#she fuckin knows i have a massive thing for vampires too like this is on purpose

[rayne-the-neutrois-nerd]

Best friend has been sending me shorts of Astarion because she's been watching someone play bg3 and she loves him and shes ruined my brain I've only seen a few scenes wjth him and oh my god

[harrieatthemet]

Mustache

He has never been keen on sharing. 

And Gemma’s mere existence, as well as the small indent on her left thumb she swears is a scar (though Harry vehemently denies it is), is living proof. 

Mr Ducky was his favorite bath time companion for a good bulk of his childhood. There were even times he’d carry it around with him in the house tied to a string like a pet, one of Anne’s fondest memories and favorite stories to tell whenever she found the opportunity. 

Maybe it was Gemma’s own fault; she was only six at the time and was foolishly under the impression that the stupid rubber toy was at anyone’s disposal, which is what led her to try and situate the duck in her backpack as she geared up for school. 

It’s also what led her to tears because Harry caught her on the way out the front door, Mr Ducky in tow, and he instinctively sunk his teeth right into the side of her hand in protest. And, okay fine, he may have bit down a little harder than he should have, but the overall message he was sending came across very clear. Gemma never touched anything he owned again for a very, very, long time; and eventually went on to tell everyone in her class she had a vampire as a brother. 

“What do we think of this little number,” your hip jut, innocent as it was, just now became a permanent memory in Harry’s brain, “too much, like.. revealing?”

You like nice in red; devilish, even, and in the best way possible. There’s nothing revealing about the dress at all. Somehow, though, he finds himself perched squeamishly at the foot of your bed in complete fucking anguish. In theory, no, the dress is not too much. It’s the perfect ensemble and flatters you so well he feels like whoever made the dress conjured it up with you specifically in mind. 

And no, it’s not too much, for literally anyone else except him. How is such a modest dress enough for him to think you up the way he is right now; bent over in front of him with your hair wrapped tightly up in his palm while that dress lays in a sloppy ball by his feet. 

“Would be nice with nude shoes,” he mules, “like, those sandals y’ave, yeah?” 

The way your eyes light up, that same way they always do when your mind starts to move at light’s speed as you start assembling a million different ideas into one, is enough to tug a grin onto his mouth. 

He didn’t really want to agree to this. When you texted first to ask he ignored it, that way you’d have just carried on without him and he could blame a busy schedule or an overrun nap on his delayed response time. It’s much easier to blame a missed text for no response. Of course it’s not in your nature to send a text, and he knew that already. So it came a son surprise when he was bombarded by 4 phone calls. By the fifth one he had picked up, succumbing to you and just the flat out unfulfilled urge he had to hear your voice at the other end of the phone.

“Seriously Harry,” your voice is like fucking honey, sweet and sullen like it always is, and he’s in euphoria listening to it as you poke your earring through the lobe of your left ear, “it’s just, y’know I don’t- I’m nervous and I appreciate you helping me do something as stupid as picking a dress.” 

“S’not stupid,” he reassures, “y’know I just like spending time with yeh, since y’so busy ’n stuff.”

Which is true. That’s the only thing that got him over here; and he rescheduled a zoom call just to sit in your bedroom for all of twenty minutes. Not one part of him regretted it, either.

“I’m busy?” You tease, “coming from the A lister who’s in London, than LA, than New York, London again, oh, than LA again oh, then ‘sorry love, m’in Tokyo.’”

Also true, he knows that, which is why he’s snickering at fault in response to your harmless teasing. He wouldn’t say it now, mainly because he doesn’t want to make it weird, but regardless of where he falls on the map he somehow still finds a way to fit you in. He’s never minded doing it, either. 

Twenty minutes isn’t enough. Maybe another twenty more could be a sufficient amount. That’s almost an hour, right? Forty minutes is almost a full hour with you and he’d love to get even that much. Or twenty more hours, even, would be that much better. It’s better for him to think of getting more time with you than to let his thoughts wander and remind him of where you’re getting ready to go off to. 

A date. It’s why he was so hesitant to come here. It’s hard enough as it is being a prisoner to his own thoughts, being around you and not getting to interact with you the way he actually wants; kiss you the way he wants, touch you the way he wants, hold you and talk to you the way he wants. Adding a new element to the mix, another man getting access to you the way he wants, well that’s just mental warfare. 

You don’t know anything about though. And thank God, because if you could get a peak into his thoughts and see just a preview of what he thinks he almost knows for sure you’d ice him out in a heartbeat. He’s got a soft spot for you, nonetheless, which is why he swallowed the massive-sized lump in his throat when you told him you needed help on an outfit for a date and b lined it over to your place.

“Who’s this guy, anyways.” He chimes, following you similar to that of a lost puppy as you start heading towards the staircase, “Like, wha’s he look like ’n stuff.”

Immediately after he asks he wishes he hadn’t. The way that pesky fucking lump reappears when you wiggle your eyebrows in response, stuffing your hand into your leather purse in an attempt to fish out your phone. A simple response like ‘handsome’ or ‘he’s a nice guy’ would’ve sufficed for him. Seriously, that’s all he needed. What he didn’t need was an entire fucking slideshow of an above average looking guy. And he had a cool mustache, to boot, which really pissed Harry off for some reason. 

“Should probably shave,” he squints his eyes at the photo you’ve got propped right in front of his face, trying his hardest to act like he isn’t so fucking jealous of that mustache, “kinda looks like a squirrel on his top lip."

“If I didn’t know you so well,” you tut teasingly, “I’d think you’re a dick.”

“You know me so well and still don’t think that?” 

He likes the way your laugh sounds, and it makes him happy that he said something amusing enough to drag it out of you. And the toothy smile you pair with it practically knocks the wind right out of him. Everything you do seems to wow him, corny as it sounds. It makes him feel so at ease, and the butterflies he gets each time gets him reminiscing to the days where he was just a kid and had the worlds biggest crush on the girl who sat three rows ahead of him in grade school. He’s giddy and he doesn’t want you to leave for this date. 

For a second he thinks about doing something elaborate; breaking his foot or faking an illness so that you literally have no choice but to hang back and look after him. That’s selfish though, and honestly just crazy and super fucked up, so he opts out of that. But he doesn’t want you to go so bad he seriously considers it, especially as you start sorting through the downstairs closet to find a coat that doesn’t clash with your shoes. 

He could just be honest. He could just tell you that he doesn’t want you to go, solely because he’s absolutely infatuated with you and for every hour he’s awake and functioning you manage to consume every thought he has. He could just be an adult and tell you he’s got feelings for you that very much surpass a platonic, friendly demeanor. That might be a better way into persuading you to stay back with him than breaking his fucking foot. 

“Ok now wait a minute,” he chokes, and there’s a painful twang that strikes his gut when you frown, “gotta tell y’somethin’.” 

“What,” you groan, and he swears he would rather die right now than do anything else, “it’s the shoes, right? They make my calves look like I’m a running back don’t they?” 

He wants to laugh but he thinks if he opens his mouth he would projectile vomit everywhere. But the thought occurs to him that if he does that than it would be an excellent excuse for you to skip the date. Though, of course, he runs the risk of grossing you out and absolutely humiliating himself all in one go of it. 

So he shakes his head no. In fact he loves the shoes, and they make your ankles look slender and really compliment your legs quite nicely. Still, he’s scrambling to string together a coherent sentence because his brain is working a lot faster than the muscles in his mouth are and it feels like someone just super glued his lips shut.

“Speak now or forever hold your peace,” you tease, and the cheeky wink you shoot him over your shoulder just edges him even more if that’s possible at this point, “Styles.”

“I don’t want y’to go on this date, (Y/N).” 

He’s well aware that he blurted that out in a way that he really, really, wish he hadn’t. Now the air in the room is stale and heavy, dense too, like someone just sucked all the air out and left the two of you here with nothing to inhale but words and unspecified tension. 

And he’s starting to get more anxious as your playful manner dissipates. He can tell your puzzled not just be the demeanor of your face, but by the stance of your body because your letting shoulders hang the way you do when you’re a little uncomfortable. 

“Oh,” you breath, and his chest starts sinking inward, “okay, I just- well why not? Do I not.. like, do I look bad or something?”

“No,” he coos, and he feels like the worlds biggest asshole when you start to frown, “No y’don’t- Christ, (Y/N) y’look amazing. Y’always look so fuckin’ amazing. It’s just-”

“What,” you huff, “than what is it, than? Why wouldn’t you want me to go?”

He’s really done it now. The proper thing to do would’ve just been to let you go, walk out with you and watch you drive off before he headed home himself. The proper thing to do would’ve been for him to just go home and think about you on a date with someone other than himself, curled up in a ball watching a Friends episode he’s already seen four times while he felt sorry for himself. But that’s not what happened, and what he should’ve done was just broke the fucking foot like he initially thought to do. That would’ve been less agonizing than this. 

“Because,” he’s frustrated now, not with you but really just himself, “I should be taking y’out. M’absolutely in love with yeh, (Y/N), and I don’t have a cool mustache but I could take y’out on a date, ’n I want to so bad.” 

There’s still that dense energy looming in the room, and his gut now too as he feels it winding up tightly in an anxious bundle of knots and twists. You’re not saying anything and the only thing he notices is that you’re breathing is vaguely staggered and your clutching onto that purse in your hand like he’s about to snatch it and run off. God, he should’ve just broken the foot!

“Please don’t go out wit him,” and now, his voice is small, “think it might kill me.”

[nuclearnerves]

INCOMING VAMPIRE AU THOUGHTS

Don't mind me I'm finally getting the ideas I had on this shit out so I can actually go forward with developing it as an AU. It's my usual mixup of fps protags, Gordon Guy and John, but I'm starting with Gordon as the Vampire and Guy as the Vampire Hunter.

absolute beast of a wall of text under the cut

What If Being A Vampire Literally Sucks All The Time Forever like chronic pain sucks. like THAT level of sucks. Like Here's what I was thinking of. Being a vampire isn't just "being alive forever but you need to drink human blood" It's like Oh man I have some lore you look at vampires and their main thing is that they're blood suckers right so lets start with a corpse dead body. cadaver. no longer with us. just some rotting meat. The brain needs oxygen as fuel. The blood supplies the oxygen through blood. The blood is pumped through the heart. The blood is made by your bone marrow. You die. Your heart stops beating Blood stops pumping Brain no longer has oxygen to think marrow stops making blood thats standard! Now, becoming undead, as a vampire, is a little more complicated. The long and short of it is: your body is FIGHTING ACTIVELY to be alive against all odds and wins every time (immortality), but it hurts the whole way

I have the gist of it. It's like. Your heart stops. By all means, you should be dead. but the magic kicks in, and you're still thinking. Your brain is still sending signals to your muscles to move. But using what oxygen to move? whats burning in you? You don't know but you know it's just enough to get to your next meal. So you ferociously eat something, and then find you can't swallow. You can't make saliva. You barely have the energy to chew, and once you DO get something in your stomach, it immediately comes back up. Why can't you feel your pulse? What's going on? You're out of options so you figure you might as well just lie down and die. You're too tired to keep going anyway. So you do, you lie down, and you close your eyes, and you quietly hope that death is as peaceful as sleep. You realize you've actually been moving around without breathing, which makes sense because you can barely flex your diaphragm for more than a shaky wheeze. How are you thinking with such little oxygen? But as you fade from consciousness, you can feel something in you, and it's so upset, it's crying, it's filled with grief, and you instantly can tell it's your skeleton. It's your bones. You're distraught down to your marrow. You're dying. You're dying! Your heart stopped and you have no more blood! You need blood! You need blood to move! To breathe! To think! You try to breath deep again for the voices in your bones, trying to comfort them, to sooth them with the repetitive motion in your lungs, trying to fill yourself with anything but grief, but they keep wailing. We make the blood, our creation, our child, what we put all of our work into is gone! gone! gone! We need it back! Anything! All of it! Find it! Bring it back to us! We're hungry! WE'RE HUNGRY!

and once you find yourself too exhausted to listen, to think, how badly you wish just to die already to cease hearing this wailing, you find your body moving without you. And it's hungry and it's searching and it's crawling on all fours and it misses its beautiful red life that made it feel so full before and it needs it back, and the next thing you know you're desperately grabbing anything with blood in it and shoving it in your mouth in a desperate attempt to sooth this cry for life, you don't want to die, you don't want to die, you worked so hard to keep up this body and craft it and LIVE with it and you're not going to go, and even when you try, even when you try to lay down and die, your body refuses, it takes the reigns, and it keeps up the work itself with or without your help. And it's not until your stomach is full and your teeth are stained and you feel a pulsating burning in your bones that you snap back awake, completely conscious, just fine. You're lucid, you don't feel any more pain. Everything around you is dead and drained and messy and your heart still isn't beating. but you can breathe now and holy shit you guess you literally need to kill to survive and the less you eat and the more you starve yourself the worse it gets when your body finally decides to take recourse.

my idea was like. "the vampires curse is actually stored in the bones, thats why the teeth get so sharp and also theres a connection between blood and bones with the creation via bone marrow" its literally like i was sitting there thinking "no no no, whats it like to be a vampire. what neurosis would you develop. How would you panic? What are common mistakes beginner vampires make" which, by the way, gordon is a beginner vampire

so now you gotta factor, what blood lasts for how long? how long can you go between meals? not only that, but what creatures satisfy the urge? How long can you go avoiding human blood? Does it work like drugs where you develop a resistance to the high, or is it like food where it will keep you moving until you eat again? How the fuck are you gonna get your hands on blood? Can you just eat raw meat? Does that count? and thats where im at lol

OKAY now. now thoughts on beginning scenes of vampire au

So my idea was this Doomguy is a vampire hunter independent and one of his buds says that some freak scared and almost attacked his daughter when she got too close to his old abandoned laboratory up the hill and hes like “he might be… you know… a problem. if you needed a lead” and guys like yeah i fuckin hate the undead ill kill this dude so he busts into old lab space and sees so many dead animals its actually mostly Bones and pelt that hes seeing piles of feathers etc so hes like yeah this is all telltale signs of vampire uhhh hes introduced to gordon SOMEHOW im not totally sure of the details but the working idea i have is guy falls into a trap gordon devised that restrains him suspended in wire or something and gordon like. limps/stumbles into the room and this dude looks haggard he’s breathing heavy, his cheeks are hollow, he’s bug-eyed and shaking while looking at this massive wall of meat in his trap and he bares a bunch of hideous teeth and grits them and looks like hes really struggling with somethin... Like if these dudes don't know each other then Gordon might give in and try to drain Guy, and Guy would absolutely do anything in his power to turn this new vampire into ash, im thinking the inclusion if g-man as a coven leader can fix both issues.

i like the idea of guy falling into gordons trap and gordon thinking about what to do with him before gman shows up and whisks gordon away for a “meeting” while complimenting him on his good work catching the most feared vampire hunter in the country and gman just leaving guy suspended in wires that he has to fight his way out of. Instant situation defuser.

Guy ends up needing to take care of other monsters before going back to Gordon, and he DOES plan to go back to gordon, because no vampire is a good one, especially not one associated with the fucking head of a coven, but next time he sees Gordon, Gordon helps him out of a scrape by attacking and draining a combine who was going to take Guy out or something and escaping before Guy can catch him, or otherwise seeing Gordon do something good with his insane undead powers and like, the third time he meets up with him is when they can actually talk, and Gordons fuckin SO haggard, he’s not even fighting back and he’s even going as far as to say “just make sure theres nothing of me left when you’re done, I don’t want anyone else getting hurt”

Side Note: Guy has a bunch of scarring on his body from dealing with vampires, cops, ghosts, werewolves, anything violent that kills people. I'm playing with the inkling of an idea that he has Divine Blood in him, so that any time something undead bites him or tries to drink his blood, it burns. We'll see.

Side Note 2: now i really like the idea of the combine actually being an organized faction of vampire hunters that are WICKED crooked and exploit people for all their worth in exchange for their “safety” when they kill a vampire They’re essentially loansharks and Guy fucking hates them and hates the name theyve given to vampire hunting

Side Note 3: You've probably noticed that I haven't said anything about John yet! He's in this too. His species is a surprise but I need to get to him later I have an idea for where he came from (Cortana too)

I still need a good reason for Guy to not instantly kill this vampire, if not it's just gonna be "Gordon Freeman escapes the countrys best vampire hunter like a seventh time" every time they meet and they end up being rivals. And it gives Guy enough time to look past the whole "undead monster" thing and start looking at the "Oh this dude figured out how to fight his ridiculous craving for blood in a way more humane than most and is actually staying out of peoples way and keeping to himself. Guess he's not that big of a threat but I still need to keep an eye on him in case he loses it. Turns out he's got a family (Probably Alyx, Eli, Issac and Barney) who's been lookin for him and cares about him as well, don't wanna hurt them". I like the idea of them ending up needing to team up to take out undead together.

And that's what I got so far!!!

[sunnypogue]

midsummers with hockey rafe (blurb)

requested by an anon who asked if i could write something about ward telling rafe to cover his hickeys at midsummers. obviously, had to make it coho!rafe. 

enjoy!

you didn’t really know what you were getting yourself into when rafe invited you to midsummers.

it was spring semester, the two of you were in your roommates hammock that sagged on your front porch, mapping out your summer plans.

“so you’ll come stay with my family on hilton head for the fourth, right?” you asked, playing with his big, calloused fingers.

rafe made a sound of approval.

“we’ll have to book tickets for you to fly out, huh?” you continued, still fiddling with his hands.

rafe grunted, his baseball cap slipping forward onto his face.

you frowned, bending his index finger back just enough to startle him. “are you listening?”

