#respecting the canon spelling of John‚ for once

[hemi-demi]

@ultramarinaa's Cat!Jon and Cat!Martin live rent free in my brain, and they need a break, lol.

I thought maybe the Lucid cabin might be a good spot for them. Place is already a cat magnet, what's two more?

This was gonna just be me drawing Cat!Jon and Captain, but then it just kinda turned into this.

Look, I'm writing sad shit rn, let me have my multiverse nonsense fluff, ok? OK??

[mxflowercheck]

Sherlock and Co pre-canon headcanons 'cause ehh why not???

English is not my first language and I have adhd so feel free to point out any spelling/grammar/etc mistakes

Mariana:

was married for a few years after college. It was a guy she met in college, a really sweet and bright relationship, but it didn't last long after college. They're not friends, but also not enemies, just drifted apart and don't talk anymore

was a Spanish tutor for a while, before she found a job at Hudsons. Loved the kids, hated actually explaining her native language and not just using it intuitively

was a very calm teenager and had the Rebellious stage somewhere in her twenties. She hitchhiked a LOT with friends one summer and her many of her favourite memories and funny stories are related to these trips

has an older sibling - and i mean like 10 or more years age gap. Tbh they're not really close

John:

pathological people pleaser as a kid. The First Child. Look at him. Yeah, that's a man who did things just because they were expected from him.

talked to himself a lot while alone, and in his mind in public. i think it's why it's easy for him to record podcasts - he's used to just talking with no one

tried writing blogs and diaries, but it never worked out

Sherlock:

once just shaved his head because summer was awfully hot and he was ALWAYS overstimulated even with short hair. He didn't like it though and never did again

was homeless for a short period of time

met Lestrade when he was arrested. She thought "NOT MY CIRCUS NOT MY MONKEYS" really hard but it didn't work. So she acquired a neurodivergent catastrophe. Sherlock pretends not to like her, but actually respects her and cares about her opinion and well-being (and vice versa)

changed multiple schools as kid due to various reasons (aka being neurodivergent and probably undiagnosed), was finally sent to a small boarding school. Not ideal, but better than others

[fanfic-obsessed]

Unauthorized Change in Priority

I’m still on a bit of a DCxDP kick right now and I have another idea. It seems to be a fairly common trope that when DP exists and the Justice league seems to be ignorant of a small town in Illinois that was actually pulled into another dimension for several days, that the blame is laid either on the GIW or John Contantine. When John Constantine is blamed, we tend toward him going ‘we don’t fuck with the Infinite Realms’ and nopes out on behalf of the entire JL, leaving a 14 year old to handle things on his own. 

Let's take a slight inversion of that. Also I should probably mention, you might want to disregard any canon that contradicts this. 

It is important to note going in that in this one Amity Park sits on so many intersections of ley lines that it is impossible to tell which layline is connecting to which.  A bit like a natural lake bed that is fed by a bunch of little rivers.  This thins the divider between this dimension and the infinite realms, substantially.  So even before the portal opening the line between Amity Park and the Infinite Realms is tissue paper thin. 

Constantine before he joins the JDL, at some point well before Danny is even born, finds himself in Amity Park. He realizes immediately how thin the veil is in this location and, not wanting to sneeze and accidentally drop this town into a hell dimension, backs away slowly. The veil is so thin that Constantine does not even dare putting any kind of monitoring spell but notes the town (reasoning that anything that happens here will be world ending).  When he joins JLD (still well before the portal opens) he creates the Amity Park file and puts two very important notations. 

First, anything Amity Park can only be handled by the JLD, preferably Zatanna or Contantine. He has a good reason for this; as most superheroes have just enough contact with death or magic to be reactive to the Infinite Realms, no knowledge of what to avoid, and next to no willingness to leave well enough alone. If there was an issue that by some miracle had not punctured the veil between realities, it is almost guaranteed that the wrong move will make things exponentially worse not better. 

Second, he put a notation that any communication about, for, or from Amity Park is priority number 1, used for potentially cataclysmic, all hands on deck immediately communications. In short any call from Amity Park should have been immediately routed to Constantine. 

This is what should have happened. However, the first technician to receive a call from Amity Park (during Lunch Lady’s attack) decided that this must have been a miscoding, or a data entry error, as ghosts do not exist. Not only does he mark the caller as a prank, but he also used his own access to change the second notation for Amity Park, marking any call from that location or about that location as a prank, to be ignored. 

Fast forward ten years, until now nobody has caught on to what happened. Constantine had very realistic fears about tearing a hole into the infinite realms and thus never checked in on Amity Park, since no notifications came in. 

We start with Batman, in the watchtower, unintentionally running into Constantine giving a royal, and deeply pissed off, dressing down to the technician in question, though the topic is not obvious. 

Upon seeing Batman, Constantine goes “Good, you were next on my list. We need a full League meeting, ASAP, and all of your brood needs to attend, particularly Red Hood.”

Batman just growls out a ‘What?’

Constantine sighed “Look, I know you don’t like magic. I’ve tried to respect that, no matter how much death magic you and your brood radiate. But we have a fuck up with potentially dimension ending consequences and your undead boy might be the best shot at keeping us all from a war we can’t win.”

 Batman growls to cover his own confusion.

Contantine rolled his eyes, “I will tell you everything I know, at the meeting. Going over this more than once increases the chance that someone will fly off the handle and fuck us all worse” he then turned to head toward one of the conference rooms, towing the technician. When the technician protested Constantine snapped out “Mid Case Scenario is that we have to sacrifice you to the Infinite Realms for your fuck up, you stay with me until I know how bad it is”

No more than a half hour later the Justice League has gathered, including a prickly and confused Red Hood (only there because someone-Read Red Robin- thought to use the ‘apparently this is a dimension ending trouble and we’re the assholes that live here’ argument). 

Constantine starts with three word ‘Amity Park, Illinois’

Every member of Justice League Dark goes pale.

Constantine continues:

We have a fuck up of massive preportions. Possibly dimension ending, all caused by the idiot to my right.  For those of you not in the know there is a dimension that lightly overlaps ours, called the Infinite Realms. It simultaneously encompasses all afterlives that ever were or will be and serves as the connective tissue between the afterlives and the mortal realm.  Natural rips form, usually along the ley lines, to allow the spirits of the dead to pass on from our world to theirs and vice versa. It can also be called the Ghost Zone. This realm is made up of ectoplasm, what ghosts are made of.  Semi poisonous to mortals, also technically radioactive. Mortals who have touched death in certain ways begin to resonate with the Infinite Realms, mostly by dying and being brought back by unnatural means.  

With me so far, Good.

A few decades ago I came across a city in Illinois where the veil between here and the Infinite Realms is so thin it is practically see through.  Since I figured accidentally punching a hole in reality and dropping a midwestern city into some fucked up shit was not a good idea, I left but kept an eye for the name to pop up anywhere. When I joined the Dark, I put a priority alert in place. ‘Cause anything that happened in Amity Park  or  about Amity Park meant the damn Infinite Realms and we needed to be on top of that shit. Except the dipshit to my right, whose name privileges have been revoked,  decided that the careful label of ‘Priority 1’ must have been a mistake, and changed the label to mark everything from Amity Park as a prank. 10 years ago.

Yesterday a different alert regarding the Infinite Realms was tripped and guess what I found…Over 200,000 calls from Amity Park in the last decade. All urgent cries for help. All ignored. This was the last message.

 Everyone in the league looked deeply uncomfortable with the idea that they had been ignoring cries for help, the unnamed technician cringing next to Constantine. It got worse when Constantine played the last message. The voice sounded male and it sounded young (They do not know if, but it was Tucker Foley aged 24 years old), what’s worse was that there was audible pain in the voice overlaid with a helplessness. 

I…I don’t even know why I am trying this. It’s clear no one is listening. That no one will listen. But…But Danny would want us to try. Would want us to give one last warning, he loves humanity so much.  They took Danny. They took him two weeks ago and they are cutting him open. We can feel it, Danny’s trying to keep it from us, to keep us from feeling it but our bond is too deep.  We can’t get to where Danny is being held and he’s so tired; he won’t last much longer. <The voice stops and there are several minutes of pained panting> Let this serve as a warning, should the Ghost King be Ended at the hands of the US Government, the Infinite Realms will ride to war. Amity Park stands with our Ghostly brethren.  Long Rule King Phantom. 

The recording cut out and a horrific silence echoed. Before anyone can rush off to try and rescue this ‘Danny’ Constantine gets to them to sit down so that this could be done right (and avoid rushing in to make things worse). He points out that the Ghost King has not yet been Ended, gesturing at the Bats. All of the bats have brushed with death in the right ways (also Gotham was Very very cursed, which also thinned the veil. Though it was not up to Amity Park Levels Gothamites tend toward liminal as well) to be at least loosely affiliated with the Infinite Realms (liminal, though that is not the term he used), with Black Bat, the current Robin, Batman himself, and Red Hood being the ones that pinged as ‘Actual Realm Denizens’ (I know most of the league has died, or died adjacent, but we’ll go with they register as slightly liminal but much less than the Bats, since Gothams curses and the use of the Lazarus pits count as additional exposure).  

Had War broken out, the loyalty of those four in particular would be bound to the Ghost King. Constantine was also sure that between their affiliation with the Infinite Realms and the loyalty of those four, the rest of the bats would likely switch sides (Of the Bats, only Red Robin looked completely at ease with this prediction-Tim had long ago accepted that his loyalty was not tied to Justice but to Family).  Thus the bats serve as an early warning system, should they attack then it was too late. 

In addition to being the canary in the coal mine, Constantine hopes that Red Hood, having died and come back, may be able to serve as an ambassador of sorts, that having him and the other bats with them when they go to Amity Park will give them the time to talk with the residents and de escalate things. 

The meeting continues as the League identifies the goals for this

Short Term: Rescue the ‘Danny’, anyone else in immediate danger, and make contact with the people in Amity Park

Mid Term Goals: Start making amends for ignoring their calls for help, ensure the residents are safe or could be made safe, figure out why they think what Danny is enduring has anything to do with the US government

Long Term: Dismantle whatever organization is the ‘They’ the caller mentioned

Of the Bats, Oracle and Black Bat would stay on the WatchTower to play canary. At the same time they would start trying to figure out the They mentioned in the call (by going through the other calls) and any research that needs to be done. 

A Single jet, with the Batfam, John Contantine, and as many of the Justice League as can fit (with the Supers flying outside it) is dispatched to go to Amity Park; there is concern that more than that would spook the residents or seem like an invading party. They are able to land the Jet in the middle of Amity Park’s town square and can already see the devastation. It already looks like a war zone, with destroyed buildings and pitted roads. The sky flickers between a normal looking sky and a sickly green that they do not realize it from the Infinite Realms. 

A crowd has gathered by the time the amp on the jet lowers. It is a mixture of humans and ghosts, none looking pleased to see the Justice League. The crowd is led by Fright Night, Mr. Lancer, and Tucker Foley (who looks to be in some kind of pain).

This is an Eternal Trio (Tucker/Sam/Danny) kind of idea with Tucker and Sam having a strong psychic bond with Danny, in part due to being there when he died and the portal opened. Because of that all the ghosts see Sam and Tucker as substitute Ghost King/Royalty with Danny being in the GIW’s hands. It takes some back and forth (and Fright Knight explicitly asking Red Hood if the Justice League are to be trusted) but Tucker is willing to answer their questions if it means that they get Danny back. 

It turns out that the GIW had the town basically under siege and had for the last year (by that point barely anyone was trying to reach out to the Justice League). Two weeks ago the GIW managed to capture Danny (and had since managed to capture a number of ghosts and liminal humans for experiments). They had some kind of shield up that meant that no one who was past a certain point of Liminal, as all of Amity Park were, were able to get anywhere near it.  Sam and Tucker’s bond with Danny meant that they knew he was alive and could feel what Danny was going through.  The Bats were too liminal to get close to the GIW facility/fortress. They would go with Tucker to Fenton Works to begin interviewing people about what was going on (finding out that the GIW was apparently a branch of the US government was disquieting). John Constantine (still dragging the techncian) was going with them, someone mentioned the stable portal to the Infinite Realms and his ulcer grew by 3 sizes. The rest of the Justice League would be storming the GIW facility to rescue anyone imprisoned. 

In Fenton Works they encounter Maddie and Jack, radiating a manic crazy kind of energy as they furiously build weapon after weapon for the ghosts/AP residents to use against the GIW and/or the rest of humanity. Vlad Masters was with them, trying to keep them relatively stable.  The Fenton Parents only found out that Phantom was Danny and that Danny had died a few days before Danny had been captured, though they had mellowed about Ghosts over the years (they were still shooting at Phantom, but it was more of an afterthought to making sure the GIW didn’t harm any innocents- Closer to frenemies than enemies).  To be fair Danny had not been trying to keep it a secret from them for years, but after a certain point it felt like bringing up the Danny Phantom/Danny Fenton thing was a little awkward. The Fenton Parents are practically the only people in town who had not made the connection.

The knowledge that they have been hunting their baby, that they have been hurting their baby, that their inventions killed their son cracked their psyche’s a little. Before they could fully recover from that blow, the GIW took Danny and was hurting him. The GIW was using the Fentons Research as a basis for everything they were doing.  That shattered their minds more than a little. Their behavior from that point on tended to remind older Ghosts of ghosts who were on the verge of having a cracked core from either an impossible Obsession, or conflicting Obsessions. Everyone is treating them very gently and lets them keep building really weird weapons to keep them from literally beating themselves bloody on the GIW shielding.  Red Hood, as the most Ghost Adjacent (Everyone in Amity Park have been exposed to enough ectoplasm to sense the levels of ectoplasm in other, to a certain extent), and Red Robin, as the most engineering inclined, are immediately co opted to help with weapons development as the Fentons babble about taking out the GIW in distressingly specific terms, uncontrollable manic energy, and frighteningly blank eyes (Even Red Hood is treating them with the ‘these people are a primed grenade attached to a nuclear bomb’ kind of kid gloves).

Jazz makes a point to thank Batman for Red Hood and Red Robin indulging her parents.  She is exhausted and at the end of her endurance in trying to keep everything together. She sits with Sam, Tucker, and a number of assorted ghosts to answer Batman’s questions about what the fuck has been going on in the past decade. 

Back at the watchtower, Oracle has written a program to transcribe the messages from the Amity Park calls and do an analysis on the word use. From the transcripts she has been able to find a couple of important keywords: Anti Ecto Acts, Ghost Investigation Ward, the names of several ghosts, Pariah Dark, Danny Phantom. She and Black Bat begin researching. These are not fun topics to research. 

The Lantern Corps are taking the research and compiling a report to take to the OA.  Absolutely 0% of the people are happy with what they are discovering. While not all of it could have been prevented by the Justice League knowing about the portal opening from the beginning (The Anti Ecto Acts had been buried in a sub clause of a sub clause of on page 1,361 of 2,500 of a Wheat Subsidy Bill), there was significant preventable damage. 

