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onebizarrekai · 3 years ago

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I think that lucia di lammermoor is one of my new favorite operas not just because of the mad scene but because the opera makes no sense whatsoever

there are literally so many plot holes in the libretto. there are so many unexplained facets of the narrative, unresolved arcs, dialogues that mandate copious creative liberties, things that only happen off-stage, and some unsolvable problems that can only be fixed by cutting things or directing things a certain way. there’s so much nonsense it’s actually hilarious. if you read the source story of the bride of lammermoor the opera diverts quite a bit, but the bride of lammermoor is actually even worse, so let’s put that to the side.

let’s just start from the beginning of the opera, paraphrasing as much as possible. lucia’s evil brother, enrico, is the first lead to greet the stage, minutes after his goony normano. normano tells enrico the tale of how enrico’s archenemy, edgardo, saved the life of lucia, and he reluctantly admits that they are now in love with each other and are secretly meeting up all the time. enrico flips his shit and sings about how he’s going to kill edgardo or whatever. bide the bent (aka raimondo, but schirmir really said bide the bent, whatever the hell that means) exists and does priest stuff because he’s a priest. by the way, there’s this whole thing about how the ashton family (aka lucia and enrico) are protestant and edgardo is catholic and that’s why they hate each other and that’s why there’s a priest.

anyway they all leave, and then lucia and alice enter. lucia is, naturally, waiting for her illegal boyfriend: edgardo. she is very scared because enrico is a piece of shit and wants to kill her boyfriend. alice is like “yo man this is a bad idea” and lucia is like “where’s edgardo” but lucia is also perturbed by something else. she has a ghost story to tell about this nondescript fountain and tells alice about the girl who was killed by her lover at this fountain, and then suddenly goes like “by the way the ghost of the dead woman appeared to me” and like wow ok lucia. after singing about all of the water turning to blood in her hallucination, she proceeds to completely change moods and sing about how much she loves edgardo because she is crazy. after all of this, edgardo finally arrives and tells lucia about how he actually has to go to france to do ambassador stuff and disappear for an indefinite period of time. he says that they should finally tell enrico about their relationship. lucia completely shuts him down, and then edgardo cries about how enrico has killed his family and how she’s the only light of his life. they end up deciding to keep their relationship a secret anyway and then vow to marry each other.

act 2, enrico has ordered normano to forge a break-up letter from edgardo to send it to lucia. normano shows up to give it to enrico, enrico summons lucia into wherever he is to tell her that he needs to marry her off to some other guy in order to save their family. lucia is like “but I’m marrying someone else” and enrico is like “oh yeah? read this” and gives her the letter, and lucia naturally breaks down because it’s a big lie about how edgardo has found someone else in france. she cries about it until this big fanfare plays to welcome her new husband, arturo. at this point lucia is singing about nothing except how much death would benefit her right now. enrico leaves after being an asshole for a few more minutes, and then in comes bide the bent to lecture lucia about the invalidity of her previous marital vows. she leaves to change into a wedding gown.

enter arturo, this random loser that enrico wants lucia to marry. his lines are so cliché that he’s probably reading them off a sheet of paper (which is exactly how we staged the production I am currently doing). somehow arturo knows about lucia’s affair with edgardo because those two were actually horrible at being secretive, but also he doesn’t care because he gets to marry a hottie. enrico tells arturo about how lucia’s mother died and that’s why she’s crying about the wedding. lo and behold, lucia enters and she is crying. they hold the wedding right then and there under the Authority™ of bide the bent, enrico forces lucia to sign the wedding documents, and then everyone is like “wait who’s at the door?” and then EDGARDO BREAKS IN and he’s like “EDGAAAAAARDO” and they sing a whole sextet that borders a confusion ensemble except it’s a bel canto tragedy.

edgardo is like “yeah man! it’s my right to be here since I’m engaged to lucia!” and enrico is like “PSH” and bide the bent comes up like “sorry she just signed this Other Marriage Contract” and shows it to edgardo and edgardo is like WHAT and he comes up to lucia like BRUH YOU DONE THIS?? and lucia doesn’t even know what’s happening at this point, she’s just like “yes?? but” and then edgardo takes off his ring and hers and then throws a temper tantrum before he gets kicked out.

behold the wolf’s craig duet, the most stupid and pointless thing in this opera considering what happens later. enrico barges into edgardo’s house and they sing about how they’re going to kill each other and duel at the graveyard. that’s it. there’s probably sexual tension.

after that, there’s a wedding party, except with a Horrifying Twist. lucia goes upstairs with arturo and fucking kills him. having lost her mind, she comes out covered in blood and sings for like twenty minutes in a very impressive manor. she collapses on the floor at the very end.

there’s a random recit right afterwards where enrico, bide the bent and normano briefly talk about lucia losing her mind. while enrico is crying about lucia, bide the bent literally blames normano of all people, who did exactly nothing, for every bad thing that happened to lucia.

the final scene begins at the graveyard. now, I know what you’re thinking. edgardo and enrico promised to duel each other here, right? right! so where the hell is enrico? I dunno, not here. edgardo is here, and he’s crying and stuff about his dead father. he’s very sad and probably wants to perish. a chorus shows up mourning something. edgardo asks about it and no one wants to tell him. bide the bent appears in all his priestliness and tells edgardo that lucia is now in heaven. how did she die? beats me. she died of insanity or something. edgardo has lost the final thing in his life that matters to him, so he decides to “go see her” and stabs himself.

the opera ends.

welcome to lucia di lammermoor. now, some of these plot holes are resolvable through directing. for example, lucia’s insanity is inexplicable in the libretto. nobody is just sad about their boyfriend and commits murder–granted, her first aria had her singing about a ghost and a fountain of blood. why’s she like this, though? she’s probably not ok. so like, some people explain this by making enrico way way worse than just a big liar. in the production that I’m doing, enrico is being depicted as sexually abusive towards lucia, and like, yeah that helps do some explaining. but you know what it doesn’t help? the parts of the opera that normally get cut, like the stupidass wolf’s craig duet that exists for no reason and usually gets cut because it makes no sense. also, the scene right after the mad scene where bide the bent comically blames normano for everything even though it is clearly enrico’s fault and enrico is randomly mourning lucia even though he was horrible to her for the whole opera. unfortunately, when you have companies like the met, which do full operas with no cuts, you get the whole, nonsensical story in its full glory, not to mention the met tends to shy away from taking creative liberties with the directing.

so like, why do I say this opera is a new favorite? well, aside from it being fun to sing, since I’m doing it for the first time, it’s absolutely hilarious to consider who the real mastermind here is, since for some reason, the librettist seems to think that it’s normano. you have to make up so much subtext in this story in order to even make it begin to make sense, so how far can you take it? how much nonsense can you create?

easy mode is assuming the mastermind is enrico. he’s a horrible person. obviously bide the bent accuses normano because he’s trying to divert the blame from enrico, who may or may not kill him if he says the truth. however, enrico does not go to the graveyard to kill edgardo and tie off loose ends (which I personally think he should have). enrico just kind of disappears, honestly, in spite of being the main bad guy.

bide the bent is another viable option. he blames normano to divert attention from himself. he plays the role of the peacemaker between edgardo and enrico during the sextet, but it’s all a sham. the reason bide the bent appears in the final graveyard scene is because he’s the true villain here. he simply took advantage of everyone around him in order to make sure everything went according to plan. enrico’s bs towards lucia, lucia’s insanity, edgardo’s depression, normano loyalty, the whole deal. he wishes to rise in power… perhaps the reason enrico does not show up in the final scene is because bide the bent has already disposed of him.

what if it was edgardo? what if he and lucia devised a plan to create an opening that would allow them to run away? what if arturo was in on it? lucia pretends to murder arturo, pretends to go insane, and the plan was to finally flee with edgardo… but then they were INTERCEPTED. their plan was ruined. lucia was disposed of by the enemy off-stage and it was too late. they claim she died of insanity, but she was killed by normano under enrico’s orders, or whoever else is the designated evil one here.

