#shes going through the horrors for real and it's a little bit funny I don't think her team fully realizes its THAT bad

[bigmoon-is-bigwife]

Ros is always so paranoid that people are plotting to kill her. She mentions it constantly after any interaction with Pili and/or Bad. And the sad part is she isn't even wrong half the time! They want her ass dead!

She sounds insane when every now and then she goes "I think they're plotting! They want to kill me!" But it is in fact true. It really does bring up the question 'Is it paranoia if they're actually out to kill you?'

[jellieland]

(Spoilers for. Real life?? I guess???)

---

Five figures stand, solemn, at the celestial summit of nowhere. They discuss matters of great import, and observe the fragile gossamer thread that is all that surrounds them, and-

Oh. No, nope, nevermind. They're just arguing again, aren't they.

"-don't know what you expect ME to do about it!" snaps the Red One.

"I don't know, Grian, how about literally anything?" asks the Scarlet Moon, raising an eyebrow.

"I mean, you could at least tell us what's going on out there," says the Ruby Star. "I don't think that's too much to ask, Grian."

"Riiight, like that'll help," says the Bloody Victor, rolling his eyes.

"Oh, for goodness sake, Martyn, do you have to make this difficult every single time?" snaps the Red One. "Anyway, we've got loads of time to work this out. It's only just started, even if it was a bit earlier than I thought it would be," he grumbles, irritated.

"Oh! Look!" calls the Coquelicot Loner, from where he is peering away from their circle at something that would look, to anyone but the five present, entirely indistinguishable from any other patch of the universe. "They must be done! Someone's coming!"

"What?" The Red One frowns. "Don't be ridiculous, Scar, there's no way-"

A brilliant beam of starlight shoots down from the heavens, and tears through their little circle like a formula one car cutting through the middle of a picnic.

It leaves behind...

Huh.

What. What is that.

There is... a. Person? But the proportions are all wrong, nothing this world has ever seen before. The limbs are mismatched, twisted, not quite connected. The movement is... disturbingly smooth, except when it jerks and jumps at seemingly random moments.

Whatever they are, they regain their balance, look around, and... laugh. "Oh, hey guys!" they say. "You know, I really didn't think this counted. But here we are, I guess!"

"Mom?" says the Coquelicot Loner, squinting at her. "Why are you short?"

"Oh my god, Scar, you can't just ask people why they're short," says the Ruby Star, apparently on autopilot.

"Yeah, and, uh, not to be rude, but more like why are you an eldrich horror? But, like, more so than usual?" says the Bloody Victor, backing up and looking rather alarmed.

They raise an eyebrow. "Oh, we're doing this now, are we?" They shake their head. "You know what this is perfectly well. We did another game, and I won. Deeply surprising, I know, but here we are!"

The Scarlet Moon tilts her head. "I mean, not that it's not nice to have you here, I guess, but that seemed real quick for a whole game, Cleo."

"Yes, thank you Pearl," says the Red One, narrowing his eyes. "I quite agree. Just how violent WAS this one that it's already finished? And WHY was I not informed?"

Cleo laughs. "To be honest I don't think anyone expected it to matter. And, I mean, sure it was violent, they always are, but it was all pretty light-hearted to be honest! Not a lot of drama, you know." She looks around, and seems to remember something. "Oh, Scott, I let a zombie kill you at the end! Sorry about that, I didn't realise quite how low you were. It was pretty funny, though."

The Ruby Star blinks, and shrugs. "I mean, fair enough. Hey, that means Divorce Quartet is all here, now!"

The Coquelicot Loner squints. "...Does that make you my stepdad, Scott?"

"No," says Cleo.

"God no," says the Ruby Star. "For, just, so many reasons."

"Yeah, I am not doing that again," says Cleo.

"So... So, hang on," says the Red One. "You're saying, in your game, it was all just. Cool and fine and calm. No pain or blood or sacrifice. No agonising entangled web of alliances. No cold-blooded, cold-hearted backstabbing?"

("Hey!" says the Bloody Victor.)

"I mean there was plenty of blood, technically. And Martyn did sort of try to stab everyone in the back and then run away."

("...Yeah, ok, fine," says the Bloody Victor.)

"But no, not much emotional turmoil, all in all! It was pretty chill, really!" They glance around the circle. "It was nice to see Ren again, too! I think he was off roleplaying with Martyn most of the time, though."

"I'm going to kill you," says the Bloody Victor, despairingly. "How is that fair?!"

"Life isn't fair," says the Scarlet Moon.

"Oh, you-"

"Can you shut up for five minutes," snaps the Red One.

As the bickering continues, the Coquelicot Loner and Ruby Star sidle up to Cleo, avoiding her wavering, eldritch outline.

"So!" says the Coquelicot Loner. "How's dad?"

Cleo gives him a look. "Scar," they say.

He holds up his hands. "Ok, ok! Just asking!"

She shakes her head, not without affection. "Is this really all you do here? Just stand around and irritate each other?"

"No!" says the Coquelicot Loner, seemingly deeply offended.

"Yeah, pretty much," says the Ruby Star.

"Ok well that's stupid," says Cleo.

"Yes," says the Red One, having extricated himself from the continuing altercation between the other two. "This is extremely stupid." He claps his hands, drawing everyone's attention and finally ending the argument, for now. "All in favour of erasing the past few minutes from existence and pretending none this ever happened?"

"Aye," says everyone but Cleo.

"What," says Cleo.

"It means you get to go home and you don't have to stands around in a circle with us lot for the rest of eternity," says the Scarlet Moon.

"Oh. Yeah, definitely do that," says Cleo.

"Wonderful," says the Red One, and clicks his fingers.

...

Five figures stand, solemn, at the celestial summit of nowhere. They discuss matters of great import, and observe the fragile gossamer thread that is all that surrounds them, and-

The Coquelicot Loner speaks. "Well, that was fun, wasn't it! Do you-"

"I thought we just agreed that didn't happen, Scar," snaps the Red One.

Oh, ok. Alright, they're arguing again.

Yeah, we probably don't have to stick around and listen to this any longer, either. I don't expect it's going to change anytime soon.

[doctorbitchcrxft]

I Know What You Did Last Summer | Supernatural Series Rewrite | Dean Winchester x Fem!Reader

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Fem!Reader

Warnings: canon violence, canon gore, depression, anxiety, derealization, depersonalization, girl just all the warnings go here man put 'em all here

Word Count: 3829

A/N: GUYS. FAKE PLASTIC TREES. (ive been thinking about Dean and y/n with this song for days). GUYS. YOU DON'T GET IT. (they're dragging me back to my padded cell). FAKE PLASTIC TREES BY RADIOHEAD. FAKE

Mobile Supernatural Series Rewrite Masterlist

Supernatural Series Rewrite Masterlist

Supernatural Series Rewrite Playlist

Uriel had been oddly quiet, and you didn’t like it at all. “No news” wasn’t exactly “good news” when it came to angel business. 

You knew he was always around; almost like a shadowy, blurry figure in the background of a wide camera shot. Not exactly present but ominous and threatening. 

Dean wasn’t pushing you any further, which you were thankful for. There were certain things the two of you just didn’t talk about. While you weren’t exactly thrilled about the two of you bottling things up, it was all you knew how to do anymore. There were feelings so complex you couldn’t find the words to attribute to them. 

You couldn’t even remember the last time you touched your journal. It was your way of checking in on yourself. If there was a large gap of time between dates when you’d written, you knew something had gone horribly wrong during that time. This was probably the longest you’d gone without writing your thoughts down. There were just simply no words. 

Perhaps the word was grief? It was a different kind of grief than the one you’d felt when he was gone. This kind was a sickening nostalgia. You missed the innocence in his eyes when you’d first met him, and you missed the way you immediately felt comforted and safe around him. However, not even he could keep you safe from the hungry animal you’d become; a rabid dog fighting for a cause you didn’t necessarily believe in. 

There were moments you’d get pulled into your own thoughts and couldn’t pull yourself out no matter how hard you tried. While you’d gained a little of the weight back you’d lost during Dean’s time in Hell, you still felt hollow. The color had returned to your face, sleeping was a little bit easier, but there was no light behind your eyes. Even despite those little improvements, you knew that Dean could see right through them. He knew you better than anyone. You couldn’t hide the ache in your jaw from clenching your teeth in your sleep. You couldn’t hide the way you’d flinch at the screams in a horror movie on pay-per-view. He saw each and every one of your weaknesses, and that terrified you. 

The thing to pull you from your mind this time was Sam dropping the pool cue he was using while trying to hustle a group of drunk college guys. He seemed to have tunnel vision as he headed toward— ‘Ruby?’ you thought. 

“God fucking dammit,” you breathed out. You chugged the last bit of your beer, and then headed to the brothers standing near the demon. 

“Ooh, great,” Dean was saying sarcastically as you walked up to the group. “Intel from demons; reliable.”

“Girl named Anna Milton escaped from a locked ward yesterday,” Ruby replied, ignoring Dean’s comment. “The demons seem pretty keen on finding her. Apparently, some real heavy-hitters turned out for the Easter-egg hunt.”

“Why? Who is she?” Dean asked. 

Ruby shrugged. “No idea. But I'm thinking that she's important, 'cause the order is to capture her alive. I just figured that whatever the deal is, you might want to find this girl before the demons do.”

Sam sighed. “Look, maybe we should check it out.”

“Actually, we're working a case, but thanks,” Dean said curtly.

“What case?” Ruby scoffed. 

“Uh, we've got leads, big leads.”

Her face was unchanging. “Sounds dangerous.”

You held back a snort. That was funny, if you were honest. 

“Yeah, well, it sure ain't goose-chasing after some chick— who, for all we know, doesn't even exist— just because you say she's important,” Dean snapped. 

Ruby held up her hands in surrender. “I'm just delivering the news. You can do whatever you want with it. Far as I'm concerned, I told you, I'm done.”

When she’d told you the address of the hospital Anna escaped from, the brothers moved toward the car. You turned back to Ruby one last time. “You should probably know you’re making a mistake leaving me alive,” you said evenly. 

The demon scoffed. “Why?”

“Because if you step even a little out of line, I’ll come back for you.”

“Ooh, scary,” she snickered. “What are you gonna do? Call your angel friend?”

“I’ll lock you in your body and tear you limb from limb,” you replied, completely serious.

That seemed to shake her resolve a little bit. You turned on your heel, walking out of the bar. It was then you noticed Dean was watching the entire interaction from the door. 

You blew right past him, trying to ignore the way he was analyzing your every move. 

****

The next day, you spoke to the psychologist who was head of Anna Milton’s case. She actually was a real person; a journalism major that had gone schizophrenic two months ago. You’d flipped through multiple pages where she’d drawn in detail the two scenes you’d witnessed of seals being broken. 

Then, you went to her parents’ house.

