#so all I can think is that they both kinda discussed it - and carol came out of it really wanting a child
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Modern trek really poses the question, what in the hell were Carol Marcus and Jim Kirk thinking?
I know I covered it a bit in my other posts. But like....
This is the 2200s. Abortion is legal. Jim and Carol both had ample time to discover the pregnancy. They both knew beforehand that neither Jim or Carol would give up their own career for the other. Carol did not want to raise a son in Kirk's shadow, or one that would endanger himself like Jim would. So.... why????
I can only imagine Carol wanted to keep the baby, in spite of what she knew. And Jim's options would be what? Quit starfleet and stay with Carol? Which is kind of a none option, and I doubt one Carol raised because they both knew each other and loved each other even if they weren't completely compatible.
Then we come to Jim, who is now faced with the option of saying no to Carol keeping the baby (Which would be a valid option, because I'd imagine it would be as simple as taking a pill with no ill effects at that point) But Jim doesn't do that either. Whether he wants the baby for himself (in a existential kind of way) or for Carol, because she asked him, I don't know.
I do wonder if it keeps him up at night though. And whether sometimes he regrets to agreeing and not getting to see David.
#Where No Man Has Gone Before and Then Some#star trek#star trek tos#jim kirk#carol marcus#star trek the wrath of khan#strange new worlds#I am hurting myself#but yeah - just saying - abortion was well within both their rights#and probably super easy#so all I can think is that they both kinda discussed it - and carol came out of it really wanting a child
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“It’s a love story.” - Simon Evans
I’ve been putting off making my own observations about Staged3 because I’m still processing it. I will say I do agree with a lot of what IIW said although I think they overall liked it more than I did.
First I’ll say I’m very glad it’s finally over. I didn’t see a need for this series. Frankly, I don’t think there was need for Staged2, either, because lockdown was over and it looked liked an excuse to throw as many cameo appearances as possible at the audience and take the piss out of Sheen and Tennant. Fair enough. Staged1 was different and fresh and came along at just the right time. It was certainly a treat for those of us who were fans of the boys and gave us a peek (sort of) into their personal lives in a way we all could relate to during the pandemic even though most of us will never have the life of privilege and wealth they do.
Why make Staged3? In spite of the fact Covid is still with us and people are still dying from it the original conceit of Sheen and Tennant stuck idle in lockdown is long over and now it’s gotten to the point of a self-indulgent exercise. They’ve been busy either procreating or working so it’s not like they have nothing to do. I haven’t observed a real crying need for more Staged other than from the most obsessed fans so why do it? What message are they trying to send?
I did notice some things, though.
First, some background. You should be aware I’ve been a fan of both men for a long time. I first became aware of Michael in Wilde (Who is that fey young man?) and David as 10 in Doctor Who, and have watched them in other projects since as I’ve been able to. They both became two of my favorite actors so you can imagine my delight when I found out they would be working together in Good Omens. You can imagine my further delight once I actually saw them in GO and I fell in love hard for Aziraphale and Crowley as many have. And like so many have observed, there chemistry on screen and in real life is amazing and they have admitted many times in interviews becoming very close friends due to all of the time they spent on set while filming GO.
Which brings us to Staged3. This time around it’s still very meta and the conceit is that Michael is jealous any time David works without him (which is ridiculous because in real life as they work separately more often than not). The particular versions of themselves in this go-round hardly resemble the ones in the previous series of Staged. Michael is such an angry prick I actually feared for Anna and their kids while David was stuck in Japan and Georgia was just stage-managing everything since they were discussing filming Staged3 while actually filming Staged3. Are you confused yet? Then it somehow turned into a decision to do a radio version of A Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve (which I’d actually be down with) and it kinda lumbered on from there with guest appearances by Ty Tennant, Lily Sheen (cuz the more nepotism the better I guess) and I can’t be bothered to go on with more, just read IIW’s synopsis above.
To me the most interesting thing about Staged in all three series is how David and Michael are presented as a couple. As in when David says to Michael, “Georgia says we act like an old married couple.” “Well, you are.” “She means you and me!” Or when the interviewer asks, “Who is the big spoon?” and both say at the same time, “Me.” When the power goes out during the actual live performance (which is a complete disaster) Michael has finally has had enough and says something like “I think we should take a break from each other.” And there are more examples of this throughout that could be listed in an article of “Tropes for Writing Rom-Coms.” I mean, I’ve haven’t seen this much coupley stuff between two men since Will and Grace went off the air! What baffles me is why? Is it a joke? Their partners are complicit in this and don’t seem to care. (In fact in real life Georgia Tennant has referred to Michael as “David’s other wife”)
“The hell with both of you on every level of your navel-gazing abhorrence!” Naw, just kidding! I love you both to the moon and back. Just keep doin’ what you’re doin’!
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Note added in May, 2024: Goodness, I found this somewhat unfinished review from November 2022 languishing in my drafts and decided instead of deleting it might still be interesting to someone so I decided I’d rather post it than not. My apologies for the lateness!
Hi! Have you already watched Staged 3? How it was? I don't have britbox and do not know what to expect.
Hi, Anon!
"Saved by the Bell", I would sum up. I watched S3 and I'm glad I've waited for the end to write something. Because after the first two episodes I was really discouraged. Despite lasting only 20 minutes, Ep. 1 was painful to watch for me until the end, so it was extremely tedious and boring. The same heated soup, over and over again, made with recycled content. But then, from Ep. 3, something has changed fortunately. Let’s be clear: the core of the show remains the same, MS & DT constantly screaming angry and stressed each other until the very end, but at least you can see ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’, the purpose of this season: to give a worthy conclusion to this project. And they did it with irony, intelligence, making fun of themself, joking on the absurdity of this farce, mixing different genres, Big Brother/Quantum Leap/Russian Doll and – why not? – a bit of The Exorcist, adding guest stars and expanding the landscape of the camera view. This last point was one of the more interesting to me, because we could finally see a glimpse of their real daily life (plus the whole kitchen of MS, part of his garden and car, DT’s house, etc.).
The development of the plot follows the chapters of the Christmas Carol novel, but in an original way. They show you how an imaginary S3 started (the past), the undone final product (the present) and their effort to change the coming bad reviews (the future), while they’re becoming - step by step - more and more aware that this partnership has to come to an end, like all good things.
To me the funniest moments were the involuntary ones, the dry humour of certain short answers, the ridiculousness of some situations, not the scenes forced, predictable, written to fill the time or the pages, to entertain you at all costs. By this criterion, there were some characters I appreciated more and other less.
MS & DT were (obviously) perfect, generous, selfless, crazy, messy and professional at the same time, even you could read in their eyes that they were (for real) sick and tired to play these cartoonish roles ad infinitum. Saying that they wanted to do other things was not just a line, but the truth (like some others in this show).
The rest of the cast followed their same rules, exaggerating and amplifying some traits of their characters, although with different results I must say. GT was the leader of this group, she pushed the events, she basically directed the project to the final destination, she was very present in every scene (maybe too much IMHO, but she was one of the producers after all), even if not so nice like she thought to be. A bit overexposed, like Simon, whose story was not so interesting to tell. Lucy acted well, I liked her, she was spontaneous, funny and fresh, as well as Ty (inscrutable but surgical in his humour) or Lily (at last finally!) or Nina (goofy). Different results I said, and there comes AL: suitable in the role of chauffeur or props manager, not so much as actress. I think it’s because she is like the beige colour and you cannot make it suddendly neon, without creating something artificial. The result is that I found her character prissy and demanding, fake (I hope for her it was), a pretty mannequin to fill the space in the showcase.
The other guest stars: Jim Broadbent (ruthless) or Olivia Colman (sweet fairy), always on time, even with small parts. Simply a guarantee. Neil Gaiman: ok, just to do a bit of advertising for GO2 and to complete the parade of family & close friends.
So, in the end, my suggestion is to watch it, even if you’re a fan or not, at least because in this case, you can break the spell, close this door and open another one. Knock-knock…
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Travelin' Soldier (P.M)
Pairings: Pete Mitchelle x Reader, Platonic!Carole x Reader, Platonic!Iceman x Reader
Warnings: mentions of death, a bunch of fluff!
Word Count: 1.4K
Author's Note: This one was a of fun to write, I hope y'all enjoy!
Masterlist!
You sat with Carole, Pete, and Iceman around a small fire in the backyard of Carole's home, Bradley fast asleep in the bedroom upstairs. You were all discussing stories of Goose, it having been almost a year since his death.
You had gone inside to grab a drink a little while ago and caught a glimpse of Goose's old guitar, carefully grabbing it off its place on the wall you bring it outside, totally forgetting about your drink.
You strum it softly, tuning it as you go, the other three had quieted down once they heard you actually play chords.
"I didn't know you could actually play the guitar," Pete said astonished, Ice nodded his head in agreement.
All you gave in return was a soft smile, playing this guitar made you feel closer to your brother.
You began softly,
Two days past eighteen He was waiting for the bus in his army green Sat down in a booth in a cafe there Gave his order to a girl with a bow in her hair He's a little shy so she give him a smile So he said would you mind sittin' down for a while And talking to me, I'm feeling a little low She said I'm off in an hour and I know where we can go
Pete listened to you, and it must have been a mixed between the way you looked in the light of the fire and the way your voice sounded so sincere, like your goal was to tell this story.
Carole caught that longing look from Pete, one eerily similar to the one Nick shot her all those years ago, when he thought she wasn't looking.
You continue completely oblivious to what was going on around you.
So they went down and they sat on the pier He said I bet you got a boyfriend but I don't care I got no one to send a letter to Would you mind if I sent one back here to you
Pete felt a twinge of guilt when he heard those lines, he knew Goose had written to you just about every week through the academy, training, every single mission, and even top gun. He wrote to you more than he wrote to his own wife. You were his little sister, his best friend. You were the only thing besides Bradley that he had left of Goose.
I cried Never gonna hold the hand of another guy Too young for him they told her Waitin' for the love of a travelin' soldier Our love will never end Waitin' for the soldier to come back again Never more to be alone when the letter says A soldier's coming home
So the letters came from an army camp In California then Vietnam And he told her of his heart It might be love and all of the things he was so scared of He said when it's getting kinda rough over here I think of that day sittin' down at the pier And I close my eyes and see your pretty smile Don't worry but I won't be able to write for a while
You were blissfully unaware of the fact that everyone was either on the verge of tears or had tears streaming down their face. The fire was warm enough on you that the tears didn't even threaten to spill, You had gotten that faithful letter from Mav about the death of Nick, and while you have told him multiple times that Nick's wasn't at all his fault, he just wasn't hearing it.
I cried Never gonna hold the hand of another guy Too young for him they told her Waitin' for the love of a travelin' soldier Our love will never end Waitin' for the soldier to come back again Never more to be alone when the letter says A soldier's coming home
Carole let out a soft sob, she has missed her husband dearly since his passing, wondering what Bradley is gonna do later in life without his father. While she will never understand your pain of receiving a letter from all the way across the country, she did have a pain of her own, she never expected to open the door to Mav and an Admiral both with seldom expressions on their faces.
And when she picked you up from the airport a few days later it was nothing short of a tearful reunion.
One Friday night at a football game The Lord's Prayer said and the anthem sang A man said folks would you bow your head For the list of local Vietnam dead Crying all alone under the stands Was the piccolo player in the marching band And one name read and nobody really cared But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair
For the majority of this evening Iceman had remained quiet, though he was the first one to let a tear fall during the song, he still remained quiet, softly sipping on his beer every now and then. It was hard watching Goose's wife and child go on without him, with was even harder seeing his best friend and sister try to hide it and be strong for young Bradley.
Pete caught you sniffle a little during the interlude before going onto to finish the song.
I cried Never gonna hold the hand of another guy Too young for him they told her Waitin' for the love of a travelin' soldier Our love will never end Waitin' for the soldier to come back again Never more to be alone when the letter says A soldier's coming home
I cried Never gonna hold the hand of another guy Too young for him they told her Waitin' for the love of a travelin' soldier Our love will never end Waitin' for the soldier to come back again Never more to be alone when the letter says A soldier's coming home
You finished it softly, not really paying attention to those around you, not even realizing that young Bradley had woken up and come out of his room, following the noise of his aunt's voice.
You look up in enough time to meet the big green eyes of your four year old nephew. You smile before standing up and scooping him up in your arms, preparing to take him and your older brother's guitar into the house. Bidding everyone a goodnight you take the boy into his room and tuck him back into bed, you begin packing up Nick's suitcase before climbing into bed yourself.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You know Pete," Carole said as the two sat at the kitchen island, "She could really use you right now."
Pete nodded, before taking another swig of his beer.
"She's hurting right now," Pete warned, wanting to open his mouth but being cut off by the creak of the stairs, not wanting Bradley to hear them but surprised to see you standing there, in one of Goose's old tee's.
"Pete," you say softly, your eyes only half open, "Will you come lay with me?" And Pete be damed if he said no to you, right now, looking like that.
"Of course, is everything okay?" He asked eyeing you questionably, but also noticing Carole, who looked like he was gonna smack him if he didn't go with you right now.
"Yeah," you say softly not meeting either of their eyes. "I had a bad a dream."
Pete's expression immediately softened, rising from his stool be walked over to you, placing one of his hands on the small of your back, and with a quick goodnight to Carole he lead you back upstairs. In the guest room he can see the remanence of both you and Goose, taking you to your side of the bed and half tucking you in Pete the crawls into bed next to you pulling you close.
"Thank you Pete," you say, exhaustedly, he stopped you before you could continue, singing that little chorus that had rung through you earlier.
I cried Never gonna hold the hand of another guy Too young for him they told her Waitin' for the love of a travelin' soldier Our love will never end Waitin' for the soldier to come back again Never more to be alone when the letter says A soldier's coming home
You finally after holding back all night, let a tear fall, and he wiped it away with his thumb. "Go to sleep, you need it." You gave a soft nod before allowing yourself to finally drift off into a rather peaceful sleep, listening to the soft humming of none other the Pete Mitchell.
Here is the song if you wanna listen to it!
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#top gun#top gun: maverick#tg:m#top gun maverick#maverick#maverick top gun#cpt. pete mitchell#cpt. pete maverick mitchell#pete maverick mitchell#rooster#pete mitchell imagine#pete mitchell x y/n#pete mitchell fanfiction
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Package Deal
Barry’s arrival is a quiet affair; he doesn’t announce his presence with a slamming door like Dinah, or by immediately shouting at Hal for not putting his boots away like Oliver; he just walks in, silently, no helmet or leather to hide the exhaustion in his body, and sits, gingerly, onto Hal’s space couch.
Hal has no idea how he always manages to find him; he could be on the other side of the frickin Galaxy, light years upon light years away, and yet still Barry will find him. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think Barry had some kind of tracker placed on him - one that even his ring can’t find. (It drives Oliver slightly insane that he can’t physically track Hal when he’s on earth. Oliver is over-protective to the ninth degree and Hal has never appreciated being smothered. He’s a lot less polite about it with Bruce.)
He sits down beside him, gently knocking their shoulders together, and Barry’s smile is tiny but true. “Hey,” he says, “there a reason you look so tired, or is it just normal hero bullshit?”
Barry sighs, slumps against him. Hal accepts his weight with ease. “Hero bullshit,” Barry says quietly. “It’s always hero bullshit lately.”
Yeah. Isn’t it just. Hal knows he’s lucky, because he doesn’t have many obligations that keep him stuck in one place for long. There’s his piloting job, he supposes, but everyone there knows he’s a part-timer, and he mostly comes around to show-off anyways. Carol’s stopped chewing him out for showing up unannounced, just shoves him in the direction of the lockers and barks at him not to ruin the newer planes.
Barry though...well. It’s a miracle he hasn’t worked himself to death yet. Probably because everyone keeps bullying him into taking all those vacation days. Helps that he’s never been able to say ‘no’ when faced with Wally’s puppy-dog pouting. Iris is a pretty cruel mistress for teaching him how to do that.
He puts an arm around Barry’s shoulders and slumps them both against the back of the couch, tucking Barry’s head into the crook of his neck. He feels the flutter of Barry’s eyelashes against his skin and simply waits him out. He’ll either fall asleep or talk, and Hal will stay with him either way.
“I visited Danica the other day.”
Hal wracks his brain for a moment, trying to remember which one that is. Barry’s been to so many places it’s hard to keep track of them all. “The asthmatic girl?”
“That’s a terrible way to remember her, but yeah.” There’s no judgment in his tone, just an edge of amusement. Hal smiles into his hair.
“How’s she doing?”
“She...seems okay.”
“...’seems’?”
Barry shrugs. “There’s something weighing on her but...I didn’t know how to get her to talk about it.”
Hal snorts. “Sorry man, but if you came here looking for advice on how to get someone to open up to you -”
“ - I would’ve gone to Clark or Lois for that, dumbass. That’s not why I’m here.”
“Good,” says Hal. “Because it would’ve been really awkward otherwise.”
Barry elbows his side, catching a bruise that hasn’t quite healed yet, the bastard, and Hal winces. He thinks his ring laughs at him, but he can’t be sure. It’s hard to tell with the way Barry’s playing with it. Stimming, almost. Gathering his thoughts, most definitely. “When I - travel. To all of those - universes, realities, dimensions, whatever you wanna call them, I’ve started noticing something.”
“Hm?”
There’s a sigh and then Barry lifts Hal’s hand to brush his lips across the knuckles. Hal’s breath stutters, his heart tap dancing in his chest. “Some things never change. No matter where I go, Diana is always a force of nature, Oliver never has to worry about money, Bruce adopts a thousand fucking kids, Shayera dates women. That kinda stuff.”
He has a feeling he knows where this is going. He asks anyway, gentle as he can, “and you? Is there anything that never changes about you?”
“Yeah,” says Barry, voice thick.
His first thought is Miss Nora. Her death, more specifically, and all the different Barry’s who’ve seen it. But no, he knows that’s not it. There’s a universe where she’s the Flash instead. Perhaps it’s selfish, but he doesn’t like thinking about that universe very much. He never thinks too hard about the ones where Barry died.
Barry looks up at him, then, eyes lidded with - something soft. Something heavy. Something that chokes the breath from his lungs. “You,” he says finally. “In every universe, every reality, the one thing that never changes about me is - it’s you. You’re always there, connected to me in some way, and we - we’re never enemies, is the thing.” He smiles, the one that Hal secretly swoons over, the one that shows a little more teeth than strictly necessary. A real smile. “It’s as if Fate itself has decided that we can’t be separated or something.”
Hal laughs, breathless and giddy. “Always said we were a package deal.”
“Yeah,” Barry murmurs, closing the distance between them. Hal meets him halfway. Always, always meets him halfway. “Guess you win the lottery.”
He wants to say that he’s won a lot more than just the lottery - he’s won the stars themselves. The moon and the sun and all the late-night discussions about shitty sci-fi movies. But Barry’s got static on his tongue, and Hal’s a little too preoccupied to remember what he was going to say.
But that’s okay. He’s pretty sure Barry gets the gist anyway.
#my writing#halbarry#I DONT KNOW WHERE THIS CAME FROM BUT HERE'S SOME FLUFF#damn I really missed writing for DC as it turns out#wild how that works
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How Scars MIGHT Relate to Leah and Daryl
Okay Everyone, this is a post that I wrote like 6-7 months ago. It was after we learned about Leah and 10x18, but before the episode actually aired. It was really just conjecture on my part. Me, trying to connect patterns and similarities I was seeing.
Why didn’t I post it back then? Because we decided we thought Leah was a hallucination, and at that point, I thought this less likely to pan out.
What I’ll say now is that, if she IS real, this may still be true. And if she isn’t, this pattern may hold but it might be about some other character, other than her.
Even if it turns out to be completely untrue, just see this as patterns I’m seeing that may come into play in the future. And I wanted to post this today, before ep 1 airs and ep 2 shows up on AMC+.
Also, someone sent me this yesterday:
Norman saying there’s some double agent stuff going on DOES suggest she might be a villain. It’s hard to interpret exactly what he meant by that, but this is one possibility. So here’s what I wrote to my fellow theorists several months back:
Here’s what I have to say about Scars, and I’m still grappling for how best to frame this, so I’m sorry if it meanders a bit. And honestly, it’s nothing super ground-breaking. It’s a lot of what we’ve already talked about concerning Leah, and it comes from what you found about the “masks” lines in the Michonne/Zeke convo, as well as between Daryl and Michonne in Scars. I’m really just giving more evidence for this and predicting a future storyline. You know, like I do. ;D
And one thing I will say is that, while I WANT to tie this to Leah because both her storyline and Jocelyn’s happened during the 6 year time jump, I’m not 100% sure this even has to do with Leah. It might, but it also might not. So, I think this is a coming storyline one way or the other. But it may have to do with Leah or may be completely independent of her. No way to tell, yet.
So, in both conversations (both between Michonne and Zeke and Michonne and Daryl on the swings) they talk about people wearing figurative masks. Daryl specifically talks about someone who has so much evil in their hearts that they actually lie about who they are and present themselves in one way, as one type of person, when really they’re the opposite.
We see this theme played out all through Scars, because obviously Jocelyn did that. But now that I’m alert to it, I’m seeing it a lot. Even in 10x17, the Sniper fell under this theme. Mostly literally in his case because he was wearing camouflage (a kind of mask) to hide out and kill people. But figuratively, that’s kinda what Jocelyn did, too.
Okay, so let me start at the beginning. I’ve watched Scars twice now and I’m thinking more and more that the thing with Jocelyn happened BEFORE Leah. Now that we know Daryl’s story spans 5 of the 6 years, I think Leah must happen after Jocelyn. Michonne is big and pregnant, so Scars can’t be more than 6 mos after Rick disappeared.
Michonne asking Daryl if he’s okay being alone definitely hints at the Leah storyline (another reason to link Leah and Jocelyn). But I think it’s a jumping off point for his story. Because he tells Michonne he’s okay being alone, and in that moment, I think he really is. Or at least he really believes he is. The story with Leah will be him realizing he really doesn’t want to be alone. Romantically or otherwise. Which pushes him back toward TF when Carol comes knocking with Henry.
But let’s get to the good stuff.
After Jocelyn shows up, she tells Michonne that some of her kids aren’t with her and she wants to go get them. Jocelyn is hurt and Michonne’s about to pop, so neither of them go. But this is interesting. The three people who go to get her kids in the one building are Gabriel, Aaron, and Eugene.
It was Eugene that really caught my eye. I started going, “hmm. What could this foreshadow?” And I don’t know the answer in detail, but I think it may foreshadow his entanglement with Beth’s return in some way. And of course Aaron and Gabe are both major proxies for Beth, with Gabe being the resident Sirius character. So yeah, kind of side-eyeing that.
The next thing is that we see two hand-drawn posters detailing, through pictures, how to skin and drain both a deer and a rabbit. These are things Jocelyn has obviously made to teach the kids to survive. And I know we noticed them before, with the deer and rabbit being big Beth symbols. But I’m seeing a much bigger theme, having watched the episode several times.
