sophisticated; dark academia vibe. Closed off, cold. Is 2x more likely to kill someone than OG Danyal, who was frankly, pr kosher with murder already but only if he deemed it extremely necessary. Still an eco-fascist.

Danyal without Sam and Tucker? Still believes in the teachings of the League because he has not been really challenged on them. In fact, he has doubled down on it, actually. Living in the city, growing up estranged and ostracized by his peers, has only strengthened his resolve that all of humanity minus the league (and the Fentons) deserves to be wiped out. He is disgusted by the people around him and desperately wants to go home, even more than the last timeline. The only reason he hasn't is for Damian's sake, but he's been checking in with mother whenever she visits and asking to find a way to come home. She's been steadily wearing down on it; her child is miserable here.

This version of Danyal should not have powers, and is, essentially on the fast track of rejoining the league -- doubly so when he hears Damian is living with father. Clearly it's safe enough for him to be with father, if mother allowed it, and father has become safe enough for Damian to live there. Good. With the threat of two heirs being in the League gone, Danny can return with Mother's permission. And. he probably takes Jazz (and the Fenton parents) with him. Forcibly if he has to.

So Sam has her work cut out for her here, a lot more than in canon, because even when she does tell him that they used to be friends in another timeline, and he believes it, he is not going to give a shit. Clearly they were not as good of friends as she thought they were, if she had wished they never met in the first place. Good riddance, then. This Danny is cold, incredibly hurt, and very closed off.

He is a cave wall in comparison to the Danny Sam knew, and talking to him feels like walking into one. Because he is looking at her with just utter disgust and disdain, keeping a distance like he is revolted by her presence and allergic to her and everyone else's touch.

Which really, really fucking hurts when she knows that in their last timeline, he would actively seek out her and Tucker's company and affection. Sam could read her best friend like an open book, and now its like she's trying to read one in another language she barely speaks. This boy used to smile at her, he used to laugh at Tucker's jokes, and he was so passionate about the things he enjoyed. Now he looks at her like he wants nothing more than for her to drop dead on the spot.

It hurts even more knowing that her last words to her Danny were the words, 'some days i wish we never met'; the way he looked at her afterwards haunts her. For a split second, he looked completely crushed and heartbroken, before his entire body language and expression shut off and he totally closed down on her.

Because by this point in his friendship with her and Tucker, he's told them, he has told them, in a very intimate moment of vulnerability, that they are one of the best things that's happened in his life -- right there alongside the day he first met his baby brother. They are very important to him, and he has finally felt comfortable enough with telling them. There's not a day that goes by that he isn't grateful for their friendship.

So to hear Sam say that some days she wishes they never met? well. That breaks his heart. Just- just a little bit. Sam regrets it the moment it leaves her mouth, and she immediately tries to apologize, but Danny immediately spits back; "Well. I hope you get your wish." and then stalks off.

I'm warring with myself here trying to decide whether or not this new timeline Danyal is at a "point of no return", where nothing Sam says is going to make him attempt to reignite that friendship. Clearly that will end badly anyways, if this is the result of that friendship. He's cut all ties from these people; he feels no prerogative to fix things she broke.

Like, the version of Danyal I'm thinking of here has no close bonds with anyone in the city sans Jazz -- and she? has her own life outside of Danny. She is not his keeper, not his caretaker, and certainly not his therapist. (which i have beef about too, considering how she gets boiled down to 'therapist with no life of her own' but im not going into that.) She has some influence on him, but frankly not enough to really make him challenge his beliefs. Danny cares about her that, if he returns to the league, she is coming with him. Or at the very least, will be spared from the League's goals.

Mmmm. I can't make it a total point of no return though. Sam's very stubborn, and she knows Danny. And while this Danny is still very different, he is still Danny. She'll try and befriend him insistently in a way that might annoy him, but at least not push him away further.

(Tucker, meanwhile, is just soo confused about Sam's very random, very abrupt switch up. Cuz girl he thought you hated this guy? Why are you suddenly trying to get all buddy-buddy with the terrifying Fenton kid. Have you been possessed? Is this some kind of crisis?)

(Sam drags Tucker into befriending Danny because he is the only person she knows that can get him to belly laugh. Tucker is mildly terrified but going along with it.)

Anyways this does end with Sam befriending Danny, or at least getting him to like her long enough that he'll pick up a ghost weapon and face off against Desiree. There's no way in hell he's walking into that portal, that last timeline might have been a 1/billionth chance of it happening and he's not dying for the chance to get powers. And frankly with his training -- which he's probably kept up with even more than the old timeline because he had no one to spend his time with -- he doesn't really need them to be good at fighting them. Just show him how to ghost proof a weapon and he'll handle the rest from there.

But Sam does end up undoing the wish and getting back to her own original timeline in the end. It's the morning after her fight, and the literal first thing she does that morning is get her shoes on and fucking sprriiint to the fenton house. Bursts into tears when she sees Danny and apologizes over and over again. She swears she didn't mean any of it, and to please believe her, and Desiree's still loose and they need to stop her, and she's had the worst time.

She does tell him about the other timeline she just went through, and she hopes that, if it still exists, that that Danyal manages to find friends in the Sam and Tucker there after this. And if not them, then anyone.

Danny's still pretty hurt by what she said, it cut really deep, but he forgives her.