At the GIW headquarters residents of Amity Park, both ghost and human, stood outside the shield line as members of the Justice League, particularly members of the Super family (which has the benefit of having Clark Kent the reporter be a first hand witness if need be) pass through the Shield with only the faintest of resistance. The first priority is the Shield as no one can escape until it comes down.  Superboy, the older, finds the experiment cells first.  It is horrifying beyond anything he had ever experienced.  

Several of the cells contained ghosts that not only had been living when they were brought in, but also were trapped in a cell with their own rotting corpse (Including both Paulina and Dash). Every possible human/Ghost experimentation and horror was present.   They find Danny vivisected and pinned open with several of his organs and limbs decorating the room, while he was painfully regrowing them.  

Later the vague descriptions of what was found in the GIW headquarters, reported by Clark Kent and Lois Lane, would induce actual supervillains to come out of the woodwork to help the Justice League in taking down the Acts, the GIW, and their supporters. Ra’s Al Ghul reaches out to Red Robin (not just because Ra’s also qualifies as liminal under the acts-though he does take that personally), offering support and a cadre of assassins. Lex Luthor throws his political muscle behind repealing the Acts.  Two Face is in complete agreement with himself for the first time in ages when he declares it open season on anyone in a GIW uniform. 

In the aftermath it is found that even the living residents of Amity Park are all too Liminal to live in most cities. Gotham remains one of the few cities that can support them.  A robust exchange program springs up between both cities; the residents of either tend to consider Amity Park as a neighborhood of Gotham. Gotham University is the first school to offer admissions to one of the ghostly residents, codifying how Ghostly enrollment should be counted. They are also the first to offer both a Psychological and Sociological Master degree program with a focus on Ecto beings.

Constantine finds that it is no longer possible to separate Amity Park from where it had partially sunk into the Infinite Realms. This has led to some strange warping of the space time continuum that gives him a headache, but by all accounts is as stable as it can be.  This means that while everyone agrees that Amity Park is in Illinois, and geography does seem to support that, it is possible to turn down certain streets at certain times and be in Gotham and vice versa. 

Once Danny had recovered some from his experience a bit, he does pass judgment on that technician.  Once the tech dies, he would be imprisoned in Walkers prison  for a period equal to the suffering and recovery time of all of the victims affected by his choice. 

[queen-of-deans-booty]

Ask Jeeves: Part One

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1.8k

Warnings: canon angst and violence, extra angst

Summary: Bobby's presence is requested at someone's funeral/will reading. Since he's not here to go, his next of kin will have to do, i.e. you. Sam and Dean make you go thinking they are going to win big. You get something else instead, something deadlier.

Season Ten Masterlist

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Supernatural. All credit goes to their respective owners. I love seeing any and all comments <3

x

Another motel. Another dull day with the Winchesters. Dean is working on his car while Sam is in the motel room. He requested some "me" time, but you know he probably wanted to jerk one off without you or Dean hearing about it. You're sitting inside the car on the passenger side looking through the glove compartment. There are a bunch of cell phones in there, no doubt John's and your dad's. There is the car's registration and insurance but nothing else of importance.

You groan out in frustration loud enough for Dean to hear. He shuts the hood to look at you through the windshield with a smirk.

"Looking for something?" he asks and wipes his hand on a greasy towel.

"No."

"Are you sure it's not this?" You look up and see Dean holding the remote to the metal piece in your fucking neck. You glare at him and slam the glove compartment shut. "Nice try."

"I'm gonna get that one day."

"Yeah, keep dreaming." He rolls his eyes and shoves the remote into his pocket. Sam walks out of the motel room freshly showered, and Dean turns to him instead of wanting to talk to you. "Hey, any leads on the scanner?"

"Nothing. Not even a cat up a tree."

"Right when we're ready to jump back into it, it goes radio silence," Dean scoffs. "Feel like taking a detour to Connecticut?"

"Why? What's there?"

Dean reaches into his back pocket and takes out a flip phone that belonged to your dad. He tosses the phone to Sam who opens it.

"I found this between dusting and listening to Y/N whine and complain." You glare at Dean from behind. "It's one of Bobby's. It has twenty-seven messages on it. The only one that counts is from two days ago. Apparently, Bobby's been named a beneficiary in Bunny LaCroix's will."

"Bunny LaWho?"

"The attorney said she's an heiress and Bobby's presence or next of kin is being requested in New Canaan. Y/N is his next of kin."

"How did Bobby know an heiress?" Sam asks.

"Bobby had secrets, man. Like loving on Tori Spelling. If he only knew Dean cheated on her. Anyway, road trip? Who knows, maybe Bobby earned us some beer money."

"Yeah, I don't want to go. I don't really care about beer money or a fortune."

"Well, I do. You're the next of kin so you're going."

Dean smirks as he passes by you, and you'd love nothing more than to cut it off him. All three of you pack up your belongings and make the long trip up to Connecticut. The property is like something out of a luxury magazine. There are very expensive cars in the driveway, cars you won't be able to afford. The house is tall and wide and covered with white paint. There isn't a splash of color anywhere. There are even tiles on the ground once you step off the driveway that leads to the front door. Stone white pillars go from top to bottom to hold up the bottom of the balcony that sits atop you.

"Wow, think we're a little underdressed?" Sam looks at their attire in concern. "The Fed threads are in the trunk."

"Are you kidding me? For once, we don't have to wear suits. You're lucky my waistband's not elastic."

Dean presses the doorbell and Beethoven's Fuer Elise plays. A young blonde woman in a maid's attire answers the door

"May I help you?"

"I'm Sam Winchester. This is Dean Winchester and his wife, Y/N. We're here on behalf of Bobby Singer."

The young woman looks around as if she is looking for someone.

"Mr. Singer won't be coming?"

"No, he died painfully as his mind withered away into nothingness," you answer, which earns Dean's elbow in your side.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."

"Condolences for your loss, too," Sam says politely.

"Thank you. You just missed the funeral but the family's relaxing inside if you'd like to join. My name is Olivia." Olivia escorts you three inside the very expensive home and into the living room where Bunny's family is. She clears her throat, gaining everyone's attention. "Allow me to introduce Sam, Dean, and Y/N Winchester."

Two women look at Sam and immediately have heart eyes for him. They see how nimble and young he is compared to them and become smitten. You roll your eyes, not interested in Sammy having cougar sex with them.

"Sam, Dean, and Y/N Winchester of the Westchester Winchesters?" one of the blondes asks.

"No, there isn't a relation. Sorry."

"No matter. You two are adorable," she flirts with the brothers.

She slaps Dean's ass as she walks past him, and he jumps in shock.

"I'm Heddy, Bunny's cousin. This is my sister, Beverly." The other woman who had heart-eyes waves at Sam. Heddy points to an older man playing pool on the other side of the room. "That is Bunny's youngest brother, Stanton. Stan for short."

"Come on in, folks. Join the mourning."

There is a really young woman next to Stan who looks like a gold digger.

"Next to him is his child bride, Amber." There is a man who looks to be your age by the liquor bar who smirks when he sees you. "Then there's Dash. That's the baby of the family. He's Bunny's great-nephew."

"How did you guys know Aunt Bunny?" Dash asks and walks over to you.

"We don't," you put bluntly.

"Her dad, Bobby Singer, did."

"Bobby? Never heard of him, but you can fill us in over the weekend," Beverly grins and slinks up to Sam's side.

"The weekend?"

"Didn't the attorney tell you? The service was today and the reading of the will is tomorrow."

"You're welcome to spend the night," Beverly flirts with Sam. "All the rooms sleep two."

"Or three," Heddy says and slaps Dean's ass again.

You roll your eyes and walk away from the brothers to go to the liquor cart. If you're going to be here, then may as well be drunk for it. You pour yourself a double when Dash sinks up to your side.

"What do we have here? If they get to flirt with your brothers, then you're all mine."

You down the double shot and turn to Dash.

"First, I'd rather stick needles in my eyes than entertain you. Second, they're not my brothers. The shorter one is my husband."

"I don't see a ring." You step away from him and he calls after you. "Where are you going?"

"To get needles," you roll your eyes.

"Where's Colette?" Amber asks suddenly.

"She quit." You turn to the entrance of the living room to see the butler standing there. You know he's the butler because of his attire. His name tag says, Phillip. "Poor dear was so distraught over Mrs. LaCroix's passing. She went off to find herself." Philip walks over to you and the brothers and leans in. "May I have a word with you in the hall in five minutes?"

"Sure."

Philip leaves and Beverly turns to Sam. She touches his bicep and squeezes.

"So, Sam, tell me... do you work out?"

"I need another drink." You walk back over to the liquor car and make another double. Someone grabs your arm and it's not your husband. You glare at Dash who grins seductively at you. "I'll break that arm if you continue to touch me." Dean rushes over to you to save Dash for the very real beating you're about to give him. He guides you away with his arm around you. "He got lucky."

"You need to calm down," Dean hisses.

Five minutes later, you three step into the main hallway to meet with Philip who joins you with a manilla envelope in his hands.

"My apologies for being so oblique back there, but I'm doing you folks a favor. As you know, Mrs. LaCroix bequeathed something to your Mister Singer. the reading of the will isn't until tomorrow and I would hate for you to have to stick around and be forced to mingle with the family."

"Don't worry, we know which one the shrimp fork is. Kind of," Dean shrugs.

"Oh, Mr. Winchester, if you're implying that I don't think you're good enough, it's quite the contrary. You're far too good. The LaCroix family is--how shall I say this politely?--money-grubbing leaches."

"What are you talking about? I thought they were all loaded," you state.

"Loaded, yes. Rich, no. The recession hit every one of them, and I'm afraid if they knew what Bunny left you, those vultures would try to stake their claim. Since the attorney kindly agreed to a hand-off, you don't have to be subjected to their scrutiny."

Philip hands over the envelope to Dean.

"Do you have any idea how Bunny and Bobby knew each other?" Olivia enters the hallway and Philip straightens his posture. "Not in the slightest. Now if there's nothing else, shall I have Olivia show you out?"

"No, that's okay. We got it. Thank you."

Olivia and Philip leave you three alone in the hallway. Dean opens the manilla folder only to find a large jeweled cross on a chain. It's bulky and ugly. Why the fuck do you have this?

"What the fuck is this?"

"Maybe it's worth a lot of money."

"If Bunny was banging Bobby, then maybe these rocks are real." Dean grins.

The nearest pawnshop is ten miles away. You have no need for an ugly necklace so they're going to try and sell it for as much money as they can. The worker inside the pawnshop takes one look at the necklace and decides it's not real.

"What do you mean it's not real?" Dean asks, shocked. "The old bag was rolling in it."

"It looks like the old bag's got a soft spot for fake rubies and cubic zirconium." The worker grabs the necklace and inspects it further. "This is interesting though." He pulls the top of the cross away from the rest of the necklace to reveal a hidden key inside. "It's a key."

"A key to what?" Sam asks.

"One way to find out," Dean says.

If the key originated at Bunny's house, then it has to unlock something that's there. You hate the thought of going back there but trudge along knowing they will force you anyway. When you get back, there is a police car in the driveway that stands out like a sore thumb against the luxury. Philip answers the door when Sam knocks on it, and even you can tell this is a bad time to come back.

"Is everything okay?" Dean asks.

"Not really." All three of you enter the house. "I presume you folks left something behind. I'll check the front closet for burlap."

"You two were here earlier?" 

You look up and make eye contact with a detective. He must be the owner of the police car out front.

"Who wants to know?"

He takes out his very real badge and shows it to your husband.

"Detective Howard of New Canaan P.D. Congratulations you three, you're now officially murder suspects."

"Excuse me?" you raise your eyebrows.

"Yeah, Bunny LaCroix's brother, Stanford, was killed this evening. His body's just gone to the morgue."

"You think we had something to do with that?"

"I don't know what to think. That's why you three and anyone else who stepped foot in this house today is being detained for questioning."

"No offense, Detective, but if I was going to kill someone, I wouldn't leave behind so many witnesses."

"Shut up," Dean hisses at you.

x

Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[jksnrabbit]

Hi again, (i’m the anon from earlier), sorry if this is annoying or too much but I have more questions about Johnny. Again don’t feel like you have to respond.

What is Johnny doing in season two? Especially with the kiddads betrayal of Nicky.

How well does he know Taylor? Is he around as like a fun uncle or is he absent like Nicky is?

In both season one and two what was his relationships with the other families (both the other dads and kiddads)?

also since you mentioned birdie (henry’s daughter) she is canon as of the “see you again” intro about schmeggan (or however that’s spelled) during the hell arc in season two. Henry comes in and sings a verse about how brad helped him and mercedes name their daughter. Will has also said he gives Henry another daughter every time he’s asked if birdie is real.

thanks again for answering the previous questions.

i love the asks!! this is fleshing out johnny more than ive thought about - ive had this mf for 2 yrs and now i gotta employ Critical Thinking this is nice <3 im so happy he's being recieved well, im tired of seeing my own oc's as 'cringe' i deserve to be free

answers under the cut cause i typed a lot again

1) in season 2, i think he's a member of d.a.d.d.i.e.s up until the betrayal, but at the same time he's actively witnessing jodie's decline as glenn and morgan do their thing, so he spends like 65% of his time picking up jodie's slack as king of hell [which unfortunately, gives jodie more time to try to win morgan back. it doesnt work]. jodie being the world's most failed bisexual leaves a lot of work unfinished for john, who unfortunately is coping through his old man fashion sense of tropical shirts and big jeans. which i hastily drew

he was in hell when nicky was attacked; nicky portal'd to glenn mid-rave, who then brought nicky home and alerted john, morgan, and jodie about the situation. once stablized, nicky told them all what happened - this drives a bit of a wedge between him and john as john doesnt believe they should immediately cut off all contact ['maybe theyve been mind controlled'], especially considering nicky would be leaving behind taylor and cass. john returns to earth to talk to the kiddads himself, and while he does manage civil conversation for a solid minute, he's ambushed as well. he's able to escape fairly quickly [he didnt dismiss 100% of nicky's warnings, he knows the others pack a punch] and once home, he reconciles with nicky, agreeing to cut off contact

2) if not for the betrayal, john would be the kind of uncle that taylor sees like, once every 3 months but when he does he spoils the shit out of him - even more so than he already is. he'd get baby taylor the loudass toys that annoy the hell out of nicky and cass. he'd come back from hell with some kind of enchanted gift that may or may not cause a power outage.

after the betrayal, he cut off contact with earth, including taylor and cass. though he and nicky keep an eye on taylor, in case he ever needs them. every christmas, he drops off a gift in the middle of the night 'from santa'. its mostly just a figurine of whatever anime taylor's been most obsessed with that year. one year, taylor gets a customized enchanted funko pop of himself [because all uncles work at funko. or nintendo. whatever], only enchanted enough that it resembles taylor on a day to day basis, like it's outfit changes with him. cass has zero idea who 'santa' is

3)

post betrayal for all the kiddads, he holds an eternal grudge against them. even after they and nicky truce in order to help the kids with the doodler's anchors, he cant bring himself to agree. he's on par with lark for title of 'skeptical battle ready uncle', but in a hawaiian shirt.

s1 oaks - nervous wreck recognizes nervous wreck. respects henry for having to wrangle lark n sparrow daily [somethin he's had to do now with walter]. he does think hen's too judgemental though. as johnathan, he sees henry as a huge pushover with no control over his kids. he still respects henry for having to deal with them everyday though. that shit's tough

s2 oaks - pre betrayal, he was friends with sparrow more than lark, as the former was mostly trying to find the least violent route for anything. he saw hero and norm like, once in their youth, at a family/friends bbq. meeting norm during the events of s2 he's struggling so hard not to say anything about his hygiene [heightened demon senses are Not helping him] but he's nice enough.

s1 wilsons - he's a little familiar with darryl pre-faerun, as nick frequently hangs out at grant's house, so darryl's a comforting guy to have around. he mostly knows grant as nick's gamer friend. paeden's on the same rank as lark n sparrow's rowdy-ness, he's just glad that the daddies tend to take him on every mission. as johnathan, darryl's the main dad that he respects [aside from jodie] as hes the one that least opposes his dad for being a cop, and mostly just opposes him whenever he's being kinda annoying.

s2 wilsons - pre betrayal, had a lot of comradery with grant about video games and weapons. unfortunately supplied grant with a lot of magical/hell weapons. doesnt forgive himself for that. linc honestly doesnt leave a huge impression on him, but he admires his honesty and heart.

s1 stamplers - neither johnny nor johnathan know what to think of ron. johnny thinks he's strange but harmless, johnathan doesnt know if ron's either clueless or knows something he doesnt. both of them solidly respect terry jr though. thats a stand-up kid right there!

s2 stamplers - probably closest with terry out of all the kiddads. they generally just vibe on the same kind of wavelength, and shared a taste in music, going to concerts before d.a.d.d.i.e.s. to be fully honest, he's a little scared of scary. he's never seen so much wrath in a teen before.