The poster of the deer shows the deer strung up by its legs (head pointed down, I assume). Then, after they bring all the kids to Alexandria, we see several deer strung up this way, and Michonne comments that Jocelyn’s kids are amazing hunters. So, we learn that two of them, Winnie, the blond, and Linus, one of the boys, killed the deer and even prepared them for everyone at Alexandria.
But here’s where it gets more interesting. When Jocelyn captures Daryl and Michonne, she strings them up over pipes in exactly the way the deer being slaughtered are strung up. And of course she brands them like animals. So, in a way, they’re meant to be the deer that she’s going to slaughter.
And I’m not even sure exactly what to make of that where the deer symbol is concerned. I thought about how killing the deer does keep people from the danger of starving to death, so it fits with Deer = Tractor = getting rid of the threat, as I discussed HERE. But I also wonder if deer is synonymous with captivity in some way.
Then there’s the rabbit. I have less to say about it except that the biggest place we saw rabbits were around Lizzie and Mica. And the poster specifically lays out how to kill a rabbit, which is what Lizzie did to Mica. And I think it works here because we’re dealing with evil kids. Like Lizzie. (I will have more to say about the rabbit theory next week. We’ll see them in a big way in 11x01.)
This is where I’m going to link it to the good twin vs evil twin theme. Remember I talked about this with Noah’s twin brothers and of course Lizzie and Mica, even though they aren’t twins. I don’t think we have to have twins or even siblings for this theme, though it’s common for them to do it with siblings like Lizzie/Mica and even Daryl/Merle. Back in S4, there was Pete and his brother as well.
It occurred to me that we have a representation of it here, with Michonne/Judith on one side and Jocelyn/Winnie on the other. Sorry to go racial, but even the ethnicities match up. Michonne, a black woman with a Caucasian daughter (Judith) who isn’t biologically hers (good). And Jocelyn, a black woman with a Caucasian daughter (Winnie) who isn’t biologically hers (evil). See what I mean?
One scene that really jumps out at me is when Michonne and Jocelyn talk in the kitchen. Jocelyn goes out of her way to REALLY earn Michonne’s trust in that scene. Michonne even says, “I’m so glad you’re here,” so she’s obviously fully trusting and loving having her friend around. This is the biggest place where we see Jocelyn’s “mask.”
Then, when Michonne and Daryl are on the swings, Michonne says, “she was a friend. Like, a real one.” She talks about how they’d been through a lot together before, like heartbreak, losing parents, etc. And then she says, “I wanted it to be that way again. I believed her. I let my guard down. I should have known. Should have sensed something.”
Okay, so many ways I could go with that. First of all, it’s REALLY close to what Carol said about Lizzie. “I should have seen it. It was already there.” So, another link to Lizzie/Mica.
But I was also thinking that I can see Daryl thinking this about Leah. Like, he wanted to believe that she would stay with him, that he could love her, but it was all just a mask.
Okay, that may feel like it came out of left field, but it’s essentially where I’m going with this. Let me keep going and I’ll circle back.
When Scars first aired, I said I thought Jocelyn was an anti-Beth parallel. I don’t think many people agreed with me, but I believe that more than ever. And @wdway’s X/Chevron stuff actually backs it up. My biggest reasoning, originally, was just all the child/baby stuff around Beth. I can see her doing something similar to this—raising an army of mini-Daryls—but of course she would be good and raise them with good values. Jocelyn will be a foil to her.
Watching it again, there are SO many Beth symbols around this Jocelyn story. There’s the deer and rabbit, which I’ve mentioned. At one point, Gabriel is telling a story to all of Jocelyn’s kids, and he covers one of his eyes, showcasing only his Sirius eye. We have Eugene going to find the kids. And of course, the X-shaped brands in Michonne and Daryl’s backs, which is where the Chevron stuff comes in.
So, one way or the other, I feel like this is a foreshadow of something to do with Beth and/or her return.
Then, at the end, I paid close attention to what Michonne says to Judith, and I picked up on a few things that had never registered for me before. Remember that, in this episode, they juxtapose these Jocelyn flashbacks with Daryl coming to Alexandria with Lydia and Henry, and Michonne doesn’t want them to stay, but Judith does, etc. And at the end, Judith takes off on her bicycle and Michonne has to go find her.
So, at the end, they’re sitting on the rock together and Michonne is telling Judith about the Jocelyn situation. She says that when Judith came out of the trailer, it “was like you were looking right at me and didn’t know it was me. I thought you’d changed, or that I’d lost you.” (Emphasis mine.)
Think about that. It’s a really odd thing to say about a two- or three-year-old kid. Like she thought Judith had turned evil or something. And I think plot-wise, she means that she thought Judith would think differently of her because she’d just killed all these kids. Michonne had a lot of guilt about that. But it’s a really odd wording, and kind of hearkens back to the mask symbol. People wearing masks, appearing to be something they aren’t.
We’ve also discussed extensively the idea of Beth’s memory loss: (X, X.) Maybe her seeing Carol but not knowing who she is, or Daryl seeing or hearing Beth but not believing it’s really her. It just sort of plays into the whole hallucination theme obliquely.
Judith then says that Michonne just didn’t look like herself because of all the blood, but after a moment, she saw it was her. So, more masks. And Michonne was kind of right. At first, Judith really didn’t recognize her, or at least thought she looked like someone else. More of the same theme.
But that bicycle is a big deal. It’s showcased obviously in the episode, and bikes almost always represent kidnapping or captivity. We saw them around Glenn in S1 when he was taken by the Vatos gang. We saw one outside the Claimer house when Rick got away. I feel like this foreshadows Judith being kidnapped. She already was once by Jocelyn. But Michonne sees that bike in the present-day scenes, which makes them a foreshadow, not a callback.
So, I’ll be the first to admit that this is mostly speculation and at least half head canon, but I’m really wondering if Leah and Beth will be the good and evil to one another. (This is obviously going to be the case in terms of a good/healthy vs unhealthy romantic relationships. And if Leah is a hallucination, and Beth will obviously be real, you can already see how they’re doing this with Beth and Leah.)
Leah is wearing a mask when Daryl is with her. And once again, she may not be totally evil like Jocelyn was. But she may be misrepresenting herself in some way. Toxic at the least, evil at the most. But maybe the reason she’s practically wearing Beth’s clothes is that she’s a foil or anti-parallel to Beth.
And you see what I mean about how, if Leah turns out to be a hallucination, clearly this won’t apply to her in a literal way.
I still think there’s a good chance she’s a hallucination, but I think this still applies. It wouldn’t be literal or physical if that’s the case, but she’s still the “bad” relationship as opposed to the good one Daryl will have with Beth. We all talked extensively about how unhealthy the relationship was right after 10x18 aired. How Leah gave him an ultimatum, didn’t seem to want to meet his family, etc. So, you can see that, real or not, the relationships will be juxtaposed, with one being good and the other, bad.
The other thing want to mention is that it’s interesting that they did this story (Scars) with Michonne instead of Daryl. It makes me think that something about Michonne and Rick’s reunion story might follow this template as well.
We’ve discussed how Leah might be part of the New Mexico symbolism, and I’ve had people message me that they’re afraid that when Daryl and Carol take off together for the spinoff, he’ll be looking for Leah. Now, I obviously don’t think he would be looking for her in a romantic/looking-for-Beth sort of way, but it’s possible that she may be involved.
And like I said at the beginning, I think there’s a good chance of parallels between Leah and Jocelyn, because they both happened during the 6-year time jump, and then there’s all the other ties like, “are you okay being alone,” the mask theme, and that Carol knew about her/the acorn conversation.
I’m actually thinking this less and less, now. I really don’t think the New Mexico symbolism will be fulfilled until the spinoff, and we already know Leah will be in s11. So, I suppose if she survives S11 (and depending on whether she’s real or not) she COULD still be involved, but the timelines just don’t seem to match up to me. At least, not right now. This may change depending on what S11 brings us.
So, total conjecture here, but I’m really wondering if Leah (or if not her, someone else Jocelyn foreshadowed) will kidnap Judith, and that’s why Daryl and Carol leave to go after her. It would fit with the TWB template for Daryl and Carol (Felix and Huck on TWB) to be following Judith (Hope and Iris on TWB). If so, Daryl might really might be following Leah to New Mexico, but not out some romantic inclination, but rather because she took the kids.
Another possibility, of course, is that Leah is real, but Daryl was drugged or is just remembering things wrong. If that ends up being the case, then this could still happen. But again, we’ll just have to wait and see.
So yeah. Let’s just say I have plenty of head canons filed away in which Beth kicks some evil Leah butt. I would enjoy that very much. :D Granted, it probably won’t play out quite that neatly for us, but that’s what head canons are for, right?
And as I said, I can’t be sure this has to do with Leah. It’s possible this storyline is completely independent of Leah, and she’ll be something else entirely. But I think something like this will happen either way. And I’m sure I’ll recognize it as fulfillment when it does.
Any thoughts?
#beth greene#beth greene lives#beth is alive#beth is coming#td theory#td theories#team delusional#team defiance#beth is almost here#bethyl
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The Holidays
In which reader and Fred have to stay happy for their daughters. 💕
Summary: You and Fred can’t seem to get along, but you’re going to have to keep it together for the holidays. Word Count: 2140 Note: Honestly I felt a lot better about this chapter. It still isn’t as long as I’d like, and I kinda feel like I’m dragging out the story at this point, but hopefully it’ll come together.
You stood on the platform, smiling as the train pulled in with a screech. Excited, joyful children flooded out of every door to meet their waiting parents. The girls ran up to you, practically jumping into your arms.
“Mummy!”, they both exclaimed in unison.
“Hello, girls,” you chuckled, giving them each a hug and a kiss on the head. You double-checked that they had everything for the break before leading them out of the station. “I’m sorry daddy couldn’t be here to see your return, girls.”
“It’s alright, mum,” Cassie said, “Business trips are important, too.”
You simply hummed in response, lips pressed into a thin line. You felt horrible lying to the girls, but you certainly weren’t about to tell them that their parents weren’t exactly on speaking terms at the moment. You apparated the girls back home, where they quickly dashed inside.
“We’re home!” Callie exclaimed, running up to their bedroom. You chuckled, admiring your exuberant daughter.
“Get settled in girls,” you called up the stairs. “Then come down because I just have to hear about school!” You gazetted up the stairs as you saw the girls round the corner into their rooms. It was a heady feeling, really. This important moment, and you were doing it alone. Yet, for some reason, it felt right. Sure, it was weird not having Fred right at your side, but you weren’t exactly struggling without him. You sighed deeply, thinking about the holidays to come. Christmas was in two days, and you and Fred would have to play nice.
The girls finally took their seats at the table, and you handed them each a cup of tea before sitting across from them. “So, girls-”
“When’s daddy coming back?” You were cut off by Callie.
You chuckled, “Well, unfortunately daddy and uncle Georgie are very busy. I’m afraid we won’t see them until Christmas.”
“Oh,” Callie whispered, turning red as she stared down at the floor. “No no no, don’t cry,” you whispered, rushing over and crouching down beside her. You cupped her cheeks in your hands. “I know this is hard, but you’ll both see daddy soon enough. I promise.” She gave you a weak smile as you kissed her forehead. “So,” you began, attempting to change the subject, “Tell me all about Hogwarts!”
You were met with a barrage of stories and shouts as the girls tried to talk over one and other. Callie talked about all of her new friends and discovering something new about the castle everyday, while Cassie discussed her favorite classes and plans to become a prefect in the future. You smiled and nodded as they spoke, occasionally interjecting or asking a question. It was a relief to finally have your girls home. The thing you had been dreading had already proven to be a much needed distraction.
After more conversation, serving the girls’ favorite dinner, and building a snowman, you all went to bed. For the first time in two days you slept soundly, peacefully. Everything felt alright.
***
Fred awoke with a start, a feeling of panic bubbling within. Christmas Eve he thought. He shot out of bed, pacing as he tried to clear his thoughts. How were the girls? Were they upset he wasn’t there? Will Christmas work out as planned? All of the uncertainty and tension of the last forty eight hours was finally starting to get to Fred. He felt dizzy and the floor seemed to sway beneath him. Fortunately, George pulled him out of his thoughts with a slam of the bedroom door. George stood staring at the current state of his brother, perplexed at the sight. Fred Weasley wasn’t one to get nervous, and seeing him like this made George want to do nothing except help his brother.
“Fred?”, he asked, gazing at his brother.
“Yeah,” Fred muttered, not fully paying attention to George
“Let’s do something today, yeah? Get your mind off of everything?” George walked over to his twin, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Fred looked at his brother, contemplating what to say. “There isn’t much to do, Georgie.”
“How about Hogsmeade? For old time’s sake?”
Fred smiled weakly, agreeing with his twin. The two apparated away to the snowy village, hoping to occupy their Christmas Eve.
***
“Girls!”, you called up the stairs from the kitchen. You were getting breakfast set on the table. You wanted to make breakfast special for the girls. Sure they had a full breakfast every morning at Hogwarts, but you wanted to do anything to help them feel like normal.
The twins came dashing down the stairs and into their spots at the kitchen island. “Happy Christmas Eve, ladies.” You smiled warmly at them.
Callie yawned lazily, taking a bite of her toast.
The day went by slowly. The three of you made gingerbread houses, finished wrapping presents, and even went for a walk in the snow. It was nice having the girls all to yourself for once. The past eleven years had been spent just keeping them safe and alive, and then you didn’t see them for four months. So to have them to just you was surprisingly pleasant. You quickly realised that your girls had matured astronomically in just four months. The giggling, bubbling twins that had left you returned as intelligent, polite witches. Sure they were still exuberant and joyful, but they had an air of intelligence and newfound wisdom about them. It was surely a welcome sight. You dreaded the thought of Christmas. The day that was meant to bring nothing but joy was causing you the most stress you’d felt in a while. You went to bed that night wondering if maybe you should just apparate with the girls to somewhere remote and skip Christmas altogether. But you couldn’t do that to Fred. You still had some decency in you. Right?
***
Christmas morning. Snow should be falling, carollers singing, cookies being baked. While all of this was happening, it didn’t feel real. For Fred, it was some mirage passing by; another life happening without him. The early morning floated by in an instant. Filled with red-haired anarchy and bustling family joy, yet Fred sat steadfast in the middle. Sure he was participating, but his mind was off elsewhere. Soon enough midday came, and you would be arriving soon.
Fortunately for you and Fred, no one except Molly, George, and Charlie knew what was going on. Thank Merlin they agreed to not say anything, lest you have an army of Weasleys throwing questions at you or single-handedly trying to fix your marriage themselves. Another fortunate side effect was that it gave you and Fred another reason to play nice. Not only was it for the girls, but for your own sanity.
Pulling him out of his thoughts was none other than you, knocking at the door. Closest was Bill, who stood and gladly welcomed the three of you inside. The twins swiftly dodged their uncle and went straight for Fred.
“Daddy!”, they shrieked in unison, tackling him with hugs. You chuckled awkwardly, inching inside the doorway just enough to shut the door and keep the cold out. Molly was quick to embrace you, taking your coat and whispering to you how proud she was, and that she could never love you any less. You gave her a weak smile, walking across the room to Fred.
Your forced smile was practically painful. The tension was tangible, even to the twins. Loosen up, you thought, this needs to work. “Hi,” you whispered, giving him a quick kiss.
“Hi, love,” he muttered, forcing a smile at you. Any sane person would have seen right through the act, but thankfully everyone else was distracted with the gifts under the tree.
Wrapping paper was swiftly strewn about in a flurry of gifts, cheers, and thanks. It was quite a wonderful sight, seeing the family completely united and sharing in the joyous occasion. Even more so now that nearly everyone had children of their own. It’s astounding what troubles can be lying just under the surface; the fights and arguments that not a soul knew about.
The Weasley jumpers were passed around as everyone asked the girls questions about Hogwarts. You all learned new things, heard stories of the girls adventures, and got the latest Hogwarts gossip. The distraction was nice, and for a moment you could’ve forgotten that anything was wrong. A reminder, however, was quickly brought to you when Callie asked what you and Fred had been up to whilst her and her sister were gone.
“Well,” you began, stiffening in your seat, “We did many things.”
“Like what?” Cassie interjected, now interested. Her bright, wide eyes gleamed up at you, all the hope in the world contained within them.
You chuckled lightly. “Well we had some new products for Halloween, we hosted Thanksgiving, and now your father is working on some new product.” You smiled, trying to diffuse the tension you had created. Fred had heard the conversation, but figured his involvement would only spark more of the girls’ curiosity. Seemingly satisfied, Cassie dashed off to entertain the new pygmy puffs she’d received, however Callie still seemed suspicious.
“Seems less than normal, mum.”
“Pardon?”
“Well you and dad usually have all kinds of projects and products going on. One release and a questionable one on the way? Just doesn’t seem like you is all.”
You stared down at her, unsure of how to proceed. “Well I suppose you girls are our inspiration.” You winked at her, then hesitated. Pleased with your answer, Callie ran off to join her sister. You sat frozen for a moment, processing what you had said. Also hearing your sentiment, Fred began to tear up. He quickly made way upstairs before any Weasleys had a chance to notice. Noticing his hasty egress, you followed him upstairs.
“Fred?”, you whispered cautiously as you lightly rapped on the bedroom door. You crept inside, finding Fred nearly in tears on the bed. “Fred,” you softened, staring down at him.
“We need to do something, y/n.” His red, teary eyes blinked up at you, frown sinking his face. He continued before you could respond. “I mean, you heard yourself. Those girls are our inspirations. Our driving force, our light and joy, our happiness y/n. Yes, I know parenting distracted from our marriage, but think about everything those girls have truly done for us. They need us, we need them.”
You simply nodded in agreement, blinking back your own tears as you stared down at him. “I know, Fred,” was all you could manage to whisper, carefully sitting next to him. “I don’t want to lose this, Fred.” The tears began to stream freely from your eyes. “These holidays, your family, the happiness and comfort. Being with you, having a family, being together and actually happy. I miss that, Freddie.”
His heart sank hearing the old nickname. It always used to make him blush, and he hadn’t heard it in months. “I don’t know what to do, y/n.”
“Can we do this ourselves?”, you questioned, staring up at him. “I mean, are we so beyond the point of repair that we can’t do this ourselves?”
“Are you suggesting--”
“Muggle therapy.”
He took a sharp breath in, squeezing his eyes shut. “Do you really think we need it?”
“I’m not sure, Fred. I’d like to think that this is only a minor issue that we can fix if we can just manage to talk without fighting-”
“Well if you didn’t always start something…”
“Fred! This is exactly what I mean! This is clearly a deep-rooted issue that's been growing for eleven years! Maybe longer.” You shuddered at the thought of your marriage being in disrepair for longer than the lives of your daughters.
He took a long, deep breath, not wanting to speak any more. “We need help.” He looked down, gently caressing your hand with the tips of his fingers.
In silent approval, you took his hand in your own. You sighed, resting your head on his shoulder. “I still love you, Fred.”
“I love you, y/n. I know it’s been hard, but you can’t get rid of me that easy,” he chuckled lightly. “I’ll put up one hell of a fight to keep you.”
You smiled against his skin, leading him to stand up. “Thank you,” you whispered, heading out of the doorway.
“Why?”
“We actually came to an agreement. We have a solution.”
He nodded, smiling as he took your hand and led you downstairs.
Your own smiles were met with a dozen more as you rounded the corner into the living room. The feeling was new, but it was normal. You hadn’t realised how much you missed Fred until you had him back, and you were willing to do anything to not lose him again.
*** Taglist: @it-was-three-am @bforbroadway @hariosborn @slytherinlovesgryffindor @dralf0yy @paigeyisme @girl22334 @sagittarius-flowerchild
#fred weasley#fred weasley x reader#fred weasley imagine#fred weasley one shot#fred weasley fluff#fred weasley angst#marriage story
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Borne of the Stars - Chapter 7 - An MLB Kryptonian AU
Tag List: @eve-valution @weird-pale-blonde-person @kris-pines04 @soulmate-game @abrx2002 @amayakans @vixen-uchiha @heldtogetherbysafetypins @raisuke06 @dorkus-minimus @captainartsypants @mopester-is-here @moonlightstar64 @annabellabrookes @maribat-is-lifeblood @toodaloo-kangaroo @the-navistar-carol @elspethshadow @chocolatecatstheron @ivymala07
[ Posted on Ao3 ] [ Chapter 1 ] [ Chapter 6 ] [ Chapter 8 ]
[ A/N: Chapter 8 is also finished, I will be posted it right after this one! ]
[Summary: Lunchtime break has arrived, and the Parisian duo meet the companions Kara has in Paris. ]
The first three hours of class passed by quickly, full of teacher introductions, reviews, and chatter from students not yet out of their summertime mindsets. Marinette was happy to see Mlle. Mendeleiev had moved up from teaching in their old collège and had transferred to their new lycée with them, but not as their homeroom teacher.
During Mademoiselle Mendeleiev’s third period Algebra class, Alix learned Kara was just as willing to take on bets as Kim, and they started a note-passing competition to see who would get caught first. Marinette and Nino both got roped in half way through when one of the notes fell on the former's head, and the latter picked it off and snorted at the message inside, hiding it before Mlle. Mendeleiev could see it or Marinette could have a curious peak.
Marinette lost by a technicality of being spotted, but won in her own way when she didn't get in trouble. For one, she knew the teacher was harsh against students messing around in class, but was lenient to let the ones who had completed their work already, and letting them have their fun so long as it wasn’t distracting. She had finished her review sheet before the other three, and the note wasn’t considered distracting because, conveniently, it was an offer to tutor Nino during lunches. All of her notes had been class related in preparation for her luck not holding out, so when the bell rang for the end of class, she was mildly smug when she turned back to the girls behind her and grinned at them.
“That was fun! I’m glad you still got your work done, though maybe make your bets after finishing first, okay?”
The three note-passers hid their giggles as they nodded. Nino nudged her then, and she jumped up. “Oh right! Everyone, wait up!” MArinette stood and scooped up the box of macaroons she had pulled from her locker before the class had started, and hopped down the stairs to stand at the door. “Macaroons! Happy first day of lycée everyone!”
Most of the class broke out into moderate whoop and thank yous as they filed out the door and took a macaroon each.
“See you down at the lunch tables today?” Adrien asked as he bit into his attained treat. Marinette took notice of a pin peeking out from under his overshirt, smiling internally as she recognized the colors of the bi pride flag, glad to see him knowing himself a lot better than he had two years ago.
Marinette glanced at Nino standing with Kara, both waiting for her outside the door and she considered the question. She nodded to them and shook her head. “I think Nino and I will show the new girl around today. See you in class later?”
“Course! See you, Marinette! Let’s go Alya, I'm starving.”
“I sure hope not,” was Alyas teasing retort. “I’ll try to start a smear campaign against your dad again, and this time you won't stop me!” Adrien only laughed as the two headed down the stairs and out of sight.
After making sure Mlle. Mendeleiev got a macaroon of her own, Marinette joined her friends out in the hall, the remaining treats back in the bag on her back.