-----

Tucker getting his powers! Frankly things gooo... relatively the same as canon, I think? Actually, no. Danny probably figures out the whole Genie "i wish you would go back into your lamp" thing faster than canon danny since he's not a C student lmao. TV.Tropes doesn't give me too much specifics for a recap on the plot, so we're gonna wing it. For the plot I'm going to say that Tucker gets his powers before Danny figures out the "i wish" thing, which happens relatively quickly.

Danny tries to be... rather supportive of his friend getting powers? Especially since, in comparison to Danny, it was rather painless. However, he's also very suspicious. He doesn't trust the source of Tucker's powers, and warns him to be careful and to let Danny know if he feels off in anyway.

Tucker does end up helping Danny a few times, but the quick progression of his powers and Tucker's willingness to use them more often than not worries him. He reminds him a handful of times that Tucker shouldn't rely on his powers to help -- not even Danny does that. He prefers to use his weapons and martial arts to fight instead. Tucker doesn't listen.

And they end up fighting anyways. Things get resolved, everything turns out okay!

------

Christmas episode straight up just. doesn't happen. Danyal doesn't care enough about the Fenton arguing or about Christmas to be upset about said arguing. He thinks its really childish, but he's not a grinch about all of it.

--------

Okay it wasn't explicitly mentioned but i have thought about TUE. And I'm trying to think how that would go because it's the result of Danny getting his hands on the math answers and cheating. Which Danyal would not do.

And someone mentioned in the comments on my ao3 under the oneshots there that TUE might just straight up not happen. Which makes sense, Danyal is so different from canon that things don't have to always happen like it did in canon. So that's something I need to chew about, cuz if it does happen, then I'm going to figure out a different way for it to.

[slackerlifewhere]

In defense of Ron Molan

Since I already wrote a post about Deruth, I'm going to make one for Ron as well because I'm absolutely confused why some readers hate him too.

Fair warning once again, if you haven't read or finished the first volume of TCF, please be prepared for SPOILERS. Thanks!

So...this is going to be a long post too. Be prepared lmao

Isekai and Abandonment

Like with Deruth, the most common thing some readers hate about Ron, is how he abandoned OG Cale and didn't seem to notice a difference when Cale and Kim Rok Soo got swapped.

Like I mentioned in my post about Deruth, please put yourself in their shoes before criticizing or hating them. Imagine this.

You noticed that a friend or family of yours, someone who you know for how many years, suddenly changed. The changes aren't obvious. There are some parts of their personality that are still them and some that have changed. What would you first think?

Transmigration? Long lost twin? Clone? Possession? No. The first thing you'll probably think is they have a problem that they can't tell you or maybe they just want to change. You'll be confused but you won't think too much about it. It happened but what are you gonna do about it? Ask them? And if they don't tell you why, would you push for it? Maybe you'll continue to watch and see if you'll find something incriminating but it won't ever answer your questions unless the other person talks.

So is Ron at fault for not noticing this after serving OG Cale since he was a baby (and changed his diapers lmao)?

Yes and no.

He should've asked Cale, former KRS, more about the topic. He should've pushed because he's an assassin. It's his job to know more. But he didn't push because there is some truth to Cale's first impression of Ron.

He cares for OG Cale but it's not enough for him to leave behind his thirst for revenge and completing his goals. And in all honesty, I find it logical for him to leave OG Cale to join Choi Han in TBoaH.

He lost his whole family to Arm, with only Beacrox as his reminder of what he lost. He was accepted as a butler for the Henituse family but that doesn't mean he forgot his past as an assassin. He'll always be an assassin and he'll leave behind whatever attachments he has depending on how useful that attachment is.

He only stayed in TCF because OG Cale was replaced with Kim Rok Soo. He was intrigued but not enough to completely leave his mission. It only changed when Cale got angry when he lost his arm and helped him gain a new one. He now owes Cale a debt.

Before, he owes the Henituse family a debt because they gave him a place where he and his son can hide in. He repaid that by being their butler and possible protector from other assassins or danger (tbh I dunno if they know he's an assassin). Still, his mind is focused on any opportunity to find and kill the organization that ruined his life. So it was easy for him to leave when he first noticed the connection Choi Han has with Arm.

Saying he abandoned Cale because he doesn't care is not completely wrong but it's also not completely right. He has layers. (Like Shrek and his onion lmao)

Lemon tea and Scary butlers

Another reason why some readers don't like Ron is, funnily enough, because of the lemon tea that he keeps giving Cale. And because he scares Cale.

Lemon tea? Seriously?

Some say Cale hates it and Ron keeps giving the drink. They say it shows that he doesn't care about his master and that he disrespects him. And yet, here I am just finding this absolutely hilarious.

Personally, I don't like tea so I understand why Cale doesn't like lemon tea. But I just see this interaction with Ron as a comedic relief and them bonding in their weird way. Sure, it gets repetitive, but after looking up what benefits a person gets from drinking lemon tea and knowing all the mess Cale gets into 24/7, it's pretty tame that lemon tea is the only thing he gives to Cale. These two are so emotionally stunted but that doesn't mean Cale will stay quiet if he truly doesn't like the tea Ron keeps giving him.

He's the master and Ron is the butler. Ron and Beacrox are both loyal to him. He can order Ron to stop giving him lemon tea anytime he wants. He talked down stupid nobles and priests for worse things they did and didn't do (because of Mary). I don't believe he can't tell Ron that he's being disrespectful to Cale as his butler.