“yes! fuck, leave my fingers alone, you brat.” he snatched his hand out of your grasp, shifting his hat back to sit properly on his head. “and to answer your question, because I was listening - no, I’ll just drive down.”

your eyes widened. “from huntsville? that’s going to take hours!”

rafe sighed. “no, I’ll be at my dad’s the week before. easier to drive.”

“you’re going home this summer?”

rafe didn’t really “go home” - at least, not the way you did. you looked forward to summers in your savannah home, having wine nights with your mom and barbecuing with your dad, relishing the time at home with your high school friends.

rafe only went home when he had to, his strained relationship with his father and stepmom making things less-than-pleasant when he would return to the outer banks for a couple weeks. he didn’t visit at all last summer, opting to split his time between your parents home and his place in huntsville.

rafe sighed again, deep & heavy. “yeah. I’ve got this...thing.”

you looked up at him, chin resting on his chest. “what thing?”

“it’s...god, it’s some stupid event my family goes to every year. basically a pissing contest to see who’s family is the most successful.” rafe removes his hat, rubbing his hand over his face. “my dad likes to win.”

you offered him a pout, going to rub your hand against his chin, letting your thumb run along the stubble that was coming in. “you have to go?”

rafe nodded. “yeah, I skipped last year only because I promised my dad I would come this year - wheez is 16, so it’s kinda a big year for her.” he gave a weak smile at the mention of his youngest sister. “sarah’s gonna be there too.”

“see! it’ll be worth it then. couple days with your sisters and then you can come hang with me and my fam in hilton head.” you nuzzled into his chest. “a tour of the carolinas.”

“I was actually hoping you would come with me.”

you popped your head up, eyes wide. “me?”

rafe rolled his eyes, “yes you. sarah’s bringing her boyfriend. figure it’s time for you to see where I grew up.”

and that’s how you found yourself flying up to the outer banks for a long weekend, a couple of gown options tucked away in your checked luggage, bikinis stowed in your carryon - you spent the whole flight fidgeting, beyond nervous about what was to come.

you had met ward a couple times - a little intimidating, and relatively unimpressed by anything rafe did. you didn’t mind that rafe didn’t go see him much - it always seemed to put him in this dark, sullen mood, one that could take days to pull him out of.

you were hoping to make it out of the weekend with minimal conflict between the father-son pair.

rafe was waiting at arrivals when you waltzed outside, grinning at the sight of your tan boyfriend leaning against his Jeep. you dropped your bags on the curb, opting to tackle him into a hug instead, giggling when he had to brace himself for impact.

“hi baby - missed you too.” he laughed, hands going to rest on your hips. “need help with those?” he gave a pointed look to your massive suitcases. you just smiled, offering him a quick kiss before flouncing into his passenger seat, letting him handle the heavy lifting.

your first interaction with the family at tannyhill (apparently rafe lived in a place where homes were old enough to have their own estate names) was mild - ward was charming, in his typical slimy way, rose offered you a grimace, before clacking away in her heels to “take a call,” and wheezie had barely let rafe slip into the foyer with your suitcases before she was asking him to buy her alcohol for some party later that night.

when you and rafe made it safely to the confines of his bedroom, he attempted to apologize.

“rafe, you don’t have to apologize.” you laughed, cupping his concerned face with your hands. “families are...well, you know.” you scrunched your eyebrows, trying to search for the right word. “family.”

rafe laughed, grabbing your wrists. “very insightful.”

the next day, rafe had a fitting, which you accompanied him to (your other option was pretending to make nice with rose while laying out at the pool - hard pass), giggling at his clear disdain for the whole situation.

“it’s so fucking stupid, babe.” he groaned for what had to be the tenth time that car ride, pulling into a spot in front of the tailors. “I probably have 50 suits I could wear, but god forbid I don’t match rose’s fucking color scheme.” he snapped his seat belt off, a hint of aggression peeking through.

you nodded, following him out of the car. “hey, if it makes you feel better, she’ll hate me more than you. I didn’t bring anything that matches the Cameron “color scheme.””

rafe turned to give you a look, hand blindly reaching for the door. “no one could hate you. you could wear a sack and people would adore you.”

you pulled a face. “shut up, you have to say that shit.”

“maybe, but it’s -“

“mr. cameron, here for the 2:30 appointment?” a tall, slim man appeared in front of y’all, tape measure around his neck.

rafe tugged on his shirt collar, letting out a small groan. “uh, yeah. that’s me.”

the man gave him a glance, before offering you a glare. “right, well, follow me. back here.”

you settled into a chair at the front of the store, fucking around on your phone. an hour went by before rafe emerged from the back, head peeking around the corner.

“hey babe!” you gingerly removed yourself from the chair, back stiff from your stationary position. “all done?”

rafe nodded, “yeah, I’ve gotta change out of it, but it’s ready to take home.”

you scrambled to your feet. “wait! let me see!”

rafe groaned, quickly looking behind him to see if the tailor was near by, before slowly emerging from around the corner. “it’s pretty fucking terrible.” he groaned.

you, on the other hand, were awestruck - there was your boyfriend, with his stache and overgrown hair, in all of his 6’3”, offseason bulked out glory, wearing a baby blue suit.

it should have been hilarious - but you were fucking salivating over it.

“uh, no it’s not.” you argued, walking up to grab the lapels of his jacket. “how the fuck do you make baby blue look this good?”

rafe grimaced. “babe, it’s awful. don’t lie.”

“oh really?” you smirked, peeking over his shoulder towards the empty dressing room. you started to walk backwards in that direction, tugging his hand as you gave him your best bedroom eyes. “why don’t you come in here and let me show you how much I like it.”

“babe!” rafe hissed, his head whirled to the left, checking to see if the tailor was in the vicinity, before looking back at you with raised eyebrows. “really?”

you nodded, biting your lip. “oh yeah, baby. never told me you were such a pretty boy.”

rafe grumbled, following you into the dressing room. “I’ll fuckin’ show you a pretty boy - c’mere.”

the next day, while waiting to take pictures with the cameron family, ward approached you and rafe at the wet bar, extending cocktails to you both.

you gratefully accepted, sucking down what tasted like a heavy handed greyhound, the vodka sitting in the back of your throat as ward barked instructions at rafe.

“we’re going to do the family first, rafe, and then we can get john and - what the fuck is that?”

you glanced up at the change in ward’s tone, straw slipping out from between your lips as ward tugged rafe’s shirt collar to expose a hickey, the deep purple spreading towards his collarbone.

“dad,” he started, knocking ward’s hand away to readjust his collar. “it’s-“

“rose!” ward yelled, turning away from rafe. “can you please come fix...this!” ward gestured at rafe wildly with his hand, throwing a glare at the two of you.

you were rigid, hand white-knuckling your drink, unsure what exactly to do in this situation.

“relax dad,” sarah huffed, grabbing her clutch as she pushed her way over to where y’all were standing. “c’mon, idiot, I’ve got something that can cover that up.” she rolled her eyes, poking at his neck.

rafe smacked her hand away. “quit.”

sarah ignored her brother, poking it once more before directing her attention to you. “what are you, part vampire?” she giggled, tugging your arm with her as she started up the stairs towards her room. “c’mon rafe,” she called out, voice almost singing. “gotta go cover up the evidence! people can’t know you have sex!”

you burst out laughing as at least three scandalized voices behind you yelled “sarah!”, rafe’s separate groan audible as he followed the two of you.

sarah leaned over as y’all entered her bedroom, voice whispering in your ear, “tux’s don’t hide shit - that’s why I usually go for the chest on john b,” she giggled.

you nodded, as if learning a deep and sacred practice - well, you supposed you kinda were.

“also,” she whispered, ignoring rafe’s call from behind to “stop corrupting his girlfriend,” and continuing, “third stall, men’s bathroom at the country club - doesn’t lock. learn from my mistakes. family bathroom is gonna be your best bet.”

“are you - are you scouting places for me to hook up with your brother tonight?” you hissed.

sarah shrugged, leading you into her room. “well, what else is there to do at midsummers?” she gave a grin, like the cat that got the cream. “john b and I call the golf restrooms.” she pushed your shoulders down, settling you to the bed, before turning her attention to her brother, who was sulking in the doorway.

“rafe! let me fix your hickey, you heathen!”

[sebastianshaw]

Gud morning, this is Munday when I post a bunch of random OOC to try to cut down on what I post the rest of the week! - My mom looks so old and ugly in pictures and like. . .she does not look like that at all in real life. And it gives me comfort because I look awful in my photos too. My pictures look NOTHING like what’s in the mirror. I know I am prettier than that. So seeing the same thing happen to someone else is validating in that ok so I’m NOT just delusionally vain, the camera indeed doesn’t like me. She says she’s never been photogenic either. We have the same coloring so I think that might be it. - I think it’s hilarious that my top three favorite books are The Last Unicorn, A Little Princess, and Jurassic Park. Like, you’ve got a very beautiful tragic ethereal fairytale, a just-after-the-Victorian-era Cinderella story about the power of imagination and about remaining graceful and kind at all times, and. . . .all-female sex-changing genetic monsters run amok killing the men who tried to control them gruesomely (no srsly everyone who dies is a man as a consequence of there being only two female characters to begin with) And like The fact all of these struck a deep chord with me since a young age says a lot about me, I think. - SPEAKING OF UNICORNS so I’ve been shopping around for supernatural RP boards to join when I have time (probably not til after this month), and I’ve narrowed it down to 2-3, but today I saw another and what really stuck out to me is that among the witches, vampires, and wereanimals was a custom playable species they called a re’em. These “re’em” are people who can  transform into a horse-like creature with one, two, or zero horns, and could choose either a warrior or healer powerset. So, basically, wereunicorns. And I just thought this was genius not simply because I love unicorns, but because. .  .ok, so you know how the King James translation (aka the worst one lol) of the Bible had unicorns in it? The word they translated as “unicorn” was “reem” or “re’em” Now, as it turns out, the word “re’em” actually most likely referred to an auroch, a massive breed of now-extinct wild cattle (of which I am also a fan) but for a long time, no one could figure out what it was. Rhinos, wild ox, white goats, and the beautiful Arabian oryx (seriously, look it up, it’s GORGEOUS) were all considered candidates for the mystery as well; some translations do use the oryx instead, though I personally prefer the auroch. . . and, I won’t lie, I really like the unicorn version best even though I know it’s only there because they just couldn’t figure out wtf this powerful horned animal could be.  But yeah so. . . having your unicorn-based shapeshifters call themselves re’em is honestly really clever (I’m guessing they decided just calling them unicorns/wereunicorns/etc sounded hokey?) I don’t think this is the board I’ll be joining but goddamn I do like that. Especially since it includes BOTH characterizations of unicorns in lore----vicious and wild vs peaceful healers. I personally like mine as gentle healer sorts but I love the research being shown here! -  I recently found out about a very obscure mythic beast from heraldry called the lampago. It's a tiger or lion with a human face. And I can see why it's so little known because. . .that's not scary? That is considerably LESS scary than a regular tiger or lion because it lacks the teeth that a predatory big cat has. I can see why the manticore took off a lot more; yes, it's a lion with the head of a man too, but ALSO the giant tail of a scorpion and three rows of large sharp teeth. That's fuckin scary. -  Fun fact: Nepotism means favoritism given to family members, such as a CEO appointing his son to a high position just because it's his kid. It comes from the Latin root "nepos" meaning nephew because many Catholic popes and bishops in the past gave preferential positions to their nephews (since, having taken vows of chastity, they didn't have sons, although it has been pointed out how some sure seemed to have a lot of "nephews" with no fathers in the picture. . . ) -  At the risk of sounding like I’m kinkshaming or harshing anyone’s preferences (I’m not, I get why people have this fantasy + why it’s appealing) whenever I see someone at a board placing a Want Ad for their character’s abusive ex/stalker/other figure who is generically evil and sexually obsessed with theirs. . .I kinda always wonder who they expect to respond? Not because it’s a “dark” character, I play plenty of villains, but because it’s a character by design meant to entirely revolve around theirs. And since it’s one-sided, with their character being the ever-pursued victim who doesn’t want this, the bad guy’s player inevitably (in my experience) is the one who has to do everything and push everything forward and all the victim’s player has to do is write woeful reactions. And the victim, of course, gets to be a fully fledged character with other stuff going on, but the intent of the villain is just to be 24/7 built around the victim. I’m sure it doesn’t ALWAYS turn out like that, just, that was my experience when I played those types of characters on occasion by the requests of my partners in the past (I don’t anymore) I wanted to make my partner happy and give them their fantasy, and they always told me how good I was at it, but I never enjoyed it. Besides finding it really squicky and uncomfortable for me, it was also so . . .unrewarding for the reasons mentioned, because I was doing all the work and my partner got all the pleasure. It just wasn’t any fun for me and felt like I was getting the short of the stick while they got off and now whenever I see people asking for this that’s all I can think of, like “I get why you want this, but who wants to be the OTHER half of it? What do YOU bring to the table for THEM?” which I think really someone should always ask in RP anyway.  -  Single ply toilet paper is for mice, not humans. It’s for nesting material. I can’t believe anyone thinks it’s for butt wiping. No way. -  Fun fact: Despite sounding like a suburban white hipster spelling of Kevin, the name “Kayvan” is in fact an unrelated Persian male name. It can be a first name, as with Kayvan Novak, or a last name as with Anthony Keyvan. - I kinda wanted to celebrate my Ukranian Slavic heritage this Halloween by dressing as a Byzantine woman or the Sultana Roxelana, but they don’t sell costumes like that and I’m too lazy to make one and like. .  .no one would get it anyway. 

[fixeddawn]

Boy do I love this blog so, so much.

Was there a New Moon in the AU? Or did Bella put a stop to that nonsense immediately.

(Spoilers for the story Clotho (The Moirai Saga) ahead, beware!)

Edward: "Okay so what had happened was-"

-Bella and Alice appear, shoving him out of the way with a squeak-

Alice: "GURL YOU KNOW HE'S STILL AN IDIOT."

Bella: "I- ugh, I tore him a new asshole when he told me he didn't actually love me, and he got me FUCKED up, but he still left. It was rough, especially when my powers started acting up and I started having panic attacks and meltdowns. The wolf pack over here is a bunch of different families, all somewhat Irish, they're descendants of the people of Ossory. Jakes grand-dad immigrated here in the 60's. Actually, OI, JACOB-"

-Jacob shoves into the room, but knocks his head on the doorframe on the way in.-

Jake: "FUCK. Finally man, the Boyz can talk!

Bella: "Eagan (Embry) Got you saying that now too, huh?"

Jake: "Ye, it's funnier. Anyway, shit happened WAY different than in the original plot line. Bella and I still got to be friends, and she hung out with my fam a lot, we have massive bonfires cause my dads the youngest of eight kids.

I helped her find her own place actually! My auntie had a 2 bedroom 2 bath house for rent cheap and she took it on the promise of painting it and shit. Of course then she got mixed up in all of our chaos, especially with the pub my dad runs in town, we got the Blacks, and the O'Clearys and the Udys, three old bloodlines. Bella actually found out about the pack by accident, I uh...I had a massive crush on her and she wasn't ready and stuff got tense and I just...poof, y'know?"

Bella: -makes exploding hand gesture- "Poof."

Jake: "Paul didn't like it at first but she became a member of the pack, we don't really imprint like...romantically, it's super rare, but mostly we imprint familial-y, Bella kept helping Emily cook and clean up and deal with a bunch of rowdy guys. (we got put to work too, don't worry) And she just meshed. She also became our field medic. It got so bad that if we weren't at The Farm, we were probably sprawled out on Bella's living room couch and floor, passed out.

Bella: "It was like snow white and the 7 goofy werewolves, it was great. Leah disliked me at first, but she still went through that thing with Sam, so she was struggling. We actually bonded over the whole "Fuck having a supernatural Ex" thing. Girls gotta support each other, you know? She and Emily also made up with a little time. When I was having my nightmares, facing all the shit that was going down alone and helpless, I told her about them. She's a professional kickboxer! She's fucking badass!! I begged her to train me and kept shoving cash at her until she let me hire her. I was USELESS at first, but she ran me hard, and eventually I could even hold my own in a fight against (human) Seth! All the while, Jake here was finding it hard to keep it in his pants, but he was really my rock, I tried to do everything I could to support him through his change and the aftermath, but it...well. You know who I married. -she cringes, Jake puts an arm around her shoulder for a rough squeeze and a small smile, obviously forgiving-

Jake: My crush was hard man, it still is low-key, (J: 👀 B: 😑) but...well, her panic attacks were still coming. And one night we were dancing, and I...well..."

Bella: "We kissed, I was so desperate to move on, feel something else, but I panicked. It wasn't right."

Jake: "She bolted from the party, ran into the woods, I remember screaming, and then this awful earsplitting sound, and a shockwave.

Bella: "....I kinda, blew down like 30 square feet of the forest around me. Thats when I realized all the popping lightbulbs and shaking surfaces weren't earthquakes...but, well, me. It was the worst panic attack I've ever had. So now, my vampire Bf dumped me, my best friend is a werewolf, and I can fuck shit up with my mind on accident when I'm highly emotional. Queue complete mental breakdown."

Jake: "...Then the redhead showed up."

Bella: "Victoria...she killed my coworker, my friend, horribly, gave him the same injuries James did to send the message. We realized she would start going after the people I was close to if she couldn't get to me. I pretty much hunkered down at The Farm after that, the pack did rounds and tried to protect so much land...I was terrified someone was going to get hurt. When she attacked The Farm, we were blindsided. She caught Seth around his chest and almost crushed him. I was terrified, I managed to use one of my "Bubbles" to blow her away from both of us so I could get him to safety and reset his ribs."