“So, what now? I know I said we’d show you around, but I won't make either of you go anywhere if you don't want to. Nino, you up for it?”
The boy nodded vigorously, his hat slipping before he stopped. As he straightened it out, he answered properly. “Of course, bro! I finally get to hang out with this cool dudette outside of your house, there's no way i'm passing this up. No offense, Mari, but she must have been dying always being cooped up inside a bakery, even if it did smell heavenly. How bout you, Kara, up for your first real visit around Paris, City of Love?”
Marinette ignored the way Nino wiggled his brow at Kara as she focused on the other girl, awaiting her answer.
“Yeah, one sec’, let me check something,” she pulled out her phone, searching her messages. “Remember how I said I didn’t move here alone?”
The two others nodded, remembering the comment from that morning and the unanswered question of who are the others. Kara grinned down at her phone and then back as she quickly typed out a text and sent it. She turned the phone around to show them a new group chat log with one message, ‘meet us, front courtyard, goin out for lunch and fun!’, and two speech bubbles displaying the recipients as already replying.
Both replies were identical.
‘“Us?”’
Kara laughed as she turned the phone back and saw the texts, putting it away without replying. “How long are lunches here, anyways?”
“Two hours,” Nino answered her as he led the way to the stairs.
Stars joined the twinkle in the hero’s eyes. “Oh, I am never going back to America now.”
Marinette and Nino laughed as they headed down the steps and led the way through the halls and out of the school building, into the open courtyard now dotted in groups of students.
“Here she comes,” Kara says absently, stopping and standing in the spot as though waiting. The other two turn around curiously but are interrupted by an excited yell before they can ask.
“Kara!!” In a fashion almost identical to Marinette that morning, a hoodie wearing ginger haired girl went barreling into the called person like a purple streak, caught without wavering in a solid hug.
“Hey there little Batsy,” Kara grinned as she let the other go, looking around. “Where’s Karen? I thought you had class together?”
“She’s catching up! Look, there she is!”
The new girl gestured back the way she came, and there was another girl, honey-toned skin, dark, thickly curled hair tied up into two pigtails with a golden highlight streaking through one, and dressed in a striped soft yellow and brown sweater. Marinette’s first thought was she looked like a very adorable bee.
The newest girl huffed as she slowed from her sprint and made her way over, clearly a bit miffed with all the rushing around, yet glad to have found her friends.
“H-hey, I’m here! Hi, Kara,” Karen finally greeted as she caught her breath. “You said something about, ‘us’? Who is us? Oh! Are you us??” She turned to Nino and Marinette as she questioned them, a slight smile in greeting on her lips, though a crease of worry in her brow at being unprepared for meeting anyone new.
The two addressed teens nodded in unison, “Yeah! nice to meet you, dudes, I’m Nino Lahiffe, one of Kara’s classmates.” He held out a hand for a fistbump in greeting, which got returned with varying levels of enthusiasm and hesitation from the two newcomers to the group.
“Marinette Dupain-Cheng, nice to meet you two!” She waved as she greeted, smiling brightly. The two green eyed girls waved back happily.
“Karen, Karen Beecher, nice to meet you two, too.”
“I’m Barbra Gordon, but you can call me Babs, it’s much easier. Wait, Nino? Like, the Nino that Kara has started to listen to a ton of music from, that Nino?”
“Uh,” was his wide-eyed response, and Kara laughed as she wrapped an arm around his shoulder.
“Yup, he’s that Nino; cool, right? Finally get to introduce you guys and, bonus, hang out properly for once.”
“But, wait,” Karen interrupted, looking pensive, “What about.. Uhm…”
“Geode?” Babs supplied helpfully, and Marinette stiffened at the nickname.
“Well, yes, her, too, but,” Karen shook her head, “actually I was going to say: ‘Didn’t you meet him as you-know-who and thus shouldn’t be acting so familiar with him?’ Kinda blows your cover and defeats your whole purpose here, doesn't it?”
“She has a point,” Babs chimed in, pointing at Kara with an exaggerated frown and a raised brow.
Kara rolls her eyes, “Yeah, but kinda pointless you hide it, don't ya’ think? If I can't be her, it means I can't exactly hang out like normal, now can I? Besides! I trust these two to keep it on the down-low; they're really good at it so far.”
As though suddenly realizing that they were discussing the identities of Supergirl in front of her, the two other American girls turned their gazes on Marinette, who took a half step back in surprise.
“Wait,” Babs tilted her head, tapping her pursed lips in thought. “Does that mean-?”
“Indeed, Babs,” Kara piped back in with glee. “Girls, meet the cutie of Paris I may have forgotten to tell you the actual name of; the one and the only: Geode.” Kara made an exaggerated flourish of her hands as she said this, as though she was presenting Marinette like some kind of royalty to a court.
Marinette couldn't help but to blush in embarrassment at the whole display and explanation, waving slightly once more.
Karen and Babs stared at her before the news finally settled, and it clicked for them both at the same time.
“Ohh…” They said in unison.
#Borne of the Stars#maribat#Karanette#kara danvers#marinette dupain cheng#dc super hero girls#karen beecher#barbra gordon#miraculous ladybug#nino lahiffe#alix kubdel#ms. mendeleiev#supergirl#crossover au
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wrong numbers/right answers
iwaizumi hajime/reader wc: 3.9k
When Hajime had started catching feelings for the mystery number, he'd rationalised that it could never be you. Slowly but surely, his mystery texter had been getting him out the slump Iwaizumi had been feeling over his unrequited feelings, and instead of wondering about you, he was wondering when the next mystery number text would come.
But now you're her and she's you and his brain is going to explode. He doesn't have enough brain cells for this.
Curse this stupid, stinking crush.
“You've been on that damn phone for, what, 30 minutes now?” Iwaizumi growls, waving Oikawa's less than impressive test score across said boy’s face. “What are you, texting a new girlfriend?”
“Iwa-chan, I'm flattered you think I have a new girlfriend!” Oikawa’s ecstatic, typing with one hand and snatching away the sheet away with the other. “But no, I'm just trying to have a good time with our favorite classmate,” Oikawa metaphorically dangles you in front of him, and smirks as his friend’s eyes widen. “Oho, I’ve got your attention now, have I?”
Iwaizumi wrinkles his nose, trying to get the test back. “Shut up, shittykawa. If I knew her better, I'd apologize to her because she has to deal with the likes of you.”
The spiker makes a wild lunge for the test paper, because they came to his house to study, not so his disgraceful excuse of a best friend could tease him about a girl, but Oikawa leans just out of reach, his long arms stretching as far as they could.
“You wound me, Iwa-chan.” Oikawa chuckles, shuffling the paper under the cushion he was sitting on. “My test score wasn’t that bad, anyways-“
“You call a 52% a good grade?!”
“Well, it's a pass, isn’t it? I have more important things on my mind, anyways, like beating Ushiwaka, texting my favorite girl in class, don’t you have something to do? Oh, wait! I forgot that you were-”
“Shittykawa," Iwaizumi cuts in, a seething expression on his face, but Oikawa pays no mind. "If you finish that sentence-“
“-Socially awkward! You can’t even talk to her without blushing! But funny how that doesn’t happen when you talk to anyone else like that, hmm, Iwa-chan?”
Hajime gets up and launches himself across the chabudai, tackling Oikawa, a fist raised.
__
It’s 8am when Iwaizumi gets a text.
From: ??? To: You rinrin this is you right!?? buddy???!! pls send me ur jpnese lit hw I NEED HELP otherwise tatsuya-sensei will have me impaled bro my entrails will be sacrificed to whoever the hell Yamada Kai was, helpppp!
There’s a string of different crying emojis after that, which Iwaizumi finds adorable. He doesn’t know who this is, but it’s obvious that the poor guy went to Aoba Johsai. The woman who taught Japanese Literature was famous around the school for being a harsh marker and a harsher teacher style. They’d been studying Yamada’s works so far, and Iwaizumi expects whoever sent it was panicking- it was 8, school started 8:30, and English was their second lesson of the day (or it was for tomorrow, because Classes 3-4 didn’t have Literature today, but Iwaizumi assumes it’s today, otherwise they wouldn’t be this distraught.)
He glances at his watch- he had a few minutes to spare. He fishes his work out his bag, and he thanks God he's used his best handwriting (Tatsuya-sensei had caused quite the scene photocopying his work last time, showing off to the entire Class-2 how “insufferably illegible” his print was,) hoping whoever was behind the screen could read it. He takes a quick picture of it, making sure it’s not blurry and the script is clear before sending it off and hurrying out of his house.
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You [sent: IMG20151219] you’ve got the wrong number but i’m from seijou too. this is the worksheet you mean?
From: Crying Emoji lmao To: You aaa i’m so sorry for sending it to the wrong number!
but yes, it is the right one! thank you so much, i owe you one, mystery man!
Oikawa’s waiting for him outside as always, and Iwaizumi deliberately speeds up so he can walk past. Behind him, Oikawa makes a sort of whine from the back of his throat, quickening his pace to fall in next to him.
“What’s gotten you so cheery?” Oikawa asks, and Iwaizumi realizes he’s been smiling. He replaces it with a scowl, quickly shoving his phone in his pocket so Oikawa can’t get anymore curious.
“It’s no thanks to you.” Iwaizumi quips, and Oikawa pouts.
Iwaizumi only risks a reply when he gets to school, because Oikawa Tooru will never shut up if he sees him texting someone that is so obviously a girl.
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You how do you know it's a guy..? for all you know i could be a girl, you know.
He gets a reply soon after.
From: Crying Emoji lmao To: You well, if you are a girl, i'm sorry!! i didn't mean anything by it... also i kinda assumed you were a guy because of your handwriting.
He should be offended by that, right? Right. He’s offended by it. He's about to defend himself when his phone buzzes with another message.
From: Crying Emoji lmao To: You SHIT I'M SO SORRY THAT WAS RUDE TO SAY!! I BET YOU WON'T TALK TO ME ANYMORE
IT'S UNDERSTANDABLE IF YOU DO...
He blinks, an ungraciously amused smile making it's way onto his face. He leaves his phone alone for the school day, because his teacher has just walked in. He figured he'd reply to you after school, just before volleyball.
It's kind of a mistake, because he comes back to 12 more messages, each message reading a variant of "I'm sorry," the amount of sincerity in each message growing as the hours passed by. He figures it's time to ease the stranger out her misery, and begins typing his reply.
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You no need to get worked up on it, lmao you planned on talking to me again?
While waiting, he has enough time to go to the clubroom early and change out of his school uniform to his jersey. He's halfway through fixing one half of his laces when his phone pings.
From: Crying Emoji lmao To: You it's because i thought i owed you one.... but i guess if you don't want to talk it's okay lol
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You i hope it's not me that offended you this time. i do want to talk. you seem... cool?
He hits the send button, rereads it, and recoils. That sounds awkward.
Iwaizumi starts typing more.
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You besides, you don't know me. how are you gonna give back (whatever. i don't know how! you're the one that wants to owe me.) if you don't even know me?
From: Crying Emoji lmao To: You won't it be funner if it's a mystery?
i guess... we could help each other out! anytime we need hw help we just call each other, like a private help line.
(also, why the question mark? of course i'm cool!)
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You i think that sounded less creepy in your head.
(sure, you're cool. [heavy sarcasm, if you can't tell.])
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao
is that a no?
(rude!)
Iwaizumi stares at the screen. Well, he didn't really mind. And whoever this was sounded pretty trustworthy, and not a random creep that pretended to be a Seijou student in their free time. His time to deliberate is cut short, because Oikawa slams the clubroom doors open, singing a Christmas carol Iwaizumi didn't recognise, along with Hanamaki and Matsukawa, who were discussing what kind of forfeit Oikawa had to pay today if he didn't set as well as he should; ramen or oden?
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You fuck why not
i'll be looking forward to... being helped out? bye.. i'll talk later.
my best friend is here and i'm not ready for him to annoy me straight to satan's asscrack.
Iwaizumi whips the phone away from Oikawa's line of vision, only letting him see his asscrack remark. (It backfired, because Oikawa spends all of the time from putting his shoes on to the start of practice whinging.) The boys slowly file out of the clubroom, Kunimi shutting off the lights as the door softly clicks closed.
Iwaizumi's phone lights up in his blazer pocket, a simple "see you later!" on the screen that brightens the whole room up.
___
It's two weeks later when Iwaizumi needs the help he's been promised. He opens up his chat- they'd just been talking last night about Seijou's annual fair, and what they each were going to do.
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You hey english is kicking my ass
can you help a me out please
To: You From Crying Emoji lmao ofc !! what do you need help with
i would let u copy my answers but i feel like you actually have to learn english at some point phone-chan lol
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You the english were on crack when they
made up their language i swear
does the sentence "the star shine brightly" work
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao
LMFAO
weh that's a trick question
"shone" is for no object and "shined" is for when here's no object. so like shone works for 'light' and shined can be for like
a car headlight
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You what the hell
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao ikr english is crazy
you also forgot the "d" at the end lol
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You that one is on me that's simple
but the other thing isn't. aren't the both shining anyway? what's the point in having two. i hate this devil language i swear
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao
if it helps no one really cares and i think
you could get away with either english has a lot of rules and no one follows them sooooo... it's whatever!!
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You
try telling that to fukuoda-sensei i swear that guy has a grudge against me or smthn
To: You
From: Crying Emoji lmao WAHAHAHA i had him last year.... he literally hates fun i don't think i've ever seen him smile
good luck with that phone-chan :P
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You
one last question btw
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao
ooh okay shoot!
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You what's 好きな食べ物は揚げ出し豆腐 in english
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao ...
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You don't tell me you don't know :(
To: You From Crying Emoji lmao phone-chan, if i say i'll make your agedashi tofu for the festival tmrw will you please stop making vague hints towards it for the rest of the night?
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You :)
To: You From Crying Emoji lmao the things i do for you, phone chan!
___
"Iwa-chan, don't eat too much." Oikawa says, blinking as he tries to process the sheer amount of beancurd his friend is wolfing down.
"Says the person who hogged all the milk bread once." Iwaizumi retorts, rolling his eyes. "This is one plate of tofu, unlike when you once wasted 2000 yen to buy the school's entire daily stock of milk bread so you could eat it." He pauses to finish another cube of his favourite food. "And school milk bread doesn't even taste that great."
"It was cheap, Iwa-chan!" Oikawa tries to defend himself. "Makki, Matssun, help me out here!"
Matsukawa only shrugs, and when prompted by Oikawa to give a 'real' answer, he sides with Iwaizumi, apologizing sheepishly.
"Sorry to admit it Captain," He chuckles, "But I don't really like school food anyways."
Iwaizumi shoots Oikawa a teasing smirk, and Oikawa's just about to say something when Hanamaki pipes up.
"I like it," Makki makes a non-committal gesture, and Oikawa looks happy with that. "I mean, sure, school food isn't that great but I think the milk bread is the only good thing about it."
"Like striking gold in a coalmine!" Oikawa nods his approval, and Iwaizumi just sighs. Looking around, he spots you out of the corner of his eye, looking as good as usual and serving a few parents and students. He knows he can't call you because he'd end up sweating through his blazer, so he asks another classmate instead.
"Okuhara-kun," He calls, waving to a boy in his class. "Do you know who made the tofu?"
The boy shakes his head. "Whoever it was came early to drop it off. It had a note with it though."
This gets Iwaizumi's attention. She'd left something for him? "Oh? What did it say?"
"Uh- this is an exact quote, by the way- 'Phone-chan, don't you dare!'" Okuhara replies, drawing out quotation marks in the air. When Iwaizumi lets out a loud laugh, he takes it for disbelief.
"Is it... really that funny?" He questions, looking bemused.
Hajime grins. "Not really."
____
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You you didn't even drop any hints!
all you gave me was a note that told me to go away
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao i knew you'd go looking, phone-chan! my intuition is as good as ever!
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You unfair. that was like, my best friend's level of unfair.
so unfair that i'm thinking about moving my best friend back to the top of my favourites list :/
That was a bold faced lie. Oikawa had never been on the top of his favourites list: that was reserved solely for Makki.
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao you wound me!
who is this best friend?
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You
not telling lol
you'd know who i was then
To: You
From: Crying Emoji lmao spare hint ma’am?
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You you didn't give me any!
and you're the one who wanted to keep it a secret in the first place :/
...but fine.
he's on the volleyball team
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao oikawa!!??
To: Crying Emoji lmao
From: You ... :( yeah
see i told you!
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao actually, i don't know the vb team that well. oikawa's one of the only guys i know because he's popular. and loud
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You oh so i’m not popular?
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao aww phone-chan it’s not like that <3 ur popular in my heart :)
Iwaizumi curses at the blush that follows reading that. He will not allow himself to get flustered over that, it was a joke!
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You gee thanks
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao besides i still know the third years! i'm just saying i don't know them that well!!
hanamaki, matsukawa and iwaizumi. they're a close friend group, so i expect one of then is you
When he reads his name, he doesn't know whether to deny it completely, or confirm that it's him. Hajime puts his phone down and paces for a bit, wondering if he's fucked up. When he checks his phone again, chewing on his lip, he guffaws at the message they've left.
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao ...judging from how you're not replying, you are.
but since i don't know which one, i'll decide on calling you phone-chan, yeah?
When Iwaizumi met whoever they were, he was gonna give them a lecture of a lifetime about not being a smartass.
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You fine, yeah. i am one of them. but now you owe me a hint too!
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao
well, i suppose i do!
i'm one of the girls in the class that actually has oikawa's number. he half forced me to give it to him, actually, but it's still been fun talking with him.
(not as much as talking with you, phone-chan!)
and i also totally get why he's annoying.
Iwaizumi feels a tiny bit of jealously bubbling up- irrational, because he's only been texting them for about half a month. His friend's statement about liking talking with him more than Oikawa makes him a little pleased, because people didn't usually pick his pretty best friend over him (selfish, yeah, but he's tired of girls asking him to deliver chocolates to the setter and befriending him in hopes of getting closer to Tooru.)
But girls who had his number? Only the ones Oikawa actually had an interest in.
The grand total of the people in his class with the brunet's number was three, because as courteous and as flirtatiously he acts, he accepts and turns down people normally, and doesn't like hurting girls as much as his playboy rep boasts (Iwaizumi's always liked that about him.) The three girls he knew of consisted of Aoi, his ex, Reina, who unbeknownst to Oikawa at the time, swang the other way, and...
You.
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao i know that aoi, reina and (name) has his number...
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao well, one of them is certainly me!
we're both down to three, phone-chan. even ground!
Iwaizumi feels the world cave in on himself, reading the message over and over. Aoi was a nice guy, but he was also the same brand of pompous that Hajime disliked and Oikawa had found cute. They’d ended it horribly, so Hajime was decidedly not looking forward to the possible outcome that it was him, so he casts away the thought before it can solidify in his mind’s eye. Reina didn’t even like guys, so if you were you…
Huh. His mouth’s gone dry suddenly.
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You cool cool
hey i'm gonna head to bed i gotta emotionally prepare for voluntarily walking into japanese lit class with tatsuya sensei on my ass
sorry to cut it short
To: You From: Crying Emoji lmao aw don't worry about it phone-chan <3
good night! and see you tmrw, whether we know it or not!!
To: Crying Emoji lmao From: You sleep well
Iwaizumi curses during the 5th hour of trying to sleep. Curse this stupid, stinking crush.
___
He wishes he hadn't asked. He's fine with his favorite crying emoji user knowing who he is, but knowing that it's you sort of struck a pang in his heart that couldn't be undone. He can't concentrate in class, and though he fights it because Oikawa's caught on to this habit, he finds himself staring at you instead of listening to the teacher. The whole situation was annoying!
First he thinks you're cute but he'd chalked it up to never working out because Oikawa had managed to snag your number. Then Oikawa assures him that it's platonic and they only talk about school work which is, to say the least, bullshit, because Oikawa can't actually text without getting distracted. His best friend has a tendency to rant about volleyball or start gossiping when his phone is within reach, and it's why his study sessions happen with Hajime next to him (and even with him, Oikawa still manages to get his grubby hands on his phone.) His best friend was absolutely up to something, and it had been killing Iwaizumi that he didn't know what it was.
And then he'd gotten that cute, fated, statistically impossible text from a wrong number, and fallen into a cute flirting-but-not-really routine. They were kind, sweet, and willing to help him with trivial things like homework and make him his favorite food.
It was easier not really knowing who it was! That was mean to admit, sure, but even when Hajime had started catching feelings for the mystery number, he'd rationalised that it could never be you. Slowly but surely, his mystery texter had been getting him out the slump he had been feeling over his unrequited feelings, and instead of wondering about you, he was wondering when the next mystery number text would come.
But now you're her and she's you and his brain is going to explode. He doesn't have enough brain cells for this.
Hajime sighs, looking away from you and back to his worksheet. Algebra stares back at him with no mercy. "I have no brain cells." He mutters, amending his thoughts. In the seat next to him, Oikawa chuckles lightly.
"You've got enough to stare at her, though." He whispers, and Hajime feels his blood boiling. "I swear, when the bell rings, I'm going to-"
The teacher clears her throat loudly. "Iwaizumi-san, if you could refrain from speaking until I've finished..."
Iwaizumi feels his hot rage flood into his cheeks as embarrassment instead. "Of course, sorry sensei."
You catch his eye as he averts his eyes from the teacher, and you smile encouragingly. Hajime thinks the knot in his forehead gets worse. He feels himself go hotter, somehow, and quickly goes back to looking at his math equations. Oikawa's still fucking smirking.
"Denial, Iwa-chan."
There's something fishy in the way that Oikawa texted the group chat about getting lunch. Firstly, Oikawa liked western food for whatever reason, and whenever he asked to go out, he would picked a pricey French place. The rest of the team would debate for about 8 minutes before usually settling on a cheap soba place near the town centre. He'd claimed it was for a post-midterms celebration, and since the Christmas holidays had started, they might as well go somewhere altogether, as a team.
But Oikawa's suggested this expensive ramen place (which... alright, it's not like Oikawa never eats Japanese. But he doesn't prefer it, and Hajime is paranoid about whatever plan his best friend has hatched) and instead of shouting at him to lower the price, Makki and Mattsun agree immediately. Iwaizumi knows Makki is broke this week, after having to buy a replacement volleyball for the one they popped while roughhousing, so he doesn't understand why he'd agree to blowing 2000 yen on a single bowl of ramen.
The rest of the third years decline or agree. Iwaizumi thinks this is for plausible deniability, to make him think it's all alright. But when Oikawa @'s him in chat to confirm for the coming Thursday, he grudgingly agrees. He's wanted to try that ramen place for a while, anyway, and he's putting too much thought into this. It was just lunch with the team. It's fine.