“Mr. and Mrs. Milton?” Dean called as he knocked on the door. 

Sam then called, “We're from the sheriff's department. We just wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”

Dean pushed the door open that the lock had been broken off of, and you drew your gun immediately. 

“Whoa, Elmer Fudd, relax,” Dean quipped, seeing as you’d already cocked it. While that comment normally would draw a smile out of you, you were too on-edge to even fully register it. You brushed past him into the house where a trail of blood led to the living room. 

“Oh, fuck,” you breathed out, taking in the bloody mess the Miltons’ living room had been turned into. The throats of both people had been cut, but that wasn’t what disturbed you. What disturbed you was the fact that you felt almost nothing while you looked down at them. The empathy had seemingly been drained from you. 

Sam spoke up next to you, and you flinched. “Sulfur. The demons beat us here. Whatever the deal is with this Anna girl—”

“Yeah, they want her. They're not screwing around. Alright, so, I'm Girl, Interrupted, and I know the score of the apocalypse, just busted out of the nut-box... Possibly using superpowers, by the way. Where do I go?” 

You picked up a photo on the mantle, then noticed something. “It’s the window of Anna’s church. She drew it in her notebook. Let’s go.” You dropped the photo back on the ground, and the two brothers stared after you in confusion. “She’ll be there.” “Wait, (Y/N), how do you know?” Sam asked. 

“Trust me on this one, huh?” you asked, patience thin. 

“Trust you? I don’t even know who you are anymore!” Sam protested.

“I’m still me, Sam, relax, man.” You continued marching forward.

“(Y/N), stop!” Dean yelled. 

You swung around, raising a fist. Then, when you saw Dean’s horrified face, you recoiled. Your throat immediately felt like it closed up. It felt like the breath had been punched out of your lungs, and the look on Dean’s face broke your heart. 

“I— I’m sorry,” you muttered. “I’m sorry. I don’t— I didn’t know it was you. I got scared. I’m sorry.”

Dean looked like he didn’t recognize you. He’d been looking at you like that a lot recently. 

****

No one had spoken on the drive to Anna’s church. The silence was tense, as were your shoulders. The two people you loved most in the world seemed terrified of you; like you were a bomb about to go off at the slightest touch. 

You didn’t know whether you wanted to crawl into Dean’s lap and cry or run away again. Everything just hurt. 

Then, you noticed someone walking up the stairs through the stained glass window of Anna’s church. Before the Impala was even in park, you were out with your gun drawn. You didn’t give the boys a chance to question your actions and headed into the church. 

You silently crept up the stairs, locked in on your target. 

When you reached the top step, you could see a redheaded girl staring out the front window you’d driven up to. 

“Anna,” you said plainly. You still held your gun but aimed it at the floor. 

She spun around, looking terrified. 

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” you told her. “I’m tryin’ to help you, okay? My name’s (Y/N).” 

“(Y/N)?��� she repeated. “(Y/N) (Y/L/N)?”

You momentarily were gobsmacked. “How’d you know that?” You cocked your gun, still aiming it at the floor. 

Anna flinched. 

“Just answer the question,” you said. 

“Whoa, (Y/N),” Dean warned, and for the first time, you noticed the brothers were behind you. 

“Dean—” you returned, cutting your eyes at him. 

“Dean. The Dean?” Anna asked. 

She was beginning to annoy you. 

“Well, yeah. The Dean, I guess,” he chuckled, straightening up. 

He was acting like his old self again, and that sent a pang of jealousy through you. Just those few words, and it seemed like he had that same jovial energy he did when you first met him. 

“It's really you,” Anna said dreamily. “Oh, my god. The angels talk about you. You were in Hell, but Castiel pulled you out, and some of them think you can help save us. And some of them don't like you at all.” She looked past your shoulder at the younger brother. “And Sam; Sam Winchester. They talk about you all the time lately. I feel like I know you.” She then realized you were still standing there. “I feel like I should be afraid of you,” she said. 

“Aren’t you?” you asked, somewhat afraid of her answer. 

“Yes,” she replied honestly. 

It did hurt you a bit to hear that. “Me too, kid,” you sighed. Immediately, you felt Dean’s eyes on you. You cleared your throat, realizing you’d said what you had aloud. “So, you talk to angels?”

She shook her head, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Oh, no. No, no way. Um, they probably don't even know I exist. I just kind of... overhear them.”

“How?”

“Sometimes, I just... hear them in my head,” she explained. “Not right this second, but a lot. And I can't shut them out; there are so many of them.”

“So you’re not schizophrenic,” you concluded. “You’re just… tuning into angel radio?”

She nodded, standing up a little straighter. “Yes. Thank you.”

“When did they start? You remember?” you pressed. 

“I can tell you exactly,” she replied, “September 18th.”

That date would forever stick out in your mind. “The day he busted out.”

“First words I heard, clear as a bell— ‘Dean Winchester is saved’,” she nodded. 

“Anna,” you began hesitantly. “You never said what they thought about me.”

“The angels?” she asked innocently. 

Solemnly, you nodded. 

“They don’t talk about you,” she said honestly. “I only ever heard your name once.”

“And?”

“ ‘(Y/N) (Y/L/N) no longer bites the hand’.”

“The fuck does that mean?” you asked, stomach dropping. 

She just shrugged, still on edge as a result of your hostility. 

Dean cleared his throat. “Well, at least now we know why the demons want you so bad. They get a hold of you, they can hear everything the other side's cooking. You're 1-900-angel.”

“Hey, um—” Anna stammered, “Do you know— Are my parents okay? I- I didn’t go home. I was afraid.”

At that moment, Ruby rushed in. “You got the girl. Good, let's go.”

“Her face!” Anna shrieked. 

“It’s okay,” Sam coaxed. “She’s here to help.”

Dean scoffed. “Yeah, don’t be so sure.”

Surprisingly, Ruby ignored him. “We have to hurry.”

“Why?” you asked, voice accusatory.

“Because a demon's coming; big-timer. We can fight later, (Y/N).”

“And, let me guess, you brought ‘em here?” you snarled. 

“I didn't bring him here. You did,” she said. 

Dean’s jaw tensed. “What?”

“He followed you from the girl's house. We got to go now,” she urged. 

“Guys,” Sam muttered. He pointed at a statue bleeding from the eyes. 

Your stomach dropped, anxiety gripping you. 

“It’s too late,” Ruby worried. “He’s here.”

Sam hid Anna in a closet while you readied yourself to deal with whatever was coming. You pulled your small iron-bladed knife out of your jacket as well as a bottle of holy water. 

“No, Sam, you got to pull him right away,” Ruby ordered. 

Your stomach dropped again. “Whoa, wait, you can’t do that—”

“Now's not the time to bellyache about Sam going darkside,” Ruby replied. “He does his thing, he exorcises that demon, or we die.”

Sam put the flask away and tried to exorcise the demon as soon as it entered the room, but it didn’t work. You breathed a sigh of relief. 

“That tickles,” the demon chuckled; his aura ominous. “You don't have the juice to take me on, Sam.” The demon chucked Sam down the stairs, and Dean took the opportunity to rush him with Ruby’s knife. 

The demon easily overpowered Dean. “Hello again, Dean.”

You tried to use the element of surprise on the demon, hoping that maybe you could overpower him that way. You stayed concealed behind a statue while the demon taunted Dean. 

“Come on, Dean. Don't you recognize me? Oh, I forgot,” he tsked, “I'm wearing a pediatrician. But we were so close in Hell.”

“Alastair,” you breathed out in realization, immediately losing your mind. You screamed bloody murder, running at the demon. You stabbed him straight through the back with the iron knife. 

Alastair grabbed your hair, wrapped it around his hand, and flung you to the ground over his shoulder. You yelped in pain but managed to keep your hold on the knife and pulled it out of his back.  

“You're gonna have to try a whole lot harder than that, girl,” the demon spat, standing over you.

Sam stabbed the demon with Ruby’s knife, giving you an opportunity to scramble away. Dean grabbed your hand, pulling you toward the window. As Sam ran up beside you, you made the split-second, executive decision to jump out the stained glass window. 

**** Although bruised and bloodied, you made it to a motel in one piece— mostly. 

“Are you almost done?” Dean grunted at you while you sewed up Sam’s arm in the bathroom. He’d cut it on part of the fence he fell on when he jumped out of the window after you. 

“I’m going as fast as I can,” you said. 

“Good, 'cause you know I got a dislocated shoulder over here.”

“Dean, I know. Stop,” you begged, patience thin. You used your teeth to help you tie off the end of Sam’s stitching and quickly wrapped it in gauze. He flexed his forearm painfully while you turned to leave the room and help Dean. 

He was hunched over the top of a table chugging a bottle of whiskey. 

“Gimme that,” you ordered. You took a large swig when he handed it to you. 

“So, you lost the magic knife, huh?” Dean called to Sam who was addressing some other wounds in the bathroom. 

“Yeah, saving your ass,” Sam replied. “Who the hell was that demon?”

“No one good,” you answered. 

Dean said, “We got to find Anna.”

You eyed him curiously, but you hoped he wasn’t paying enough attention to see your jealousy. 

“Ruby's got her. I'm sure she's okay,” Sam answered. 

You turned your focus to Dean’s shoulder. “Alright, c’mon. On three. One—” You forced Dean’s shoulder back into place with a sickening pop. He groaned, raising his arm above his head and rolling it around. 

“You sure about Ruby? 'Cause I think it's just as likely she used us to find radio girl and then brought that demon in to kill us,” Dean suggested to Sam. 

“No, she took Anna to keep her safe,” Sam argued. 

“Yeah. Well, why hasn't she called to tell us where she is?”

“Because that demon is probably watching us right now, waiting to follow us right back to Anna again. That's why he let us go.”

“You call this letting us go?”

“Yeah, I do. Look, killing us would've been no problem to that thing. That's why, for now, we just got to lay low and wait for Ruby to contact us.”

You pinched the bridge of your nose. “Okay, Sam, explain something to me.” You licked your teeth in aggravation. “Why the fuck do you trust a demon more than you trust me?”

Sam furrowed his brow at you, nostrils flaring. “I told you.”

You pursed your lips. “Not everything.”

He seemed taken aback. “How do you know that?”

You raised a brow. “Look at how you just reacted.”

Sighing, Sam admitted defeat. “She saved my life.”

“Care to elaborate?” you asked, tilting your head to the side. 

“Y’know what, (Y/N)? Back off,” the brunet snarled.

“Sam—” Dean warned. “Tell us what happened.”

The younger man huffed, sitting down on the bed. Then, he explained, “I… was hammered. These demons got the jump on me. Ruby was one of ‘em. She ended up killin’ the other one, and, uh, she told me she’d had to regain Lilith’s trust.”

“She tell you exactly how she did that?” you questioned pointedly. 

“No, but I don’t think that matters.”

