#she also does much to keep the records of him in good standing aka not erasing who he is or his relationships

[ramblings-from-the-ether]

Prohibition AU: The Family

The Outer Circle

These members have a limited amount of knowledge into the scale or even the degree-of-illegality of Naven's empire (Bliss Ocean).

Molly Blyndeff, trudging through hard times with an uncaring family, Ms Blyndeff has been quietly emancipated in exchange for her eyes, ears, and unassuming demeanor. A little spy in short.

Trixie Roughhouse, a close friend of Molly's with a fascination with concoctions. Upon introduction, they were assigned to be apprenticed in moonshining at one of Naven's underground distilleries, though they personally prefer experimenting for unknown product.

Phoenica Fleecity, another friend of Molly's. She isn't of much use in criminal activities (also the least informed of Naven's doings), but her generous allowance does help grease the financial side of activities she has no business knowing about.

Howie Honeyglow, an engineer and construction contact of Naven's. He provides maintenance and solves any lack of facilities for 'business activities', by building them up in record time with little excess charges.

Giovanni Potage, leader of a band of misfits who broke off from another street gang; now in Naven's employ. As mentioned in a previous post, he provides the majority of grunt work in Sweet Jazz City for Bliss Ocean. His talent lies in his rousing leadership which keeps morale steady no matter the branch, much to Naven's surprise. Hosts weekly hotpot nights for his brothers (in-arms).

Percival King, the officer who chose peace. She sees Naven as a major businessman with some connections to the criminal underworld; thus a deal was struck where Percy cooperates with Naven in removing the violence on the streets (and kills off competition) while Percy avoids further investigating Naven's influence that made the deal possible.

Indus Tarbella. Formerly Mera's self-declared servant and bodyguard, he now provides security and butler-like services in extension to Naven as a means to remain close to Mera.

The Inner Circle

Everyone here has blood on their hands. These are the men and women who initiates and executes the family's plans. Aka Bliss Ocean Proper.

Zora Salazar: former bounty hunter, gunsmith, and living action film 'protagonist'. Once carried out a hit halfway across the country within a single day by jumping off a wing of a plane midair onto a passing train to cut time. She usually works alone over larger distances outside of Sweet Jazz City.

Mera Salamin, the main (once) licensed surgeon and occasional strategist. She was out of a career after leaving glass shards in a patient and former co-worker who allegedly harassed her. But her swift manner of action caught Naven's attention, and she refuses to play on the sidelines this time.

Ramsey Murdoch is the accountant and financial advisor, mainly for Naven's legitimate ventures but also reaffirms good and competitive business sense for an empire balancing its legal and illegal standings. Whilst Naven is a great dealmaker, Ramsey makes those bigger deals possible.

The Driver is Naven's eyes on the city, as well as his personal companion. Always (seemingly) a different person to outsiders, some speculate that Naven has Sweet Jazz City's private chauffeurs under his patronage. Though in reality, Yoomtah Zing is a master of disguise and has a more hands-on role in managing Naven's criminal operations alongside Mera.

Naven Nuknuk, former arms dealer to the IRA and the man who came from selling apples to apple cider. He is just a small fish in comparison to the big bosses in New York or Chicago, no need to pay heed to him! (The FBI certainly doesn't anymore)

[fiona-fififi]

⏳⏳🧭🏃‍♂️‍➡️ if I may be so greedy

My love, you can be as greedy as you want. I am, however, very, very late answering this, so have many more sentences than you requested. 💚

⏳️ Eddie's gone (aka the coma!fic)

As an aside, this one decided to give me all the problems, and I kind of hate where it landed, so whether this is where it will end up, I don't know, but it's what I managed for now. Also, I have done zero research for this fic, so like. no one expect any kind of medical accuracy, we're here for the drama.

They make it to the hospital in record time, Buck stumbling through the doors on wobbly legs and heading straight for Eddie, leaving Maddie behind in his desperation. No one stops him—a testament to just how much time he's spent at Eddie’s side in the last months—and he's grateful for the grace of the staff, too afraid of just how quickly he would break down if confronted, and desperate to keep himself together at least until he knows what's happened. 

He's a few steps from Eddie's room, at a near sprint, when Eddie's doctor steps out in front of him, and he only just manages to stop himself before barreling into her, breath coming heavy as he stares with wild eyes. “What is it?” the words a rush of fear and hope, the sound jumbled enough that he's not sure she'll even understand.

But she does, maybe out of pure instinct, and she gives him a sympathetic smile and reaches out to lay a comforting hand on his elbow, steering him gently away from Eddie. He wants to protest, twists back to look over his shoulder, even as she guides him toward the little waiting room nearby that Buck hates with his entire being.

“Mr. Buckley,” she says carefully, tone even, not betraying a bit of what she's about to say, “let's talk in here. You can sit, make yourself comfortable.”

And he knows she's being kind, but he's tired of being handled with kid gloves and the last thing he could possibly do in this moment is sit anywhere other than Eddie's side, so he stands his ground, even in shaky legs, and shakes his head in defiance. “No,” he tells her, not unkind, but forceful, “just tell me what's going on.” 

“It's good news,” she promises, and Buck lets out a shuddering breath he hadn't realized he was holding, tries desperately to keep the tears from gathering in his eyes. 

Maddie rounds the corner, then, just in time to hear the words, and her eyes fill with a relief Buck thinks must mirror his own when he meets her gaze for a brief moment. He reaches for her, and she meets him there where his feet feel nailed to the floor, tucks him into her side in a way that makes him feel small and safe, and he clings as he chokes out the words “good how?”

“There have been some changes. He regained consciousness for about five minutes earlier. It was short-lived, but it implies improvement we hadn't fully expected. We're running some tests now, but when it happened, he was alert and seemed coherent. He asked for Christopher. And for you,” she tells him, and it's matter-of-fact in a way that feels unreal—because the idea that Eddie's awake, that he’s recovering in a real way and awake feels like some kind of miracle, but her tone reflects none of the intense joy that threatens to knock him off his feet.

“He-he's awake?” Buck chokes out, voice threatening to die in his throat as he struggles to keep himself upright, clutches to Maddie's shoulder to steady himself.

“At the moment, he's resting. And he's weak. All the work his body's been doing to help him recover has taken a lot out of him, and with all the time he was comatose, even the smallest activities are going to be a struggle for him for a bit. Probably a long while. So I want you to be prepared for that when you walk in that room. It may well seem like nothing has changed,” she speaks carefully, and Buck knows it for the warning it is—what he will see is the same thing he has for months now, and he knows it's going to feel like a knife to the heart even with all the assurances, “but I assure you that things are improving rapidly. He's still not completely out of the woods, but we expect him to wake again, and recovery looks promising.” She pauses for a moment. Let's Buck take in the information, and he's grateful for the pause. “Are there any questions I can answer for you?”

Buck nods, tears suddenly flooding his eyes as he chokes on the words that try to tumble from his throat. “Can—can I see him?”

“Of course,” the doctor smiles at him in a way that doesn't feel like it's full of pity for the first time since Eddie was admitted, and it makes Buck feel out of sorts in a way he's not sure he expected. “Just remember that he may not wake while you're in there, but that doesn't mean he's not making progress.” Buck nods at the reassurance, and he clings a little tighter to Maddie. “I'll be close by if you have any questions. I'm glad I could give you some good news today.”

Her tone is soft and earnest, and Buck holds himself together as she walks away, even as the tears that flood his eyes start to fall. He sucks in a harsh breath as soon as she's gone, choking on a sob as he turns to tuck himself into Maddie's arms as she tugs him close and hugs him tight, hushing him gently just as she had in their childhood, and he lets the rush of tears fall as relief overwhelms him.

🧭 Eddie's gone - alternative universe

WARNING for suicidal ideation on this one.

“Buck?”

It takes a moment for the pull of consciousness to settle over him. He feels comfort like he hasn't in days—soft fingers stroke his hair, and for a moment, the voice sounds like Eddie's, even if part of him knows it's only in dreams.

“Evan, can you open your eyes for me?”

It takes him longer than it should, too bone weary and aching for waking. But then a quiet “please” that sounds almost as broken as feels pulls him back, and he forces his eyes open. Finds Maddie sitting on the arm of the couch beside him, eyes damp with unshed tears, and lips pressed into a tight line with worry.

“You weren't answering your phone,” she tells him in that shaky voice that's somehow endlessly gentle and equally as accusatory. 

He blinks a few times. Tries to process her words through the fuzziness of his mind. Pushes himself up until he's sitting up, hunches over, but out of her reach. He thinks he notices her lips press tighter in distress. Knows he should feel guilty. Can't really feel at all.

“Told you,” he insists, tone a little harsher than is fair, “I need some time.”

“What, so you can sit here and drink yourself to death?” Her tone turns just a little angry. He understands why when she tosses the bottle of pills into his lap that had been sitting open on his coffee table next to a near empty bottle of whiskey when he'd passed the night before. “You can't take these with alcohol, Buck. You could have killed yourself.”

“Yeah,” he snaps back before he can think, all the hurt built up in ways he doesn't know how to control dampening his common sense, “that was the point.”

🏃‍♂️ Maddie's not the only fugitive in the family

“Buck,” Eddie finally murmurs, drawing Buck's eyes to his, and there's so much guilt and worry there that Eddie feels himself soften further, as he tries on a sad smile, “I promise you, I am okay.”

Buck watches him for long moments, big sad eyes locked on Eddie's until he finally gathers himself, trying to blink away all the emotion he'd let Eddie see, even as he whispers “I missed you” so quiet that Eddie's not sure he's supposed to hear. 

And part of Eddie wants to be angry over that—wants to scoff and remind Buck that he's the one who left. But Eddie can't bring himself to respond with cruelty to Buck's vulnerability. So instead, Eddie gives him a sad smile and answers with a soft “missed you, too,” because he means it, and he hopes Buck knows.

Buck stays for a moment longer, holds Eddie's eye for as long as they can both stand, and then, finally, drags himself away and stands, moving back toward the door, where he digs through a small stack of shoes until he produces a pair of barely worn slippers with hard soles. He holds them up triumphantly and then returns to kneel before Eddie once more, carefully helping him to slip them on. When Eddie tries to protest, Buck shakes his head. “Uh-uh,” Buck scolds gently, “no arguments. You're going to get cold without them.”

And Eddie can admit he's probably right. Even with the warmth of the little space, he can admit that there's an underlying chill in the hardwood floors that he's not entirely accustomed to, so he nods and responds with a sincere “thank you” that has Buck grinning, much of the earlier discomfort melting away as he clambors to his feet.

Once he's up, Buck starts moving near immediately, smile still in place, and Eddie's not sure Buck has even realized how much his earlier tension has melted away. “I'm gonna go grab you a sweater, so you can ditch the bulky jacket, and then I'll make us some dinner. Sit tight, okay?”

For a moment, Eddie considers protesting. Wants to tell Buck he doesn't need to go through all the trouble. But Buck is already gone, ducking back into what Eddie imagines is the bedroom, and Eddie can't bring himself to crush the ease Buck seems to have regained at the idea of helping care for Eddie, so instead, he strips the jacket off his shoulders and lays it carefully over the arm of the couch to wait for Buck to reappear. 

Make Me Write

[badedramay]

hania frustrates me in the sense that she chooses interesting characters on their face but the dramas never really live up to the hype themselves and her characterization feels like it loses substance at some point, so i can never feel completely satisfied. like anaa and ishqiya are dramas that i overall did not enjoy watching at all (esp the latter.. even before the abuse reveal i really have never cared for feroze as an actor and found him to be uncomfortably aggressive in a lot of his roles) and they were way too long for my liking but i did think dania and rumi were somewhat interesting. dania choosing to get away completely from the abusive and reductive environment of the haveli to live with her father and pursue studies felt like a good conclusion, but at the same time the buildup to that conclusion wasn’t all that compelling (in all fairness though it’s hard to be compelling alongside shehzad as an actor 💀). and with rumi i do think leaving hamza is something that made sense, bc regardless of however remorseful he was now he had willingly kept from her how extensively he had terrorized hamna previously and how he had only married rumi to continue that reign of terror, even if the circumstances changed along the way. but the ending also felt so abrupt and sudden and never really gave much closure so i couldn’t be entirely satisfied with it either even if i did want rumi to be free

and that’s more or less where i’m at with mujhe pyaar hua tha. awful, awful drama that seems intent to repeatedly brutalize hania’s character for being a victim to other people’s forced choices on her person so audiences can villainize her for not being perfect or loving back the “good” guy. and i have a feeling given hania’s track record (well. with the exception of mere humsafar but that was a train wreck of colossal proportions) that she will end this drama ending up single as well and it will be the conclusion she deserves after all of the abuse. but it won’t feel well earned bc she’ll never really demonstrate a capacity to stand up for herself until only the very last moment. she has a lot of talent as an actress but she never seems to capitalize on it well it’s really a shame :/

Rumi was the one character of Hania that really got her mainstream wali success. it helped her as an actor as well because Rumi closely resembles to how Hania is irl. i mean the mannerisms and all. i don't think any other character of Hania has gotten such success? in terms of success, after Ishqiya it was Mere Humsafar that was a huge hit and Hala was anything but a character with any power or agency. Anaa is remembered more for the Izza Altamash story. and MPHT has fully been a Wahaj show from the start even though the drama has crashed and burned by now.

Hania is not a bad actor. ever since Janaan her potential and especially her strong screen presence has been very evident. but I really don't understand, based on the projects she has done, what is so unique about Hania except her conventionally pretty looks and that dimpled smile? i haven't seen her bring in anything extra to her characters that cannot be credited to her good looks?? and I am talking about projects where the writing isn't on her side aka something like Ishqiya. i always feel like Hania just keeps her personal philosophy of living her life completely locked while choosing a project despite benefiting from it when she's not in character. Hania Amir is the coolest chick on the block; fun, quirky, life of the party but also keeping it real, the most popular girl in high school! but none of the big projects she does has ever reflected that on screen in a positive way? like even Rumi had a very pathetic ending despite her being the ONLY GOOD PERSON In the show (my issues with Ishqiya will never end istg). for someone who advocates for many issues, she hasn't really used the power of the audience pull she has to do something about it through her work. am I making sense?

it's like Hania tried being herself onscreen and realized that doesn't work with the masses so she has now said, 'ya know? fuck it all. i'd rather cry and cower onscreen if it means my projects get the views and ratings and i'll defend my characters when asked about them. i need to pay them bills to live the life I actually want to live. the work i do onscreen is just a job and i need not take it home with me.' which ya know..good for her!

[raymondebidochonlifechoices]

To summarise:

The title of the episode is The Jughead Paradox, that is to say: The Writer(s)’ Paradox, and, hoo, boy, there’s quite a bit of that!

On the outskirts of Rivervale lies a dead body. This will turn out to be Jughead’s. Or, rather, a Jughead’s. Fine, it’s Jug Serling’s aka Narrator!Jughead’s.

Much like the writers, the Vale’s characters have no regard for continuity. Previously deceased Archie, Toni, Reggie and Nana Rose, come back to life. Everyone believes the events of the last 4 episodes to be simple nightmares. If only.

Jughead, in particular, dreams of an explosion in Archie’s room and wakes up in said redhead’s garage with his feet dirty. He gets back to his and Tabitha’s apartment thinking he sleepwalked there.

He’s back to teaching at RHS and is having first day jitters: he keeps reliving moments from the show’s pilot. Daytime hallucinations are a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia, unhelpfully informs him not!dead!Ben Button.

Dr Curdle Jr, the great Bughead connoisseur, informs Betty of Jug Serling’s cadaver and, thus, of the existence of a second Jughead.  Betty, who in this universe is engaged to Archie, and is about to share her life and his one brain cell, does not believe the good doctor.

Jughead, however, does. He visits the morgue, where he (aka writer!Jughead) and Jug Serling (aka narrator!Jughead) meet: time stands still and so does my heart!

Dr Curdle informs Jughead that his double’s cadaver was found in the Lonely Highway, which is quite a generous term for that muddy dirt road leading to Fox Forest.

Among narrator!Jughead’s effects, Jughead finds a Rivervale comic book with Barchie getting married on the cover. It reads: America’s Typical Teenagers. I’m tickled!

Jughead reads through his comic book collection of Riverdale and Rivervale (that he doesn’t remember acquiring) in record time. Then, in typical Jughead fashion, he makes the rounds to inform everyone about it.

He starts with Tabitha, who declares that she remembers everything she read in the Riverdale comics but as happening in the Rivervale universe. This is indeed a paradox, since Tabitha wasn’t in Riverdale 7 years ago … Oops!

The biggest paradox, though, is not how the events of the Dale play out differently in the Vale but that they apparently play differently for each character! I mean, no one comments on Jason’s death except from Cheryl. Double Oops!