in the met, for some reason, they decide to have lucia’s ghost come in during the final scene and silently “coerce” edgardo into ending his life, which sounds cool, but it was ridiculous. I just remember the blood bag being in the wrong place so he had to stab himself in the kidney and lucia actually pushed the prop knife in like she wasn’t literally a ghost. there was also a ghost during lucia’s first aria that totally upstaged her. this opens up many stupid doors for directing such as arturo’s ghost returning as well if need be. anyone’s ghost could be there. ghosts canonically exist at the met. arturo could be fortnite dancing during the mad scene.

behold, a terrible take. edgardo is having a secret affair after all, but he’s having an affair with enrico. enrico is enraged when he discovers edgardo’s relationship with his sister because he thought that THEY had a thing. he vengefully tries to break them up by marrying lucia off to arturo. enrico and edgardo sing the wolf’s craig duet as a not-tragic breakup song.

honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in this goddamn cast was sleeping with each other. the possibilities are endless

during the staging period of the show, we all came up with so many stupid and hilarious ideas that we could stage an entire comedy version of this opera. maybe one day it could happen. maybe…

anyway it’s like midnight and I’m doing my cast’s performance of this opera in two days, and I just drove home a while ago from performance 1 today talking with my family about all of these stupid possibilities, so it’s all on my mind. at least the mad scene is fun to sing

#random stuff #me? going on a comical tangent about opera? more likely than you think #there's a lot of content warnings for stuff here but that's to be expected of opera #honestly I'll lose my mind for real if I have to do this show at face value #enrico isn't evil enough in just the libretto alone #see operas usually have pretty simple stories #and plot holes #but LUCIA #lucia is something else

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fitzs-trained-monkey · 3 years ago

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Chapter Three: If We Have Each Other.

~When the world's not perfect When the world's not kind If we have each other then we'll both be fine. I will be your brother and I'll hold your hand. You should know I'll be there for you. I will always be there for you~

"Dude, we are in some serious jelly," I proclaimed as I paced around the small perimeter of the tree house.

"And that jam!" Isaac added from where he remained sitting at the table.

"Tight spot."

"Indeed!"

"Up a tree!" I supplied.

"Lost in the grass!" He offered. I swung around, shaking my finger at him.

"I'll tell ya what's grass, our- AAH FRACKLES!" I had stepped on a stray nail in one of the floorboards. Hobbling my way back into my chair, I thunked my head against the table.

"But look at the bright side." Isaac leaned back in his chair. "Seeing as how our grand-theft-hairbrush is going viral and all, there is still a chance that me flipping the camera off could become a meme!" He pointed out. Slowly, I raised my head to stare at him.

"Are you kidding me right now?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

"Consider it, Marty! All it took was five years being dead and now I'm finally fulfilling my life-long dream! If I'd known it was this easy, I would have killed myself a long time ago and spared me all that drama and emotional damage," Isaac smirked. I shook my head, my gaze drifted back to the Vader figure and snow globe sitting side-by-side on the shelf.

"Please don't talk like that Isaac," I sighed. Isaac's face fell.

"Sorry, I-I wasn't thinking," He apologized. I nodded.

"It's okay." It wasn't, but what more could be said when you didn't want to speak?

"Hey," Isaac spoke softly, ducking his head to get me to look at him, "Even if things go sour, I'm gonna be here for you. Just like I promised. Through thick and thin, remember?"

"Through thick and thin."

Smiling weakly, I repeated our life long mantra. I took a deep breath and focused back in on the problem.

"Alright, man. We gotta figure out a game plan. That video is gonna bring every hunter and their mom up here to ice our, or my, gluteus maximus. And if they know about the minimart then they know about the hospital. So, what's our play?"

"Well, I say you use your Sweet-Talkin' thing and talk any o'those alcoholic weirdos out of it," Isaac suggested. I shook my head.

"Isaac, you know how much I hate doing that."

Although it was a tempting idea, that wasn't something I wanted to mess with. If you start playing with the dark things, the dark things start playing with you. That wasn't a concept I liked, but Isaac would never understand that.

"I'm just saying it’s an option! And an easy one at that," Isaac pushed. I glared at him.

"I'm not doing that."

"It might come to it, Marty. I'm just saying as a plan C it-"

"The answer is no! Moving on." My tone killed and buried the subject. Isaac raised his hands in surrender.

"Fine. But misinformation is still our strongest tool. We should use it. Tell anybody who asks that it was all done on a computer," He conceded.

"Alright, that's plan A. What's plan B?" Isaac's face twisted in thought. I let him do any and all planning when it came to telling a lie because he was so much better at making it convincing than I was. Isaac was the king of spouting believable bull crap. In fact, he would have made and excellent demon. That guy could probably get an angel to sell its soul for a box of holy doughnuts. When the idea hit Isaac's brain, I could almost see a light bulb light up above his head. He leaned forward, exited.

"Okay, I got it. We make up some BS story about a gay black dude who got chopped up by the ferry or something and the hospital wouldn't help him because all the doctors were racist homophobes, and it was the 50's." He nodded at me very seriously. Like I said, Isaac was king.

"That's is the worst, most ridiculous and stupid story I have ever heard," I told him. Isaac's nodding grew more excited. "It's perfect. They'll buy every word. Just one thing though, what about the mini-mart?" I pointed out.

Isaac opened his mouth before closing it again. Then he opened it. Then he closed it. Open. Closed. Open. Closed. This happened several more times before he finally came up with something good.

"So, our gay black guy was also a nice hobo dude and after he died he started stealing crap to give to his hobo buddies." Isaac gave me a thumbs up. I nodded.

"Okay, sounds good, sounds good. How do we explain me?" I splayed my hands. Isaac huffed and rolled his eyes, leaning back again and tucking his hands behind his head.

"Well, that’s easy. The camera never even caught a glimpse of your face, so you're his anonymous theft buddy slash item distributer!" He explained. I grinned at my fantastic phantasmal co-conspirator.

"Excellent, and of course nobody knows who the thief is. Especially not, innocent little me!" I chuckled at his brilliance.

"Exactly!" Isaac smirked.

"It's perfect! Except one last thing. We're gonna need some eyes and ears in on this. Someone to alert us when someone fishy comes lurking about," I said. Isaac nodded seriously.

"You're right. But who can we trust around here?" He asked. I could feel the smile split across my face.

"I can think of only one man for this job. A man as trustworthy as he is slimy. A man scrubbed clean by his own filth. A man so wonderful, words do him no justice!" I declared dramatically. Isaac was confused for a moment before realization dawned. His face fell.

"Please tell me you're not thinking what I think you're thinking."

"I think I am." I grinned. Isaac just sighed.

"Marty, no."

"Marty, yes!"

- 45 minutes later-

"Yo! Danny, my man! How's life?" I called out. Dan-the-Dope-Man looked up from...whatever it was he was doing outside Copper Harbor's one and only pharmacy. The pharmacy which he, in fact, owned. Honestly, I didn't want to know exactly what he had been doing behind the pile of cardboard boxes that were stacked up against the moldy brick. I figured it was better if I didn't. Dan smiled a grin that was missing two teeth.

"Marty! My worst customer and only friend! Life's good!" He greeted me, kicking a few of the boxes over to hide whatever suspicious activity it was that he had been up to. He winked and walked over to me, pushing his absolutely disgusting blond hair out of his face. "But, you know, business is betta'," He concluded.

I could never tell how tall Dan was, in this form especially. See, Dan-the-Dope-Man was a shapeshifter, though of course, no one else in the town knew that. That's how he was the owner of the pharmacy as well as a drug dealer. His other form, Jonathan De’ Santos, was the tall, 40-year-old, honest-looking Hawaiian man that ran the pharmacy. In this form, however, Dan was a somewhere-in-the-upper-five-foot-range Caucasian guy from Brooklyn with a thing against bathing. He said that the grungy, sewer-rat look was better for his side business. I wasn't sure how much of that I bought, but then again, who's gonna buy drugs from the guy who's supposed to make sure you don't destroy yourself with them.

"I bet it is!" I said, taking a step back when he reached me because, like I said, the guy had a thing against hygiene.

"This is a terrible, terrible idea," Isaac muttered, leaning on the wall to my left. I couldn't reply to him because although Dan knew what I was he didn't know about Isaac. So all I could do was give him a rude gesture behind my back. He saw it and stuck his tongue out at me.