“Why is that?” you pressed. 

“She was tortured down there, (Y/N), I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be lying to me about that,” he replied. 

You rolled your eyes. “Well, excuse my skepticism.”

“Just… keep going, Sam,” Dean ordered dejectedly.

You folded your arms, turning away from the two men to calm yourself down.

“She told me she could teach me how to get rid of Lilith,” he said. 

Dean looked at him expectantly. “So? What'd she teach you?” 

“Well, the first thing I learned…” Sam trailed off. “I'm a crappy student. First time I tried, all I got was some smoke out of ‘im. Ruby ended up having to kill ‘im. I was pissed, she was… y’know.”

“Uh, wait, what?” you asked. “What does ‘y’know’ mean?”

Sam took a breath, then continued. “She told me the girl she’s possessing had checked out a long time ago. I, uh, I didn’t wanna talk to her about Dean being gone, and, uh, she kissed me.”

Your brow furrowed. “She kissed you?”

He chuckled. “That wasn’t all we did.”

You and Dean grimaced. 

“Yeah, uh, she said something like, ‘I know you think we shouldn’t, and it’s wrong, but the girl’s gone; it’s just me in here.’ And, again, I was pissed, needed an outlet, and, uh, I fucked her.”

Dean flinched. “Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Too much information,” Dean said. 

He held his hands up in surrender. “Hey, I told you I was coming clean.”

“Yeah, but now I feel dirty,” the older one grimaced. “Okay, well, uh, brain-stabbing imagery aside— So far, all you've told me about is a manipulative bitch who, uh, screwed you, played mind games with you, and did everything in the book to get you to go bad.”

“Yeah, well, there's more to the story,” Sam said.

“Skip the full-frontal this time, huh?” you suggested. 

“Pretty soon after... that, um…” he trailed off. “I put together some signs: omens.”

“Saying what?” Dean prompted. 

“Lilith was in town. And I wanted to strike her first,” he explained. “I was ready to do a full-on kamikaze attack. I nearly killed her trying to get her to let me go.” He took a deep breath and shrugged. “Ruby came back for me. Whatever you have to say, she saved me. More than that, she got through to me. What she said to me... It's what you would've said. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be here.”

Then, someone knocked on the door. “Housekeeping.”

“Not now!” you and Dean called back in unison. 

“I’ve got clean towels,” the woman answered. 

With your gun on the back of your door, you looked through the peephole and opened the door. 

The maid let herself in.

You scoffed, keeping the door open and hiding your gun behind it. “Couldn't you just leave 'em at the door?”

“I’m at this address,” she said, pressing a piece of paper into your hand. 

You shook your head. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Go now. Go through the bathroom window, don't stop, don't take your car, don't pass go. There are demons in the hallway and in the parking lot,” the woman explained. 

“Ruby?” Sam asked. 

The demon threw her hands up. “Okay, yes, so I'm possessing this maid for a hot minute. Sue me.”

“What about—”

“Coma girl? Slowly rotting on the floor back at the cabin with Anna, so I've got to hurry back. See you when you get there. Go!” she ordered. 

Without so much as a glance at either brother, you moved toward the window with all three duffel bags slung over your shoulder. 

****

“Glad you could make it,” Ruby said, back in her original body as you entered the cabin.

“Yeah, thanks,” Sam told her. He then looked over at Anna, who sat on the couch. 

“Yeah, I think so,” she smiled. “Ruby's not like other demons. She saved my life.”

“Yeah, I hear she does that,” Dean deadpanned. “I guess I... You know.” He looked down at the ground.

Ruby crossed her arms, turning toward him. “What?”

“I guess I owe you for... Sam. And I just wanted... y’know—”

Ruby smirked. “Don't strain yourself.”

“Okay, then. Is the moment over?”

Ruby nodded. 

“Good, 'cause that was awkward.”

“Hey, Sam, you think it'd be safe to make a quick call, just to tell my parents I'm okay?” Anna asked. “They must be completely freaked.”

“Anna—” you started. 

She turned to face you, concern overtaking her. “What?”

“Your parents are gone,” you stated matter-of-factly. 

“(Y/N)—” Sam said, frustrated at your apparent lack of empathy. 

“No, they’re not—” she hiccuped. “Why is this happening to me?”

“I don’t know,” Sam told her. 

Then, her face changed. She sprang up from her seat, eyes wide. “They’re coming.”

“Uh, who?” you asked. 

“Back room,” Dean ordered. 

Sam left to bring Anna to the back, and you readied yourself with your iron blade. 

“Where's the knife?” the demon prompted. 

You tsked. “About that…”

“You’re kidding,” she said. 

“Look, it’s your boyfriend’s fault,” you shrugged. 

“Thanks a lot,” Sam hissed at you. 

You glared back at him. 

“Great. Just peachy. Impeccable timing, guys, really,” Ruby snarked. 

With a violent rattle, the door burst open. 

“(Y/N),” Uriel stated, stepping into the room. Castiel wasn’t far behind. 

You stepped slightly forward. “What? What’d I do?”

“You want to explain why you have that stain in the room?” the angel snapped at you.

Castiel cut you off, keeping you from answering. “We're here for Anna.”

“Here for her like... here for her?” Dean asked. 

“Stop talking,” Uriel ordered. “Give her to us.”

“Are you gonna help her?” Sam asked. 

“No,” Castiel said. “She has to die.”

“(Y/N),” Uriel ordered, eyes icy. 

Your stomach dropped. 

“Kill.”

Series Rewrite Taglist: @polireader @brightlilith @atcamillanorrman @jrizzelle @insomnia-bookworm @procrastination20 @mrs-nesmith @djs8891 @tiggytaylor @staple-your-mouth @jesstherebel @rach5ive @strawberrykiwisdogog @bruhidkjustwannaread @mxltifxnd0m @sunshine-on-marz @big-ol-boat @mgchaser @capncrankle @chervbs @simpingdeadcharacters @nesnejwritings @stillhere197 @tearsforhan @take-it-on-the-run @iloveyou2mia @maxinehufflepuffprincess @ohgeehowdigethere @seninjakitey @berarenado @s0urw00lf @princessleahorgana @quarterhorse19 @isla-finke-blog @silverdoragon @karacaroldanvers @gayandfairycore @examishbookwyrm @star-yawnznn @real-sharena-h @fandomloverrr @metalmonki @onlyangel-444 @yu-winchester @benniwiththefanni @daisychaingirl @immagods @missmieux @yoongi-holland @littledebbieinabigworld

[justarandombrit]

Believe it or not, I did in fact go to see Spies Are Forever (you'd never know from looking at my blog), and, as usual, I wrote down some notes. My memory is shit so I'll probably update this with additions when I remember more, but for now, below the cut...

Act 1:

. They played Show Stoppin' Number and so many people were singing along

. It started midway through them playing The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals

. Joey: “Sorry to anyone who thought they were seeing Wizard Of Oz. Although, this show has many friends of Dorothy”

. Emily Proudlock has a beautiful voice. The microphone was struggling a little at the start, though lmao

. THEY GOT AN ACTUAL BANANA PEEL

. Oliver Ormson (Owen) called Curt “Mega” which in the show he doesn't do until he becomes the DMA (not a criticism, just interesting)

. Owen said the “A man needs his privacy”(?) line, so Owen and Barb have officially interacted now

. I love Brian's Informant. His French accent was so over the top

. Brian stared at Clark when he said “The Deadliest Man Alive” until Clark played the keyboard sting. And then whenever anyone else said it throughout the show, he played it.

. They left in a huge awkward silence when the DMA was waiting for Sergio and it was so funny

. Sergio sounded so awkward when he said “You guys can relate, right?”

. Joey fucking SCREAMED “PLEASE!” during Sergio's little Somebody's Gotta Do It reprise

. “The Deadliest Man Alive disarms Mega and escapes”

“He does?”

. Dean John Wilson walked back on stage after his exit, said “The Deadliest Man” and left again

. Okay, so Claire M. Hall is a perfect Cynthia

. You guys are gonna crucify me for this, but I actually liked her Eyes On The Prize I better than Lauren's…

. Joey was making the weirdest faces during Eyes On The Prize II

. Curt cocked his head at Hallucination!Owen and Owen shrugged and mouthed “I don't know” at him

. I LOVE EMILY OOI’S BARB!!!!!! She did a cute little dance during “It's actually a gun!”

. Obioma (Curt) pretending his beard had been shaved lmao

. No Richard Big appearance sadly

. Curt was even more oblivious about Tatiana hitting on him than in the actual show

. The Nazi ensemble stuck around throughout the whole scene and kept gasping when Curt called them villains

. THEY MADE NOT SO BAD… EVEN MORE NOT SO BAD

. “SAY WE GOT A BIT LOST, WITH THE WHOLE HOLO–” *looks at ensemble* “ehh…”

. “WE DID ALL WE COULD DO TO poopoo THE JEW”

. They didn't make the audience chant, which was… probably for the best

. Von Nazi yelled “I'm a big boy! A BIG BOY” at Mega then walked off without using his knees

. Curt groaned and hung his head when the DMA said “I'm gonna torture the living shite outta you”

. Actually gasped at the overlapping “Doesn't even matter if I killed my best friend” and “To show you the horror of staying alive”, even though I knew it was coming

. The homoeroticism 🤌🤌🤌🤌

Act 2:

. I WAS ON THE SAME ROW AS A.J. FUCKING HOLMES AND DIDN'T NOTICE UNTIL JOEY SHOUTED HIM OUT

. Joey shouted out loads of cosplayers still in character as Vanger Borschtit

. Everyone was so excited about Vanger Borschtit, and Joey made everyone cheer for an acceptable amount of time “for his reel”

. The new We Love the Prince lyrics really are so much better (also what did he do to the Pope?!?!?)

. Vanger Borschtit was DISTRAUGHT when the prince died

. Obioma stared so blankly into the audience at “Or whatever it is you boys do in the rumpus room”

. I think out of all of the new cast members, Evelyn Hoskins (Tatiana) sounded the most like the original actor (she was also so cool)

. Obioma actually sung the little “Very good place to start” Sound Of Music reference and Tatiana looked so annoyed

. Tatiana was SO into Doing This up until the kiss (which wasn't a real kiss lmao)

. MRS MEGAAAAAAAAAA

. The lights flashed rainbow after the line “So we're just… friends?”