Dale!People also appear to have forgotten what happened recently in the Vale (see above: nightmares) but this does not become a point of discussion when confronted with Jug’s comic book knowledge. As Jughead said: it’s counterintuitive.

S1 Reggie makes an appearance, because there is no universe where Reggie does not seek out Veronica.

Teacher Jughead spends his time investigating, because there is no version of Riverdale where there are actual classes.

Everyone talks in this universe, including Jason, but not Kevin. The shade!

Imagine you’re an actor. You get a job in Riverdale. And your line is: “I’m sorry Mr Jones. The Philosophy of Parallel Universes was checked out years ago and never returned.” This is the stuff Emmy Nominations are made off. No?

Everybody is teaching at RHS, including Dilton Doiley and Ethel Muggs. This only serves as affirmation that the Vale is, indeed, an aberration.

Dilton and Ethel explain your basic parallel universe theory to noob Jughead.

Apparently, parallel universes are supposedly copies or mirror images of the prime universe. Except in the case of Rivervale. Of course. I don’t know why I expected differently.

Everything was set off by Hiram’s bomb. OMG! THE SHEER POWER OF HIRAM LODGE! The man. The mobster. The creator of Universes! What a legend.

Stop trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, says the character (Dilton) who’s researching parallel universes in his spare time. Oohh, is that academic rivalry?

A bunch of anomalies appear. More and more dead people come to life. The Black Hood kidnaps Jason Blossom.

Who the hell is the Black Hood, asks Betty who read Jughead’s comic books just the previous day and should have already known the answer.

Apparently, it’s a fair question, because in spite of his comic book knowledge, Jughead himself doesn’t know who the Black Hood is, although he uses said comic book knowledge to locate Jason at the Whyte Wyrm. Wait, what? 

Surprise anomaly: he’s Clifford Blossom.

Jughead doesn’t question Hal’s presence either, although He. Has. Read. The Comic. Books. Le sigh …

Reggie is a comedic duo all by himself.

For someone previously completely unaware that he was living in a pocket universe, Dilton Doiley has some nerve posturing about documenting a prime and pocket universe collapsing in real time to the person who made the discovery of said parallel universe in the first place. That little bitch! He was not going to share credit with Jughead, was he? The punishment for lack of academic ethics in Rivervale is death. Hmmm ... maybe there’s merit in saving this universe after all.  

Both universes will be destroyed unless Rivervale ceases to exist by reproducing the moment of its conception (aka the explosion), says Ethel. Jughead decides that if anyone is going to explode while making out, that’s gonna be him. Maybe he though a different kind of explosion?

He dumbs Ethel and goes out to find Veronica. 

Archie what are you doing here, asks Archie’s best man who skipped Archie’s wedding to make out with Veronica.

Meanwhile, Archie has killed her and is about to off Jughead too. There’ll be no Vughead on Archie’s watch.

Everybody has daddy issues in Riverdale but no one quite like Archie Andrews. Yikes! On the other hand, Archie thinking that a whole universe would be created just for him, actually tracks!

Archie supposedly knows everything about Rivervale because he was there at the moment of its creation. Betty Cooper, who was also there, miffed because she was not being informed on anything, shoots him in the head.

Jughead and Betty are one Hiram, one chunk of palladium, one curse and one Jughead writing in the garage short to accurately recreate the confluence of forces that gave birth to Rivervale but that doesn’t stop them from seizing an opportunity to make out.

It took Archie 4 episodes to come back from the dead but Narrator!Jughead was up in no time! Your construction worker/palladium miner/football coach/war veteran/firefighter could never!

Bughead are interrupted by Jug Serling (aka Narrator!Jughead) who tells them all about unravelling the great mysteries of the universe(s) while stuffing himself with burgers at The Great Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe in the Sky. That’s why, he says, he was resurrected and he came back. The how remains unclear but let’s use our imagination!

Come with me and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination sings Gene Wilder Narrator!Jughead, who has dreamed of expanding out of all the autobiographical stuff and into TV writing. Imagination is the power source to maintain Rivervale without harming Riverdale, says Narrator!Jughead. It makes sense: everything in this show so far has been a huge stretch of my imagination.

Writer!Jughead is to be secluded in order to rebirth the Vale using his trusted Underwood, keeping that universe alive by constantly feeding it stories, while Narrator!Jughead and Betty will set off the bomb. The writer lives a solitary life after all. Oh, the Symbolism! Oh, the Bathos! The Riverdale writers clink their champagne glasses and get ready for another bout of social media trolling.

Betty sees the opportunity to possibly snog Narrator!Jughead and agrees.

Jughead lives to his reputation of being a talented writer by resetting Rivervale without detonating any bombs.

Although no one is supposed to remember him, Ethel pops by the Bunker to bring him some burgers, because why not …

Unfortunately, unlike in the Vale, in the Dale the story isn’t written by Jughead, so not much improvement is to be expected: the bomb goes off. No barchie are harmed during this. Jughead’s hearing is another story.

Toffee has reluctantly left Pop’s Great Chock’lit Shoppe in the Sky for the Vale Bunker. Cats have nine lives, after all, and, yes, some of them are parallel. She’s slurping milkshakes while editing Jughead’s manuscript. She’s gonna put things right.

[sepublic]

Malphas and the Coven System?

I have to really wonder what Malphas’ relationship is with the coven system... Given how he let a known criminal Eda continue to check out books, and amidst being pretty chill, it’s usually libraries who are targeted by dictatorships when censoring.

And it stands to reason that a well-educated reader who wants to protect and preserve historical texts would have some issues with the coven propaganda, and know enough to realize its flaws. The coven hides the truth from people, and someone whose occupation centers around letting people access knowledge isn’t going to appreciate that.

Malphas has access to plenty of accounts from centuries before Belos, people talking about life before him; Which makes me wonder if the Forbidden Stacks are only forbidden because they’re contraband, necessitating that Malphas hides it from the coven system?

Hence why he takes it so seriously when Amity breaks this rule, as much as he adores her; The Forbidden Stacks contain a LOT of knowledge and information that would get the entire library shut down and the contents inside destroyed, so Malphas really can’t take these risks. He has to crack down on any breaches of security here.

(It doesn’t help that Amity DID end up destroying a book while in the Forbidden Stacks, which would just contribute to Malphas’ disappointment here.)

Considering his possession of Philip Wittebane’s journal, Malphas probably has a LOT of information in those Forbidden Stacks that Belos would prefer hidden. And for all we know, this section might be some compromise with the coven system;

Malphas doesn’t want to destroy these historical records, so the most he can do is lock them away in the Forbidden Stacks, where they still exist, but can no longer be accessed nor used by the public anyway... Making them functionally non-existent to the coven system, and as good as destroyed.

Which just adds to Malphas’ policy on the Forbidden Stacks and firing even Amity over this, because opening them to outsiders could be seen as a violation of that agreement- Given the coven system’s parallels to the American school system, I wouldn’t be surprised if Belos saw knowledge as similar to magic, as something reserved only for the ‘best’.

Spreading it all willy-nilly for anyone to use decreases its value, makes it mundane; Which for magic is a sin and insult to the Titan’s sacred work! I wouldn’t be surprised if Belos and members of the Emperor’s Coven had exclusive access to the Forbidden Stacks thanks to government authority, and Belos even treated them as a necessary ‘evil’ for him to use; In case he ever needs to access the texts within for reference...

(AKA a certain journal that he might notice has been destroyed, perhaps frustrating Belos but also alleviating certain fears, unaware of the Echo Mice?)

And again, if Malphas is in some precarious agreement where he can still keep this contraband, but only for the reference of the system... Then of course the system will hold him and his employees accountable for any breaches.

(Maybe that’s another reason why Malphas fired Amity, so she’s not considered to be underneath his jurisdiction, and wouldn’t be involved in any consequences that the library might face; Its a precautionary gesture to protect her, but obviously still hurts the both of them. Wishful thinking, but I just want Amity to have that caring adult that she can always trust!)

But yeah, Malphas might have a lot of controversial texts that he’s only allowed to keep because it’s not like the public can access them anyway, and/or so the Emperor’s Coven alone has access, in case they ever need it. Which would make Malphas a lot like Bump, as someone who IS beholden to the coven and cautious of its rules, but out of genuine concern for others as a necessary evil he has to tolerate;

Plus, to further the parallels to the covens and the American government, who knows? Perhaps libraries are already massively under-funded the way schools are, with discussions that they aren’t “needed” and should even be made private...

Which like Bump, places Malphas into a dilemma where he doesn’t want to deal with this censorship and oversight, but he really does need those snails to uphold the library, so that future generations can benefit and learn from it. Wishful thinking, but maybe one of the cancelled Season 3 episodes could’ve involved Malphas finding his own way to rebel against Belos, the way Bump did?

Being inspired by Luz and Amity especially, the former of whom convinced Malphas to let Amity back in (kind of like a parallel to Gus giving up his HAS leadership for Luz’s Hexside enrollment), while the latter has always been someone that Malphas has valued and respected.

As a young blood, Amity could appeal to that moral compass of Malphas and make him more inclined to listen as someone he knows and has guided throughout the years, a really personal example of the kids he’s affecting with these decisions, and how he wants them to flourish.

Plus, if they bring up funding, perhaps Malphas might get that support from the Emperor’s Coven revoked, only for the Bonesborough community to really come together and show their appreciation for the library, how much they used it, and contribute donations? Bonus points if the Blight kids leverage their own family wealth to make the library set, which given Amity’s own involvement here, would be incredibly sweet to see; With Malphas looking after this kid, and her paying him back literally as a result!

[venfx]

magnus fic roundup

as tma comes to a close, i thought i'd post some of my favorite fics to come out of this fandom. most of these are classics, listed in no particular order.

A Weather In The Flesh by @cuttoothed​ | 3K | S1-S4 | Jon/Martin | Complete

"There is a span of years where Jon doesn’t touch anyone other than the occasional hand shake. It’s not so bad. He’s never been someone who’s needed physical affection."

Jon has never been any good at making people want to stick around.

↳ this is such a well-done exploration of jon’s character and his relationship with touch, and i’ve re-read it at least five times. sweet and sad and phenomenally well-written.

in the chillest land and on the strangest sea by imperfectcircle, singlecrow | 20K | Safehouse, S1-S4 | Jon & Daisy, Jon/Martin | Complete

Jon remembers a statement he read years ago given by a Jesuit priest, who said that the shortest prayer he knew was, just, fuck it, as in fuck it; it's in God's hands. He takes Daisy's hand and trails on after her.

or; hope is a thing with feathers.

↳ hey, you wanna fuckin..... feel things? read this.

The Magnus Institute vs the 21st Century: a series of emails and IMs by shinyopals | 26K | Series | S3 | Pre-Jon/Martin | Complete

The Magnus Institute hires a Data Protection Officer. He sets about diligently booking in meetings, writing policy documents, and training all the staff in the importance of confidentiality. Now if only he could get hold of the Head Archivist, who seems to have vanished again...

(Jon is only trying to save the world, but apparently some people think he should still be doing his day job.)

↳ i’d be surprised to find people who haven’t read this series, but it’s the definition of “the magnus archives is a workplace comedy”. also, alasdair stuart has actually read some clips of this on Twitch, so that’s a fun bonus.

Bell, Book, and Candle by yellow_caballero | 102K | Series | S3 into S4 | Jon/Martin | Complete 

In accordance with the Ride or Die Pact of 2009, Jonathan Sims can call upon Georgie Barker at any time for aid with no strings attached. Despite their rocky history, their childhood friendship, and Jon’s barely recovered alcoholism, this pact is sacred and must be upheld.

Georgie Barker may regret this. She may regret it when she discovers that the world is full of monsters and eldritch gods and dickhead managers. She may regret it when a punk rocker who should be dead collapses on their doorstep, a teenager again who needs their help. She may regret it when her stupid ex-boyfriend starts selling his soul for knowledge and the ability to keep his new family safe.

But she probably won’t. Georgie isn’t scared of anything - not a Clown’s apocalypse, not the apocalypse that Jon is destined to begin, and not Jon’s own loss of humanity.

Maybe she should be.

↳ if you’re looking for an everyone-lives-no-one-dies-happy-ending fic that also happens to be massively chaotic, look no further. 

The Reverb in These Holy Halls by @wolftraps​ | 98K | AU, S1-S4 | Jon/Martin | Complete

Undoing the apocalypse would have been enough for Jon, if all his people survived. Without them, Jon's only recourse is making it so it never happened in the first place. He's going to do better this time.

↳ quintessential time travel AUs. plot-wise, i feel like these can be difficult to write, but op does a fantastic job of tying things together in a way that makes sense. plus, it’s just fun to read.

jon sims v the nhs by @thoughtsbubble​ | 12K | Series | S3 | Complete

Joan Bright has a new patient. He's carrying an old tape recorder and is covered head to toe in scars. Jonathan Sims looks dangerous, but Dr Bright has dealt with all sorts of atypical individuals. She has no reason to be nervous.

Right?

↳ if you’ve ever thought “hey, jon should probably go to therapy”, then 1) you’re absolutely right and 2) this is... probably what would’ve happened. prior knowledge of The Bright Sessions is not required. also, apparently, this fic is written by the showrunner of The Underwood Collection? wild.

Family, Found by Dribbledscribbles | 9K | S4 | Complete

It’s Basira who catches onto it.

The collective shift that seems to come over them when heading in or out of the Institute. Not just the oppressive sensation of being observed, their every move catalogued for the voyeuristic cravings of some unseen Eye(s). That feeling remained with them even when they left the Institute these days, but it was always stronger inside its walls. That wasn’t the change. Nor was it the point.

The point was: making life worse for Jonathan Sims.

↳ i think being part of the avengers fandom circa 2012 has given me permanent found-family-trope brainrot, but you know what. jonathan sims can have a little happiness, as a treat. 

Road to Damascus by @titanfalling​ | 107K | Series | S4 | Jon & Tim | Complete

n. an important moment of insight, typically one that leads to a dramatic transformation of attitude or belief

Or, in which Tim becomes an avatar for the end of all things.

↳ tim dies and then he doesn’t. there is catharsis and world building. just....read it.

Come, Change Your Ring With Me by @backofthebookshelf​ | 29K | S3 | Peter/Jon, Jon/Martin, Peter/Elias | Complete

The Lukases demand the Archivist marry into the family, and the Institute relies on them too much to say no. Peter is smug. Elias is fuming. Martin is suffering. Jon thinks this might be tolerable if only Peter would hurry up and leave him alone already.

OR, the soap opera we call an Archives revolves around Peter Lukas this time.

↳ superb evil-bastards-in-love content, feat. martin pining, tim being obnoxious, and jon being... well, tired, mostly. i will literally never get tired of how op writes peter. 

creatures that i briefly move along by @dotsayers​ | 16K | Series | AU, Post-S4 | background Jon/Martin 

Mr Sims was so weird, was the thing. Miss Grant always said calling people weird was rude, and Anna sort of agreed, but she didn’t know what other word to use to describe Mr Sims.

He’d only been in with the class for a few days, really, and half of that he just sat at the back listening, but that didn’t stop her from making a swift judgement. 5BG had had student teachers before, back when they were 3ST, and they’d been uniformly normal.

Mr Sims was… actually, Anna had a better adjective. He was interesting.

↳ i just.... love teacher!jon fics. this series delivers. 

Once Bitten by @apatheticbutterflies | 1K | S4 | Jon & Daisy | Complete

Jon Sims has always been a jumpy kind of guy. Nervous. Twitchy. Daisy used to think it meant he was guilty. Turns out he was. Just not of what she’d thought.

Daisy learns how to peel an orange.

↳ daisy and jon’s relationship is an example of an instance where i’m happy to say “fuck what you wrote mr. jonny ‘chocolate torte of tragedy’ sims, i want them to be friends”.

pins and needles by mutterandmumble | 13K | S1-S4 | Complete

He’s got a reputation to uphold anyways; an uptight, rigid reputation that dictates the way that he interacts and functions and is such an integral part of him that he can’t let go of it anytime soon. He likes his safety nets. He likes his contingencies. He likes his privacy, and everything around this place right down to the walls seems to have ears, so he’ll stay tight-lipped up to and beyond the threat of death.

He’s good at that.

In which Jon takes up embroidery and bumbles through life the best that he can.

↳ out of all the introspective jon pieces i’ve read (and there are many), this one stands out. maybe it’s the symbolism or the characterisation, or maybe it’s the fact that i have an embroidery kit lurking in the back of my closet along with a hundred other half-pursued hyperfixations. whatever. this is excellent.

sleeping in by @ivelostmyspectacles | 5K | S2 | Jon/Tim | Complete

“Who are you trying to convince?”