"What can I do fo' ya, Marty?" Dan always pronounced my name as 'Mawty' at least in this form as it had a Brooklyn accent.

"Well, o' Danny boy, I have some rather bad news to deliver," I continued, "There might be some hunters coming to town soon."

Dan frowned; his eyes narrowed at me as he folded his arms over his chest.

"Well, that ain't good. Whatt'id ya do, Marty?" He asked. Sometimes Dan could be like my older brother, even if he didn't realize it.

"Woah, woah, woah! Who said I did anything?!" I defended. Dan just raised an eyebrow.

"You're always showin' off and ya know it," He said simply.

"He's right, you know," Isaac interjected. I wished I could tell him to shut his eidolic cake hole. It wouldn't have made much of a difference if I could, as he would still have continued talking, but the principle remained the same. Isaac was annoying. He needed to shut his mouth now and again. But I couldn't say that right now because he was a flipping ghost and ghosts are invisible. Mostly.

Ignoring Isaac, I opened my mouth to try to argue with Dan but quickly closed it again when found that I couldn't, because he was absolutely right. Now, I couldn’t admit that to him because Isaac was right here and that would be saying that he was right about something, and that was a thing I would never hear the end of.

"In regards," I started again.

"You'd just say 'regardless'," Isaac chimed in. I had to physically bite my tongue to keep from screaming at him to shut up.

"Regardless," I corrected. Isaac chuckled. I really needed to get myself some iron gauntlets or something so I could give his apparitional arse an involuntary appendectomy. Or just an iron ring so I could punch him in the face.

"Regardless, it wasn't me. This time. It was some attention seeking moron with a computer. That combined with my little hospital trips and you get something fishy looking." I finally managed to finish my sentence without Isaac chiming in.

"Well then ya betta' keep ya head down, Marty. I don' wan' ya gettin hurt." A dark look crossed over Dan's usually upbeat face. "Or worse," He finished.

"I know Danny, which is why I need you to do something for me," I said. Isaac sighed and face palmed but I ignored it.

"What?" Dan asked.

"I need you to watch out for any newcomers asking weird questions. I've got a plan if any hunters get too close to us, I just need to know who and where they are," I told him.

See, the pharmacy, the mini-mart, the bar, and the barber shop all sat across from each other at a four way intersection. Thus, Dan would have an excellent view of any hunter's first two targets. The origin of the supernatural activity, in this case the mini-mart, and the bar. He would be the perfect spy. Dan looked at me strangely.

"Say, Marty, you ain't plannin' on gankin' any a' dose' suckas' now are ya?" He asked, caution evident in his voice. I sighed, shaking my head internally. This was just another downside of being what I was. Everybody thinks you're a murderer. Though I knew I was far from innocent, I had never killed anyone. At least, anyone who didn't deserve it.

"Come on, Danny. In all the time you've known me, have I ever, er, ganked anyone?" I asked him, spreading my hands as if to catch the obvious answer.

"Well, no. But people can change," Dan pointed out. I rolled my eyes.

"Dan, I'm not gonna kill anyone. There, ya happy?" I said, only mildly aggravated. Isaac decided it was time to speak up again.

"You may not. But I will. If it comes to that. I won't let anybody hurt you, Marty. Not again. Not when I can do something about it."

I knew he was saying this now so I wouldn't be able to argue with him. Then I would forget and if he did kill someone Isaac would say he'd said he would. I ground my teeth together and reminded myself that it wasn't going to come to that. I wouldn't let it.

Meanwhile, Dan thought about what I'd spoken aloud.

"Yeah okay, but if anybody comes sniffin' I'm skippin', kay?" He agreed. I nodded.

"Okay, take care of yourself, Danny."

"You too, Marty." I smiled at him and began to walk away. Isaac pushed himself off the wall and trudged behind me, complaining loudly.

"Make sure you take care of yourself too, Issac! I'd hate myself if anything happened to you, Isaac! I wouldn't be able to survive without you, Isaac! Thanks Marty, your friendship means everything to me!" He said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. "Ugh! Why do I even bother?"

I smirked giving him the sign for 'I love you' behind my back.

"Aw shut up!"

But I knew he was smiling.

~So, I'm thankful for my sister even though sometimes we fight When high school wasn't easy, she's the reason I survived. I know she'd never leave me and I hate to see her cry. I just wanna tell her that I'm always by her side. I just wanna tell her that...

The worlds not perfect, but it’s not that bad. If we've got each other and that’s all we have I will be your brother and I'll hold your hand You should know I'll be there for you When the world's not perfect When the world's not kind If we have each other then we'll both be fine I will be your brother and I'll hold your hand You should know I'll be there for you.

I will always be there for you.~

Lyrics from: If We Have Each Other by Alec Benjamin

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travllingbunny · 4 years ago

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The 100: 7x05 Welcome to Bardo

Here’s finally my belated review of 7x05. I was too busy last week (with actual work) so I couldn’t write it before 7x06 aired. Then I got a bit distracted with my Dark rewatch and Dark season 3 dropping. But I’m taking a break from it to finally post this review and then, hopefully, 7x06 not long after. It’s good that I did a couple of rewatches because I could notice more details. (The review was already halfway over a week ago, so I added some remarks in italics that are things I only think now after seeing 7x06.)

This was an episode I was looking forward to and I enjoyed it, because it finally brought us to Bardo, in the belly of the beast so to speak (note: I wrote this sentence before I saw 7x06, and now I want to keep it because it’s just too funny that 7x06 put Clarke and co. in the literal belly of the beast), where the main action is likely to be, advanced the main plot of season 7 quite a lot, tied a few storylines and showed us Octavia in the present for the first time this season, and - not gonna lie - the highlight of the episode, 1 minute appearance of Bellamy, the first one since the first scenes of the season premiere.

However, I have to say that I wasn’t really impressed with the part of the episode that should have been the most interesting - Octavia’s flashbacks showing what happened to her when she was first taken to Bardo. It served its purpose by filling in the blanks, or rather confirming what I had already figured out, but for one thing, I didn’t get too much character focus in this episode, except for a touching Octavia-Hope scene and Echo’s disturbing actions in the end, which made for a pretty strong scene. And this time I was really bothered by the sloppiness of the details: from just how inconsistent the time dilation rules (rules? what rules?) seem at this point (already a problem before, but this episode made it even worse, especially since it focused on the timeline so much) to the messy selection of flashbacks in the Memory Capture scenes (while the timeline is the writers’ fault, this was obviously a case of the editor being really lazy). Maybe this is just nitpicking, but I find it really annoying when I can’t analyze details to come up theories because I have no idea which detail is a part of the plan and which is just a screw-up.

:Like everyone have some theories, including those about what really happened to Bellamy after his “death”. (At least they’re not even trying to make us believe Bellamy is dead on social media and in Inside the Episode features, like they tried last season with Clarke.)

This is why it ended up being an episode I liked less on rewatch, and I rank it behind 7x02, 7x04 and 7x01, although ahead of 7x03 (and, it turns out, 7x06). Even though the Sanctum portion of the episode was really strong and interesting this time.

Prepare for a lot of nitpicking of plot holes, and me about to incur the wrath of many t100 fans by explaining why I really dislike like the idea of an Octavia/Levitt endgame romance (it’s mostly because of their interactions in this episode).

This was the second episode this season where Marie said “Previously on” (I’m curious how many different cast members do it this season) and I think it’s the first time we saw the opening titles that were released before the S7 trailer, the ones that start with the Bardo Stone Room.

Sanctum

The deluded brainwashed folks in Sanctum who still worship the Primes have a name they have given themselves - the Faithful. And it seems that they call the people who aren’t brainwashed ‘the Fallen’. Has the show ever had such an annoying character as Trey, their leader?