If your reason is Cale is too scared of Ron to tell him to stop, then I think you don't understand their dynamic.

Cale finds everyone, not just Ron, scary. He finds the kids scary. He finds Choi Han scary. He finds the Whale Tribe scary. They're OP and can kill him before he can blink. And yet he's very close to all of them.

Ron scares him because Ron is an assassin and is very good at his job. And honestly? A normal person would be scared of Ron. But the difference is, Cale is not normal and he can also kill anyone if he wants to (are his ancient powers and skills he gained as KRS decoration to you guys?). Him being "scared" is him being respectful of Ron's abilities. He acknowledges Ron's strength but also finds the way he smiles when he can kill someone, "scary" (understandable).

So no, the whole lemon tea thing and him being scared of Ron that he can't tell him to stop giving the stupid tea doesn't make sense as a reason for hating or disliking Ron.

Oh, and last thing.

Ron actually gave Cale a sweet tea once early in the novel. I think it was before the war and Cale was stressed with a lot of things, including maintaining the shield around the territory. So...yeah, he shows concern for Cale in his own twisted way.

Again, layers.

___

That's my opinion about the matter. In short, Ron is a human being who can be selfish and dangerous. He's a person who has emotions despite being an assassin. He has his own goals. It's not that hard to understand him.

[browsing-and-anon-asking]

Hellooo first post

I was embarrassingly, watching back on one of my fav mlp redesigns videos and was like 'hey that would be cool... but with Fallout characters!!

Piper:

As you can see, I didn't mm change much. (Thank you Piper for your hate being easy to draw) However I assumed she's hot as fuck in all those layers and since she rarely goes out into the wastes, I thought of lessening the amount of clothing. Giving her a plain undershirt and jeans, her famous pretty jacket that has a 'closely matched' patch of cloth over one of the bigger holes in it. Also, all of her buttons are gone. So she has to have a belt to close her coat!

I also put her hair up bc I think she looks nice like that! Maid her hair a lil curly.

Gave her those belt bags to add on the 'women's clothes never have pockets' thing.

Gave her make up, since most reports before her wore it for charisma, I assume she picked that up.

Nail polish, I just think she'd like it to hide her dirty fingernails

Only does small smiles to hide her missing back teeth

Cait:

I changed a lot about her, bc honest!! I hated most of her design elements.

I forgot to put on her pit paint, so imagine this after going eirh sole survivor.

Took away her corset. Because I HATE that they would put a female cage fighter in ANOTHER unrealistic outfit. Let this woman breathe. Also, I made her tank top greasy because yes.

Made her more muscular, with more scars to show off. She's SO COOL!!!

Shortened her hair because hair is a BIG thing to grab in fights, and she's probably annoyed with how much people try to go for that. So she hacked it off! She did it herself!

I made her eyes a bit more detailed than the others to show off the drug abuse and trauma it left behind. It's not a lot, but it's a little detail, along with the needle holes in her arm.

So many missing teeth, and she's proud with a lisp.

Preston:

I love this man so much shut up.

Bethesda, let people of color have their hair! And have it be matted bc this man is too depressed to take care of himself instead of others

Made him less muscular and more on the skinnier side bc depression

Eyebags bc... depression.

I like his og coat, but again, so many layers are hard to run in, so I kept it to a minimum, like with Piper. His scarf, undershirt, slacks, and coat.

Give him more facial hair bc let that man actually look depressed bro.

Gave him earnings bc it just looks pretty on him. Small face scars he's clearly ashamed of and has tried to hide with makeup.

I mean, every word I said beside his head, they could change each other. For the better or worse

Thanks for reading! I'm gonna do a poll of other compainions to see which three I should do next :3

[fandomfucker]

Do you think you could do one for Rhea were it’s all about how she posts about her girlfriend on social media? Like she posts about her girl and the fans just go wild for it? Can make it fluff, smut, whatever takes your fancy. Could be headcannons if you want? ❤️‍🔥🌸

YES!! I love this one cause I literally think about these things all the time. Doing headcannons so I can fit more in🫡

Lemme know if yall want a part 2!

I've said it before, I'll say it again; Rhea loves doing TikTok trends with you

Whether you're running into her and she swings you around or your eyes are inches away from her tits, she loves them and she loves the reactions ya'll get from the fans

She constantly reposts fanart of not just the two of you, but fanart of just you

There's even some of you and her dogs which she commissioned the og artists to paint on a canvas so she could put them up around the house

And edits of course

She lives for the edits people make of you

You're not super active on twitter however Rhea will always find some way to flirt with you on every single post you make, no matter what its about. A winking emoji, some heart eyes, or the filthiest implications

and the mosherz always go batshit when she does it

she also reposts ever single one of your posts to hype you up no matter what it is

She also loves to just take pictures/videos of you when you're completely unaware and just totally natural because those are the things she loves most about you

Every milestone post has a caption so long most people dont even bother to finish reading it

of course its all about how much she loves you and how proud she is of you but omg its so long

she will bully the fuck out of anyone leaving even the slightest mean comment

like to the point they delete their account

she just loves to show you off every chance she gets

because you're hers and she's yours and everyone needs to know that

every thirst pic/video she posts goes to you first so you're always the first to see them

You also get bonus content thats not posted😉

sometimes you'll be in one of her tiktoks or thirst posts from Raw (or a ppv) and the caption is always something super raunchy that makes the fans freak out for the next few weeks

or until the next post

You've been obsessed with the Harley Quinn show on Max recently so for Halloween you made Rhea dress up as the Poison Ivy to your Harley Quinn

You won best costume and there was tons of fanart made of the two of you as them

You like to do face masks and you wanted Rhea to join you but she'd only do it if you would agree to do a little photoshoot with her with them on for her insta

She also took a little polaroid of you to keep in her wallet

On that note, when you revealed that Rhea keeps one of those mini photo albums for polaroids in her carry-on (no matter where she goes) FILLED with polaroids of you, you and the dogs, or the occasional ones of the two of you, or all four of you, Twitter blew up

it was all anyone could talk about for weeks

"The cutest thing ever!!😍 Rhea loves her SO MUCH😭"

SHE. LOVES. TO. SHOW. YOU. OFF.