Then the coming Thursday rolls around, and he's been standing outside the ramen place for 5 minutes and no-one is here and he's going to kill Oikawa-
To: [crying baby noises] From: You oikawa i swear to god where the fuck is everyone. i'm going to aim every spike in practice to you i swear. yahaba would help me
To: You From: [crying baby noises] WAHAHAHA it's okay iwa-chan, someone else you like much better than our sweaty volleyball team is coming ☆⌒(ゝ。∂)
To: [crying baby noises] From: You die in a ditch
To: You From: [crying baby noises] you won't be saying that after ur first date! (☆ω☆)
here's her number, since ur gonna need it!
[CRYING BABY NOISES] HAS SENT YOU A CONTACT
Iwaizumi grumbles the entire time he's punching in the number, intending to tell you that you've been set up and you don't need to bother coming, but his phone shows up with an error that he's already got the number saved. He stares at the notification, blinking once, twice, before the elation sets in and-
"Ah, Iwaizumi?" You call his name, walking quickly towards him and giving him a bashful smile. "Sorry I'm late. I wasn't worried because I thought it was just going to be Oikawa talking my ear off, but he texted me to say... well."
He just says your name, blushing but still grinning. You chuckle, and the little display of happiness pushes him to at least try and say something, "Oikawa gave me your number, but..." Iwaizumi trails off.
"He sent yours too." You explain, pulling your phone out and, at last, he's given proof that you're the mystery number and his grin manages to get wider. The cool winter air bites less than it did before. "But I already had it saved."
"Me too." Hajime says, taking a step closer to you and taking a hand tentatively. Your fingers slip between his, and your cheeks are pink from more than just the cold.
"I had a feeling it was you." You admit, still looking at him the way you do in his dreams. "It's nice to finally meet you properly, Phone-chan."
#haikyuu x reader#hq x reader#iwaizumi x reader#iwaizumi hajime x reader#hq imagines#haikyuu imagines#haikyuu!! imagines#this was SO hard to format please like n subscribe SKDVGSLKJFDLSK#this was crossposted to ao3 !#also i should rly write smthn huh. like something actually new
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( nick robinson, male, he/him ) have you heard about BRADY WRIGHT? they’re a 22 year old TEAM MEMBER in the VIDEOGRAPHY team. i don’t know what their last job was, all i know is that they’re originally from DENVER, CO. carol in hr said that they’re kinda STUBBORN and DEFENSIVE but jessica in marketing insists that they are CONFIDENT and PROTECTIVE. at the end of the day, no one is worthy of the instant hype here. i just hope they get to achieve their dream of being A DIRECTOR one day. According to the latest Vibez quiz, their Disney soulmate is ALADDIN.
hi!! nicole here, and this is brady! below you’ll find some background/bullets abt him, and you can also check out his STATS PAGE for more! i also listed some connections ideas at the bottom, but i’d love to discuss anything just based on who the muses are and what would work specifically for them.
im not actually on my laptop rn for opening unfortunately, so i might not immediately see your tumblr messages. feel free to add me on discord ( john ambrose mcclaren#1627 ) to message me there for plotting etc.!! otherwise i’ll get back to you later. NOW WITHOUT FURTHER ADO:
some background (TW homophobia):
brady is the third child of colonal bradford wright, sr. and isabella wright. his father obviously comes from the military and his mom is one of those stay-at-home military moms/wives with no actual hobbies. they’re also both from well-off families so, you know. they got moneyyyy.
the family moved around a lot due to general relocation and living on different military bases and things like that. as a result, brady and his 2 older siblings were all born in a different state. brady himself was born in colorado, where he lived for the first 7 years of his life. since then, he’s never lived somewhere longer than 5 years.
because of the lifestyles isabella and the colonel both came from in their own childhoods, and then all of the people the colonel was associated with over the years, brady was raised in an environment where appearance was key. his parents have all these rich friends and each of the children had to appear polite, put together, well-mannered, etc. when they went to their fancy parties. arguments were not well-received, so brady and his siblings learned to be quiet and get through it. it was never much of a choice at all.
the relationship with his parents, and especially his dad, is complicated. they’re strict, conservative, traditional... all the things brady isn’t. they were never quiet about the political/societal opinions and ensured the kids didn’t form their own. but of course, that was kinda bullshit, and brady and his siblings learned to think what they wanted. but it was complex at home. political debates just didn’t, or really couldn’t, happen. defying authority was simply not tolerated ― and having a father in the military was no joke. so brady didn’t argue. just like when he was a kid, he’d gotten good at shutting up and dealing with the terrible things they would say at the dinner table.
needless to say, brady discovering his own bisexuality in his early teens became a closely kept secret; his parents’ extremely conservative views and family trips to church every week made sure of that. now that he’s an adult, it’s become much less of a secret. if you’re a close friend of brady’s, you probably know that he’s bi. but it’s not quite something he’s shouting from any rooftops anytime soon. as difficult as things have been with his parents over the years, he’s just not quite ready for everything that would come along with coming out yet. so being totally out and proud is a work in progress for him atm.
more fun facts/info just about brady!
his full name is actually bradford (he’s a jr. named after his dad), but he simply will never tell that to anyone. so that’s brady to you, and always will be.
brady has always been more creative than he was ever truly able to express, so he spent a lot of time in his earlier years with an old camcorder he’d been given, messing around and making movies (and forcing his siblings and childhood friends to participate). it’s hard to tell for certain when it became the most important thing to him, but at some point brady decided videography was his passion and directing was his dream. so now you’d be hard pressed to find brady without his camera.
his sister introduced him to vibez and pushed him to apply as a way to do something he loves and is good at, so... here he is!!!
he’s also an artist, but it’s more of a hobby. he likes digital art and pencil sketches but also enjoys experimenting with paint.
he loves cryptids/true crime/all things paranormal. he even has a podcast just to talk about stories like that.
he played basketball for a long time when he was young. he thought about continuing with it and improving and at some point had dreams of going pro, but an injury in middle school stopped him from playing altogether, so there went that.
he smokes weed a lot.
he absolutely loves movies and keeps updated lists of his all-time and recent favorites.
he loves harry potter & is a gryffindor. also has a rescued black lab named draco.
he has a tattoo of an alien smoking weed on his arm that his friend gave him in their kitchen once.
he’s headstrong, sarcastic, stubborn, cocky, has daddy issues....... what more could you want, really!
we can discuss absolutely anything as far as plotting so hmu and i’ll get back to you asap!! im def quicker on discord. looking forward to writing with you all xoxo.
connections ideas just to get started:
best friends — i would love a few of these. give brady a squad pls!!
roommates — i’d love to have like 3-4 of them in the apartment. chaos
rivals — maybe someone else in the vid. department who gives brady a run for his money and they vie for a lot of the same projects!! could be friendly or genuine pettiness lmao
childhood friends — brady lived in different states constantly growing up so could apply to any muse regardless of where they’re from!!
the bad habits bro™ — he smokes weed a lot and has a horrible sleep pattern and takes too many shots of fireball sometimes so someone who doesn’t exactly help any of that sjdjdjdjw
podcast partner — has a lowkey, just for fun, not well known podcast to talk about true crime/supernatural/cryptid stories!! so anyone who likes that stuff too
mentor — someone higher up (probably in the same department) who gives him tips n tricks
exes/hookups/short flings/fwb etc. — all pretty self explanatory and there are likely quite a few in the last few years, bc brady has been Bad at romance
mutual or one sided dislike — just love the hate n angst
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Okay, I kinda wanna write something on the Carol/Jim factor of the latest episode.
Jim flirts. Jim flirts with everyone, theoretically. La'an, Uhura, Una, Spock. It's how he communicates friendliness and I really wager he just doesn't know the way he stares at people can be considered flirtatious either. He just genuinely finds them appealing, and fascinating. So... no this isn't him practicing infidelity, even if he were on with Carol at the moment.
Much like with Chapel, people do NOT give Carol any credit. She's a strong, professionally inclined woman, much like La'an. And Jim specifically tells La'an that her and Carol would get along. I'm willing to wager, like adults, both Jim and Carol have discussed what they're okay with in a relationship.
As for little baby David. Carol, what? Just got pregnant? Both of them know about it. They have ample time to stop the pregnancy if they so wish it. Which is not only fine in our day and age, but likely even simpler in the future. So they had to have discussed the baby, before she came to term.
Jim and Carol decided beforehand that Carol was going to keep David. Carol wanted to keep him. Jim having very little to say on the matter, except his approval (or disapproval?), because he still loves her, but knows they were never gonna stick together and so does she. Maybe he also wanted David to be born anyway, be raised by an amazing woman, become someone who was his own person, and Jim could love him from afar, but that's it.
Dead beat!dad simply isn't in the cards for him. And even if he was allowed to see David just a few times, all because he's not the majority of the time doesn't mean he's a bad dad. It just makes him absent. Perhaps not much of a relationship, but, hell, he didn't have much of one with his own father, and you know what? From his perspective, him and Sam came out just fine.
Now just a brief look at good ole Sam! Sam has work! Sam has a job! He's on the flagship! The enterprise, herself! He's most definitely discussed his career with his wife! Whether his wife or his children bear issue with his choice is another matter. We simply don't know unless we see them. Why demonize Sam for literally being on the ship that saves lives? The ship where any moment you can die?
Literally what is up with people encouraging unhealthy relationship dynamics?
Chapel shouldn't have to give up her career progress for Spock, Spock would never give up his career for anyone and he finds the only person he can love later (Jim) will sacrifice himself for the job as well. Chris and Batel in constant argument and miscommunication, Chapel and Spock too. And rightly so, because neither are communicating properly. Well, I'll wager that Jim and Carol did actually communicate. Because we know they can. We know both their characters!
This isn't to say David doesn't have another opinion. Neither his mother or father really thought properly of his emotional reaction to not having Jim in his life. But that's another matter, not easy to predict, likely the two did not think ahead that far. They're both fallible humans, who've saved countless peoples lives.
#Where No Man Has Gone Before and Then Some#star trek#spirk#star trek wrath of khan#jim kirk#carol marcus#star trek strange new worlds#star trek tos#I urge everyone to stop looking at your fellow human being as an infallible saint till they do something 'wrong' in your eyes#theres this culture of tainted beings#you're either a 'good person' or you're not#this is severely detrimental to your own mental health
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little t&a (paul/gene, nc-17) (part 12 of 29)
part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 part 11 part 12 part 13 part 14 part 15 part 16 part 17 part 18 part 19 part 20 part 21 part 22 part 23 part 24 part 25 part 26 part 27 part 28 part 29 Four weeks before KISS gets back on tour, Gene discovers that Paul’s been cursed by a groupie. For the sake of KISS’ finances, Paul’s comfort levels, and Gene’s libido, this crisis must be resolved. Sexswap fic. In this chapter: Ace and Peter discuss Paul’s crisis, with and without him, and Paul gives Gene some lessons.
Peter and Ace stuck around for a couple hours. Long enough that Paul heated up the leftover pizza for them, and Gene ended up getting two more delivered, while the forgotten remains of both their Dairy Queen milkshakes just melted in Paul’s car. Paul confessed to nearly everything, from when Gene had first come over to the call to Steve Rubell’s secretary.
Peter had been pretty loath to talk about witchcraft and ways to alleviate the curse at any real length. It seemed to make him as queasy as it did Gene. Ace, on the other hand, perused Paul’s occult books for awhile, and offered to scour some old hippie contacts and see if they still knew any witches.
“Or Suzie. But she would’ve told you herself if she knew anyone good.” Ace had shrugged, devouring another slice of pizza. “Thing is… thing is, you’re better off going to the source. You just don’t wanna mess with it yourself if you don’t have to. You got really fucked up. You don’t wanna risk making it any worse, getting someone else to try to fix it.”
“You think someone might turn me into a frog on accident?”
Ace had laughed.
“We could get you a cute costume that way. What d’you think, Geno?”
“We could get him a cute costume now.”
“Bet you already have.”
Paul’s face went red. Ace winked.
“But… really, thing is, this kind of shit isn’t your basic curse.”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing.”
“Y’know, bad luck for a couple months, bad acne, psoriasis, that kinda curse.” Ace ran a thumb across his own pockmarked cheek, then added, unnecessarily, “I’ve had this since I landed on Earth, it ain’t a curse—but that’s about all most witches could’ve done to you.”
“Anybody ever do anything to you, Ace?” Paul asked. It was a pretty fair question, Gene felt like. Ace used to run with a weird crowd. Still did. But Ace shook his head.
“Nah. Well, Suzie told me KISS’d never get a number-one single here. But that was more of a prediction—”
“She’s wrong.” Gene dismissed her out of hand. Across from him, sitting on the coffee table, Peter nodded in agreement. Ace shrugged.
“What I mean is, it could take awhile to fix, and that’s if she wants to fix it.”
“Ace, we’re not canceling the tour.”
“’M not saying cancel.” Ace gnawed heavily on his lip. Gene could tell he was just about to ask Paul for a beer. “But how far back do you think we could push it? Couple months?”
“We couldn’t push it back any without Bill wanting a reason why,” Gene said flatly.
“So let’s give him a reason why.” Ace exhaled. “I’ll… y’know, I never did have a big honeymoon with Jeanette. I could tell him I wanted three weeks for that.”
“That’s only three weeks—”
“Yeah, but…” Ace reached for the Tab Peter had been drinking out of, finishing it off with a gulp. “It’s about buying time. We could keep on finding excuses if we had to.”
“I don’t want you to have to,” Paul said. “I don’t want to fuck things up for everybody.”
The silence lingered for several moments. No one said a word to argue his point. Paul’s gaze lowered to one of the cardboard pizza boxes, and, next to it, the box of Gene’s Studio 54 clothes. Finally, Peter spoke.
“You can’t help it, Paulie. We’re gonna do what we can.” He rubbed his arm. “Could probably get my doctor to say I’ve gotta take off another month if I have to.”
“Don’t say anything yet.”
“I won’t. We won’t.” Peter hesitated. “Hey, you want us coming to 54 with you tonight?”
Ace perked up.
“That’d help. Four guys looking for the same girl. One of us could be in the basement, one in the VIP lounge upstairs—”
“You’d just be fucking in the basement,” Paul accused dryly.
“It’s good for running into people. Groupies all over there. Besides, Steve’s bunch is just as loaded as he is. They may not remember what girl you wanted.”
Ace had a point. Gene mulled it over, glancing at Paul, who nodded, before he answered.
“Yeah, okay. But not all in the same limo.”
“Aw, c’mon! Why not?”
“It’d attract too much attention. Everyone would be wondering where Paul was.”
“Me and Pete’ll go together. We’ll get there later so it’s not as obvious.” Ace took another slice of pizza. “Remind me again, yeah? Brown hair, freckles, short?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Carol… Carol Johnson?”
“Jensen.”
“Gotcha.” Ace shook his head. “God, Paulie, you gotta start making photo albums like Gene. You get better descriptions outta those police sketch artists.”
--
The rest of the afternoon was placid enough. Paul and Gene lazed around after Ace and Peter left. Gene turned on the T.V. and they watched The Edge of Night (how the hell that soap was still on, Gene didn’t know), Paul flopping next to him with his legs hanging over the couch. There was something comfortable about it. Paul only got up once the show’s credits streamed down the screen, turning it off.
“You don’t want to watch the news?”
“No. We’d still have half an hour. Besides, I wanted to show you something. C’mon.”
Gene followed him out of the living room, down the stairs to the den. He’d been there before, sure, but Paul had never really given him a house tour. KISS’ gold records hung from the wood-paneled walls, along with an assortment of posters and memorabilia from their earlier tours. All stuff Gene had at home himself—if anything, Gene had a lot more of it—but Paul didn’t acknowledge it, heading for three bookshelves packed with records.
“Back when I was in high school,” he said, “I used to try to buy one album every couple of weeks. I’d have to get the cut-outs.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So once we got big, I decided I’d get every record I ever wanted.” Paul grinned a little ruefully. “But I didn’t really think it through, so this is what I ended up with.”
“Uh-huh.” Gene tugged out a copy of Alvin and the Chipmunks’ “Witch Doctor.” “I think that goes without saying.”
“C’mon, I was a kid when that came out.”
“Do you have ‘Flying Purple People Eater,’ too?”
“Don’t laugh, I might.” Paul started thumbing through the shelves. Gene almost told him not to go looking for it, but instead of the Sheb Wooley single, Paul took out a copy of Rod Stewart’s latest offering, last year’s A Night on the Town. Gene looked at it quizzically.
“What’s this for?”
“Good luck.” Paul slid the record out of its sleeve and handed it to Gene. “Put it on.”
Gene put it on. The vinyl crackled appreciably. Last year’s hit on that first track. Rod Stewart could pair filthy lyrics with a number-one hit, while KISS was stuck going the clean ballad route just to hit the top ten.
“‘Tonight’s the Night’?” Oh. That made sense. Well, it made some sense. Gene was getting the impression Paul might not have thought his selection through, as Rod started to gravel-voice his way into getting a virgin into bed. “Hoping for a pretty exciting evening, aren’t you?”
“Not—Gene, I meant we’d find the girl.” Paul tapped Gene’s shoulder with the album jacket. “It’s positive thinking. Norman Vincent Peale and all that.”
Gene grinned.
“Pretty raunchy. I thought you’d pick a cleaner pick-me-up.”
“Whatever, I like it.” Paul propped the jacket against the record player. His face was faintly flushed. “The whole album’s pretty good.”
“I know. I have it.” Gene listened to the saxophone’s croon before cutting in again. “You really just wanted me to see your record collection?”
“No. Not exactly.” Paul shifted. “Look, I know you don’t really go to the discos much.”
“So? Paul, I don’t mind doing it for you.”
“Yeah, but… shit, I don’t know. You got bored last night.”
“I didn’t get bored. I had a pretty good view.”
Paul rolled his eyes.
“There’s not a lot to do at 54 besides get wasted and dance. And neither of us is going to get wasted.”
That was true of any club, and most of why he didn’t go. He could get laid just as easily in his own neighborhood, without the hassle of dressing up and schmoozing.
“It’s fine. Maybe I’ll bring a book.”
“Gene.” Paul had his tongue peeking slightly past his teeth. Nervous. “I wanna teach you to dance.”
“What for?”
“So you’ll have something to do. That way, we don’t look like creeps waiting around.” The first track was edging towards the halfway point. Paul took his hand. “What do you say?”
“Don’t you want something a little faster?”
“No. This is good.” Paul took Gene’s other arm, positioning his hand on his shoulder. “You can dance to anything, if you’ve got rhythm.”
“You’re leading.”
“Damn right.” Paul had his other hand on his waist already, was urging him forward with that hand. Gene took an obedient, offbeat step, and Paul sighed but stepped back in time with Gene instead of with the beat. A couple more steps and Paul had them back on track again, although Gene felt about as awkward as he had during senior prom ten years prior. “It’s mirroring, mostly. Mirroring and—getting a feel for your partner, what they can do.”
“A feel, huh?”
“Getting a feel, not copping one.” Paul pursed his lips in consideration. “Don’t watch your feet so much. Keep it up here.”
“When did you start dancing?”
“I dunno. I always wanted to.” He was starting to get more complicated than the sort of forward-back motion that was all Gene could readily accomplish. Shifting more than his feet around. Had he been doing that from the beginning? Paul’s grip on him was more relaxed than the reverse, that much was definite. “Just one of those stupid things. I used to watch all those variety shows when I was a kid, and think, ‘hey, I could do that.’ Dance, sing… puppeteer…” Paul snorted, and dropped his arm from Gene’s waist. Gene almost let go entirely, but then Paul squeezed his hand, raising it up. Gene gave him a blank look in return, before realizing, several beats too late, that Paul had been trying to get him into a spin.
“Puppeteer?”
“Howdy Doody’s a—formative influence—”
“Uh-huh.” The mildly disappointed expression on Paul’s face made him a little concerned, and he added, “Try that again, I wasn’t ready.”
Paul lifted his arm again. Gene made the spin, his movements stilted, feeling a bit stupid for all of it until he saw Paul start to grin.
“Maybe we should try it like this.”
“Like what?”
Rod had just about made it with the girl, the moaned-out French at the end of the track something Gene could only guess at. Paul just took him by both hands.
“A little less formal, right? Hang on.” Paul let go, hurrying back to the record player. Gene watched him take the vinyl off and stuff it back into the sleeve and jacket, before rummaging around the shelves again. He pulled out another record, though this time he didn’t show Gene the jacket before putting it on. Not that it mattered. Gene recognized the harmonies anyway, well before Paul made his way back to where he was standing. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s Deja Vu.
“Figured we could go way back.” Paul took his hands again as the record played, his steps faster, more energetic. Gene didn’t really think the band had meant for anyone to dance to their stuff. He kept up awkwardly at first, but something about how enthusiastic Paul was, how much he put into every move, how he tried to fit the steps to the songs, buoyed him. His curls would bounce a bit depending on the tempo. It was almost cute to watch. Almost infectious. Gene hesitated before trying to get Paul into a turn himself, getting a gratified look and an eager spin in return. He was starting to get it, a bit, the way just a shift or a squeeze of the hand was enough of a signal of where to turn or where he was headed. Like that sense he’d get, that sense they’d all get, if one of the guys was having an off night and they needed to cover during a concert. It was warm, intuitive.
Paul was breathing a little heavily by the time they’d gone through the first few tracks, hands sweaty. Gene tried to get him into one more spin as the record buzzed. He caught Paul’s shoulder with his free hand while he was halfway through, his back towards Gene’s. He wasn’t sure why he’d done it. Paul stopped there, turning to look at Gene, questioning.
“Something wrong?”
“No. I’m fine.” Gene shifted forward—a bad idea; they’d been closer than he realized, and now he was up against him. The melancholic harmonies of “Country Girl” were starting to swell. Gene pursed his suddenly dry lips, feeling stupid, no, feeling absolutely moronic, as he let go of Paul’s hand. “I—I think we better get ready.”
Paul’s expression drooped only for a moment, like the hesitant flicker of lights just before a power outage. His hand went to his side.
“Oh. Oh, yeah. Lemme get the record.” He took a step, Gene’s hold on his shoulder slackening to nothing, Gene’s hand faltering down to his own side, and walked over to retrieve the record, the moment fading away before he even lifted the needle.
--
A few hours later, Peter and Ace were in a limo, grousing. They’d gotten ready for Studio 54 earlier than they’d meant to from sheer antsiness, and now they were reduced to making the driver get them fast food they didn’t even want to kill time.
Well, Peter didn’t want it, but he was pretty sure Ace would eat his share for him. He was also sure it wasn’t quite enough of a delaying tactic to keep him and Ace from arriving right around when Paul and Gene did, but Ace reassured him he could keep that from happening. Peter sighed, glancing out the window to make sure the driver wasn’t on his way out of the restaurant yet, before speaking again.
“What do you think about it?”
Ace raised his head slightly at the question. He had brought a deck of cards and was shuffling them as they waited. Sometimes he’d lift the cards up into a sloppy arc as he riffled through them. He’d been fairly quiet, no real goofing off, not even any drinking, since they’d doubled back to Peter’s, gotten ready for the evening, and scrounged up the limo. Two nights in a row at 54 might’ve been murder on a normal human being, but in his less-sober moments, Peter could convince himself he’d spent the last four years with Jendell’s most questionable export.