4) in some talking dad episodes, will actually mentions henry originally having a baby daughter named 'henrietta', who wouldve been home with mercedes during the soccer tournament!! and i will never forgive them for scrapping that idea!!

i love the enigma of birdie/henry's multiple daughters though. god i wonder if theyre estranged from lark n sparrow, that's unfortunate :[

[dilfdemolisher]

Let The Light in - Part 1

Chapter Summery - You have a discussion about your future patrolling with Tommy and meet your new patrol partner

Content - Mentions of canon typical violence, very brief mentions of suicide, recalling someone’s death, emotionally constipated reader<3, not proofread so probably spelling errors, shitty writing, use of ‘—‘ indicates timeskip, it’s either specified or not but use context clues to figure it idk, reader is not given any physical description and if I accidentally did please let me know I want to make my writing as including as possible, no use of yn but is called “hun” once.

Word Count - 2.6k

Jackson, the wonderful peaceful town, one that seems too good to be true. Nothing like your life for the past 20 years, filled with blood, havoc and destruction. A town you yourself have a hard time believing isn't a figment of your imagination, that maybe the knife wound you survived months ago really took you out and now your body’s rotting somewhere while your mind conjures a reality to help you find peace.

Or maybe you really did stumble upon Jackson a few months ago and you're lying in bed, covered in a warm feather duvet that the older women on your street had made you as a welcoming gift, only for a few weeks later for her to pass away in her bed. A death that is merciful and natural. Not one by getting ripped apart by infected, or shot through the skull by raiders, or even yourself. It was bizarre to see somebody live their full life, something not many achieve.

Yet that may be your fate, it's bold to assume that you will be able to spend the rest of your life here, whether you don't because you are exiled or it all comes crumbling down from raiders, infected, God knows what. But it's nice to think, not for too long though because your alarm is blaring in your fucking ear.

Yup this is definitely real

You rub your eyes and arch your back to stretch your spine out and groan, trying not to let the comfort of your pillow persuade you into spending the day in bed and leaving your duties unfulfilled. After sitting up and pushing the button on your alarm clock you start your morning tasks; brushing your hair and teeth, getting dressed and drinking a glass of water to remove the sticky feeling in your mouth that developed overnight.

You gather what you need for your patrol with Tommy, a man who welcomed you into this town (not before pointing a gun to your head first though) with a fair amount of kindness. More than you expected considering you were the one wandering their territory after specific warnings not to by the older couple you'd encountered several miles back.

Tying up your boots before slinging your backpack over your shoulder and stepping outside. The cold early morning summer air blankets you as you walk towards the gates to meet Tommy as you do twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays and your third patrol of the week you do with Jake on Saturday, despite your distaste for him which wouldn’t exist if he could pull his weight better instead of leaving you to do all of your heavy lifting; so you much prefer your patrols with Tommy, whom you see small-talking a guard while waiting for your arrival.

“Hey there thought you weren't coming.” He says with an unserious manner and a grin. “God I fuckin’ wish” You say deadpan, Tommy responding with a chuckle.

“Everything all good? I'm ready to head out.” You ask.

“Yup.” he states, handing you your rifle that you once regularly hauled around before being accepted into the community. “Thanks.” You say before being stopped by the sight of Dave, the man who primarily runs the stables bringing two horses to you.

“Hey guys.” The older man says to formally announce his presence, handing the respected leads to you. “Ah thanks bud you didn't have to bring ‘em for us” Says Tommy. “Well I was up, and if I wait around in this weather for too long my joints get stiff.” He says, shaking his head in discomfort.

“Oh? The old man got sore old man joints? Who woulda’ guessed?” Tommy says looking up at him and down playfully with a smile

“Oh fuck off you’re not too far behind me are ya, just wait till your kiddo starts crawlin’, your be looking just like me.” He smirks. “Oh tell me about it, Marias been counting the greys in my hair lately as a ‘calming activity’ she says it is before bed.”

“Oh trust me I know all about getting greys look at me” He laughs before continuing. “Well, I don't wanna keep you much longer, you still coming to the stables later hun?” He looks towards you.

“Uh-huh, sorry I wasn't there last night. I just got a bit caught up in some housework” You apologise.

“Don't worry about it, not tryna hound you were just wondering 'cause Ellie came around after dinner asking for Ya.”

Oh shit, you were supposed to meet her there. Fuck.

“Oh yeah- I- I'll tell her I'm sorry it completely slipped my mind”. You speak a bit mumbled while shuffling your feet in the small patches of weeds that you stand on.

With silence in the air after your sentence Dave walks away with a smile, leaving you and Tommy to mount your horses and head out.

————

“Bit of a chilly morning today huh?” Tommy declares, breaking the silence that's held you between for the first few minutes since you stepped out of the gates.

“It is, can't say I’m complaining though. This summer's heat has been kicking my ass.” You laugh. “Thank God for the running water y'all got because I sure as hell don't miss being all gross and sweaty from the heat.”

Tommy lets out a light chuckle in response then stays silent, uncharacteristically so. You take a glance towards him, he's looking at his horse's hooves with a solemn look on his face, watching as it takes each step forward and leaves a print in the grass as he walks.

“What?” You say. Tommy brings his head toward you. “Are you planning on bringing me out here and dumping me or something?” You joke attempting to lighten the mood but he still stays silent before he takes a deep breath. “I recognize that you do a lot, I do I-” He communicates before clearly trying to get his words in order. “Marias have been swamped lately, between taking care of the baby and helping manage the community”. He takes another breath before continuing. “What I'm tryna’ say is I'm not gonna be on patrols for the next few weeks to help Maria around.”

Oh, That’s not what you were expecting.

Tommy looks at you while you continue to stare at him in surprise so he takes your lack of verbal response as a cue to continue.

“My brother Joel, y’know the one who stopped in for a bit with Ellie this winter?” He continues to stare back at you in hopes of a response, but you just give him a hum and look forward toward the end of the trail you're reaching. “We’ve been talking about a job for him to do now that he and Ellie are all settled in and we agreed that patrols would be best for… his type of skill set.” He says while ending his sentence with a pause.

“So I’m gonna be patrolling with him, is what you're saying?” You ask, looking towards him.

“Yeah-I uh am. I trust you, you're one of our best and I don't worry ‘bout ya out there. My brother can take care of himself but I like to know he's with someone he doesn't have to supervise.” Tommy admits. “Plus I hope he won't be as much of a dick to yuh, 'cause you're a girl y’know? No offence.” He stutters out, attempting to backtrack.

“Um, none taken. I get what you're saying” You say a bit awkwardly, staying mute for a moment while trying to formulate your next sentence. “So when, this Thursday?” You ask, staying professional. At the end of the day, this is a job and despite Tommy and Maria's insistence on getting comfortable here, you remain stubborn in your ways. It is not easy for you to forget the strenuous life you had been living, at least not yet, you'll still keep your guard high.

Tommy's face morphs into an amalgamation of confusion. “Is that all?” He asks.

“I don't think it's my place to complain about my coworkers, and what am I gonna say Tommy” You huff. “No don't help your wife and child keep, doing patrols with me and tell your brother to go fuck yourself?”

“Well I fucking hope not.” Tommy says with a glare, clearly offended by the sudden spike in your attitude. “You sure seem to have an issue though.”

To be fair, you did come across as a bit harsh. Tommy looks at you a moment longer, probably waiting for a continuation of your apology that wasn't coming. “Alright then.” He grunts and kicks the side of his horse faster, bringing the animal to trot and walking in front of you, keeping physical distance between the two of you.

You’re not sure if you should make a formal apology to Tommy or stay silent, Tommy’s a fairly confrontational man but you know you couldn't give the apology that's warranted even if you tried. So staying as silent as possible for the rest of your patrol it is.

————

“Ellie?” You yell entering the stable, hay scrambling around your boots as you walk further looking for the girl.

“Back here!” You hear her voice yell from the back of the stable. You already know that she’s with her favourite horse Shimmer, despite her insistence that she doesn’t pick favourites her actions heavily contradict that.

“Shocker you're with your favourite.” You speak as you come into her view. “Shocker you didn't forget about me again.” She bites.

You raise your hands in surrender. “Fair enough I deserve that.” You admit. “I meant to apologise to you yesterday after my shift with Tommy but I felt a bit weird knocking on your now ya’know?”

“Why would you feel weird?” She inquires, to your surprise her demeanour wasn't accusatory, but confused.

“I'm going patrol with Joel tomorrow? I just figured meeting him for the first time whilst apologising to you wouldn't be the best impression when my life's gonna be in his hands tomorrow.” You answer.

“You’re going on patrol with Joel tomorrow?!” She exclaims. You’d been wrong about your assumption that she'd already known.

“Yeah we are.” You confess a bit awkwardly. “I figured he told you already.”

“No he hadn’t.” She says with a smirk. “I hope you two don’t kill each other.” Grinning even more with the added statement. Now you're the one to be confused, unsure of the meaning behind her sentence.

“You guys would just like, totally butt heads is all.” She clarifies with a smile still sitting on her face. “But no he didn't tell me, he doesn't tell me shit ever actually.”

“Oh… well do you think Shimmer needs any brushing?”

Ellie giggles at your obvious deflection from the conversation. “Sure I guess.” She says, not pressing you further on the matter. In all fairness you're not sure what else she could ask, that's about the extent of it all.

Just that you're going on patrol with Joel tomorrow.

————

“Hi.” You say pulling your hand out, waiting for it to be shaken.

“Hey, I'm Joel.” He says pulling his own hand out of its pocket and shaking yours.

“I’d introduce myself but I'm sure Tommy told you and gave you the rundown.” You say with a bit of a nervous chuckle tailing it.

“Oh-uh yeah, he has.” He says “My Ellie told me a bit ‘bout you too, she says you showed her how to pick out the horse's hooves?” He asks a bit awkwardly, but you can't be upset when you yourself have yet to master the polite small talk that's needed in a community like Jackson.

“Um yeah I did. I help around the stables a bit, I like horses.” You say matter-of-factly. “Sometimes I help around with the dogs too, but that's usually just meal prepping for them.”

“Oh yeah. I've seen dogs that eat as good as those guys but I guess kibble ain't available huh.” He says, referencing their diet of fresh meat and produce.

“Yeah not really.” You quip.

You both look at eachother, standing parallel, both with hands back in your pockets. You rock back and forth on your feet before speaking again. “Well uh- are you ready to hit the road.” You say, clearing your throat near the end.

“Yeah for sure I’ll grab the horses for us.” He raises his hand and points with his thumb toward the stables.

“Okay.” You nod, watching him as he walks away.

————

The ride to the power plant was silent, it didn't need much communication considering your jobs were fairly simple. The only mind Joel paid to you was the occasional glance he'd steal at you, probably from being uncomfortable and wary in your presence.

You ride side by side about a few thousand yards away from your destination, you embrace the ambiance and ride in comfortable silence while scanning your surroundings for any signs of trouble, while rounding the bended trail, you spot a pair of infected crouched over an object to your right.

“Joel.” You say just quiet enough for him to hear, more quiet than necessary. You’re sure that they wouldn’t be able to hear your call to Joel over their growling and the rustling of their frenzied movements still, you nod your head towards the sight of the infected as he takes a look.

“Stay here.” He grumbles while dismantling off his horse.

“No.” You get off your horse as well tying her next to the tree that Joel’s started a knot around for his horse. You see his glare at your face through your peripheral vision. “What?”

His mouth turns into a frown, his eyebrows collapse down towards the centre of his face. The line on his forehead becomes much more prominent while giving you a look to kill before walking away. You follow him towards the infected and pull your machete from its sheath and see that Joel has pulled his hatchet out of his.

With a brief moment of eye contact and understanding between each other you both bring your horses into a fast trot, drawing your weapons and preparing for the bloodshed. You ride toward the two and can't help but feel a rush of adrenaline, this is what you are good at, what you are equipped for. You were in your element, you felt alive.

As you reach the infected you take charge, movements fluid and precise you take down the infected. Joel stays behind and watches, silently as you execute the infected, him the other.

The moment of intensity quickly dies down as the two of you stay still with heaving chests before the silence is broken by Joel.

“Let’s go”

[keigocntrl]

Another cute head canon I absolutely adore is hawks liking to sing and not just him liking to sing but him being amazing at it. (As he is with everything else.)

I guess you could even call it a bird characteristics headcanon but I think he was just born with a beautiful singing voice. I personally imagine it very soothing but with a wide range like John legend.

Ofc the commission being the shit hole it is didn’t nurture his many other talents and hobbies and was rather aggressive in squashing them. They drilled it into his head that anything other than hero work was a distraction and therefore a waste of time.

So as a teenager the only person who knew he could sing was himself. Even to him he sincerely didn’t think he was all that good. Unfortunately he’s the type of person who’s a god at something but still manages to find fault in it. Everyone will see his worth but him :((

Because he most definitely doesn’t sing in front of others it takes a while for him to sing to you in which I actually assume it happens by accident.

Around other people he’s trained himself not to succumb to the habit of humming and singing the tunes in his head. But after you become apart of his daily routine, he of course becomes very comfortable with your presence. So I think he’ll start humming without thinking about it.

Sure you notice but you don’t make a massive deal out of it, I mean, who doesn’t hum that one song on the radio they can’t get out of their head once in a while?

Cus he’s doing it subconsciously he continues until he’s full on singing and that’s when you point it out; genuinely mesmerized by his vocals.

He’s probably a bit bashful at first but can play it off smoothly. Though deep down he’s turned into mush knowing his favorite person adores such a core part of him. it makes him happier than he’ll let you know.