Alice: "And all 𝘐 saw was victoria closing in on Bella from above for a third of a second, when she let out her bubble, so, ofc, I thought she was dead and immediately bolted back to Pullman. Everyone else came too, Carlisle, Esme, Emmett, Jasper... We were so shocked Victoria went after her and 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘶𝘴.

"We found out, when we arrived at her apartment and she was still alive and being guarded by werewolves, that it was because my dumbass brother never gave her my goodbye letter, and lied to both sides about his intentions for what happened that day in the woods. He told the family he was going to tell her the truth, that he was going to take himself away from the situation and see if she couldn't move forward, if she couldn't have a human life. Not that he was going to lie to her that he "found out it was infatuation and not love" or whatever the fuck the Drama-King decided made sense. -steps hard on Edward, he squeaks mournfully-

"Emmett and Jazz were about ready to hunt him down for not giving her a way to contact the family, Esme was devastated that Bella thought we'd just abandoned her, Rose was...well, rose, and Carlisle and I were dissapointed, (mine was more on the murder side tho.)

Bella: "We really didn't think it could get much worse, but Edward's creative."

Alice: "Rose calls him to tell him Vicky killed Bella, because EMMETT NEVER FUCKING CALLED HER. Edward flies into a fucking rage tantrum and ofc, goes to italy. When I told her what was happening, Bella was 𝘱𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥, like, walls shaking, lightbulbs popping pissed, and tbh I kinda wanted to see her kick his twink ass."

Bella: "...The emotions were wild. Rage, betrayal, relief, fear, it was such a jumble. When we got there, saved him, and got passed the volturi, we stayed overnight- well, over𝘥𝘢𝘺 in one of the dorm room things. I was still in my funeral dress and nylons and had lost my shoes, so they let me shower and sleep. First however, I laid into Ed. I wasn't going to carry the weight of "if I accidentally die, I'm gonna be the fuckin reason Edward is taken from his family too." Especially not as a Human. I informed him he was going to come home, apologize, take his lumps, and cope. He was a grown ass man and he needed to act like one and clean up the mess he made."

Edward, from the floor, muffled: "Safe to say, I learned my lesson. My self flagellation and pity-party was immature at best, destructive at worst. I apologized to Bella and my family, and did not yet ask for forgiveness, just for the opportunity to prove that I 𝘩𝘢𝘥 learned something from all of this."

Bella: "...We didn't get back together at first. I couldn't trust him, and he obviously did not trust me or my feelings. But I still loved him. When he was there for me and recognized/supported my autonomy, over a little bit of time I was able to trust him again. I think we both grew a LOT during the experience, and while it sucked the whole time, it was also a catalyst for better things to come. Jake was upset, at first, but we had a long and hard talk. Honestly about what I was able to give to a friendship and if it would be enough for him. He eventually decided, that it was. We still bro's. He even made friends with Edward."

Jake: -Grins and steps on Edwards head. Edward growls and rolls over to drag him to the ground. The boys play-wrestle in the background, though it looks less playful than others. Growling, gnashing, and the word 'fuck' is heard often from the fray.-

Alice: "Idiots."

Bella: "The Cullens and the wolves actually bonded as Esme and Sam strategized about the newborn war. We're not "natural enemies" after all, just smelly to alert the other we're in the area. So Jake and the pack and I are still close as ever. "

"Sorry if this was long winded, but it deserved an explanation! I'm gonna go break the boys up now, thanks for your question!"

[h-a-d-i-t-h-i]

Someone is babysitting a little girl. But the little girl is a 300 year old vampire and the hole thing has more of a visiting a sweet old lady vibe.

Title: You Make Ends Meet Word Count: 1300 TW: Blood, vampires, drugs Summary: Riley makes $2000 for a weekend of work.

I’m good at making ends meet. I’ve got an apartment in Brooklyn that I share with three other people, but even then rent’s not cheap. I’ve got friends in high places that make it manageable.

One of them owns a bar that I pick up shifts at whenever they’re short-staffed - under the table kind of payments. Around Christmas, there’s always someone who knows someone who needs retail work, so I pick that up too.

Emily is the real moneymaker though.

She works in fashion and spends way too much time around rich people. Not Bezos rich. They’re not the kind of people buying boats on a whim, just the kind of people who throw out their clothes every year and think spending a grand on boots is a reasonable expense.

People like that need housesitters and dogsitters and babysitters and Emily knows how to wink and imply that an agency isn’t worth their time and she can find them someone better. I’m the something better, and I’m pretty sure that I’m not better. Doesn’t really matter. Money is money.

Emily hooked me up with babysitting someone’s eight-year-old for the weekend. It was an easy live-in gig with all the food I wanted in the house, a credit card to order out, and the sweet sum of two thousand dollars at the end. Which was weird. Even for rich people.

A few Zoom calls with the exhausted parents explained that Mary was precocious - which is one of those words rich people use when their kid sucks. That made things line up. I expected a little shrieking brat who’d spend the whole weekend throwing tantrums, demanding some weird takeout from some fancy organic place, and a neverending loop of her favorite Disney movie.

I walked in and found myself face to face with a little weirdo. She was too short for eight and had this round face thick with baby fat that would’ve made me guess five at most. She was a real pretty kid though - monolid eyes and tanned skin and a button nose that made her look like a doll come to life.

“Hey, Mary.” I dropped my duffel bag and crouched, hands on my knees in that way you greet little kids. “I’m Riley. It’s nice to meet you! Did your parents already leave?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said, with an accent out of Downtown Abbey. Her voice was smooth, none of the odd stutters and breaks for air most kids had. “Very rude of them not to say hello, but I can show you where everything is, dear.”

Dear. That was precocious. I followed her around on a tour, wondering if I had somehow signed up to babysit Benjamin Button. The apartment felt creepily still. The massive four-bedroom place felt like a set - the walls were cluttered with design, but nothing was out of place. Though honestly, that’s not weird for rich people either. They love to clutter a place up with stuff and pay a maid to fix it up for them - but even maids could only do so much with a kid running around.

But Mary was precocious, I guess. And, you know, at the time, I didn’t even notice that in all that decor none of those rooms looked like they were for a kid.

By the time we were back in the kitchen, I was focused on the fridge, looking at the emergency numbers and credit cards that were all stuck to the fridge with a magnet. I didn’t see Mary get on her tiptoes to snag a muffin off a tray in the counter, but she was pushing it up towards my face sure enough.

“Would you like a muffin?” she asked. “You look like you’re wasting away.”

I raised an eyebrow as I took it from her hands. Wasting away, alright. Off came the wrapper and I shoved a bite in my mouth as I kept reading. I nearly spit it out. 

There was sugar in it, sure, but there was also a strong, bitter, earthy taste that made me want to gag. That was how organic health nuts made their food. I’d had my fair share of skinny rich ladies insisting their carob avocado pudding tasted just like the real thing.

I choked down the swallow and set the muffin on the counter. “I’ll save that for later, Mary. I’m not hungry.”

“I’m starving.”

I took the plate of muffins from the counter. Fuck, it was heavy. Slick. My hands felt oddly slick on the clean, white ceramic. “There’s plenty,” I said, and my mouth seemed too small for my tongue. I felt the weight of it as it moved.

“Muffins are a sometimes food, dear,” she said in that sweet, oddly British voice. Her little hands reached out, taking the heavy plate from my hands. So fucking heavy. The room seemed to shift under my feet, my knees too weak to hold up my gasping body. My hand gripped the countertop, and it was shaking. Every finger trembling as the room tilted and tilted and slipped.

“I need more iron in my diet,” Mary crooned.

She looked so fucking weird. Hungry. And smart. Fucking precocious. I tried to move my mouth but the floor ripped up from under me. The tile under my feet become a wall, and I slumped against the counter. Slid to the floor.

Out like a light. ——- When I woke, I was on the couch. The big-screen plasma was tuned to the Gameshow Network, and I tried to focus as buzzers blared through the fog in my ears. My arms and legs were all heavy, numb. My whole body didn’t feel like mine, and I wiggled my toes and rolled my head with a sleepy snort.

My wrist was hot, but it was a nice kind of hot. When I looked down I thought there’d be a cup of tea, or a throwaway Starbucks cup, but it was Mary. Her hair was knotted in a bun, which was pretty cool for a kid her age to do all on her own. Her face was bent like she was kissing my arm. That was kind of weird for an eight-year-old, but kids mouthed stuff, sometimes. Maybe she needed one of those chew necklaces.

And then I thought “oh fuck that’s some blood”.

There was dark red trickling from my wrist, down my arm to the brown towel beneath me. Couldn’t really get my heartrate up to feel scared in the first place, but I sighed with relief anyway. “Dude, I could not have paid for this couch.”

Mary looked up, and as her lips left my hand they were stained dark red, shiny and wet with syrup-thick blood. There was a smear of blood on her chin, and my other fingers twitched to wipe it clean, but I couldn’t make them move. Oops. Bad babysitter.

She smiled, red-streaked on her teeth and tongue and she spoke, blood mixed with spit stretching in her mouth. “Don’t worry. It’s just the weekend. I’ll take good care of you, dear.”

I sighed, watched as she went back to my bloodstained wrist with small, childish sucks. Fuckin weird. Like being a wet nurse. Wet nurse to an eight-year-old. Rich people do that too - feed their kids milk until they’re twelve or some shit. My mind fuzzed as contestants on the screen shouted for no whammies. Colored lights flashed. I could fall asleep like that.

“Two grand’s a good price for blood,” I said, and it was. You didn’t get those selling platelets at the clinic. Two grand if I lived. That’d cover rent for a bit.

I closed my eyes with a little laugh and hoped Mary would let me have something that wasn’t a rancid organic muffin for dinner.

[dw-writes]

Krampusnaucht - The Unholy Trinity & GN!Reader

So! @whatafuckinnerd suggested “Hunting Krampus with Jesse Custer and Cassidy (featuring a very adamant Tulip that refuses to fuck with the thing because it might Ruin Christmas TM)” when I asked them for Christmas/Holiday requests and this came about!!! This IS a heavily implied Jesse Custer x Reader in this as well! :D I hope you guys enjoy this! Please let me know what you think!!!

December 5th, 20--, Krampusnacht

Tulip’s car was crowded. Really, it wasn’t meant to sit four people, let alone have them road trip in a search for God across the southern US for who knew how long. And, to top it off, her heater had broken. In December. Before a stake-out. This was Jesse’s fault, thought three of the four people in the car, because he used the Word of God too many times for selfish things and this was karma just coming back for him.

You kicked the front passenger’s seat when you saw Cassidy digging around in the brown paper bag at his feet. “Stoppit,” you grunted. Cassidy sucked on his teeth, wrinkled his nose, and swatted your foot when you continued to kick him.

“Stop kickin’ me!” he protested.

“Stop tryin’ to drink the booze!” you hissed with a well-placed kick to his shoulder. He unlatched his seatbelt and turned around, leaning between the seats to smack you back.

While you and Cassidy fought – with the occasional squeak of alarm and soft shout of protest – Tulip turned around and shoved Cassidy against the center console to get a better look at Jesse, who sat in the back with you. He wasn’t trying to hide his amused grin. “Why the hell are we out here, Jesse Custer?” she asked. Then, she huffed and drummed her open palms on Cassidy’s back. “Get back in that seat and stop fightin’ in my car!” she demanded through clenched teeth.

Cassidy swore up a small storm while he maneuvered himself back into his seat. He pulled the blanket – stolen from the last gas station your group had stopped at – around his shoulders and sulked. You, in turn, drew your feet up onto the back seat and tucked your also stolen blanket tightly around you. When that didn’t work, you tucked your feet under Jesse’s thigh.

Jesse sighed a bit when you did this. He didn’t mind too much – it was better than when you stuck your cold toes on him in the middle of the night – but he was still a little put off. You weren’t the only one that was cold in that car.

“We’re doin’ this,” he grunted as he shifted around. His (also stolen) blanket was a little thicker, and larger, and with a bit of maneuvering he got it around you both. You buried yourself into the blankets and tucked your nose against his shoulder. “We’re doin’ this,” he repeated, “Because we’re helpin’ people.”

“Bullshit this is helpin’ people,” Tulip shot back. “This is puttin’ my Christmas in jeopardy.”

“How?” chimed three voices. You popped your head out of the blankets to stare at her.

“Because if we fuck with Krampus—” Cassidy snickered, which made Jesse snicker, which made both you and Tulip take those ‘my patience is thin’ breaths. “—Then we run the risk of bein’ on Santa’s bad side.”

“You still believe in Santa?” Cassidy asked.

She jerked to face him. “You don’t?” she snapped. He started to reply. She held up a hand. “You’re a vampire. Jesse’s got the offspring of the universe’s stupidest hook up in his chest. We’ve seen angels. There’s a killer cowboy. And we saw heaven and whatever-the-fuck you wanna call God-Imposter,” she said while ticking up her fingers. Then, she added another one. “And then there’s that dog guy back in Nawlins.”

“Yeah, that made me question a few things, too,” you mumbled.

“What would you do with him?” asked Jesse, turning to you, wrapping an arm around your legs beneath the blanket.

“I mean, there’s a kink called ‘pet play’,” you said. Jesse’s mouth snapped shut. “God, I love ruining your perceptions of humanity sometimes,” you whispered.

Cassidy looked back, pulling the blanket over his head. “Oh, it’s a whole thing, Padre. There’s horse play – but not the kinda horseplay lil’ boys do, trust me – and there’s—” He tilted his head, “Dog play now, I s’pose.”

“Cat girls,” Tulip offered, “And bunnies.”

“Oooh,” Cassidy drawled, “Cat girls. Now there’s one thing the internet got right.”

“How do you know this?” he hissed after a moment.

You flashed him a sympathetic smile. “I read,” you answered.

“I’ve partaken,” Cassidy said at the same time.

Tulip clucked and sat back in her seat, pulling the sweatshirt Cassidy had loaned her tighter around herself. “I’m not surprised in that,” she replied.

“Can we change the subject?” Jesse asked.

“You started it,” you pointed out.

“I’m endin’ it,” he shot back.

“When this guy supposedta get here?” Tulip groaned. Cassidy started to rummage through the bag again. She smacked his arm with he back of her hand. “Knock it off.”

“There’s other shite in here ‘sides the fuckin’ schnapps,” he whined. He continued to dig. “Is it wrong to miss that Ratwater swill?”

“Yes,” you said, while Jesse said, “No,” and Tulip scoffed.

Cassidy sat back with a triumphant laugh and twisted open a bottle of whiskey. Jesse thrusted his hand over the vampire’s shoulder.

“Oh, there’s also those soul trading fucks,” Tulip said, adding to her previous list, “Soul harvesting?”

“I think it’s like blood donation,” you said. You moved your butt closer to Jesse’s thigh and flopped back against the seat, staring at the ceiling. “Like you can give a little bit over a long period of time.” The bottle was passed over you. “Can I have the chips that are in that bag?” you asked Cassidy.

“Don’t you dare make a fuckin’ mess back there,” Tulip warned. The bag was tossed over Cassidy’s shoulder. “Gimmie those Slim Jims,” she then demanded.

“Say please,” Cassidy taunted.

“Gimmie those fuckin’ Slim Jims before I punch you in the dick,” she replied.

Paper rustled. The bottle was passed back over you. You offered the open chips to Jesse.

“Have I told you I love you today?” Cassidy asked. Tulip sucked on her teeth, but said nothing, and Cassidy snickered. You held the bag out to Cassidy after Jesse took a handful. “You know, Padre, there’s also a kinky religion thing that I think you’d very much enjoy,” he said.

“How long are we gonna sit here ‘fore we call it a night?” Tulip asked.

“If it involves fuckin’ on an altar, then he’s done it,” you said through a mouthful of chips.

“Let’s give it another hour,” Jesse replied as he pinched your thigh. You squealed.

Something heavy smashed into the ground outside. Everyone jumped, sending chips flying and booze splashing on the windows, while screams pierced the air. Tulip fumbled with the headlights. When they flicked on, they revealed a massive creature in a dirty red suit. Its horns rose high into the air, and curled back in a slow, terrifying arch. It slowly turned its grizzled face towards the car. You four stared back at it.

Tulip flipped the headlights off. No one removed their eyes from the spot in the darkness you had seen the thing. The paper bag crinkled, and Cassidy slowly – hesitantly – pushed open his door. You heard the gentle tink of a bottle being set on the gravel, and then the door shut.

“Tulip, back up, and get outta here,” Jesse whispered.

“I fuckin’ told you,” she whispered back. The engine roared to life, and the headlights blinked back on. It was gone. You turned your eyes to Cassidy’s window, then started to anxiously pat Jesse until he swatted your hand and snagged it between his. Metal bells gently tapped the window glass as the bottle of schnapps was picked up. “I fuckin’ told you,” she repeated. Cassidy blindly reached over and pressed on her knee. The car slowly backed up, pulling away from the house it had sat in front of, and illuminating the creature one more time. She turned the wheel, corrected the car to face down the road, and gently guided it away.

You whipped around to watch Krampus disappear into the night. Jesse slumped against his seat, reaching into his pocket to pull out a box of cigarettes. The car started gaining speed.

“Bigger than I thought he’d be,” Cassidy said.

Tulip gripped the wheel. You fished around for the chips that had fallen around the back seat. “The next time you get a bad feelin’, Jesse, you better fuckin’ ignore it,” she grumbled.

Jesse lit his cigarette. The whiskey was passed back to him. You chomped on the chips. “Noted,” Jesse finally said. He dropped his face onto you blanketed knees with a groan.

Cassidy took the chips. “Tulip,” he said as he took the bag, “You may be onta somethin’ about Santa Claus.”