Jon gives up, letting his head sag against Tim’s shoulder. “I don’t know.”

aka Elias gets tired of Jon and Tim's bickering, sends them away for a "team-building" weekend trip, and is sure to book them a room with only one bed

↳ this has everything you’d need from a “oh no there’s only one bed” fic. someone please get these men therapy.

if you try, sometimes (you get what you knead) by @ajcrawly​ | 3.5K | S1-S4 | Jon/Martin, Tim/Sasha | Complete

It starts with an abundance of boeuf bourguignon and ends up as a team tradition.

Food and love in uncertain times.

↳ more found family fic, this time with a diverse og!archival staff and food as a metaphor for love. hurt in all the right ways. made me hungry in the process.

[anxiouspotatorants]

Whoopsy daisy I made a Shadow and Bone random thoughts post:

The costumes in this show are impeccable. I was drooling over all the keftas and the ball gowns in 1.05 and the crow outfits. Hell, even the winter-camo outfits that Mal, Mikhael and Dubrov wore in 1.04 were amazing.

Am I the only one who isn’t surprised by the kruge pronounciation? Because I thought it would sound like how English people say Scandinavian words and I wasn’t wrong.

Coming in to this show as someone who had only read the Six of Crows duology, I expected to at least tolerate Malina based on the trailer clips. I kid you not: less than five minutes into the very first episode they owned my ass. That might be a new record for me.

Seriously the friendship? The pining? The finding home in each other and being able to acknowledge their faults and apologize to each other? Both of them having massive “fight me” energy and protecting each other? Hugs?? Why am I surprised that I ship this?

Some of those scene transitions/flashback edits were so good! Like I know they repeated that meadow scene a lot throughout the season, but the cuts from kid-Mal looking at the rabbit to grown up Mal psyching himself up for the fist fight? Poetic cinema.

The Darkling was horrible and I love it. He wasn’t a carbon copy villain, nor did his complexity redeem him. He was a perfectly complex and understandable monster and I am living for it. I have not been so happy to despise a character in ages and I genuinely bow in gratitude to both the writers and Ben Barnes, because I finally got to enjoy watching a character I did not for one second root for ( #writevillainswellagain)

Look I already loved Jesper in the book but his on-screen translation elevated him from a fave to the fave. I was worried that they would push him into a comedic relief-role, but he got to keep both his heart, his depth, and his humour. Kit Young did an amazing job bringing what was already a great character on page to an even greater character on screen and I once again applaud.

Am I a bit bitter that the casting had some interesting choices for certain roles (aka hiring light skin and mid-size actors for explicitly darker skin and plus-size roles)? Kind of. Do I think there are important discussions worth having about this? Yup. Do I also think that every actor hired for Shadow and Bone did an amazing job and deserve zero hate and massive amounts of love? Also yes.

I had Alexei for one episode and one episode only, and I still miss that poor sucker. This show did a surprisingly good job with making me care about a massive amount of characters considering the screen time they had and the amount of episodes this season had. Good job.

For some reason I expected Inej to be a lot more brooding based on how I perceived her in the books but I love what Amita Suman did with her. Her translation completely recontextualised everything I remember from the books and just brought this truly fresh character to life. Assassin with a conscience indeed.

Also I did love the Kaz we got in this season but I can barely contain myself as I wait for season 2 to be made and for a certain flashback to take place because that moment in the book was visceral and it stayed with me for a long time and I knew before the show announcement that this flashback could become a television moment. 

Speaking of Kaz the crows were so chaotic and messy and I’m here for it. Their interactions with each other and their improvised back-up plans were everything. I somehow didn’t expect the crows to become the comedic relief of the season but it honestly makes so much sense.

A couple episodes in I still didn’t get the Zoya hype (remember I haven’t read the books) but was a massive Genya fan. By the end of the season I was like “oh both of these girls are getting redemption arcs and I am here for it”.

Speaking of redemption I still don’t like Matthias. I’m sorry but I just don’t. I get that he is important to many and that they like his relationship with Nina, but I just don’t have the patience for him and feel like Nina can do better. I still want him to get a redemption... but maybe not through a romance with the grisha woman he repeatedly slutshames, is bigoted towards and chokes at least once (twice if that SoC scene from book 1 happens). That being said this is just how I see him, so feel what ever you feel about him and ship to your heart’s content!

Alina’s journey through this season made complete sense to me. It hurt to see certain things, but they were necessary in my eyes. Seeing her go from this essentially insecure but brave girl to a manipulated pawn to an even stronger and more self reliant girl in spite of everything was amazing. It did feel like a well-written hero’s journey and I’m looking forward to seeing where she goes next.

Apparently a lot of book-readers don’t like Mal (and I am not here to change anyone’s mind about that) but the Mal I saw on the show was amazing. I actually kind of wish we had seen more of who he was outside of his relationship to Alina (f.ex. other flashbacks than the meadow, maybe something about any of his missions while separated from Alina pre-show), but I also loved what we got of him with Alina. We still got to see a guy who was brave, stubborn, flirtatious, a bit judgemental but with a strong sense of humour, and a lot of loyalty (to Alina but also to his friends). I can hardly wait to see what’s next for him.

Milo the goat. Where do I even begin. Not only did we get that Jesper-scene, but their farewell actually became a Chekhov’s gun for Mal in 1.07? Milo is the true hero of the season.

Speaking of 1.07 I loved the tent scene between Alina and the Darkling. She both got to be realistic about her feelings for the Darkling and stand up for herself and for others and call him out. The way I interpret the Darkling, he is the kind of villain who creates a saviour narrative around himself but cares more about power than anything else. He’ll say he’s doing everything to protect his people but is the first to kill the very people he claims to love. And Alina’s tent-speech really hammered that in for me.

I adore Baghra. Is she morally dubious? Yes. Was she incredibly mean to Alina during training to the point where it might have been excessive? Yes. Did she not take any of the Darkling’s bullshit and act as the proper mentor for Alina when the Darkling had said that he was going to train her? Yes. Am I kind of a Baghra stan now? I mean maybe.

The antler-collar was so evil and gross but from a visually narrative stand point it was perfect. 

Also I still have no idea who David is but I want redemption for him too. Honestly I feel like half the supporting cast is gearing up for redemption arcs next season and I am excited for most of them.

Nina’s reaction when she hears Kaz on the boat? Priceless. Actually the whole boat scene from when she goes up on deck again to the cut back to the fold was priceless.

That being said the final scene had me even more ready for season 2.

Jesper kind of gave me messy period-fantasy James Bond? Does that make sense?

And Mal kind of gave me Lois Lane energy? As in he’s the mortal love interest that many assume is the hero/heroine’s weakness but actually functions as their emotional strength and inspiration? Am I reaching here or am I getting somewhere?

Mikhael and Dubrov. What a duo. Absolute madlads.

Also I’d like to see more Nadia if that is possible? Because the few scenes we had of her had me intrigued but then she sort of disappeared? Is she going to be important or was she just more of a temporary supporting character? 

I entered this show a casual Six of Crows fan with mild interest in Kanej and I finished this season a mess. A mess who ships Kanej and Malina and Genya with that David guy even though they had about 30 seconds of screentime together and Zoya with redemption and Jesper with main-character status (hey we’re not getting Wylan until season 2 at least) and kind of those two Ravkan army guys and Nina with anyone else and Matthias with a better redemption storyline and the Darkling with karma! Also, a mess with a whole new set of comfort characters!

[bbugyu]

daddy’s little monster + lee seokmin & yoon jeonghan

the story of your side hustle, that both pays well and had some very lovely benefits.

prelude | part one | part two | part three | epilogue

wc.5195 | SMUT, like DIRTY SMUT, threesome, sugar daddy!jeonghan and musician!seokmin, aka my worst nightmare, hard dom vs service sub vs service dom, aka my other worst nightmare, fem reader, daddy kink, marking, cream pie, please use condoms, lk cucking? happy halloween!

i was gonna say this is porn without plot but in reality idk how to not make smut way too personal. and i have not stopped thinking about my seokhan sandwicch fantasies and desperately needed to get it out, so take my shame and run with it. gif literally does not match this at all but DONT WORRY ABOUT IT

~

seokmin knew that jeonghan, the prolific and sought after architect whom he considered a close friend, had a less than conventional relationship with a young woman, but he had never met her. didn't know what the two did beyond appear at fancy industry dinner parties together, or the occasional sleepovers that had been offhandedly mentioned when seokmin and him get drinks and grilled meat. he believed she was real - he had been told she was real, by a mutual friend who had attended said parties - but had never seen a picture of her. never been introduced. he dropped architecture, afterall, deciding instead to get a teaching degree while jeonghan continued his artistic engineering. he had no reason to attend the parties that jeonghan paid her to accompany him to.

so when he was slightly drunk at a halloween party being held at the architect's beautiful home, he thought nothing about the pretty girl giving him attention, other than the fact that she looked incredible in her cheerleading outfit and that she was sitting far too close to him to not be flirting.

"how do you know jeonghan?" you asked, perched on the sofa next to seokmin, fingers mindlessly fiddling with the zipper on his red and blue bomber jacket.

his arm was over the back of the sofa, and you were comfortably sitting in the negative space, your feet tucked beneath your baby blue pleated skirt. "we went to college together," he said.

your eyebrow quirked. "are you also an architect? i've never seen you around."

he smiled and shook his head, wondering why a pretty girl like you was wasting your time getting to know a guy like him if you frequented industry parties. "no, i dropped the program. too much math. i'm a music teacher."

he watched your eyes light up. "what kind of music?"

"piano and guitar, mostly," he said, shifting beside you when your knees brushed over his thigh. "i do some vocal coaching, also."

you gazed at his profile as he looked anywhere but at you, eyes briefly focusing on the little black heart drawn under his eye. "you do have a lovely voice."

"thanks," he said, smiling when he turned to look at you, almost faltering when he realized you were leaning into him. "but you haven't heard me sing."

you paused, staring at his lips. "i'd like to," you breathed, and seokmin's hand dropped from the couch to find the small of your back, a shiver running up your spine when his fingers ran over the waistband of your skirt.

"y/n."

with great difficulty, you looked away from his lips to the source of your name being called, smiling lightly when you saw who had summoned you. you put a hand on seokmin's chest.

"i'll be right back, okay?" he kept watching your lips as you spoke. "promise me you won't go anywhere?"

seokmin gave you a lopsided smile, fingers brushing over your skin still. "promise."

you pulled yourself off the couch, purposefully giving him a bit of a view as you leaned over to slip your feet back into your sneakers, walking over to the man that had called your name. seokmin watched you swing your hips side to side, then cursed under his breath when jeonghan's hand snaked around your waist only a few meters in front of him, putting the pieces together in his mind.

"i see you like my friend," jeonghan muttered, handing you the drink you had asked him for. he was dressed as a man in black, which was wholly unoriginal considering he wore many suits regularly, but you figured your cheerleading costume wasn't leaving much more to the imagination than any of the dresses he usually picked out for you.

"you never told me you were friends with a musician," you teased. "afraid i wouldn't call you?"

he laughed, sneakily pulling up the hem of your skirt and watching over your shoulder as seokmin tried not to stare. "you'll always call me."

you bit at your lip, smiling. "yes, daddy."

"are you sure about him?"

you peeked over your shoulder, giggling when seokmin looked away from you and tugged at the knees of his black pleather pants. "isn't he perfect?"

"i like seokmin," jeonghan said, drawing your attention by taking off his sunglasses, hooking them in his lapel pocket. "he's one of my closest friends. i want you to be absolutely sure."

you paused, considering his tone and looking into his amber eyes. "i'm positive."

jeonghan smiled, pulling you into him for a quick kiss. "go tell him the good news, sweetheart."

you grinned, pulling away from him as he put his sunglasses back on and teasingly clicked his prop neuralizer at you. you giggled and sauntering back to the couch that seated the most adorable harley quinn you had ever seen.

"i'm back," you said, sipping at your drink as you settled back into seokmin's side. "sorry, you know how sugar daddies are. so demanding."

he choked out a laugh, still unsure despite your joking tone. "so, you and, uh, jeonghan-"

"yeah," you sighed, setting your drink down on the table beside the sofa and adjusting your posture, putting your knees on his thigh but keeping your shoes off the couch. "he likes my company, i like not paying for tuition."

"what are you studying?" seokmin asked, jumping at the opportunity to change the subject.

you smiled, tugging at his arm until he took the hint to put it back where it was before you were interrupted. "musical theory and recording arts."

he almost laughed. "you're unreal."

"i could say the same," you said, fingers fiddling with the opposite collar of his jacket. "can i ask you something? no pressure."

his eyebrows quirked upwards. "there's a little pressure."

you giggled, tugging at the collar lightly and smiling when he shifted to face you better. "genuinely, don't say yes just because i want you to, okay?" you only continued when he nodded, taking a deep breath. "so, jeonghan and i have been wanting to try something for a while, and he asked me to find someone tonight."

seokmin swallowed. "am i someone?"

you bit your lip. "yes."

his finger scratched at his cheek. "and he approves?"

your eyes flickered to where you and jeonghan had been standing, but the older was nowhere to be found. "yes."

"i-" he cleared his throat suddenly. "i just haven't- i don't know what i'm trying to say." he paused to collect himself. "i've never even considered doing anything like… that."

you giggled sweetly, and seokmin tried to not notice the way your hand ran over his chest. "i haven't done anything like this either," you assured him. "jeonghan's a little bossy, but he'll only be that way to me if you don't ask for it, i promise. and you don't have to do anything you're uncomfortable with, seriously, we can stop whenever, i just-" you bit at your lip briefly. "i just really want to make you feel good."

despite you telling him to not just say yes just for your sake, he had a hard time saying no after hearing your dark tone. any idea of saying no slipped his mind completely when you kissed him, slow and deliberate, your tongue tasting like cola and whiskey against his. he even went as far as pulling you into his lap, forgetting the context of the party surrounding him, his only thoughts about the way your thighs split over his lap and how soft your skin felt when his hands ran under your skirt.

"is this a yes?" you asked breathlessly, trying not to grind down on his pleather covered thighs.

he nodded at you with blown out eyes. "i'll try anything with you."

you grinned, finger brushing over the purposefully smeared lipstick across his cheek. "you're so cute."

he smiled at you, a hand running up your side as you leaned into him again. "not all the time," he muttered, and you couldn't help but gasp lightly when he bounced his leg under you. "want me to prove it?"

you kissed him again, unable to form any words to say yes but desperately needing to. when a hand landed on the back of your neck, you moaned into his mouth and pulled away, trying to catch your breath.

seokmin's hand pulled you into him again, and you whimpered lightly against his lips. "we need to go."

his lips barely left yours when he asked "where to?" and your fingers intertwined with his as you stood, pulling him off the couch to follow you.

you spotted jeonghan in the next room, and despite not knowing for sure if he noticed you two, you spun around playfully and pulled seokmin into you again, letting him kiss you deeply with his hands exploring your bare waist before you pulled away again to continue leading him away, the lopsided grin on his face never leaving.

the noise of the party dissipated as you pulled him up a flight of stairs and down a hall, stopping a few times to kiss against banisters in areas of jeonghan's home he had never been in.

"is this-" seokmin stopped himself as you closed the bedroom door, looking around at the grand but minimally decorated room - the main focal point being the large canopy bed against the far wall.

"jeonghan's," you said, pulling seokmin into you and resuming your feverish kisses. "it's the only bedroom i'm allowed in."

he briefly wondered what other rules the two of you had, but all but forgot about them when you were pushing his jacket off his shoulders, hands running over his chest. you tried to catch your breath as seokmin's mouth worked its way down your neck, but you couldn't stop whining.

"fuck, do you work out?" you asked breathlessly as he backed you up against the door, your hands not so subtly gripping at a bicep.

he chuckled against your neck. "i tune pianos, sometimes."

you briefly thought about him moving an upright to access the strings, and how you had to recruit the help of three friends to move the one jeonghan had bought for you. "you should come to my place, i've been meaning to get mine tuned for a while."

"you can just say you want to see me again," he said, a teasing smile on his lips as he pulled you off the door.

"you're sure about this, right?" you asked between kisses. "he'll notice we're missing and come looking. i don't want you to be surprised."

seokmin considered the concept of jeonghan walking in on his friend between your thighs, laid out on his bed, and the way his length flinched in his pants assured you that it was the best idea he had heard in a while. "i'm sure, i promise."

you bit at your lip again as you grinned, letting him overtake you with kisses as the back of your legs hit the bed.

"this little skirt, i swear to god," seokmin groaned, large hands squeezing at your ass through the fabric.

you gasped, your open mouth making seokmin groan deeper as he pulled you against his tented crotch. "jeonghan picked it out."

"i can tell," he said, staring down at the supposed team name you were meant to be cheering for. "angel, huh? does he call you that?"