After that he doesn’t hold back in singing around the house or whenever you two are alone.

You too are cuddling together before bed? Without fail he’s humming you a sweet lullaby

Cleaning the kitchen? He’s belting out songs while they blare from his speaker

Brushing his teeth in the morning? That won’t stop him, you’ll hear his incoherent babbles barely travel through the gurgling foam

Sometimes he’s probably a bit annoying with it, purposely cracking his voice in your ear while you’re working to get you to pay attention to him.

All in all though you love finding out new talents of his. Discovering what makes keigo, keigo. And when you tell him that he’s beyond emotional. Living his whole life with some sorta restriction keeping him from being who he is and wanted to be but now knowing this person he has so much respect and adoration for is so genuinely interested in him is like a dream. He’ll never let you go.

(Sorry if there were any spelling errors <3)

[mittensmorgul]

Hi Mittens! Happy holidays! I love your meta and I had a question: I've seen you make a couple posts about Miracle lately, and while I'm definitely angry at canon replacing Cas with a dog, I was kind of taken aback at some of your comments about Dean and dogs (specifically how much you seem to hate that combination; I've never felt strongly about it one way or the other). Do you have a tag or post about your feelings on Dean and dogs? Or could you explain in a little more detail, please?

Hi hi!

Dean... has never been associated positively with dogs on this show-- up to and including that scene in Scoobynatural where he does the SCOOBYDOOBYDOOOOO! and Cas rolls his eyes and tells him flat out he’s not a talking dog. I mean, even in one of Sam’s heaven memories, he’s effectively replaced Dean with a dog... so while Dean was being implied-harshly-punished by John for “losing” Sam, Sam had been having the time of his life with a dog instead... Sorry, I’ve got a lot of resentment for dog symbolism in the show...

Cas has also been associated with dogs in a lot of... let’s go with derogatory comments, and since this dog in the finale was SPECIFICALLY a replacement for Cas in Dean’s life... I find it particularly insulting, you know?

5.14: We get dog comments about Cas and Dean both in this ep. Famine refers to Cas as Dean’s dog... “You sicced your dog on me, I threw him a steak.” And we see Cas crouched on the ground eating meat. Earlier in this ep, Sam teased Dean about his lack of any “appetite” for anything with the comment, “when a dog doesn't eat-- That's when you know something's really wrong.“

7.21: after being banished, he reappears at a dog track, where the dogs were unhappy. so... Cas was basically just another unhappy dog in this part of the story.

10.22: Rowena compares Cas to a “dog who thinks he’s people” for being an angel who rejected heaven and chose his family with the Winchesters.

10.23-11.03: Cas is literally under a spell referred to as “Attack Dog,” which he fights against but is slowly turning him into a killing machine. He seeks help from Heaven, but they only want to use him, to torture information out of him and then kill him once they get what they want. It’s implied he even kills a dog in 11.01.

11.06: when Cas is in the bunker still suffering from trauma related to the attack dog spell, lying in bed and watching tv, he changes the channel to a news story about a dog riding a skateboard, and the newscaster uses Rowena’s line from 10.22: “Aw, that dog thinks it’s people!”

12.19: Lucifer refers to Cas as the Winchesters’ “purse dog,” and s12 is littered with dog references, especially between Lucifer and Crowley (which started back in s11 when Lucifer was using Cas’s vessel and treating Crowley like a dog... there’s a lot of negative baggage attached to dogs on this show)

13.16: Scooby is obviously the one dog Dean’s okay with, having positive childhood associations with him. But when comparing themselves to the scooby gang, Sam says they don’t have a talking dog, and Dean replies that Cas is sort of like a talking dog... which is interesting because at the end of the episode Cas tells Dean he’s NOT a talking dog. And this, in a scene that was directly foreshadowing Dean becoming Michael’s suit...again, more negative baggage for both of them.

The Dean vs Dogs imagery really kicks in when Dean’s soul is destined for Hell in s3, though.

3.10: In his rant to his dream self, Dream!Dean accuses Dean of being as “mindless and obedient as an attack dog,” just a few lines before he gives the “daddy’s blunt little instrument” line that Cas reminded us of in 15.18. So I do think this is something that the writers couldn’t possibly have been unaware of in invoking that specific line and the specific baggage attached to it.

3.11, one of the MANY deaths Dean suffers is from a seemingly nice dog he tries to pet in a friendly manner. The nice golden retriever mauls him to death, like the hellhounds are due to do to him in just a few short episodes... 

3.16: literally torn apart by hellhounds... don’t know how else to make it clear that Dean Is Not A Fan of this.

4.06: suffering from Ghost Sickness, and being magically forced to experience heightened levels of fear, he runs from a lil Yorkie with a bow in its hair, pausing only long enough to warn another person on the street to run before it kills them. We are invited to see how his biggest fear-- of Lilith, of being tortured in Hell, and having been dragged there by hellhounds-- is literally tied to his feelings toward actual dogs, including nonthreatening little lap dogs.

6.01: When Dean falls under the djinn’s spell, he hallucinates an unseen monster, presumably something akin to a hellhound, but when he thinks he’s caught the monster, it’s the neighbor’s Yorkie. Just like in 4.05, Dogs, Hellhounds, and Things Dean Fears In His Soul are all tangled up together.

6.08: aka that one episode I forget exists until it comes back around on the loop (actually I don’t forget it exists anymore, I’ve seen the show too many times at this point, but meh...). But it does plant this fear, that any dog anywhere might not really be a dog. The “sleeper cell” skinwalker packs in cities all over the world? Yeah, not a happy thought for someone who really doesn’t like dogs. Or at the very least has a low-key fear of them.

7.15: I would qualify this one as just “symbolism,” but since this episode is full of anvils, it feels legit to mention that the spell Jeffrey uses to summon his demon back to him involves using Dean’s blood and a dog’s heart. Not really a dean/fear thing, but Dean AS a dog-- and a sacrificed dog at that.

8.01: When Dean gets back from Purgatory, he gets in the Impala and smells dog. Bringing on the famous rule that he’s quite angry about Sam having clearly violated even when he wasn’t on the same plane of existence at the time-- No dogs in the car. He’s still clearly not a fan. Early s8 becomes a long string of “Sam hit a dog” comments, too.

8.15: for all this episode’s grossness, it does remind us over and over again that Dean really does not like dogs. Even flat out having Dean say he likes dogs, and the woman who literally is a dog familiar tells him that no, he doesn’t.

9.05: Dean... is basically a dog. He bonds with the Colonel a bit, even identifies with the dog while he’s under the spell, but all that good will that built up between them effectively shatters again with the ominous last words he gets before the spell wears off and the knowledge that dogs were not created to be man’s best friend, but had some other-- and in this context seemingly sinister-- purpose.

And then we have every other ep that deals with Hellhounds, Dean’s failure to kill one leading to Sam taking on the trials instead of him, tied up in their mutual discussion of what they see as their respective futures-- Sam wants to live, and he wants Dean to live, too, instead of Dean constantly running toward death and self-sacrifice. So like, these themes are all tied up together, and makes all the dog stuff incredibly not fun when it comes to Dean specifically.

So when Dean does lose Cas-- and everyone else on the planet-- the dog being the ONE living being they’ve found, Dean picking her up and putting her in “Cas’s place” in the car, only to have Chuck snap her away like she was a manipulative trick the entire time? Not even really real, just one more thing to give Dean a tiny bit of hope only to maliciously snatch it away again?

And then for the SINGLE thing Dean asked for from Chuck being to bring Cas back?

And then he doesn’t get Cas back, but apparently kidnaps this random dog instead?

It’s just... indescribably weird to me, and so entirely out of character and insulting to Cas on top of it all. Like this was the only happiness Dean was allowed after saving the universe. No found extended family, no life outside of Sam and hunting, no dream of retiring and finding a beach to sink his toes in the sand for a little while. He just gets a dog, which he canonically doesn’t like and has a lot of issues with for entirely understandable reasons. So like.. .how is this cute or happy or nice?

[juniaships]

Vanessa Marble-Whittaker Bio **redux**

I had to delete the old post due to spelling mistakes and to add more info, but here is the official character bio for my AIO OC....possibly the only one in existence 😅 Contains spoilers and subject matter of abuse & postpartum depression; if you're curious you might have to do look into the main story arcs of AIO for easier understanding.

Full Name: Vanessa Crystal Marble Whittaker (nee Marble;)

Age: Unspecified but around late 20s to mid 30s

Birthday: May 15th

Race: African American (with European ancestry on both sides)

Fandom: Adventures in Odyssey

Voice Claim: Cree Summer; Vivica A. Fox is also a good alternate

Character Role: Heroine & love interest/spouse of Jason Whittaker

Items: Cross necklace, Midnight Manor (formerly Blackgaard's Castle)

Relationships

Family: Robienne Marble (mother), Regis Blackgaard (father), Edwin Blackgaard (uncle), Jerry Jr. (son, infant), John Whittaker (father in law), Monty (nephew in law), Jana (sister in Law)

Friends at Whit's End: Whit, Eugene, Connie, Katrina, Angel (pet doberman)

Acquaintances: Nuns, denizens of Odyssey

Love Interest: Her primary love interest and eventual husband is Jason Whittaker. They began as tensse & awkward relationship during the Blackgaard Saga duento their contrasting personalities, before becoming close friends and allies. They do not become completely official until after Novacom. Their relationship is regarded as the bonafide example of "Opposites Attract" in Odyssey.

Enemies: While enemies are far and few, she considers her own father as the major obstacle between her and a peaceful life. She was a major player against Novacom. She had a brief yey tense rivalry with Monica Stone (partly for Jason's affections) but the two made peace at the end.

Appearance

- Average height (say, 5'7)

-Brown skin, light brown eyes, and wavy-curly black hair

-Has an average body type (pear shaped) and seemed to gain a few pounds since giving birth

-Typically were darker shades of purple, blue, with the occasional maroon

-Sense of fashion is put together, professional even if casual

- Still has her nun fatigues

Personality

Vanessa is a composed and reserved lady with a deep connection to God, while respecting other religions (and non religious). While seen as a cold person at first glance, she is actually very kind and open-minded, though she isn't immune to making sardonic comments once in a while. While not really great around kids, she has moments of being supportive. After becoming a mother she is rather clueless, though well-meaning and tries her hardest to be the parent her father wasn't.

One of her biggest obstacle is overcoming her aloof demeanor. She needed to learn to open up to others and to out faith in her new friends. Even now she still has her moments of keeping her true emotions, though she has a wide circle of friends and a spouse to talk to. Vanessa was also ashamed of her Blackgaard blood, though she learns to come to terms with her past in order to create a brighter future for herself and the rest of her family. Sometimes she is prone to feeling inadequate and jealous, especially during brief periods of romantic rivalry.

There is a fierce protective side that comes out when loved ones are threatened, as seen with the Blackgaard and Novacom Sagas. She dislikes staying on the sidelines and does whatever she can to help out. She even broke her vows to protect her mother Robienne when Regis came into town, and later inspired her uncle Edwin to stay and fight her father to help save Odyssey.

While studious snd intelligent, Vanessa is not very tech savvy, naturally preferring traditional mediums such as writing letters and books. While she learns how to use computers and cellphones, don't expect her to be a technophile anytime soon. She expresses curiosity and concerns over the next invention hubby makes.

Abilities

Vanessa can memorize a lot a bible verses which she uses as prayer, or as a quip. She also has taken self defense classes to hold her her own.

- Strengths: In her early years she proved to be surprisingly strong and fast when need be. She can adapt to certain situations and keep her cool. Clever and resourceful, Vanessa often thinks and plans her actions. She can speak three languages (Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese) and plans om studying more.

- Weaknesses: After pregnancy she isn't as physically strong and has to limit herself to recover, and can be overpowered by much stronger foes. Vanessa is not very good at advanced technology, and she is a bad cook (Jason keeps her away from the stove as much as possible).

Backstory Vanessa was the only child of Regis and Robienne Blackgaard. Their marriage had be a short and rocky one marred by neglect, emotional manipulation and mental abuse. Finally, on the guidance of Edwin (Regis's brother) Robienne decided she had enough and divorced Regis when Vanessa was two years old. Robienne moved her daughter to New England to be with family, and the two lived peacefully after that. After graduating high school, Vanessa went to the nunnery and stayed there for a few years, while Robienne moved to the Midwest to pursue a career in teaching.

However Vanessa soon grew discontent, feeling as though she was missing out on normal young adult life. Should she stay as a nun or forge her own path?

She would find clues to her answer in the form of receiving news about her father moving to Odyssey - the same town her mother lived. Fearing for her mother's life, Vanessa requested a temporary break in vows, family business, she had said. Settling in Odyssey (under the surname Newman) she got a job working at Whit's End and as a private tutor.

Following major and minor events including the Blackgaard, Novacom, and Green Ring Conspiracy drama, Jason proposed to Vanessa, and they had a summer wedding (but not before overcoming premarital jitters and a threat from Jason's past). Two years after their union (or as of current Odyssey storyline) they had a little boy named Jerry Jr. (named after Jason's deceased brother). Vanessa continues to work at Whit's End as a curator and artist.

Major Storylines: If she was canon she would've been a major player in some of Odyssey's biggest stories including:

- Blackgaard Saga: Her debut, she came to town to take care of her mother & to confront her father on troubled past. She was hired to work at Whit's End where she met then-owner Jack Allen & the previous owner's son Jason for the first time. The townsfolk were.mesmerized by the seemingly mysterious woman and rumors started to abound. Near the climax, Vanessa revealed to Connie and Eugene that came to Odyssey to protect her mother from Regis. Towards the end of the saga, she, her uncle Edwin, and a few townsfolk helped to set up a trap for her father to save Odyssey.

Novacom Saga: She was a big player in taking down Novacom, using her skills writing letters to raise awareness on Novacom's shady actions. This is where her rivalry with Monica Stone began as Vanessa feelings for Jason turn romantic. After Novacom, she would be involved in more stories.

Green Ring Conspiracy: Following Jason's supposed "death" she briefly left Odyssey in mourning. Her uncle and mother managed to convince her to come back to Odyssey. She was unaware of Jason's secret of being alive and working as the Stiletto, and had several encounters with the Stiletto where the mysterious man left her roses and notes of endearment. The two would later reunite after Jason retuned to town, but Vanessa was angry with him for keeping secrets from her. After a long time (and counsel from Whit) she forgave him, and the two reconciled with the promise of being more open with each other.

Courtship Of Jason & Vanessa: An original storyline where the romance between her and Jason comes full circle, leading to their engagement! If only they could overcome personal inhibitions, a hateful doberman, past rivals and a threat from Jason's spy work!

Junior's Birth & Beyond: A couple of years into their marriage Vanessa became pregnant. She was anxious over multiple scenarios, her growing appetite and mood swings. After her son was born she developed symptoms of postpartum depression and sought medications and therapy. Slowly but surely, her mental health improved, & her anxieties faded away. As of now she has gotten involved with the current Rydell Saga.