I must say I related to Murphy when he suggested that maybe they should just let them burn themselves if that’s what they want, instead of letting them exert control that way. Yes, I know it’s bad. But that’s one of the things Murphy is good for, to sometimes say things that we all kind of think but would feel ashamed of saying aloud - at least if it was real life. However, Murphy - and I’m sure everyone - changed his mind when he saw they were going to burn children. And the father of the child who was about to be sacrificed (who we now know is called Jeremiah) looked confused and terrified. Maybe it’s just Trey and a couple of other fanatical people influencing and manipulating the others. Unfortunately, real life examples of people doing horrible things - even to their own children - in the name of what they believe in, to make me hesitate to call this too extreme to be plausible. But what is going on in the heads of these people? At least before, when the people of Sanctum were sacrificing their children or other loved ones or themselves, they believed it meant living forever and being one with the gods, but this?

Nelson is becoming quite a likable character even though he has only had a brief scene or two here and there. (And then the show goes and does... whatever the hell they’re doing with him in 7x06.) Like this time, when he was the only one who tried to save the Faithful woman who set herself on fire, explaining that the people of Sanctum are still their people, even the Faithful. (Now this is a much nicer face of the Children of Gabriel. Where was he when CoG were killing Nightblood people/potential hosts, even though that’s not the most efficient way to stop the Primes - as opposed to killing the Primes and destroying their mind drives?)

Great little character moment for Emori when she asked Nelson: “Even though they cast you out?” He probably doesn’t even know how much that resonates with her. Is this foreshadowing her storyline this season? Will she have to interact with or do something for the Grounders - or even specifically her clan, Sangedakru (which also happens to be the clan where Sheidheda was from - and the most likely to follow him if/when they find out who he is, since they seem to consider him their “greatest champion’)? (The latter seems slightly less likely now that Indra seems to have made them respect her authority... but I doubt it’s going to be that easy...)

BTW, speaking of Emori. let me just address the speculation that she’s pregnant - apparently based on the fact she threw up?! She threw up because she got radiation poisoning, FFS. If she were pregnant, the fetus would at least be in huge danger of not surviving. Maybe the writers of The 100 didn’t know or didn’t expect the audience to know about the effects of radiation, but come on, they must be aware that everyone has seen Chernobyl.) And Jackson, a doctor, examined her right there.

Murphy being snarky: “I’m tired of being a hero”. Hmm... when was the last time, Murphy, you were a hero without someone roping you in first, or without you following Emori’s lead or making a last moment decision? However, while Murphy likes to claim he doesn’t want to be a hero, Bellamy told him in 5x01 that Murphy’s problem on the Ring was that he actually wanted to be a hero and felt useless because he didn’t have the opportunity. Still, he’s come a long way since season 1, when he wasn’t exactly that protective of children.... Granted, Charlotte was not an innocent, but she was still a child. And he was 17 at the time, now he’s an adult.

I’m enjoying watching Indra in her new leadership role and her stand-offs with RussHeda. It’s very fortunate that Adina is not busy with AHS anymore, and JR Bourne makes for a fantastic villain - in a completely different way than Russell was. Russell was soft and emotional while also pompous and hypocritical and seemed to believe his own BS, which made him all the more annoying. Sheidheda is much smarter and has no delusions about being a good guy. He’s scary and dark but he also knows how to turn the situation to his benefit and has very rational remarks about how ridiculous the Faithful are with their tactic. He clearly has nothing but contempt for them. “My, my, what foolish little lambs you are.” (Which ties into this season’s themes of Shepherd and the flock.)

We learn more about Indra’s backstory, and this is the most I’ve been interested in Grounder history since... ever?

It’s also quite dark how she manipulates Jackson with his desire for revenge, by keeping the truth from him that RussHeda is not Russell. But Jackson’s dark side of his thirst for revenge for Abby has made him the most interesting that he’s ever been as a character.

I think that this storyline will eventually somehow tie with the main storyline. If nothing else then because Sheidheda and Madi are connected to the knowledge from the Flame, which is connected to Becca and ALIE and events from the prequel. Especially since it increasingly seems like the “great war” that’s being talked about may have something to do with AIs...

Bardo

Timeline and time dilation

Let me get this off my chest first... The timeline of this episode was confusing for some viewers in terms of the sequence of events. That isn’t the case for me - the problem is that the amount of time that was supposed to pass makes the time dilation seem really inconsistent.

So, chronologically, things happened like this:

in 6x08 (some 4 or 5 Sanctum days ago): Diyoza goes into the Anomaly; ends up on Skyring

Octavia goes into the Anomaly 6 seconds later, ends up on Skyring, 3 months (Skyring time) after Diyoza arrived. she gives birth.

Octavia and Diyoza spend 10 years there raising Hope.

Octavia sends a message to Bellamy in a bottle, not realizing the bottle ended up on Bardo (apparently, the default setting of the Anomaly, is: you go from Sanctum to Skyring and from Skyring to Bardo). Disciples capture her and Diyoza and take them to Bardo.

While Hope spends 10 more years on Skyring with Dev, before jumping to Bardo, Octavia is taken to Bardo, tried to run away, then is taken to Memory Capture. This is 45 (Bardo) days ago. She resists at first, but 34 Bardo days ago, she allows Levitt access to her memories and he starts watching them in a more coherent and chronological manner. 31 Bardo days ago, after he’s seen her memories up to the season 3 finale, Hope comes to rescue her.

Levitt helps them and Octavia is sent back to Sanctum, losing her memories, and runs back into Gabriel’s arms (no, I don’t mean it like that and I don’t ship them) - 10 Sanctum seconds after she ran into the Anomaly! (This is still 6x08)

7 Bardo days ago (which is some 2 days ago on Sanctum) or 6x13, Hope (who had probably been immediately captured when trying to save her mother - I guess she and the Disciples spent 24 days waiting for Octavia to enter Hope’s mind code into the Anomaly Stone...) is sucked into Sanctum, stabs Octavia with the tag which pulls her to Bardo. Octavia is brought to MCap again, and apparently Levitt talks to her and then she is brought to the Stone Room to talk Bellamy down. Something happens to Bellamy and Octavia is made to believe he’s dead.

in the present, Hope, Echo and Gabriel (after spending 5 years on Skyring, which was somehow 2 days on Sanctum (?)) jump to Bardo, kill some people, pretend to be DIsciples and listen to Anders’ speech, find Octavia, and see the memory of whatever happened or did not happen to Bellamy.

Now this means that the time differentials between planets have been like this:

Sanctum: 6 seconds = Skyring: 3 months

Sanctum:10 seconds = Skyring: over 20 years (because Hope spent 20 years on Skying and at least a few hours on Bardo, all in those 10 Sanctum seconds)

Sanctum: a few seconds (under 10 seconds, probably a lot less) = Bardo: 14 days (from “45 days ago” to “31 days ago”)

Sanctum: about 2 or 3 days = Bardo: 24 days

Sanctum: 2 days = Bardo: 7 days

Sanctum: a little over 1 day = Skyring: 5 years

See the problem here?

@justbecauseyoubelievesomething pointed out before that the time differentials may vary a lot because of planets orbiting their suns (and Sanctum orbiting its planet and the suns) in elliptic orbits, so distances from the black hole change. However, the problem with this is that 1) they haven’t said that on the show and instead keep talking about the time differentials as if they are at least roughly the same or similar all the time, and 2) these fluctuations vary way too much for it to make any sense? If it was just 1:3 and then 1:7, for instance, OK - but how the heck does the time differential between Sanctum and Bardo go from 1:200,000 to 1:3?

How is this supposed to work? Do people on Bardo go:

“We’re sending a team to Sanctum!”

“Understood! We will need just an hour to retrieve the target!” “But Sir... they’ll return in 20 years! We have to wait till next week, then an hour will be just 7 hours here!”

“All right, we have to wait for the next week then!”

And do these fluctuations happen just between Sanctum and Bardo or Sanctum and Skyring, or also between Bardo and Skyring? The latter would make their prison system quite complicated and tricky!

A couple of other pieces of info -

Levitt put the “Trust Bellamy” note in Hope’s arm during his MCap session (because he knew what Bellamy was to Octavia), but Anders apparently did not realize why Hope was bleeding or that it had something to do with Levitt, though he was the only one who could’ve had any contact with her?

One thing I don’t get is the part where Anders says: “it’s why you’re a prisoner dressed like a savage so you can get close to Aunty O”. Why did they have to dress Hope in Grounder-like clothes, exactly?