. Curt looked straight at Barb when he said “Some of us may die”

. Curt paused before he drank the shot, and then started drinking a load and everyone stared at him, really concerned. It was a really neat piece of acting

. Von Nazi kept stressing how he had no idea how Feurgin was killed

. The Informant looked so concerned at the start of NSB reprise, then actually kinda got into it

. Jak Malone (Von Nazi) made his death SO DRAMATIC. He fell to the ground and went “Ow, my back! Ow, my front! Ow, my…self” and then got up and bowed

. Owen stood behind the DMA and they just spun around while Joey narrated

. Joey: “THE DEADLIEST MAN ALIVE FALLS DOWN THROUGH A HIDDEN TRAP DOOR IN THE STAGE–”

. ONE STEP AHEAD JSTSKTKEYYKDKFYFUHDYSWWGDJFKGKFDHSGSTSFJKGKGKGJDSYSYIFKF I'M NOT OKAY

Dean: *Crouch-walks away*

. Owen stared directly at Curt (and addressed him instead of Tatiana) when he said “Don't slip up” and loads of people “Ooh”ed

. Owen seemed actually on the verge of tears in Spies Are Forever (Reprise)

. He also fully yelled “You're a caveman!”

. They changed the line “Taking your advice” to “Moving on”, just like Curt (I think it was Curt? Edit: IT WAS JOEY) wanted in the livestream

. The speech before Spy Again (Reprise) was so good. Everyone came out on stage and it was all just incredible

. SPIES ARE FOREVER, IT'S A MUSICAAAAAAAAALLLLLL……. IT'S ABOUT SPIES!

[thescarletnargacuga]

Caine and Pomni having a movie night, with them accidentally choosing a horror movie to watch. Pomni doesn’t really mind and isn’t affected, but for DAYS Caine is bothered and doesn’t want to be alone without Pomni ever. Causing him to constantly sleep in her room, accompany her on adventures, etc. Pomni then has to teach him the beautiful art of the movie not being real, but because he is a visual learner she also has to show him that it’s not real by pointing out how each affect is done.