Trivia

Vanessa won several awards for her artwork and has them on display everywhere in Odyssey

She is one of my most complex characters, but also one starting to really grow on me mostly out of nostalgia for the series

- Characters that inspired Vanessa's creation are Megara (Disney Hercules), Rei/Sailor Mars (Sailor Moon), Esther (biblical stories), Tzipporah (biblical stories esp. Dreamworks The King of Egypt), Talia Al Ghul, and Elisa Maza (Gargoyles). Other inspos include Maria Von Trapp and Marian Ravenwood.

- Vanessa was made to have a unique female character to contrast Connie and Katrina. Also because I have a soft spot for the Forbidden Love trope (if done right).

- She is the only main character OC of mine that is explicitly religious. She was Catholic and while she converted to Protestant, she still holds on to Catholic values. She is also the only main OC to be a parent as of current.

- Vanessa still visits her old nunnery when she and Jason goes to New England.

- She has bouts of postpartum depression, and takes medication to regulate.

- Her favorite things are the color blue, making her own pigments, and coffee flavored ice cream

Quotes

"Blackgaard already made our lives miserable uncle Edwin! If you leave now you're only giving him more power! You helped mama and I so many times, so it's my turn to return the favor!"

"Connie I'm a nun not a miracle worker."

"If my mother superior saw what I'm doing right now I would've had an early meeting with the Lord!"

"No more secrets. From now on it's just truth and nothing but the truth. Except for my age, don't ask me how old I am."

"Sheesh with all these buttons I'm surprised we didn't destroy Odyssey yet!"

"Jason I know you're worried about the baby but did you have to baby proof the doghouse too?"

"My little Angel! Who's a good girl? Who's a good girl!"

"I can't believe I can still wear this after all these years!?"

"Jason Whittaker you have got to be the most stubborn, reckless, foolhardy man I have ever met, and I wouldn't have it any other way."

"You call it junk I call it avant garde."

"I'm not responsible for my father's sins but I am responsible for mine. But my mother and uncle are in trouble. If not for me then please, do it for them!"

"She doesn't hate you Jason, she hates everyone equally."

"I guess God had a plan in store for me after all. I would've never met such wonderful people."

"Are you going to keep talking or should I start the kissing?"

Pictures

I haven't drawn any references for her yet, so that's going to be on a separate post

[woulddieforperrytheplatypus]

To distract myself from this awful political scene I'm forced to watch for history class: can you give us some obscure side characters (like, Dr. Diminutive, Newton the Gnu, type characters) you absolutely love for no reason? :) <3

Okay I am literally so late because I was doing my chem reading and my writing hw BUT I can’t refuse a chance to scream about my favorite characters (but y’all can refuse to listen to my scream about them so here’s a cut)

First of all, I want you to know that I haven’t even started listing characters yet and this ask has already lead me to spend almost $4 on Agent P’s Guide to Fighting Evil and that’s why I don’t look at the PnF wiki when I’m tired thank you for coming to my TED talk

I almost feel like I’m cheating by starting with Dr. Diminuitve but HOW CAN I NOT LIKE TELL ME THAT LIL MAN IS NOT THE BEST CHARACTER THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN OKAY FUCKIN DO IT JUST KIDDING YOU CAN’T I mean come on, one of his first lines was literally “I don’t have a Napoleon complex; Napoleon had a ME complex!” I had to check the wiki to see if that was his first line ever and I’m very disappointed that it wasn’t and then in OWCA’s Going Down when all the evil scientists were just vibin against the fence and they started doing that West Side Story snappy walk and Diminutive was so into the snaps that he just didn’t fucking move and then he opened his eyes and the rest of the gang was halfway off the screen fjdskhfkalsfhaskl I just really love him okay the more I think about it the more convinced I am that he’s actually my favorite character

Idk if this counts as an obscure side character but he is incredibly underrated so I gotta throw in: LAWRENCE FUCKING FLETCHER. He’s just such a pure and innocent lil dude. He sees the boys doing dangerous shit and he’s just like, “Well that’s happening,” or better yet, “Hey, that looks fun!” I mean, the airplace? The flying carpet? The monster trucks? He genuinely gives zero fucks and I love him for it. I wholeheartedly believe that Lawrence knows Perry is a secret agent -- or at least that he’s smarter than he acts -- but he’s literally so indifferent to everything going on around him that he never mentions it because life is full of fun and exciting things like that and he can’t talk about them all, you know? And he gets so excited about his antiques and he’s so passionate about history and ughhhh I love him 

I was about to say I feel like I’m cheating by using a special but it just occurred to me that that’s lowkey how I’ve prefaced all of these so no, fuck that, I’m using a special and that’s just how it’s gonna be. CARL FROM THE LAND OF INTERNUS WOULD HAVE MADE A MUCH BETTER ENDING THAN THE ACTUAL BOOK HAD AND FUCK YOU MONOGRAM FOR CUTTING CARL OFF BEFORE HE COULD TELL IT HOW HE WANTED TO

These two kinda go hand-in-hand but Bunka Da Bunkaquan and Sweary the Swan are my favorite alternative Perrys. As far as the specials go, Steampunx isn’t one of my favorites, but Sweary the Swan is just... How do you even describe Sweary the Swan? He is life. He is the reason I wake up in the morning. He is the only thing worth living for. And then Bunka Da Bunkaquan is just so fuckin cute and anyone who disagrees needs their eyes checked. And tbh while we’re talking about Tri-Stone area, I gotta throw in a mention of Doofengung no of course I didn’t have to google what his name was what are you talking about because I love how he just stares at the water and every time it drips he just fuckin cackles lmaooo

Okay one more special (maybe) but Doofenshmirtz in The Temple of Juatchadoon brooo I just googled it to make sure I spelled that right and I did woah my power is unmatched is lowkey my favorite Doofenshmirtz. I don’t know if it’s because I actually like him more than every other Doof or if it’s just because his first scene was with Phineas Ohio Flynn and they knew each other and they had actual interactions throughout the episode and the Doof/Phineas relationship is my favorite underexplored relationship, but Juatchadoon Doof makes the list anyway

The “what did you think, _________ was just going to fall out of the sky?” couple — who 100% deserved that cameo in catu

I’m almost afraid to say this in public, but I actually really like Roger. I was mostly indifferent to him at first, but then Delivery for Destiny happened and I was like wait a minute, why am I sleeping on his man who literally orders boxes just to give to his cat? And once I realized that he was kinda cool, it started sinking in that he was never actually a bad guy. Heinz never even really claimed he was -- if anything, his problem is that Roger isn’t a bad guy, and everyone in Gimmelshtump and Danville knows it. And I gotta give Roger credit for not being too harsh on his brother, because yeah, he can be a little stuck up (I’m looking at you, stupid golf game), but you can’t really blame him for thinking he’s better than Heinz, you know? But at least he’s not a dick about it like their parents are. Also the entire latter half of this paragraph was me trying to find a way to work in the other part of that scene with the cat box and it didn’t work so I’m just gonna tack it on to the end because this isn’t an essay for English class and I can do that lmao. Paul mentions that he just delivered something to a Heinz Doofenshmirtz, and Roger is like 😬 because let’s be real, no one wants to be represented by the type of dude to try to juice City Hall, but he’s obviously not going to say that because he’s still a respectful dude, so he’s just like “Charming... man... isn’t he...” and he’s literally so uncomfortable and it cracks me up every time but also it’s lowkey kinda wholesome because Heinz may make it his life mission to embarrass his brother but Roger doesn’t reciprocate. but I accidentally discovered a few weeks ago that John O’Hurley is a raging Trump supporter so I gotta dock points for that one

In the same vein, Paul the delivery guy. What more do I have to say?

If my love of Roger didn’t turn the world against me, this one probably will, but I’m going to say it loud and proud anyway. I LOVE PETER THE PANDA. He’s just??? so??? cute??? Like when he was tearing apart Doof’s inator and he was just... actually no scratch that I need pictures for this because I can’t explain this in words

THIS IS NOT EITHER OF THE PICTURES I WAS LOOKING FOR BUT LOOK AT THIS LITTLE GUY OH MY GOD

Peter really said “this bitch empty, YEET!”

okay but the ones I was actually looking for are...

I mean, how can you not find him adorable? And don’t even get me started on his relationship with Perry because Meapless in Seattle was just... B R O Perry flew halfway across the country (probably I mean idk where exactly Danville is but they use EST so Seattle is probably halfway across the country?) just to go grab a coffee with him. They went on a lil date at a fancy restaurant I know Dan said it wasn’t a date but he's been wrong in the tiktok comments before which means none of his opinions are canon lmao. They’re just? So? Cute? I don’t even know what to make of their relationship but I live for it.

And I can’t mention Peter without bringing up his nemesis, who, to be entirely honest, I also don’t know what to make of and he’s mostly on this list because I like the line “How did you get chorus girls in here?” and when I downloaded and cut a bunch of songs that you can download from Google Drive here if you want, I specifically kept that part in because I love it lmao (I do gotta point out tho because it’s been bugging me since I last watched the episode: I don’t think we have any proof that Professor Mystery even exists in the PnF dimension. I had just assumed he did for the longest time, but that entire episode takes place in a dimension where Lawrence is a polar bear. Who knows what other differences there are?)

I love all the grandparents and I don’t even have an explanation they’re just all adorable

Okay I know I said no more specials but TECHNICALLY at2d isn’t a special; it’s a movie. I am physically incapable of not brining up the muffin time Normbot and the “I use aggression to mask my insecurites” Normbot.

While we’re talking about Norm, his old head would 100% swear all the fucking time if it wasn’t a kids’ show and i gotta respect it

Dan Povenmire does one line for a dude named Vinnie in Mission Marvel and off the top of my head I don’t remember who he is but it was the beginning of the episode and I think (?) it was during the New York scene and he does it in the Vinnie Dakota voice long before Dakota was even a concept (I’m assuming) so he gets a mention

Jerry the Platypus gives me Paper Jam Dipper vibes and they are both valid as fuck (the fucked up Doof copy is not valid as fuck tho we’re gonna pretend he didn’t exist)

Don is literally the best part of Where’s Pinky and I’m not just saying that because I’ve been watching Whose Line for years and I was super excited to see Wayne Brady in the credits (and the fact that he was also in both the quarantine rap and catu makes me incredibly happy)

Ooh I almost forgot OWCA Files existed but Harry the Hyena playing the trumpet and the subsequent “you’re gonna be wearing that in a minute” is the best part of OWCA Files and tbh just Doof, Perry, and Harry could have carried an entire series by themselves (though I do also love Karen and Maggie)

WAIT A SECOND THE BUG TRIO FJDSAHFLKSAJD I was trying to pick a favorite last time I watched OWCA Files and every time one of them spoke they were my new favorite like I lowkey thought their plotline was boring but the characters themselves were hilarious

WAIT ANOTHER SECOND HOW DID I GET THIS FAR INTO THE LIST WITHOUT MENTIONING MONTY HOLY SHIT I’M SUCH A FAKE FAN BUT I LOVE MONTY OKAY HE IS LITERALLY JUST OZ FROM BTVS EXCEPT MONTY AND VANESSA HAVE BETTER CHEMISTRY THAN OZ AND WILLOW AND NO I WILL NOT BE ACCEPTING CRITICISM

Wait I forgot Vlorkel too omfg these two belong way higher on the list but Vlorkel is the love of my life (and I lowkey wish she had met Steve the giant chameleon because they would have become best friends)

I wanna keep going but it’s currently 1:45 in the morning (this is why I’ve been avoiding asks during the day: I get way too into them and spend a solid hour and a half on them and I’d never get any schoolwork done lmao) and it’s far from the first time I’ve stayed up this late but I figured it was fine because I have no classes tomorrow but it occurred to me like four seconds ago that I DO HAVE A CLASS TOMORROW SHIIIIT I had an anatomy exam on Tuesday during my usual class time (which if you read my tags you might have known about because I was having an existential crisis over it) so he moved our class tomorrow excePT IT’S NOT TOMORROW IT’S TODAY IT’S LITERALLY IN LESS THAN SEVEN HOURS FUCKING HELL I GOTTA GO TO BED ASAP

[tortoisesshells]

⭐️ for the director’s cut asks!

Nellie did not bring up brother John’s letter with Aunt B, though she knew she ought to have. There was a little bit of greed in it: she hadn’t gotten such a wad of paper in some time now, and even if much of it was a report, it was her John in there. John, who she hadn’t seen since before her marriage – John, who’d been lost until Captain Treat came home one July with a broad smile and slim letter to “Mrs. Elinor Coggeshall Treat” in a rolling, familiar hand:

Nora! (he wrote) You shld have written, you wicked Girl – never mind you didn’t know where I was – you shld have thrown a Letter into the Sea for me to find! Am I to learn such News from drunk Sailers in Nassau public Houses? Your Husband cheats at Cards you will be Interested to know, which I suspect is Your Doing.

And so on.

This letter was not so joyful. There was the old nickname – only John and her late mother had ever called her that – and then a bad-tempered oath – and then:

Customs and Duties, Chapter 6

John Coggeshall’s been one of those characters who invites themselves into the narrative and makes themselves quite comfortable, until you can’t imagine the damn thing without them - there was a John Coggeshall in the first draft outline, but he was pretty much playing the role that Peter Coggeshall, the self-righteous (but perhaps has a point) brother in Newport, plays in this version. In between the outline drafts, John came out of a need to have a counterbalance to the Bendishes on Nellie’s outlook and connections. Where the Bendishes are always pulling Nellie towards respectability and acquiescence to imperial order, John’s far more cavalier about and critical of law and order. 

John’s letter to Nellie had to do three things: First and most importantly, it had to tell Nellie more about Norrington’s reputation/history in the Caribbean; Second, it had to shade in more about Nellie’s history that isn’t apparent from her life as the respectable Widow Treat in Boston, that pave the way for later revelations about Nellie’s sympathies; Third, it had to establish parts of John’s history and worldview that will affect the way he relates to his sister and her current problems, since he’s only been mentioned once before now. And I had a blast doing it, not the least because 18th century spelling and capitalization are fantastically expressive, and John’s done pretty well for himself for someone who Nellie describes as not having had much education.

Where John’s concerned, when he’s first mentioned two chapters before, it’s by Hendricks - who describes him as quite happy with the last Governor of the Bahamas throwing his hands up and going back to England, and as someone who benefits by a lax enforcement of law and order (much like his sister). Here, Nellie remembers that she hasn’t seen him since before her marriage in 1726 (and later, she’ll recall that their father threw John out of the house and family, for reasons as yet undiscussed in narrative). His first words on page are irreverent and he wastes no time in yanking Nellie’s chain, using an old nickname that only two people ever called her by. John provides useful information about a number of things: he gives and overview of Norrington’s hitherto illustrious career, he explicitly describes how Norrington’s engagement ended and that it was related to “an act of mercy for some brigand”, he dismisses stories about Barbossa’s cursed crew. John’s also the first character to to address and criticize, even in passing, the brutal realities of European colonization in the Caribbean and the Americas; it’s not until later in this chapter that Nellie expresses any opinions on the subject, which is that she refuses to marry a man involved in slave trading & that she doesn’t think that highly of herself for making some of her money shipping sugar and molasses. So: John’s living a very different life than his sister is, and it’s his introduction to the narrative that both provides her with an ally and partner in the Caribbean, as well as begins raising some limited moral questions.