She has "Belongs to Y/F/N" in her bio on all socials

Constantly taking pictures of you because "you're just so beautiful, babe"

The fans are in love with how in love you are

Like its a fairytale and they're living for it

She constantly talks about you in interviews and always reposts those clips specifically so that just in case people didn't watch/listen to that particular instance of her gushing about you, now they have

The fans cosplay as the two of you just like they do with Rhea and Dom

you are THE it couple

Everyone wishes they were you

When you got engaged, you changed your name in your insta bio to Mrs. Ripley and the fans actually went insane

like to the point that the official WWE accounts got involved

[stra-tek]

More Roddenberry Archive musings...

This is supposedly the launch configuration of the Prime universe U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701's main bridge. It's based on the first piece of concept art for the TOS set, and is one of several weird not-quite-canon things the Roddenberry Archive has decided to consider canonical. 2 command chairs and the whole centre console and chairs spins to face the very minimalist 60's scifi perimeter consoles or viewscreen. Try to imagine Captain April and first officer Chris Pike on this bridge, it's weird.

Behold! The top of the Jeffries Tube.

FERENGI ATM MACHINE ON THE PROMENADE!!!!

The view from OG Captain Pike's bed, featuring his awesome TV, his laser gun and his Starfleet hat. We wouldn't get hats back in Trek for 50 years.

This is inside the Ringship Enterprise XCV-330, circa 2100. The Ringship in canon was seen only in picture form or a desktop model, we never saw inside. The ship was actually designed for a non-Trek Roddenberry scifi show called Starship which never came to be, and there was actually concept art made for the interior which the RA people decided to import to Trek too. Predating the transporter, here is the Metafier.

Discovery Season 2's U.S.S. Enterprise has a cool corridor running around it. Walk around it and... it goes nowhere😂 the Archive tries to balance the reality of everything being a television show with the fantasy of a 100% accurate in-universe museum, it'll give sets ceilings to make them into a believable spaceship but doesn't want to go nuts inventing too much of it's own stuff and that sometimes leads to weird stuff like this dead end

Speaking of ceilings, here's the ceiling and lights of the classic TOS Enterprise's corridors. I think they did a decent job keeping to the TOS aesthetic. The sets TOS was filmed on didn't have ceilings at all.

The Enterprise-B actually had a red carpet for special guests Kirk, Scotty and Chekov

Strange New Worlds has the coolest transporter room of all. Just look at it😍

The TNG Enterprise battle bridge has it's own ready room! And it's super tiny, ultra cramped and Picard probably never used it because there's no replicator in there and thus no access to tea.

The 1st version of TNG engineering's big Master Systems Display as seen in "Encounter at Farpoint". Ten Forward wouldn't be a thing until season 2, and you can see here an earlier deck layout and the original concept for the saucer rim, a corridor walkway with windows above and below. You'll also note Ten Forward would actually be on deck 11 had they not changed the diagram by then.

Kirk's quarters on the TOS Enterprise has dresser drawers full of uniforms for when his gets torn

Walking around the Roddenberry Archive ships is eerie as hell. You're the only one on board, exploring corridors and poking your head into rooms. These starships are liminal spaces. This for me adds to the atmosphere greatly.

Here's the link (enjoy before it vanishes again!):

Roddenberry.x.io

Here's my original post about the Roddenberry Archive:

Also a clarification, I was wrong when I said it won't be in VR. There is one VR setup it was designed for - the $3,000 Apple Vision Pro. More details here, although it appears to only show a 2D window rather than be fully immersive 3D, possibly confirming what I was told previously that no current 3D setup is capable of doing a true VR experience:

[annabelle--cane]

im listening to mag again and damn do the archival crew HATE jon. listen i get it supposedly your lives would be normal if he hadn't brought you here... but he didn't? (minus og archive crew, jon requesting them and all) if anything he was just kinda there when you made decisions, bro wasn't EVEN THERE when melanie got hired like??? like how r u gonna wish him pain rn, he's ltrly sopping wet and on the verge of dying💀

like another anon I got a month or so ago, this is one of my sleeper agent trigger phrases, so this might be another marina monologue moment.

as I'm also in the middle of a (for my standards) incredibly slow relisten, I've been thinking about this topic, too, but I've been coming at it from a slightly different angle than I normally do. in tim's case, we don't get an actual look at the circumstances under which he transferred to the archives, it is theoretically possible that jon laid it on a bit thick in asking him to come with him to the department and tim wouldn't have even thought of it otherwise, but with melanie we have several scenes of her hiring and onboarding where jon is not present and she continually rebuffs people who tell her she's making a mistake, so the text very clearly sets up that her blaming jon for being trapped there doesn't make sense. and, even with tim having been requested by jon, he still had to make the ultimate decision to switch departments himself, so, yknow, what gives?