We also see that Meredith’s team was told to go to Sanctum and find Clarke - though it’s unclear why they waited so long to send them. Or why Meredith’s team waited about a day and a half to contact Clarke. We see Anders telling Meredith: “Because of the time dilation, no one will come for you if you fail” - and I have no idea that’s supposed to mean, especially since I don’t know what time differential it was supposed to be at the time.

Octavia in Memory Capture

...And I’m gonna nitpick some more.

Maybe it’s not a big deal that many of the scenes we saw as Octavia’s memories didn’t make sense, because they were either scenes she wasn’t present for or scenes from the future (relative to the moment when she was on Bardo the first time), but I expected better, after the wonderful attention to detail in last season’s Nevermind and Matryoshka, where neither the prop masters nor editors and sound editors made any mistakes with what we saw and heard of Clarke’s memories.

So, 45 days ago, when Octavia was first brought to Bardo, and Anders and Levitt were seeing random memories against her will, the first thing she’s told is to imagine someone holding out a hand to her to help her, and we see brief flashes of various memories (aka scenes from the previous seasons) before her mind settles of many different images of Bellamy:

Aurora with baby Octavia

Lincoln, just before his death

Indra - when Octavia finds her and talks to Clarke and Lexa (3x05) - of course this is there because of Indra, but I don’t know if Clarke is also supposed to be one of the people O thinks of: we see her quite clearly as she’s saying she must talk to Bellamy to save their people

and then a bunch of images of Bellamy - which is where things start not making sense, because while we see him

in the Pilot on the dropship (that makes sense)

in season 5 when he argued with Octavia (also makes sense)

but we also see him dressed Gabriel’s cardigan, which he only wore after reuniting with Octavia in 6x10, after she came back from Bardo, and one of the images is definitely from 6x13 when Hope came from the Anomaly (future scenes!)l

we also see the scene where Bellamy was looking for Octavia and talked to Clarke in 1x06 (where Octavia was obviously not present for! It’s also the scene right after the Aurora flashback - the editor were obviously being super lazy)

and Bellamy in an anti-radiation suit in 4x13 when he had to leave Clarke (the only way Octavia could remember that is if she had a telepathic link to her brother!)

Other memories include Murphy in Pike’s class (clearly just as a cool transition from a Murphy scene in Sanctum), but it was really funny how horrified Octavia seemed when Levitt asked her if he was her lover. ;) Levitt clearly got a bunch of images of her friends - including Raven, Clarke (from the Pilot!) and Indra, whose images we see on screen in addition to Bellamy - and he finally sees a bunch of memories of Hope on Skyring, which is what she was trying to hide the most.

At this point, Octavia desperately tries to make a deal with Levitt - he doesn’t mention Hope in his report, and lets her go later, and she’ll let him into her memories. Just before Levitt starts watching her memories in the chronological order, we hear some more of Octavia’s memories in her head (they aren’t showing on the screen, where the same flashbacks as before are playing):

banishing Echo in 4x11

Bellamy deciding to leave her in 6x03 (“Are you out of your mind? You didn’t need to kill anyone!”)

Miller saying “Blodreina gave that honor to me!”

Octavia yelling “You’re dead to me!” to Bellamy (in that disturbing scene in 3x10) and...

Hallucination!Pike telling her she caused a world to be destroyed and herself yelling she wanted “REDEMPTION!” - which is another inconsistency, because comes from a red toxin hallucination that she’ll only have after she returns to Sanctum (in 6x09)! At least you could say this was already in her subconsciousness, but these were supposed to her memories!

When she starts cooperating, Levitt basically binges the first 3 seasons of The 100 - or rather, a version of it where Octavia is the main character and everything is only from her POV - ending with 3x16, which is probably pretty significant, as they showed several moments right before Clarke destroyed the City of Light and the moments after she came back. We see Bellamy telling everyone what to do as they were fighting chipped people to protect Clarke, Clarke on the throne in the City of Light, Pike fighting chipped!Jaha, Pike saving Octavia, and, and after the destruction of the COL, Murphy and Emori hugging, and finally - Octavia stabbing Pike.

This is where Levitt goes “Yes!” - which makes me (and Octavia) feel real tonal dissonance. He reveals himself to be a true Octavia stan, the kind who thinks their favorite character simply cannot go wrong and who doesn’t just defend her and have an understanding and empathy for her motives and emotional states (which is great), but cheers even the bad things she did (which is not great). Now, if Levitt is meant to be a representation of a typical stan, that’s great. The show has, this season in particular (and even in S6 to a point - through Jordan) been dealing with the idea of Clarke, Octavia and other main characters as living legends. And a lot of t100 fans - including every single YouTube reactor I’ve seen - always cheers and says they’re happy when she kills Pike. I didn’t feel that way, so there’s that. And sure, some of that is because I didn’t hate Pike. But what’s more important is: that moment was never portrayed as a triumphant one. (It it was meant to be, it would have been Octavia killing Pike in a battle, or something similar to the scene where Lincoln killed Cage Wallace in 2x16, not Octavia stabbing Pike when he didn’t expect it, after they had fought together and right after he had saved her life. It wouldn’t have shown Bellamy and Clarke worried about Octavia, or made it her ‘start of darkness’ moment that led to her becoming a murder-obsessed assassin in season 4. And 6x09 made a point that Octavia herself saw this act as a wrong one - that she thinks she didn’t have the right to murder someone in cold blood even though she had legitimate reasons to hate him. The show generally doesn’t portray revenge-murder as a good thing. And that is true in this scene, too: we see flashbacks of Pike at his most heroic (fighting chipped Jaha and Pike right after he saved Octavia’s life) before the scene of her stabbing him, and while Levitt is like “YES!”, Octavia seems upset to see that moment again and a tear is falling from her eyes.

So why, then, is the show apparently portraying Levitt’s uncritical stanning of everything Octavia does as a great thing, and why are so many fans and reviewers convinced that Levitt is a great new love interest for Octavia, possibly her endgame love interest, because of his adoration of her and the praise her gives her? (And 7x06 has made me think that, yes, the show is definitely portraying him as a potential love interest.) Yes, I agree that Octavia needs someone to help boost her self-esteem and tell her she’s not a monster, that she’s a good person at heart, that she’s worthy of love. But it would mean so much more if it came from someone who was able to relate to her as an equal and also acknowledge her dark side and be critical of the bad things she did. “I understand why you did this and it doesn’t make you a terrible person” is different from “Everything you did is right and awesome.” I liked what he said about her as a child, how she was even then being responsible and protecting her mother and brother and not just herself by hiding. But it’s absurd to tell someone “You’re not a killer, you’re a warrior” right after you’ve seen them murder someone out of revenge in what most definitely wasn’t a battle or a fight. The fact is that Octavia is both a warrior and a killer. They all are - she, Clarke, Bellamy, all of them. Having a good heart and understandable motives doesn’t change that fact.

If Levitt is supposed to just be a Disciple with a crush that makes him help Octavia, fine, but I can’t see a potential romance there - it would be like a relationship between a celebrity and an obsessive fan.

World-building

This episode was full of world-building info, probably what I liked about it the most:

Levitt seemed particularly interested in Clarke and the fact she was in the City of Light, which makes me think that the reason why she is ‘the key’ in the eyes of the Disciples has something to do with Becca’s tech and ALIE in particular, and that the enemy they’re afraid of may be some sort of an AI.

We finally saw Bardo. Not that it was surprising since we already knew from the opening titles and 7x04 that the compound was underground and that it was a dome with artificial atmosphere and that it included an arboretum, Stone Room, which is on the way to the cells, etc. I checked to see if it matched the layout drawn by Orlando. I had assumed that the numbers were levels in the structure, but while Orlando put Arboretum as 1, it is on level 2.

It seems that all the Disciples were either black or white clothes. (Fits with the black and white way of thinking.) From what we’ve seen so far, it seems that the military, so to speak (fighters/those who jump to other planets) wear black, while the Stone Conductors, people who do the Memory Capture, other scientists, as well as other personnel (like janitors or gardeners/groundskeepers) wear white. Anders himself, the First Disciple, wears white, so I suppose he is one of the “civilians’.