PRACTICAL EFFECTS

A HALLOWEEN SHOWTIME ONESHOT

WARNING: movie blood and gore

~~~

Caine could barely see through his clenched teeth as he sat shaking next to Pomni. He and Pomni were relaxing with a spooky movie marathon. Just them, a bowl of popcorn, and eight hours of back to back seasonal features. However, one of the TV movies was a bit more gory than Caine could handle.

Pomni was having a great time, eating handfuls of popcorn as the killer on screen violently swung a massive chainsaw. She chuckled at the campy acting and blatantly fake special effects, not noticing Caine was ready to bolt.

When the killer dug his chainsaw into the gut of the underdressed hot girl character, Caine screamed. Pomni jumped for the first time all night, spilling the popcorn. Pomni paused the movie. "Caine?? What the heck!?"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN- WE JUST WATCHED SOMEONE DIE, POMNI!!" Caine plucked his eyes from his mouth and rubbed them against his coat. "MY EYES WILL NEVER BE CLEAN AGAIN!!"

Pomni blinked, confused. "Caine... It's a movie. I'm not crazy about horror, but these movies are so bad they're actually pretty funny."

"FUNNY? FUNNY????? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?" Caine slammed his eyes back in his mouth so hard, he nearly choked. "I never realized I was dating a psychopath!"

"Woah, woah, woah, Caine, breathe. Calm down a little." She took a few deep breaths, encouraging him to breathe with her. "It's a movie. Fake. Everything that's happening on screen, isn't actually happening."

"...come again?" Caine arched his top jaw, looking from Pomni to the screen. "I know movies have actors and such, but you're telling me that that man is not actually digging a chainsaw into that woman's stomach? But- but- it's so real! I can't even look at it without getting squeamish!"

"Have you ever heard of movie magic? Practical and special visual effects? All of that blood on screen is nothing more than red dye and corn syrup. I mean, some hardcore movies use animal blood, but it's mostly colored corn syrup. That torso getting cut up? Fake. A prop. That chainsaw? Doesn't actually have blades on it except in close-ups."

Caine still couldn't bring himself to look fully at the screen. "I don't like it..."

Pomni put a comforting hand on Caine's shoulder. "Hey, it's okay. We can skip this one if it's too bloody. I prefer atmospheric and psychological scares, myself."

Caine snapped, vanishing the spilled popcorn and refilling the bowl. "Thanks, Pomni."

"Of course, Caine. This is supposed to be fun." Pomni scoots closer, until their thighs touch. "Just imagine all those actors covered in sticky syrup. Must have taken them ages to wash it out."

"Heh, yeah..."

"Caine, out of curiosity, what did you think was happening?"

"Oh...uh, seems silly now but... I thought actors were really going through everything on screen. Because they're mass-produced like boy bands."

"....say what?"

"What?"

"Nevermind. We'll talk later." Pomni changed to a different movie and settled her head on Caine's shoulder.

[poproximus]

I think it's bullshit that Charlie didn't go with Bee at the end of the movie.

Buckle up, my friends because boy oh boy do I have a rant to go off on. . .

(Spoilers ahead for Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts.)

I know the message of Bumblebee is supposed to be like "maybe the real treasure is the family you rediscovered along the way" and "sometimes you meet people who change your life but they can't stay forever" or something, but come on, my girl deserves to go on a road trip with her new best friend/soulmate.

Sure she'd probably end up witnessing Primus-made horrors but she's already watched Bee get murdered once and was absolutely ready to throw hands at anyone who looked at him funny the whole film, so I think she'd fit right in with the Autobots. (Maybe OP wouldn't have been such a racist bigot during ROTB if he'd met her too).

Besides it sounded like she was planning on going to college or something in the near future so her family would have missed her either way. Maybe. It's not like they hung out much anyways. I know it's probably cause Charlie was distancing herself out of grief, but they didn't seem too hung up on it. Regardless of how their relationships were by the end of the movie, Charlie is still a young adult now, and I think it would've been good for her to spread her wings and set out on a road of friendship and self discovery.

Plus like, Bee deserves his human friend, dammit!! He finally gets to have a break from the war he's been a part of for who knows how long, he meets someone who is gentle with him in a way he's probably never felt, who reawakens his fun side, and who also, from pretty much the first minute they meet decides she's gonna have his back no matter what, and then he has to say goodbye after they've gone through hell together?? Excuse me?? No?? Why??

I feel like even if Charlie was just a minor character in Rise of the Beasts, she would have been great. First off we wouldn't have had racist Optimus Prime because he would've taken one look at her cute little smile and had all his G1 reminiscent human protection protocols activated, change my mind.

Plus I feel like she would have such a fun dynamic with the other bots! She could introduce Mirage to earth music like she did Bee, and all three of them could go to those drive-in theaters together. I feel like Arcee would take it upon herself to train Charlie in combat a bit so that she can at least know how to wriggle her way out of a Decepticon's grasp. Plus like, cool motorcycle rides. Charlie could also help do light maintenance on them in like the tinier crevasses they can't reach themselves.

When Noah shows up she'd totally tease him about Mirage and his situationship. Not to mention I definitely believe her and Elena would have some kind of romantic thing going on in the background (y'all can pry sapphic Charlie Watson out of my dead, gay hands). Bee would totally be the biggest wingman after he comes back online.

SPEAKING OF!!

Regarding Bee's death. . . I was sat for the majority of that movie going "So um guys, I know y'all aren't killing off Bee for good, he's like the golden child of the franchise, so when are you going to do something about his lifeless frame? Hello?? He's literally just slumped in a corner please fix my boy!!"

I feel like Charlie would not accept that Bee is gone for good. At least not at first. She brought him back from the dead once she can do it again, right? While everyone is off doing key stuff I picture her staying behind and tinkering with his body, trying to bring him back. I don't think she'd truly register he's gone till like a few minutes before he's brought back.

I know that "Character A thinking Character B is dead and crying over their lifeless body only for it to be a fake out a few seconds later" is an extremely overdone cliche, but I'm still a sucker for it. ROTB is already full of cliches and overused tropes (generic skybeams, amiright?) anyways so what's adding one more to the mix?

Anyways I wanna see Charlie grapple with that brief moment of grief and loss and just lose herself in it. She'd be filled with despair and self loathing because what do you mean she can't fix him? They've been through so much together, she's already saved him once, it can't end like this!! She's simultaneously crying her eyes out and planning on how she will personally remove Scourge's spine from the rest of his body when Bumblebee comes back online and envelops her in a crushing embrace that brings her back to herself. They join the fight together and Charlie'd get to help Optimus kill Scourge. As a treat.

She'd probably offer to help Noah fix up Mirage but he'd be like "No thanks, this is something I gotta do myself. This guy saved my life, the least I can do is help him out" And she'd be like "I know how you feel." and give them some space and then she'd go watch a drive-in movie with Bee while cuddling with Elena in his front seats.

And there we go. As you can tell I am extremely salty with how the Bumblebee movie ended. They really gave us one of if not the best written human characters of this godforsaken universe and then were like "Erm actually you're never gonna see her again. Sorry not sorry." Bullshit. Charlie should have gone with Bee and I will die on this hill.

[sunny-reacts-to-stuff]

tma 39 "infestation"

worms, parasites, gore, physical violence, body horror, trypophobia, uncanny, jumpscares (2m07s, 2m11s, 2m16s, 6m40s, 18m25s), loud screaming, alarm sounds, high-pitched audio interference, being chased, being trapped, getting lost, asphyxiation, abandoned tunnels

i cant believe i am slaying my way through the magnus archives as a scaredy cat

martin being like "right right right right" is so cute from an outside perspective but i would literally kill him myself if i was jon in that moment

where the fuck is tim

also my poor 3/4 archivists im praying for you rn

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" "there we go ^0^" see that's the clervalstein i came in for

"Look, you guys got to go home every day, okay. I didn’t!" my SON TT

HE SAID THANK YOU ????

so sorry jon for saying it would take you until s4 to say please and thank you

"These old files are far better protected than we ever were." the diction of that was peak "im gonna kms"

nooo martin you did great

better trapped than dead?

"why record it" for the memories, sash

he has gotten attached, let him be

gods forbid an autistic guy has a comfort object

Every real statement just leads… deeper into something I don’t even know the shape of yet. -> i feel you jon dont worry

the only difference between you and i is that i have something close to a database and you look like you cant type into a computer

"Only an idiot would stay in this job." says guy that goes to work at 6 am bc he wants to

LET MARTIN (and me) CALL YOU AN IDIOT

waiting for me im coming waaait im coming too

ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT YOU ARE USING THE FUCKING TAPE RECORDER BECAUSE THEY JUST MAGICALLY DONT RECORD DIGITALLY AND YOU HAVE WAITED 39 CHAPTERS TO LET ME KNOW THAT

"ITS SOUNDPROOFED" I AM WHEEZING AND I SO SHOULDNT

turn around every now and then i get a little bit lonely

SASHA?

"joe spooky" i fw this guy

I JUST SAID I FUCK WITH HIM.

WHAT.

man.

man.

man.

"it's stupid" "yes. yes it is" jon he just saw his friend (YOUR FRIEND) die can you be nicer

jk i know he's also very stressed

MARTIN GETTING MAD? YES.

please jon. enlighten me on why you started working there. i've been wondering.

out of those 40 i just listened to, at least 80% of them ended with you being "nah why would this be real"

jonathan. i am so sorry i ever was mean to you.

actually i still think you should have been nicer to your co-workers.

but i am sorry about everything else.

this is what i wanted (not the tim part of course) but yes be vulnerable

slowburn and forced proximity the trope you are

couldnt the worms have killed fuckass elias

im so sorry because tim just died but im here smiling like an idiot at these two actually having a conversation

"we’re clearly doing a whole heart-to-heart thing" autistic ass man (just like me fr)

the fuck do you mean "even you must be aware that's not normal"

is martin from london

WAHT.

WHAT.

WHAT.

JON WE CAN'T GO FROM "I DON'T BELIEVE ANY STATEMENT BC IM A WEE LAD AND IM SCARED" TO "AH YEAH MY ROOMMATE MUST HAVE BEEN A GHOST"

HE IS SO OFFENDED LMAOOO

the va's from manchester

elias you're a horrible boss

THE FUCK YOU MEAN "WORSE THAN MARTIN"

MARTIN ISNT EVEN BAD

BURN THE BUILDING

SASHA DONT USE THAT

oh he used to smoke thats why he was so offended when tim asked

"im not a doctor" i say that very often

YOUR ONE REASON TO NOT KILL MARTIN AND JON IS THAT YOU DONT WANNA REHIRE JON?

"so....." sounded so silly

"the window is covered in WORMS" sounded so pinocchio trailer

okay now hug as you die

tim?

"bit light headed, the gas yk" tim you are so funny please dont go bald

DID HE JUST FLASH THEM

"can you walk?" "no" "THEN LET'S GO ^^"

HE WRITES POETRY AND HE RECORDS THEM ANALOGICALLY TO GIVE IT A LO-FI CHARM. JON, IF YOU DONT MARRY HIM I WILL AND IM A LESBIAN

but tbh that sounds a bit suspicious

why are we all giving out our reasons to join the institute

the fuck

DID SHE GET GRAHAM'ED?

DID SASHA GET GRAHAM'ED?

MARTIN HAS WHAT

well. that was everything but fun.

[sapphoshands]

"We broke every rule we established for the trials and the characters broke every rule given to them but its funny that viewers have different interpretations" not cute actually, Jac. Just bad writing that verges on outright racism by killing off the one Asian character and making the Black character over the top malevolent. Oh and putting the sole (white) man in narrative center. Should've known it was too good to be true.

it is of course extremely déclassé to go into the inbox of someone who is loving a thing and tell them why they should not be loving the thing, but you know, i'm so deep in this show, i'm just like *rubs hands* more time to think about my blorbos! so!

i will do you the courtesy of ignoring your bad faith phrasing to engage with your actual points - and of course, we also have to keep in mind that we're just over halfway through the season, so things may come back in ways we can't yet see. that said, i adore the idea that agatha's punishment in this was to be seen by yet another coven as an object of horror and fear, especially after a few moments where she was seen as a real person. i think that's going to play very strongly into the end of the season and i think it's a very smart bit of writing that plays with the expectations of the characters on screen and the audience watching the show. i got a little seduced by some of the alternate trial theories, ngl, but that is one of the joys of episodic television and i am having a blast watching more of this story unravel.

re racism, i as a white woman am certainly not going to tell anyone how they should receive a story like this. but i feel about alice's death much like i feel about the push for no more dead lesbians, which is that if we erase any sort of peril for any given segment of the population, we are no longer telling full stories about them. speaking for myself, i am a advocate for increased representation of all sorts on screen (and behind the camera), and simple math tells us that having more people of colour on screen means more people of colour will die on screen. so i always ask myself whether the death feels racially motivated, and in this case, to me, it doesn't. we've already lost a white woman to the road and it is important for the show to keep the stakes high. to me, alice's story was gorgeously tragic and a really wonderful parallel to agatha's - you really felt alice, having discovered the depth of her connection to her mother, feeling that lack for agatha. but naturally... you may have a different interpretation.

jen, on the other hand - oh my god, jen, i fucking loved her in this episode. and again you can read her as OTT, although in contrast to agatha i think she's really rather restrained! obviously tropes play differently for Black characters than white, but in the context of the show, in the context of the way the rest of the coven has been portrayed, she fit perfectly. i mean, in jen's trial, agatha tried to sacrifice mrs hart, tried to cheat, tried to literally break out, etc, because she was so determined that her quest was the only thing that mattered to her. i frankly don't blame jen for pulling an agatha and deciding to put herself first, and i don't think the show wants us to blame jen either. totally tracked to me. the retainer moment? exceptional. and alice and lilia were right there with her - it's not like she was the only one pushing this agenda, you know? certainly she wasn't singled out by skin colour.