“I fuckin’ told you,” she repeated.

You flopped back against the seat again. “I wonder if he’ll come after us,” you mused.

“If this ruined my Christmas, Custer, I will hurt you,” Tulip threatened.

Cassidy whipped back around in the seat. “Near-death-by-festive-fuck aside, tell me about this fuckin’ on the altar, Padre,” he said. He took the cigarette from Jesse. You pulled your blanket over your face and groaned.

[brujahinaskirt]

@missn11​ says:

Ask and ye shall receive, fellow neonate! <3 Bear with me, because I’m about to hammer out 2000 words very quickly...

This massive rant by its topic nature is sort of Nines-critical, so lemme start by saying that, in my own way, I love Rodriguez. (I was partially self-burning in the shitpost that ignited this rant because I SEVERELY exaggerated Nines’s canonical shadiness levels in my ancient fanfiction, and for no other reason than because I was a teenage edgelord. I am appropriately embarrassed, but only by my excess and melodrama, not by Troika’s characterization. I think the writing behind VTMB’s Nines is superb.)

When it comes to Bloodlines, I think he’s one of the most psychologically interesting profiles in the game. In fact, I could never get into LA by Night because they so de-toothed Troika’s vision of him. Not to say LA by Night’s Nines was a poorly-developed character in his own right, ‘cause he wasn’t at all, but “my” Nines will always be unapologetically and only Troika’s: boiling angry, viciously pragmatic, a survivor who doesn’t let anyone too close lest they see through him, whose over-the-top confident façade cracks a little more every time his back’s against the wall. Troika’s Nines is the epitome of greater VTM’s “fallen rebel” archetype, and even though we don’t get to see it on all playthoughs, that makes it even better and more believable.

But as with all characterization in Bloodlines, we have to read between the lines and between our own play styles a bit to piece the truth of the puzzle together...

Besides the direct evidence Troika gives us—i.e. the music cues, which are a bit overbearing if I’m honest (sorry, Troika! ilu); the absence of Nines in Rosa’s prophecy re: people you can trust; and the overt warnings Camarilla-aligned characters give us about him—the biggest red flag about Rodriguez, imo? It’s twofold:

the way the characters he surrounds himself with talk about him and the type of vampire he chooses to fill his den. Namely: Nines exclusively recruits angry, spurned, mistreated people who are younger and far less experienced than he is

those messy, ugly, fleeting moments where you see his toughguy everyman personality crack

So! Starting with point one:

THE PERSONALITY CULT ITSELF

We can’t deny that Nines does not surround himself with peers. He surrounds himself with followers—people who don’t challenge him in any way, who are fanatically loyal, who openly profess their worship of him and their conviction he could never/would never do anything wrong. If you listen to how Damsel and Skelter talk about him, it’s with frightening adulation, often repeating Nines’s lines word-for-word without truly understanding the argumentation behind them. (Damsel’s the main offender here with her “IT’S A PYRAMID SCHEME… it just makes sense, you know? It just makes sense!” And then, of course, she gets pissed and refuses to speak to you when you push her into elaborating.)

Nines has clearly made himself much more than just a friend-figure or a Sire-figure to them. He’s utterly and completely mythologized by the LA Anarchs, held up next to other politically mythologized names like George Washington and Ho Chi Minh. His followers love him… but there’s a pecking order, and like good body shields, they believe their lives don’t matter as much as he matters. And they love that, too. They want to die for Nines. They’re not just willing to or resigned to it; they’re eager to die. Damsel will volunteer this information the first time you meet her. She just can’t wait to prove herself by taking a bullet for goddamn Nines Rodriguez. It’s literally how she introduces herself to new people.

And yet Nines deliberately withholds his attention and time from his followers. He uses his attention as a reward, as incentive. He rations some care and reassurance and help—makes you feel good and gives you reason to crave his attention—and then he pushes you away, back into his adoring ranks until the next “two minutes” you earn from him in which you’re special enough for such an exceptional, important, cool guy to talk to. That’s a classic manipulation tactic, and a classic personality cult tell.

And Troika is so damn fuckin’ brilliant about it because they don’t stop at showing us that an Anarch-aligned fledgling might feel this way—no, they make the PLAYER also feel this way. On our first playthrough of Bloodlines, we’re desperate to talk to Nines. We want the reward. “Let me finish the plaguebearer quests… let me run to the Elizabeth Dane… I hope Nines talks to me again now! Quick, to the Last Round! Maybe if I say the right thing to make him like me, he’ll give me another free EXPERIENCE POINT!” (iirc he’s one of two characters who will do so, and the only one who gives multiple points.)

But at the end of the day, Nines is indisputably the leader of the Anarchs, and even fledgling figures that out. (“Sounds like you’re the Prince of the Anarchs.”) He’s very much the Baron of Downtown LA, even if he won’t use that language. As for the grating day-to-day management and leadership stuff that might make him somewhat unpopular among the Anarchs, though? He fobs all that stuff off on Damsel!

Damsel, his Minion No. 1—whom a lot of players will hate on their early playthroughs, because she assigns tough missions with little to no reward. Damsel, who has no real power role in the Anarchs and functions only to serve Nines. You help Damsel, and you do Nines’s work—i.e. you do the work of the Barony of LA—and he doesn’t even have to take the admiration hit by having to ask you himself.

There’s only one non-follower of note around Nines. It’s Jack, and by his own words, he’s not one of Nines’s people; he disparages them, in fact. And we’ll notice that Jack—who is stronger, older, and wiser than Nines—very much doesn’t talk about Nines the same way Nines’s followers do. While Jack doesn’t directly insult him and occasionally defends him, Jack also has a downright shocking response to the announcement of the Blood Hunt. When fledgling desperately asks what they can do to help Nines—Jack says, word-for-word: I could give a damn.

Something ain’t quite right about this place.

Moving right along:

NINES IS A FAKE ALPHA MALE WHO KNOWS HE’S GOING TO DIE

Part of why Nines is so attractive to someone scared and weak like our fledgling (or Skelter or Damsel) is that he seems utterly fucking untouchable—like nothing scares him, and that must be reassuring when two of your age-old enemies are moving into town. But Nines’s tough, cool, Devil-may-care persona outs itself as a protective shell, too… and this is another thing I think Troika handled so subtly and so well.

You’ll notice that even Nines’s voice is dramatically different in a couple different situations: when Ming Xiao is borrowing his body, when he’s afraid, and when he’s distracted or deeply disturbed. (A successful Malkavian mind read will really slam a crack in his coolguy persona. For a second, the nonchalance shatters and he childishly screams SHUT UP!)

But whether you Malk him or not: In those isolated moments, the Coolguy Nines Rodriguez we normally see frays. Physically, even! His accent loses its burr (that ballsy rural American everyman accent), shoots up to a higher register—and reveals a much softer voice than the one he uses in front of other people. No wonder; part of Nines’s charisma comes from his performance of masculine confidence, and even if it’s not a toxically patriarchal masculinity in the way we often picture it, the fact this performance cracks at all shows it’s not his genuine self. He’s acting. In the way a lot of toughguy men do—but for Nines, whose survival depends upon attraction now, he’s acting toughguy for his very life.

I think those little fray-under-pressure moments are the “real” Nines, or as close as we’re going to get: scared, desperate, worn-down, and very aware of his doom.

Now, all that said…

BLATANT FALLEN REBEL CONCEPT APOLOGISM

I don’t think we can quite throw Rodriguez into the same Mean Monster Morality Dungeon for Evil Vampires as other Big Bads in LA. This is where motivation comes into play, at least for me. We know Nines can be merciless and violent, and he doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice his own soldiers (namely, um, US!) to protect his holdings. But he does seem to have a twinge of genuine anger over injustices wrought upon “little people” (look no further than Nocturne)—one that seems like it stems from a sense of right v. wrong rather than sheer pragmatism. This stands in stark opposition to the rationed pacificism of characters like LaCroix, who simply doesn’t want the headache of cleaning up a pile of dead humans on his nightly to-do list.

Nines also, of course, just doesn’t have the same kind of disaster reach other Bloodlines Big Bads do in how much harm he can cause. When LaCroix gets up to some bullshit, he crashes the national economy. Nines, like, crashes a car into a corporate office window or takes over a street or something. Can’t really compare the two when it comes to the scale of damage done.

And even Nines Rodriguez is, for all his strategy, still an honestly angry person. Not all of him is fake—what’s troubling about him is what he’s willing to sacrifice and do to satiate his anger-passion. It’s the standard Brujah emotional-moral struggle. Even though I agree with much of what he says about bloodsucking late capitalist vampires (tbh he seems to hate vampires in general!), one wonders if it’s not partially the anger-passion that’s warped him into the façade of a noble leader he’s become. It’s not a pure anger anymore; he’s weaponized it in selfish, unhealthy, destructive ways.

But if he’s a fallen rebel—and since he is still apparently capable of some genuine anger and sadness—then we can infer he wasn’t always like this. He fell, and narratively, that’s key to understanding Clan Brujah. Maybe he fell in a way all of us angry rebel-types risk falling if we let our hatred of the bloodsuckers in real life outgrow and consume our care for the real-world little people.

I think we also have to appreciate that—as far as we know—the shady shit Nines does, he primarily does to prolong his power. But for a threatened Anarch like Nines, power doesn’t mean expansion or accumulation as it might for an ascending Ventrue; it primarily means survival. The Camarilla and Kuei-jin incursions into LA have numbered his days, and he can’t possibly have any delusions about this, no matter how much he swaggers. So he does what he can do with the skills and limited resources he has. He corrupts vulnerable, angry, abused people by giving them the appearance of friendship, family, and hope they can become stronger—much like effective gang leaders do.

If he’s morally nastier than other power-players like LaCroix in some way, imo, it’s here. It’s the intimacy with which he manipulates the people around him. LaCroix may lie to you; Strauss may withhold information from you; Ming Xiao may double-cross you. But none of them ask that you love them. That’s not their goal; that’s not how they operate. None of them expect or encourage anyone to happily die for them of their own free will. If they get you killed, you’ll die resenting them—resenting that you had to die, at all.

But when you die for people like Nines Rodriguez, you do it willingly, if only because you believed he cared somehow and that he’d fight tooth-and-nail for you, too. You believed that you were a member of his little outcast family—or that you would be, if you just proved yourself a little bit more. If you just fought a little harder. If you were just a little happier about having the chance to die for the cause. Maybe if you die for Nines, then Nines will love you, too.

I don’t think he does. I don’t think he will. If he’s a true fallen rebel archetype, I don’t know if he can anymore.

That’s enough Anarchs for now! I’m gonna peace out with some copy/pasted lyrics from the theme song of Nines’s den: the ballad of the charming and vengeful Lecher Bitch. Stay sharp, my little Bloodlines fanatics!

Tell me your story Don't worry, I've been there Crown me your savior Don't worry, I'll be there

[Chorus] I said hey You're coming all the way I've got some hell to pay I'm diggin' all the way All the way down I said hey You're coming all the way I've got some hell to pay Gonna rip you every way On the way down again [Bridge] Don't belong lording above me Won't be hard to pull you underground It won't be long 'til you love me And I'll be coming at your back To break it down

[zelskzerker]

Mangadex went down so I read alot 2/7

Lets CONTINUE reviewing a bunch of isekai and related stuff I binged because mangadex went down. The scale will be a single thumbs up to a single thumbs down in terms of how much I would consider recommending it in general. Lot more to come, brace yourself future me who is reading this.

The Reincarnation Magician Of The Inferior Eyes

Chapters 1-55

This manga is FUCKING SHOCKING. [Insert reincarnation setup] but this time it is end tier level generic. I actually cannot believe the things that happen in this manga are so utterly within my prediction range. Calling the plot and characters lazy would not give this enough credit. It takes alot of force of will to produce something so utterly generic, devoid of spirit, bereft of theme and lacking in interesting setting. I keep reading only to be shocked SHOCKED at how basic the next fuckin plot point is. HOW FAR CAN THIS GO?!?! It is maddening. THUMBS DOWN.

The Reincarnation Magician Of The Inferior Eyes (Prequel)

Chapters 1-21

I cannot believe this. How is there a prequel. How is it even worse. Is this a test? Did Cthulu write this to drive me insane? HOW IS THERE A PREQUEL. This must be a personal attack. Who asked for this. Why.

Revival Game of Wandering Reincarnations

Chapters 1-20

Hmmm. This manga’s concept actually comes together and manages to have emotional highs and lows in a short amount of time. Where it doesn’t connect with me is how every arc completion in this ends with some plot-direction altering revelation about the world that its hard to grasp the theme. Its the best its concept allows I guess. THUMB SIDEWAYS. 

Do You Think Someone Like You Could Defeat the Demon Lord?

Chapters 1-8. 

THUMBS SIDEWAYS. Biggest problem here is how little is translated. Great trajectory, bad total amount of content. Gorey story of a former hero tricked into slavery by an evil member of the hero’s party. Using the knowledge she got there and her skill to reverse effects, she fights for a daily life with her new maid friend. Edgy dark and sweet yuri mix.

Start a leisurely lord life with a plant magic cheat After farming with the knowledge of the previous life, a reversal life began

Chapters 1-7

[Insert isekai startup here] but this time its about growing a town with MC’s OP plant growing magic. Nothing too interesting here, just slice of life slow town building. THUMB SIDEWAYS.

The Principle of a Philosopher by Eternal Fool "Asley"

Chapters 1-41

[Insert reincarnation setup] but this time he didn’t actually die, just hikki researched for waaay too long. 5000 years too long. He drank an immortality potion he accidentally made, so old age can’t kill him(he can only die when killed.) Firstly, the story has got alot of chapters which means it clearly goes through multiple arcs and scenarios that allow the grand narrative to start coming into perspective and show how the MC is going for it. Most notable thing about this is how much a comedy duo The Fool Asley and his Trusty Dog Pochi make. It is every chapter, sometimes hit or miss, so you have to be braced for constant back-and-forth comedy acts. For a reincarnation-esque series, Astley is not overpowered for the world. Or at least he really does not want to show off what he can do and has invented himself willy nilly. It is really interesting to see how he self-describes himself as an idiot and he is slow to learn and talentless, his only real advantage being his massive age. As long as you can take the comedy antics and the sometimes iffy art, THUMBS UP.

Exceeding limits can only be handled by reincarnated people

Chapters 1-5. 

Absolutely wild start, even though its isekai. THUMBS UP. For at least the first chapter. Skills in this world are mineable ores and each person only has 8 skill slots. Then of course the MC equips an ability that needed 10 slots. Story outside the inciting incident is cute shotasekai stuff. But damn chapter 1 pops off.

Saikyou Juzoku Tensei: Majutsu Otaku no Risoukyou

Chapters 1-20

So [insert isekai startup here] but this time the MC’s clan uses totems to teach magic, therefore MC mostly uses totem magic. Alot of this series is made up of weird ideas like that and the biggest hook I saw is the chapter 6 stinger of the clan having its siblings marry, the MC obviously hating it and running away, and the YOOOO part of his little sister being a yandere out to fuck him. Surprisingly interesting. THUMBS UP. 

Shadow Hero's Daily Life

Chapters 1-10

Displays and goes through the positivity in seeking revenge. One of the best complete expressions of the theme of “revenge” that I have ever read. A THUMBS UP based on that alone.

The Abandoned Hero is Going Home

Chapters 1-6

THUMBS DOWN. Eh. Not worth reading based on its incompleteness and hiatus.

Shokei Shoujo no Ikirumichi

Chapters 1-12

A well thought out world and story about an isekai slayer *coughcoughfuckisekaicheatslayercoughcough*. The world exists such that the isekai’d are many(relatively speaking) and are on a variable scale from good to bad. The only consistency about them being that their skills eventually grow out of control and instantiate nuclear-tier catastraphoes. So the MC is part of a group that assassinates them, before they know whats happening. Good depictions of present, past, and expectations of how the MC will grow given the recent isekai’d girl she meets and has to travel with because she can’t be killed by normal means. Also touches on how the assassins don’t neccessarily see themselves as good people. Some even see themselves as evil. THUMBS UP. Oh yeah also this is a yuri story so its anime as fuck and adorable.

Even Though I'm a Former Noble and a Single Mother, My Daughters Are Too Cute and Working as an Adventurer Isn’t Too Much of a Hassle

Chapters 1-8

Cute concept, but its kinda only it’s concept so far. Mom is a god tier semi-immortal and fights for her daughters. Maybe the revelation of mysteries later will be interesting but, its exactly as the title says. THUMBS SIDEWAYS.

Vermeil in Gold

Chapters 1-9

Gotta love these oneshota manga. Good design sense, really love Captain Kurys. Vermeil is shamelessly lewd and secretly tragic. This is a story that is going on constantly despite oneshota shenanigans every chapter. su-perb. THUMBS UP.

Ragna Crimson

Chapters 1-40

THUMBS UP. This manga is absolutely wild. It has 4 different scenarios, each which are so radically different in setting and then they just flip out into a totally different setting, making it impossible to predict the trajectory of the manga or what kind of arc will happen next. The only thing worth describing here is the MC with big himbo that is beqeauthed power from his future self in order to protecc his loli this time. Thusly, Ragna wants to kill every “dragon.” They say dragon, its more like vampires. Then there is Crimson, one of the strongest dragons who wants to hunt the 12 elites, and then at the end have Ragna hunt him. Issue being Ragna hates Crimson, because Crimson is absolutely evil. More evil the 12 elites but also more pragmatic to reel it in. The power system of the world is simple and described well so fights make sense. The real most amazing part here is the art and the concept behind fights. Probably the BEST ART of any manga on this entire list. From silly cute gags like the MC’s head being a sword or tsundere love antics to Crimson’s face as he commits a warcrime. As for one of the many amazing fight portrayls I while mention a time where Ragna has to fight an enemy for NINE SECONDS. So the whole chapter takes place over 9 seconds and there is a countdown timer in every other panel. FUCKING SUGOII.