"sometimes," you breathed, lips nipping at his neck. "he calls me the name on your chest more, though."

seokmin chuckled, almost completely forgetting about his own costume that he had mostly only picked because the shirt was so easy to find. he brought your lips back to his, kissing you deeply before pushing you down onto the soft mattress. "i want you to get comfortable."

you nodded excitedly, kicking off your shoes and watching him unbuckle his belt as you backed yourself up against the pillows. he kneed his way onto the bed, pants unzipped and shirt discarded, but stopped his undressing to crawl towards you, hands running over your split thighs. you groaned, hips rolling towards him just at the sight of him between your legs, and he gazed up at you sweetly.

"you're soaking through your panties."

you took a heaving breath. "you're super hot."

his lips skated over your inner thigh, and you gripped at the duvet as you tried to stifle a moan. his hands went under your thighs, squeezing at your ass before hooking under your panties, and you bit your lip to keep yourself from whining as he slowly pulled them off you, your skirt falling over your waist when you lifted your hips for him.

"oh, baby, look at you," he cooed, tongue darting out between his lips as he took in the sight. "is that all for me?"

you moaned, rolling your hips off the mattress again, staring at his shoulders as he settled. "fuck, seokmin, please-"

your pleas were interrupted by your own garbled moan as he put his tongue against your inner thigh, biting down on the soft flesh. your hand found his scalp, gripping as he sucked a sweet red rose into your thigh, kissing it gently before moving to repeat the action a little closer to your core.

"oh, god, s-seokmin-" you whined, bucking your hips against him. he gently held your wily hips down as he continued until he was satisfied with the marks, hoping they would stay a while. remind you of him when he wasn't around. his breath hit your core and you keened, desperately asking for his lips, but he only barely teased his tongue over your clit before planting his lips on your other thigh, drawing a shaky moan from you as you gripped his hair.

"fuck, please," you begged, wishing you could move your hips more freely, but his strong grip on you held you in place.

when seokmin decided he was happy with the delicate roses between your legs, he looked up to you, observing the way your chest heaved and you panted, your eyes blown to all hell. your fingers tightened in his hair when he rolled out his tongue, slowly dragging it through your folds.

you moaned, your voice sounding choppy and desperate even to you as your neck stretched out in pleasure. "g-god!"

he hummed against you, his lips kissing at your clit and tongue running over you alternately. you shook as he lapped at you, and he pulled his hands out from under your ridden up skirt in order to push your thighs back, allowing him more comfortable access as you groaned, blue stained fingers leaving his hair to grip at the duvet.

"fuck, seokmin, i'm already so close-"

he hummed again, pulling away but putting two fingers over your core instead, spreading your arousal through your folds and over your clit as he licked his lips. "is my mouth that good to you?"

you arched your back as he continued running his fingers over you. "it's so good."

he lapped at you again, making you let out a high pitched whine as he slowly slipped his fingers into your sweet, tight hole. your eyes shut and you moaned, squeezing his fingers as your arousal seeped out from around them. "your pussy is so cute," he muttered, eyes darting up to your face as you panted. he slowly began to curl his lean, long, instrument trained fingers in your core, pulling more pleas from your lips. "i bet it's cuter when you cum."

"fuck, please," you begged. "please make me cum."

seokmin groaned lightly as he sucked at your clit, rolling his hips against the mattress to relieve some of the pressure he felt from your fingers digging against his scalp, your taste on his lips, your whining moans in his ears.

you noticed the sound of the door, almost processing the meaning before your pleasure interrupted your own thought. "fuck, baby, right there!"

he groaned, digging his fingers further into you to spur your squealing as he flicked his tongue against you, and you practically thrashed against him as you came undone, your thighs pushing into his shoulders as your back arched against the mattress.

you whined dully when he pulled his mouth away from you, your fingers loosening their grip in his spray dyed hair. he never pulled his fingers out of you, not even as he crawled slowly over you, continuing to gently curl into you as you wrapped your arms around his shoulders, pulling him into your chest.

"you started without me," jeonghan said finally, and seokmin smiled into your neck as you watched your sugar daddy pull off his tie, still whining lightly at the fingers in your cunt. "that wasn't what we agreed on."

"i- ah-" you gasped, thigh pressing against seokmin's arm when his thumb pushed against your clit. "i couldn't wait," you said, hooded eyes watching jeonghan approach.

"found yourself a cute toy, huh?" he quirked his eyebrow at the younger, noticing the way his shoulders rippled under your desperate fingers as he stood at the end of the bed. "are you gonna treat him nice, sweetheart?"

you nodded quickly, fingers finding seokmin's scalp again as you kissed him, loving the way you tasted on his lips. you gasped when he slowly pulled his fingers out of you, his hand running up your waist to hold you stay as he rut his clothed bulge into you, the feeling of cool pleather against your hot core making you moan against him.

"what do you want to do, sweetheart?" jeonghan prompted you, gently leaning against a bedpost as he adjusted himself in his pants

"i wanna ride," you said, breath fanning over seokmin's face as he blushed slightly. his red ears just made you move your hips again desperately. "fuck, seokmin, i need to ride you."

his movements stopped for a second, mind whirling with the idea of you bouncing on him. his thoughts were only interrupted by a voice.

"you heard her, seokmin."

he snapped into action, kissing you again as he shoved his slightly too tight pants down his hips, and you pushed him until he allowed you to roll him into his back. you tugged his pants down his legs, gulping at the bulge in his underwear.

"jesus, seokmin, you never said you were packing," jeonghan chuckled, observing the way you faltered when you noticed his length.

seokmin sucked in a labored breath when you ran your hands over his hips, teasing a thumb over his erection. "you never asked."

you tugged his underwear down over his hips, taking care to pull him gently out to avoid harm. you rolled your tongue out to draw a wet line up the underside of his heavy cock, enjoying the way it flinched up against you. 

"he likes tits," jeonghan said, shrugging off his blazer and walking to the side of the bed to toss it onto a chair. "lose the top, angel."

you smirked up at seokmin, suddenly extremely happy that the only one that interested you at this party was someone jeonghan knew. you slinked up his body to straddle his lap, the hem of your skirt teasing the head of his cock as it peeked out from under it. you kissed him first, and his hands ran up your thighs as he bucked his hips up to meet your bare core, but you hovered just out of reach. you sat up again, pulling the cheer top over your head and tossing it to the side.

seokmin groaned, hands finding your waist and running up your sides to squeeze gently at your breasts with his thumbs. "fuck, you're gorgeous."

"and you're huge," you said, finally grinding down against his length, pulling a deep groan from his chest. you backed up to stand his cock on end, pulling it against your stomach and practically choking when you saw how tall it stood, the tip far past the waistband of your skirt.

jeonghan whistled. "how are you gonna stuff all that in your tight little pussy, sweetheart?"

saliva gathered in your mouth at the thought. "like a good girl."

seokmin groaned again, hips bucking up to fuck into your hands. "stop teasing and take it, baby."

you got on your knees, positioning yourself over the head of his thick cock, and he practically bucked up into you when he felt your wetness at his tip. you gasped, sinking slowly, eyes watering slightly at the stretch and seokmin moaned, hands on your waist in support. you looked at jeonghan briefly, and he smiled, cock in hand, watching you as you sank slowly.

"stop," seokmin said, grip tightening on your waist. he panted as he held you in place, and you had an idea as to why he stopped you as you felt him pressing against your cervix. "i don't wanna hurt you."

his gentleness was a welcomed juxtaposition from jeonghan's usual intensity. you nodded, hands on his chest, then leaned forward to kiss him, gently fucking yourself on as much of his length as you could manage, readying yourself. his grip on your waist tightened, and he let out a beautiful whine when you dipped a little further onto him.

"careful," he breathed, and you sat up. your hands ran down his chest and over his stomach, then up your own body to gently coerce his fingers out of the deathgrip on your waist. he took the hint, running his hands up your torso and running his thumbs over your hardened nipples.

you groaned, your hips inching closer to his every time you bounced on his lap. it took everything in him to not take control, your pussy squeezing and pulling him further into you, the only sound in his ears your musical moans as you started to get desperate.

"fuck, you're so big," you said dumbly, unable to think of anything else. 

"you're so tight," seokmin said back. he hooked a thumb under your skirt, tugging it up to reveal how tightly your cunt hugged him. "fuck, you look so good filled up like that."

your hands found his thighs, leaning back as you rolled your hips over his. you choked out a moan, the angle nearly making you fold an instant. "d-daddy, can i cum?"

seokmin groaned and almost responded before jeonghan did. "go right ahead, angel. let him feel how good you are."

you sank down, your hips meeting seokmin's and a whining moan leaving you lips as he choked slightly. you fell forward onto his chest, giving him desperate, open mouthed kisses as you rolled your hips, your sensitive nub rubbing against his pelvis. you gasped, clutching at his hair as he pushed his hips up into yours, the coil in you snapping in you all while he muttered how good of a girl you were against your lips. his grip around you tightened as your grip around him did the same, the feeling of your tight cunt pulsating around him almost enough to get him off despite him steadying his hips as you shuddered on his chest.

"beautiful," jeonghan commented. "she looks good when you fuck her."

seokmin tried not to groan, but the involuntary movement of his hips triggered an unhidable moan from you. "never thought i'd enjoy being watched."

"i always knew you were a freak," the older said, continuing to pump himself. "you okay if i take a little control?"

seokmin finally looked over to his friend, eyes dropping to his cock as he gulped. "y-yeah."

"alright. sweetheart, time to get up. i want that skirt off."

you whined, grinding down on seokmin. he choked, and you dug your face into his neck.

"three..."

you whined again, louder this time, gripping a bicep as you took in a breath. "please, he feels so good-"

"two..."

you curled your toes in protest, and seokmin had the least control when you rolled your hips on his again, both of you letting out shaky moans. you heard your name as a warning, and you practically started crying from how badly you didn't want to remove yourself from him.

"y/n. one."

you caved finally, not wanting jeonghan to punish you in front of a guest, sitting yourself up suddenly and gasping at the feeling, seokmin's hands gripping your hips. you looked over to jeonghan, who had a smile on his face as he bit his lip gently.

"off, angel. you can have him again in a second."

you slowly pulled yourself off of seokmin's hard cock, and he had one hand keeping your skirt out of view, the other kneading reassuring circles in your thighs as you did. you both groaned when you managed to lift yourself off of him completely, and jeonghan watched your arousal drip from you onto seokmin's flushed cock.

"c'mere, sweetheart," jeonghan said, gesturing for you to come to the side of the bed where he stood.

you unzipped your skirt and let it fall to the mattress as you weakly kneed yourself over to him, thighs shaking. seokmin tucked one hand behind his head and wrapped the other around his cock, watching you intently as you came up to the eldest. he gripped your chin first, opening your mouth before him, and you rubbed your thighs together as you vocalised.

"embarrassed?" jeonghan asked, chuckling darkly when you nodded lightly. he spat in your mouth anyways. "don't let me make it to one next time."

you heard a groan behind you as you swallowed, then gasped when jeonghan's free hand found your ass, pulling you against him. he kissed you, and you had almost forgotten how his lips felt against yours, how his nimble tongue brushed against the back of your teeth in a way that made your knees wobble on the edge of the bed.

"i want him to ruin you," he muttered against your lips, grip tight on your jaw. "i want to see you fucked out on his fat cock, choking on my cum."

you nodded fervently, and felt the bed shift as seokmin sat up behind you. jeonghan smiled as he let you go, and you quickly backed up against the younger, gasping when his cock slipped between your thighs and his fingers pinched at your nipples, kneading your breasts tightly.

"fuck, she's incredible," he said, against your neck, and you couldn't help the sustained whine you let out. "i can't believe you never told me, han."

he chuckled, rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt. "i knew she'd like you too much. but you'll always call me, right, sweetheart?"

you whined again, watching as jeonghan gently kneed onto the bed, just to brush his lips against yours.

"answer me."

you quivered, grinding down on seokmin's cock and feeling his lips on your neck, but still focusing on the face before you. "yes, daddy."

he smiled, placing a gentle kiss on your nose before backing up again. "hands and knees. give us a minute, okay, minnie?"

the younger nodded, but groaned when you dropped forward, watching the way his cock fit snugly between your thighs. "tell me when."

you stared up at jeonghan as he put a hand on his cock, another in your hair, and slowly guided himself towards your lips. you puckered your lips to meet him, then opened your mouth and rolled out your tongue, lapping at the tip of his cock, tongue gliding under it as you desperately tried to suck him into your waiting mouth.

"oh sweetheart," he said, watching you with hooded lids. "you really want this, don't you?"

you whined, pushing back against seokmin, making his breath hitch. jeonghan finally pushed his hips forward, fucking once into your wet mouth, and you moaned on his cock as it hit the back of your throat. seokmin couldn't help but buck into your thighs, slightly desperate for friction as he watched you drip all over him. he tested his voice once, then quietly asked if he could finger you.

you moaned again, and jeonghan smiled as he fucked your mouth. "sounds like she wants it."

you let out a muffled whine when seokmin slotted two fingers into your pussy, your mouth too full to properly vocalise how good it felt. when he added another finger, you almost collapsed, and likely would have if jeonghan hadn't been holding you up by your hair.

"fuck her," he commanded, holding you on his cock and watching the way you looked up at him as you realized what that meant.

seokmin pulled his fingers out of you and placed himself at your entrance in their stead, sinking into you slowly. your eyes rolled back, drool dripping from either side of jeonghan's cock as seokmin filled you out.

"fuck," he said, gripping your hips and trying to stop himself from pushing all the way in. "fuck, you're so wet."

you let out another muffled noise, pushing back onto him as he choked. jeonghan watched the tears well up in your eyes, mouth stretched around his cock.

"angel," he paused, pulling from you slightly. "are we still green?"

you nodded, rolling your tongue around him to prove it. he smiled at you, then quietly told seokmin to fuck you full.

and he did. you whined and babbled, every thrust of seokmin's hips pushing you onto jeonghan's cock until he hit your throat. you didn't know how long it continued. you heard a honey voice you were familiar with, but you couldn't tell if the teasing words were directed towards you or the man behind you. you couldn't even register fully what was happening when you felt fingers circling your clit, and you wailed as you came, thighs quaking and throat full.

"oh, fuck, i'm gonna cum," seokmin said quickly. he gasped. "fuck, can i cum?"

jeonghan grinned, one eye closing more than the other as he huffed, feeling close to his own release. "fill her up."

seokmin jerked into you three more times before he steadied his hips and let out a deep, melodic groan, buried deep in you as his cum leaked out around his thick cock. you were still moaning, unsure if you could ever stop making noises, but quickly pulled yourself together as jeonghan came down your throat.

you choked once, but swallowed around him, and he gripped his fingers against your scalp as you did. when he finally removed himself from your mouth, you panted and collapsed onto the bed, unable to catch your breath with seokmin still hilt deep in you.

"what a perfect girl," jeonghan muttered, brushing his damp hair off his forehead, gazing down at you. "smart, funny, and an angel in bed. and you-" he said, smirking at seokmin when he finally lifted his head from your spine, even if it was only for a moment. "you surprised me. if you're down, i'd like to do this again."

he tried to catch his breath, but couldn't help the way his hips involuntarily pushed into yours, fucking his cum deeper into you. he just nodded against your spine as you moaned, feeling his cum drip down your thighs.

jeonghan tsked. "you got your hair dye all over my white sheets."

[rhyselinn]

Gather round folks, it’s time to talk about Shovel Knight characters’ canon heights!

First things first, let’s talk about our friend Reize Seatlan.

His creator, Seizui, has been building canon around this character for years, and this link tells us that Reize’s canon height is 160 cm (5'3").

Let’s take a look at this boy’s sprite: (complete with blue Photoshop rulers in case you want to see where I measured from)

*caveat: Reize’s hair is extremely fluffy. It runs in the family, so I counted his height as being shorter than the height of his hair. It makes sense and it makes the math easier

Counting the pixels in Reize’s sprite, we can see that he is 32 pixels tall. So when we divide 160 cm by 32 pixels, we discover that each pixel in the Shovel Knight universe is 5 centimeters in real life.

So, what does this mean for the rest of the Shovel Knight cast?

Great question: I’ve got the rest of the math (with screenshot proof) under the cut:

Alright, in no particular order, let’s talk about Plague Knight next.

--Worth noting that I’m using playable/Showdown sprites as opposed to boss sprites when possible. This helps keep characters proportional to each other

--Plague Knight is 31 pixels tall = 155 cm tall = 5 foot 1. Tiny plague knight, but as we’ll see later, not the tiniest member of the cast

Tiniest member of the cast, you say? Could you mean... Tinker Knight?

--Tinker Knight slouches in almost all of his sprites, so I tried to find a sprite of him NOT slouching. That extra pixel makes a difference for this tiny character lol

--27 pixels tall = 135 cm tall = 4 foot 5. tiny tinker. But still not the tiniest member of the cast, believe it or not!