“What do I think about what, Pete?”
“What we’re gonna do about Paul.”
“Nothing to do about Paul. Either he gets back to normal or he doesn’t.”
“I meant the band.” None of them had really wanted to bring it up. Ace had only barely alluded to it when he’d offered to delay the tour with a honeymoon. “If we don’t find that girl, or Paul doesn’t get back to normal, what’s going to happen to the band?”
“You know what’s going to happen.” Ace sounded more quietly cynical than he had in a long time. “We all know what’s going to happen.”
“I’m not kicking Paul out of his own fucking band.”
“I’m not, either. And Gene’d rather get a tongue reduction than hurt Paul like that.” Ace shifted, kicking his heels up to the glass partition between them and the driver, while he kept toying with the deck in his hands. “We’ll all just have to pack it up. If he doesn’t get fixed, KISS is gone.”
Pack it up. The thought felt like the gum beneath a desk at school. Peter didn’t like thinking about the options. They could all try solo acts—he felt like he had a better shot than the others, given “Beth”… or join up in some other band, but it felt… dirty. It wasn’t like Paul had gotten on drugs or turned into a completely insufferable asshole or blown out his voice. He’d just had something shitty happen to him that they couldn’t—
“Do you think Bill could spin it? Let’s say… let’s say we don’t tell him everything.” Peter was trying to think. “Let’s say Paul’s fucked off, but hey, we found a replacement that kinda looks like him. A real pretty girl. We got a whole new market. Chicks don’t ever front rock bands—”
“Petey, we couldn’t keep it up.” Ace gnawed his lip. “Bill’d still wanna know who this girl was. Even if Paul could fool him, we’d still get blown out of the water the minute people started asking questions. We’d need IDs, a passport…”
“We could get fakes made.”
“Then what?” Ace shook his head. “Paul’d be living like that guy in The Fugitive. Worse. Having to pretend he really was some random chick in front of the whole damn world… I don’t wanna shoot you down, man, but we’re sunk.”
Peter groaned.
“KISS is sunk and Gene gets a girlfriend. Fucking terrible trade-off.”
“Poor Geno.” Ace laughed. “He might figure it’s worth it, you think?”
“Nah. Gene likes money more than he likes getting laid.” Peter swallowed. “You think they’ve fucked yet?”
“C’mon, Paulie’s a lady,” Ace managed, before bursting into those weird, high giggles again. “He won’t give it up that quick. How long did it take you to warm him up to it?”
“Not too long.”
Ace held the deck up. Peter shook his head. Shrugging, Ace started trying to cut the deck with one hand, and flip the halves over with his thumb. He only succeeded in spilling most of the deck onto the floorboard and seats. Peter reached over, obediently helping him gather up the cards and handing them back over. Ace winked, taking the stack.
“What’s on your mind, anyway, Cat?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.” Ace said it lightly. “You’re not really worried about whether Gene’s made it with him or not.”
“God, no.” The thought was more disturbing than it needed to be. “It’s just that I should’ve figured it out from the start.” Peter let out an irritated breath. “Gene only saw him once and figured it out. It took me three times. Paul had to tell me before I—"
“Hey, you got him, that’s the important thing.”
“Yeah, but… he wasn’t good at pretending the first time. He called me Pete. And the second time, he kept trying to tell me—”
“Pete, c’mon, you weren’t expecting him to look like that—”
“Makes me think I don’t really know him.”
Ace looked at him almost sadly. He’d stopped fiddling with the deck of cards, setting them on his thigh.
“You know him better than you think.”
“You think so?”
“Positive.” Ace’s head jerked up suddenly. Peter’s gaze followed his, and he saw the beleaguered limo driver heading out of the restaurant, with two sackfuls of barbeque sandwiches, fries, and a couple of sodas. Ace put an unnecessary finger to his lips as the driver opened their door and handed over the sacks. “Hey, man, thanks. Didja get yourself anything?”
“I shouldn’t eat on the job.”
“C’mon, I used to drive cabs, I’d eat in there all the time.” Ace cackled, digging awkwardly in his back pocket. “Get some food if you want. Then come back in here. We’ll play some poker before you take us over.”
“You’re not worried about the time?”
“Nah. I got the time if you got the money.” He grinned. “Hey, hey, Petey’ll spot you, right?”
“I ain’t spotting anyone.”
“Then the best hand gets… aw, hell, I dunno. You beat us three times in a row and we’ll bring you into the disco, you dig?”
As the driver sidled into the back of the limo, Peter scooted over to give him room. Five minutes later, barbeque sandwich in one hand, a straight in the other, Peter decided they were going to be late after all.
#kiss the band#kiss fanfiction#paul stanley#gene simmons#gene simmons x paul stanley#ace frehley#peter criss
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My Review of To Heart
How did I get into this anime? I have been curious about this anime for a straight-up decade now and the randomizer decided to bless me with something not incest. Thank you Arceus!
Since she was young, Akari Kamigishi has been best friends with Hiroyuki Fujita. Because of kind acts he did for her as a child, Akari has stayed by Hiroyuki’s side. Now that they’re both in high school, something has changed in Akari and it feels more like she’s falling for her childhood friend. Will Akari find happiness with her best friend or will she end up friend-zoned?
And because this is a harem, there are quite a few girls hanging around Hiroyuki throughout the two seasons. Just to name a few, we have the brash friend, Shiho. Then there’s the tomboy type, Aoi. The very silent type, Serika! And then there’s the robotic maid, Multi. Yes, you read right. A robot! This is Japan after all! Oh yeah, there’s also the class rep, an actual American girl, and a quiet girl with supernatural powers.
Akari, girl, you need to step up your game if you’re up against all these chicks!
BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: Before I discuss all that, let’s go down the ugly story about To Heart for fans in the U.S. The first season (and only the first season) was dubbed by RightStuf (at least I’m certain about that). Everything else wound up undubbed and even unlicensed. To Heart was kind of left in the dust due to what happened when the first season was supposed to release in the U.S. A lot of damaged material was the culprit and this came during the time when animation was transitioning from animating using cells to going digital. So to sum that up, the anime debuted in Japan around 1999, Rightstuf licensed To Heart in 2004 with a release in 2005, and the actual release was delayed to 2007. And in back-in-those-days times, that’s pretty fucking long. I can see why they didn’t want to bother with this series after it took all that trouble to remaster a series many were calling only “OKAY”.
Now then, on with the good stuff! I went in thinking that this was a Geneon reject, but was blown out of my ass to hear voices from New York! Lisa Ortiz, Jessica Calvello, Veronica Taylor, Wayne Grayson, and my personal favorite (not who you’re thinking), Carol Jacobanis! Yeah, surprisingly I didn’t hear Ted Lewis here. But Jacobanis is my second favorite in the NYAV group. I am in nostalgia heaven! Yes folks, these were the same people to give life to many characters from Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Berserk, His and Her Circumstances, Bakuman, Gravitation…OH, gambled and lost! Well, you get my meaning! Thankfully this dub wasn’t as horrific as Gravitation (despite Hiroyuki’s voice actor is well-known for something from that particular anime). Here’s what you might recognize these folks from!
JAPANESE CAST: *Akari is played by Ayako Kawasumi (known for Ursula on Pokemon DP, Saber on Fate/Zero, Izumi on Beyond the Boundary, Aoki on Bakuman, Laura on Index, Yoshida on Shakugan no Shana, and Nodame on Nodame Cantabile)
*Hiroyuki is played by Kazuya Ichijo (known for Hoteye on Fairy Tail and Zafila on Nanoha)
*Shiho is played by Chieko Higuchi (known for Tomo on Azumanga Daioh)
*Multi is played by Yui Horie (known for Hanekawa on Monogatari, Tohru on Fruits Basket, Hanyuu on Higurashi, Minorin on Toradora, Charla on Fairy Tail, Chie on Persona 4, Maria on Umineko, and Riki on Little Busters)
ENGLISH CAST: *Akari is played by Debora Rabbai (known for Mika from Gravitation, Rika on His and Her Circumstances, Leina on Queen’s Blade, and Boogiepop [original])
*Hiroyuki is played by Rich McNanna (known for Jack Walker on Pokemon Movie 9 and Shuuichi on Gravitation)
*Shiho is played by Jessica Calvello (known for Prima on Pokemon, Hange on Attack on Titan, Excel on Excel Saga, Kanako on Maria Holic, Tsukino on His and Her Circumstances, and Aika on Aria the Animation)
*Multi is played by Tara Sands (known for Richie on Pokemon, Soujirou on Rurouni Kenshin, Mokuba on YGO, Badiane on Sailor Moon SuperS movie, Tori on Pokemon Movie ~ Deoxys, and Filia on Slayers Try)
SHIPPING: So remind me what genre this anime is!
HAREM!
We’re watching a harem! But it’s more slice of life than anything romantic. There are a lot of love interests for Hiroyuki throughout the series. It’s just that it doesn’t develop as much as one might think (except for maybe Akari) in season one.
And it’s so easy to think that Hiroyuki is the object of every one of these ladies’ desire. Serika waits for him to come to the club room. Aoi finds him helpful, as does Tomoko and Lemmy. Multi got attached to Hiroyuki’s headpats. As for Akari, she’s got quite the teddy bear collection because of Hiroyuki. After watching all of season one where Hiroyuki is hanging with all of these ladies individually, I thought there would be a moment of jealousy from one or more of these girls. Much to my surprise, that was not the case. It didn’t go down any of those bad-end routes you’d see with things like Kanon, Clannad, or God-forbid, School Days!
But then season two happened…
Ooh boy! First of all, Hiroyuki ended up getting his first confession of love from the most unlikely person ever. Kotone wasn’t even a contender in the first season as she had other issues. In fact, didn’t she have feelings for Masashi in season one? But halfway in the season, she gets ballsy and confesses to Hiroyuki. He rejects her and thankfully it didn’t get ugly (except Akari heard it and got jealous). Lemmy, I also thought wasn’t in play, but here we are! She was apparently childhood friends with Hiroyuki and brought it up when confessing her feelings. That unfortunately came at a bad time as he’s in a quarrel with Akari so he dismisses her.
And then there’s Akari! She’s been able to put on a smile and kind of be a wall-flower whenever Hiroyuki is doing something with one of the other girls. And most of the season, we see him mostly with Aoi and Multi. Thankfully, Aoi never showed romantic interests in Hiroyuki. I much prefer Aoi x Kotone if you want to know the truth. But halfway into season two, jealousy came in like a drunkard in a bar. Akari was definitely pissed when she saw Kotone confess to Hiroyuki and would get jealous seeing Hiroyuki and Multi together so much.
Oh yeah, good old Multi! Yes Multi loves Hiroyuki. Now does Hiroyuki love Multi back? It’s complicated! Because of Multi, Hiroyuki ends up pursuing a career in robotics and as a result spends quite a bit of time with her (pissing Akari off in the process). But because Multi is kind of a malfunctioning robot, who the hell knows if she’ll even remember being with Hiroyuki.
Now are there other boys interested in any of these other girls? The only other boy that has any prominent screen time is Masashi. It’s just that after season one, he’s only seen every so often because he’s busy with soccer. But in season one, it almost felt like Kotone was admiring him from the distance. Don’t get excited because that was just a one-and-done sort of thing before Kotone set eyes on Hiroyuki. Actually, Masashi does reveal his fondness for Akari (at literally the worst possible time). But it seems like Masashi ends up with Shiho in the end. So…whatever!
Hiroyuki DOES end up with someone. Just go down to the end of season two to get that answer.
ENDING TO SEASON ONE: The last two episodes of this season consist around Shiho deciding that she wants to throw a Christmas party at an old hangout from her middle school days! But this isn’t the only nostalgic kick she feels. Shiho ends up remembering the first day she met Hiroyuki and after he took care of a wound she got, Shiho starts seeing Hiroyuki in a new light. Yeah, up until this point, Shiho and Hiroyuki’s relationship could be summed up by saying they both give each other shit every day. Then you have Akari, who is also feeling a little nostalgic with trying to see if Hiroyuki is able to remember things from their past. During the finale however, Akari does develop a cold and has to bail on the party planning.
When Shiho came to visit Akari, it kinda comes out that both girls do care for Hiroyuki. But because this isn’t one of those kinds of romance animes, it really doesn’t get ugly. It’s more of an “I acknowledge your feelings for the boy I like and good luck to you”. Shiho really didn’t do any confessing and we get a cute moment with Hiroyuki and Akari out in the snow.
Let’s see how Season Two holds up!
OMAKE: Nozomi Entertainment also released the six Omake specials that came with releases of the first season. Not dubbed! Just a couple of minute-long specials that range from cute to wildly absurd.
There were also Omake specials in season two that mostly consisted of all the girls fighting each other in almost a Street Fighter or Dragon Ball style.
REMEMBER MY MEMORIES: Five years after the first season aired, To Heart returns with a bit of a time-leap from where we left off last and some slightly improved(?) animation. And if you’re wondering why this season isn’t called “To Heart 2”, there is a series named that already. To Heart 2 is a spin-off of To Heart. It’s just that none of the characters from To Heart are in To Heart 2. ANYWAYS…
It has been a year or so from where we left off. Hiroyuki, Akari and the others are now in their senior year of high school and a lot has changed. Minor character, Kotone who mostly kept to herself in the first season, has found another role in hanging out with Aoi (the chick who’s into martial arts). Serika is still silent, but that blue hue to her hair is definitely not silent. What the hell is with this new animation? And finally, Multi apparently left a year ago and came back in the first episode of season two. Only now Multi has amnesia. A lot has changed since season one, especially when it comes to romance. Buckle up!
ENDING TO REMEMBER MY MEMORIES: Yeah, this season layed on the melodrama really thick compared to the previous season. All the ladies love Hiroyuki and at least half of them expressed those feelings to him. Akari had some conflicted feelings when it came to Hiroyuki. She loves him, but feels like he doesn’t return the feeling due to him hanging around a lot of other girls (especially Aoi and Multi).
Speaking of Multi, this girl has had such the rotunda of computer issues. My stroked-out Dell PC from 2005 had more working power than this girl! For starters, her memories are in danger of being wiped away at several points of the series. We even begin season two where Multi returns after over a year with full-blown amnesia. And since then, Multi had some sort of malfunction issue arise every other episode. This was showcased in the finale, where Multi gets so upset and runs away to the amusement park!
So, Hiroyuki and all of his friends come together to look for Multi. They thankfully found her at the amusement park (during closed hours) and broke into the main-frame to the Ferris wheel. And did I mention these people almost committed assault on police officers? Yeah, these kids are about to have a rap sheet the size of Texas by the end of the episode. Anyways, Hiroyuki, Akari, and Multi ride the ferris wheel and have a nice talk before Multi falls asleep for…
…Let’s say a long time…
Fast-forward to high school graduation! Hiroyuki and Akari seem to be doing a lot better. They’re both going to attend the same college and are pretty much on better terms than when Akari was having a jealousy, bitch-fit. At graduation, they both decided to give each other the Christmas gifts they never gave each other. Because Multi was having another malfunction, they never got to give the gifts. Hiroyuki got a hand-knit sweater. And Akari got a ring!
Hiroyuki wanted it and so he put a ring on it!
During the ED credits, we see the characters we’ve seen throughout these two seasons and what they ended up doing after high school. Lemmy is back in San Francisco. Aoi and Kotone are still doing the fighting matches. Rio is a primary school teacher. Serica is still into the occult. Tomoko is working for her father’s business. Masashi is becoming a big soccer star with Shiho working on journalism (and I think Shiho ends up romantically involved with Masashi).
And we close with Hiroyuki and Akari working with the HMX robots and surprise, surprise, Multi wakes up.
And before you ask, I did NOT watch To Heart 2. And I don’t intend to…at least not yet. I’m saving it for another day and putting it back on the randomizer list.
This anime was…just okay. Yeah, a lot of things were predictable, especially when it came to who the main male lead was going to end up with. Come on, we all know Akari was going to end up with Hiroyuki in the end. If this were the visual novel, I’m sure there were infinite numbers of routes Hiroyuki could take and there’d be a good end to all of the girls. But I’m mostly anime only here! In terms of recommendations, ehh…I feel like there were other better harems you could watch.
Only season one of To Heart got an official release in the U.S., but you might have to search around for any DVD copies as I’m pretty sure it’s currently out of print. Anything else from the series, you’ll have to do some heavy searching to watch all the way through.
Okay, next licensed limbo/unlicensed classics!
What’s that one play everyone and their mother has seen, but you haven’t?
*sighs* Hamilton.
No, the other one.
Les Miserable? Wait, this never got licensed?!
Okay! I guess I’m watching that. I hope I can do well at this review considering I never watched the play, read the book, or watched that film where Russell Crowe can’t sing.
#anime review#to heart#to heart remember my memories#hiroyuki fujita#akari kamagishi#shiho nagaoka#hmx-12 multi#kotone himekawa
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10x21: Diverged - First Analysis
Okay, how did everyone like the episode? Did you see all the symbolism? If not, fear not, I’ll show it to you.
***As always, spoilers abound below for 10x21. Don’t read until you’ve watched!!!***
So let me start by saying this. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. The point of the six bonus episodes it retell, symbolically, every facet of Beth’s story. So 10x17 represented Inmates, but also 4b in general. I said HERE that it reminded me of everyone being split into small groups in 4b. But they were also tracking children’s foot tracks (in this case Hershel Jr) which is weirdly specific to what Beth and Daryl did in Inmates.
10x18 retold most of Beth and Daryl’s story through Leah. So there were elements of Inmates, Still, and even Coda in it. But it’s pretty much a play-by-play of Alone. Play. By. Play.
10x19 with Aaron and Father Gabriel can be called a retelling of Still. They get drunk. Playing drinking games. Play golf.
10x20 is all about Grady recalls, with the imprisonment theme and all.
So, where does that leave 10x21? As with all of them, there is lots of symbolism I’ll point out, but it’s kind of a scene by scene retelling of Them. I know others may go through it in more detail to show the exact parallels, so I’ll just go over the broad themes today. Tomorrow, I’ll do my normal details post.
So, it starts with Daryl giving Carol Leah’s knife, which is a retelling in reverse of her giving him Beth’s. She does try to return it to him at the end and he declines, which is super important. I’ll get into that more as we get into the weeds of this, but let’s go over this template first so you can see the broad strokes.
Starting with 10x18 (and I’m following the Daryl/Carol template here, so put Leah aside for the moment), Daryl and Carol get on his bike and leave together. They’re on the outside together for a while, searching for something. Mostly food in this case, though Daryl might have originally been planning to search for Connie. After a time, they come to a place where they spend the night, that has ties to one of their pasts. (In this case, Daryl/Leah.) Then they have an argument. The next day, they part ways.
We’ve actually seen this exact template before, in S5. It comprised 5x02 and 5x06. Daryl and Carol left together in a vehicle (car rather than bike that time). They were out for a while searching for something (Beth). They came to a place where they spent the night that had ties to one of their pasts (in that case, Carol and the abuse center).
The next day, they have a fight. In that case, it was about Noah and Carol wanting Daryl to help him. Not nearly as big or impactful a fight as in 10x18, but the conflict parallels are there. Then, they part ways. The mechanisms, again, are different. In 10x21, they chose to part ways. In Consumed, it’s because the Grady cops hit Carol with the car and took her into the hospital. But I don’t think the reasons matter. Just the basic events.
So what happened next in S5? Daryl went back to get Rick and TF, but then returned to where Carol (and Beth) were at Grady, right? Well, we’ve already established firmly that Dog = Beth. And notice that in this episode, Dog went with Carol. Are we seeing the symbolism?
So what follows with Carol is very reminiscent of Grady in some way. Now, unlike Princess, they can’t actually have Carol imprisoned here, because it wouldn’t work for where they need her to be in the story going into S11. So it’s all going to be symbolic.
Carol/Dog/Rat:
I said a few days ago that Rat = Beth. Think of it this way. Rat was minding his own business when Dog suddenly attacks him. So you could see that as Dog and Rat kind of being synonymous symbols. Actually, if we want to get really granular, Rat was in Daryl’s room. We’ll ignore the obvious romantic/sexual pun and just say it represents that rat (Beth) was hanging out with Daryl. Then someone tries to kill Rat. In this case, Carol.
We even have rat getting caught in Carol’s trap (Beth being kidnapped and taken to Grady) but escaping. Then Carol traps Rat in the wall by plugging up the way in with the scarf.
At that point, Rat is not only trapped, but kind of entombed behind the wall. And Carol can’t see Rat. (What is not seen theme.)
Now, in terms of Carol herself, I’ll talk about what they said on TTD, because it’s very helpful in deciphering all this. But in terms of the symbolism, we think what she does here probably equates to stuff that happened during the missing 17 days and whatever role she played in leaving Beth behind. Because of that, it’s kind of hard to pin down.
Other clues? Dog = Beth right? And not only is Dog present with Carol here, but he even watches over her while she sleeps, same as Beth did while Carol was unconscious at Grady. And Carol is definitely a “prisoner” of her own past and her own mind here. She’s clearly obsessing about things like Rat and soup and the scarf because she can’t “fix” bigger things in her life, like her relationship with Daryl or that Connie is still missing and that’s on her. I’ll talk more about this theme in a minute.
Daryl/Bike/Walkers:
Daryl’s arc here is also chalk full of symbolism that I don’t think I’ve even entirely pinned down, yet, but I really love it. In Daryl’s case, the bike breaks down, right? There’s a hole in one of the hoses that’s leaking stuff, which makes the bike stall, and he has to go find the tools and resources to fix it.
So, here’s how we’re interpreting this: bike = Beth. Why? Well, I think we can all get behind music box = Beth, can’t we? (If not, I don’t know why you’re following my account.) And remember that I said this was a replay of Them. Just as Daryl fixed the music box in Them,
he fixes the bike here.
The train tracks are another clue. He takes the bike to the tracks and leaves it there. You know I think train tracks are indicative of Beth’s path, but I’m also sure they’re a multi-layered symbol with many meanings.
In S4, Beth was the only one who didn’t actually follow the tracks. She crossed them. Daryl did too, initially, but he later followed them to Terminus with Rick and Michonne. Beth was the only one who never did that and therefore never ended up at Terminus. Her path would be completely different. We saw hints of this symbolism in 6x08, when Daryl crossed train tracks on his bike after being hurt, and we see the same thing here.
The “hole” in the bike hose represents Beth’s gunshot wound, dripping blood. Daryl leaves the bike to go look for something to fix it with. So, this part is kinda non-specific.
You could say leaving the bike where it was in the woods = leaving Beth behind. But where does he search for the part?
In a group of 3 cars with a walker inside, which is also indicative of where we think they left her. So, this whole sequence kind of points to the missing 17 days and leaving her behind. With the bike being “dead,” (read: unconscious for a human) Daryl pushes the bike manually, which may parallel him carrying Beth.