billy, now... i am not gonna lie. i am a little worried that we're gonna turn this into the billy show. and i do mostly trust jac schaeffer and mary livanos and the whole setup of the fucking show that they won't, that this is about women and witchcraft and queerness and all of my favourite things. but it's a marvel property, right? and we always have to have this fucking fear. but this interview, again, actually made me feel a lot better about that:

obviously this sounds like it was really early in the room and things change throughout the course of development, but it is really reassuring to me that in the early stages of breaking agatha's story, billy... wasn't billy. he was, you know, a sexy lamp. someone else could've done his job. so his innate billyness didn't matter. to me, that suggests that the established arc remains agatha's and billy's just there to prop it up. i'm sure that since he became billy in the writing process, he became more important and elements of his story became part of the narrative and so on, but i expect it was a series of discussions on how to fit him into the story rather than how to rewrite the story to suit him.

i'm just as biased in my defence as you are in your annoyance, so you're welcome to dismiss all of this and grump on with your grumpy self. but i think this is a smart, interesting, nuanced show that hasn't spilled all its secrets yet. and i cannot wait for more. is it wednesday yet?

[spinchip]

May I ask ALL of the ask meme questions about Never the Dark 👉👈 I WANT TO KNOW

[ask meme]

i'll do all the ones i havent already answered! Thank you! and putting it under the readmore cuz it'll get long

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

cuteness agression towards zane. love him so much i have to put him through the horrors. No to be serious I just really enjoy writing things that cover darker topics, so drug use, alcoholism, manipulation, etc. is all interesting to write for me, so i favor that type of plot. the main idea came from thinking about what might have happened if Wu never told the other about Zane getting sent to the never realm, and just quietly went there alone to save him. Wu doesn't fight the emperor, he doesn't even try. he tries to bring zane back but he mostly dodges his blows until he's certain that nothing he says will remind him who he is. and then i thought- what would Wu do, and what would be the fallout? and the fic was bornnn

2: What scene did you first put down?

the very first scene. that feels surprising to me- i usually get hung up on scenes happening way later down the line, but i had such a clear and specific idea for how i wanted the prologe to go that it was almost easy.

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

i already did this but i'll do it again.

“Oof-” She stumbles back, “Sorry- what happened? Why are we stopping?” “I apologize.” Birdy says, emotionally flat where he’s standing in front of a large purple tree, “I was simply making sure we were on the right track.” When he starts moving again, he takes a wide step over something. As the others begin to move, Nya sees that the thing Birdy had stopped at and stepped over was a oblong dark spot on the grass. She’d seen a few of them before, scattered around the forest. She steps over it too but doesn’t ask about it. Birdy's voice had taken on that tone that comes when he’s not feeling like himself. She blinks, surprised at herself for knowing that.

this is part of the scene where Birdy is leading the others through the acid forest. I think you all should know that spot? blood on the weird grass here leave lingering stains. this clearing? the same as the one birdy shared with farley. it's why zane doesn't want to stop here and why he acts so jumpy

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

crying screaming throwing up

“It was wrong of me to bring up your friend.” Birdy says before stepping any closer, “I reacted so strongly because I was afraid for you, Kai. Those pills are designed for control. Samira supplies the people of this realm and then twists their addiction against them.” “I don’t need your worry.” Kai says, but it’s lost some of the bite it had before. Hesitantly, Birdy approaches Kai. Slowly, with enough time for Kai to draw away, and with more than a bit of caution to stay out of easy access of another swing, Birdy cups Kai’s injured palm. He takes the bandages next, moving to wrap his hand, “There is not a switch I can flip to turn it off.” Birdy says wryly, carefully winding the gauze around Kai’s hand, “I am sorry for what I said.” Kai just stares at him. “...You may not trust me, but I trust you.” He continues, finishing up dressing his knuckles, “I believe you would have made the correct choice.”

5: What part was hardest to write?

the zane POV chapters actually. isnt that funny? theres just so SO much information that recontextualizes a lot of previous events, and trying to keep track of everything was really hard. ewspecially when past me would add stuff without thinking of the ramifications. like FUCKK i wrote a throwaway line about x in chapter 5 now i have to integrate that into this chapter. damnit.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

I don't know

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

nope! well there may be a little projection in some aspects, but what is writing if not sorta-therapy through the blorbos?

12: What do you like least about this fic?

that i didn't write it all down and edit before posting. Looking back through chapters i'm catching inconsistencies a lot that coul dhave been avoided if i drafted, then edited and fixed, then posted!

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

i'll make a separate post for this one heehoo

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

don't take candy from strangers.

15: What did you learn from writing this fic

that I can write a book. I used to be so convinced that my attention span wouldn't allow for long form writing like this but i've proved myself wrong. and i'm grateful for that.

[hero-ar]

Highlights of Ep 8 of Murder drone to me

The teachers nonchalantness to whole thing is so real. Especially the reaction the little slap.

I found the fact they was no sound during the space seens so cool. Excellent usage of that too.

"Stop :)"

Nuzi canon yay

Lizzy casually text V while she is in the middle of the fight is so funny

Why is the sentinel velociraptor beefing with Lizzy? (Still funny)

Cyn. Is so silly. And also so very terrifying (let me in, let me in, letmein, letmein, letmeinletmein)

Hands! That is so cool

I was at the edge of my metaphorical seats when V crashed through

I sorta wish all the cores look slightly different from one another.

Go- fu- da- it

Khan little moment where he saves N with the door, I adore it

"Wierdly hot robots" immediately made me think of NuziV, I still head canon it

They is something so funny about Cyn/the Solver saying "Kay" so casually after Uzi's speech about being an absolute nerd

She is not at all concerned and only slightly amused, and it for some reason is so funny

And then [amazing battle] also nightcore

Cyn was so cool through out all of it, she is so unserious.

V's absolute disgust with Nuzi is so real, also her disgust when Uzi fistbump her after the secret handshake is so funny

My brother screaming "Eat it, Eat it" into screen only made the moment funnier

Uzi standing like Cyn and swatting the gun away made me chuckle a bit, also her eyes look so cool✨️✨️✨️

(😧 . 😧)

WOMEN THATS YOUR HUSBAND

"Broken OC"

More ammo for my NuziV headcanon.

Doll.. a moment of silence for her

.

.

.

I know it says Solver in the caption, but that is definitely Cyn, Cyn was the one with the bow obsession.

Anyhow.

Khan and Nori. Just that

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

Overall, I really liked this episode, the animation was so COOL, I liked the story, and it made me feel some genuine horror sometimes. Generally positive feeling about the ending. Only truly negative feeling being how some questions feels unanswered, but Cyn's silliness somehow made up for it?

No actually criticism from, I don't think I know how to criticise anyway, not the point, I have no problems with the finale, 9/10 series would watch again

If you read through all of this thanks, and feel free to add your favourite moments.

[chaosmagetwin]

Hello! My name is Halie (Pronounced Hay Lee), my pronons are She / It, I'm 31 years old, I'm pansexual, but very demi with it, and this post is about who I am! While I'm here, if you're a terf, go away <3 If you're a minor you're on thin ice. Just know not everything I post is appropriate for you.

Feel free to flirt with me if you like, but don't expect much! I'm a chronic fumblr and let's be honest, I seize up like a doe in headlights if people are flirty.

I am very much a writer type (My works are below the cut!), and most of my interests and skills relate to that.

That said, feel free to send prompts of any kind into my box, especially for stories of some kind. The weirder and more genderfucky, the better. Asking for some smut is also fine <3

Owner is @thewhorehome2 Love you Daddy <3

These're my gender graphs. I would love to consolidate them all into one graph, but IDK what program that would be or what that would even begin to look like considering how many variables there are, so, ya know, I did my best. These are not gender graphs that are a "one size fits all", they are mine. If you feel like associating with them feel free, but if you want to know why [Insert gender thing for you] isn't on here, it's because I have no opinion on it, don't know it exists, or don't think it applies to me! I associate with demons a lot (as the graph says) but I recently discovered that the type of demon I am is the Acedia Demon, or Noonday Demon. Aka, the demon of depression. Basically, I murdered the host of this body and replaced him. Now I’m making it my own body. I strongly feel like I’m not the original host, but I have access to those memories.

Now for a little bit more about me. CW: my BDSM test, A master list to my different writing projects, some selfies (SFW only), and maybe a few other things.

This post is subject to change and be edited! I won't take out any works, but I might change the links if they get updated to AO3! Just keep in mind, anything not on AO3 is some serious Behind The Curtains stuff, and a lot of older work that I won't be picking back up. Be careful, you're looking at my soul.

It's funny, a year ago that "Dominant" was at 7%, and switch was sub 20%. Sadist was also at a sub 20%, and voyeur was... sub 40% I think? I've gone through some things, most of which is from one off dates. I want to be clear, though, I'm not a dom! I'm not a top! These things have not changed. My understanding of them has grown a little bit, and my switchiness is debatable. It takes *very* rare moods and people to activate it, and I will tell you now, you being more of a bottom isn't it.

Now, for the Master list! If you're from The Old Times (there's like.... 4 of you, idk if you're even real, but w/e.) you MIGHT recognize this. It's been 8 million shwillion years, and I've decided to update. Don't go thinking that this means this blog is going to go and get serious though.

First up, the major projects!

Layla is a transgirl space scavenger mechanic, an anarchist from Mars where Hypercorps run everything, and she's just hit a minor jackpot; an empty cargo ship filled with material that can not only earn her a lot of credits, but also reputation. There's just one problem; there's no pilot, there's no destination, and there's nothing to indicate what really happened.

Set in Eclipse Phase (A Transhumanist Sci-fi TTRPG), Hive's Story is a horror, about the scariest parts of being early in transition; not knowing who you are, or who you'll become, and how people abandon you. It's still a work in progress, naturally.

A necromancer witch kills a mech pilot and steals their mech, before raising them to Pilot it for her, since she does not know how to do so. The two of them attempt to save the Witch's girlfriend, A Mech Artificer, who is going to be executed by the Empire for the Witch's crimes of necromancy. The POV character is The Pilot, who has lost most of it's memories, and is completely subservient to The Witch, but has enough personality to wish it weren't.

Be sure to read the content warnings; they're going to be pretty important.

Next up, some minor projects! Some have been dropped, some are still being worked on.

Charm used to be human... before she died, anyways. She's wound up in another world, and she feels different, but it's difficult to say how exactly! She doesn't remember NOT being a Hellsworn, even in her old life, but there weren't exactly Hellsworn there. She's lost, confused, and worse, she seems to be hated by anyone who isn't a hellsworn as well, and now she's being forced into the slums outside the city! Slums that are roiling with deceit, and love, and a fomenting rebellion that major players in the slums are trying to prevent. But she's not the only one who's been isekai'd; John's still trying to run the rat race; he figures he can start small, just be a mason, try to live a quiet life. He didn't think he was interested in a loud life... but something is wrong. He was doing that in his last life... and died for it! He's alone, surrounded by people who tolerate and use him, but he doesn't know what to think anymore.

Hellsworn Charm is a story about a girl on an upwards trajectory from the bottom and finding a ceiling of oppression, and about a man who is on a downwards trajectory from... well, not the top. Both struggle with their lack of purpose, but where one gets a support network, the other does not, and the two's trajectories are on a collision path. The story is more world-building than plot, and once i realized I didn't really have one, it sputtered out. I won't be moving it to AO3, though. I'm not too proud of this particular work.

This post goes into what what it is, as well as explains where it's from ^.^

WHEW. The OG. The one that... almost started it all. There were a few versions of AOM before this, but goddamn, this is the one I put the effort into. It's got some notes in it from when I was trying to rework it, which I still might do, but this version is better than the newer one, even still.

I still want to work on this one, tbh. It's a story about an apocalypse of magic (AOM), with the main character, Rhea, waking up in a hospital, having survived a magical plague in 2020 (I swear, I wrote this in 2012 or something, cut me some slack) that turned her into a Kitsune, and her brother into a Giant. At first, it's all about survival. Later, it's about realizing the depravity of humanity.

The other OG. Lesbians witches who hate each other, and also have to deal with their country falling apart. One is the princess, the other a rebellious peasant. I used prompts to get started on each part.

Honestly, don't know that I'll ever pick this one up again. I like their dynamic, but the world just wasn't it, I think. I've tried reworking it, like, 4 different times.

My very first ever long story, and also my longest even now. Almost 90 pages! I got so far! And god, my pacing was terrible. Fun though. It's FILLED with my annotations.