most people, I think, and myself in the past, have come at this question from a very jon-centric pov because he's the main character and it's a jon-centric show, but I think putting it down to "they lash out at him because he happens to be there and stops defending himself after a while" misses something, as does "they lash out at him because elias sets everyone up to think they have an adversarial relationship to jon." more than that, I think it's about the rejection of agency.

tma is a show that's very much About agency and choices, so it's important to keep track of where characters suddenly balk and try to offload their choices onto other agents. martin, despite being very proactive and efficient when he sets his mind to it, has a consistent habit of thinking of himself as fundamentally unimportant and unable to affect real change. jon, someone who is usually culpability_acceptor_4000, really tries to convince himself that the web made him pull statements out of strangers. and melanie and tim, on realizing that they've gotten themselves stuck in the archives, have similar reactions of trying to retroactively make those decisions jon's.

they hate being stuck there and they can't bear the idea that it might be their fault, and they don't know how to reconcile the choices they did make with the greater forces outside of their control that shape their lives. tim swings right from seeing jon as fully responsible to seeing everything as the result of cosmically inevitable bad luck, and this hits him so hard that it leads directly to his suicide. post-bullet melanie gets a better handle on it; accepting that she chose to fall further into the slaughter opens her up to accepting that she made other choices, like joining the archives, as well as accepting future choices, like quitting the archives.

and yes, in the moments where tim and melanie are most vulnerable and just starting to realize how deeply screwed they are, jon (at least from their pov) does something to make it worse. when jon tells tim that jane presntiss wasn't his fault, tim says "well you sure made me feel worse afterwards! and then everyone had to pay attention to how you were feeling to get you to stop stalking us!" when melanie goes in for a second assassination attempt on elias, elias makes jon talk her down instead of doing it himself, presumably to try and get the slaughter mark done with. neither of these are the inciting incidents for tim and melanie's situations, but they stand out. and because jon is culpability_acceptor_4000, a man who feels like the weight of the whole world is on his shoulders and is even right some of the time, the accusations stick. tim and melanie don't want anything to be their fault, jon thinks everything is his fault, and it's a bit of a vicious self-fulfilling cycle.

[princip1914]

I recut the kiss from Good Omens to emphasize Aziraphale kissing back. I already posted the longer version (yes, I have made alternate cuts of my kiss alternate cut, yes I know this is ridiculous) but I realized I liked it in shorter gif form better. After the cut is the OG kiss for comparison and some notes on my process.

Edited Kiss:

Original Kiss:

On the longer version, I had some people ask what I changed. Essentially, what stood out to me when I saw the original version of the kiss was that it was just so...choppy. Particularly, the cut right before they break apart where we go from Aziraphale's hand on Crowley's back to him waving it around in the air, just didn't look natural to me. The original version seems to splice together several takes of a shorter kiss, with some pieces of the kiss out of order from how it was probably acted:

In the first cut of the sequence we see Aziraphale from over Crowley's shoulder and his eyes are open and he looks shocked and uncomfortable, then he relaxes into the kiss a bit and closes his eyes and his hand comes up to Crowely's shoulder and caresses it. My guess is this is the sequence and duration of the kiss from start to (nearly) finish as it was blocked and acted. But the kiss as it appears in the show is much longer than the acted kiss. From that first cut of Aziraphale's face seen over Crowely's shoulder we go to:

A wide cut where Aziraphale is waving his arm in the air and looks uncomfortable--likely filmed at the start of the kiss from a different angle and then spliced in.

A close up of Aziraphale stroking Crowley's back which seems to me to come from the end of the kiss, once he has relaxed into it. (This is the one all the girlies are gif-ing and yeah, it's a great shot so I'm glad the fandom has gone wild for it!)

Another shot from the relaxed bit of the kiss which is a close up on their faces with Aziraphale leaning in a bit

The last shot of the kiss where Aziraphale's arm has come off Crowely's back again and he's waving it in the air and looking uncomfortable as Crowley pulls away. I think this shot may actually also be from the start of the kiss, or it is actually how the end of the kiss was blocked out, but if so there's a section of it that's missing because we don't see how Aziraphale's hand moves from Crowley's back (shot 3) to waving in the air. This isn't really a continuity error as presumably Aziraphale has been moving his hands around during shot 4 while the viewer was being treated to a close up of their faces, but it registers as a continuity error because the emotional vibe of shot 4 is Aziraphale starting to get into the kiss and lean in, while the hand off the back in shot 5 makes the viewer feel like he is pulling away and uncomfortable again.

In editing the sequence, I simply moved pieces around to try and tell a story that was more emotionally coherent, with Aziraphale starting shocked and uncomfortable, relaxing into the kiss slightly, and then stepping away. I chopped up the long sequence in shot 1 and used the relaxed part of it instead of the beginning of shot 5. I also switched shot 3 and 4 so that we see a wide cut where Aziraphale looks uncomfortable and his hand is visibly in the air, to a close up shot of their faces where he starts to get into it. Then we are in the home stretch with the tender hand on the back and then Aziraphale's face as he holds Crowley close to him (formerly the end of shot 1) before they break apart.

[mrinafria]

Just last night I was sitting there going through my edit drafts, and I looked at this scene, to notice all these things Seon Jae does before/during the live radio call.