John’s letter also fills in Nellie’s backstory a little more - John liked her husband Samuel off the bat, Nellie cheats at cards, and John apparently thinks she has a reckless streak. This last isn’t supposed to jibe with what we’ve seen of Nellie so far - she’s been pretty careful, all told, with only a few outbursts of sarcasm here and there; it’s a little more fitting that she cheats at cards, I think. And I know it’s a throw-away line, but I did intend that very few people call Nellie the same thing to be significant - John calls her “Nora”; her late husband called her “Nellie” and variants; her Bendish relatives call her “Elinor”. Nellie’s very much defined by how successfully she can adapt herself to difficult situations, so I wanted there to be some more obvious representation of that in-narrative. Also of note: there’s a throw-away bit about Nellie’s late husband and “ague” - at least hinting at how Samuel died, since that’s been avoided so far.

Lastly, plot-wise, John dumps a lot of information about Norrington in Nellie’s lap, some of which answers earlier questions about his history - yes, Norrington’s engagement ended badly; yes, it had something to do with letting an as-yet unnamed pirate go free, which stuck him very firmly in the Admiralty’s black books (despite us learning that he does have family influence which should raise some questions for Nellie about what the hell is going on there); yes, Norrington (while a reasonable man who John judges to be less cruel of capricious than other representatives of British authority he’s dealt with) absolutely is a danger to her smuggling concerns and John emphatically doesn’t believe she should risk it. John attributes at least part of Norrington’s meteoric rise - going from Lieutenant to Commodore in eight years, canonically before his 30th birthday - to surviving where other prominent (and IRL) officers in the Caribbean died of illness, so apparently he’s got “unkillable” except by Bootstrap Bill going for him. There’s a few references to the Anglo-Spanish War of 1727-1729, which would have been the start of Norrington’s career in the Caribbean god my canon chronology is messy; there’s a reference to Saint-Martin/Sint Maarten which only exists because DMTNT made the inexplicable choice to describe it as a British colony. I suppose you could interpret John’s letter as blaming Norrington for the in-canon British takeover of what ought to be a French/Dutch colony? I hadn’t intended that but in retrospect it kind of seems like it.

[send a ⭐ for director’s commentary on fanfic]

[queen-of-deans-booty]

Pac-Man Fever: Final Part

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~2.4k

Warnings: canon angst and violence

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Supernatural. All credit goes to their respective owners. Any and all comments on these are appreciated.

You find your own way back to the Bunker where Sam and Dean are waiting eagerly for you. You give them the basic rundown but there is nothing more to give than that.

"So, no chance of a recovery?" Sam asks.

"No, and I don't think Charlie has accepted that. Did you two find something?"

"I think so. There was a John Doe from nine years ago. The original coroner wanted the body sent to the CDC, but the coroner's new assistant 'accidentally' ordered the body to be burned."

"New assistant?"

"Jennifer O'Brien."

"Son of a bitch."

"CDC never heard from Jennifer this time either. She faked the reports and burned the bodies to cover her tracks."

"So, why does she get sloppy again after nine years and start leaving the bodies where they can be found?" Dean asks.

"We need to go ask her. Where could she be?" you wonder.

"According to this, she owns two pieces of property in town. One two-bedroom house about ten minutes from here, and an abandoned shipping warehouse."

"Can you guess where she's at now?" you scoff.

Sam is forced to stay back again, but he doesn't complain this time. He knows it's useless if he tries to go up against you, and the kids seem to like spending time with their uncle. It takes thirty minutes to get to the abandoned shipping warehouse since you believe that's the place Charlie is being held.

You use your magic to break in, and you don't have to go far to look for Charlie. She is in the main room, tied to a chair with a blue handprint on her arm.

"Charlie! Hey!" You rush over to her and shake her, but she doesn't wake up. "Hey. Charlie."

"Figures I'd attract hunters here."

You turn to see Jennifer, and she lets her hair down for this fight. She rolls up her sleeves so she can use her powers on you, but you're not going to let her (as if she could). Dean stays where Charlie is, and you charge at the woman, knocking her down with your magic easily.

She gets back up and grabs your leg just as her tattoos appear on her skin and her eyes flash dark blue. She's confused as to why you're not falling for her charm, but all you do is smirk.

"Sapphire Witch beats Djinn," you say as your own eyes shine bright blue.

Before you have a chance to inflict damage, Dean rushes up to Jennifer and uses the silver blade to kill her. Jennifer gasps as the light in her eyes dies out, and she crumbles to the floor. Without her in your way, you rush over to Charlie to try and help her.

"Do you have the antidote?" you ask.

Dean gives it to her, but she still isn't waking up. When Dean was under a Djinn's spell when Sam escaped the Cage, he got an antidote for the poison. It worked on him instantly, but Charlie isn't waking up.

"What the hell's going on?"

"I don't know. Jennifer is a different Djinn, so maybe she needs a different antidote?"

"Charlie?" you ask and touch her forehead. "She's burning up, Dean. She's going to die if we don't save her."

"Okay, Djinn poison puts your brain in something like a feedback loop while your blood boils, right? If the antidote didn't break the loop, then maybe we can find a way to break it from the inside. I mean, if Djinn take you to your happy place, and your happy place is like a dream--"

"African Dream Root," you and Dean say at the same time. "Let me go in. I can get her out. Please."

"Fine."

Dean still has the ingredients for this kind of spell, and for once, you're not excited for a drink. It looks like ass, but you take the shot anyway once all the ingredients are in. The only way you'll be able to get into her dreams is if you're asleep, and you're not tired right now. By the time you get to sleep, she will be dead.

You hate to ask this of Dean, but it needs to be done.

"Knock me out."

"Excuse me?"

"I need to go to sleep fast, and this is the only way that it's going to happen."

"I'm not going to hit you."

"Don't be a fucking baby and punch your wife in the face!" Dean stares at you with an unreadable look. "I won't hold it against you. My magic will heal me of any injuries, and I'm not pregnant anymore. It's no big deal. Punch me in the face."

Dean hates this, but he listens to you anyway. He gives you a mean right hook, and you fall back as you're sucked into the darkness.

When you wake up, you're inside some hospital of some kind. You're wearing what looks like a nurses' uniform from the 1950s. Where the hell are you? Is Charlie here? Why is she dreaming of a military-looking hospital?

There is a record player in the corner of the room playing ominous music, but you ignore it as you go exploring. The floor is littered with dead bodies, but you don't know what killed them or if it's still here.

"What the hell is this?" you ask yourself. There is a newspaper on the desk you pass by. It's dated July 12, 1951. "1951?"

Someone growls from behind you, and you turn to see a shadow heading your way. When it gets too close, it splits into two which means there are two people coming after you. They come around the corner, and it turns out to be two vampire soldiers. Your eyes shine blue as you prepare yourself to fight them, but someone else already has plans for this.

The elevator behind you opens and Charlie steps out with a shotgun in her hand. She shoots both vampires easily, but you're more concerned with her outfit. She is wearing a badass black suit with a black eyepatch.

"Come with me if you wanna live." You raise your eyebrows at her. "I've always wanted to say that. What're you doing in my dream?"

"You were attacked by a Djinn. The coroner, Jennifer, remember? Djinn usually send you to your happy place. No judgment here, but you got a really strange sense of happiness, Charlie."

"Jennifer said that her kind feeds off fear. This isn't my happy place. It's a recurring nightmare of mine."

"What is this?"

"It's a videogame."

"Wait a second, you're telling me that this whole thing is a video game? What game?" you ask.

"It was called The Red Scare. A first person shooter against super-soldier vampires. I copied it off a game company's server before it was finished, reprogrammed it to reflect my flamingly liberal politics and then I released it for free. Then, they tracked me down and had me arrested. I was twelve."

"You've been on the run ever since," you nod in understanding.

"How do we get out of here?"

"I don't know. We gave you the Djinn antidote, but it didn't take. Dean killed the Djinn."

"Both of them?"

"Excuse me? There's two of them? Dean's up there right now. We have to get out of here."

Charlie leads you down the bloody hallway where two more vampires come. She uses her shotgun on one of them while you slice off the other's head with your magic.

"Look, I don't know how long I've been out, but I've been through this level a thousand times already. Every time I beat the level and save the patients, I get reset back to the beginning, only there's less weapons and the vampires are faster. It's an infinite loop. Like Pac-Man without level 256."

"Wait, what patients?"

Three more vampires come, and this time, it's easier to take them out despite them being more than before.

Charlie leads you to one of the patients' rooms. You slide back one of the curtains while Charlie barricades both of you into the room. On the bed is Gertude, her mother.

"I know who this is," you say as Charlie comes over with a book in her hand.

"What are you talking about?"

"When you went missing, me and Dean found your little crash pad. We saw the payments that you make for her. So, I went and visited your mom, looking for you."

"She's why I'm in Kansas. I sneak into the hospital whenever I can, and I just... I read to her," she says sadly. "She used to read me to sleep at night when I was a kid. She'd read me 'The Hobbit'." It's hard for her to say this without tears, but she manages. "She's the reason I love the stuff I love."

"I'm sorry for your loss," you sigh.

"She's not gone," Charlie says as if you insulted her.

She yanks the curtain closed so she doesn't have to see her mother anymore. You turn away and open another curtain, but instead of a hospital bed, it's a crib. You know who is in there the second your eyes land on it. You can't bear to look inside.

"Who is in there?"

"My son," you whisper. "My son who died before he was born."

"Is this my nightmare or yours?"

Suddenly, vampires start to try and break down the door into the patient room where you are.

"This is it, the boss battle. Come on, we gotta save the patients," Charlie says, getting her gun ready.

"Charlie, you have to stop. You said we're stuck in a loop, and that loop is only going to continue. However, you're dying out there in the real world, and I might be too. Dean is alone trying to bring us back so you need to break the loop."

"Okay. How?"

"You gotta stop playing."

"What?! No, no. We gotta save them. Nut up, Winchester." A vampire punches through the door, but you use your magic to kill him. "See? You can't stop either."

"Charlie, listen to me. This poison is designed to put your mind into an endless cycle while your insides turn to mush, okay? Its fuel is fear. Now call me crazy, but I think the only way to break the cycle is to let go of the fear and stop playing the game."

"You don't know that."

She shoots another vampire trying to get in, but you take her shoulders in your hands and make her face you.

"Your fear is not to stop playing the game. It's not of the vampire soldiers. It's not of this game. You're afraid of losing her, Charlie. She's already gone."

Charlie doesn't want to believe that her mother is gone, but you have to convince her to let go of her fear.

"I didn't want to believe my dad was gone, either. I know you don't want to live in a world where your mom is not there, but by keeping her in this hospital, you're only hurting her. It's time for her to move on. It's the only way she can start to heal because it's the only way for you to start to heal."

"I can't," she whispers as tears fall from her eyes.

"My dad should have never gotten shot. I was the one who killed Dick's friends, and then I used the last of my Borax on Dick. He killed my dad because of what I did. Sometimes I feel like it was my fault that he got shot, but you did not kill your mom."

"No, you don't understand. You don't understand!" she cries. "I was at a sleepover, and I got scared. I called my parents to come and get me. They should never have been driving that night."

"It wasn't your fault."

"I just wanna tell her that I'm sorry and that I love her," she sobs. "I just need her to hear it again. I just need her to hear that one more time, but she can't. She can't."

"She knows, Charlie. Parents always know," you say, letting your tears fall. You hope Robert knows how much you love him, whenever he may be. "You have to let her go."

You let your arms fall at your sides, and Charlie looks at the door. The vampires continue to get in, but the minute Charlie drops her shotgun, they disappear; the hallway is empty. Charlie walks over to the bed where her mom is, and when she slides the curtains open, her mom is gone. Even your son is gone, but you know you're not ready to let him go just yet.

This is not your nightmare, it's hers.

You close our eyes to take a moment, but when you open them, you're back in the warehouse. Your jaw is sore, but you don't blame Dean for that one.

"Thank God. Are you okay?"

"Damn, you didn't need to punch me that hard." You get up just as Charlie wakes up. "Charlie?"

She runs into your arms, and you hug her as she sobs into your chest. You look at Dean with tears in your own eyes. You'll tell him what happened later, but right now, you need to be there for Charlie.

There is one more thing Charlie needs to do before she can leave Kansas, and it's not something she's going to like. She doesn't need to be in the Bunker anymore, so everyone is outside ready to say goodbye to her.

"Thanks for saving my bacon," she says to you and Dean.

"Anytime, your Highness," Dean grins.

"You know you're gonna be okay, right?" Charlie says to Sam. "Those books portray you as one tough cookie. If anyone can get through the trials, Sam, it's you."

"Thanks. You know, you really should come back and dig through our archives. You are definitely a Woman of Letters."

"I like the sound of that," Charlie grins.

Sam gives her a hug before retreating back into the Bunker.

"Thanks for stopping by, Charlie. What's next for you?"

"I'm gonna go to the hospital. Gotta let go, right?" she asks, looking at you with tears in her eyes. "What about you? Are you gonna let it go?"

"One day," you say truthfully.

"I love you both."

"I know," Dean says.

Dean pulls Charlie into a hug and kisses her temple. It's Dean's turn to retreat back into the Bunker, leaving only you two outside.

"When you visit your mom, you tell her everything you want her to know. Because she's listening. She will know, and then you let her go and start to heal."

"Only if you let it in and face Robert."

You pull her into a hug for the final time. You hear what she is saying, but you can't do that just yet. You pull away from her and watch as she gets into her car and leaves. You head back inside the Bunker, but instead of joining Sam and Dean at the table, you head to your kids' rooms. Joanna and Maryann are both sleeping, but you just want to see them.

You stop at Robert's door and hove your hand over the doorknob. Your hand shakes, but you can't bring yourself to open the door. Charlie is right, but you can't face him right now. You wipe your tears away and head to your kids' rooms... the kids who need you now more than ever.

x

Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[mantra4ia]

The Rise of Skywalker: Expanded Reaction Episode II (spoilers ahead)

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I must preface my opinions with the one central point of view that has never wavered: you can be a Star Wars fan and a film critic simultaneously.

Dislikes (big and small)

So in this new trilogy, does everyone know all about the secretive Sith? No one knows where Exogol-Sith-home-world is without a wayfinder. Yet some random spice traders know who the Sith are and that they have a runic language, but nearly the entire Jedi culture disappeared until the tale of Luke Skywalker revived it. This dislike is not isolated to RoS, but it's so odd considering that in the prequels and OT, the Emperor did not put the knowledge of the Sith right out in the open.