[minaminokyoko]

Peace Talks Reactions

Hey, Dresden Fandom. You guys may or may not be knee deep in Peace Talks, but if you are, I welcome you to the below reactions, in handy dandy bullet form. I would love to discuss the book if you’re interested, whether you reblog with comments or shoot me a chat. I just finished the book, so all spoilers are below the Read More tag. 

Woof. Well, at least it was something after six fucking years of waiting.

·         So before Butcher’s giant hiatus, we had this first chapter of Peace Talks already and I have to say I still feel like I felt six years ago: I don’t really know where he’s going with Thomas becoming a father. In terms of what that will do for him as a character. For Harry, it’s different. Harry keeps it close to the chest with his decisions, willing to die for the greater good in an instant, and becoming a father made him have to be more careful and thoughtful in his actions to be sure he can be there for his baby girl. I’m not sure where Butcher is going with this for Thomas, but I guess we’ll see.

·         I was pleased to find out Harry decided to stick with the protected apartment and is trying his best on Dad duty. Me gusta.

·         Right, let’s get to the first big elephant in the room: Ebenezar. Oh my fucking God. I want to punch his fucking lights out. My friend and I have argued about his reaction to seeing Thomas at the apartment already. I know Eb has Harry by a thousand years or more in experience, but it pisses me off that Eb can’t be bothered to learn more about Thomas. Nope. Just skip straight to irrational anger.  It was also disappointing to find out that Eb is not a part of Harry’s life as much as I thought he was in the past, so clearly he doesn’t understand how important Thomas is to him. I’m a bit miffed that Harry didn’t explain Thomas is his half-grandson to help him understand, but at the same time, Harry might be worried about what that revelation will do. Either way, it displays a massive lack of trust in Harry. To think Harry—who has survived all this fucking shit from the supernatural world so far—is just a pawn and he doesn’t know how incredibly dangerous the White Court is. Eb is downright disrespectful and insulting to his own grandson. I’m sorry, but I think he’s being an asshat in huge proportions by just thinking Harry is too stupid to know better and by not asking him why he feels loyal to Thomas.

·         In that same vein, Eb’s whole thing about wanting Harry to leave Maggie somewhere can kiss my ass. I’m with Harry on this one. It’s not that I don’t trust the foster care system and I think anything negative about adoption, either. Maggie is a target because she’s a Dresden. That’s it. There is nothing she can ever do about it. She is the daughter of Harry Dresden, Captain fuckin’ Disaster of the supernatural world. There is no place she can go where she will be safe and Harry is honestly her best shot at being watched over and protected, but not only that, if she’s gonna be in danger her whole life, she might as well be loved and cared for by her father too. Harry brings up such a good point about feeling abandoned and rejected and how Eb’s “protection” jag didn’t work for Margaret either. I know he wants what’s best for her, but I agree that Maggie has a better chance of surviving at Harry’s side than somewhere else. Hell’s bells, that’s how this whole fucking thing started anyway. Susan’s bitch ass hid the kid and it didn’t work. Sheesh.

·         And now the other elephant in the room: Murphy. I think part of me forgot how severe her injuries were. I had assumed months of PT and such would allow her to be mobile again, but then I read Chapter 5 and now I’m just angry and hurt. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. You just don’t. I can’t help it. Murphy is my favorite, goddamn it. I’ve reread the books where she’s helping Harry the most because their dynamic is so phenomenal. They’re my OTP. She is one of the best written female characters I’ve ever known, so ripping her ability to be at Harry’s side away is so…2020. It’s just a nasty, horrible thing and it’s shot my excitement for this novel right in the foot. I didn’t realize how important it was to me that Murphy is Harry’s badass ace in the hole until I was told she’ll be lucky to walk again. I know things have to get worse for characters in order for them to grow, but fuck this so much. I am praying she gets a magical contract or healing or a wish or something so she’s back in action or I’m done.

·         With that same elephant, fuck Jim Butcher for skipping over the foreplay at the end of Chapter 5. Yes, I said it. Fuck him. I know he thinks it’s funny to frustrate us, but this is an act of betrayal of the highest order. Why? Because I’ve waited TWENTY FUCKING YEARS for Harry and Murphy to go canon, and what does he do the first time we, the audience, get to see them in a relationship? Cut to curtains fluttering. Fuck you. We deserved that foreplay scene. No, I will NOT use my fucking imagination, pun intended. I just paid you $15 to use YOUR imagination, Jim. You spent fifteen books building up the trust, love, loyalty, and sexual tension of these two characters. That’s countless words and countless pages. And now that they’re FINALLY together, nope, skip it. Skip what should have been something intimate and powerfully emotional. Ha-ha-fucking-ha. I hope you step on a Lego barefoot. I will try to have faith that Butcher will give us what we want—a canon version of Chapter 14 of Skin Game—but if he doesn’t, I’m gonna lose my fucking mind.

·         The thought of Mab and Lara Raith working together is utterly terrifying. No. Just no. Ugh, there are bad times ahead. I also thought it was kind of contrived that Lara is owed favors, which forces Harry to not be able to say no, and I think it’s a bit lazy on Jim’s part for this convenient block to be there and he can’t refuse the favors. It just felt like he didn’t want to put the energy into painting Harry into a corner this time, so here, a convenient favor. That being said, I cackled when Mab called him a bowl of porridge. That was legitimately hilarious. What a bitch.

·         Mm, Harry just called Murphy his girlfriend. I’ve waited twenty years for that alone. *happy sigh*

·         Oh, great. Someone sent Thomas to assassinate someone. I’m betting blackmail, whether he admits to it or not.

·         LOL @ Harry’s cursing policy with Maggie.

·         Harry. Don’t. Make. Promises. EVER.

·         I would not be the least bit surprised if this assassination attempt is Mab’s idea to cut off all of Harry’s allies but her so he will have no choice but to use her protection more often. Mab is a cold fuckin’ piece. Pun intended.

·         Harry, for real, do not square up with Ebenezar. You are a wolf, for sure, but that man is a werewolf by comparison.

·         I’m getting real tired of Ebenezar’s anti-vampire schtick. I get it. They’re bad. Now shut up.

·         This is so unfortunate: I’ve been missing Lara Raith just because she’s a hoot but with this whole favor thing and Harry and Murphy being fitted for chastity belts, I’m more tired than anything else.

·         Oh, neat, one of Gard’s sisters!

·         Of course Lara knows about Thomas being Ebenezar’s grandson. It’s Lara.

·         Oh, good, I’m sure whatever deal Harry just made with Molly isn’t stupid or reckless.

·         Yes, Sanya is a VERY weird man. That is an understatement, Butters.

·         Aha. I had a hunch it was River Shoulders and not the Genoskwa.

·         And oh good, the Genoskwa’s not dead. Yay. I hate you, Butcher.

·         Now there is a good tidbit of story for the series: that the reason everything is accelerating into bad news is we’re about to hit that 666 year mark that people are talking about, where the even worse shit hits. We’ve had small clues about Harry being starborn and this helps provide context for the shit that happens to him. I hope it’s not a Chosen One scenario, but it does explain why he’s been in so many scrapes and why he’s made it out of them so far. However, I tend to dislike destiny in most stories. It can get tedious. We’ll see what’s in store.

·         Ugh, and there it is, but I already knew Lara was gonna make poor Harry break Thomas out from the book trailer anyhow. Sigh.

·         Murphy calling the White Council useless is a fuckin’ mood and a half. I swear, they ain’t nothing but useless since these books first started. Harry hit the nail on the head earlier with Carlos and the Wardens, that they spend a lot of time talking at Harry but not listening. That’s been their entire M.O. from the start. They don’t listen to anything he has to say; they just insist they know better and that he should fall in line, not caring about what he has on said line, which is very often innocent lives. I love the hypocrisy of them preaching to him about making cold, rational decisions when it’s not their asses who have to deal with the consequences. Yes, there is fallout from what Harry does, but the opposition is always there and it doesn’t act solely based on what Harry Dresden does. I really fucking hate the Council at this point.

·         So we get a second of tender kissing in the tub and an “I love you” and then Butcher cuts away again. I am so over it. I don’t have enough energy to put towards how angry he’s making me right now and he doesn’t deserve it anyway. I cannot believe he spent all this time building this relationship up and then makes it canon and won’t touch it. Fuck you.

·         Murphy immediately spotting all three of Harry’s tails is life. God, I love my bad bitch.

·         I do like that Harry has been practicing his Veils. That’s smart. It also shows character development and wisdom that he’s recognizing how much more useful stealth is and that even though it’s hard for him, it’s worth the effort to learn. Good book boyfriend.

·         It’s still Murphy, bitch. Injured or not. My queen is a queen. Try her if you want, Freydis.

·         PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT MURPHY YOU POOR CATHOLIC DARLING COME HERE. That pass was hilariously unexpected in a book that hasn’t been all that funny so far. Thanks, Jim. That got a whole bunch of cackling out of me.

·         “I like your brother.” I just clapped and squealed. I mean, duh, of course Murphy likes Thomas, but this pleases me greatly to hear her say it aloud. Murph is tough and doesn’t like to say stuff like that out loud usually. I’m delighted.

·         For all my complaints, I appreciate Butcher bringing Murphy in to help Harry plan everything. She’s hella smart and experienced in matters where you need to get someone out without being all guns a-blazing. And it is an apology for her being benched halfway thru Skin Game, imo.

·         Oh, shit. Harry doesn’t know Molly’s the one who attacked Carlos. Ugh. I bet this is gonna explode in someone’s face.

·         And Harry just fucked up the rest of his friendship with Carlos, not know Molly already did the same thing. Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeat.

·         “You just went from a three to a six.” Jesus Christ, immortals are so savage, I swear. I laughed, tho. That was mean as hell.

·         I’m dying that Freydis wants a threesome with Harry and Murphy. I mean, who can blame her? Fuck, I want a threesome with Harry and Murphy, if I’m being totally honest here. The thirst is so fucking real.

·         Finally, someone made a joke about Harry and Murphy getting together.

·         Ah, this IS what I missed about Lara, though—she loves to fuck with Harry for the lolz and nothing other than the lolz. I mean, he’s such a peach. I would do the same thing.

·         Also, Jim, for God’s sake, make up your mind about vampires getting burned! I don’t get it. Thomas can touch Harry, and Harry is and always has been loved, so when do vampires get burned and when do they not? We’ve seen Harry touch Lara even when Susan was still alive and remember the kiss in White Night? MAKE UP YOUR GODDAMN MIND. I had a debate about this with another fan because it’s so goddamn inconsistent! If anyone being loved by anyone else burns them, then that would mean the entire world would be in the know about White Court vampires because they’d get burnt left and right touching people who are loved. I thought it only happens if they try to feed, not just touching each other. I think Jim needs to pay better attention to his own lore or finally spit out an explanation. We’ll see if he does later with that whole kiss thing from the book trailer, I guess. Argh! *Yosemite Sam curses*

·         I’m really starting to hate Harry’s condition and the fact that he didn’t stop to ask Eb what it is or how to stop it. Ugh.

·         Oh, good, and now everyone will think Harry and Lara are a couple. Convenient. Like they don’t already have constant trust issues. I’m sure Eb won’t block a gasket or anything.

·         Oh, yay, a Malcolm Dresden flashback! This is a delightful surprise. Like a lot of the fanbase, we’ve always wanted to know more about him. He seemed like a good man.

·         Yay! Vadderung to the rescue!

·         Okay, I do NOT like Murphy being alone with a starving Thomas and Lara. Not one little bit.

·         Ah, so the goddess Ethniu gets introduced in this book. That’s why Peace Talks got split and then Battle Ground popped out as the next book.

·         “You’re out of the White Council if you do this.” FUCK YOU, EBENEZAR. Jesus Christ, fuck you. All the Council has EVER done is use and abuse Harry Dresden. They have constantly blamed him for everything or forced him to fight their goddamn battles. You can shove it right up your old crusty ass for all I care. I am sick to death of this belief that they are just so righteous and trustworthy and good when they’re self-important douchebags who think that people are ants and can’t be bothered to protect them unless it directly benefits the Council.

·         I think I’m angriest because up until this point, Ebenezar has been mostly reasonable and it feels inorganic that Jim pushed him this hard. It’s just kind of exhausting because it feels like the plot needs Eb to lose his shit instead of it being something natural. I won’t be shocked if we find out he’s been compromised somehow, but I guess I’ll have to find out myself.

·         Murphy is right on the money. We thought we knew Eb, but we REALLY don’t. And that sucks. A lot. Especially since Harry has barely any family at all.

·         I can honestly tell why this book took Jim six years to write. It’s awful stagnant. It’s the exact same reason that the first draft of Of Fury and Fangs kicked my ass. I wrote the story in the first draft incorrectly, in a way, because all the characters were passive for the most part, and the other half of the problem was that I got halfway through this book and thought up an idea for a better book, but in order for the better book to happen, there were too many things I couldn’t ignore in this one, so I still had to finish it and make it good. Peace Talks, to me, feels like it’s obligatory to set up the next book, and maybe that’s why it feels lackluster to me. It’s a transitional book, which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s definitely in the bottom five of the entire series. Transitional books aren’t bad, but they aren’t good either. Most authors know that this tends to happen if you write a trilogy. All the really big, important shit tends to happen in the first and third book if you’re not careful. In this case, yeah, there’s stuff happening, but it’s largely passive. It’s kind of like why back in 2010 people were so hard on Iron Man 2—it spent all this time setting up shit for the MCU, which in the long run is a good thing, but that makes it weak when it tries to stand on its own. 

As it stands, Peace Talks is mediocre. Jim took way too many shortcuts. It felt rushed, ironically enough, because he was so busy moving pieces around to set up for Battle Ground that Peace Talks doesn’t really stand out as interesting or likable like the other books. I really understand why he got stuck and couldn’t write on it for six years. My two biggest beefs here are him pushing Ebenezar into the antagonist role and him completely fucking bailing on the Harry/Murphy relationship after sixteen books of waiting. I mean, yeah, fine, because everything in this book is just set up for Battle Ground, maybe then we’ll get more acknowledgment of the romance and the importance of the relationship, but as it stands, I’m dissatisfied with both aspects. This is part of why we didn’t want a hiatus. If you make us wait this long, inevitably, the result is not going to be up to par. There are VERY few things we as people have waited forever for that ended up living up to our expectations. I almost feel like all the fan theories and fanfiction was a better, more creative result than what actually happened in Peace Talks. That’s harsh, I know, but I’ve been reading the fan generated stuff for six years and that’s just how I feel. 

This is a mediocre novel that’s placing a LOT of weight on what’s to come, which is dangerous from a quality standpoint. It could be a lot worse. I was expecting a disaster. Instead, I got a disappointment. I can live with it, but only if Battle Ground makes up for it. If it doesn’t, then we’re all in a world of hurt.

I’ll take maybe a week or so and then consider if I want to do an actual review or not. We’ll see how I feel once I digest everything and talk it out with friends.

Overall Grade: 3 out of 5 stars

[iminyourhandskara]

Chris Wood on FatMan Beyond with Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin. (Full interview transcript)

A MASSIVE, MASSIVE THANK YOU TO @bwaybenoist WHO HELPED ME A LOT WITH THIS. ❤❤❤❤

to the anon who requested this, and for whoever wants to read this, enjoy!

__________________

Kevin: One of my favorite people in the world, man. If you're lucky enough, you get to work with people you like, and I met this kid on a set and most people on sets, you know, 'not necessarily all likable and stuff like that.

Marc: Careful.

Kevin: Yeah. (indistinct) This kid ain't just likable, he's fucking lovable, man. I was like, goddamn it, I fell in love with him the way I fell in love with Ben Affleck, where I'm like "You should be in everything! Fuckin, you should play Fletch." I still to this day think he'd be the perfect Fletch based on the Gregory McDonald books. When we got lucky enough to work on Masters of the Universe from Mattel on Netflix, I, you know, there was always a like "We could probably get a big cast for this" and stuff, so I played very few cards in terms of like "Well, here's who I think you could get and stuff like that" because Netflix, Mattel, these cats putting up the money, they should tell us who they want and stuff and Teddy who's our Netflix exec, he loves MOTU, so like casting of course with Netflix, the ability to draw talent is gonna be right up his alley. But one of the only names I put forward in the process..I was like “I worked with Chris Wood, and he is SO good, like he would be an excellent Prince Adam and He-Man as well of course, but like, can I put him on the list?” and they put him on the list, and you know, I thought that was gonna be it, “Kevin made a suggestion and we’ll put him in there and then it will never happen.” And he got the job, legit got the job. Mattel loved him, Netflix loved him, boom, he’s our prince Adam! So, here tonight, you got him? Here tonight, man..*Skype sound* Making a little chit-chat, that’s the sound of joy. That means we’re gonna talk to a guest, we get to open the door and welcome to Fatman Beyond, uh, He-Man himself, ladies and gentleman, Prince Adam, I give you..Chris Wood.

Chris: Oh my goodness.

Marc: Look at that intro.

Kevin: And look at that pretty ass man, look at how pretty he is.

Chris: *Plays Jellicle Cats from CATS*

Kevin: Somebody’s been listening to the show!

Chris: Reminiscing about..the Winter Garden Theater.

Kevin: This is actually..I was gonna say..

Chris: My first Broadway show I ever saw, Kevin!

K: Was CATS?

C: Was CATS!