Really wasn't going to write about OG Seon Jae after my last post on him. I never knew I had such a masochistic side to me until Lovely Runner because all I've done since this show started is go back to rewatch episode 1-4, over and over and over and over again as if this was a hell loop I created for myself.

There's hope, anticipation, a bit of excitement too. He will hear her voice. Again. He will get to talk to her. For the first time. Yeah. The OG Seon Jae never got to talk to Im Sol. He admired her, crushed on her, liked her, observed her, tried whatever he could as a 19yo to save her, but he never, ever got to talk to her. This is the very. first. time. he's able to have a conversation with her.

But she doesn't pick up. And he has to put a leash on his emotions in those few seconds because this version of Ryu Seon Jae stopped showing his true emotions long back. Ah, this was the only chance I had. I wish I could talk to her. I wish I could hear her voice. I wish I could know how she's been doing. Just once. Just this one time.

He introduces himself using his name. Not along with his band name, which is the usual practice, mind you. And a very little pause before going "Do you know me?"

Sometimes when you long for a person, crave for their voice, their smile, their presence in your life and your world, you desperately want to be present in their world too, no matter how trivial your presence or your existence might be to them. Seon Jae hoped she would remember; even if she didn't consider him her savior (which he never thought he was) he desperately wanted some semblance of familiarity in her voice, even if it was out of nothing but resentment. Maybe even something as painful as How dare you call me.

And she does share her resentments, not towards Seon Jae the 19yo boy who she doesn't remember, but Ryu Seon Jae the idol, along with everyone present there, for putting her through this misery, triggering her worst trauma and twisting the knife in her wound that has already driven her to the brink of ending it all. Everyone is uncomfortable here, except for this one guy. He's back to reliving that incident that forever changed her life, his life and brought them to this moment here. He is reminded of just how big of a failure he is, for failing this one person he never wanted to fail. He is reminded how a moment of indecision/inaction on his part led to the person he loves the most to be this miserable. In this moment above, you look at him and realize it's no longer Ryu Seon Jae; it's the 19yo Seon Jae, the one at the reservoir, the one who kept chanting mianhae to an unconscious Im Sol, the one who waited on that bench while she underwent surgery--clutching on to the watch in anguish as if that was the only thing keeping him from falling apart--the one who stood by her hospital door, listening to her screams while shattering into a million pieces inside. It's the 19yo Seon Jae who would be haunted by her screams and live for the remainder of his brief life in extreme guilt and regret mixed with intense longing, until he meets his untimely demise on that fateful night.

I often wonder if he could sense it from her voice on the call. Just how close she was to the edge, how she was probably going to do something that very day right after the call ended. Was it because he felt her pain as if it were his own? You see him springing to action right when we think it's over, as if he is desperate to help her, any. way. he. can. You see how restless his eyes get all of a sudden? He likely wants to say so many things to her. Sol-ah, I'm glad to hear your voice. Sol-ah, I'm sorry. Sol-ah, I hope you are okay. Sol-ah, I'm grateful you are here. Sol-ah, I'm really sorry I couldn't do better. I'm so sorry I failed to wake you up. I'm sorry I let you miss your stop. I'm sorry I didn't reach you sooner. I'm sorry I couldn't be more careful. You can hate me all you want. I'll live the rest of my life being sorry to you. You don't have to forgive me. I'm fine as long as you're okay, you're fine, you're happy. Sol-ah, I miss your smile. I miss the sound of it. I miss knowing you're happy somewhere, even if I am nowhere in your somewhere. Sol-ah, thank you. Sol-ah, please, please live.

But oh, he can't say any of that to her now. So all he says is "Thank you, for living. The ones by your side will thank you for that". And yes, he means himself.

He wanted to be the umbrella she once was to him, the gift she has been to him all his life, both literally and figuratively. And because Ryu Seon Jae is a person who will receive the affection/love you give with the utmost appreciation, increase it 10x more and return it to you gift-wrapped with sparkly ribbons, he chooses to be her umbrella this way, the only way he can.

He wanted to pull her out of the reservoir, literally and figuratively, so she could live. He didn't mind spending all his life stuck in that reservoir himself.

This was supposed to be a response to @thedeathdeelers rewatch post here and as usual, it ended up being a mess of feels (why do I even try really) I swear atp I feel like we're the same person watching feeling the same things lmao. You, don't ever shut up about this show please :')

p.s. I love writer Lee Si Eun for ultimately wanting to save THIS OG Ryu Seon Jae, and therefore initiating the memory flashback with pieces from this timeline. Although my heart will forever ache for this OG boy, it finds some comfort in that.

[toa-archive]

Decided to split up the artwork that turned up over the weekend in part as wanted to focus on THIS thing first:

Brunch Studio has a now hidden page where they go into detail of what they did for Trollhunters (Both og film and TV) including creating the Trollmarket set design. Which is neat because some of Rémi Salmon's work was saved from whatever his website is doing! Another of the artists mentioned on there is Fabien Ouvrard. Through some tracking down I managed to uncover his instagram and later his artstation account. The first had some cropped work from Trollhunters whereas his artstation didn't... Until Saturday.

Being able to have a proper look at this thing managed to figure out it is in fact the shooting board for the below video:

Not entirely sure if it was part of a pitch, a spec or what just that it's incredibly cool.

If you really zoom into the Shooting Board you find this image which given the other artwork. Who painted it is currently a mystery.