Anders claims that the Disciples have risen above “lesser emotions” and learned to value the collective rather than the individuals. But from what we’ve seen of other Disciples, that’s BS. That may be their ideology, but in fact, they’re just the same as anyone else and just as prone to developing feelings of love and bonds of friendship as anyone else.

Levitt is Level 11! Which makes you wonder how hard the Disciples really check how ‘devout’ the Disciples are. But maybe he’s just too important as an expert,

We see the MCap technology at work. But we also see that it’s not easy to extract memories from an unwilling subject. Levitt has apparently mostly done this to the Disciples themselves (you’d think most of them would be willing, but obviously some were not, since they sound like they already have experience with unwilling subjects.) Levitt tries to get Octavia to comply because he’s a Good Cop by telling her that they may get his colleague instead, who will “burn right through” her brain. (But as we see from the Diyoza flashback in 7x06, that’s not true - the other guy, Kirsch, doesn’t do that when Diyoza is uncooperative. I don’t think they are actually able to do that.)

The Disciples usually send teams every 30 minutes (but these 30 minutes are drastically different on Sanctum and on Skyring!)

More about how the Anomaly Stones work: while Dev told Hope that all you need to do Is think where you want to go and the helmet will do the rest, it’s not actually that magical - in fact, you actually need someone (normally the Conductor) to push the buttons on the Anomaly Stone.

According to Levitt, pulling someone from another planet through the Anomaly is “ safe 8 out of 10 times". What happens the other 20% of times? Is it really being “turned inside out” as Hope said in 7x02?

It’s also confirmed that people lose their memories if they travel without the helmets from a faster to a slower time dilated planet (which I had already figured out based on the fact that the danger only seemed to exist when travelling from Skyring/Bardo to Sanctum and from Skyring to Bardo, but not the other way round).

When Hope was about to leave to save her mother, Levitt tried to tell her: “They have helmets, too, that means that…” – what? That they can see her? Meredith’s team didn’t see Raven, so it can’t be that. But do they have some other way of communicating? Do you have to be actively thinking for them to detect you? Whatever it is, she should’ve listened as she quickly got caught.

Eyes are important as it’s through them that the biometric signature/mind code is made. And the Disciples have a very quick way of painting/tattooing the code on someone’s back.

What exactly is the problem with the atmosphere on Bardo? There is a biohazard alert as Octavia is brought in and she’s checked for some sort of an infection (“she’s clean”). It seems that the problem is with some kind of a disease (especially with what we hear from Levitt in 7x06).

In the category of revelations that weren’t a surprise at all since the fandom has figured them out weeks ago, Gabriel realizes that there is a Stone on Earth (as we saw in 7x04 and in the opening titles - it’s the offline planet), by listening to Anders’ speech where he mentions that the Shepherd delivered them by a stone. (Confirming the theory that Disciples are Second Dawn even before that was technically confirmed in 7x06 and that Cadogan led them through the Anomaly some time after the Apocalypse and after burning Becca. I suppose they disconnected the Stone so unbelievers could not follow them.)

There’s a ton of new info about the history of Bardo. According to the Disciples, the compound was built by “Native Bardoans”, who went extinct before the Disciples got there. And they were supposedly giants, but were turned by something called “Gen9″ into “crystal giants”?! Levitt says that the whole min code could fit on a Bardoan’s arm? (How does he know that?) I call BS on that. The rooms and doors in the compound are tall, but wide enough just for a human-sized person to pass through. (And there are plenty of human buildings with very tall doors and ceilings.) The retinal scans are fitted to the human eye, all the technology is human-sized, and, most importantly, the keys on the Anomaly Stone are the size of a human finger. The whole thing reminds of many legends that various big ancient buildings were built by giants. I still think Eligius III people were the ones who built the compound. We still haven’t heard anything of them and where they fit. And with the time dilation, they could’ve been on Bardo for decades or centuries before Second Dawn arrived a few Earth years later.

What is Gen9? I assume it’s a disease (especially with all the mentions of the polluted atmosphere on the surface), but it’s also been suggested it may be a computer program, which would fit with the idea of the enemy being an AI or connected to AIs. I like the theory that it’s not short from “Generation 9″ but “Genesis 9″, which would fit with the religious themes (the Disciples mix and match a lot of pseudo-Christian and pseudo-Buddhist ideas). Genesis 9 is the chapter about God’s Covenant with Noah, where God tells him that humans should go and multiple and feed on plants and animals, but they mustn’t eat what has lifeblood in it still, and they mustn’t shed the blood of another human being. “I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.“

These are the transcripts of all the prayers and speeches of the Disciples from this episode, as much as I was able to hear them:

[prayer] “In the light of the Shepherd, for all mankind. He will save us from the war to end all wars”

[female speaker] "The Shepherd brings us wisdom. The Shepherd brings us love, for all mankind. (...) Humanity (...) (final days)… burned, (...) as bombs launched, your ancestors chose a different path. There will soon be time when we will be tested to a man, and we will be victorious. For all mankind!"

[male introducing Anders]“And now, it is my greatest honor to present the esteemed First Disciple, who will lead us through today’s lesson on the Book of Allness.”

Anders: “Thank you, Emilio. In the light of the Shepherd, for all mankind!

Let’s first take a moment to acknowledge our newest class of Level 9s. You’ve each demonstrated impressive devotion to the Shepherd. Our predecessors on this planet did not share that faith. Like our ancestors on Earth, they destroyed their world. Even before they were wiped out by Gen 9 and turned into crystal giants, their atmosphere was so polluted they were forced to build forests underground in order to breathe. Even the rain that should fall from the sky, falls instead by their technology. For that, we thank them. But where are they now? We know that by the time the Shepherd delivered us with the stone, the Bardoans were gone, extinct. Why is that? [Someone from the crowd: “They didn’t have the Shepherd!” Everyone laughs. Oh, Disciple humor... ] No, they didn’t, did they? They [unintelligible, Gabriel speaks over this part]… they lost their last great war. That same enemy is coming after us now. But, in the light of the Shepherd, we will not lose. [crowd cheers] We’re close now. We’ve located the key. After hundreds of years it has returned to us. Ours is the generation that will win the last war! Our Shepherd will rise [unintelligible] and we will win (?) this fight, for all mankind!”

Hi, Bellamy! Bye, Bellamy! See ya later!

And for the most important thing in this episode: yes, we were blessed with a rare and joyous moment,, a sighting of Bellamy Blake on screen (and not in MCap but in an actual new scene), as occurrence as rare this season as (probably) the Disciples seeing the Shepherd.

While absolutely no one is buying the fake-out death (about as convincing as Clarke’s in 6x04 or Octavia’s in 6x13, though I now wonder if leaving Bellamy out of the poster and Bob out of the Countdown was a part of the fake-out they committed to), there have been many different theories about what really happened there, if the whole scene was staged or if it even happened or was an implanted memory. (The glitch effects between scenes may have contributed to that theory, but the glitch effect occurred at random points, e.g. when Hope remembered her conversation with Anders, and I don’t see why that would be a false memory.)

For a moment, I even wondered if Levitt talking to Octavia was her hallucination (seeing a comforting figure) because it seemed quite implausible that Anders and the others had only then started to figure out that he got too close to her, and that they were still letting her come anywhere near her. But 7x06 proved I was wrong. Well, maybe Anders has realized Levitt had helped Octavia and Hope and it’s all some elaborate trap where he is using Levitt as an unwitting pawn, though that seems a bit convoluted... or maybe Anders just isn’t actually that smart as we assume he should be.

I’ve never believed in the ‘implanted memory’ theory, and people have since pointed out that there’s a sign of damage from the blast in the Stone Room.

The other prevalent theory is that the whole scene was staged by the Disciples and that Bellamy himself was in on it because he’s been brainwashed. The arguments are - it’s unlikely that Bellamy managed to overpower a few Disciples after being captured unconscious, and that there’s supposedly something “off” about him in that scene because he had been crying just before that. I don’t think there’s anything “off”, and he had learned that Octavia was alive, so why do people expect him to be crying rather than fighting to save her? As for it being unlikely that he killed a couple of Disciples immediately, overpowered another and captured the Conductor - I’m sorry, but have you seen the Disciples this season? They are being killed by pretty much every main character. And maybe some fans see Bellamy as a soft sweet teddy bear of a man and think that only women on t100 are allowed to be good fighters, but canon Bellamy is pretty damn badass and really good at fighting. What would be actually hard to believe is that Bellamy could get brainwashed over the course of a few hours. I’m sorry, but no.