My fellow theorists and I discussed the idea that back in S5, Daryl didn’t have the “tools” to fix Beth after she was shot, or the understanding not realize she wasn’t really dead. But at some point, he will. We don’t know what the “fixing” point refers to overall, or how it will manifest in the show. It could be lots of things. Literal, medical, emotional. Who knows? But it’s interesting.
Now, on the one hand, this points backward, to those missing scenes. But I always say every callback doubles as a foreshadow. After all, if Daryl had “fixed” Beth during those missing 17 days, she wouldn’t be missing and presumed dead, right? And in Them, we see him fix the music box, and the next scene is Aaron showing up with “good news” and the music box waking up. Clearly that didn’t happen with Beth in S5. So at some point, this shifts from a callback to a foreshadow of what will happen when he actually finds her again.
Now, in order to understand (as far as we can) this symbolism, I will have to get somewhat granular. Because the whole sequence is very strange. Daryl stops the bike on the tracks and looks through his binoculars. (Binocular Theory). It doesn’t really show us what he sees or what he’s trying to do, but I think the idea is that he sees the military walker and is hoping to find a smaller knife on him that he needs to fix his bike.
Imma come back to the knives, because they’re a theory all their own, but let’s examine the events first. He leaves the bike on the tracks and moves forward. Now, I had to watch this several times to understand it. I think the idea is that there were walkers on both sides of the tracks that hadn’t noticed him. They’re milling around but not focused on him. So he’s hoping to slip, unnoticed, between them. Unfortunately, he snaps a twig under his foot and they all turn toward him.
Everyone’s been asking about the Beth walker. She’s definitely here in this scene. I almost wonder, if she represents Beth, if it’s supposed to be that she’s there, close by, but he’s focused on something else, and doesn’t notice her. I kept thinking he would kill this walker, but he never does, and I think that’s significant.
Also, these military walkers probably represent the CRM. So, for example, this may represent a future storyline where Daryl has a run-in with some members of the CRM. He manages to get away here, which probably means during that future interaction, he’ll get away, too. But he may not realize Beth is with the CRM. So she’s there, hanging around, but he’s too focused on other things to notice.
(Disclaimer: I’m not saying this is exactly what this scene foreshadows. As always, the details will probably be wrong, but it’s something along these lines.)
Now, there are a lot of weirdnesses in this scene. He suddenly starts limping, for one thing. He wasn’t limping before this, and he doesn’t have the limp when he returns to Alexandria. So to me, that screams that this is a foreshadowing of something we haven’t seen yet. When whatever this sequence foreshadows plays out, Daryl will probably be dealing with an injury of some kind.
He hurries toward a ravine where a military walker is caught in a tree. (Tree/Trunk symbolism anyone?)
So, in terms of this episode, he obviously saw the military walker and hoped this dude might have a knife on him that Daryl could use to fix his bike. That’s what he’s up to here. And it turns out, he does.
Symbolically, it’s a whole other ballgame. In terms of the binocular theory, I always thought Red Poncho Guy, who Daryl and Aaron looked at through binoculars, represented Beth. Both because of the red poncho (red garment in Beth’s cell in 4x01) and because he was taken by the Wolves. It’s possible the Wolves are the symbolic antecedent of the Reapers or the CRM. Or both.
So, I think this whole sequence where he walks along the tracks, past the Beth walker, and then interacts with these military walkers that probably represent the CRM, is a foreshadow or future telling of how he’ll find Beth. Because of the limp, maybe he gets injured and the CRM take him somewhere—like they did with Rick—and that’s where he find Beth.
How is that represented here? He finds the knife he needs to fix the bike.
And again, we don’t know what the “fixing” will mean in a literal sense when this plays out. Maybe fixing is just finding her. Because that will “fix” the hole she left in his heart when he lost her. Maybe it will mean something else.
But the knife itself is important. Why? Because it’s…kinda cooler than Leah’s knife? It’s bigger. It does more stuff. It’s a better tool and a better weapon. It’s kind of life Knife 2.0. And how many times have we talked about how when Beth returns, she’ll be tougher, stronger, a better survivor. She’ll be Beth 2.0. They even said that in the TTD after Still. Remember the phrase they used? “Raised by Hershel, trained by Daryl, meet the new Beth Green.”
So, remember that Leah represents everything that came before in S4 and S5, so her knife then represents the old Beth. The one that died at Grady, emotionally if not physically. Knife 2.0 then represents the new Beth as she’ll be when Daryl finds her again. And where he did find Knife 2.0? With the military/CRM walker.
See what I mean?
A couple of details that parallel this to Them: When Daryl fights the military walker, he slides down into a dry creek bed. There was a dry creek bed in Them. There’s also a small bridge behind him (Bridge Theory) with a circular opening for water to pass under it. (Beth = Water.)
When he gets out of the ravine, he sort of goes a different way and all the walkers that were coming after him just sort of fall into the ravine. That’s exactly what happened in Them. Remember? TF was on the bridge and they would wait for the walkers to come close and then jump out of the way so they all fell off the bridge? Yeah. Replay of Them.
So then Daryl goes to fix the bike and two more military walkers come at him. Yes, two. At first, you’ll probably only see one because they show it weird. But there are actually two. He pulls ammo off one and food rations off another.
What does that mean? I don’t want to go into too much here, but I think it’s just all part of the CRM story arc, which we won’t truly see play out until the spinoff. I think this lack of food they’re dealing with will continue, and at some point their water will become undrinkable. So, it won’t be a matter of grabbing Beth and Rick and running back to Alexandria. They’ll all die without the CRM’s resources. (Hence why Daryl finds food and ammo on these walkers and is like, “nice.”) Much like with Negan/AOW, they’ll have to find some way to integrate and all live together peaceably. Which is also what Rick’s confrontation with the Governor in 4x08 foreshadowed.
Next clue. It takes Daryl a while to fix the bike and it gets dark before he’s done. I totally didn’t catch it the first time until @frangipanilove clued me in, but we hear a wolf howl in the distance. The subtitles confirm it is a wolf, not a coyote or dog, and Daryl even looks over his shoulder as though acknowledging it. So to me, that’s wolf symbolism, and shows that the Denise/Wolf template will be in play when Daryl finds and ‘fixes’ Beth.
It’s actually way more complicated than that, but this is part of that second rabbit hole I mentioned this morning that I won’t be posting about until after ep 22.
Repeat of Still Theme
Okay, the only other thing I want to draw your attention to today (Details tomorrow) is that there is a theme of letting go of the past in order to move forward. And that’s very much a Still theme. Beth and Daryl burnt down the moonshine shack as a symbol of letting of their pasts and moving forward. And we see that same thing here.
People are going to say this is boring bc Carol makes soup and chases a rat around the kitchen, and Daryl fixes his bike. And on the surface, they’re right. But I’ve already explained the significance of him fixing the bike.
For the rest, not until Carol gave up on the rat did it actually get free and get out of her hair. And I think the scarf represents something that really couldn't be saved, and wasn't worth her time, but she started to obsess over it. She couldn't control or fix the bigger things in her life, so she's trying to fix small things that actually don't matter much. And when she finally made her peace with that, she threw the scarf away because she didn't need it anymore.
Same with Daryl and Leah’s knife. They actually say on TTD (which I’ll post about in more detail on Wednesday) that Daryl letting go of Leah’s knife and letting Carol have it represents him letting go of Leah. So, we still think she’s mostly hallucination anyway, but even if we’re wrong about that, they’ve pretty much confirmed that the Daryl/Leah thing is completely over.
But think about what we’ve said about Leah. She represents his time with Beth IN THE PAST. He has to let that go in order to move forward. And I think he was always going to have to reach this point, emotionally, before Beth could return.
Another way to think about it: just as with Beth’s knife, he probably needed to hang onto Leah’s knife for emotional reasons. It has to do with his guilt and trauma and grief over whatever happened. Now, I don’t think they wanted him to give Beth’s actual knife to Carol because that will probably figure in the plot eventually, but this is a symbol of the same thing. The knife, like the hallucination of Leah, is something he created to get himself through the hardest time of his life. Now, he’s past it, and letting it go. Just as Beth taught him to do in Still.
It's about letting go of small things in order to move forward.
So, I’m really looking hard at knife #1 (Leah’s) vs. knife #2 (leatherman that he gets from the military guy). Because, I think just as we always talk about how Beth from S4/S5 was not only younger, but naïve, innocent, less mature in her character development, etc., when she comes back, we know she’ll be tougher, more badass, Beth 2.0, etc. right? Hence, she just changed.
And I think the knives represent that. The old model being left behind (by Daryl) and he finds the newer, better knife, which represents him finding the new Beth. Hence the train tracks and the military walkers (CRM). And incidentally (haha not so much) we do see the Beth walker in that same sequence where he finds the knife.
In Still, we learned he has to let his past go to move forward, and he’ll have to let his past go to find Beth. So again, I’m wondering what the knife will represent that he gives Carol when they part before he actually runs into Beth.
I did have one idea: maybe it’s not a tangible object. Maybe he gives her the truth about Leah. That she’s a hallucination. He finally admits it to her, and then later realizes he can’t function without it (just like he needed the knife). But he’s gonna need to let it go and find something better before he actually finds Beth.
And I actually think the scarf/leatherneck thing works with this. I mean, Leah wore the fox scarf. So in that way, it may function similarly to the knife. Something that needs to be let go to move forward, even if it’s kinda painful. And Carol throws away the scarf in this episode.
I was thinking about when Carol went to see him the last time in 10x18, she gave him a scarf, right? But it was kind of a token gift. He didn’t look particularly pleased with it. And she admitted it wasn’t the real reason she was there. First she said something about how she shouldn’t need an excuse to give him a gift, but then she says, “okay, the REAL reason I’m here…” And he took it, but you could tell he was kind of like, “okay, whatever.” And that’s similar to the knife here. She offers it to him, but he doesn’t want it. So yeah, at least in this respect, I think scarf and knife are somewhat synonymous.
Okay, I’ll stop there for today. I have TONS more to say about the specifics and TTD, and plenty about where all this is going. But I’ll leave you with that today. Thoughts?
#beth greene#beth greene lives#beth is alive#beth is coming#td theory#td theories#team delusional#team defiance#beth is almost here#bethyl
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a painful return // carol danvers
summary: your girlfriend, Carol, is always returning home from missions bruised and battered. This once, she returns injury-free, which you thought was a miracle, but of course, that just isn't the case.
warning/s: idk I guess mentions of losing someone you love?
author's note: I have no idea what this is, it's pretty shitty but I also kinda like it too? idk but yeah aha enjoy my gals (and guys, if there are any reading)
masterlist
I struggled to pull on my second shoe as I kept my toast balanced between my teeth. I was running extremely late for work because of my stupid alarm and the last thing I needed was to hit the morning traffic.
As if the world was completely against me, I heard a persistent knocking on my flat door, causing me to roll my eyes. Talk about wrong timing.
I finished yanking on my shoe before stuffing the rest of my toast in my mouth. I realised that was probably a dumb move as I struggled to shout out: "Give me a second!" to whoever was at the door, it instead coming out as a series of muffled noises.
I headed to the door, managing to swallow my toast as I pulled it open, not bothering to check who it was. You can imagine my surprise when I saw my girlfriend, who had been on a mission for three weeks with no contact allowed whatsoever, stood there with a small smile on her lips.
"Would you believe me if I said I lost my keys?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow playfully.
I couldn't help but let out a laugh, relieved to see her looking well. I wasn't sure when she was going to come back - she said it could be a month at the least. When she usually came back from a mission, she was always recovering from some life-threatening injury. But here she was. Perfectly fine.
"Oh my god, Carol!" I immediately embraced her in a hug, feeling tears prick at my eyes. "You're here!"
She chuckled as she wrapped her arms around my waist, holding me close. I closed my eyes, unable to stop grinning. She was really here.
"I missed you so much," I said, pulling away, but keeping her hand in mine. I brought her inside our flat and shut the door behind us. "I thought you weren't going to be back for at least another few weeks."
She nodded, stepping forward and using her finger to wipe away a stray tear I didn't even know had fallen. A concerned smile was on her face. "I know, but it ended earlier than planned. Come on, don't cry, darling."
I didn't know what else to do but laugh, using my finger to dry the corners of my eyes. "I'm sorry, I just- wow. You're really here. And you're okay. I mean, you seem okay. Are you okay?"
Her eyes crinkled as she smiled at my question. "I'm okay."
I felt relief spread through me as I nodded, thanking God she was well. I don't think I could have taken it if she had come back to me battered and bruised like usual - it hurt me to see her in so much pain, and I was always afraid I would lose her.
"Work!" I blurted, realisation hitting me as I saw the clock behind her head. I was late. "Oh my- Carol- damn!"
I thought to myself, trying to find a way to maybe get out of work. I didn't have any sick days left, so that wouldn't work. Plus I had that presentation to prepare for, so it wouldn't help. I also had to help my colleague with his presentation and-
"Hey, don't worry about!" she spoke, bringing me back to reality. She grabbed my hands and squeezed them reassuringly. "I'll be here when you come back. And we can catch up then. I want to hear about everything you got up to when I was gone."
I smiled, nodding my head. She looked so beautiful and all I could think about was how lucky I was to have her.
"I'll ring you on my break, and again at lunch," I promised her, unfortunately having to let go of her hands and grab my bag from the kitchen counter, "and again when I'm on my way back." I grabbed my coat from beside the door and stopped before her. "I'll see you later."
She laughed, already trying to push me to the door which she had opened now. "Okay, okay, I don't doubt any of that, Y/N, now go! You're going to be late!"
I nodded and was about to leave, before suddenly turning around. She raised an eyebrow with amusement.
"I forgot to say that I love you," I breathed out, before moving forward and pressing my lips to hers. I hadn't kissed her in so long, but I could never forget how she made me feel when we did.
When we broke apart, she grinned at me, her eyes meeting mine. "I love you, too. Now go."
I smiled and gave her a haste kiss before leaving, half-running to the lift so I wouldn't be late. I honestly couldn't wait to be back with her later.
***
I did exactly as I said I would - called Carol during my break, my lunch and on the commute home. I just missed her so much and she was stuck in my mind all day. I was on a natural high at the thought of having her back here with me, safe.
Carol never discussed the specifics of the missions she went on, whether that be with S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers themselves. She tried to keep that part of her life separate from ours, and I was never one to pry. If anything, I kind of preferred it because I would probably have a heart attack every time she mentioned almost dying. It happened more times than you'd think and it worried me every time, especially when she returned to me after being patched up for some major injury.
She would come home, hurt and bandaged, and I would look after her the best I could, all whilst trying to push away the fact that one day she might not come back alive. It terrified me, imagining a life without Carol, but I knew it was her job. She was a hero who saved lives and she loved doing that. I loved watching her do it. But it didn't make it any easier to handle.
That's why this time was even more special than all the other times, if possible. She was well, uninjured and safe. How it should always be.
When I returned home (quite quickly, might I add), I saw Carol in the kitchen cooking. It warmed my heart, seeing the look of concentration on her face as she managed the pans on the stove.
"You didn't have to cook," I said when entering the kitchen, a smile tugging at my lips. "You just got back. You must be exhausted."
Her eyes lit up when she saw me and she pulled me in for a hug before kissing me on the cheek. A hand around my waist still, she led me to the stove to show me what she was doing.
"I wanted to," she said, glancing at me. "You deserve it. I'm making spaghetti bolognese. Your favourite."
I nodded. "I'm impressed, Danvers."
She squeezed my waist a little. "You go get changed. It should be done when you come back."
I rested my hand on hers, bringing it up to my mouth to kiss it gently, before leaving her side to freshen up. Seeing Carol acting all domestic was a very nice change of pace compared to how I usually found her after a long mission, and it brought a smile to my face. God, I just loved her so much.
We had a lovely meal that evening and I caught Carol up on all that she missed, which actually wasn't that much now that I had said it aloud. Nonetheless, she insisted on hearing about all of my mundane routine without her and I appreciated her listening to me. I asked about how her mission was and without dwelling on it for too long, she assured me it went perfect hence why it ended early. I left it at that, as did she.
When we finished eating, Carol stood up, grabbing our plates, ready to take them to the sink.
"I can clean up, Carol, come on, you've just gotten home," I said, also standing up.
She rolled her eyes playfully, already moving to the sink. "It's fine, Y/N. You've been at work all day. Just let me do something, okay?" She stopped halfway on her walk to the sink, a flash of discomfort crossing her expression.
I grew concerned as I stepped towards her, about to take the dishes from her hands. "Carol, love, are you okay?"
She moved the dishes from my grasp and a reassuring smile appeared in an instant. "Yeah, sorry. I just- you know when you walk and your foot does that weird cramp thing? That happened. It's good now."
I raised an eyebrow, studying her curiously. "Okay, whatever you say..."
She grinned at me, which put any of my doubts at ease, before ushering me out of the kitchen. "Go. Go on. I got this."
I smiled at her, watching her with adoration. I gave her a quick hug from behind, pressing a kiss to her neck, before leaving her be. If she wanted to clear up, who was I to argue? She'd just keep protesting and Carol was too stubborn for her own good.
After she cleared everything away, we both spent an hour or so watching some TV before I started to grow sleepy. I'd been up pretty early and always got tired after a long day at work, yet I was trying so hard to make this night last. Carol was with me and I had missed her so much. I know it made no sense - I'd see her when I woke up beside her in the morning - but I just wanted to be with her a little longer.
"Come on, sleepy head," Carol said, kissing the top of my head. My eyes were closed, but I heard the TV turn off. "Let's get to bed."
"I'm awake," I said, sitting up, finding it difficult to keep my eyes open. "Just a little longer, come on. I like being here with you."
She let out a laugh, standing up. "We can be together in our bedroom. Where you can have a good night's rest because God knows you're gonna fall asleep any moment now."
It took a moment for her words to register in my mind, before I glanced up at her, one eye open. "What?"
She laughed, suddenly picking me up bridal-style. "To bed. Now."
I didn't bother arguing anymore, instead closing my eyes as I allowed her to carry me to our room. She tucked me in bed, before joining my side and spooning me from behind. I smiled with comfort, intertwining our fingers.
"You not gonna take your hoodie off?" I mumbled, eyes closed. "It's pretty warm tonight."
I was too tired to realise she hesitated. "Erm, no. It's comfy."
I hummed in response, not really hearing her anyway. All I knew was that I hadn't slept that well since she'd left for her mission.
***
I woke up the next morning to my alarm clock ringing like a drill in my head. Groaning, I snoozed it and patted the other side of the bed, hoping to find Carol there. She rarely slept in, but I was hoping this morning would have been one of those days. Apparently not.
"God damn you and your early rising, plane-flying butt," I mumbled, rubbing my head to wake myself up.
"Good morning to you, too," I heard her voice, sensing the amusement.
I opened my eyes and sat up in bed, seeing her leaning against the doorframe, already up and dressed.
"Would it kill you to be there when I woke up so I can have morning cuddles?" I complained like a five-year-old.
She grinned. "You're awfully cranky at someone who just made you breakfast."
I narrowed my eyes at her, seeing the pride in her expression. "I hate you."
"Because you feel bad," she said pointedly, knowing that was exactly why. "Now come on, get up. You have a little time before going to work to sit with me."
I sighed, unable to stop the smile forming on my face.
I got ready for work before joining Carol in the kitchen, seeing the mini spread she'd put together for me. Eggs, toast, beans, hash browns, pancakes, pastries... geez, she'd gone all out.
"You're hiding something," I immediately said, stopping beside her as I looked at the counter full of food.
"Excuse me?" She laughed, pulling me close to her side by looping an arm around my waist.
"You're hiding something," I stated knowingly. "You cooked dinner, you cleaned up, you made me breakfast... I love you, Carol, and you're the sweetest person ever, but you're definitely hiding something. So, spill. Did you break something of mine? Lose something? Forget something?"
She chuckled, kissing me on the cheek. "Do I not treat you regularly enough for this to be classed as a rare thing?"
I eyeballed her curiously. "You treat me, yes. But this is strange. My detective senses are tingling."
She pressed her lips together to contain her laughter.
"Nonetheless, I will eat the food because I am not one for waste," I concluded, before taking a seat at the counter.
She let out a laugh as she joined my side. "Glad you made up your mind, darling."
***
My morning at work went by as usual, but I was adamant on getting my work finished so I could try to leave early. I had no meetings booked for the afternoon, so it was just a matter of working quickly enough. I just wanted to be with Carol - I still wasn't used to her being back and I appreciated it so much, knowing it might not be long before she might have to leave again, even for a day.
Thankfully, I was able to get my work done and leave early, hoping to go home and surprise Carol. However, when I reached our flat, I couldn't exactly find her. She wasn't in the kitchen or living-room, so I headed to our bedroom, calling out her name. When I heard a crashing sound in the bathroom, I furrowed my eyebrows and went over there.
"Carol?" I called, trying my luck and opening the door.
"Y/N, no-!"
"Oh my god!" I widened my eyes when I saw Carol bending down, picking up the contents of a first aid kit. She was wearing no shirt, her hand pressed to a bandage on her abdomen, but there was a lot of blood everywhere. The blue liquid soaked the bandage and several more on the floor.
"It's not as bad as it looks!" she was quick to defend, standing up and moving forward to approach me, but she grimaced as she moved.
"Sit down, right now," I told her, leading her to the edge of the bathtub.
"Y/N-"
"Right fucking now, Carol," I said sternly, feeling a lump form in my throat.
She sensed my anger and did as I said, sitting at the edge of the bathtub. I neared her and carefully looked beneath her stained bandage. There were stitches that ripped open, an injury that had previously been looked at evidently. A fresh one, maybe a few days old now...? The skin around it was still raw, trying to heal.
"I tore the stitches trying to grab something from the shelf in the kitchen," Carol muttered, unable to meet my eyes.
I clenched my jaw and nodded, before going to our well-stocked first aid kit, thanks to the many times she'd come back injured. I knew barely anything about first aid before meeting Carol. Now, I knew way more than the average person should have. Such as how to disinfect and suture a wound, at least long enough until a professional could take a look at it.
So that's what I did. An unnerving silence surrounded us as I got to work, temporarily fixing her injury whilst she sat there and said nothing. When I was finished, I washed my hands, cleaned up, and packed the first aid kit away back in the cabinet above the sink.
"Y/N, I'm so sorry," Carol finally spoke, guiltily.
I saw her reflection in the mirror, watching me with a frown. I turned around, leaning against the sink, and stared at her, my eyes flickering to the freshly bandaged injury. She'd had that since she returned and hadn't said a word. That explained the pain she felt last night. The hoodie she was wearing all the time, not wanting to give away the bandage under her shirt. She'd thought this through.
"Why the hell didn't you tell me?" I finally asked, meeting her eyes with glossy ones.
"I didn't want to worry you-"
"Screw that, Carol!" I stood up straight, glaring at her. "You could be in the safest place on Earth- heck, in the Universe, and I would still worry about you! I have every right to know when my girlfriend is hurt. What if I had hurt you? Made it worse? What if your stitches tore open in your sleep and I woke up to find you in a pool of your own blood? Huh? What then?"