The matching image on the reel is a pretty easy one to ID, Geoffroy Thoorens dated back in 2014. The trolls beforehand are a bit more of a mystery though there is a suspicion who they might be which we'll come to shortly.

Next zoom in is this which the artbook confirms is Zibach.

Whereas the Reel is Thoorens again, also 2014. It's likely this is an overpaint of Alfonso Blaas' version because of the remarkable similarity.

From the zoomed in stills again this one can absolutely confirm is Zibach because it was on tumblr with an instagram redirect.

Broken tumblr posts can't stop me:

The next transition gets a bit more in the air seeing as it's a composite. From what I've been able to figure out:

Alfonso Blaas - Trolls, he has them all uploaded separately and they're painted over Headless Studios linework

Christopher Zibach - Heartstone

Geoffroy Thoorens likely had a hand in the rest as he does have those funky gem bridges on his artstation which have not really shown up elsewhere. It could be a mixture of him, Blaas, Ouvrard or even other artists too!

After that is a bit of a mystery. On the shooting board it's clearly Zibach so somebody must have made their own version of it. When that happened they added Blinky and Toby in the process.

With nothing for the sweeping in to GO AWAY shot it like was based on Fabien's sketch using the above Zibach as a reference.

The Heartstone went through all sorts of weird and wonderful transitions though being in water with the posing did show in Zibach's shown below. According to the artbook and comparing to the reel it looks like that particular image was drawn by Dominique Lewis possibly with Thoorens's background, difficult to tell.

It's been incredibly neat seeing some brand new work (If small), sketches and an excuse to watch that video again.

[fountainpenguin]

Riddle watches New Wish - Post #20

Best of Luck

With a title like "Best of Luck," this sounds exactly like an Anti-Fairy episode. I'm intrigued.

I love how Cosmo and Wanda's house can be wherever it needs to be, including inside Hazel's desk.

I wish we would've had that lore in the OG series, because it makes a lot of sense (and makes the concept of riding around with your godkids and sitting in elementary school all day less boring). I think I'm yoinking this for 'fics.

I like how they still have old-fashioned desks in the future. I've never had these desks.

Peri and Dev are together again... Peri's trying his best <3 I like how Dev is a grump. That feels right.

"Peace is boring and lacking in swag." - Dev Dimmadome, 2024

I love him.

I enjoy how that random horse has been here for tons of episodes. It's just silly.

I really like Winn. They have so many happy things to say about life and their friends:

"Pulling out paper, even though you'd used it to defeat your previous 3 opponents?? /smiles and clutches hands to chest while shaking head. "Inspired."

They deserve to be the cool kid everyone likes and wants to befriend. I support it. I hope they have a really nice life and many joys.

Hey, wait a minute! I WAS right about Winn only having freckles on one cheek. I think it just flips sides when they turn.

Peri in his debut: I'm gonna take you from Dev to Dev-ine!! Dev now, on the heels of a massive meltdown: What happened to you 'taking me from Dev to Dev-ine?' I don't FEEL very Dev-ine >:( Peri: :')

I enjoy the detail of Dev pushing his shades back on his nose after throwing his head back and then snapping it forward. They didn't even fall down or reveal his eyes, but it was the correct move for him to do.

I like how every time Dev moves his head, his shades catch the ceiling lights.

Ohhh, when snooty Peri comes out, you've gone too far!

... I was wrong!! Dev just raised his voice and Peri crumpled. I love him.

That music sting, tho...

For some reason, that last one gives me bigger "Oh, that's totally Poof" energy than any other screenshot I've taken? idk why; I don't remember Poof getting angry often.

Hang on- I watch Season 9 a lot. Let me check my usual highlights...

... ah. I don't like what this says about me.

-> omg, his staff is based on his rattle! I didn't even notice that until now!! That's so clever!

There's something really funny about posting this picture right before jumping back into my liveblog.

Anyway, Peri is trying SO hard to explain the rules... He looked like he was about to cry and then he snapped; let's see where this is going.

OHHHH, he's quitting! I knew it~! He can't handle the pressure. He's too baby!!

I cannot believe this man lasted 4.5 months on the job. Every time he showed up, he was upset.

Peri: You know what, Dev? I'm DONE. Dev: Well, I'm done-ER! Peri: I'm the done-EST! Dev: Stick a fork in BOTH OF US, THEN!!!

Neither of them is okay.

And he's got tears down his cheeks... Freakin' GEEZ, Dev! You snapped him like a twig.

I'm glad he's having a hard time adjusting to being a nice person. lol. It really underscores why he's so mean at the start of the series.

The fact that he had no issue taking off his shades after befriending Hazel in "A New Dev-elopment" (even willing to go to school with them off and talk nicely to his teacher that Monday, regardless of the fact that this was his first time in the series doing that and people might've talked about it) gives me the inkling that he probably HAS tried being nice in the past, and he doesn't MIND being nice... until he's hurting, and then his self-defense mechanism is to shut down and wall everyone out.

He WANTS to be "a happy kid." He just keeps getting bit every time he places his trust in someone. Including Hazel (in his POV) since he couldn't move past his "Wait a minute... Did you WISH for us to be friends??" meltdown in spite of the good times that came from that wish.

He tried so hard to see the good in his dad in "Lost and Founder's Day." Even when his dad snapped at him for asking if he could help and told him to go "Eat a lizard."