Shovel Knight:

--fairly straightforward. i did wonder if his victory pose was any taller than his regular pose, but it's not

24 pixels tall = 120 cm = 3 foot 11. tiny. tiny shovel. the average 9 year old child is between 120-145 centimeters. So not only is Shovel the size of a 9 year old, but he might actually be the shortest in the class...

Black Knight:

--there are interesting things i could say about the bird feather situation but eh. imma go with eh. bird feathers do not count as height, final answer --other than that, pretty easy here

24 pixels tall = 120 cm = 3 foot 11. same size as shovel, aka also the size of a 9 year old. adorable

Propeller Knight:

--slouches REALLY BAD. ALL THE TIME. --his least slouch-y sprite is his tuxedo sprite from the end of Plague of Shadows, so I used that initially... only to realize that he's the exact same height in his other sprites as well. How about that! Maybe he has some kind of a battery pack for his propeller hat in the back of his shirt. It would explain his terrible posture.

--39 pixels tall = 195 cm tall = 6 foot 4. Tall, but not unreasonable.

Mole Knight:

--has some fascinating squash and stretch in his sprite sheet --fabulous from an animation standpoint. difficult from a math standpoint --i refuse to count his fire-hair as height lol

Squash sprite: 32 pixels tall = 160 cm = 5 foot 2 Normal: 36 pixels tall = 180 cm = 5 foot 10 Stretch sprite: 46 pixels tall = 230 cm = 7 foot 6 (!!!)

I have no explanation for this other than artistic liberties lol

Specter Knight:

--i'm so glad player sprites exist lol. Specter's boss fight sprites are just piles of cloth with him slouching underneath. I will gleefully ignore them for this exercise --that said, even with player sprites, specter knight is HUNCHED OVER ALMOST ALL THE TIME. AUGH. --fortunately, cold shoulder sprites exist, and a few other action-y type poses. they’re pretty consistent with each other (within a pixel or so) --how much of Specter's hood is fluffy cloth vs actual height? good question. I compared to one of Donovan's sprites to give us a good estimate, give or take 1 pixel or so

37 pixels tall = 185 cm = 6 foot 0. Pretty average here.

Treasure Knight:

--also slouches in a lot of his sprites, but at least has a few non-slouchy sprites for us to examine. I chose the taller of the two for consistency (difference of 50 vs 51 pixels)

Treasure Height: 51 pixels = 255 cm = 8 foot 4 (!!!?!) This man is huge!

King Knight:

--his normal standing sprite met my requirements, so I used that --I included his boss sprite without the crown for comparison, because a crown does not actually make one taller lol (sorry not sorry, king) --this also shows the importance of using player sprites vs boss sprites. the difference between the two is pretty obvious here

32 pixels tall = 160 cm = 5 foot 2. tiny. tiny king

Polar Knight:

--hunched over. like, all the time. --there aren't really any sprites of him not hunched over, but the least hunched over is him doing his shovel up attack, so I'll use that, and his normal sprite for comparison

Normal sprite: 47 pixels tall = 235 cm = 7 foot 8 (!!!) Tall sprite: 58 pixels tall = 290 cm = 9 foot 6 (!!!?!?!?!) tl;dr polar knight is a beast of a man and we all knew that already hahaha. the tallest man on record in medical history was 8 ft 11. This is absolutely bonkers

Shield Knight:

--while she does have hunched over sprites, i simply avoided them lol. --how tall is her head inside her helmet? great question! the world may never know. Since our only reference for this is concept art (which does little more than tells us her head is shaped like a human’s and not, say, a squid’s), I kinda winged the exact pixel count. --also worth noting is that she grows a few inches when she sticks her leg out lol

Normal sprite: 35 pixels = 175 cm = 5 foot 8 (tall but normal height for an adult woman) Tall sprite: 40 pixels = 200 cm = 6 foot 6 (!!!!) (hOLY MAMA beautiful big buff lady)

And just for fun, I added a few other important characters from the main stories:

Mona:

--we know she is a tall lady, but exactly how tall? --all of her sprites seem pretty consistent in height, which makes my job easy!

48 pixels tall = 240 cm = 7 foot 10. (???????!!!?) She is the size of Shovel Knight and Black Knight stacked on top of each other. Amazing. I have nothing but awe and admiration for this incredibly tall lady

Luan:

--He has a bunch of funky tumbling/hunched over sprites and very fluffy hair. like father, like son. I did my best to pick the most reasonable sprites of the bunch --after that, I decided two pixels of hair is enough. voluminous hair is impressive but is not height --similar to Shield Knight, he grows a few inches when he sticks his leg out lol

Normal Sprite: 39 pixels = 195 cm = 6 foot 4 Tall Sprite: 43 pixels = 215 cm = 7 foot 0 (!!) All the better for reaching those hard-to-reach platforms in the Tower of Fate, I guess?

King Knight’s Mom:

--last but not least, the best character in king of cards (you know it's true lol) --she also has somewhat fluffy hair. i'm not counting her bun as height.

41 pixels = 205 cm = 6 foot 8 (!!!). It's not Mona tall, but it's still very tall. Tallness may run in the family, but King Knight seeems to have missed out on all of those genes hahaha.

Special thanks to https://www.spriters-resource.com/pc_computer/shovelknight/ for having all the sprites in one easy place! Thanks for reading!

*disclaimer: I am only human and if I flubbed the math or measurements on any of this, I hope you’ll forgive me. I promise I didn’t mean to slight whichever character was affected

[1ddiscourseoftheday]

🗣Tues 15 Dec ‘20🙊

Anyone order their daily with EXTRA DISCOURSE today? Lucky you, I guess, I'd send it back to the kitchen if I had the option but this is more a 'you'll take what you get and like it' kind of establishment so here we are! EAT UP we got Liam and Lou Teasdale making everyone mad, Louis and Harry's teams forgetting they're supposed to be mortal enemies, and Zayn?? Getting papped?? Omg is Z3 really coming this time? I've been burned so many times before (flown too close to the sun) but what if....... So first Gigi and zaby stroller were papped, then Zayn was papped in his usual way-- 'if you can get a good picture of me in the seconds it takes me to walk from my front door to the car have at it, that's exactly all you get'-- and then a fan reported seeing Zigi and zaby at a pizza restaurant. Zayn's hair is bleached white blond and that's about all I can tell you except that Z NEVER gets papped (or spotted really) for nothing so I am excite!!

Liam's back! He did the postponed-from-last-Tues hour long live for Stand Up To Cancer (and raised $16k!) and he's got a show in two days so I'd say his extremely brief breather is probably done with, whether he got the time he needed to be happy about coming back or not. He seems in good shape for the live though, even if he does say “its been a really long day, you don't even know, REALLY long” and that what he wants most for Christmas is “to have a little bit of time to reflect.” But he says he is going to take some time out and go away and write music “for the first time in a very long time,” in the new year, nice! He mentions how he went up to Sweden for recording recently and says it ”went really well I'm really really excited” about the new music and, uhhh, “got something sent through from Mick Fleetwood while I was over in Sweden writing, some guitar stuff, which was amazing, and he was dressed like santa at the time!” I...what??? I'll just... leave that there?? About other bands, he says that he's become a big fan of the Wanted over time, that “someone Zayn-ed out,” of Little Mix but “Zayn left for pretty much the same reasons and I do feel for them,” and “are 5SOS still together? Did they pull an us I thought they pulled an us?” He said yes, it's so great about Louis' show, and “it was great, and do you know what, like listening through those lyrics, it’s really nice to hear the truth in his music because obviously I mean I know all of the full story about him, and [pause].. and uh... his relationship with his girlfriend and whatever else,” SKLDYSSKKJ.

This long live also had him responding to screen comments he would usually ignore (though thank GOD he only reads but doesn't answer 'what happened with Niall in Japan' please tell me the questioner wasn't trying to get him to comment on the 'violently masturbating' story), anyway so we got Liam on touching his hair if larry is real-- “of course that's not going to happen don't be silly,” and on whether he thinks 'larry is disrespectful' “sometimes I do... actually that's not true, all the time I do.” Well he's not wrong though I'd expand that to 'all the fans' but if I had to wade through a million “touch your nose if larry is real” comments every time I was promoting my own material, for ten years, I'd probably get tetchy too! He didn't say it was or wasn't real, as he himself pointed out he never WILL do that for REASONS; tbh I'm with Liam can people PLEASE stop being so embarrassing on main and let him live? ANYWAY, moving on, his Advent Alarm clock today is the sleep story edited down to be just Liam laughing for like 30 seconds, aka the exact edit that I suggested they should make a couple weeks ago, which I find frankly extremely alarming (ALARMing HA) are they... listening to me?? Well if Liam's management are looking for ideas BOY HAVE I GOT SOME FOR THEM hit me up fellas PLEASE.

Harry and Louis both announced further postponements of their UK and Europe tour shows, like really the same announcement and just fully back to back, I can only assume that after weeks of intensive hashing out to match up dates their teams have arrived at some kind of plan and were like cool let's announce! Louis has added some new shows, while Harry's new schedule is undisclosed as yet. Harry says “I really hope to play these shows and will have news for you in the new year on when they will take place.” Louis' new dates include previously omitted countries (Iceland! Austria!), and those tickets go on sale Friday. Harry did not respond to Rob Sheffield's awkward attempt to link Watermelon Sugar and WAP as being similar but he did like Megan Thee Stallion's post celebrating her successful year, and Vulture ranked Adore You in its top 5 videos of the year with a much better take on what Harry is all about, saying that it “highlights one of the singer’s best traits: his willingness to be delightfully weird.” Kid Harpoon said that he and Harry “wrote a song in Japan that may yet see the light of the day,” and Harry continues to roast him, disputing his songwriter of the year award-- “they found 8,000,000 opposing ballots in a bin behind his house! FRAUD!”

And last but most discourse-y-est of all, The Sun made waves today, pulling the most salacious parts of a Lou Teasdale interview with the Sex, Lies and DM Slides podcast from last week and bringing it to wider attention. In the interview she talked at length about systemic discrimination against women working in the music industry and her own work experiences, which naturally include (very briefly) touching on her highest profile job- the years she spent traveling with 1D. In this context she says “you kind of can’t sleep with them [the band]- it’s quite important to keeping your job... some people would come in and like you know assistants and stuff and I think they would really think... that it was love and obviously it’s not,” and “it’s just the quickest way to lose your job- because then they’ve got a new girlfriend and she’s there and they don’t want you in the room.” She did not sell her story to The Sun she mentioned this in passing as part of an interview about her work experiences; she herself says, “I didn’t do an interview [with] the sun. I’ve never done that. I did a podcast with friends about loads of things.”

There is nothing remotely unlikely in this story, either in the concept that members of the band slept with girls casually (we know that certain of them did and there isn't even anything wrong with that in a situation of consent, the denial of it is as bizarre as scribbling out the beer bottle in a 28 year old man's hand), or that low level members (“assistants and stuff”) of the 150 person+ crew appeared and disappeared on a regular basis. The band were, to my guess, probably simply not paying very much attention to the serious ramifications of this carelessness and the consequences rather than demanding that people be fired, but I do very much hope they've learned over the years to be responsible for the kind of power that they have over other peoples' lives (something I really doubt they understood the extent of yet as very young people being dragged from one place to another who felt powerless themselves).

[caitsyoi]

I made a post about the Seraphites, so now I want to make one about the WLF. This post is mostly about the WLF's home base, aka the stadium and the area immediately around it. I've included some of my favorite pictures, and my thoughts and observations about where they live and their culture.

Under the cut again to keep things nice and clean.

I gotta say, this blew my mind when I first saw this as Abby. The WLF really have their shit together. Multiple power sources, a bunch of the resources FEDRA left behind, and multiple food sources. The field has cattle, sheep, and chickens plus some farming. On the steps they have even more areas for farming. They have a way to collect water, and even people to design and string up their logo everywhere.

It makes sense, supposedly thousands of people live here (you can't see it unless except via glitch, but there is also baseball stadium immediately next to this that they might also occupy).

We only see where Abby and other soldiers (perhaps squad leaders?) live. They have a pretty cushy life, two per luxury box (the rooms NFL teams overcharge for that run along the upper level of stadiums). Mel also mentions a special area for young families, I wouldn't be surprised if these areas were further divided. Perhaps there is also housing for larger families and single people who aren't soldiers or squad leaders. I very much wonder if those who join the military get better housing than those that work as farmers (or dishwashers, teachers, laundry washers, cooks, etc.). As mentioned earlier, Abby and Manny live in a luxury box, and there are 112 of those in the stadium this is based on. That's housing for 224 people, if they all live like the people in Abby's hallway. That would mean there has to be more housing in other parts of the stadium.

This stadium was once used by FEDRA, and you can see the concrete barriers they left behind along the edge of the field. They have to have more cattle than this, to feed all the people that supposedly live under the WLF. There is farmland around the stadium (more on that later), so maybe they mostly let them graze out there, then move some in when they plan on slaughtering them soon.

I love that they have wind turbines AND solar panels. You can see the influence that the Fireflies had on Issac and the WLF, they really focus on stability and restoring what was lost (at least when it comes to comfort). So they have electricity, sustainable food sources (and multiple kinds too), and a way to collect water (you can't see it in this shot, but they use a system similar to Jackson's, just on a much wider scale).

They teach a curriculum similar to what was taught to kids before the outbreak. We only see two classrooms, but from what I can tell they try to give the gives the type of education they could have received in the old days (as best they can, at least). Both the teachers you see are pretty young, which makes me wonder who taught them.

Most of the kinds you see in class are pretty young, like less than 10. These look a little order (they are outside the stadium in the market area, which I will talk about more a little later). I wonder how long WLF children are required to attend school (I think I saw a sign for 1st through 6th grade, so at least that?). I imagine they get a basic education with some broad looks into various topics, and maybe the ones most apt for study are selected to do specialized careers like teaching or meteorology. Other children are probably pushed into farming or the military portion of the WLF. Regardless of what they study, they probably also get a heavy dose of WLF propaganda. That aligns with how gung-ho many of them are to fight.

I wonder if military service is compulsory, like everyone has has to do at least so much time and then they can do other things if they want. Or maybe they make it so you don't have to fight if you don't want to, but those that do get better perks.

Most of the WLF you see appear to be in their 20's or 30's, or at least the fighters. That would mean they have spent most (if not all) of their lives under military rule, and they would have a special allegiance to the WLF since they manage things so much better than FEDRA did. Plus, you know, all that propaganda. I imagine they are told a lot about how the WLF is restoring society and how the WLF saved them from FEDRA/Scars/infected.

Sorta related, I thought of an WLF AU. Ellie grows up in Seattle under the WLF, perhaps with Riley and Dina and the other characters from canon. So many interesting things can be done with this, but that's for another post maybe.

This is one the cafeteria's the WLF use. I believe this is one of a few, although this is the only one you see. There is also a butcher and small market for clothing and items here too. They prepare food here, but I think the majority of cooking is done in an area set up for it in the stands.

They have posted meal times for groups A-F, and separate meal times for children and the late night patrol. So maybe this is the only cafeteria? Each end is blocked off, so maybe they use some of the corridor that circles the stadium for more living quarters.

This is also community space where they can play games, chat, or read. There also seems to be a mix of soldiers and other workers eating together, as well as young families (there is at least 1 or 2 women with young babies in here).

This little detail was super cute to me, but it also tells you a lot about WLF society. Everyone has a job to do, there is a role and place for everyone to contribute.

I'll talk more about this in another post (titled "It's Silly to Call a Post-apocalyptic Group 'Fascists', but Still the WLF Is Pretty Messed Up"), but an important thing to remember about the WLF is that everything comes down to Issac. He has the final say on everything, he makes all the major decisions, he picks squad leaders, he decides who needs to be punished, he's basically the Supreme Leader. Issac has been shown to be somewhat progressive with some things (you can follow whatever religion you want or none at all in the WLF, the WLF has no problem with LGBTQ people, you can get medical waivers for military duty, they provide support for pregnant women and parents, etc.), and in other ways he is very much the opposite (he punishes anyone who disagrees with him - this could be a relatively light punishment of a crappy assignment or it could be a beating, then there's the whole attempted genocide thing). Anyway, my point is that there are good things about the WLF, but also there is a serious darkside.

Anyway, when I saw this lady and her baby I immediately thought of Dina doing this with JJ while she gardens.

I absolutely loveeeee this little detail. A mural for the fallen. This really reminds me of some stuff you could see today, just replace the wolf with an eagle and make the uniforms camo.

There are 46ish names on this wall, so I wonder if it is continuously updated or if there are multiple murals, because they definitely have lost more people than that over the years. Also, there are about 150 people at the FOB (the amount of bodies at the FOB, yes I counted) that will need to be added. Maybe the war with the Seraphites just really exploded in the last few weeks (or maybe longer) leading up to Ellie's arrival.