Aisleigh is a very poor woman who just got invited to Chile to go to a very rich mans party. She gets experimented on midway, and it goes from "Poor girl being uplifted to high society" to "kind of super-hero origin story, except she's now a brilliant fox girl". Listen, young Halie was cooking, but she did NOT know what she was doing.

A super hero origin story, except in this one, the main character began to lose her emotions. Can't really talk much about this one, pretty sure I was writing it while feeling dysphoric and worried about the apathy that was consuming my life :)

A Light Touch of Cold Steel (6016 words) by ChaosMagius Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Warhammer 40.000: Darktide (Video Game) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Hadron Omega-7-7/Veteran Characters: Original Female Veteran, Original Female Psyker, Hadron Omega-7-7, Original Nonbinary Fanatic, Original Ogryn Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Blood and Injury, Gore, Nurgle Plague, WH40K Inquisition BS, Robot/Human Relationships, Trans Female Character, Planet Cadia (Warhammer 40.000), Adeptus Mechanicus (Warhammer 40.000), Masturbation Summary: A team of four varlets attempt a dangerous mission of assassination of a plague cultist officer of nurgle. Things go wrong, and Ashley, our Veteran and POV character, takes a little extra heat for it from Hadron.

A small hit of smut at the end of some violence :)

That's pretty much all of what I'm willing to share from my projects these days, but I've got a few more I'm still working on. I may add more to this over time. As of September 2024, these projects are a Mecha story, a post apocalypse mage who is so lonely she's disassociating, and whatever else happens to catch my attention.

Anyways, here's me

Thanks for reading!

[fangirl-1st-class]

Something very personal I'd like to share. Turns out, inside my Crisis Core box survived a receipt from when I got the game with the date 4th of May, 2014. Which - I'm totally claiming for Zaven anniversary. The foreign currency you can see on it is polish złoty.

Final Fantasy 7 wasn't exactly super popular in Poland at the time, and that rang especially true in the countryside that I used to live in. My parents were vehemently anti-tech and anti-digital entertainment, so the fact I was able to get my hands on it at all (online) bordered a miracle. But I did. And this is an important beat in the story of my battle for independence in a very controlling household.

Few years prior to this purchase, I learned how to emulate FF7 on PC and played through it fully - despite barely being able to string together a sentence in English at the time. I played the game with a dictionary/google translate in hand because the polish translation available was done for a little bit of the Midgar starting area. It was my first tumble into a foreign media, though I vividly remember stumbling into Advent Children a little bit earlier - it aired on some of the TV channels and I watched the snippets of it with awe. Not understanding much, but the unknown seemed to only lure me in, instead of dissuading me.

The fact that it did is the reason why I'm here in the first place, speaking in a completely foreign language. Which I why I can't overstate enough how big of a help it was in introducing me, a very sheltered and lonely person, to an entirely new whole wide world.

As you can imagine, Raven dates all the way back to this time period. It's mind boggling to think, my girl is 11 at least, though her first iteration was coined shortly after that AC exposition.

I revived her after all this time partially to honour my past self, who's been through a lot. Partially to save myself, because a depression episode I'm going through tanked my mental capacity in a way that is a pure horror. It always has been so, that when I needed them the most, Zack and Raven were there for me, though all I initially did was just making them suffer with no payback haha. Remember when making daughter of X OCs and OC x Canon was peak cringe and god FORBID you dared interfere in a canonically established ship (that Zerith was and is widely considered)? I was there with the torch and pitchfork wielding crowd, never letting Raven shine as Zack's potential partner let alone entertain the notion she could be related with Angeal for real.

It's funny how it circled all the way from something that was ultimately a boast of freedom into a delicacy to be enjoyed only under self-imposed restrictions. I like to think that my careful and loving rewrite of Raven constitutes that I've come long way in accepting myself as a person, who likes things the way she likes and not how is expected of her.

Time puts many things into perspective. I'm happy Raven weathered the test of time stronger, better and more beautiful than she's ever been. As my therapist said - I managed to protect all that was dear to me throughout these dark and lonely times. That we survived. For someone who never thought she'd be seeing her 20s, let alone anything past that it is... A strange reveal. But a welcome one. She survived, and so did I.

I guess what this babbling session is trying to achieve is to say that you should nourish your inner child, or anything in fact that people might find undesirable or hard to understand, but what remains a core of your being. I'm sure there's someone out there who also had survived and protected all they held dear. The little things. I think mayhaps it might be a good thing to find a kindred soul, is all.

I don't know where all of this came from, I've just been felling so many emotions about my link to Final Fantasy 7 thanks to my therapy. Some of them I wasn't able to name for years and years. I might delete this, I might not. This whole blog had been turned into a some sort of homage to Raven and my past left silenced? Buried? Maybe it'll be good to leave a bit of upturned earth here as well. I just. Idk hahah. God I've been on this insanity for years and counting. Here's to another decade.

[chemicallywrit]

Well well well, look who's having a real day off for the first time in six thousand years! I'm gonna write because that's what my soul needs! It's time for Audio Drama Sunday! Here's some shows I enjoyed this week...

♟️ @camlannpod first of all. I called it. Second of all. How DARE you. The discussions about names and power in this episode were fascinating and...I don't know, I love a hero who's devastatingly normal. Gwen/Shujun can make anything happen with her words, is the damsel in distress, but she's just normal. Perry is normal, Morgan is normal, and Dai might not be normal by neurotypical measures, but he's just some guy. Except that he's really not. And the group of them can either embrace it or suffer.

🧃There is never a week when @thesiltverses doesn't go all the way off, and this one went ALL the way off. We have to talk about Shrue having a whole breakdown and then moving forward anyway. Felix, Ray, and Daisy were amazing, but I also have to give all the flowers to Rhys Lawton, who I met recently and was an utterly terrible villain in this episode. Corporate horror. Who knew? (Anyone who works in corporate knew.)

🐗 The season finale of @victoriocity was funny and amazing and incredibly well done as always, but the stand-out moments are the moments of friendship between Clara and Fleet. I just. I love them your honor. They are best friends. Do not separate them. It's really good to see Fleet cracking open a little bit. Just a little. He's still Fleet, after all.

🍦I listened to the new Among the Stars and Bones on the way home from work and it was absolutely chilling. My word. The number of times I screamed. Oliver Smith was incredibly scary even in the midst of the horror, Jordan Cobb is always a treat, and my word, the crowd of Nabonidas crew members...Hey, Chris Magilton, writer of Among the Stars and Bones, what the hap is heckening???

1️⃣3️⃣ I've started listening to Thirteen! I love a horror anthology, but especially one with a central theme. So far most of the stories present you with a protagonist who is missing closure, and a creature who offers it, for a price. Thirteen is about grief. The stories are rhythmic and spooky, and at one point alone in my house I actually really scared myself listening. Check out Thirteen, it's a treat.

⛽️ In other shows I've started listening to, @desertskiespodcast is gorgeous and lovely and...the only word I can think of is effervescent. It's like a cold soda on a road trip. It's maybe just what I needed. My favorite part is definitely the cold opens, especially the one about Cash laughing. Jared Carter has incredible comedic timing.

In Inn Between news, we just posted 5.8: The Blood, which might be my favorite episode of the season, depending on how the next one turns out. In The Dead news, this next story is a HUMDINGER. Did you cry at Giancarlo in the last story? GOOD, now it's time to run for your life through London. Y'all are gonna love this.

Catch y'all next week or whenever I have time to write again! If you like what all this is, maybe drop me a tip?

[innytoes]

"My wife can stab me a little bit I don't care."

okay i need this but i don't know who from...... 😩

oh maybe some jubobby?!

Alfred The Cat verse. Set after the Haunted House Fic.

"You know, it's weird that someone who sees ghosts hates Halloween this much," Leo said, poking his head out of a kitchen cabinet next to the one she was rummaging through. She'd been cursing to herself about Reggie's over-abundance of autumnal mugs, trying to find one that wasn't shaped like a pumpkin or a ghost or what have you.

"Gah!" she exclaimed, nearly dropping Pumpkin Mug Number Four. At least the ghost had the decency to look kind of sheepish. "I get enough jump scares in my life, thank you."

Ever since Sunset Curve made it big and bought the creepy haunted murder-house they'd been renting, things had changed a little. Julie had moved in, officially.

Sunset Curve won a Grammy, on a song that Luke and Julie wrote together. Bobby proposed. They had the wedding in the garden, giving Tía an explanation about wanting to put down roots and make memories in their forever home, because 'our ghost friend is tied to the place he died and else he can't come' wouldn't fly.

They'd done some renovating, making sure to leave Leo's unmarked grave undisturbed. He'd been very adamant he was fine with them just pouring a slab of concrete over his remains to install a catio for Alfred. There was nobody to visit his grave anyway. That was why he'd been such easy pickings for the serial killer who used to live here.

Gertrude, the ghost of the woman who owned the house in the fifties, had passed on to the Other Side after passing on her famous scones recipe to her favourite 'adopted grandson', Reggie.

Which led to today.

With the renovations done, apparently her boys had decided this was the year they were going to win Best Halloween House In The Neighbourhood. Which wasn't even a real thing. There was no contest. There was no prize. But Reggie had insisted it was a real thing, and it was measured in how spooky your decorations were, how awesome your candy, and how happy you made the kids.

Obviously Julie didn't have the heart to argue with 'don't you want to make the kids happy, Julie?' Not to mention the puppy eyes of four musicians and a ghost.

So she said yes to the giant skeleton, and yes to the millions of decorative gourds, and yes to the fog machine and the 'spooky lights' and the creepy animatronic witch. She agreed to getting The Best Full Sized Candy Bars Ever for handing out, and hiding them from Luke. She even indulged the boys in their horror movie marathons, and Bobby stoically did not wince when she grabbed his arm so hard he had bruises the next day.

It was just that the last horror movie stuck with her. Especially today, what with it being a very stereotypical Dark and Stormy Night. Especially, especially because the guys had left the following morning for a series of concerts in New York, leaving her alone in a big, empty house with just an elderly cat and a ghost.

"We'll be back before Halloween," Bobby had promised. They video called every day, usually after the show, and he wisely never said anything about the amount of lights she had on.

"Come on, Halloween is fun! It's about dressing up in silly costumes and running around with your friends and getting free candy from strangers," Leo pointed out. "Which is honestly a terrible thing to teach children, now that I say it out loud."

"You just like it because you get to scare people who want to 'get a look at the murder house'," Julie said. And okay, it was pretty funny to see Leo scare the daylights out of troublesome tweens daring each other to touch the door.

"That too." Leo beamed. For a while, that had been the only contact he had with the living, until some 'entrepreneur' had bought the nearly derelict building, slapped some landlord beige on everything, and rented it out to some broke musicians.

"I like the cute parts of Halloween," Julie defended herself. "The candy and the pumpkin spice everything and little kids dressed up in costumes. I could just do without the horror stuff."

All of a sudden, all the lights in the house turned off.

"That isn't funny," she snapped at Leo.

"It wasn't me!" Leo said, raising his hands up in self defence. "It must be the storm."

Great. Just great. "Can you use your ghost powers to turn the lights back on?" she asked, hopeful.

"No?" Leo asked, confused. "Why would you think I could do that?"

"You can turn the TV on and off."

"I turn the TV on and off with the remote," Leo said, amused. "I think you need to... flip the breaker switch. Or something."

"Where even is the breaker switch?" Julie asked, and Leo unhelpfully shrugged. "Okay, I'm going to find some candles or something, so I don't stub my toe or anything trying to find it."

"Skill issue," Leo muttered, phasing through the table. "I'll check the laundry room."

The only candles she was able to find were Bobby's tea lights. They would have to do. She plopped one in a wine glass, holding it up by the stem as a make-shift torch. Leo came back to report the laundry room was a bust.

"Maybe it's in the hallway closet," Julie said, but Leo didn't seem to be listening anymore.

"Did you hear that?" he whispered, even though he was a ghost and nobody else could hear him.

"What?" Julie whispered back.

"I thought I heard someone."

"If this is a joke..." Julie started, but Leo shook his head, curls bouncing. He looked genuinely scared. She put her wineglass-light on the countertop.

"It's not! I heard something."

"Well, go look!" Julie hissed at him. He was a ghost, it's not like anyone could see him, or hear him. If someone had broken into their home...

"You go look!"

"You're a-"

"Hey, why's it so dark in here?" a voice asked, and Julie shrieked, grabbing the nearest utensil and thrusting it at the burglar.

Okay, so maybe when Luke, Reggie, and Alex called Bobby to see how surprising Julie turned out, and he picked up from the ER with a fork stuck in shoulder, they laughed harder than they should. Julie felt really, really bad. He'd been so worried about her, knowing she was creeped out being home alone.

Bobby, being Bobby, had just shrugged his non-forked shoulder. "My wife can stab me a little bit," he'd said. "I don't care."

And that was one of the many reasons why she'd married him.

[electronickingdomfox]

"Bloodthirst" review

It's Resident Evil, but the zombies are vampires!!

Novel from 1987, by J. M. Dillard. Kind of a retread of her previous novel ("Demons"), but substituting demonic possesion with vampires. Of course, there's nothing supernatural going on, but a scientific explanation behind everything. I found it less scary than the previous entry, though it's in the same spirit of horror story, this time with a political background as well.