Too much telling, not enough doing. I detest plot reveals via exposition, because a majority of the time explain-y dialogue is far inferior to natural conversation. But for two-thirds of the movie, I couldn't settle into the world because I felt like I was being told a Star Wars story instead of being in it. Case point 1: Poe's argument that Rey is training instead of being on the front line to try to verbally push the narrative that she's not just naturally too-gifted. Case point 2: Explaining Force heal to the audience (via droid) after its already been demonstrated as if we can't interpret how it works. AND YET we get no planet captions? Who's advice are you listening to? Disney could spell everything else out in dialogue when it was unnecessary and borderline condescending to audience, but when it mattered you couldn't give us planetary captions so I blinked and missed the fact that we opened with Kylo Ren kicking a** and taking names on freaking Mustafar! That was a great scene. Epic. Kylo’s on a mission, and there ain’t no questing here - it’s as fast and direct as the throat punch. He’s tired of being jerked around, he’s in a position of power to demand answers, and he’s going for the head of the Emperor, all while I was like...was that Mustafar, that was Mustafar, except now we just left Mustafar. DAMMIT.

We see the repair on Kylo's mask but not the repair of Luke's saber, or Rey building her own saber? TLJ broke the most iconic lightsaber and RoS just fixed it off screen (see point above)? I suppose this shouldn't be shocking since they introduced Palpatine IN THE CRAWL, but it was disappointing.

Did like the opening crawl, did not like how it was used as Palpatine’s business card. I think my exact words were: did they really, what kind of movie am I here for?

Leia's death. I don't buy for a second that establishing a Force visitation with Kylo across the galaxy was enough to kill her. TLJ (in my opinion) demonstrated enough to establish her as a powerful force user, which Rise of Skywalker doubled down on using the flashback training scene. So no, I don't think the exertion of it was enough to take her life unless it was inferred that she either wasn't recovered from the events of TLJ or that the Force sensitive impact of Luke's death was taking an extended toll on her, or that she was somehow already overdoing it trying to use other Force abilities behind the scene to protect the resistance/ reach out to Luke. I understand that with Carrie Fisher's (rest in peace) sudden death it would make certain practical sense for Leia to die if fitting, but put all that explanatory dialogue to some good use for once and build up tension so that Leia's death makes sense.

Luke's Force ghost being underutilized. From the beginning I didn't have a problem with Luke's conclusion in Last Jedi (minus a subtle eyeroll at the noble sacrifice trope being easily confused with honor) because it doesn't bother me whether a character is living or not as long as they are still growing. I thought, I hoped, I legitimately put money on the fact the Rise of Skywalker would use Luke in the training of Rey or the haunting of Ben and that he would play an active Force ghost role. He was used for damage control. That was infuriating.

Han Solo. I recognize the irony of this moment being in both my likes and gripes. While I liked seeing Han bestow Ben forgiveness, even if he was just a memory and not a ghost, it quickly became a hollow sort of nostalgia. FULL POST HERE.

Why in the world is there an arbitrary 16-hour frame before the Exogol fleet strike? The Last Jedi gave us a slow space chase and now what, the executive team thinks that the polar opposite is the answer? So you already have to wrap of an entire saga in a 2-3 hour real world runtime, and you've decided to amp up the pace and cram that into 16 hours of Star Wars time just for funsies while the Emperor broadcasts propaganda to kill morale? Rushed, forced, we just spent a chunk of the movie at Fyre Festival in a space desert, don't tell me there wasn't more time to allocate for imminent doom.

So essentially, we had a StarKiller base in TFA, mini-Death Star canon in TLJ, and a thousand Death Star planet killing cannons on Star Destroyers? LET that part of THE PAST DIE!

The execution of Leia training Rey. The idea was wonderful...in practice you can really tell the dialogue was built around her, and the scenes suffer for it. Execution, for the sake of preserving the character Carrie built, may have been accomplished by Tricia or Joely Fisher or her friend Meryl Streep as a way to still honor her.

A case for triple / quadruple convenience. Star Wars has always been a universe of happy coincidences, but Rise of Skywalker takes them to new extremes to the point it smacked me out of the movie. Every movie has it's own unique level of “good faith reserves” after which point plot conveniences elicit “you've got to be kidding” reactions. This happened to me during the setup of Force healing. FULL POST HERE.

Execution of Finn's character. Apart from his force-sensitivity and connection to the trooper defectors, I think Finn's plot regressed in this film each time he had to follow in Rey's wake every time she went solo, (going after Rey in the sciff, yelling Rey in the Death Star battle, Rey I have something to tell you). I thought that we had gotten past this in TLJ when Finn found purpose in the Resistance and something worth fighting for, but old habits die hard. 

Scavenger hunt questing and the damn Sith Dagger. If part of this was in the crawl, that might have been good with me. I get that Rey's a scavenger – it's good to see her in her element like TFA, climbing through the Death Star at the culmination – but it's far too time consuming to do the double header of dagger/wayfinder and coincidental. She could have been standing anywhere on Kef Bir, the oceanic moon of Endor, but she happened to be standing exactly where she needed to be with no reference to force power, and the tides hadn't moved any part of the wreck and the topography hadn't changed at all for the protractor on the dagger to work?! I’m a nerd about mathematical, logical tools, but they don't work well in a Sith alchemy plot! Even when we try for logic, the convenience appears, which could have been passable if I still had good faith. In the words of John Mulaney, “you spent it already?!”

Nostalgia aside, where are the stakes? They're trapped in a sand cave / wait, no they're not. They're being hunted through Fyre Festival and they don't have a get away ship / oh yeah they do, and its fully fueled, parked in the open, not stripped for parts. There are about five different “fake” deaths where the tension releases so fast, and two real deaths of spies that should have been given beats but were skimmed over: Chewie's dead / but no it was the wrong transport, 3PO's peril / never mind we've got backups, Zori wants to turn Rey in for bounty / then they have the quickest fight in Star Wars and are on good terms. Instead of taking big risks and getting reward, this film banked on unraveling the plot by the flip of a two-headed coin and settling for surprise “Oh, they did wot now?” instead of awe.

“Retconning” The Last Jedi / plucking it out of the timeline. Rise of Skywalker, in many ways, feels like a direct sequel to The Force Awakens. Direct slaps to TLJ include but not limited to: Holdo maneuver “one-in-a-million,” and Luke plucking Rey's saber from the fire. “A Jedi’s weapon deserves more respect (except when its Kylo’s),” and Luke lamenting about going into exile as a mistake. Concepts that could have been accepted, some even verbatim foregone conclusions from TLJ, were it not for terrible execution clearly framed at goodwill appeasement.

So, the Knights of Ren were window dressing? They just follow Kylo around like bouncers and when he turned to the light, they turned on him? A) Like the praetorian guard for Snoke, they are supposed to be loyal to Kylo and if they’re not we should get to see that, B) they just made Ben look boss as he took them out. Epic saber fight, lackluster idea, especially when the Knights were so speculated on and could have had mythos. Take them out of the film and put Luke's ghost in. Problem solved.

Rey as a Palatine / OP (Overpowered) Rey. All the one-ups that ensued between Rey and her grandfather. No thank you. I don't mind that she has power and is very naturally and diversely talented, don't let lineage play a factor. It was vastly more meaningful when she was ‘ordinary.’ I could go into a whole dedicated post on this.

Hux as a spy? No, I can't imagine that's what TFA set him up for. Interesting concept - I don’t want you to win, I want Kylo to lose - terrible setup. The Last Jedi did it better, Benicio del Toro is one of the only things I'll give Canto Byte credit for.

What even is the point of Zori apart from a character used to deliver a plot point of security clearance? She is very much used to prop up Poe's story. I like the idea of the character, I don't dig her role, and even more so I don’t like how the destruction of her planet first was used to fish for emotion. Invest more in Poe's struggles ascending to acting general.

Palpatine overall, from his intro in the crawl to his motives – He's such a cool, larger then life character, it shamefully never feels like we JJ knows what he wants out of the Emperor as his villain. Palpatine's motivation for decades was the dark, unnatural Sith ability to live forever sought by his master Plagueis before him, yet in RoS he's so utterly content to say “kill me so that you can ascend to Empress and I can flow through you (possess you)” – and then the discovery that draining the “Dyad in the Force” can regenerate him changes the plan immediately. Principally its an interesting idea using him as a puppet master to tie *all* the trilogies together, but for me it didn't work as nothing else about his character felt cohesive. And then when his own Force lightning is blasted at him, hasn't he learned to stop using it (throwback: Mace Windu) and pick up a saber and fight. Fool my once, shame on you, fool me twice and I'll cut you down. Wouldn't it be so great if, despite his wizened state, he still had latent combat skills? We were sooo robbed of that opportunity.

“Undermining” Anakin’s arc as the chosen one. I don't think bringing in Palpatine undoes Darth Vader's sacrifice – because Anakin still brought peace and balance to the Force when he sent Papatine back to the shadows. Balance restored by nature is not a permanent state, so it makes sense that the balance Anakin brought would eventually be challenged - but it does take away from the satisfaction of his story, especially considering that we do not see him return in physical form.

I get the "Be with me" use of Force ghost voices from all the Star Wars mediums. It was teed up right in the very beginning of the training montage. But you’re STAR WARS, you are making history. Go big, take a risk, PUT THE FORCE GHOSTS ON SCREEN (or at least a few from the central saga)! Give me Obi-Wan, Anakin, Yoda, maybe Mace, Luke, and Leia bestowing their energy on Rey, or go home! I mean my goodness, the Emperor had Snoke clones, but they were just sitting around as props in tank. If you wanted to go really big you could get all the clones of his main Sith disciples on screen (Snoke, Maul, Dooku), and have him force drain them to illustrate Sidious matching the power of the Force ghosts. But instead Disney played it safe.

Rey’s return to Tatooine and taking on the name Skywalker. FULL POST HERE with better options than appropriating the name Skywalker, especially considering that the plot does plenty to fulfill the film’s marquee during the Final Order Battle on Exogol when Rey embodies the Force of the Jedi and they will her to RISE. Taking on the name by contrast seems to trivialize via overkill what was delivered on (imperfectly, but powerfully).

The death of Ben Solo / “the redemption”: This depends on largely on what how you define and merit redemption. I can see why some loved it and others hated it – if you define redemption as “Kylo turned good after all that universe wrecking carnage and now he has access to light side force ability?!” then I can see where you didn't like or want his redemption arc, and might be satisfied with his death as a conclusion. If, like me, you didn't see Kylo's redemption not as the act of turning good but rather turning to face his own reflection / the thing he most feared – himself – exactly like Rey – and that's what allowed him access to the light side abilities to heal, that's fascinating as h***.  My gripe is I don't think Ben needed to die for the redemption to work or as a way to finish his arc. (FULL POST HERE) Again, why another Luke-themed noble demise? It could have worked for Luke’s character because Rise of Skywalker follows TLJ and gives you room to breath and play. But there’s nothing after this episode for Kylo in the same way.

So peace was created by defeating Palpatine and his fleet? Nah. First of all, Rey killed Darth Sidious exactly like he “wanted” her to and yet he didn't possess her as promised, while an order of Sith stand around watching– okay, was the Emperor really that attune in his Force Cognizance that he expressed with full confidence to his followers “whatever happens, the ritual will be complete. Don't move, sit back, enjoy the show”? And there's still the fragmented First Order (see the previous point above). Not every First Order officer and ship were loyal to or trusting of the Emperor and his comrade General Pryde, so it would stand to reason they didn't all heed the call to the final order and join the fray. What happens to them now that their Supreme Leader (Kylo) abdicated and then died? Yes, they are far fewer in number and they no longer have the firepower of Exogol behind them so they retreat into that shadows and regroup like opposition always does. I don't believe for a second that they all gave up or were defeated by the groundswell of Resistance. And now we are right back to where Return of the Jedi left us almost beat for beat.

Initial Reaction *** Episode I *** Episode III

[bro-stoevsky]

VICTORIAN PARLOR GAMES IN THE WARDROOM WITH FITZ AND VES. Thank you.

I accidentally wrote this as extremely Fitzier for SOME reason, because Victorian parlor games while elaborate, are mainly excuses either to (1) kiss people (2) eat cotton or (3) crawl around on the floor, and the expedition is all out of cotton and floor space. 

—

“Oh Francis, do stay,” said Fitzjames.

Crozier, halfway out of his seat after an interminable meal aboard Erebus, froze like a prey animal that had attracted the interest of a hawk.

“I regret I cannot,” he said, thinking with fond longing of the trek across the ice, of a nightcap with Blanky and his bed and his dog at the end of it. “I have duties on my own ship.”

“The last time we officers of Erebus had to entertain ourselves alone,” Fitzjames went on, “we played Proverbs with verses from the Bible and it was – begging your pardon, Sir John – a gruesome business. An ignominious rout.”

“I admit,” said Sir John with a magnanimity Crozier was beginning to find insufferable, “that I often forget my fluency in scripture is hardly common.”

“Hardly common! It is a fluency, sir, which would surprise no one in a doctor of divinity or a canon professor, but which one is astonished to find in an explorer,” said Fitzjames admiringly.

Crozier wondered if he could claim he was seasick in an icebound ship.

“Humbug, James,” said Sir John, but he smiled as he lit his pipe, as pleased as he always was to be flattered. It had been different before, in Van Dieman’s Land when Sir John’s face had lightened to hear a kind word. Back then, Crozier had been pleased to say them.

“The rest of us unfortunately have a deplorable command of the ecclesiastical dialect,” Fitzjames continued, as if he didn’t see that Crozier was still standing above his chair, unable to break into the conversation even to excuse himself. “One night some years ago Henry and I had occasion to dine with a minor canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The fellow introduced himself and stated his office, and Henry – his manner as sober and serious as ever you have seen it – Henry said to this unfortunate: ‘A minor cannon? How many pounds is that then, and what type of shot?’”

The room erupted into laughter, and even Crozier huffed a little, amusement taking him by surprise. He bit down on it immediately.

Lieutenant Le Vesconte had to catch his breath before he replied: “I say he spoke uncommon quiet!”

Fitzjames raised a glass in agreement, explaining to the rest of them: “For a graduate of gunnery school ‘uncommon quiet’ describes the full range of civilized conversation. HMS Excellent is not called HMS Say Again? for nothing! But Francis desires me to come to my point – I mark your impatience, sir, and implore you to stay for a game or two. We are a very dreary party on our own, after all we are squashed together all day long with each other.”

“Please, Francis,” said Sir John, his voice sincere as it had been long ago, when they were truly friends. “It has been so long since we have had your company.”

In the end that statement, true as it was, did him in. Crozier raised his hands to the wardroom’s cajoling, awkward in the face of so much honest attention, and took his seat.

“What shall it be, then?” Sir John asked. “I detect some displeasure with my favorite way of playing Proverbs?”

“Snap-dragon!” suggested Sergeant Bryant of the marines, to the hearty cheers of his fellow officers.

“A charade,” said Lieutenant Gore.

“A tableau vivant of naval officers around a table,” said Dr. Stanley.

“A tableau vivant of my making the very respectful submission to Dr. Stanley that his idea is dull indeed,” countered Fitzjames.

“Courtiers,” said Lieutenant Fairholme, which made the marines groan.

Apparently the officers of Erebus had all grown bored of a dozen or more common parlor games, but eventually with Sir John’s urging settled on a round of The Minister’s Cat which they adapted to describe the captain’s monkey. They went through the alphabet quickly, accumulating forfeits just as quickly for words that had been used in weeks previous.