People also said the fact that Bellamy asked what the heck Octavia was talking about when she used the opportunity to tell him that Disciples wanted Clarke (”I’ll tell them everything, even about Clarke”) was a sign he had lost his memories or been brainwashed and that he didn’t know who Clarke was - which is a really convoluted argument. The simplest and most obvious answer is that he was surprised and wanted to know what they wanted with Clarke.

There was actually something odd about that scene - but it was Anders’ behavior. after Octavia said that line about Clarke and after Bellamy reacted to it, he got a very strange look on his face, and the camera was focusing on him. The second odd thing is that the Conductor got very upset at that moment and started begging Anders: “Sir, please, no”, before Anders shut him up - which seemed like an overreaction to the possibility of... what? Letting a prisoner go? This makes me think that the Disciple on the floor detonating a grenade was a part of the ploy by Anders. He certainly was never going to send Bellamy to Sanctum - I have an idea where he actually sent him - but what if he was also signalling something to the Disciple - that he should detonate the grenade? Which would be a smoke screen so Octavia, Levitt and others wouldn’t know what really happened to Bellamy and would think he was dead.

But why would Anders want Octavia to think he was dead? It’s certainly not to make her cooperate, because that was only ever likely to have the opposite effect. But also - why would the Disciples focus on making Octavia tell them more about Clarke, when they could try to use Bellamy for the same purpose? From Octavia’s memories, they must have known how close Bellamy and Clarke are. (Or did Levitt tell Anders that? If he did not, that was an additional reason to suspect Levitt and hide information from him. If Anders was only starting to realize there’s a connection between Clarke and Bellamy, that could have changed his plans.) And they could do more with Bellamy than just try to get his memories. They could use him (his life, his safety) to draw in Clarke, the “key”. If Anders has sent Bellamy somewhere and wanted to hide his whereabouts and make people on Bardo think he’s dead for the time being, the blast could be a good distraction, before he plays that card. (All of this, of course, assuming Anders is actually smart.)

Now, where is Bellamy? He certainly wasn’t sent back to Sanctum, and Anders had no reason to send him to Skyring or Nakara (if he needs him alive and under his control, that would defeat the purpose), And there’s no indication that it’s possible for the Anomaly Stone to send a person to another location on the same planet. So, I believe Bellamy has been sent to Etherea. That would be the reason to finally go to the only planet of the 6 that we haven’t seen yet. I’ve also had the theory that Etherea is the slowest of all the planets - because, if you’re using time dilation as a plot point, why wouldn’t you milk it for its worth? And if that’s the case - good news is that Bellamy won’t get almost any older, but the bad news is that he’s lost all his memories. But not too bad of a news, since he’d get them back as soon as he gets to a faster planet.

This would open some juicy story possibilities...

An Echo of Finn (and Octavia?)

This episode continued the trend we’ve already seen in 7x04 - Hope is becoming more of a killer after her first kill on Skyring, Echo is reverting to her identity as as ruthless spy and killer (and occasionally murderer, as at the of this episode), in her 5-year single-minded mission to save Bellamy and now as a result of believing that Bellamy is dead and her mission was for nothing. And Gabriel is getting more and more frustrated with both of them, especially Echo, and constantly going “will you stop killing people, please?” (Well, not in those words.) (And I’m wondering how close he really got to the others, since they spent 5 years together and were preparing to jump to Bardo, but Hope never told Gabriel about Levitt?! )

There was some irony earlier in the episode when Hope seemed almost ready to attack Anders in front of hundreds of Disciples (she really hates him - I guess because she knew they were torturing her mother), and Echo told her to “pull herself together”, since it was Echo later that lost it, murdered Kirsch the memory capture guy in a particularly brutal way, and blew their chances of using him to get to Diyoza, which would’ve been a terrible blow to Hope if Diyoza hadn’t freed herself anyway, as we see in 7x06.

(Kudos to Tasya for being really good in that scene, she made Echo look genuinely scary. I’ve often criticized her acting, but this time she was really on point.)

So let’s talk about this moment and Echo’s arc this season.

Some people say that this is just a normal reaction to “losing the love of your life” and that everyone would react the same. But we’ve seen other characters lose people they deeply loved, and they did not react the same way. We’ve seen Bellamy react to Octavia’s “death” in S4 and Clarke’s “death” in S6. We’ve seen Clarke react to many of her loved ones’ deaths, most recently to her mother’s. Her grief over her mother was shown in detail over several episodes, and we saw her explode in the end, but while she beat up Russell, she stopped herself from killing him (and Russell was the actual person who murdered her mother and had previously tried to murder Clarke herself and stole her body for his daughter). In S6, Bellamy wanted to kill Russell (again, the actual person responsible for Clarke’s death) and burn the Sanctum down, but he stopped himself. In this very episode, we see Octavia react to her brother’s “death”. which she sees as very real, but she hasn’t started going around and killing anyone she gets her hands on.

Now, Octavia of the past, S3 Octavia, was different, far less mature, more violent, and she did react violently to Lincoln’s death, including becoming a murderer - now, the person she murdered was the one directly responsible for Lincoln’s death, but she also went on to become an assassin and became rather murder-happy, before stopping herself just as she was about to kill Ilian the same way Pike killed Lincoln.

Another obvious parallel is to Finn and the way he was losing control and becoming more violent, ruthless and selfish, from murdering a Grounder prisoner, to wanting to leave Mel literally hanging from a cliff because she was unimportant in his eyes compared to his goal of finding and “saving” Clarke (who, it turned out, didn’t even need saving and had saved herself), to completely losing it and killing a bunch of completely innocent people. The guy Echo killed here wasn’t really innocent, but he wasn’t responsible for Bellamy’s “death”, either, and Echo’s behavior on her quest to save Bellamy has been increasingly violent throughout the season. And, while we knew Clarke was alive and well, we don’t know where Bellamy is but he is still alive and will probably eventually meet Echo again, just like Clarke reunited with Finn.

(Mind you: I don’t think Echo’s killing spree is the reason why Becho will fall apart. The relationship was already disintegrating in S6, if you pay any attention. This is more about Echo herself and where she finds herself without that relationship. Finn’s killing spree wasn’t the reason why Flarke fell apart, either. Clarke still had feelings for Finn, but she had rejected him for other reasons, i.e. his earlier behavior. )

What do all these actions have in common? They weren’t romantic, they were f*cking unhealthy. When Finn told Clarke that he killed all those people for her, she was horrified, and I was really angry at him for telling her something that terrible.

In Finn’s case, he may have been suffering from PTSD, and his feelings for Clarke were turning into an obsession and made him look almost like a stalker. In Echo’s case, she has serious identity issues and her childhood trauma and conditioning by Queen Nia. But the show is, in this case, more open about the fact that, for Echo, it’s not all about romantic love. or love in general. She has lost her purpose. Bellamy is not just her boyfriend, he’s her King, like Nia and Roan before him. Echo’s own subconsciousness has been telling her that this is a problem, and that her relationship with Bellamy is very unbalanced. “Without Bellamy, who will you follow? Without someone to follow, who are you?” It also told her that she has remained the same as before she became a part of the Spacekru and his girlfriend: “Once a killer, always a killer.” ““The honorless spy who would do anything for her queen, even betray the man she now claims to love?” In S5 and S6, Bellamy was trying to not “make the same mistakes”, and “do better”, and was always rejecting Echo’s more ruthless suggestions of how to deal with any potential enemies, and she always fell in line as he was the leader/ Without him, she is reverting to her old patterns.

It’s not romantic or a sign of soulmate love to wrap your whole identity over one person. It’s really unhealthy. It was also unhealthy when Octavia said she didn’t have a home and didn’t belong anywhere after Lincoln’s death because he was “her home”. She had to grow out of that. Maybe she could offer some advice to Echo now. Will it work or not? I don’t know.