K: I totally forgot as we were sitting here, going “Nobody’s gonna care about us talking about Broadway.” There’s one guy waiting to be on the show who was like “I’d love it if it was all--”

C: I was having the time of my life! This was like Batman, Broadway edition, I loved it.

K: Give us the full rundown of every Broadway show that you’ve ever seen, and when you say Broadway, do you mean--

C: I mean, I mean Broadway.

K: You mean like seeing it on Broadway, not just live theater.

C: No man, that’s where I got my start, that was my whole...the stage was my whole thing. You’d have to sit here for like three hours to hear all of the shows I ever saw..

K: Are you serious? So wait you-

C: It’s got a soft place in my heart still.

K: You uhm, I remember when I was working on Supergirl, at one point Melissa was just like: “He was in Sweeney Todd!” and I was like “What?” Were you in Sweeney Todd?

C: It’s true, yeah.

M: With Victor Garber?

C: Yeah.

K: Yeah, it’s surprising, he was in Sweeney Todd and has worked on a Victor Garber adjacent show.

C: Yeah.

K: I (was) saying before Ben Affleck’s my last card, I’m turning to Chris Wood to make that Victor Garber connection.

C: Yeeees! Hey guys!

M: Hey man!

K: How are you sir?

C: What’s going on?

K: So wait, what- you were a musical theater guy.Correct?

C: That (was) my thing, man. All through college and high school and growing up, that was like-- aside from making movies on my Super8-- that was my, that was my other hobby.

K: What is uh- look, for those who don’t follow very closely: Chris has acted for a long time, I met him playing Mon-El when I was directing Supergirl episodes. Of course as I said, he’s playing our He-Man. What was the vampire show that Mewes loves that you were on?

C: The Vampire Diaries, yeah, yeah.

K: The Vampire Diaries as well and stuff, uhm, and he’s a wonderful actor and gorgeous human being but-

C: You’re always- you have the kindest intros in the world, Kevin. You’re- I come on just blushing every time I talk to you. 

K: He’s wonderful (but) this is wanna lay out there: he is a fucking hell of a writer.

M: Outstanding. 

C: Oh wow! It’s still going!

K: And you know that like I’m not just saying it’s a butter him up because we could totally just talk about He-Man and that’s it but like-- I’ve read a script that he wrote that took me back to 1994, where I was like-- This is what I felt like when I saw Indie Film. It reignited a love for indie film because the film was impressionistic and wonderful and original and singular in vision and stuff..

C: And nobody will ever make it..*Laughs* All of the qualities of a terrific independent film.

K: You got- you got some pushback on the movie. “Some people like this? What?” but he wrote- didn’t you write a script that went someplace legit or whatnot? Are you allowed to talk about it?

C: I did, yeah. It’s not public yet, but we’re--

K: That’s not public? That wasn’t in the trades or anything like that?

C: Not yet, man. It’s still like..under the table wheeling and dealing.

K: Alright, we can’t say what it is, but I can tell you right now, it’s like- it’s something that you and I (Marc) would work our Whole lives to achieve and we’ve been doing- all we have is writing. And this motherfucker has everything in life and he’s about to have that as well. But well worth it, because he’s wonderful at the written word. What do you attribute that to?

C: The written word?

K: Yeah. Where’d you- How come you’re such a good writer?

C: Well, that’s very- Thank you first of all. Uhm, writing, I always kinda did it. I think I was like you, Kev, when I was a kid I just- no one was giving me pages to shoot or to have my friends put on plays in the garage, so I had to write my own words. So, I kind of always done it. I remember writing plays and I’d write up thirty pages of a script when I was 13 years old and I’d hand it out to my cousins and we’d perform it for all of our aunts and uncles and grandparents. I kind of always done it, just never been paid for it.

K: Yeah, that’s the dream, to get paid for it at the same time. I saw when my man got married, he whipped out beautiful words as well. Like you know, where you get to like say something to your-

M: Your vows.

K: There you go. That’s that word, “vows”

C: “What do we call those *snaps fingers* those promises we make.

K: I smoked those away. *Laughs* Even his vows, were like beautiful, like incredibly well fuckin written, beautiful choice of words, look-

C: My missus..

K: I mean, yes.

C: (Blew me out) the water.

K: Who went first, was it you or her who went first?

C: She went first, that’s why I couldn’ t-- I couldn’t speak through mine.

K: Yeah, both of them got real beautiful.

C: Oh man..

K: The thing is, I knew Woody was a writer because I read his script and what not. Didn’t homegirl open with “I’m not a writer” and then dropped one of the most beautiful fucking speeches that you’ve ever heard in your life? It was really great, really special for me to be there for, man. The point is this kid here writes well, the point is one day he’s gonna take my advice and write himself his own fucking lead in the movie that he should make, particularly that one that I love and make a movie, ‘cause he’s got all the ingredients. Like you know, like me I was like “I wanna make a movie” but like I had to hire actors and shit like that. Well, not hire but beg them to be in it. Thank God they were. But like he could write himself a part and be that fucking part and direct himself in the part, because he’s been on enough sets so knows how the process works.

M: So what you’re saying is he’s unfair.

K: Yes, I don’t want to say it in front of him and embarrass the man but yeah.

C: I’m so sorry.

K: Um, take us into, for those watching at home uh, talk a little bit about Vampire Diaries. When did that, was that the first thing you did?

C: That was one of my early kind of like public roles, um, I had done some stuff before that, nothing really that caught on with a fan base. That was sort of the first thing I did where people got excited about a character I was doing, um and wanted more of them, so they wrote me more stuff, um, yeah that was, I guess, I started on that seven years ago? Eight years ago?

K: And what was the, did you leave? Did they kill you off gracefully? Did you leave because you were like “I don’t want to do this”.

C: Yeah, I was a bad guy, so with like all good villains in our favourite shows, they have to meet some sort of demise or just, you know go into a spin-off *Laughs*. It’s kind of either-or. Or they’re Skeletor and then they just exist forever as an equal force.

K: So after, how long were you done with that show before you went and did Supergirl?

C: So I did a couple of things after that, um, I did a mini-series and I was on a limited series called ‘Containment’ about a pandemic, much like what we’re living in now. A little too timely, I kind of don’t recommend it at the moment, but yeah I did that and then right after that ended, that’s when I went up to Vancouver.

K; So wait, and if I remember correctly, Containment, did Julie Plec do that? Didn’t she also…

C: Yeah, yeah, that was Julie Plec, who did Vampire Diaries. She kind of pulled me across, from that experience.

K: When you’re making it, are you like “silly fictional world this will never happen.”.

M: “I’ll never need to remember any of this.”.

C: You know what, I feel like in a way the show kind of prepared me for the quarantine because I read so much about the Spanish Flu and about outbreaks and what actually happened, so when this all started happening, I was like “guys no no no, this is real” you know like, when people who play lawyers think they’re lawyers? It was kind of one of those things, suddenly I thought I knew, I was like “send me in I’m ready guys”.

M: Was there any Containment swag that you got to keep like “oh they sent me all these masks, I got all of these masks!”

C: I wish! I think I have some uh, dog tags and that’s about it..

K: Alright so wait, did they come after you to come audition for Supergirl? How does that happen?

C: That was the first time in my career where I got offered something without reading for it. Which was kind of amazing. And I played hard to get for a second because I wasn’t sure if it was the right coloured spandex. I was always more of a Batman guy than a Superman and then eventually it clicked and apparently, there was some part of me that knew I was going to meet my future wife and the mother of my children. *laughs* So I guess it all worked out.

K: I mean, yeah, and aside from just getting to play a hero and stuff, it gave you the rest of your life.

C: The rest of my life, which is a pretty lucky thing to get from a job, usually the job doesn’t serve you that. So that was pretty fantastic.

K: And there are very few people who can walk away from the CW going “and that built the rest of my life”, you know what I’m saying?

C: *laughs* Well it does match, the network that matches my initials should promise me something like that. I think it’s somewhere in the rulebook, I don’t know where.

K: I just put that together.

M: Like the Wendy's girl walks into Wendy's and is like “I will take all of your hamburgers, I’m Wendy."

(all laugh)

K: When you, when they gave you the suit finally, which is something you know, for the run of the show was something you would look forward to and then finally they do give you the suit, looked tight. Was it as uncomfortable as it looked?

C: Oh yeah, they’re terrible. It’s the worst thing you’ll ever wear in your life. You know, it’s like a giant onesie. A onesie is known for comfort and relaxation and too many zippers. This is as few of zippers and you can have including no accessibility to use the restroom, and you really can’t move in them, it kind of squeezes your everything, if there’s a thing that can be squeezed by the spandex. So things are going like, your elbow is going up to your shoulder and you’re not really sure why. You know that you’re not controlling it. Uh, it’s an odd experience, but um, I’ll tell you what, those lunch breaks were always very, it was like a great release to unzip the spandex and just lay on the couch.*laughs*

K: Tell them what it’s like to be up on the harness thing man, when you have to do flying and shit, on the green screens.

C: The flying is fun, that’s one of the really, that’s when you feel like you’re on the trampoline in your backyard as a kid fighting the invisible villains. It’s literally the same thing, except someone is doing the jumping for you with a rope. But that’s when you get to play and feel like a kid. Those are my favourite, the big action sequences. They’re a bear to shoot because they take days to shoot two minutes, as you know. But when you’re actually doing the thing, it’s a great time.

K: How long before you think, because I know it ain’t happening now, how many years from now do you think it’ll be before you and Melissa are like “let’s watch the episodes and see if we can spot the chemistry, and see if I can see myself falling in love and blah blah blah.” Do you think you’ll ever get there?

C: You know, I think it’s probably all over every second of every frame *laughs*. You could probably just uh, start at the beginning and then the first second on-screen probably in some way, shape or form go “oh there it is, there’s the first bits of it”.

K: I believe that, Mr. Broadway.

C: Mr Broadway!!

K: Can I tell him [Marc] a quick Broadway story? I actually went to a Broadway show, where I got to sit next to Mr Chris Wood.

M: Did you now?

C: Oh man, yeah you did.

K: It’s beautiful. So we go see Beautiful, is the show, the Carole King musical.

C: It was also beautiful.

K: It was beautiful, branded and in my heart. The lead of the show that night is of particular interest to both me and Mr Wood, him a lot more. Melissa Benoist, "rhymes with moist", I learned that from Chris Wood.

M: That sounds awfully romantic.

C: He texts me late one evening..

K I used to say Ben-o-ist all the time, I don’t know why.

C: And then I shot you a text I was like “You know it’s Benoist like moist, like a chocolate, decadent chocolate cake”.

M: That was the most Christopher Walken thing I’ve ever heard: “It’s Benoist like moist”.

K: “And delicious like a chocolate cake”. We’re watching Beautiful and we’re watching Melissa open, this is the debut, the first opening night of the show, and Chris is there um, a bunch of people that love Melissa were there. Fucking Lynda Carter was there, Wonder Woman was there to watch Supergirl, how awesome is that? The curtain opens and it opens with Melissa, she’s up top like bang, singing, right at the top of the show and I’m sitting right next to Chris Wood who is crying. Crying those joyful tears of seeing his lady love’s dream come true. She always wanted, is that her first Broadway performance?

C: It was, first and last. *laughs*

K: *jokingly* She’s not going to do it again?

C: No, no, no, no, no I’m just kidding, no it was her first. Life long dream.

K: She was like, she’s like Chris, she’s a theatre kid. A couple of musical kids and stuff, drama kids.

C: You can say nerds, it’s okay.

K: Drama nerds, the idea of Broadway, that was the goal, it wasn’t like “one day I’m gonna be Supergirl”, that was the surprise and the delight where she met the love of her life and stuff, but the dream was Broadway and her dream came true and as you know, if the curtains open and Melissa was crying, of course, people forgive it because they’re like “Oh look at her dreams coming true” the fact he was bawling, I was like "oh my God, she’s got the right guy." All of the joy he felt for her joy, as she was concentrating on doing the very thing that she dreamed about doing, performing, so she can’t just stop the show and be like “can you fucking believe this?” which is how she feels inside, he’s expressing for her just by emotional, he was crying, it was one of the most beautiful things in the world.

C: I’m not ashamed of it.

K: No!

M: Nor should you be.

K: It was so fucking wonderful so supportive but he is a- point of the story, he is such a Broadway kid.

C: You could say I’m a Jellicle kid.

K: Somebody could explain that.

M: I too was sitting next to Chris Wood when he was crying, but it was in New Orleans, in a waiting room to shoot a scene for Reebot, and he's like "Listen, I gotta fly back to Vancouver and my flight is like twenty minutes from now and we haven't shot yet, and it's 4 AM and I'm a little bit daffy in the brain.

K: *Laughs* It's true.

C: Yeah, we were drinking- we were on coffee number four, at like 5 AM, and I looked at my watch and I went "Oh!! My flight's at 6:30." *Laughs*

M: "Anytime you're ready, Kev!"

C: But we got it done.

K: The boys were so sweet, they came out uhm- Chris and Jesse Rath came out and they're in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot during Chronicon, if you haven't seen it on Amazon Prime.

C: With the most extensive and detailed backstory that any limited amount of screentime has ever had in the history of film. There's a story in those eyes, if you look closely.

K: Oh my God, he's working. But he's sitting next to Mr. Marc Bernardin.

M: Yes.

K: Throughout the night, and it was- we ran up against- what time do we finally shoot you guys?

C: I don't even remember.

M: It must've been like 5:15 or something like that.

K: And then rush them to the airport so they could get on (a) plane and get back to Vancouver, correct?

C: That's right, I had to get back to work.

K: Such a special-

C: But it was such a blast, though. And thank you again for letting us come out and play. That was such a trip.

K: It just means that uh, one day your kids are gonna watch that movie and be like "They're both in this terrible movie? Who are Jay and Silent Bob? Was this before you guys met on Supergirl? Why would you be in a movie like this?"

C: *Laughs*

K: Let's talk He-Man. What-- Had you done voice work prior to He-Man?

C: So, when I was broke, living in New York, in between babysitting for three boys on the Upper West Side to make cash so I could support my acting aspirations, I bought a little USB microphone and I joined this- I can't even remember the name of the site. It was some like, some freelance voiceover site, where you join and you can record audio samples and submit auditions and that was the only voice work I had done. I would- I was making like 100 bucks here and there, doing a voiceover for a animated-- "Hey kids, don't run in the cafeteria!" Like a school PSA, or I did some military PSA teaching soldiers etiquette in the barracks and-- so strange. But that was all I had done.

K: Tell'em about how- what acting in front of a microphone is like, 'cause it is acting-

C: Oh yeah.

K: -And in some ways, it's way more acting than one can do on a camera, on a camera one can be subtle, you can't be subtle behind a microphone. You gotta communicate emotion just with the voice, tell 'em about it.

C: You know it's so funny, I actually would describe voice acting as incredibly physical work, whereas camera acting it's all- you know, it's what you're feeling, it's..they say it's through your eyes, which actually means they're seeing through your eyes, through your soul, right? If you're feeling something you'll see it. But for voice acting, we don't see anything, it's all voice, so you really have to take the feeling and elevate it, and sometimes it helps to physically express it, so people sweat in the booth and they, you know, they grit their teeth and they stomp into the ground, and really, you have to really dig in, to grab the emotion and kinda amplify it, otherwise *monotone voice* you're just kinda talking like you do on film and nothing's really happening, and no one cares. Which is sort of what American acting is a lot of the time, we kinda just try not to seem like we're interesting and care about anything. *Laughs*

K: Is that the secret to acting? Did you just let it-- Is that all acting or just CW acting? What kinda acting are we talking about?

C: I'm actually doing a master class series on early '20s acting and basically, the first lesson is to speak as monotone and enunciate as little as possible.

K: Fucking worked out, you married Supergirl for heaven's sakes.

C: Listen-

K: Mumble away, kids! That's what your future looks like if you can mumble your way through a performance.

C: Mumble core.

M: So what you're saying is, voice acting then is very much like theater acting? Where like you've gotta play to the back row, right? Like you can't see that person's eye from a hundred feet away.

C: This guy!

K: Right? This fucking guy, he made-

C: You've found a way to bring it back to CATS! Wow!

K: Thank you, fucking excellent job, now there's a writer. Marc Bernardin is a writer.

M: *singing* Midnight and the kitties are sleeping..

K: Yes, your theater training really comes in handy in that shit, I never fucking put that together!

C: Yeah! Because you learn how to take a truthful feeling and amplify it, that's what the best stage acting is, right? An emotion that an actor is feeling that can reach the back of the house and, with voice acting is that same sort of thing, but your relationship is with the microphone uhm, and it needs to go through the microphone and then into the character and then the audience gets to it. So it's a whole-- There's a learning curve, I feel like it takes a second. Hopefully we got it right.

K: Now you're way younger than us, so I don't know if like- was He-Man in your wheelhouse growing up? Or that was before you?

C: He-Man, yeah, He-Man was on uh-- we didn't have cable when I was a kid, 'cause we didn't have the money for it. So I was watching, they were rerunning it on-- I'm trying to think what network it would've been. I can't even think of the names of what they were back then, but they were running- it was the rerun after the original series had aired. 'Cause I would watch that and I would watch X-Men, those are my cartoons.

M: Where'd you grew up, in New York?

C: In Ohio. Yeah, Dublin, Ohio, home of Wendy's, yeah.

K: That's true, that's where Wendy's begins, is in Ohio!

C: Yeah and there's a callback to Wendy! So..

M: This guy!

K: There's a writer, there's a writer! *points at both Marc and Chris*

M: High five!

K: What uh-- you know, we gotta be very careful of course, when we talk about MOTU, all of us are NDA'd up the A-H. You gotta play two different characters, what was that like?