She tried to stand up, her hand resting on her bandage. "You're right. I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry. I just didn't want to scare you. I wanted things to be different this time. I come back from my missions and I see how scared you get. I didn't want this to be the same. I thought- I thought it would work. But you came home early and I didn't expect this to happen."
I crossed my arms, hugging myself as I looked down to my shoes. "For Gods sake, Carol... I get scared because I love you. I'm terrified, okay? I'm terrified that one day your injuries will be too severe. Or maybe one day you won't come back to me. That's the truth." I looked up to meet her eyes, swallowing the lump in my throat. "But it's even scarier with you pretending to be okay. Because if something did happen, I wouldn't have known. I wouldn't be able to help you."
Carol frowned. "I didn't... I didn't think about it like that..."
It was quiet for the moment, before I sighed and said, "You need to get that checked out again. I only know so much. I'll drive you to Tony's."
She didn't say anything, but she did walk out of the bathroom and grab her jacket. I helped her put it on before grabbing my keys and taking her to the car. I helped her in the passenger's seat before jumping into the driver's seat. It was still silent between us and I wasn't sure what to say.
"I really am sorry," she said, looking up at me with a guilty expression.
I managed a tired smile, resting my hand on her thigh and squeezing it gently. "I know you are... we'll get you fixed up and you can rest up like you should have done initially. It'll be okay."
"And us?"
I grabbed her hand and pressed it to my lips, kissing her. "We'll be okay, too. I promise."
She nodded and I saw the relief in her eyes.
"I love you," I said, watching her with what I hoped was reassurance.
"I love you, too. I'm... I'm sorry."
I intertwined our fingers and squeezed gently. "I know, Carol."
#carol danvers#carol danvers imagine#carol danvers x reader#captain marvel#captain marvel x reader#captain marvel imagine#Brie Larson
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WARNING: Watersports (heavy emphasis), facials.
NOTE: Last Dustmas is entirely written by NaughtyButWeiss, and could basically be taken as a canon sequel to Dustmas Cookies or non-canon, however you choose to view it really. Thanks again to RuBee for helping to make this happen! If you’re interested in requesting something look us up on Tumblr for details (to be posted soon, we promise)! Happy Dustmas!
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A year had passed for Ruby and Blake. A year of minor trials and tribulations, struggling to figure out who they were to each other while at Beacon Academy. Everything settled eventually – especially now that they were out to most of their friends. That helped in bucketloads.
They were doing their best to console Yang this year. Weiss had been called home to Atlas to celebrate with her family, despite her numerous protests that she would rather spend that time with her friends. To make matters worse, they had just gotten in a fight the day classes ended because Yang was begging her to come out to them so they would understand. In Weiss’s words, “If I do that I might as well be saying goodbye to the Schnee family forever,” which had led to a whole new realm of bickering. Less than a fun holiday sendoff.
“Awww, come on, help me with these popcorn chains.”
Yang barely uttered a “mmm” as her sister nudged her. Blake shrugged helplessly as she kept running the needle and thread through more pieces of popcorn.
“Well… okay, what about if we put on your favourite Dustmas movie? Oh No I’m Alone 2: Lost In…”
“Lost In Atlas? Yeah, maybe not right now.”
Shoot. Ruby definitely hadn’t meant to remind her of Weiss yet again; she couldn’t help that the movie was set where her girlfriend was, practically on the other side of the world. Still, she had put her foot in her mouth and decided to leave it shut for now.
“Maybe we should go out caroling,” Blake suggested softly, trying for a small smile. Hoping to cheer up her battle partner. “Get out of here for a while and see the rest of Patch – maybe show me around Signal?”
“You saw Signal last time.” After a second or two, Yang sighed and looked back and forth between those two. “And Dad’s up there right now, and I just… maybe I’ll go spar with him. You two should just hang out here and ignore me.”
Both of her teammates wrapped arms around hers on either side, cuddling in slightly. “But we want you to have a good holiday!” Ruby protested. “Eggnog? Cocoa? Mulled cider? Oh – cookies always cheer you up!”
Finally, her big sister cracked a smile. “No, cookies always cheer you up. You don’t need me as an excuse to make them.” Then she reached up to ruffle Ruby’s hair, earning a little giggle. “But seriously, I’m gonna take off for a while. Let me brood and you guys have fun, and… I dunno. Maybe I can shake this mood eventually.”
“Alright, Yang,” Blake put in gently as she sat back to let Yang get up. “But we’re here if you need us.” She brandished her scroll warningly.
“Got it, loud and clear. Thanks, guys.”
Still, the heavy atmosphere hung over the two of them now that the usually-boisterous party girl was gone. They slowly started finishing the popcorn chain again.
“Well, this blows.”
“I know,” Blake sighed, eyes sad as her nimble fingers worked. “I really thought we could stick by Yang’s side and keep her from missing her girlfriend. But I mean, at least it’s a step up from throwing me into the snow.”
Ruby snorted and scooted closer to Blake. “Yep, she’s a big sister and a hothead. But she’ll cheer up, y’know? Weiss promised she’d call tonight, and would fly out for the new year, even though her dad is throwing a big fit. So like, compromises and stuff.”
With a little nod, Blake kept stringing as Ruby patted her thigh. She braced for impact. Any second now…
“Wait… Blake…”
“Yes?”
“Are you-” Ruby leaned over to peer up at Blake’s face. While Blake tried to look nonchalant, eyes pointed off toward the fireplace. “What the heck?!”
“Shh!” she hissed back, cheeks just starting to pinken. “Keep it down.”
“Why? Nobody else is here! Why are you like this now? Do you have some kinda thing for popcorn?!” Then she folded her arms. “Do you have a thing for my sister?”
“WHAT?! NO! I mean, she’s really hot, but that isn’t…” Sighing, she threw down the popcorn chain into the bowl. “You know they upped my dosage. I can’t help it if some days are different than others!”
It was true. Because Blake was born differently than most girls, she needed special medication to maintain her girlish figure; a mixture of herbal remedies and a couple of different varieties of Dust particles. T o offset the testosterone trying to reassert itself, they had increased her prescription from once a month to once every three weeks. There had been times since then where she had no interest in sex at all for days at a time. And then, at other times…
“So you literally are hard as a rock for no reason? Like, not even because I’m here?”
Blake shrugged awkwardly, thighs squirming and causing the bump in her shorts to shift . “I’m still crazy in love with you, but no, I wasn’t thinking about you or doing anything like that. And before you ask, no, I am not sexually attracted to popcorn.”
“Huh. So… I mean, would it be bad to take care of it? Or good? I dunno, since it’s because of the drugs…”
“I don’t think that part matters,” she snorted. “But you can ignore it. Even if it doesn’t go away, it’s no big deal.”
O f course, a second later Ruby got that same sneaky look on her face that she wore so often lately. Before they stole into a broom closet or under the bleachers again. Then her hand wrapped around the bulge and began to stroke.
“Mmhh… or we could take care of it,” Blake sighed, eyes closing as her hips twisted from side to side. “That’s… good, too… God, Ruby!”
Soon the bowl of popcorn was sitting on the side table and Blake was being jerked off in earnest by the younger girl. Ruby painted herself along her girlfriend’s side as her fingers finally worked that beautiful cock free of its confines, encircling it with just the right amount of pressure – as she had been learning over the past couple of years a little at a time. It was so warm and smooth in her hand, and her own heat was definitely starting to grow from knowing how much her Blake enjoyed this.
“You wanna… put it in me again?” she breathed huskily, eyes full of the promise of more.
“Mmm, Ruby...”
Instead of really answering, she just claimed her mouth, tangling their lips together as she was slowly stoked to blazing. Ruby moved to straddle her lap, mewling into the kisses in just the right way to make her unable to ignore. By now, they had evolved beyond condoms – because Blake wasn’t the only one with a prescription. The smaller of the two worked her own shorts aside and wasted no time sinking down on that gorgeous cock.
“NH! Oh wow… y-you’re so wet, why?”
“Because you feel good,” she squeaked, eyes screwing shut as she weathered the initial discomfort of being entered. She was still tight even after so long together, but if they worked up to it slower there was no discomfort at all. Trouble was, sometimes they were impatient. “Nnh! Oooh… yeeaahhh, there we go…”
All Blake could do was lean back and take it. Not that she was complaining. When their relationship had begun, she was very uncertain about taking a smaller, younger girl and “claiming” her – being the dominant party with the typically male equipment. Lucky Yang, her girlfriend was the same age and bossy, and both of them had the same equipment. More equality. However, Ruby had quickly shown her that she was just as enthusiastic in bed, and wanted to take charge all the time. She got just as excited about this as she did about fighting Grimm, or milk and cookies.
Maybe that was weird.
“Nnhh!” Ruby moaned as she rolled her hips harder, almost forcing Blake to start thrusting up and into her. “Ohhhh yeah – yeah, right there! Wow! S-so good!”
“Ruby!” she panted, already feeling the telltale tingles that signalled an end to their lovemaking. After a whole two seconds; how disappointing. But she forced herself to focus on gripping Ruby’s backside, thrusting harder while trying to think about Vytal Festival statistics to pull focus from how amazing it felt and delay her climax.
Their lips crashed against each other again, cutting off any further discussion. What was to talk about? Their bodies fit together perfectly and Ruby always felt perfect in her lap, with or without sex. The shifting ramped up until her girlfriend was literally bouncing on her cock, letting out a little squeak into the kiss with each landing until she couldn’t maintain the kiss.
“Blake! Holy shiz, I’m- I already feel like I’m gonna–”
“Wait, Ruby! Just… a few more… okay! I’m almost there, come for me! Please?”
“AH! Y-you got it!” The girl actually gave a weak thumbs up before she gripped both of Blake’s shoulders…
And threw it into overdrive. On top of everything else, this girl was a speed demon, more than capable of bouncing up and down at speeds no other citizen of Remnant could have hoped to achieve. Except maybe some of the Faunus who were naturally gifted with speed. She was going to milk Blake dry in a matter of seconds.
In a flash, it was all over. Blake came over and over into her girlfriend, head thrown back and mouth dropped open as she felt her entire length pulsing inside of the warmth of Ruby Rose. Ruby timed it almost perfectly, starting her own flutters and pulses of her inner walls immediately after she felt Blake spurt for the first time. She kept up the bouncing of her hips as long as she could before collapsing against Blake’s chest, heaving for breath.
“Whoa… I… like… that was really… maaaaan…”
“I know,” Blake laughed weakly, basically half-dead. But she did manage to move a hand to rest on Ruby’s rear. “Wow… thank you.”
“My pleasure. Like, literally, right?”
“Yeah.”
The room was nothing but the crackling of the fireplace and the laboured breaths of two satisfied lovers for a full minute. Then Ruby leaned up to kiss Blake on the cheek before nuzzling her neck hard, humming her obvious joy.
“Merry Dustmas again, you lioness.”
“Don’t call me that,” Blake chuckled. “Or I’ll go back to calling you my flower.”
“God, we were so lame,” she snickered right back as she cuddled her. “But… at the same time, it was really cute. You’re still my lioness.”
“Ruby… I love you. Like, probably too much, but I wanted you to know.”
With a little smile, she whispered, “Got it, amiga. Don’t worry.”
“Mmm.” Then she cleared her throat and squirmed a little.
“What? Something wrong?”
“No, not really. Just realised I really need to run to the ladies’ room. I drank too much hot cocoa earlier and after fucking you…”
Ruby’s brow furrowed slightly. “Wait, after fucking me, what?”
“Well…” When Ruby still didn’t seem to get it, she lowered her voice to whisper, “I usually have to pee after we do these things. You probably noticed that.”
“Huh? O-oh, no, no I didn’t. But now that you mention it… you do always run to the bathroom. Guess I figured you were just cleaning up – scraping off all the Ruby-goo.”
“That, too,” Blake snickered as she pet over Ruby’s hair. “Even if it’s my favourite goo. But I can tough it out for another minute or so.”
The smaller girl nodded, trying to remain contented. However… for a reason she didn’t really want to share, her hips began to move again. Seeking out more pleasure. That went on for another minute before Blake half-chuckled and whispered, “Okay, you are making it worse now.”
“Sorry! You just still feel really good, I dunno!”
“Okay, okay, but now I have to get up.” Ruby pouted as Blake lifted her bodily and stood her on her feet – both of them groaning a little as their bodies parted. “Mmhh… wow, I have to pee so bad.” “Nnhhh…”
Blake squinted at her suspiciously. “Do you want to go again when I get back?”
“No… it’s dumb, don’t worry about me. Just go take care of you.”
“No, hang on.” Even though she was visibly squirming, she cupped her girlfriend’s cheek. “Out with it. Why are you still horny but don’t want me to help you? If you think it’s greedy… I mean, you’ve jerked me off before and asked for nothing in return. Let me repay you.”
“It’s not… exactly that. But I’m super embarrassed, and you’re gonna think I’m a weird, gross girl, and I dunno!”
“What?” Ruby hid her face behind her hands, but she reached up to pull them away. “Hey… I could never think of you as gross. Do you know that?”
“Oh… you sure will when I tell you…”
But Ruby didn’t tell her right away. Just took her hand and started leading her toward the stairs. Only once they were going up them did she continue.
“So… u-um, I don’t know if you know… that you sleepwalk.”
“What?” Blake stared at her for a moment, then came over thoughtful as she gripped her chin, amber eyes staring off toward the distance. “Yeah. I’ve noticed that a couple of times I wake up in strange places. It’s more common with Faunus, especially if their animal traits are from animals with nocturnal tendencies; cats sometimes have ‘midnight crazies’ where they have to run back and forth and burn off energy for no reason.”
“Oh? Huh, that’s… kinda cool, kinda weird, kinda cute. Yep! Wow, that’s fun.”
“Ruby… you’re getting off topic. On purpose.”
“Yeah,” she admitted with a grimace. “Anyway, um, one time a couple of Dustmases ago – you probably had no idea – you sleepwalked into the bathroom while I was on the toilet.”
“What? Oh… oh Dust, I’m really sorry. Did I…” Her lip curled. “What… did I do, exactly?” No response. “PLEASE tell me I didn’t sit down on you and-”
“NOPE! No, no, not that one!” she reassured her quickly, and Blake looked extremely relieved. “But the other one… yyyyeah, you kinda did.”
“I did?”
“Yeah.”
Blake’s lips pressed into a thin line as she swallowed hard. “W-was it… did you move out of the way?”
“I… did not.”
“What?! You mean…” She had to say it, or she would always be tortured by the unknown. “You mean I actually peed on you?!”
The poor girl’s cheeks were flaming red as they entered the bathroom. The scene of the crime. “Y-you didn’t mean to do it. Obviously! And like, you’re right, I should have moved cuz I was the one who was awake and all, but it was so weird to have a dick pointed at me back then still, and also super hot, a-and I wasn’t sure what to do, and then it was too late!” Licking her lips, she quickly finished with, “And you were hard, too, and I had to really stop myself from doing anything because you weren’t awake and that’s not okay, a-and I had to clean the bathroom, anyway!”
“Ruby! That is… I don’t know what that is!” Her mouth was hanging open as she stared at her girlfriend, completely beside herself.
“Me either! What the hell IS it? A-anyway, now you can pee and I’m gonna go away. Probably from the whole planet.”
Before Ruby could edge out the door, Blake caught her by the elbow. “Hey… wait. I need to ask you one more thing about this before you take off.”
“Do you? Do you need to? Because I’m already so embarrassed I wanna die.”
“Yes.” Blake made sure to pull her in closer, to hang onto both of her elbows so she couldn’t bolt. Sometimes they had to do that from each other, since both of them tended to run from embarrassment. “Did you like it?”
No response.
“Ruby… did you like it when I whizzed on you?”
“Well gee, now I feel better when you say ‘whizzed’.” But the deep red blush answered for her.
“Oh wow.” She felt a little uncomfortable now, knowing that had happened, that it turned Ruby on, and that she had been completely unaware all this time. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you couldn’t help it!” Ruby whispered urgently. “How do you bring that up? Like, ‘Whoops, ya peed on me, and I thought it was super hot, but don’t worry about it since you weren’t even conscious’?! That’s pretty dumb! And you and me was still really new back then, s-so I didn’t wanna make you think I was gross, but I am, I’m a weird, gross girl that you should definitely break up with!”
With a little sigh and a slight smile, she released one elbow to reach up and pet over her girlfriend’s hair. “Come on, you know that isn’t… I mean, I would have been a little disgusted no matter when it happened. It’s urine, it’s… a waste product. But even before we confessed our feelings, I wouldn’t have let it stop me from loving you.”
That brought the brunette’s head shooting up so fast her red-dyed forelock bounced from side to side. “Really?! I mean… you don’t care?”
“No. And what’s more… I want to make you happy, Ruby. Relationships are about compromising. So if you want me to pee on you, then I’ll do it.”
“Oh. Oh, no no, no way,” she laughed nervously. “This wasn’t- I really didn’t mean to like, sell this as a thing we’ll be doing! Nope! Just w-wanted to explain why I was all blushy, since yeah, we’re together and you deserve to know things like that.”
Blake chuckled as she held her close. “Oh, I know. It’s okay. But I’m saying, that as your girlfriend, I am deciding that I’m okay with trying it at least once. To see if we can both be into it, even. I don’t think I’ll enjoy it like you do but I’m also very certain it won’t hurt me in the slightest to test the waters.”
Ruby had been blushing and looking away right up until the end. Then she smiled a tiny, shy smile. “Test the waters, huh? Is that a Yang-pun? Because ‘watersports’?”
“Wow, you caught me,” she deadpanned. But then she smiled and Ruby smiled back. “Okay, um, get naked and then we can test this out.”
“Huh?” The smaller girl blinked rapidly. “What, right now?!”
“Yes, right now. I mean, I really, really gotta go – and I would like you to hurry?”
Blake was certainly dancing on one leg, holding her own crotch. Ruby realised that her girlfriend was in pain, so she was a lot more expedient about shucking all of her clothes than she normally would be. Kicking the last sock out into the hallway, she stood nervously in front of her.
“Okay, um… n-now what? I’ve never done this before. Well, like, I have, but not on purpose.”
“You say that like I’m any more experienced than you!” she protested, and Ruby giggled. “Alright. I think… you should sit in the tub. Or kneel, or be in whatever position you want to be in, I guess. But sitting or crouching, so I can actually do this without standing on the toilet.”
Obediently, Ruby climbed into the tub and knelt down. God this was making it difficult… normally she would already be sprung by looking down at Ruby kneeling there, naked as a jaybird. Between having just climaxed and bladder full to bursting, she wasn’t… but the urge was still there.
“Alrighty!” she piped up, excitement flushing her cheeks and stiffening her nipples. “Lay it on me!”
“That’s what you’re going to say? Before I do this… really unusual thing?”
“Um… open fire?”
“Ruby…”
“Okay, okay,” she giggled as she settled in a little more, sitting back on her heels. “Like, just do it whenever. I’m ready.”
Blake took a few quick breaths to steady her nerves. Took aim. Licked her lips. Shifted from foot to foot as she aimed her half-hard cock at the girl practically bowing before her.
“So…”
Blake grunted. “I don’t… know if I can.”
“Huh? Why not? You aren’t going to hurt me; I promise, it’s just pee.”
“Well yeah, but I can’t… pee… with you looking!” she finally admitted, her own cheeks starting to flush now. It was an interesting shade against her olive skintone.
The girl’s head tilted slightly to one side. “Really? Why not? Oh – wait, waitwaitwait, I’ve heard of this! Shy bladder! Right?”
“Yes! Now will you stop drawing more attention to it?!”
“Oh! Sorry!” She slapped her hands over her eyes. “Is this better?”
Blake just stared at her for a moment before chuckling and leaning down to kiss the backs of said hands. “You… are perfect. I’m sorry, I just… I don’t think I can do it, too weird. But I’ll try again.”
“Okay.” This time, when she lowered her hands it was to reveal closed eyes. And they stayed closed. “Just think of waterfalls or something.”
“Thanks,” she snorted. Then she really did attempt to relax. To let it all flow.
Nothing. At first. Then the muscles she had been clenching to prevent an untimely accident gradually began to relinquish their hold…
And then…
“WHOAB!” Ruby burst out – the end of the word turning into a different sound when she slapped her lips shut to keep any more pee from seeping inside. Because it was splashing everywhere. She sputtered a little to clear her mouth as it poured down through her hair, over her face and neck and shoulders, dripping from her peaks. The pool around her knees and feet slowly began to grow before running down into the drain.
And Blake felt extremely guilty. This was a highly depraved thing to do – and they had talked about tying Ruby up again many, many times since the night she had found her under the Dustmas tree, wrapped with a bow. How could she do this to her girlfriend?
Because she asked her to. That’s how.
“Nnhhh,” she sighed as the stream began to taper off to just a few drips, reaching down to play her fingers through her own wetness. “Ohhhh Blake… it’s so nasty…”
“O-oh, I’m sorry.” Then she squinted. “Or… am I not sorry?”
No, no reason to be sorry. Ruby was clearly getting herself off because she was so happy to be covered in Blake. “Nnhhh… Blake… I’m all yours!”
“Of course you are,” she told her with a small smile. “Always.”
“No…” Ruby’s other hand gripped the edge of the tub. “You marked me. Now nobody else can have me, ever! R-right? Mmhhh… right, Blake?”
A dark flush shot into the entirety of her face. Now Ruby was talking about something else – something that Blake had really tried hard not to think about. Especially after her past with Adam.
Faunus could mark their partners. It wasn’t permanent; they had to re-mark or the musk would wear off eventually, or sooner if they took a lot of baths. This was more useful in a more primitive society, but still useful today. However, she had not been thinking about that in the slightest until this moment, because she didn’t often ruminate on the more animalistic ancient traditions of the Faunus people.
“That’s… not exactly true, but um… Ruby, you do know…”
“What?” Blake laughed nervously, cheeks only getting darker, so Ruby persisted, “What, did I do something bad?”
“Not really ‘bad’. But when we get back to school, Velvet and some of the other Faunus students will, um, probably instantly know that you’ve been marked. And it won’t take much more investigation to figure out by whom. And they’ll also know I’m trans, because… well, biological markers like those don’t change when you transition.”
For a second Ruby just blinked up at her. Then she snickered and waved a hand. “But that’s weeks away. I’ll have showered a bunch of times.”
“No… you don’t get it.” She knelt down so she was on Ruby’s eye level. She could also feel her cock was rigid yet again; even if she wanted to warn Ruby, it didn’t mean she could ignore how much her libido loved this. “The strong smell is gonna wash off, but the musk, those… pheromones or whatever, those won’t come out for a while. Especially out of your hair. Even if you shave bald, though, it’ll still linger.”
“So…” Her hips shifted impatiently, cheeks flushing a little brighter. “They really will know I’m all yours?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, if I remembered that…”
“No, it’s okay.” Her arm started moving again, little mewlings erupting from between her lips as she prodded her body toward another climax. “Nnhhh… I don’t care if they know. I want them to.”