I love that you can pause during the ride with Abby, Mel, and Manny to look around the outside of the stadium. Immediately outside there are train tracks and what appears to be a large market running along side of it. This is on the west side of the stadium, I believe. A major highway intersection is also nearby.

The market has all sorts of goods, food, gas, clothing, cleaning products, TVs and other electronics, records, and even more. I wonder if this is some sort of intake area for any goods they bring back to the base. But who runs these little shops? From some notes you can find we know their economy runs on trade, so how does this work?

Once you get past the market area, you see a pretty vast section of farmland. I loved this shot because it also shows one of their rain water storage areas. They mark this water as to be used only for irrigation, so they must use something else for people to drink and bathe with. Or maybe they just filter some water for people to use, and the rest goes to the plants.

In the background you can see the wall and a guard tower. There is a larger wall (like much larger, I'm talking maybe 5 stories) around the QZ, and a smaller one that runs around the stadium.

This is labeled "Checkpoint #4", so I'm not sure if that means there are other gates, but this is the only one we see in game.

The wall is pretty thick, and you can see these guard towers spaced out all alongside it (much like in Jackson). Once you leave the walls you are immediately surrounded by the wasteland that is post-apocalyptic Seattle.

[blush-and-books]

Hi! I wasn’t sure if you were still taking requests but could you do #22 for Juke? Make it angsty if you want I’m in that type of mood today 😂

From this prompt list: Kissing someone’s cuts/bruises/scratches etc. High school AU, Luke is ~edgy~, Julie is the best friend in the whole world and he has every reason to be in love with her (which he is). IDK if you’re still in an angsty mood but I made it angsty. I also went off with this one because I was having too much fun. Thank you <333

“Guys, please don’t tell Julie.”

It was early in the morning before school, and Luke was hunched over one of the dirty sinks in the bathroom while trying to nurse his bloody nose. Alex was twirling one of his drumsticks between his fingers in a nervous habit, and Reggie was propped up against one of the stall dividers. 

Luke’s face was bruised and bloody from both his nose and his own scraped knuckles that keep brushing against his cheek on accident. 

“She’ll find out,” Alex sighs, and Luke glares at him through the mirror.  “Fuck, Bobby will probably be bragging about it,” Reggie adds. 

Luke, Reggie, and Alex had been planning on going into the music room before school to quickly test out some new material that they had been working on with Julie for their rehearsal after school that day. Normally, the music teacher lets them go into a practice room and mess around, but this morning, their teacher was distracted: By Bobby Wilson. 

AKA their ex-bandmate.

Who they had found with the music teacher, hunched over a computer, playing a recording he had made of a song with eerily familiar lyrics. 

He had recorded songs that Luke wrote when they were all still in a band. And he was showing them off to their music teacher as his own. 

Their music teacher was singing Bobby’s praises, telling him how proud she was that he was developing a career, and then she excused herself to go make some sheet music copies for one of her classes -- and that is when Luke made his entrance. 

Long story short: Bobby had a black eye and some cuts on his face from Luke’s rings, and Luke had a bloody nose, some busted knuckles, and a bruise blossoming on his cheek. 

And the last thing he wanted was Julie, his best friend, finding out. She would be so mad. 

“Well then just let me handle it, please,” Luke spits. “Don’t go running to her saying ‘Luke and Bobby beat each other up-’”

The door to the boys bathroom flings open -- and an angry girl with dark, curly hair storms in. 

Julie Molina. 

While, under any other circumstances, Luke’s day would be made just by seeing her -- he knows it’s about to get a lot worse.

“Lucas Michael Patterson, you better have a fucking valid reason for getting your ass kicked or I swear to God-”

“Julie-” 

“Bobby? Seriously? I thought you decided he wasn’t worth your time?”

“If you’ll just let me explain-”

“Maybe we should go,” Reggie cuts in. Luke rounds on him. 

“You-” He points at Reggie, then Alex, “you two weren’t supposed to tell her.”

Julie speaks up again. 

“You told them to hide this from me?” “I texted her SOS as soon as we broke you and Bobby up,” Alex explains, avoiding Luke’s eyes. “Sorry. We thought she would know a little more about first aid then we do.” 

Reggie walks over to the door, and Alex follows him before Luke can tear into them more.

“Thanks, Julie,” Reggie says right before grabbing Alex’s wrist and pulling him out of the room. Luke is left alone with Julie -- and Angry Julie is not a fun Julie to be around. 

“Jules, I-”

“Save it.” 

She puts her backpack on the floor and surprisingly pulls out a bag of bandages and a container of rubbing alcohol. A small package of tissues follows, which she instantly passes to him to hold to his nose. 

Relief fills him. They’re the soft kind -- not the sandpaper stuff that the school keeps in the bathrooms. 

“Thanks for… Doing all this,” he mumbles, voice nasally. Guilt pangs at his chest when her scowl deepens and she still won’t meet his eyes. 

“Well, I knew you wouldn’t have gone to the nurse, and someone needs to make sure you don’t get an infection.”

She’s right. The nurse means admitting he got into a fight to a school employee, admitting he got into a fight to a school employee means suspension, and suspension means an upcoming raging argument with his parents. 

He’s filled with a burning warmth when she suddenly grabs his hand -- still not making eye contact with him. His knuckles are pretty torn up, and Julie starts to remove his rings one by one. 

Luke’s heart breaks a little at how much he wants to lean into her while watching her do it. He wants her to do this again, preferably when she’s not mad at him, preferably in his room or in the studio while they write songs. 

“Now,” Julie finally speaks up and breaks his trance of distraction. “What happened?”

As he inhales a deep breath, he slowly removes the tissue from his nose, which has minimized it’s bleeding. 

“Well-”

Luke’s cut off by a stream of cleansing alcohol running over his cuts and stinging every square millimeter of space. 

“Fuck! Ow!” Julie’s face remains expressionless as Luke tries to pull his hand away, but she keeps it firm in his grip. His breathing gets heavier as he tries to face the pain. “Okay, I know I fucked up, I’m sorry. I deserved that. Let me explain.”

Another drop of the alcohol splashes on his knuckles. As he hisses, Julie gives him an expectant look. 

“I’m waiting, Patterson.”

With a few more deep breaths, Luke starts. 

“We found out that Bobby recorded our songs. My songs. Songs that were supposed to go to Sunset Curve, and he stole them, and recorded them, and played them for Ms. Harrison.” Julie’s grip tightens on his fingers. He hopes she understands his anger. “And she was just so happy about it, and was giving him all these compliments, and… When she left, I confronted him, and he was being a dick, and I just… Got mad.”

Julie finishes pressing a towel to his knuckles to wipe away some of the blood, and begins to softly wrap a bandage around his hand. Her touch is more gentle than it was a minute ago. 

“Who threw the first punch?” 

Luke sighs. 

“I did.” The bandage is tugged tightly around his knuckles. “He said that I’ll never have a band ‘with that Julie girl’ that’s worth anything close to what Sunset Curve was, and that he was making a success out of what wouldn’t have been.” 

The bandage loosens. 

“I’m sorry that Bobby is a song-stealing asshole,” Julie finally says, finishing up the bandage on his right hand. Now, time for his left, so he turns fully towards her and lifts the hand towards her to take. His heart flutters when her fingers wrap around his, but it’s quickly killed by the pierce of the rubbing alcohol. “But you know you shouldn’t resort to violence. You should be the bigger person.”

“Being the bigger person doesn’t exist when you’re a teenage boy,” Luke retorts, only to be defeated by a strong pour of the alcohol once again. “But you’re right. I know you’re right.”

“As I always am.”

Well, he can’t argue with that one. 

“As you always are.”

Finally, Luke catches a small smirk on his best friend’s face, which fills him with relief. Temporarily, his attention is taken off of his burning knuckles as she calmly finishes wiping away the blood and beginning to wrap a bandage around his left hand. 

“At least tell me you kicked his ass,” she says, out of the blew. “I want to know it was worth it.”

Even in the current situation, Luke grins wider than he has all day. Julie never fails to bring it out of him. 

“I mean, not to brag, but he definitely looks worse.” Julie looks up at him, clearly wanting a full description of the other party’s injuries. “His knuckles are trashed too, but I got in a black eye and my rings tore him up pretty good. He looks like he got attacked by a raccoon.”

“As he should,” she thinks aloud. Luke nods vigorously in agreement. 

They stand in silence under the aggressively fluorescent lighting of the bathroom, and Luke spends the next thirty seconds just staring at Julie like a lovesick idiot. She looks tired (like all of them do, every morning -- they’re teenagers for God’s sake), but her hair is down and curly and beautiful, and her sweatshirt looks beyond cozy. 

Suddenly, Julie lifts Luke’s mummified left hand to her lips and presses a light, slow kiss to it. Followed by another one. 

And then, she finally looks up at him through her long eyelashes, which takes his breath away completely. Her feet shuffle a small step closer to him, and for a moment he panics that she’s going to kiss him, or he’ll lose his self control and kiss her, but what she does instead makes his heart pound just the same:

She lifts herself onto her tiptoes and kisses the oval-shaped bruise painted across his cheekbone. 

His hand, with a mind of its own, comes up to cup the back of her neck and keep her as close as possible, which she doesn’t fight. Instead, she brushes her nose against his, and today just went from being the worst day ever to the best day ever, and-

The school bell rings. 

Julie pulls away. 

Hastily, she’s tucking her medical supplies back into her bag, and avoiding his eyes once again. 

“Try not to get in another fight, please,” she sends him an awkward smile as she zips her backpack, “I only brought the two bandages.” And before he can even blink, she’s gone.

[cybernaght]

Guardian rewatch: Episode 3

First of all, wow. When I decided to post those online, I was expecting that they would be read by two people, both of whom I personally know. It was in equal part surprising and terrifying that so many of you ventured here. Thank you for reading, I really appreciate it. 

Episode 3 is probably my favourite case. It’s not perfectly strung together, there is little actual investigative work in it, but it’s a beautiful story of boundless love and devotion, which echoes through the relationship between our protagonists

Professor Shen is looking at some materials that are looking suspiciously like research into something supernatural, when Zhang Ruonan makes an appearance at his office, claiming that she is absolutely fine, while clearly being very far away from fine. This is something Shen Wei can certainly relate to, because he is the king of hiding his ailments from others. 

Zhu Hong’s one-sided affection for Zhao Yunlan starts to show already in this episode:  while he has the cold, she nags him to take care of himself, shoves tissues into his hands, and presses him to drink his meds. It’s easy to imagine even this early on that she will be the woman drunk dialling him one day. 

I know this could be seen as straightbaiting, but I honestly thing that the actual purpose it serves in the show is the opposite; I’ll talk more about it when we get there.

Zhao Yunlan spends a lot of this episode in Shen Wei’s office, starting with this scene, in which is obviously flexing. Not only does he sneeze all over the office, he goes to eat Shen Wei’s cake after specifically being told not to eat it.  He also takes his opportunity to mix questioning with flirting, as is his usual way. He keeps eye contact while spooning cake into his mouth, as he explains, jovially, that another mysterious death on his campus cannot possibly be a coincidence. And, to be fair, he is not really wrong. We are meant to believe that this is all set in motion by Zhu Jiu, aka the least scary villain in the history of villainy, and an owner of your staple baby goth wig. I will not mention him again until the plot makes it impossible for me not to do so. 

Zhang Ruonan comes in, and Zhao Yunlan introduces himself as Shen Wei’s good friend. Which is half-way between a flex and an act of kindness. On one hand, he could have said he was from the police - which would be absolutely true - and risk tarnishing the professor’s good name. On the other hand, he could probably look less pleased with himself. Shen Wei, at the very least, looks neither grateful, nor amused. 

Zhao Yunlan asks her if she new the victim and she looks incredibly shifty as she flees. He is right to think that something is up, and he correctly assumes trauma, rather than guilt. We can now start to see that he is very very good at reading people. It must be equal parts thrilling and disconcerting for him to have met something who he decisively cannot read. Shen Wei vouches for the woman, partly, surely, because his Hei Pao Shi sense is tingling, letting him know that someone is eavesdropping. 

Despite feeling uneasy, Shen Wei still offers Guo Changcheng, who is left to collect various paperwork from his desk, a little smile. He has a reason to like Xiao Guo, of course: he was the one to see the young man’s kindness and understanding, and he is already growing protective of him, way before he will start seeing members of the special unit as his people. This reminds me of how many months later, he will subtly, but decisively stop a barrage of verbal abuse against Xiao Guo by dropping a pair of chopsticks. 

Zhao Yunlan is taking Xiao Guo with him on the case rather than anyone else, partly, supposedly, because of Guo Changcheng’s familial connections. The young man looks more sure of himself, asking correct questions, dutifully records answers. He also tries to look after his Chief by asking him to go home and rest. He does phrase it badly, but Zhao Yunlan has a thing against his own health and well-being, so he reacts extra poorly.

Soon after, Zhao Yunlan’s at Shen Wei’s office yet again, as Shen Wei tries his best to ignore him, in the hope that he… well, maybe not goes away, but does not ask him anything that will require him lying. Instead, Zhao Yunlan is asking Shen Wei why he is bad at reading people, which is a very strange thing to ask. Shen Wei answers his question with a question, “Will seeing through people really lessen the hurt and disappointment?” Adding, “Many tragedies were destined from the beginning”. He looks well.. like this as he says it. 

This is loaded. On first glance, it’s a pretty good set-up to the way this story will unfold, as a tragedy of two individuals who let their devotion to each other nearly ruin each other’s life. A fragile human and a dangerous powered Undergroundian: what else is that, but a tragedy, waiting to happen? But this story - this one right in front of us - will not end tragically, at least not for the two people it enters around. It could do so, but it will not. Maybe, this truly is the first hint that this entire narrative, so carefully set up from the very first time Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei meet, is destined to be a tragedy. Moreover, that it must be one, for some cosmic reason. 

(… I apologise while I go have a little cry in the corner. Damn you, Guardian, why do you make me hurt so much?)

Da Qing inexplicably morphs from black cat to a human in white t-shirt while doing night shadowing, and promptly falls asleep on patrol. Why is he being sent to stake anyone out? He is least suitable for it.  He is literally a cat. He sleeps 16 hours a day. 

Surprisingly, when pressed, Zhang Ruonan comes clean very easily, revealing that she was a victim of the three students she failed (two of which are already dead and one one standing right next to them), who lured her out at night, which left her vulnerable to be attacked. Zhao Yunlan listens to this story, and instead of… oh I don’t know, perhaps asking her the identity of the third student, leaves to go find that out for himself. It is heavily implied that he does it on purpose, which is definitely not okay.  

Moreover, he goes and... asks Shen Wei. This makes me suspect that he’s not really thinking with his head at this point. As he does so, he is brandishing a letter opener. 

Shen Wei is looking even less impressed with him than he did during their last few conversations. 

Zhao Yunlan is a little bit flippant when it comes to students’ lives this episode. And yes, they have done something really quite horrible to another human being, but that's not a very good excuse to let the last of them just die. As it happens, the situation Yunlan created - perhaps on purpose - did lure out Zhao Ruonan’s murder girlfriend, but it also cost a student his life. Which is far from ideal, but is somehow never even mentioned. Instead of being aghast, he sits on the table as he goes into full interrogation mode. (As he will continue to do a lot. Sometimes he crouches on tables instead. There is no further point here, apart from: I like this character quirk. It’s a nice character quirk.)

He brings some of his team in at this point, and asks Zhu Hong to continue interrogation. It would be a nice gesture is he did not interject two questions in. 

“How do you regard your relationship with Wang Yike?”

“We are family.”

They are definitely, decisively not going for sisterly bond here. Which is kind of incredible. This is one of the moments the amorphous being that show is looks at the censors, wiggles its battered low budget eyebrows at them, and then proceeds to flip them off. Well done, Guardian. 

Wang Yike calls Zhang Ruonan, saying there is one more victim she needs to take care of, and Lin Jing traces the call back to campus. Zhao Yunlan, who did not even bat an eyelid at a dead student earlier, now looks decisively worried  

“Oh no. Professor Shen.” 

The only reason Shen Wei is attacked is jealousy. Wang Yike does not know this of course, but trying to kill him is a bad move, because a) he has long ago given his heart away, and is definitely not interested; b) this is probably the only thing she could do to make the man on the case very very upset; c) Shen Wei’s immune to her powers. 

“Someone like you will never understand what she means to me!” Wang Yike shouts eventually. “As long as I can protect her, my life has worth!” And, even as Wang Yike has no way of knowing it, these are the words that ultimately save both her and her loved one. Because Shen Wei does in fact understand what Zhang Ruonan means to her. His own endless and ultimately self-destructive devotion is his main driving force.

Shen Wei pretends to be hurt, again, which earns him a half-hug from the object of his devotion. If Zhao Yunlan does notice that Shen Wei should really come out of this attack grey haired and dead, and not just mildly inconvenienced, he chooses not to say anything. 