C: That was one of the fun aspects of Prince Adam slash He-Man. It's finding these very different placements for the same person, right? So it has to feel like the same character but that, their emotional states are- Prince Adam is sort of in a different place: he's covering, he's deflecting, he's more fun and goofy..And then He-Man we have to drop the truth of his core mission, you know, to save the world, so..I mean, it starts with registers, right? That was the easy part. Prince Adam is supposed to be full of youth so he's a little higher and a little more excited, and then He-Man, *lower voice* go down and be more heroic, down in the basement and use his big fighty-fight voice.

K: It's pretty awesome, like you join a tradition of storytelling in which performers get to be two people, like you know, whoever plays Batman gets to do Bruce Wayne, and then they get to do the Dark Knight, whoever plays Superman gets to do Clark Kent and then they get to do the Man of Steel, so you get to do Prince Adam and then you also get to be his heroic alter ego, man.

C: Right.

K: It's a wonderful fraternity that you join.

C: Although I hear I'm in deep trouble, because the internet has found out that I'm not bulking up--

M: You're not doing the work?

C: --for my performance.

K: Somebody on Twitter was just like "Chris Wood, he's not big enough to play He-Man!" and they meant in size!

M: "Have you seen his thighs? His thighs are not nearly there!"

K: "He skips leg day all the time" but oh my God--

C: You're right! "He can't possibly play the character!"

K: Yeah I had to point out, I was like "I better get in touch with Netflix and see if they'll send Chris some steroids and a fucking peloton so he could do the the voice in an animated series."

M: Also, Chris is not from another planet. That's also an issue. Could you not have cast an indigenous actor to play somebody from Eternia?

K: Who was it tweeted, somebody tweeted something about Griffin Newman, they were like "Oh, tell Griffin we gotta cut his fucking legs off". Maybe it was there, texted that, tweeted that. What uh, now that you've voice acted and led an animated series: is it something that you see yourself doing again? I mean, of course, hopefully we all get to do this one again, but other stuff. You got like one of them Disney voices and you can sing like a motherfucker, man.

C: Oh man, I would love to do Disney too. Let's uh, put that in the bucket list. I honestly, I get a real kick out of it, it's..like you said you can really go to a larger-than-life place, and it all, it always has to come from, you know, something sincere, that sense of play has to be grounded in something. You just kind of yell and scream, I think people can hear that..so there's a challenge to it, but it's also super rewarding because you get to, you know, play characters that fly on cats that are oversized and wear armor and..

M: Jellicle cats?

K: None of that Jellicle shit in our show, Marc! Battle cats!

M: What kind of Jellicle are you? I'm a cringer cat!

K:*jokingly* Somebody point a sword at me, quick. Yeah man, it's a..

C: It's a long life with He-Man too, 'cause this, I mean the character is so fun and obviously..I had the action figures when I was a kid and those toys..I hope to introduce my son to Masters of the Universe via the action figures, 'cause I mean they're so weird! They really went there-- have you seen that special that they do on the toys on the Netflix show?

K: Oh yeah, the toy, the wonderful-

M: The Toys That Made Us.

K: -The Toys That Made Us.

C: Yeah, yeah The Toys That Made Us.

K: Their He-Man episode is unbelievably wonderful.

C: Oh, it's great! And it just shows you- you know they were thinking "what weird crap would a little boy like, put together on a toy?" And then they end up with these wild names, and these characters who do insane things and it's part of why it's so fun. And the fact that they found a way to build a story around those bizarre toys, that was also compelling.

K: Thank God they did--

C: 30 years later, it's amazing.

K: Thank God they did, we all have fuckin jobs, all three of us.

C: *laughs* You're right.

K: Wait so before we let you go, it occurs to me that Melissa just had her episode air of Supergirl, that she directed.

C: Directorial debut!

K: That's right! Did you- Did the Wood-Benoists or Benoist-Woods- did you guys like kick back and watch it together?

C: You know, we didn't because *laughs* we don't have cable. So, no!

K: Don't let CW hear that, or perhaps do and they'll pay for cable! Why don't you have cable? Where are you quarantining?

C: We're in California, so we're home, but we're usually not home.

K: Right! Oh my gosh, that's right!

C: As a fortunate actor you move to California to never be there. I was shooting in New York and she was shooting in Vancouver when this all started and we were lucky to get home quickly but uh, but yeah I mean, we don't spend that much time in our house, so we don't have cable!

K: Tell 'em why you were in New York. Was it the- that's been announced, right?

C: Yeah, yeah for Thirtysomething, Thirtysomethingelse which is an ABC show that hopefully, knock on me, hopefully ends up going when we get out of this situation with Covid. Yeah, it's a reboot of Thirtysomething, another 80s classic.

K: Oh my God, that's-- you'll have two, you'll have fuckin MOTU and Thirtysomething. I watched Thirtysomething in real time when I was a kid, I loved that show, my mom watched it so I watched it with her and stuff, so I know all about Hope and Michael. I saw that they were redoing the show and I saw that fucking Chris was involved and I was like "What?!", and I texted him "Are you fucking for real?" and shit, and you're playing Hope and Michael's- did they announce that? I don't know

C: Yeah, yeah, I'm their son, yeah.

K: So he's tied in-

M: He's a legacy character!

K: Legacy character and like-

C: Legacy! This is what's all about.

K: That's fucking dope, man. So I mean, look I can't wait to watch that, but I have seen and heard four animatics so far of MOTU and-

C: Oh man.

K:- your performance..

C: I cannot wait.

K: It's wonderful, you did a great, great job and made me proud as the guy who was like "You know who'd be good? This guy." Put you forward--

C: This guy and they're like "who's that?" and you're like "hang on, let me tell ya!"

K: Yes, "Here let me pull up IMDb". They knew who he was, they know you, man.

M: If you did like The Music Man it wouldn't have been an issue: “You know who’d be good? Wood would be good, if he could do that, I bet you Wood could.”

C: *Laughs* Well, you got He-Man, my friends. (inaudible) city.That was a, that was a deep cut.

M: Hell yes.

K:Look at you, look at how you came to life with a little theater ref, man. Jazz hands all around.

C: Oh yeah, you can feel the jazz hands from there in the Cantina.

M: Touching us all over

K: Go back and enjoy the rest of your Thursday night, thanks for hanging out with us, say hello to the good lady Benoist and whatnot.

C: Thank you gentlemen. It was wonderful seeing you both.

M: Good to see you, sir. Be well.

C: Alright guys, be well.

K: Give it up for He-Man himself, Chris Wood, everybody.

M: *cheers*

K: Mon-El..flies away. He’s so good, such a good guy. I forgot he was such a fucking theater kid, that’s right, and we were like talking theater and shit. And I forgot his connection to Garber. One more we wrote in.

M: We have another point of entry.

K: That’s true, that’s good. Man, I’m telling you, I ain’t fucking around, his script was one of the most impressive thing I’ve ever read,

M: Yeah, that’s awesome.

K: It did make me feel jealous where I’m like “he’s that pretty and he can write like this? Like, all I had was writing, fuck!”

M: That’s a problem.

K: God, what a good guy.

[milliethekitty27-writing]

Carry On (A SPN fix it fic)

When Dean’s alarm went off, he had to take a minute to figure out where he was and if everything was a dream. The past several days (weeks? years? honestly, all of the above) had been a completely exhausting blur. Jack and Castiel had been gone for what felt like years, but Sam had left a note on the table saying he was out for a jog and there was a familiar weight at the end of the bed. Miracle looked up and whined. 

“Right.” Dean rubbed his face. He got up, yawning, and took a long hot shower that soothed his aching muscles. He pretended he didn’t see Cas behind his eyes. God he missed him, terribly, but he was still so angry. How could he have just not said anything? So many people had died, Rowena was gone, and now Dean was just… here. Doing nothing. 

Sam slammed his hand on the door and Dean jumped out of his skin.

“I made breakfast but I want to shower!” he called. 

Dean met him downstairs. They ate, Dean did dishes while Sam showered, and then he started messing around on his computer. 

A story popped up and he let out a long sigh. 

“Sam-” he cleared his throat and Sam looked up from his book, his hair still damp. “-we’ve got a case.”

They headed out, the Impala humming under his hands like always. They played whatever music he was in the mood for and both of them were quiet. They wondered about Cas, and Jack, and everyone else, but the day was clear and beautiful.

Something must have aligned because when Dean got out of the car, there was a big sign reading All You Can Eat Pie over a field thrumming with people. 

“Are you crying?” Sam was clearly trying not to laugh. 

“Nope.” There were tears streaming down his face but he wiped them off. “Just, uh… smelled some… onions.” Sam laughed behind him, but Dean ignored him in favor of exploring the fair. 

There were so many pies everywhere. Cherry, pumpkin, sweet potato, apple, blueberry, gooseberry, peach, pecan, it was actual heaven. Dean didn’t care what Jack was doing up there, this was better than anything else he could do. 

Dean turned to tell Cas, but his heart sank. There was no idiot in a trench coat to drag around with him. There was just his brother on his bench, nose buried in his phone. He looked tired. 

Dean bought six slices of pie, ones that the cute blond woman told him were best. She kept glancing at Sam and Dean delighted in the fact that he sauntered up and dropped them onto the picnic table. Sam jumped. 

“I am going to eat pie until I die.” he said. “If you want to join me, get your own.” Sam laughed. He kept eyeing the pumpkin, though, so Dean relented and slide it over to him. 

Sam smushed it into his face.

Sam. Smushed a pie. Into his face. A perfectly good piece of pie. This was pie abuse.

Sam was laughing though, and he looked better. Dean felt better too. 

“You’re getting me another one.” He pointed at the blond woman at the counter. “From her.” Sam rolled his eyes. “Shut up it’s delicious. Where else am I going to be able to eat pie all day? You’re the jerk who wasted that slice anyway.”

Sam did. He chatted with the woman, and he came back with a slice of pumpkin and a slice of blueberry for himself. The woman’s named was Sherry and she was Sam’s age. She worked in a bakery with her mom, and she’d written her number on the plate of his pie. 

The next town over was their proper destination, though. A family had been attacked in part of a string of similar attacks - the father had been drained of blood, the mother had had her tongue cut out, and the pair of sons had been abducted. The picture, from the mother, was one of men wearing masks.

They searched through their records, finding a little, but eventually Sam found the entry. 

“Vampires. Vampire mimics? Vampires.” Eventually, they agreed vampires and geared up - plenty of fine, beheading weapons, because that’s was the routine. Miracle jumped into the car and off they went. 

The nest was in an old cabin in the woods. It was an absolutely massive place, covered in ivy, and it painted a haunting picture against the twisted wood.

“Can they not be so cliché?” Dean rolled his eyes, arming himself. Miracle was kept in the car, with the windows cracked wide enough for him to jump out. “You stay, Miracle.” The dog grumbled a little, then settled on the car. “No tearing up the seats either.” Another grumble and Sam snorted.

They crept in but found the house practically devoid of life, even more so then usual.

It reeked of blood too.

“I wish we’d come when it was lighter out, or hadn’t stopped for lunch.” Dean grumbled. Sam shushed him, but the moonlight peeking through the cracks of the house.

They found the first body a little ways away. It was clearly a man, and when they checked the teeth it was a vampire. 

It had almost entirely been beheaded by something very big. They cut the head off for good measure, but their unease was growing with every second. 

They heard it only a second before they saw it.

A wendigo was standing over the body of a vampire. There were a pair of terrified children trembling near a rotting couch. The thing was making the most awful noises and the older brother was hiding the younger one’s face in his stomach. Sam and Dean looked at each other. 

They needed better weapons. 

“In the car.” Dean said it very very quietly. “Flare gun. Only one, though. Get it.” 

Sam creeped out and Dean stayed, wishing he had a lot of other things right now. Why a wendigo, why now? Sure, it saved them the trouble of the vampire nest, but now they had a wendigo, at least two kids, and one fire weapon. 

Bobby would’ve yelled at them for an hour if he’d found out they’d been so unprepared, but at the same time it was pretty clear it was a vampire nest. 

Dean didn’t really remember the fight, honestly. He didn’t know what triggered the wendigo but it saw him, or smelled him, and he was using the machete he had to keep it away from his face. The thing was too damn fast. 

Sam shot the flare and he got it in the shoulder. It burst into flames but Dean was pinned under it. 

They both realized with horror that the old wood of the cabin was catching on fire too.

“Go!” Dean shouted at his brother. 

Sam got the kids out quickly enough, but he started towards Dean. The smoke was growing thick and Dean couldn’t breathe. The wendigo was dying but it had landed a few bites, and now there was a fire and Dean couldn’t get out. 

“I said go, Sam!” Sam stared at him, then was forced to flee as the fire choked Dean to death.

I wonder if I’ll see Castiel.

Dean blinked and found himself next to a cabin, staring at a lake. He rubbed his chest, coughing a little. 

“Fuckin wendigoes.” he muttered. 

“Nasty sons of bitches, aren’t they.” Dean turned very sharply and found Bobby sitting in a chair. They looked at each other. 

“Weren’t you in heaven’s lock up? Last I heard, anyway. This has to be some memory.”

“Jack made some changes.” Bobby chuckled. “He and Cas have been pretty busy.” Dean’s heart panged. They chatted, about heaven and about now what. They shared one of the shittiest bears Dean had had in a long time, but talking with Bobby made everything a little bit better. 

“Thanks.” Dean said rather suddenly. Bobby grunted. “For… everything.” He waved the mostly empty bottle at the lake. “You know.”

“Don’t be an idjit.” Bobby said. “I said you were my boys. I meant it.” Dean’s heart warmed and they were quiet for a bit. “What are you gonna do now?”  

“Get a better beer.” Bobby laughed and Dean smiled despite himself. “Sam… Sam’ll be ok, won’t he?”

“Course he will be. Don’t make me tell you not to be an idjit again.” Dean blinked, his throat tightening a little bit, then he nodded. 

“Right. Course.” he sighed, then got up. He looked at the car Bobby had pointed out. “Maybe I’ll go look for Castiel. You said he’s around, right?”

“Should be.” Bobby lifted his bottle a little. “Come visit.”

“Don’t be an idjit.” Dean grinned at him and Bobby chuckled again. 

His Baby hummed to life beneath his hands. Dean had no idea how he’d find Castiel, but he had to try. There was a lot they had to talk about, and primarily the first one was yelling at him for telling him how he felt when he was about to be grabbed by an oily black octopus, and then they needed to talk about what next. 

Dean wasn’t sure how long he drove for, but he pulled up to a barn.

He got out of the car and missed his brother, and his dog, but he tucked his hands into his pockets and sauntered in.

“...Castiel?” He called finally. There was a noise, a familiar rustle of wings, and Dean turned.

Castiel was standing there, wearing his stupid trench coat and looking at Dean like he’d looked a thousand times but Dean had never understood. His throat twisted up again.

“Hello, Dean.” Castiel’s voice was quiet, but very tender. 

“I’m still upset with you.” Dean said. “Very. But… I missed you.” He shuffled his feet a little, then nodded to the car outside. “Want to go for a drive? Talk about some stuff? Maybe find a place with decent beer?” After a moment, Castiel’s lips curved into a smile and he nodded.

Sam died at eighty-three years old, and he woke up to find Bobby sitting on the porch. Bobby directed him down a path and he saw people he’d thought he’d never see again - his mom was there, Jo, Charlie, Garth, lots of people he hadn’t seen in ages. 

He got to the end and he found his brother leaning against the Impala, looking at a map. 

“...Dean?” Dean looked up and smiled at him so wide that his face looked like it would burst. Sam went to him and felt like he was five, but Dean met him halfway and held him tight.

“I can’t believe you named your kid after me.” Sam went red.

“It suited him, he’s a good kid. Besides, it was Sherry’s idea.”

“I claim full credit for getting you two together. You married the pie girl of my dreams.”

“She did more than just pie.” Dean laughed. They got in the car and drove, the Impala purring along the road and the music blasting, and they pulled up to a rather simple looking house. Sam got out a little slowly but Dean got up without a concern. Miracle shot out the door when it opened, barking like a lunatic like he often had. He pranced around Dean, then he saw Sam and Sam got the same treatment as they tried to get inside. 

Castiel was standing at the counter, staring at the coffee pot rather absently. Dean kissed his cheek and the angel jumped. 

“Oh. Hello, Sam.” 

“...uh… hey.” Sam pointed at Castiel, then at Dean, then back as Castiel again. “Are you two, uh…”

“We are.” Dean puffed up a little. “We talked it out.” 

“Cool. Good. That’s great.” 

“There’s pie in the fridge.” Castiel offered after a moment. “If you’d like. I can leave.”

“No.” Sam shook his head. “You stay. It’s been a while. We can chat. I have to wait for Sherry no matter what. She’s looking forwards to meeting you.”

“You’ll think the pie’s boring then.” Dean sighed dramatically. “I still dream about her apple pie.” Castiel looked at him affectionately and Sam instantly regretted agreeing to stay. This was going to be a long visit, but he didn’t mind too much. After all, they had all the time in the world.

----

Thank you for reading!

Find this fic on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27675821

It’s worth noting that I have seen five (5) episodes of Supernatural (Gabriel episodes, plus Garth with a sock puppet) Is that stopping me from being angry about the finale, thinking I can do better, and writing a fix-it fic? Absolutely not.

I had an idea for how I wanted this to go and what I wanted. I read the synopsis of the last three episodes or so. My goals; 1. Dean gets a fighting death 2. Wendigos were cool opponents and I wanted to see more of them. 3. Find Castiel 4. Give Sam’s wife a name and something to her. 5. You know the montage in Hamilton where Eliza sees everyone before finding her wife again? Yeah that’s Sam’s death gift. 