God. Now the scent was becoming powerful enough Blake couldn’t avoid breathing it in, and she almost hated it… but also was incredibly turned on by the idea that her Ruby was literally covered in this essence that belonged to her.
Marked.
“A-ah,” Blake sighed quietly as she started stroking her firm cock again, eyes only for Ruby and the way she was punishing her clit, nearly doubled over. She sort of wanted to kiss her, but that meant going into that leftover stench she had created. And even if Ruby found it kinky, she had no desire to touch her own. That was for sure.
But how was she supposed to resist? With Ruby’s mouth so close… so she claimed it, tongue swirling over the sharp, salty taste.
That made it a lot faster. Both Ruby and Blake were moaning and shifting their hips faster in no time at all, begging for release without asking either of them. Some things were just perfectly understood, even when left unsaid.
“MMHHH!” Ruby groaned into her lips when she came, trembling from head to toe as her spine kinked and her hips wriggled in their happy little puddle. Then she drew back with a gasp. “Ohhhh, WOW, Blake! That was so freakin’ HOT!”
“Y-yeah?” Blake panted as she jerked harder and faster. Unlike Ruby, her orgasms were more difficult to reproduce when closely following the last, not easier. “Then… then I’m s-so glad for you! My flower!”
Her eyes lit up. “You’re gonna cum? Again?” Becoming a little more animated again, she hissed, “Cum on my face!”
“WHAT?!”
“Hurry! Just stand up and do it – I wanna try that, too!”
“What the hell has gotten into you today?!” But Blake was too horny to argue. She struggled to her feet so fast she knocked over a bottle of conditioner, which bounced across the floor as she started jerking it harder and faster, panting with the effort of trying to drag the orgasm out of her body.
“YES!” Ruby squeaked, bouncing up and down in her excitement – and causing her breasts to do the same. That certainly didn’t hurt. “Do it, Blake! I wanna feel your cum all over me!”
“Okay! It’s… it’s coming, Ruby! NHH!”
A few more strokes and it came. And it was… not very exciting. She had cum so hard already that now it was only a few minor spurts before it was simply dribbling down on her girlfriend’s upturned features. She still sighed and smiled, shivering in delight, even though it was such an underwhelming display.
“S-sorry.”
Ruby shrugged with a grin. “Why? You came on me. That’s what I asked you for, right?”
“Well, yeah, but…” Then she snorted and rolled her eyes, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly to release her anxieties. “You are too cute. Always know how to make me feel better.”
Something about the way she was grinning with that essence clinging to her cheeks… was both cute and a little arousing. But Blake was totally spent; nothing doing now.
“I try,” she whispered. “And… it’s cuz I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Then she pecked her lips and drew back. “Whew. That’s starting to get rank, you’d better shower.”
“Mmm, shower with me?”
“No. I don’t need to, I didn’t pee on me.”
“I could pee on you!”
“Nnnno thank you.”
“Awww, come on! Just a little? I’ll pee on your leg!”
Shaking her head, she turned to start pacing out of the bathroom with a smirk on her lips. “Ruby, you need help. Seriously, I’m calling a therapist.”
“BLAKE!”
--------------------------------------
Once Ruby emerged from the shower, she apologised for getting so overzealous about their watersports adventure. Having had time to process and decompress, Blake waved it off with a kiss and another insistence that Remnant was home to many different walks of life. It was foolish to assume none of them would like to be urinated upon.
Now they were both dressed warmly, and decided Yang had been gone long enough that they should probably go check on her. Which they did, hiking toward Signal with hand stuffed in pockets as their boots crunched in the snow.
“So… I’ve been thinking about something.”
“Oh wow,” Blake said with a wry smile. “Is that your New Year’s resolution.”
“Hey!” She bumped her with her hip, earning a slight chuckle. “Um… so like, you marked me.”
“You made me mark you,” she corrected. Hoping she could pass off the rouge in her cheeks as a reaction to the chill in the air.
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, does this make us like… engaged?”
The Faunus nearly tripped over an errant snow drift, she was so distracted. Once she found her footing – partly thanks to Ruby’s hand shooting out to grip hers – she goggled at the shorter girl.
“En… engaged?”
Her smile was so brilliant. “Yeah! Y’know, to be mar-”
“YES! Yes, I know what it means, I…” She swallowed hard, head so light she felt like it may float away. “You really like me enough for that?”
“Sure, Blake! Can’t you tell I’m all about you now?”
“W-well, I…” Now her own small smile was blossoming. “You know, you have had worse ideas.”
Now Ruby was pouting as the school came into view over the crest of the next hill. “Hey, I have plenty of great ideas. All the time!”
“Oh yeah? What about that time you wanted to go bungee jumping off the roof of Beacon?”
“What? It’s not my fault Weiss didn’t change out of her skirt! And Jaune didn’t seem to mind!”
“Of course he didn’t,” she snorted, all grinning now. “But I’m not such an easy girl to hook, you know. I expect you to ask me formally.”
Ruby tapped her chin. Then she took a few quick paces forward and knelt down in the snow. “Blake Belladonna…”
Just for a moment, her heart stopped. Then she held up a hand and said, “No.”
“Huh?! But you just said-”
“You don’t have a ring, do you?” No answer; just a lot of squirming from the girl getting the knee of her leggings damp. “Then it’s not a real proposal. Try again when you have a ring, and I will very seriously consider your offer.”
“Oooh, you’re mean.” She got up and started walking again, brow furrowed and lips pursed so hard they almost met in the middle over her nose. Blake chuckled and slipped her arm through her girlfriend’s. Completely contented.
Signal was basically deserted, but they saw some flickering lights in one of the classroom windows. That was an easy lead. Heading upstairs, they quickly oriented themselves to the floor plan and found said room.
“-absolutely atrocious,” a tinny voice was saying as they eased the door open. “He is such an insufferable little twerp; I can’t wait to get out of this house.”
“God, I can imagine,” Yang laughed. She was sitting at one of the desks near the window, kicked back with her boots up. Her Scroll was in her hand, opened so that she could get a better view of her lady love’s face as they chatted.
“You really cannot,” Weiss countered. “And be grateful! Oooh, the less I see of Whitley, the better!”
Ruby’s sister nodded in sympathy as they both edged quietly into the room. “Speaking of seeing less of your brother…”
“I know, I know. And I’m working on it. I think I’ve complained often and vocally enough that they are seriously considering letting me visit you, despite the New Years Gala being such an important event for the Schnee Dust Company.”
“That’s my girl,” she said with a smile. “Nobody can throw a ‘May I speak to your manager’ fit like my Weiss.”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?!”
Yang was about to answer when she saw the other two hovering in the doorway. She sat up straighter and called out, “Hey! Not cool, Sis – you really gotta lurk and listen in on my conversation? This is a private girlfriend thing!”
“As if we’re really doing anything private,” Weiss scoffed. Then she called out louder, “Hello, Ruby! Is Blake there?”
“Hey!” Blake said as they approached. “We started to get worried about Yang, she was in a bad mood.”
“Awww, I know. Sulking like a true Schnee. Almost makes me think she would be accepted right away into my family.”
Yang rolled her eyes. “Thanks a billion, you guys. Really feeling the love.”
“Happy Dustmas,” Weiss continued airily to the other two.
“Merry Dustmas, Weiss!” Ruby piped up, leaning over so the camera on the device would catch her waving. “Hope you’re having a good one!”
“It’s cold and my family is egregiously annoying. But I suppose I have received some passable presents.” Then a small smile began to tug at her pouting lips. “Well… and one very nice one.”
“So you like ‘em?”
“Shhh!” she hissed urgently. “They don’t need to know about such things.”
“This about the panties that say ‘Weiss Queen’?” Ruby asked.
“YANG! You told her?!”
Yang shrugged carelessly. “I mean, she’s my sister; she went with me to pick ‘em out. Plus you know Blake is our teammate, so…”
“I won’t tell a soul,” Blake said with a hand raised as if swearing an oath.
“Well… fine. But yes, I do very much cherish them. Oh, and I also liked the coffee mug from you, Blake, and the hot cocoa set from Ruby. Especially since I will be able to use the gifts in tandem.”
“Yeah!” Ruby piped up happily, glad her battle partner enjoyed her gift. “And you can use ‘em together, too!”
After a brief silence, Weiss sighed. “Never change, Ruby. Never change.”
“Oh!”
At Blake’s quiet exclamation, they all turned toward the window. Snowflakes had begun to drift down from the skies, blanketing the nearly-melted snow and browned grass of the Signal grounds. It was heavy enough that in no time, the entire landscape would be a winter wonderland.
“Yeeeessssss,” Ruby breathed, eyes huge and cheeks bunched with the force of her grin.
“Nice,” was all Yang said, reaching up to fistbump Blake. It took her a moment to notice and bump the fist.
“You say that like I made it snow myself,” she snorted.
“Nah, nah. Just gave us a heads up. Merry Dustmas, you guys!”
“Happy Dustmas!” Weiss insisted, sticking to the more traditional Atlesian greeting. Yang only laughed.
Either way, it didn’t matter. Ruby and Blake slipped their hands into each other’s and squeezed as they watched the gentle descent of the snow, deciding to wait on telling the other two they were soft-engaged – soon to be real-engaged when Ruby picked out a ring. Or about the marking. Right now, none of that mattered because they all had each other, and a picture-perfect view. And that was the best Dustmas gift of all.
The End
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ENDGAME THOUGHTS
So here it is. The longest post I’ll ever write, so bear with me. (I’m not kidding, this is HUGE).
I watched Endgame at 7 pm yesterday… Came back home at 11. And I posted that I would try to sleep and make this post today. You know how many hours I slept? Four. And I finally fell asleep at 3.30 am.
I will try to say all my thoughts on this post, so if I miss something, I’m sorry. (Note: although I like more characters, the IronFam, pepperony, irondad… Will be the main concerns here, so anti Tonys, get the fuck out)
SPOILERS AHEAD
I will try to say things that I liked first, then the ones that I didn’t like, and then we’ll get to the OG6 ends, okay? Okay.
THINGS I LIKED:
The whole movie has that atmosphere that this was it. The Endgame. And it really makes you anxious for the characters.
Clint’s first scene with his family is heartbreaking
Tony being so soft (a dad) with Nebula was fucking everything
Although it was expected, Carol rescuing Tony and Nebula was great. (I guess it’s because the message for Pepper was received… because then why was she waiting there?)
Tony saying “I lost the kid” killed me, and then he finally calms down when Pepper hugs him
Tony’s kiss on Pepper’s cheek
Tony cutting out Steve’s bullshit had me going “Yeah, honey! That’s it”
Seriously, he looks (and feels) like shit. And he gets the strength to get up, rip off his IV, and call him out before his body can’t stand anymore
What’s left of the team trying to fix it all, going to Thanos without second thoughts and killing him once and for all (okay, maybe not “forever”, but you know… Thor finally went for the head)
That “5 years later” gasp, seeing how the world is “moving on” after the decimation
Everyone’s fucking done, and tired, and hopeless (e.g. Nat, Steve, Rocket and Nebula, Rhodey, Clint…)
Nat’s break down, trying to stay positive about Clint, and about everything (also, Rhodey helping her, looking for Clint… Because in this blog, we love and respect Colonel James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes)
Scott getting back from the quantum realm after (for him) 5 hours, to finally reunite with his now grown up daughter
Tony “moving on” (kinda). He has the life he said he wanted since AoU, with Pepper as his wife and his daughter, and living on a beautiful farm, away from everyone
Tony being the BEST DAD the MCU will ever see (no hate on Clint or Scott tho, it’s just my opinion). He loves her so much, and she loves her daddy too (3000
Morgan with the Rescue helmet
Tony kissing it
He carrying her inside to have dinner
The team getting to his house for help, cause he’s the only one that can do it
That shot of Tony pouring drinks for everyone in which we see his wedding band (because, of course, and like RDJ, Tony is that kind of man)
He being selfish about trying what Scott said. He has every right to be. Although Peter’s not there, he has Morgan. And he wants to be there for her. He’s allowing himself to be selfish for the first time in 15 years (being 2023 in the MCU right now… I think… technically…)
But… he’s Tony Stark. The selfless man the world will ever know. He can fix it, and he will
Nat, Scott and Steve talking with Bruce… or Hulk… or Proffesor Hulk (let’s call him Bruce)
Tony being domestic: doing the dishes, tucking his daughter in, the “I love you 3000″, and him being so cute with Morgan like… “whoa, honey, that’s a lot… that’s more than ‘tons’"
Him resolving the problems of the “time-travels” in a couple of hours… I stan one man… Also, Morgan seeing her daddy work and getting ice-cream before going to sleep. Again, the best dad
Once again, Tony being domestic talking with Pep (aka his wife, aka the love of his life, aka the mother of his daughter, aka his goddess, boss and queen), asking her what should he do, and Pepper, like always, being his voice of reason
Scott and Bruce trying to work with the quantum realm
Tony driving to the compound like the badass he is (also, while being a badass, still being a dad and putting toys and a teddy bear out the way of Cap’s shield)
Bruce and Rocket looking for Thor, the appereance of Valkyrie, Korg and Miek, and Thor playing Fortnite. (I found all of Thor’s scenes very funny, but at the same time I didn’t feel like it was okay to laugh about it. He’s clearly depressed during the whole film, and every character-like every person- deal with depression and ways to cope in different ways… so I don’t think that laughing at Fat Thor was nearly okay)
Clint being a badass
His scene with Nat, holding hands
Rhodey with the best fucking idea of the movie (go back in time to baby Thanos, and… you know the rest). Again, I love this man
Bruce freaking out about it. And explaining the way the MOVIE works
Clint being succesful on the first try
The WHOLE scenes of the “domestic” team, getting up ideas of how they’re going to recollect the stones (Loved every single one of them, and I would gladly watch a film that was all about Nat, Tony and Bruce lying on a table and talking)
Jane Foster making a come-back (kinda)… Also, Thor is me when I’m doing a presentation
Rocket calling Scott “puppy”
The team prepared. The whole “you know your teams, you know your missions” speech
The “unseen” parts of Avengers 1, after they got Loki
Scott giving 2012-Tony a heart attack and 2012-Thor helping with Mjolnir. All while actual-Tony gets the tesseract (for a while)
All of Rocket-Thor scenes in Asgard
Rhodey and Nebula laughing at Quill
2012-Cap vs actual-Cap (+America’s Ass), and the elevator scene
The ancient one and Bruce conversation
The whole thing with past and present Nebula
Stan Lee’s cameo
Tony and Steve going to 1970. Tony (aka Howard Potts… I died when his wife’s name is the first one that comes to his mind) talking to Howard Stark, having a dad to dad conversation, and Edwin Jarvis cameo. Meanwhile, Steve seeing Peggy.
Nat sacrifice for Clint. Clint crying afterwards…
The team decided to not let her sacrifice be in vain (+Bruce’s reaction)
Bruce undoing the snap
Past-Gamora helping actual-Nebula (+killing old-Nebula)
Thor, Steve and Tony fight with Thanos (while the rest of the team is trying to get the gauntlet)… (+THAT scene of Steve and Mjolnir)
THAT FUCKING SCENE WHERE ALL OF THE FALLEN AVENGERS COME BACK (+RESCUE!!) AND STEVE FINALLY SAYS “AVENGERS ASSEMBLE”
SERIOUSLY, THAT WHOLE SCENE
Rescue and Iron Man fighting back to back like the power couple they are
Rescue-Mom giving Spiderman and the gauntlet a ride
Tony and Peter reunion *sobbing* (+Groot and Rocket, +Hope and Scott, +Quill and Gamora)
THAT SCENE WITH ALL THE WOMEN FIGHTING TOGETHER (Pepper being the badass she fucking is!!)… The only woman I missed was Nat… *sobbing again*
TONY’S “I AM IRON MAN”
PEPPER’S “ITS OKAY… YOU CAN REST NOW”
PETER SOBBING. PEPPER SOBBING. RHODEY HOLDING PETER
PETER GOING BACK TO NED AND MAY
THE VIDEO. “I LOVE YOU 3000″
THE FUNERAL WITH ALL THE TEAM (+HARLEY)
RHODEY AND HAPPY COMFORTING EACH OTHER BEHIND MORGAN AND PEP
“PROOF THAT TONY STARK HAS A HEART”
UNCLE HAPPY AND THE FUCKING CHEESEBURGUERS
Thor going with the Guardians (+Quill looking for Gamora)
Clint with his fam
Scott with his fam
Steve giving the shield to Sam
(this is kinda)-> Steve going to Peggy
In conclusion: MY HEART IS FUCKING BROKEN FOR THIS MOVIE, but nontheless I “loved” it
Okay… so now that we are done… Let’s talk about what I didn’t like:
I needed more Pepper/Tony moments, and more Pepper “mommy” moments
Uncle Happy was great… BUT WHAT ABOUT UNCLE RHODEY!
Steve, get out of the fucking way! Tony doesn’t need you now (at the begining of the movie). He needs Pepper, and Rhodey, and food, water and sleep
Rhodey not getting a hug with Tony at the begining of the movie
Not May/Tony conflict/crying over their ‘son’
I don’t know if I like Howard’s and Tony’s talk… I do like it, but idk. I guess that in the movies he wasn’t physically abusing to him… But at least he gets to talk with his dad and he realizes he’s a very good dad with Morgan (aka, his “little girl” *sobs*)
TONY DESERVES BETTER. THE WHOLE IRONFAM DESERVES BETTER. MORGAN, PEPPER, RHODEY, HAPPY, PETER… MY GOSH, EVEN THE BOTS AND FRIDAY (I can’t talk about him in past tense, I’m sorry. I’m just in denial)
THAT FUCKING CHEESEBURGUER LINE (I swear, I will never get over that fucking line)
Steve getting to live his “endgame” with Peggy, leaving everyone behind (aka Bucky and Sam, but mostly Bucky) and being FUCKING SELFISH (in my eyes… and for what I’ve read, in a lot of actual Cap’s fans too)
How come that “the man who lays in the wire” is the one that leaves, and “the man who would cut the wire” is the one that fucking LAYS ON IT (again)
Alright. Now I’m going to talk about the OG6 ends. Although I have leave my points of view up… But I still want to talk about it more thoroughly:
Clint: Finally, Clint got his protagonism in the team. He’s going to do “whatever it takes” (and he means WHATEVER) to bring his family back. I liked his end, there’s nothing more to discuss about it.
Bruce: Yeah, Bruce finally got the best of both worlds, the mind and the strength… But what’s he going to do now?
Thor: Thor’s end was okay (IMO)… He doesn’t have the strength to be the king anymore… But Valkyrie does. And he has great chemistry with the Guardians, so I didn’t mind him going with them.
Nat: Nat’s ending was great. Let me explain. I didnt like that she died. But I felt it very on character… She has no family, her family are the avengers. And she wants to bring them back. Clint is like her brother (I’m a little into Clintasha tbh, but I accept that they give them that brother/sister relationship long ago. It proofs that not all the male/female friendships have to end in a romantic relationship), and she did anything she could to undo the snap during 5 fucking years.
Steve: Hated it (him). Yeah, you “loved” Peggy… Whatever. (The Russos trying to put Steggy as the Royal ship when everyone KNOWS that that title belongs, AND WILL ALWAYS BELONG, to Pepper and Tony). He’s just looking at the past, he has never moved on, and he never will. He let Tony gave up his family (at the age of 53… god, he had a lot to live for) and then he left Bucky behind (and the whole Hydra mess too), when he always was so nuisance about him all these years…
Tony: Hate/Love it. I love it because it’s the way of fully close the circle of this whole journey, and he’s the SAVIOR of the fucking MCU, now and always. Haters can shut their mouths now after what he did…
I hate it because… He’s my baby. He finally had the life he craved for all these years. Married to Pep, with his baby girl; trophy husband, doting father… and now he’s… gone. He’ll never see Morgan grow up (her first day at college, her first bf/gf, her graduation, her wedding, his grand-kids… any of it), he’ll never see Peter go to college either. Pepper will see all of that alone (not completely, because Happy and Rhodey will always be there, but someone will be always missing). Morgan won’t ever doubt that her daddy loves her, but still he won’t be there to kiss her goodnight, nor to tell her shitty bed time stories. (God, I’m crying again… and I really want to say I am joking, but I’m not).
Tony fucking DESERVED BETTER.
The whole IRONFAM DESERVED BETTER.
Rhodey hold his head and pet his hair, with tears in his eyes that he refuses to let out. Peter calling him Tony for the first time ever… “We won”
Also, Pepper is the STRONGEST WOMAN IN THE MCU. No one will EVER change my mind. She went into battlefield to help her husband, to protect their kid, and she hates violence. She fought beside him, helped defeat Thanos… And, when Tony (her Tony) was dying… She kneeled next to him, to reassure him that they would be okay, that he “can rest now”. And she didn’t break until he was gone. So the last thing he would see was her being the calm, competent person he knows she is. SHE FUCKING WAITS TILL HE’S GONE. SHE HOLDS HER TEARS AND HER SOBS SO HE WOULD FEEL OKAY. SO THAT HE COULD REST. And then, when the light of his arc reactor is out, and his hand is no longer in hers, she let it all out. She kissed his cheek one last time and sobs with her face buried in his neck… And I can’t deal with it.
Tony’s last message… “I love you 3000″ is another heartbreak. And the “Proof that Tony Stark has a heart” is the best… But the fucking cheeseburguers… If I weren’t sobbing and trembling during all that, the cheeseburguer was the charm that made me explode. It was over. It was really over. And that line made it true.
And the point is… I can’t read fanfics now. Nor see fanarts, fanvids, edits, you name it. Hell, I don’t think I’ll be able to watch any movie with Tony in it with the same eyes anymore… Any of the Iron Man movies, Homecoming, Civil War… It’s just too much. I won’t be able to watch Iron Man 1 again the same as I did before… with the cheeseburguer, and Pepper tears because she “hates job hunting”, Yinsen and his question about family, or the first time Tony flies out of his garage, with that huge, happy smile on his face.
Every time that I see 3000, I get fucking sad. And I was crying when I got home yesterday. When I calmed down a bit, I entered Instagram and Robert posted that photo of him and Jimmy Rich “holding” the A of Avengers and the tag #iloveyou #3000 and I fucking cried again… Fuck, I’ve been crying while writing all of this post.
I’m not even able to read some fluff fanfic from a couple of years ago… Pre-Infiniry war era to cheer me up. It just makes me sadden.
And… I think that’s it… I hope someone will read aaaaall my rant, but I can’t sum anything up.
.
TONY STARK, I LOVE YOU 3000 (ALWAYS WILL)
#tony i love you 3000#3000#forever#tony stark deserves better#ironfam deserves better#avengers endgame#endgame spoilers#avengers endgame spoilers#spoilers#iron man#rescue#spiderman#war machine#pepper potts#tony stark#peter parker#james rhodes#rhodey#happy hogan#morgan stark-potts#morgan stark
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