Worried about her murder girlfriend, Zhang Ruonan rushes in and accidentally touches her. Zhao Yunlan Freaks The Hell Out. Shen Wei does, too, but in his own, reserved, way. They are both emotionally invested in those two people, although for very different reasons: Shen Wei is acutely feeling resonance of his own past in their story, and Zhao Yunlan, I think, wants to fix it, he wants to be able to make it better. Instead, Shen Wei fixes it for him, turning the tide on this tragedy, and giving it a happy ending. He heals Zhang Ruonan right in front of the officers of SID, albeit with much subtlety. (“Have someone saved her right under our noses?” Zhu Hong will snort the very same evening, and she will be 100% correct.)

Shen Wei also lets Wang Yike go despite the undeniable fact that she did kill three people. Here, he is looking at the picture of this human/Undergroundian couple, surviving despite all odds, and touches his only reminder that Kunlun really was in his life. 

He then burns the picture as the only evidence that Wang Yike was not punished by him for her crimes. 

In the end, Guo Chengcheng is making first of his many diary notes about the events, recounting a conversation between Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan we had not witnessed, in which Shen Wei mentioned a relationship based on devotion that can last a thousand years, and Zhao Yunlan called such a relationship “guarding”. Finally, Guo Changcheng hopes that he can become a guardian of all. 

And this is making me think that this absolutely should be a set-up for him becoming a wick of the guardian lantern, as per every single other decision that was made prior to the last two episodes. Right? This is a perfect foreshadowing, and mentioning it here, so early in the show would not make any sense if it were a deliberate subversion. So, was Guo Changcheng meant to become the wick after all before... what, some rewrites happened? What made the final episode be what it was in the end?

(This is a genuine question by that way, if anyone has any insight on the matter.)

The episode would end here, if this was a western show, with a familiar monster of the week structure, but it does not. At least, the way it ends is reminiscent of a cliffhanger, with Zhao Yunlan catching Shen Wei in a middle of a crime scene, and looking betrayed. 

Next episode: Lynchian Nightmare, aka people without faces. 

PS.

I did not have a seamless way to stick this in anywhere but... Shen Wei’s technological ineptness at the max: he does not know how to use a Polaroid camera. Help him, he is so lost.

——

Second point of housekeeping to say a few things: 

I don’t think I will be consistent with certain things being transliterated versus translated. I am more likely to use Hei Pao Shi rather than Black Cloak Envoy (because the later reminds me of Tuxedo Mask, which makes me inwardly giggle every time) but at the same time I am also more likely to use Underground/Undergroundian rather than Dixing/Dixingren. I am more likely to use Xiao rather than Little, but have called Chu Old rather than Lao before. I hope that’s not grating, but do tell me if it is

My recaps are Shen Wei-heavy. I have no real explanation for this, apart from.. I like Shen Wei. 

I realise that there will definitely be things here that are head canon and speculation rather than flat observations; this show is a work of fiction and a work of art, which cannot be interpreted objectively. If you have alternate takes on anything I write in the future, let me know! 

[steve0discusses]

S5 Ep 3: Apdnarg is Really Hard to Spell

 Yo guys, people are getting vaccinated, the sun is parting through the clouds, and I felt so nice that I even stopped listening to quite so many throwback 00′s BTS mashups (and yet I keep clicking on these dissonant catastrophes thinking “this time it’s got to be better. This time they’ll figure it out.” and like, no. Turns out you can’t match Brittany’s Toxic with BTS’ Black Swan. You can’t do that.)

This must be a sign that things are getting better. If anything, it means my personal tastes are improving. I mean I only clicked on like 3 “Dark Academia” Playlists where I could pretend I’m some sort of spooky witch in an abandoned library with a bad music player and basic taste in classical music (like can we ban Satie from Youtube for a little while?). Hell, I might even do a prompt update to this blog!

Yeah, you heard me, I’m actually going to stay ahead of the update schedule for Yugioh Abridged (maybe. I haven’t actually watched cuz of spoilers, I just noticed the thumbnail pop up on Youtube and was like “Damn it, they came out of hiatus??? I got hurry UP.”)

Anyway, speaking of the sky parting.

I’ll have you know my bro said this is actually more like a circumcision and it was one of the worst thing I have ever heard.

We get a chance to take in this lineup of confusing and varied character designs, and Joey. who is...still Joey.

The animators probably had to hold a strike in order for them to put Yugi in the audience, lets be real. There are TOO MANY PEOPLE in this shot and one is wearing a turban where you draw every single wrap. I hope those artists charged by the line.

Tea has a subplot where she’s just very frustrated with everyone she knows. They have been traveling together for like many weeks and got trapped in a foreign country so I get it. But at the same time, it’s kind of hard to picture Tea with female friends.

Because right now you got this 12 year old child, the other duelist who does not care about anything besides cards, and Kaiba’s 3 dragon cards that we’ve all collectively decided are female.

Hell it’s almost like the writers are asking themselves why Tea is here. Maybe they forgot. There’s no more ghosts to bus, no more people to knock out with her ass with random Olympic feats. Tea’s just sidelining.

(read more under the cut)

Mokuba is a itty bit bit taller this season, and so I guess that means he can legally climb on top of the cherry picker in order to give a riveting speech.

Really says a lot about Mokuba that he is so unphased about talking to, I dunno...an entire planet of people. Kind of a shame we never see this courage from Mokuba used for anything other than talking really, really big and giving everyone around him a really hard time.

Mokuba takes a moment to dunk on Yugi Muto, as is Kaiba tradition.

And then introduce the first pair of duelists, which obviously must be between the few people in this tournament that we actually know and care about.

Thankfully, in between last episode and this episode, Yugi has figured out who his own Grandpa is. This is a relief, because Yugi is such a mess, that I was fully convinced it would take over half a season for him to recognize it. I mean how long did it take him to figure out he shares a body with a ghost? Like half a season?

Instead Yugi recovered gracefully from not recognizing his grandpa, but it’s not like he bothered to tell anyone else, so the rest of our cast is just gonna be like “Is he my hairdresser? The guy who delivers my mail? Who is this guy who made absolutely no significant changes to his outfit or voice?”

Like sometimes this show goes full Spongebob silly kid’s show and you never know when to take it seriously or not. They might be sacrificing the entire cast next episode. I really don’t know. But for now their big concern is who is grandpa??? Like an innocent card version of “Are you my Mother?”

Faced with public speaking, Yugi decides to have a melt down.

We have seen him face monsters, we’ve seen him on TV dozens of times, he’s been in multiple competitions...but give a speech? Of course he can’t do that. The kid doesn’t attend enough school to know how to do that. Them’s learning skills.

And that was when a newly assembled wife-jet spliced through the sky like a souped up razer scooter and deposited 1 fully equipped Seto Kaiba in a Buzz Lightyear jetsuit.

THE RECOVERY.

Seto always watching over his Brother, ready to save this awkward party if it kills him (and it really should, that suit is held together by two seat-belts), making sure to get on that platform before Yugi starts going off about how he’s half an Ancient Egyptian. (Ah, life before social media. You could just be hella famous and also half a dead dude and people would just not know. I kinda miss the time before I knew literally everything about everyone.)

Please admire how close those flames are to setting Mokuba’s heavily hairsprayed mane completely alight. It would be an unforgettable spectacle.

These were absolutely just random ass jet packs that Gozaburo Kaiba made to kill hell tons of people, right? Like Seto found it in the family cabin, clutched to the heart of some crispy fried corpse and was like “neat! Mokuba! I found a cool toy!” and just plucked that thing out of that skeleton’s clutches and has been flying around for months?

Like this is Seto Kaiba’s Butter Glider, right?

Seriously what type of vehicle license do you need for one of these things? RIP My ‘Seto only has a scooter license’ headcanon.

Which I’m only even thinking about because I’ve had to try and make an appt with the DMV for days to get a freakin REAL ID. I went to sleep in 2019 and I could fly on a plane. I woke up in 2021 and it’s like “Want one last screw you?” and just...can 2020 please stop screwing me over? It’s March.

Anyway, the Jet is removed soon after, so no, this is not part of his new outfit. He goes right back to his Post-S4-Trauma-Normcore.

After wrestling this competition out of his brother’s hands and confusing everyone in the audience, Roland must have gotten the memo to cut the microphone before Seto got too excited and we were quickly ushered on to the next stage of the tournament.

One sec...the BTS Mashup playlist I just clicked on did a Black Swan X 7 rings mashup and it’s the worst thing my ears have ever heard.

Holy crap. I had to actually turn down my volume. Like...Ariana Grande already has music that has way too many overlapping singing parts on it--and then lets just stick a 52-person boy band on top? That’ll fix it. Yeah. Go ahead.

Wow. Even I had to change the song and you know how much I enjoy pop culture mistakes.

Spot the Mickey but like a million times easier because it’s a Massive Dick Shaped Dragon.

Yep. That’s my grocery shopping outfit. Except maybe not a lab coat and a duel disk. Wish I had a duel disk, that would make social distancing just a hell ton earlier. Just a “Yo, only one person in checkout, please” and then bap them on the head with a propelled discuss/hologram.

Anyway, Grocery shopping/Doctor man dueled the Purple Hair Boy, and considering that Purple Hair got screen time and shook Yugi’s hand once--I think that Doctor man doesn’t stand a freakin chance.

Good. I hate him.

Also, every time he breathes he’s gonna fog up his glasses. I have experience in this area. He can’t read his own cards in the same way I can’t read my phone if I’m in the refrigerated aisle.

So the way this tournament works, is everyone has to sit in the stadium to watch the show. Kinda like showing up to a football stadium just to watch a recorded TV monitor...but then again...that is how it feels to watch a football game at a football stadium when it’s live (at least with the tickets I usually get.)

And as we watch Grandpa waiting for his competitor, we find out that his competitor (Joey) is too busy eating snacks to give him the time of day.

Why do cartoon hot dogs always have lettuce? Is that seriously supposed to be relish? Or is there a place in the world where you put lettuce on your hot dog?

Sorry, bro has just informed of his favorite hot dog order, which is absolutely terrible so I will share it with you: a Five Guys hot dog with ketchup, mustard, pickle relish, onions, mushrooms, pickled peppers, and you guessed it--topped with freakin lettuce.

My own kin. How am I over 30 and just finding out that my baby brother thinks it’s normal to walk into a restaurant with normal god-fearing law-abiding people and order lettuce and mushrooms on a hot dog?

I have fully failed him.

The rest of this episode is watching both Joey Wheeler and Mokuba have a shared panic attack while Seto does freakin nothing.

Please remember that Seto has both a jetpack and a dragon wife plane and could have easily solved this problem. But nah.

Then again, Seto Kaiba has given this crew so MANY rides, that maybe he’s tired of being the Soccer Mom for the team?

Like they don’t actually say this episode, but Seto was the one in charge of like...this entire place, do you think he made the 2 for 1 special just to get Joey where it hurts the most? Or does it actually not take any subterfuge to screw Joey Wheeler because he’s just naturally this way?

Like Mokuba wasn’t there when Joey was told “stay right here, and then we will all go together to fight Dartz” and Joey was like “I’mma save Mai from herself although she told me not to!” and then he Hella Died. But, Mokuba did see the result, AKA, Joey’s dead body being carried on the back of Tristan. Maybe Mokuba never realized that Joey died because he went out of his way to be late?

Lets do a tally of every time I can recall with my dodgy memory that Joey was threatened to be DQ’d/pretty much was DQ’d either by his own fault or no fault of his own

-When he wasn’t allowed to go on the boat to Murder Island because he was a stupid nobody kid who did not have a dueling glove

-When he wasn’t actually supposed to be in Pegasus’ tourney and was, in fact, secretly using half of Yugi’s entrance ticket the entire time

-when Bandit Keith stole the ticket that Joey got from Yugi so then Joey had to borrow Mai’s ticket although she had just used it so it really shouldn't have counted. Because, really anyone could have just piggy backed off of each other’s ticket until the whole boat went through that castle.

-When his account was hacked to get entered into Kaiba’s tourney when Kaiba very clearly told him he could not apply solely because he was Joey Wheeler.

-When he was late to his sister’s eye surgery because he got mugged by Marik’s Rare Hunters, so she almost refused to do the surgery.

-When Joey got possessed by Marik, and as Marik, threatened to murder everyone else in the tournament including both of the Kaiba brother’s who’s tournament it was, and then chained himself to Yugi Muto to throw both of them to the bottom of the ocean.

-I think there was a point when he threatened to attack Kaiba in Kaiba’s own tourney while not possessed? Like several times?

-when he got struck by Lightning and almost did not stand up fast enough after being struck by lightning, which is apparently a type of DQ in Duel Monsters.

-When he tried to save Mai from getting hit by a fireball, but then Yugi did it instead, and then so many people were standing on the dueling platform that Kaiba couldn’t possibly DQ them all.

-When he entered the restricted area of the blimp in order to hassle Kaiba into landing the Blimp, which Kaiba did not do.

-When Marik killed Joey before Joey could press the “go” button on his duel disk to play the card that should have won Joey the match.

-When he was dueling a lawyer in a digital universe but then the dice was like...weighted? So Noah had to walk over and be like “The hell is this weighted dice? This is my perfect digital world? How did you even do that?” and then Joey won because the match was no longer legit.

-When Joey yelled at Noah too much and so Noah turned Joey to stone for being a rude ass spectator

-When Mai was like “Wheeler and Valon, listen closely: do NOT murder each other” and then Joey did a murder on Valon so she was like “I guess I have no choice, I was very clear” and killed Joey straight up.

-When Joey decided to block Seto’s fireballs while Joey Wheeler WAS a playing card, somehow disrespecting both Dartz and Seto Kaiba at the same time.

-When Joey was playing cards but then got absorbed into a giant Leviathan and basically couldn’t play anymore after that.

-There’s probably hell ton of S0 stuff I just haven’t seen yet.

-This episode

And Joey runs fast for a montage of wacky things that really have no business being in a theme park. Things like this:

(remember when Bakura almost died from a rock that ended up being a balloon? It comes full circle.)

The stuff that the Kaiba brother’s think is normal and fun.

Anyway Joey fights off a bunch of hologram snakes and bats and everyone is like “Should we tell him it’s just holograms???” And it’s like wow, guys, how many times have these ‘holograms’ straight up murdered Joey Wheeler and everyone else on this cast? Too many? Because I have a google doc with so many deaths on it. 7,805,844,048, to be exact.

Anyway, he gets there with five seconds to spare and Mokuba’s like “well at least you were still entertaining while we filmed you in front of a live audience being a total spaz for 15 minutes straight, so I’ll let you go.”

Grandpa and Joey start playing, Joey completely oblivious that this is just an older Muto, while Hawkins walks up awkwardly and is like “hey guys. I’m so sorry about this.”

(welcome to my font choices, for those new here, I have to make weird font color choices to make sure it’s legible for the colorblind and also for the non-colorblind. This one is not much contrast, so I may change it up in the future, but for now, this is Grandpa Muto’s new font. I apologize to every graphic designer reading this. Please don’t tell anyone who has ever hired me for graphic design about this blog.)

What’s funny about this exchange is that after they find out that Yugi’s Grandpa is Apdnarg (HOLY my brain cannot get around the spelling for that, and I will not change it in the caps. I cannot do a ‘pdn’ ever again), they don’t stand on his side of the field or anything. Hawkins is legit Solomon Muto’s only fan during this exchange and like...damn. Way not to back your Grandpa, Yugi.

Yugi immediately strides up to Mokuba to non-confrontation-ally inform him that he has stepped over a line and Mokuba is like “what are these things you say called ‘lines?’”

According to Mokuba, Solomon Muto begged him to be in the competition so he could relive his glory days (glory days making no sense here, because the game has only been released for the past 15 years, so glory days is like...the before times that can only be referring to disgraced archeologists and Pegasus ((who is, in his own way...a disgraced archeologist, too))) and Mokuba was like

“You trained Yugi Muto, right? Hey that’s good enough for me. This drama is gold. People will eat it up. Hell yes. Don’t be afraid to abduct him a little bit. Maybe trap a couple people in a digital hellscape for a little while? Now we go by Pegasus house rules here, so fire as many lasers as you want, but just make sure not to hit anyone in the face. Oh man, we are going to be swimming in cash. Love it, Muto Sr, love it.”

But I dunno, I feel like Grandpa won’t make it past next episode. It is Joey. We kinda need him to make it past Ep 4 of the arc. If Grandpa Muto becomes the new Joey Wheeler, that will be a weird transition for this show to make.

But that’s all for today, as always, here is the link to read these in chrono order becuase there’s SO MANY that you don’t need to read backwards--don’t do it--just use the chrono tag (and I don’t know if you can add compound tags, but I did separate the Season from the Episode, so if you write S4, it should only pop up stuff from S4. I didn't’ do that to seasons 1-3 though because I just...didn’t.)