Even when his dad blatantly used electricity to shock people's brains and Dev very clearly had issues with it. He tried SO HARD to turn it around to "Oh, so you can help kids!!"

He even tried to see the good in Vicky [before she entered the house] when Hazel tried cheering him up with the thought of, "Well yeah, maybe you didn't want a princess cosplayer at your birthday, but she might be a really COOL party princess!"

He just keeps trying and has such high hopes and patience despite getting nipped every time he speaks up and reaches out. That's why he stayed un-miserable for so long before tipping over and getting Peri assigned to him. Tell him how high to jump and he'll do his best without even asking "How high?"

So he took that leap with Hazel. And the floor went out from under him.

I read once that if your natural response is to close off when you're struggling and/or just handle everything yourself even if it's a lot, it indicates your past experiences of reaching out yielded no help, so it's hard to see the point in asking others for help in the future.

I don't have the place I read this on hand and I didn't dive for the sources back then, so take it with a grain of salt, but it's all I've been thinking about while watching Dev in this show.

btw, I had to rewatch part of "Lost and Founder's Day" to grab that screenshot, and it's hilarious to me that even when he's talking to his own son, Dale still introduces himself as "Dale Dimmadome, owner of Dimmadome Global." He's just like his dad.

Okay... Blue smoke? Anti-Fairy time??

OHHHH, it's the man of the hour!! Welcome back, loser!

I love the little shift of him flexing his wing. I like how similar the wing is to the old show (Black with blue markings).

Eric Bauza, is that you?? Score!

Okay, I looked it up to see if that was true and first of all, yes it is, and second, he's also credited as Peri's VA, so I love that! I hadn't bothered to check who Peri's VA was, but that literally makes so much sense; their parents have always shared, so of COURSE they'd share too. That's so smart...

Hm... Can't say I'm the biggest fan of Foop's name changing to Irep and I'm not sure I like his design, but maybe it'll grow on me.

That said, the name change is a really clever way to get Irep to explain the lore of how he's the opposite of Peri without being info-dumpy.

I'm glad he kept his facial hair. And he's got big boy fangs! I miss his F-shaped hair curls, though, or maybe I need a better angle.

Hey, he has a dark jacket like the lab coat I gave him in my high school design. I wasn't far off!

No freckles, but in OG canon, they only really showed up when he flushed, so no surprise. I don't expect to see them, but it would be funny if he did flush and they were still there.

Also, I really like the ultraviolet glow of his crown. That makes so much sense.

Insert joke about how Anti-Fairies used to be invisible to the naked eye until Season 5

... He is actually REALLY cute. He looks a lot like his old self.

Are other Anti-Fairies also going to have square heads? I don't mind Foop having a square one if all his species does, but I'll be a bit surprised if he's the only creature with a cube head.

I think it's funny that they took away Peri's eyelashes when he grew up, but left Irep with one. That feels incredibly right.

I love his unique scruffy eyebrows. That's cute.

Irep, who previously had such a traumatizing experience as a godparent that he spent that episode screaming and crying, his magic souring in a range of colors all the way down to green in one of the only appearances of green magic in the series, and literally almost gave up on life before he gained the courage to lash out at Vicky despite knowing full-well his magic would immediately backlash and torture him for it: "I am once again ready to take responsibility for a mean human."

This only exacerbates my analysis of Peri not being ready for godkids and that's flippin' hilarious.

The nerd finally put on shoes!!

Dev wished for it to be tomorrow, so now it's tomorrow (waning crescent, of course).

No Dev-Irep sleepover? Robbed >:(

??? Obsessed with Hazel walking into school chatting about what she spent her night doing. I love how this means Irep just... yoinked Dev forward in time.

/horse in the hospital voice: I didn't know he could do that.

This episode's set-up & plot is just great in general.

Everyone else has gone to bed and Dev's had no sleep or breakfast. He needs a snack.

Ooh, wait- what? Mace wand!! ... I don't think I'll keep that in my canon, but that's a clever way to parallel Poof's staff. It's funny to me that the posh British boy did not get a staff. He WOULD like bashing people with the mace, huh?

It delights me to see Irep left-handed. He's been a leftie since the day he was born, all through to Season 10 :')

I like how Irep started crying when Dev told him he was "better than Peri." I mean... He's not wrong- that IS literally all Foop-Irep has wanted to hear since the minute he was born.

He is literally the same person he's always been. lol.

"Best of Luck" & "Two and a Half Babies"

I wonder if he's still claustrophobic, because that was, like... his big thing after escaping Abracatraz. I doubt it will come up (and he's much older now), but since he's an antagonist, I assume he has a weakness, and that would be an interesting one to bring back.

-> Actually if I'm remembering right, it was his alternate personality's phobia (Foop vehemently denying it while his alter literally screamed at the top of his lungs and doubled down), which is definitely implyin' somethin' about which of them remembers Abracatraz better. Hmm...

FINALLY! I don't think we ever got to see umbrellas open indoors as a form of bad luck in the OG series. It's one of those tiny questions always floating in the back of my mind, sdklfj.

I like how Dev still went to class. He has rule-breaking magic at his fingertips and this is where he's spending his time.

I guess it's not like he can leave the school; his whole goal is to get in that schoolwide Rock, Paper, Scissors competition.

I like Hazel eating from her popcorn bucket of 4-leaf clovers.

is Irep going to try to poke her and then, like... break out in hives or something? lol.