[theliteraryvampire]

Take Your Heart In Your Teeth (10/?)

Warnings: None!

Fandom: BBC Dracula (Dracula x Reader)

Author’s Note: We’re getting into it now bois :)

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

Dracula heard the shower turn on, and, smiling to himself, he got out of bed. Disregarding his now crumpled clothes on the floor, he went to his dresser and instead got out a pair of slacks and a button up shirt to change into. He was just about to close the drawer when he hesitated. Glancing back towards his bathroom, he decided to pull out a sweater, his favorite sweater, for (Y/N). He was feeling unusually sentimental, but the image of (Y/N) wearing something that was his, leaving her scent all over it, filled him with a carnal desire.

He took out the sweater and laid it across his bed, then picked up her jeans and folded them on top. He picked up her own sweater next, but he didn’t lay it out with her other items. Instead, he held it to his nose and breathed in deeply, picking up the notes of warm vanilla, dark plum, sandalwood, and musk, at once feminine yet intriguing, mysterious...the perfect description of (Y/N), he thought. 

Selfishly, Dracula put the sweater in his drawer, hiding it, wanting to have a physical reminder of what had just transpired moments ago. The effect (Y/N) had on him was an enigma, but Dracula found himself desperate to have a tangible grasp on it, as if he needed to prove that this...this thing between them...was real. Only, Dracula didn’t know exactly who the proof was for. Others, or himself?

Not wanting to sit and wait and drive his mind insane thinking, Dracula meandered to his living room, where he sat and picked up the files (Y/N) had brought over. He rifled through folders labelled things such as “Field Notes,” “Research I,” “Research II,” and “Documents,” until he came across one labelled “Personal.” He didn’t want to invade (Y/N)’s privacy, but he was curious. Plus, Dracula figured, if there were things she didn’t want him seeing, she wouldn’t have brought them over.

Opening up the folder, the first thing Dracula saw was an itinerary. Finding schedules to be boring, he was about to flip past it, when a note caught his eye. Scribbled in a corner of her itinerary, (Y/N) had written, “9/23/13, 3rd day here and injured lol. Fell hard, blacked out, remember nothing. No stitches but nasty scar on hip. Tour guide Nik huge help.”

Dracula clenched his jaw. So this was the tour guide (Y/N) had talked about. Ever the more curious, he pulled everything out of the folder, but something with weight slip out between the pages and landed on the coffee table. It was a CD labelled “Trip + Friends.” Glancing to the still running shower, Dracula got his laptop, turned it on, and popped the CD in.

A younger version of (Y/N) swam into view. The first clip featured her in a castle, though the camera was mostly pointed at the ground. Every now and then the camera would flash up to a window or the ceiling, but it was clear that (Y/N) didn’t want to be caught taking a video. The second clip showed the view of the Carpathians, and Dracula smiled to himself, happy seeing his homeland for the first time in two centuries. He fast forwarded a little, and stopped when he saw (Y/N) surrounded by other people. She looked to be in a bar, and she was yelling into the camera. 

“Day six and we’re living it up!” she said, laughing. “Over there is Professor Garner!” The shot flipped over to a balding man who was drinking out of a beer stein. 

“Yo Professor G!” He smiled and gave a little wave, and the camera flipped back onto (Y/N).

“What other professor takes their researchers out to drink? He’s not like other professors, he’s a cool professor.” She winked and then laughed at this apparent joke, but Dracula didn’t understand the meaning.

“Aaaand here we have Dorian and Georgie!” A young man covered in tattoos and a woman with curly brown hair came up behind (Y/N) and put their arms around her.

“Show off your scar to the camera!” Georgie laughed, jokingly lifting (Y/N)’s shirt a bit.

(Y/N) rolled her eyes. “Only I would get a massive scar on my fuckin’ hip of all places and not even remember it!” She sighed. “Bye bye bikinis.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’ll look awful in them now,” Dorian deadpanned, and he kissed her cheek before he was pulled away by Georgie. That ignited something in Dracula’s veins, the feeling of jealousy not one to which he was accustomed to.

(Y/N) then walked over to a man sitting at a table by himself, and Dracula thought that she looked...off, somehow, like she had just been put in an uncomfortable situation, but she was trying her best not to show it. The man was attractive though, young, with short wavy hair, strikingly light blue eyes, and fuller lips, so perhaps (Y/N) was just nervous, nervous like she had been with Dracula before, a tantalizing emotion he loved playing with, touching her hand, looking at her just so, drawing a finger over— 

“Everyone, meet Nik!” 

Oh. Dracula scowled. Nik looked down at her and smiled, but said nothing. “Not only is he the best tour guide ever, but he was the one who found me after I fell and now I totally owe him a drink!”

(Y/N) started walking away, Nik still visible in the background of the video. Dracula saw that he watched her the whole way, possessive, eyes never leaving her form, and in the span of a tenth of a second, far too quick for mortal eyes to catch, Dracula saw what (Y/N) had failed to. He paused the video and went back a few frames, and there, right on the screen, was—

“Hey!” (Y/N) said, walking into the room. “I couldn't find my own shirt but I saw that you had laid this out, so I just threw it on, if that’s ok.” She was busy trying to roll up the extremely too long sleeves, but when she picked her head up to look at Dracula, her face fell. “W-what’s wrong?”

“It seems as though I’m not the first vampire you’ve ever met, and I’m certainly not the first vampire you’ve ever slept with.” Dracula was angry, and Dracula was jealous, but why? He knew of course that (Y/N) wasn’t a virgin, so it couldn’t be that. No, Dracula felt jealous because...because...

“What?!”

Dracula said nothing, but he turned his laptop around to show her. It took (Y/N) a few seconds to understand what she was seeing, but it slowly came back to her. She remembered that night in Romania, the bar, drinking, having a good time with her friends, but she was clearly confused, her eyebrows knit together.

“I don’t get it.”

“Look closer,” Dracula said through clenched teeth.

(Y/N) took a few steps closer, staring at the screen, at the image of herself and Nik. Staring at Nik, there, a few feet behind her, at Nik, there, with his ice blue eyes...no, Nik, there, with his eyes clouded in red.

[militant-holy-knight]

Castlevania Season 3 Review: Ellis is Gonna Ellis I Suppose.

Warning: Massive spoilers ahead because I don’t give a shit anymore so scroll down really fast if don’t want to get spoiled

Being a Castlevania fan is pure suffering, man. Not only is the video game franchise being put on ice by Konami at the time of writing, but your only form of enjoyment is a hit-or-miss Netflix Original written by a guy who admits never playing the games. I tried to enjoy the first season despite it being only four episodes long, and same thing with the second one which was longer but had a plethora of issues. Now it’s the third season, which took a year-long break to be made, and I am absolutely sorry to say it’s the absolute lowest point of the show: not only repeating the issues from the previous season, but amplifying them and failing to do anything interesting with anything new that is given. I will elaborate why I think so in this review.

So after Season 2, Dracula has been destroyed, our heroes have split up with Trevor and Sypha going their own way while Alucard has stayed behind in his father’s castle overlooking the Belmont Hold. Carmilla and Isaac have survived and are preparing to build an whole new army, the former to establish a new empire and the latter to get his revenge on her for betraying Dracula. 

Even though the stakes are lower than the possible extinction of the human race which was the (possible) outcome from Season 2 which never actually came into fruition, you’d imagine they would do something inciting with this new status quo... But you’d be wrong. This season as a whole felt like padding in all conceivable manners. Not only was the pacing atrocious (which I will get into a minute), but really, nearly all of the events that occurred could have been omitted and the storyline as a whole wouldn’t have been affected somehow. 

The pacing was the worst problem in Season 2 since you had the protagonists locked down inside a hold to do research on how to kill Dracula and endless exposition among the bad guys that some defenders call “vampire politics’ which ultimately went nowhere. The pacing in Season 3 is even worse since not only is it longer (10 episodes this time), you have more storylines now but each of them move at completely sluggish pace with a disproportional large amount of exposition and comparatively few action. 

The Castlevania games were level-based games which had you visiting several distinct locations whether if it was inside or outside the castle. An adaptation series of Castlevania would make more sense if it was episodic in nature, perhaps even with monster of the week formula. It would have been better off for it, but the show is attempting channel Game of Thrones with an over-aching arc with sprawling individual storylines whose episodes are build up for an epic confrontation at the end, but it fails in that regard.

Trevor and Sypha’s storyline was absolutely pointless - they have no idea of the larger threat brewing with two demonic armies about to clash against each other, but they are stuck doing what basically amounts to a sidequest, investigating a evil cult operating in a small town which takes a needless long time to conclude. They completely fail in saving the townsfolk from being sacrificed and end up discovering that one of the characters that has been helping them is actually a monster all along. This only serves to make their effort completely pointless and leave the pair absolutely bitter and angry.

Not that there is any urgency in stopping Carmilla or Isaac since they come nowhere near close to trading blows to one another. In fact, Carmilla doesn’t come anywhere close to achieving her goal of raising an army of demons with Hector (who has been enslaved by her for this purpose) and it’s actually one of her lieutenants Lenore that solves this problem at the end. On the other hand, Isaac gets the closest thing to an highlight in this season by experiencing something of an character development since he is questioned by several characters that maybe humans aren’t so bad as a whole. The problem is that his development becomes inconclusive since he doesn’t learn to be anymore different than he used to.

Alucard gets sidelined like you wouldn’t believe. He spends the entire season in his castle now with two new characters, Japanese twin hunters that seek to be training so they can free their people from the vampires... Aaaaand they try to fuckin kill him, which comes out from nowhere specially after an extremely uncomfortable threesome between him and the twins. And just in case you thought the previous season was depressing enough with Alucard breaking down in tears completely alone in his castle, this one ends not only with Alucard still alone, crying, but now emulating his dad by leaving the impaled corpses of the twins in the castle’s entrance to scare off any trespassers which is the closing shot of this season.

But for me, the biggest letdown has to be Hector. He was one of my favorite characters from the games, having starred his own entry Curse of Darkness for the PS2 where he actually turns on Dracula on behalf of humanity and pursues Isaac for murdering his wife. Here, he does absolutely fuck all during the entire season except being bossed around by Carmilla’s sisters. The guy had such cool powers of summoning Innocent Devils and wielding all types of weapons (including a lightsaber) is reduced to a whimpering slave, whom I have absolutely no hope of seeing in his absolute glory. The worst part is that it was very predictable - the moment I saw Lenore saying that both her and Hector should flee together, I knew she was gonna screw him in some way. The irony is that unlike the other storylines which pull some kind of mean twist in the last second, here you already can tell what is going to happen next.

The new characters frankly do nothing for the story. The aforementioned Carmilla’s sisters are pure window-dressing and only Lenore gets the shit done by herself might I add completely independent from the others and specially Carmilla herself (who does nothing). A video game character actually does get featured - Comte of Saint-Germain, who is some kind of magician in search of his loved one who got lost in another dimension. Another step down from his video counterpart who is a time guardian that preserves the cosmic balance (though it seems they were channeling the historical figure rather than the character that happens to share the same name given their ignorance for the source material).

There are of course those typical Warren Ellis moments like three mentions of bestiality (and one goatfucking as usual) and anti-Christian commentary, though it seems to be sending some kind of mixed messages this time: in one hand Sypha comment that while she hates God, she at least admires Jesus because of his sacrifice which can be considered one of nicest things that atheists can comment about Christianity... And then the next episode features an demon that used to be a Greek philosopher who lived during post-Constantinian Roman Empire and was persecuted by Christians because of his intellect. Oh dear. With that said, it’s rather odd this guy became a demon so maybe he had it coming? 

Overall, this season is a lot more weaker and lacking than Season 2, which at least had the climax in Episode 7 which some people were willing to forgive the dullness from that season. But Season 3′s climax is completely unfocused, interlaced with unnecessary and uncomfortable sex scenes and doesn’t even feature classical music from the games, which was the saving grace from the last time.

So did it have any upsides? I guess so if you look hard enough like Isaac’s schizophrenic “should I hate all humans or not” dillema which goes unresolved. Hardly anything that elevates the season or make it redeemable in some way. To be perfectly frank with you, I don’t know if I have any interest in keeping with this show. It blew away any good will Season 1 and 2 did, it barely moved the plot forward (and that if it has an overaching plot at all), the protagonists being disconnected to the main threat at large and quite frankly, none of the antagonists are as interesting as Dracula, I just don’t care what happens next. Specially if the pacing and exposition remain in place. In theory, if the series was restructured to be episodic instead of trying to be Game of Thrones, my interest in the show would have been renewed but it’s too little too late.

I guess in retrospect I should be grateful that Season 1 was so short had I knew later ones would be so tedious. There is so very little to do with Castlevania: Dracula’s Curse when you already got rid of the main villain and you don’t move the plot forward. If they want to regain my interest, do a Leon Belmont season that is episodic or heck anything else, but I don’t see them doing this because they have to give closure to this story arc, which already grew past it’s welcome and wasted everyone’s time with a season that amounted to nothing more than filler. Well, my patience has been worn thin.

[aviatrickss]

Vox Machina episode 34!

Did they beg Ashley to Skype in to keep everyone from dying lmaooo (I’m glad they did tho 💜💜💜)

Love that Percy is like “may I please have a health potion Grog :)” and Grog is like “alright” and then Vax is like “may I please have a health potion Grog” and Grog is like “fuck you I get to kick you in the nuts as hard as I want”

I love that Vax is like “omg you guys, you would yell at Scanlan if he kept almost dying from running into shit too fast too right??” and everyone is immediately like “Scanlan would never do that u fuckwit ur the only one with depression”

“~MEAT SHIIEEEELD~” grog im love you

“Hi Pike” agghhhhhhhhhh

Grog bulldozing Vax to hug Pike 💜💜💜💜 team big and small is back in business babyyy

BEAR PERCY NOOOOOOOOO

Keyleth guiding Trinket around the traps and Vex being like “he listens to you :)” I’m crying that’s so fucking cute

Vax calling Trinket “my nephew”... the Trinket love this episode is unreal, 10/10

Taliesin saying like actual science things.... wtf.... don’t like that....

Also I can’t believe not one fucking person has had the thought “maybe we shouldn’t be trying to press the button in the middle of the room that’s obviously a trap”

“In the absence of good ideas, bad ideas are, I think, always reasonable.” God that explains so so so much of Percy’s character, always shdhdhe

Also ngl I’m super salty about everyone giving Vax shit for running into dangerous stuff but like.... no one else fuckin wants to be the first one into the Trap Room.

OH MY GODDD THEY GOT GOT

VAX DIMENSION DOOR???? VAX MAGIC????

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

CASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Silas is just like “hey 😏” and Vax is like “l8r heteros”

Oh God but Keyleth trying to talk him out if the charm hrghhhh

“BREAK THE OUTSIDE GEM” “I think Percy wants us to kiss Pike! He said the power of love will inspire him?!” “FUCK THE POWER OF LOVE!”

They are. So fucking stupid. God bless.

They JUST got back from break and Matt is like “btw, your demon gun now wants to kill your sister :) anyways...”

Okay like.... I know that they haven’t found out about Vax being Fate-Touched and stuff yet... but if the Briarwoods were going to sacrifice him to wake up Vecna or whatever..... God, I just really want to see Matt’s notes for this

“I’m on top of a thing. Everyone’s very attractive up here.” Vax you are so stupid and so bi and you deserve to get fuckin sacrificed

“Roses are red, violets are blue, we’re both gnomes, and you are soooo foxy.” Jfc

“The darkness demands your soul Silas.” PERCYYY

Poor charmed Vax is just like “why my sister shoot me :(“

Omg Delilah Briarwood coming face-to-face with Trinket who looks like a really obese Percy walking around on all fours..... bet she’s sorry she murdered his family now huh

Vax using himself as a human shield for Delilah is.... weirdly appropriate

God Silas Briarwood was already a foxy vampire and now he has a fuckin life-stealing sword??? Why are Matt’s NPCs all proficient in being as sexy as possible????

Flying Vex SLAPS yo

VAMPIRES ARE SEXY!!!!!

“Did you say you SOLD your SOUL to a HAG?” “LET’S DEAL WITH ONE PROBLEM AT A TIME.” Percy n Vax soulless buddies and Vex is gonna kick both their asses

“I’ve got this cool new character I’ve been working on.” Mr. Mollymauk????

SCANLAN SAYS NO!!!!!!

Silas being afraid of Pike lmaooo

Percy absolutely DESTROYING Delilah..... boy’s working thru it

Keyleth getting Silas with the lamest line ever omg.... I love love love that she was like ‘i’ve seen Percy do lines so I just think that’s what badasses do’ we STAN best friends

“I BROKE THE WORLD FOR US”

Love that they’re just taking potshots at her and Delilah is just fuckin ignoring them to do her ritual ejfjdjxnw

Vax is so scared when Vex flies in :(

KEYLETH TRIES TO BLOODBEND DELILAH

Oh my God Vex falling through the air with one fucking hit point nooo

TRUE 👏👏👏 LOVE’S 👏👏👏👏 CRIT 👏👏👏

THE POTIONS DON’T WORK????

Omg they’re all so scared Vax is having a fucking stroke

PERCY THROWING HIMSELF OFF THE ZIGGURAUT TO GET VEX OUT!!! (oh my god just like Vax almost died trying to save Cass I’m)

I really can’t deal with it, like I know that she’s fine but they’re all so scared hghhhh

Oh my god everything about this has such bad energy it’s giving me massive anxiety

VAX RUNNING BACK TO STAY WITH KEYLETH

I cannot believe they’re just fucking leaving a black hole beneath Whitestone what the shitttt