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

And because I brought it up: here it is, the best BTS Mashup that I found on my deep dive. Like legit--this one isn’t a mess:

Most of other ones are horrible in a fascinating way. Like I’m not even a BTS fan, I think I sort of age out of that metric, I’m just bored and quarantined. And lets be real, we all appreciate a good bop when we hear it.

[jq37]

The Case File – Mice and Murder Ep 3

The Case of the Curious Clues

Before we start, a quick plea to Grant O’Brien: Please stop finding clues. I can only take notes so fast. You’re killing me Grant. Moving on...

We start off this episode with yet another flashback, this time to the final confrontation of Sly and his supposedly dead arch nemesis Fletcher Cottonbottom at Reichenbunny Falls (...Brennan please). Fletcher was using a local castle as a storage center for munitions but Sly tipped off the cops before they could be moved. They do some repartee back and forth before Fletcher, the madman, handcuffs them together and jumps off the edge. They hit the water but Sly is able to lockpick himself out and escape while Fletcher disappears beneath the waves. 

You know what I got from that story? No body.

Anyway, we jump back to the present where there *is* a body, Squire Badger’s specifically. Everyone in the room who isn’t a PC thinks that this must either be the work of ghosts or Mrs. M who was the only person in the room when it happened (allegedly). 

This is a crucial time for clue gathering and Brennan keeps everyone in initiative for investigative purposes. Now, *so much* stuff happens here that I’m not going to recap every single detail--just the major clues and the things that seem relevant. I’m serious, this is like the volume of info we usually get in the once per season later game lore dump ep but it’s episode THREE.

Daisy tries to find a secret door but critically fails. She clocks Gangie, a fellow criminal, and in the moment Rekha and Katie decide that they prob have worked together in the past even though they are very different kinds of criminals. 

Buck, who is outside listening to what’s going on in the room notices that his ankle knife is missing which is Concerning considering a man was just knifed to death. 

Sly has Lars guard the door (he opens it and Buck is discovered, whoops) and then rolls a NATURAL 20 plus NINE to investigate so Brennan just has to tell him literally everything. RIP to him and me. Anyway, here’s the rundown (along with some of the stuff other ppl got):

Mrs. M’s hands are covered in blood but she couldn’t have done it. Based on her personality for one and for other reasons we’ll get to.

The wound is much messier than it would be if a person stabbed themselves typically.

There is a note in Squire Badger’s handwriting that says “Sylvester Cross I am afraid” No indication of if that was the whole message or if he got interrupted (maybe Buck could figure it out with his handwriting checking skills). Daisy from across the room clocks that Sly’s name is written on the paper but can’t read the rest.

The knife is a hunting knife with a pronghorn handle--an animal not common in England but very common in Texas (and Buck is sweating obv).

There is a slight layer of charcoal type dust on everything on the big resolute desk in the room (which makes sense, ash from the fireplace) but there is parchment type dust on the bust of Barkus Aurelius (OK, that one’s good) on the table and that’s the only place that dust is. Ian later notices that the date on the bust is wrong. 

Speaking of, the desk (which we learn later was put in and taken out of storage once Loan Hall was modernized) is bolted to the ground and a lot of stuff has been thrown off it as if by a powerful force but Sly notices that it’s just the metal stuff like things made of silver or with screws. Stone things like the bust and other non-metal things have stayed put. Plus he smells ozone. This was the work of magnets, not ghosts, he concludes. And, for the record, Grant figured this out himself!

Mrs. M’s eyes are rapidly dilating. She is questioned about what happened and she says that she was told she was fired and would receive a small pension. 

(Not a part of Sly’s clue dump but Buck rolls a 24 with disadvantage to persuade everyone he didn’t do it but then 2 nat 1s in a row to see if Harding--who said he was standing outside the door--is suspect. Buck thinks he’s at most a stooge but he did roll a nat 1 so who knows?)

Anyway, back to Mrs. M. Gangie fully believes Mrs. M is innocent and scared. She doesn’t quite remember what happened for a couple of seconds in there and it’s clear this is not the first time she’s had missing time. Sly calls Longfoot (the bunny photographer) over to take a picture of Mrs. M which everyone is a little appalled at until they realize he’s making a point. When the flash goes off, she bugs out like she did in episode 1 and forgets that the picture was ever taken. Sly then has Dr. Magpie list the symptoms of epilepsy. It seems that Mrs. M had an episode triggered by the flash she mentioned seeing and then lost time. It’s possible that what she thought she saw after that she didn’t actually see.

[While Sly is monologuing this Rekha texts Brennan and gets a 17 to swipe the “I am afraid” note. Sly doesn’t notice.]

So if it wasn’t her, then who was it? There’s only one door into the study and anyone who walked in would have to have walked past Mr. Harding, Shellcrest, Calliope, and Tabitha (who is having a marvelous time being in the midst of so much drama). Ah, but who said there was only one door? Sly has Harding pull a sconce and a SECRET DOOR OPENS! Woo! Finally! It’s a classic bookshelf one that opens into the hallway and there is some extremely fine crushed glass under the door. Hmm.

Sly clocks that there is something under the desk but we don’t know what it is because Brennan texts it to him and it’s redacted. There are actually a couple of redacted texts that go around this ep so we are def missing information. 

OK, that’s more or less everything. 

Sly notices that the page is missing and Grant gasps while Rekha does an excellent job of pretending like she doesn’t even remember what paper is being talked about. Constance asks if it’s possible that Mrs. M totally made up the memory because of her epilepsy and between Dr. Magpie and Sly they determine that that’s uncommon but possible. Dr. Magpie says that everyone should leave so he and Sly can examine the body and Sly says that someone should watch Gangie at all times. 

At this point, Harding and Gilfoyle (the butler) say they should establish where everyone was at the time of the murder. A lot of the staff and guests have solid alibis cause they were in big groups/cleaning up together. But the PCs were off alone (or with each other) and had reasons to want to guy dead so they’re prime suspects. Sly even admits that he’s one too. Also everyone dogpiles Ian because Raph makes it so fun. 

Harding mentions the letter that was given to Buck (the one selling his shares in BB and giving voting writes to his rival Josiah) and asks him to read it. Buck reads it and gives a streamlined version of the truth, saying everything except for the part with the proxy vote. With a 26 he is able to allay everyone’s suspicions for now, but now he’s purposefully hidden the truth in a way that can be readily called out if anyone sees the letter or the contract which he resolves to find. 

Buster distracts the group so Daisy can “check the body for a pulse” aka: check the body for the contract. She doesn’t find a it but does find a key attached to a piece of red silk--something that would be weird for him to be carrying around instead of his valet. She figures this must open whatever locked drawer the contract is in and swipes it but Sly clocks her stealing it (his perception ties her sleathiness but an earlier Bless from Ian tips him over the edge--poetic).  

Calliope says that everyone is kinds suspect, including Sly, but *someone* has to solve this and Sly’s their best bet so everyone should just stay put and they can guard the exits. The butler says that, besides the front door, there are some towers that poke up above ground and a servant's exit/entrance by the elevator in the kitchen wing but they can lock down both and have someone guard the front doors. 

The butler is like, lmao yeah Sly I know you didn’t do it and I’m not gonna stand guard here but you know, everyone is keeping an eye on y’all. And then he leaves the PCs, Mrs. M, Constance, and Dr. Magpie in the room with the body. 

Lars is about to go watch the kitchen staff but, before he goes, Sly says to him that he saw Cottonbottom and is obviously quite scared. Gangie, who used to work for the guy, overhears and asks what’s going on. Sly assumes Gangie is playing coy but rolls high enough to know that he isn’t. He saw a starkly white Cottonbottom and one of his known conspirators doesn’t know he’s back? Perhaps it was a ghost after all. 

Case Notes

My 2 fave bits of this episode were “bad to bad bad bad” (and the further riffing) and Daisy throwing increasingly bigger books at Sly.

Even with a Nat 1, Sly gets a 16 on Investigation. Wild. 

I don’t think Rekha got enough props for her “Cross examination” line so I’m mentioning it here.

Brennan said the ozone question was still open--but I assumed it was like the electricity smell from an electromagnet. That would make sense, right? Maybe he meant they hadn’t found the source of it specifically yet?

Brennan says Buck’s knife is a pronghorn knife. I assume they’re made from the animal’s horns? Even if they’re the kind that fall off every season, is that weird? Or is it just like human hair wigs? Also, does this world have leather?

I love that the dice keep supporting the narrative that Daisy simply cannot get her shit together when she’s with Sly because he distracts her too much. Delicious. Their whole relationship is delicious. 

OK, I am a tiny bit suspicious of Calliope. It’s partially the way she took control of the situation near the end and partially the fact that she doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would be involved in this which would make her heel turn delicious. No hard evidence and obv she couldn’t be the person who actually stabbed a guy but idk. Just spitballing. I’m very curious about whether we’ve met everyone we’re going to meet more or less or if there are still outside people/hidden inside people. Because, in real life, a murderer could be literally anyone but in a story, you can’t just introduce a new villain all of a sudden at the end. Bad storytelling. Weak payoff. We’ll see how things start to pan out. 

[newmusickarl]

Album & EP Recommendations

My word, the music world has well and truly spoiled us this week!

The past seven days has seen a colossal avalanche of new releases, so much so I’ve barely had chance to keep up with it all. Although this is not the full list of everything from the past seven days, here are the 16 (yes, 16!) new releases I’ve enjoyed the most this week.

As there is so much to get through the rundowns are (mostly) a bit shorter than normal and there is no single Album of the Week, instead I simply recommend checking out whichever album or track sounds most appealing depending on your preferred taste.

So without further ado then, here’s what’s good:

Californian Soil by London Grammar

It’s been four years since the release of London Grammar’s last record Truth Is A Beautiful Thing - an album that I enjoyed, but I’ll admit also left me feeling somewhat underwhelmed coming off the back of their incredible breakout debut, If You Wait. As it turns out, the band themselves were also having a tough time around that period, with front woman Hannah Reid in particular battling relentless industry sexism, as well as the persistent physical pain caused by her fibromyalgia condition. With this being the case, it is amazing that the young indie-pop trio have made it to their third album at all, let alone delivering what is their best work to date.

Opening on a grand, string-drenched Intro, the record soon morphs into the sun-soaked guitars and soaring orchestration of the album’s glorious title track. It marks an early highlight as Reid catches the audience up with the tribulations of the last few years – “I left my soul on Californian soil.” From there the album doesn’t really let up as the band move through a series of career-defining tracks – the gorgeous contemporary groove of Missing, the dance-influenced How Does It Feel, the chilled-out ambience of the dreamy Baby, It’s You and the sublime, stripped-back closer America.

However, the album’s strongest moment comes when Reid confronts music industry sexism head on with defiant anthem Lord It’s A Feeling. Beginning with some twinkly xylophone, before evolving into an atmospheric synth-laced backdrop where Reid pulls no punches:

“I saw the way you made her feel, like she should be somebody else,

I know you think the stars align for you and not for her as well,

I undеrstand, I can admit that I have felt those things mysеlf”

The cutting lyrics against some blinding quiet rave instrumentation leaves quite the impression, as does this sterling record in general. After a slight misstep, London Grammar have well and truly rediscovered themselves and they have honestly never sounded better – a truly incredible album.

If You Could Have It All Again by Low Island

Oxford electo-pop outfit Low Island are another band that have defied expectations to get to this point. This, their debut album, was not recorded in a professional music studio – in fact, the vocals were recorded in a bedroom cupboard of all places. The band themselves don’t even have a manager or a record label. In every sense of the word, they are a truly independent band. For a self-financed, self-produced effort, If You Could Have It All Again is a quite remarkable first outing.

From melodic, uplifting opener Hey Man, the record quickly jumps into spoken word electro punk banger What Do You Stand For, featuring acid-drenched synths and a dancefloor-ready groove. Fans of FIFA 21 will recall Don’t Let the Light In, with the glitchy pulse of recent single Who’s Having the Greatest Time also standing out. That said, it’s the smooth, infectious sway of I Do It For You that still pulls me in the most.

Having followed the band since their early EPs, I’ve been rooting for Low Island for a while now and this is one debut album I was highly anticipating this year. Safe to say, my expectations have been met – this is a fantastic, accomplished record, which leaves me eager to see where they go next.

The Greatest Mistake Of My Life by Holding Absence

There was a time when the difficult second album used to be a thing, but listening to the sophomore effort from Welsh rock band Holding Absence this week, I’m really not sure that exists anymore. After a dramatic and impressive self-titled debut two years ago, the band have wasted little time taking things up a notch, with this new album cinematic and masterfully produced from beginning to end.

From standout singalong anthems like Afterlife and In Circles, to the album’s epic seven-minute penultimate track Mourning Song, The Greatest Mistake of My Life shows a band pushing themselves and driving forward with ambition at every opportunity. In a year packed with outstanding rock and metal albums already, this is most definitely another one you can add onto that list. Soaring, impressive and demanding of repeat listens.

We Forgot We Were Dreaming by Saint Raymond

It’s been six long years since Nottingham-born singer-songwriter Callum Burrows, AKA Saint Raymond, released his debut album. However it seems the time away has been well spent as this long-awaited follow-up finds Burrows in fine form, with this album packed to the brim with catchy, glossily produced indie-pop anthems.

From the brilliant title track that opens the record, to the bouncy riffs of Right Way Round, Talk and Solid Gold, to more subdued and heartfelt moments like Only You, this album will have you smiling, singing your heart out and dancing your troubles away.

Flu Game by AJ Tracey

AJ Tracey may have only been three years old when Michael Jordan was winning NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls, but that hasn’t stopped him making a record influenced by the legendary icon and his famous 1997 Flu Game. Like many others including myself, grime superstar AJ Tracey spent lockdown watching the brilliant The Last Dance documentary, and this record weirdly works as a fantastic unofficial companion, but also just a great summer rap record.

McCartney III Imagined by Paul McCartney

Even if like me you completely missed Sir Paul McCartney’s 2020 album McCartney III, it’s well worth checking out this reimagining, where he has called on the help of some of his famous musician pals. This is a real who’s who line up of guest features including Beck, Khurangbin, St. Vincent, Blood Orange, Phoebe Bridgers, Damon Albarn, Josh Homme, Anderson .Paak and more, making for quite a fascinating mix of sounds and styles.

Moratorium (Broadcasts from The Interruption) by Enter Shikari

And finally on the albums front this week, genre-benders Enter Shikari have released a brilliant compilation of all their lockdown live performances, headlined by an incredible string-tinged acoustic version of The Dreamer’s Hotel and a beautifully stripped-back “At Home” rendition of Live Outside.

Tracks of the Week

Introvert by Little Simz

Wow, wow and wow again. Still fairly fresh off the back of her masterful, Mercury Prize nominated third album Grey Area, this week British rapper Little Simz released the first taste of her next record in the form of this epic and triumphant opening track. At six minutes in length, this majestic and operatic political anthem aims to grab the listener by the collar and shake them awake. Without a doubt, one of the best songs of the year so far, the powerful video for which you can view above.

Smile by Wolf Alice

The second taste of their forthcoming album Blue Weekend, Smile continues Wolf Alice’s pattern for alternating Loud/Soft releases, with this one featuring buzzy guitars, punky vocals and a hypnotic chorus melody.

Beautiful Beaches by James

Although written off the back of the California wildfires that impacted front man Tim Booth’s local community, the lyrics on the band’s latest anthem purposefully offer a dual meaning, giving hope to those dreaming of a post-lockdown getaway and fresh start.

He Said She Said by CHVRCHES

The Scottish trio made their much-anticipated return this week, with Lauren Mayberry also sharing her experiences of sexism on this arena-ready synth-pop banger.

Matty Healy by Georgia Twinn

Georgia Twinn delivers an infectiously catchy break-up anthem, inspired by an ex-boyfriend, who’s most interesting feature was supposedly looking like the 1975 frontman.

Kill It by Vukovi

Underground Scottish rock outfit Vukovi’s new single is so good, they even managed to get KILL IT trending over the weekend of its release. Masterfully produced with big bold riffs and trancey synths, this one just sounds huge.

Can’t Carry On by Gruff Rhys

The latest solo single from the former Super Furry Animals frontman is a stunning, super-melodic tune with an instant chorus you’ll be singing before the track has even finished its first play.

Ceremony by Deftones

One of the highlights off their last album Ohms, the nu-metal rockers have now delivered a cinematic new video directed by horror legend Leigh Whannell. Check it out!

Chasing Birds by Foo Fighters

And finally this week, Dave Grohl and company released a trippy new animated video for this Medicine At Midnight cut to help celebrate 420 in their own unique way. Again, well worth a watch!