Good-natured Gore was obliged to play the learned pig, snuffling up to Dr. Stanley when asked who in their company had the worst temper and – to everyone’s amusement – affecting great confusion between Sir John and Fitzjames when they asked him who was the handsomest. Collins stood on his chair to be posed very poorly as a Grecian statue, and Le Vesconte spelled ‘Constantinople’ backwards so easily he must have made a study of it.

Finally it was Crozier’s turn to pay his forfeit, and after much conspiring among Erebus’s officers it was decided that he would choose one of three signs from Fitzjames, a very eager volunteer. It was a game for happier circumstances and mixed company – the idea was that the gentleman faced a wall while a lady determined the order of three signs: a kiss, a pinch, or a box on the ear. He had played it with Sophia once, over some long afternoon in Hobart, and had won a kiss from her while Ross only got a pinch so ferocious it brought tears to his eyes. 

Crozier sighed. “I choose the first sign,” he said, turning around. The group laughed helplessly for almost a minute and he stood with his arms crossed, facing Fitzjames, who grinned back at him.

“What awful luck,” said Le Vesconte. “That man there pinches like a lobster fighting his way out of the trap. It is a good thing we have the surgeon with us.”

“I do not have any remedy,” Dr. Stanley said archly, “for pinching.”

“Captain Crozier your luck has run from bad to worse,” Le Vesconte said then, “as Dr. Stanley thinks himself above treating even the most calamitous pinching.”

Dr. Stanley gave him an awful glare.

“It is within my prerogative to be merciful,” said Fitzjames, “and to say that we have it wrong, the first sign was in fact the kiss.”

Crozier felt embarrassment burning from his collar to his ears. He hated the whole room for making him the object of their ridicule, and in this way a frozen ship was no different from a London parlor, where Crozier was never popular. Ladies never went out of their way to kiss him. Resolved to endure it, he kept his eyes forward where Fitzjames’s smile had become far kinder, as if he meant this prank as a sincere kindness.

“An odd idea of mercy,” said Crozier, reaching over the table for his glass and downing it. Erebus’s wardroom found this so extremely comical that one of the marines, laughing energetically, overturned his glass of Madeira into his lap.

“Bon courage, Francis,” Fitzjames said, taking hold of Crozier’s shoulders, “and for God’s sake hold still.”

[mariposalass]

Deep Pain, Deep Sorrow

Summary: The day he died the first time has come, and Philip is having nightmares of reliving the events in his mind. It is not really great, not great at all.

Setting: Mari and co.’s house in Daly City, California, present day midnight; Weehawken Dueling Grounds in Weehawken, New Jersey and the Church family house in New York City, New York, November 20-24, 1801.

Notes: Written up in the last minute in commemoration of RL Philip Hamilton’s death by gun dueling on this day 218 years ago. There are Hamilton musical spoilers and mentions of death, guns, & blood loss along with slight mention of alcohol & hate speech against Alexander Hamilton: if you’re not comfortable with any of them, then skip this and finding something more cheerful instead. Although the ending doesn’t end on a sour note though… Also tagging @husband-of-lucoa​ since I’m basing this on a RP we had on Discord with Marina’s old life dilemma before as a main theme.

Tags: character death, mention of guns, salty language, mention of blood and blood loss, existential crisis, Defying Time, Renewed Potential, Hamilton: An American Musical, Hamilton spoilers, implied mention of alcohol, hate speech, George Eacker bashing (if this is a thing), real life history

It all started with a speech, a goddamn speech on the Fourth of July nonetheless. Bloody Eacker had all the nerves to bash his father like that: no respect to the man who had to work hard from a rough life of illegitimacy and having one parent died & another far away to help bringing a nation out of the shackles of Great Britain’s control, in front of a bunch of people wanting him dead literally or otherwise, poor Theo’s figuratively blind and ambitious father included. Surely, if that fool had known the man personally much longer, maybe it have been less abrasive, but no, he was a foolish twat. 4 months had passed since that slanderous speech and he & an old friend, Stephen Price, had confronted him, both younger men being under some alcohol for some reason, in the Park Theater about that rancid work of words. A verbal fight has borne out of this confrontation and the final straw came in the form of that bastard calling him and Stephen ‘rascals’, which had the young men to challenge him in a dueling match.

Back then, most men, even the smartest and most noble of the lot, wouldn’t simply settle things in a calm and logical manner; with pride on the line, they dealt arguments with small death machines, guns loaded with bullets that could spell death to the unfortunate person on the other side. Eacker would take on Price first a day after, then him on the next day. Four shoots were heard across in Weehawken, but no one died that day. The next day came, and it was him against the foolish twat; with some advice from his father, he had started it with a delope, throwing his first shoot, a move that would ultimately cost him life. Eacker had done the same, for a fool like him, it too was a smart move then.

A minute later, neither one dared to make a move, but then, Eacker aimed for him and shot him above the right hip and into the left arm; he did shot back, but the bullet was useless. The fired bullet from Eacker’s gun was lodged to his arm, spasms came in involuntarily. Everyone was wondering and panicking while Eacker was blindly soaking in this false victory, yet he knew that the victory that fool was enjoying is fleeting and was trying his best to remain calm and collected as Death is slowly arriving at his doorsteps and he was bleeding profusely. Soon, word was spread of the duel and he was then rushed to Aunt Angelica and Uncle John’s house in the city center; Angelica, while still shocked by her nephew’s misfortune, wrote that his attitude during this trying time was unbelievably remarkable for a 19 year old nearing Death.

Horrified by the news of what Eacker did to his firstborn son and rocked by anxiety & worry like every responsible caring parent would, Alexander rushed to Dr. Hosack’s home to ask for medical help, only to learn that the good doctor was already ahead of him at the Church residence by this time, staying with his family to recover before heading to his sister in law’s place. By the time he and Eliza reached him, he was paler than the moon itself, his face ashen from the near loss of blood, almost haggard in appearance.

The older Hamilton was in despair, sobbing and clutching Dr. Hosack by the hand & salted tears running down from his watery eyes, and the middle Schuyler sister, pregnant with her final child at 3 months, even more distraught than she would let on. Pulse was faint, but still heard by Alexander, and yet time was running out for his eldest son. They had stayed by his side all the night along, 14 hours and a confession of faith later however, Death has taken Philip Hamilton away from the world and from his family at 5 AM. Only 19 years old.

He had bolted up from his bed after so many flashes running across his mind, waking up screaming and causing his roommate Ahkmenrah to wake up from his slumber as well. His horrified screams could be heard all over the house, alarming everyone trying to get a good night’s rest. The former pharaoh was startled by the stressful look in his friend’s face and checked if he was okay. Philip honestly couldn’t hide how he was feeling, but didn’t explain it to him fully until everyone else went inside their shared bedroom.

Mari has never seen him this stressed out (beside crunch time on news article deadlines and getting confused over modern day things) in the 11 months they have been together, she had sat beside him and sheepishly held onto his hand as a calming measure. Kirby, saddened to see him in the state he was in, flew onto his bed and hugged him by the side of his torso.

“Hey, what’s happening to you, mate?” Harry questioned him, sensing that there must be something that left him this freaked out.

“Yeah, we want to know why,” Kairi chimed in.

“Come on, Philip, there is never a bad thing to admit it,” Mari gently reminded him, “We’re all ears for you.”

“Nightmares, those nightmares of that duel, agh!” he groaned in agony, “I never thought of reliving those awful memories of it all over again. I didn’t expect it to send my family on a downward slope after that. It was horrible to think about it in your sleep.”

“Well, you told us all about it many times for a long time now, still there is no need to hold back just because of some a-hole trying to peg down your dad like that and shoot you in return,” Mari sighed, not knowing what else to say in return and trying to fight back in tears from her eyes.

“Philip, please don’t feel bad about that. I know that it was very foolish of both you and that Eacker guy to try to shoot each other over a speech and just sort those issues out yourselves, but honestly, I didn’t think that it was all your fault,” Issa tried to reassure him, “Besides, he’s already dead and probably regretting that he shouldn’t harass your father with that speech in the first place.”

“Your father sounds like a very important man indeed, Philip,” Ahk pointed out, “You and your siblings must have looked up to him so much. He have done some messed up things in the past like that affair thing, yes, but never a horribly terrible person at all. I would have loved to ask him questions about how he helped out in freeing and growing this nation and independence with several like-minded men.”

“Poyo...” Kirby sniffed in sympathy as he cried.

“Look, Philip dear. The past is the past, we know that we couldn’t turn back the hands of time to stop it from happening, even the Doctor couldn’t stop it in a couple of cases whenever he goes time-traveling. But it doesn’t mean that you should never be defined by those events. You got this second chance in life and you can still enjoy life even more than ever, so you shouldn’t worry about everything the second time around,” Mari calmly reassured her dearest beloved before remembering something similar that had happened to some friends a year ago, “Funny enough, this whole situation you’re in is quite similar to Marina’s case: Dyl’s friends at the Fortress Team found her unconscious by the sea and couldn’t find anyone willing to pick her up and look after her until Dylan and Lucoa (and later Lady Palutena) stepped in and took her into their large family. Even she was struggling with recovering from her past mistakes for some time, but since you came back and befriended her, she doesn’t have to worry too much about them. She still gets nightmares once in a while, but beyond that, she is doing well.”

“Well, I suppose that I should follow her example then?” he meekly asked her and everyone else in the room.

“I don’t see a problem with that, Pip,” Issa smiled back in response, “She was the first person to reach out to you since you made that public reveal of your return, so she is likely to listen all about it.”

“Since you did in a way helped her recover from her past mistakes and get help from her folks, perhaps we can contact Dylan, Lucoa, and Lady Palutena by morning and see if she can drop by to help you out as well,” Harry added, “Or you can talk to me as well. I have been through a lot of trauma in my life as well, especially with the Killing Cruse, the Horcrux Hunt, the Battle of Hogwarts, and after I disown my canon realm for good. Seriously, if you have some nightmares again, just let us know: we’re all here for you and Mari is always there for you as much as you’re always there for her.

The kind support and reception he is receiving are too overwhelming yet welcoming as everyone gathered around him to give him a warm hug, Mari’s being the tightest of all. He never felt this much closer to home than with this unlikely group of people, animals, and what have you, but it is probably true in a way. It might tempting to ask Ahk to bring his folks back to the world of the living, but that would too much hassle and trouble to ask for. The whole 11 months felt like quite a wild ride for sure and yet it is the most fulfilling he has ever lived through, and he couldn’t ask for more than find his place among these strange modern day waters and have an amazing life with his new unlikely ‘family’ and his beloved darling.

The End

[nancylou444]

this is what I mean by ‘not the sharpest tack’

Let’s start with the replies from last night after I logged out to watch tv: 

@thedemoniccow said: mrspadaleckisworld I think he was sweet when he adopted Jack and sacrificed himself to kill Lucifer (even though that failed) He has given himself up time and time again for the Winchester’s and Dean just completely forgot that. Yeah, honestly I would have beaten him up too.  

Sacrificed himself to kill Lucifer? Once again he created a situation and it’s only right that he fix it. (bringing down Sam’s Hell Wall then taking on his hallucinations wasn’t because he was being nice) HE said ‘yes’ to Lucifer, HE is the reason Kelly got pregnant with Lucifer’s child then died.

Given himself up time and again? See above example in regards to a certain hell wall.

Yes, you people LOVE beating Dean.

@thedemoniccow said: @destiew-must-go Excuse me but: John is a Jackass and you cannot change my mind.

Right, YOU can have a negative opinion about John , but we aren’t allowed to dislike Castiel. You do know what the word ‘hypocrite’ means? (#1)

@thedemoniccow said: @starlightcandythings Supernatural. Over all he TRIES to be good. How many people have all the others murdered? A whole fuck load that’s how much. To be fair they tried to kill him first every time. It’s called self defense. If someone came at you with a knife you’d defend yourself.

Tries to do good? Yeah okay.

Outright murdered? None, as compared to the cold blooded murders of his brothers and sisters, including Balthazar.

@thedemoniccow said: mrspadaleckisworld Because I didn’t want to message you privately. Castiel is a great character. If you wanted to you could’ve just answered my question rather than making a whole post about it. I’m sorry that I like a relatable character. I was calmly asking a question. If you wanted to we could have remained sivil and I could have gotten my answer and maybe noticed a few flaws in an awesome character, but you had to go and make a whole post about it like the little bitch that you are. I’m sorry that I was trying to conduct a sivil conversation with someone who did seem to think it such a big deal. Honestly, you could’ve just said the reason why you hate him so much.

Reading comprehension is not your friend, since twice you addressed her and not me as the OP. You don’t want to message privately because YOU LOVE THE DRAMA. 

Castiel WAS a great character, now he is only a space saver. 

You also have spelling problems. You want to talk about being CIVIL? How about keeping YOUR opinions off my post. A post clearly tagged ANTI Castiel. You wanted to know why I disliked him but you don’t like the answers, that’s not my problem. 

I’m a little bitch? LMAO that’s good coming from you sport, YOU needed to respond to everybody on this post because you can’t STAND that your favorite character isn’t loved by everybody. 

@thedemoniccow said: It was really that easy. But instead you decided you wanted a metaphorical fire. I’m sorry, but I’m not giving you your fire. I came here to have fun. If you are going to attack my fun then you can stop following my account, block me, and leave me alone. Just because I don’t have the same opinions that you do doesn’t mean we can’t talk without fighting. To late for that. Goodbye!!! Have fun trying to light your metaphorical fire with no fuel!!!! Have a great day!!!

If it’s so easy, then why did you leave so many replies? I didn’t want a fire, I was answering you question with examples of CANON. 

LMAO, ‘not giving you your fire’, right, that’s why you left all these replies. 

Never followed you, have no intention of following, would NEVER follow you. 

I wasn’t fighting, you are, sport.

@thedemoniccow said: Try to respect other people’s opinions while you’re at it!!

I thought you said ‘goodbye’? Idiot.

Respect other people’s opinions? You should practice what you preach. 

-------------------------

I log in this afternoon and find this message from the idiot, sent at 2 am:

If you want you to confront me on my opinion message me and we can talk. Seriously if you both were sivil you might understand how to accept one person's opinion as their own and just leave them alone about it. You might not like my opinion and that's okay. But keep it in your own fucking head. I'm respecting your opinions. I haven't said one thing against anything you like I've only said things promoting what I like. I asked you a simple question and you overreacted. If you want to argue do it somewhere else please. I have an opinion you have an opinion can we just respect each other's different opinions and get on with our lives

This is the problem with the children of tumblr, they don’t know when to let it go and move on. I guess I didn’t respond to all the above replies, so the fool decided a direct approach might get my attention even though he says you decided you wanted a metaphorical fire. I’m sorry, but I’m not giving you your fire. 

You might not like my opinion and that's okay. But keep it in your own fucking head. I'm respecting your opinions. LMAO, all this word vomit clearly shows that he DOESN’T respect our opinions. (#2) 

I haven't said one thing against anything you like I've only said things promoting what I like. “John is a Jackass” right any bells? (#3)

I asked you a simple question and you overreacted. So pointing out CANON is now considered “overreacting”? Okay 🙄

I have an opinion you have an opinion can we just respect each other's different opinions and get on with our lives. YOU are the one not getting on with your life, sport.