The initial setting is intriguing, even though it's fairly obvious what's going on and who are the villains, from the earliest chapters. The ending is also exciting, and reminded me of an actual TOS episode. The problem is the rest of the novel, and by that I mean like 90%. I had the impression of reading chapter after chapter of barely anything but filler. Kirk does little more than talking through the terminal with this or that. McCoy does little more than telling Kirk "they're close to find a vaccine" and fretting over Chapel's sickness. Spock does... nothing, really. The fact that the story was extended artificially to a breaking point is obvious by the fact it takes the crew SEVERAL DAYS to find an intruder in the ship (an intruder who wears a red cape, is sick and insane, and screams in pain every time light touches him). This with a crew of more than 400 persons, and with the full security team activated at all times (what the hell!?).

To add more padding to it, there are lengthy scenes focused on a group of redshirts. Now I don't have a problem with original characters having their spotlight if they're interesting and play some role. But these guys just reflect about their High School dramas, and they don't have a distinct role compared to any other redshirt: that is, being attacked and suffer a lot. The other characters are a mixed bag. The most interesting is probably Adams, the "vampire", and the passages that follow his sinister deeds are the only ones that keep the plot moving, in that stale middle section. Kirk is serviceable. In particular his friendship with Admiral Quince felt like the real thing. And he gets to do some of his cunning negotiations at the end. McCoy on the other hand... Look, this author makes him funny on occassion, but in my opinion, she has a REALLY odd idea of the character. From the "dirty old man" trait, to his clumsiness and cowardice. The guy who would offer himself for torture in "The Empath" is here scared shitless at the prospect of it (well, he's scared of dark corridors too, so...). Fortunately, there's no Mary Sue on sight this time. Unfortunately, there's still the obligatory romance "out-of-left-field" for McCoy, that this author seems so fond of. This time in the shape of... Christine Chapel??? We're suppossed to believe that she's not just the closest person to McCoy (closer even than Kirk!), but that all this time, they've been repressing romantic feelings for each other. And that Chapel isn't really attracted to Spock, but only chose him because he'd never return her feelings... Yeah, weeell, how about... NO.

Other random weird bits: Nobody knows what a vampire is in the 23rd century (only Chekov has heard about this legend, that had survived for hundreds of years so far). And a crippled Enterprise can only manage to go at warp 9! (c'mon Scotty, I'm sure you can do better than this shitty, fast-as-fuck warp 9 speed...). Spoilers under the cut:

The Enterprise receives a distress signal from a scientific station at planet Tanis, but upon beaming down, they just find a deserted lab, two dead scientists missing most of their blood, and a single survivor: Dr. Jeffrey Adams. Adams looks gaunt and is obviously suffering some kind of disease that makes light painful for him. He's brought to sickbay, and needs continous blood transfusions to survive. But when Kirk interrogates him, suspecting the scientists were doing illegal research on biowarfare, Adams says they were just working on agricultural projects and that the other two commited suicide. Nonetheless, the evidence at the station points to Adams as the murderer, and it seems he had drunk the blood of the victims too. The fact that Admiral Rodrigo Mendez, head of weapons research, is awfully interested in destroying any trace of the virus, and quickly bringing Adams to trial, makes it all the more suspicious. However, the landing party is unable to recover any sample of a virus at the station, and records had been destroyed, so the Enterprise starts travelling to the nearest starbase.

After being informed of this, Adams accuses Mendez of being the mastermind behind the virus development, and begs Kirk to not surrender him to Mendez, since the admiral wants to kill him. Kirk is unwilling to believe at first that Mendez, or any other top brass at Starfleet, would be involved in such deadly project. Besides, upon learning that one of the dead researchers was Mendez's son, he dismisses the admiral's behavior as natural resentment. Nonetheless, Kirk contacts his friend, Admiral Quince Waverleigh, at Starfleet HQ, to see if he can unearth some dirty laundry among the top brass.

Meanwhile, Adams attempts an escape from his isolation chamber at sickbay, and injures Chapel, drinking some blood from her head wound. Adams doesn't go far under the light. But Chapel has contracted the disease, which is contagious upon contact, and slowly slips into a coma. In the end, McCoy realizes that Chapel has died, and disconnects life support. And there's a lot of drama about this, but since the reader can probably guess where this is leading to, and what the solution will be, the scene doesn't have all that much impact. Apart from this, Spock has recovered some info from the fragmentary records at the station, that tell about a Vulcan researcher who had also died at an earlier point. This suggests that there was, in fact, two versions of the virus: a first one that was deadly to Vulcans (and thus, Romulans too), and the current mutation (probably accidental) which is deadly to humans. This deepens Spock's suspicions about Mendez, since he had lost his wife in a Romulan attack.

Once in the starbase, Adams is brought to a detention cell, which he promptly escapes again, this time more successfully. First, he attacks a guard and steals her red cape, to better protect himself from the light, as well as a device that blocks tricorder readings. After this, Adams kidnaps Lisa (a redshirt on shore leave), and forces her to ask for a beam up directly to her quarters in the Enterprise, where he also attacks her and drinks her blood. And then comes a loooong period where everyone is searching frantically for Adams throughout the ship. And yeah, he can block tricorders, but it's not like he's invisible or anything... He goes as far as entering sickbay and stealing transfusion equipment to draw more blood! (his next victim being Stanger, another redshirt).

For his part, Admiral Quince starts noticing strange things going around him, ever since he started investigating: sudden personnel transfers, tampering with his terminal, etc. He sends Kirk a quick anonymous message, to warn him that things are looking ugly. Yet Kirk is unable to reach him afterwards, and later is notified of Quince's sudden death in an "accident". This is the last straw that convinces Kirk of Mendez's guilt, alongside a small clique of corrupt admirals. So he decides to lure him to Tanis and catch him red-handed there, with a bluff: he tells him that Adams has been captured and has spilled the beans about the R-virus (the incriminating Romulan strain), and that they have found the evidence at Tanis.

At sickbay, Ensign Stanger wakes up from the dead after having been infected. And even though he shows some early signs of "vampirism", his good side wins in the end, and he's able to protect his friend Lisa and capture Adams (at long last!). McCoy has also developed an effective vaccine, that he administers to the whole crew and Chapel, who's also waking up from the dead (but strangely enough, much slower than Stanger?). The modus operandi of the virus is thus revealed: at first, it sends the host into apparent death (actually, hybernation) while it consumes the bloodstream's heme; once the host is depleted of heme, he wakes up and starts craving blood and infecting others. (But I don't know, as a bioweapon, it doesn't seem so effective to me...).

In the final chapters, Spock and McCoy beam down to Tanis and confront Mendez, who demands the samples of the R-virus (which they actually don't have). But just then, a transporter beam captures them and they appear in a Romulan ship. As it turns out, Adams had contacted the Romulans, promising them the samples of both virus in exchange for his freedom. Kirk forces Adams to cooperate by refusing to give him the cure, until he tells them where's the R-virus, so Adams confesses: the original R-virus had been hidden all this time inside a locket that he wore around his neck. The Romulan commander threatens Kirk, saying that he'll kill Spock and McCoy if he doesn't surrender Adams. Yet Kirk tries to negotiate with him and buy time, now that he has the only sample in his hands, though the Romulan doesn't agree to destroy the sample. However, Spock, McCoy and Mendez had managed to escape from their cells in the meantime. And after a run through the enemy ship stunning Romulans (with McCoy closing his eyes every time he has to shoot, the poor devil), they manage to lower the shields and beam themselves to the Enterprise, which promptly warps away. In the transporter room, Mendez makes a last, desperate attempt to escape with Adams and the sample. But Spock tricks him into confessing everything, and then Kirk informs him that he's been monitored, and now Starfleet knows everything about his involvement in the illegal research. In the epilogue, Kirk reflects about his lost friend Quince. And there's a moving scene where he receives a posthumous gift, with a last message from his friend, telling him to not feel guilt about his death.

Spirk Meter: 0/10*. Kirk and Spock barely exchange a couple of lines throughout the novel.

There isn't a lot either in other departments. Spock and McCoy don't seem to like each other much, though McCoy asks Spock for company while disconnecting Chapel from life support. Though it's hard to read that as Spock/McCoy, when it's evident that McCoy's full concern is for Chapel in this book. Maybe, maaaaybe, one could read some McKirk in the final scene, when McCoy drinks with Kirk in his quarters and comforts him about Quince's death. But at this point, that's like begging for crumbs.

*A 10 in this scale is the most obvious spirk moments in TOS. Think of the back massage, "You make me believe in miracles", or "Amok Time" for example.

tagged: @bonez-artistry

[unnursvanablog]

Lawyer dramas are usually something that I shy away from (but not as much as doctor dramas) but with the right cast and story I am willing to give most things a try. I also got a little sick earlier this week and I had finished this weeks episodes of No Gain No Love and binged the remining episodes of the new season of The Rings of Powers so I had nothing to watch and therefor decided to just give The Judge of Hell a go.

And while I was itinually hoping for a more horror-esque sort of story, but this no The Guest. This is just a darker fantasy story with a demon as a protagonist - but what a protagonist she is! I find Park Shin Hye very charming and funny in this role. I genuinely chuckle at lot of her scenes. But then again I just tend to have a fondness for these sort of no nonsense, very tired of humans and their nonsense sort of female fantasy characters. It's a bit camp, and I enjoy it.

The fantasy elements in this show are sparse. Much sparser than I would like, at least in the first two episode and it felt very info dumpy at times. Lot of things explained through text on screen, things are explained to us quite rapidly at times instead of letting it slowly unravel through the story just to sort of laying the groundwork and setting the scenes so the story can be ushered to a start. It's annoying, but I get it and I can deal with it.

It feels very procedural, typical lawyer/judge sort of stuff (but the judge part is just sort of a setting, it's not really heavy on making sure it's accurate. This is a campy fantasy show and not really a very heavy drama where they fact check stuff) with like a certain case filling up the bulk of the episode, with some goals and personal moments of the charcaters sprinkled in there, and then it comes to a close and the story continues on. I do think the angle of her being more liniant towards criminal and then just straight up killing them and sending them to hell quite interesting and I do suspect that the murder of the real Kang Bit Na will slowly weave it's way into the story. She will probably finally get the justice for that death in the end, which landed her being stuck in Kang Bit Na's body when she acidentally got sent into that hell courtroom instead of her killer, and then possibly having to make up her mind if she wants to stay in that human body or not… for love.

The cop character, aka the male lead is fine. He is just sort of there for me if I am being honest but he seems to be a nice balance to the 'I can't believe I have to deal with this nonsense' sort of character that Kang Bit Na is. He is filled with longing to do the right thing and making sure his community is safe (there is maybe a waft of copaganga in there but that comes with these sort of shows) and uphold justice. Somewhat of a sunshine to her moon, and I do enjoy that sort of dynamic. I do like when the female character get's to be the more mean one, it must be said. But there is a slight edge to that male character. I had a hunch, and then in the end of episode two he confessed to having murdered three people and there it was. But, I am sure it's going to be more complex than that. And then she tried to kill him. that was WILD.

I kinda suspect that it the romance might be on the milder side for this one, but then the demon controlling Bit Na asked the dude to sort of fake date her (stop it drama, don't dangle my fav romance trope in front of me and then don't deliver) so what do I know. I know that a lot of people don't enjoy Park Shin Hye when it's very romance heavy and they don't find her to have great chemistry with her male leads (I have seen her do a good and a bad job at it) and they don't like the way she kisses her male costars (which I wish the kdrama community would give a bit of a rest, because the critiscism has been done to death, because maybe it's just the way that she is directed or has been directed since she was a teen) and while I can't say there is a sizzling chemistry between Bit Na and Da On… yet, I don't think the drama requires it.

Yes, she seems to be quite uncomfortable with heavy romance. I get it, it's a valid criticism. But the roles that a actress like her are often offered, especially once Shin Hye got into her young adult career were romance-focused, rom-com and youth-dramas and there aren't a whole lot of options for a strictly no-romance roles for women in kdramas, if you are playing the lead. But I do think Park Shin Hye is trying to find those roles for herself now (she does like to kick ass in a lot of her dramas, and do some action which I admire) so maybe she is aware that that is her weakness. And that's okay (sorry, I am a Park Shin Hye girly and I have been defending her from angry fangirls for a long time).

I must say that the two hours that took to watch the first two episodes flew by quite fast and I was quite entertained by it. I didn't start scrolling my phone and I was quite engaged by the whole thing. More so than I thought I would be. So I think I will be adding it to my tv show watching schedule for now on, at least. Just so I can watch Park Shin Hye being evil and murdering scumbags and looking very good while doing so. Whenever the music starts and we see her walking menacingly in slow motions as she is about to murder a man… that's when my cold dead heart skips a beat.