What I’m sure of is that Becho is doomed, but the writing on the wall has been there at least throughout season 6, if not already in season 5. What I don’t know is how Echo’s own arc this season will end. She will have to forge a new identity, but what will it be? Will she start following someone else? (That would be a pretty depressing arc.) Become independent, but still a ruthless killer? Will she start thinking about the morality of her actions as most other o the major characters do? Will she fail to find any solution and will die? Not every character on the show gets to have an uplifting arc where they solve their issues. Her arc is different from Finn’s because his dark arc was a completely new and shocking development, while Echo is reverting to who she used to be. But I think it’s more likely that she gets a more positive ending than Finn, because the show has been paralleling storylines in seasons 6-7 to storylines of early seasons (like Sanctum-Mount Weather) but with a more positive outcome.

Best moments/lines

While Bellamy’s 1-minute appearance was undoubtedly the highlight of the episode, my favorite scenes were Octavia’s reunion and goodbye with Hope (even with Hope being an adult now, Octavia talks to her as a surrogate aunt: “I love you, little one, don’t you ever forget it”), the scenes with Murphy and the kids and the battle of wills between Indra and Sheidheda.

The best line by far was Hope’s reply to Anders:

“This is what happens when you value individuals above the collective”

Hope: “It’s called love, you son of a bitch,”

Body count:

One Faithful burned herself.

another fanatical suicide: a Disciple who detonated the grenade (at Anders’ orders?) in the flashback scene with Bellamy

a bunch of Disciples killed, again. For a group that’s supposed to be so badass and scary, they really failing to be that, since they’re constantly getting their asses kicked. OK, they are not all Level 12, and Orlando was both Level 12 and a teacher of fighting skills. And yes, Echo and Hope (and Gabriel, who hasn’t killed anyone so far) have had almost 5 years of training by Orlando, while Octavia and Bellamy (and Diyoza, of course) are incredibly badass even without it. But you can’t keep them getting killed so easily and expect me to take them seriously. This time, Bellamy killed a couple in the flashback, and Hope and Echo killed a few, including a particularly sadistic murder of Kirsch the Memory Cap guy.

Rating: 7.5/10

#the 100 #the 100 season 7 #the 100 7x05 #welcome to bardo #octavia blake #bellamy blake #indra kom trikru #indra #sheidheda #john murphy #echo kom azgeda #hope diyoza #gabriel santiago #cadogan #the disciples #bardo #time dilation #the anomaly

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raisingsupergirl · 4 years ago

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I Didn't Vote

Yep, you heard it right. On 11/3/20, I didn't go anywhere near the polls. I woke up, went to work, went home, and went to bed. Sure, I'd had a long day, but I certainly had a chance to swing by and punch my ticket. I thought about doing it. From the time I woke up I thought about it. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it, and I didn't really know why. Even the next day I couldn't figure it out. And I've been mulling it over since then. I still don't have a satisfying reason, but at least I have a reason. Actually, I have several.

Okay, let's get this out of the way. My first reason for not voting is ignorance. No, not on the part of the political candidates, or social media, or you. I didn't vote because I'm ignorant. I know so little about the two old guys (and there was a woman, too, right? That third-party so-and-so?) fighting to "rule" our country. Here's what I do know… First, Trump: He's filthy rich. He owns some companies (honestly couldn't tell you which ones). He had a TV show (can't remember the name) and a tower. He has been our president for the past four years, and he did some things that veterans and conservatives like (I can't tell you with certainty even one thing that he's responsible for changing). He's a republican, but I think he used to be a democrat. I also think his wife's name is Ivanka, he has a daughter, and his VP is Mike Pence. Lastly, people either love him or hate him, which has only further divided our nation. He comes off at different times as a megalomaniac, a bully, and an idiot (though he may not be any of those things. Who knows?). He has no filter, he has Twitter, and he claims that everyone else is out to lie, steal, and cheat to make him look bad, which is ironic, because his ridiculous hair does that all on its own. And now on to the other guy.

I actually forget Joe Biden's name a lot. I want to call him Pence or Kerry or even McCain. Seriously, though that's not saying much. I'm horrible with names. But I also forget what he looks like. When I think about him, all I see is Jim Carrey. Oh! That must be why I tend to call him Kerry in my head. Silly me. Now… what about him? He's a lifetime politician, he's democrat, and he's really old. I know that much. And his running mate is a woman, I think. Seems like he's probably going to be our next president based on the Electoral College, but I couldn't tell you with confidence what that means. And that's about it. Honestly, I don't know anymore than that.

But why don't I know more? Am I dumb? Well… I don't think so. I received a master's degree over a decade ago (with honors, no less), and I like to think I've only grown smarter and wiser since then. I love learning new things—ideas, talents, how things work. But one of those things just isn't politics. So, the second reason I didn't vote is disinterest (I'm racking up quite a compelling argument, I know). I've written about how I don't have a passion for BLM even though I think it's a worthy cause. And I think the main reason is because it falls under the "politics" umbrella in my mind. Too many people with too many emotions and not enough listening. I just don't have the stomach for it. I would rather spend my one life changing the world one person at a time. I'd rather show love to my neighbor (as a Christian), fix someone's knee pain (as a physical therapist), and help other people get their ideas across clearer (as an editor). And, if I'm being honest, all of the doom saying just doesn't scare me. I'm a country boy at heart, and I have simple needs. My family is small, and I have a cabin in the woods. I was sad when Y2K didn't happen. I love individual people, but I'm not a big fan of society. In large groups, people are mean and naïve. And so, fear just doesn't enter into the equation for me. Life is so much bigger than what the marketing campaigns claim.

If you haven't caught on yet, I'm a bit of a skeptic. I don't know if I was born that way, but I became aware of it in college. I didn't particularly like my research classes, but I loved learning how to read scientific articles. Specifically, I love learning how to recognize BS (Biased Science, that is…). I have a knack for seeing through it in any situation. I can generally tell when people are lying, and even though I don't know everything, I do understand concepts, theories, and ideas better than the average person. And like Aristotle (and Plato), I'm keenly aware of my own ignorance as well as that of others. I see how people embrace sensationalized "fake news" and assume causality just because of correlation. Everyone does it. I do it. But I'm aware of it. I'm aware of social media algorithms, of herd mentality, of confirmation bias. And so, the third reason I didn't vote is because I assume everyone is either lying or buying into lies (lying and bullying are my two biggest pet peeves, by the way). And we've already established that I don't have the time or the energy (or the mental capacity) to learn the truth of every political topic and use those truths to set everyone straight. But hey, at least I'm honest…

Remember when I said earlier that fear didn't factor into the equation for me? Yeah, obviously that’s not true. I mean, sure, I'm not afraid of societal collapse or the end of the world. But I'm obviously afraid of being wrong. We've established that I don't know much about Trump or Kerr—er… Biden. That I'm ignorant about politics, in general. And we know that I'm a skeptic—that I have to come to my own conclusions. And most of the time that looks like stubbornness. I hate being told what to do. I hate being micromanaged. I hate the virus on my computer that sets Bing as my default search engine instead of Google. I hate the alarm on my wife's van that makes me wear my seat belt. And I hate the Facebook banners that keep telling me it's my duty to vote. I'm a grown boy. I can make those decisions all on my own. And I will not blindly trust a random source with dubious intentions to make those decisions for me. And, as much as I love my friends, I don't buy their claims that it's my duty to vote, either. Countless brave men and women did not die for my DUTY to vote. They died for my freedom to do so. Same as my freedom to be a Christian. Which means I'm also free to NOT vote.

But why wouldn't I WANT to vote? Because I'm afraid of whom I would have voted for. I'm aware of where I live and what my local culture thinks. In short, I voted for Trump last time, and I probably would have voted for him this time. And I couldn't stomach that thought (side note: I do have one regret, and that’s not voting local. I do know people personally who were running for office--as well as local bills--but I missed the opportunity to vote on things that I DO know about because of my fear of voting for the “wrong” president). It’s not that I doubted that Trump would do positive things while in office (even though, as I said, I'm not sure what he actually did the past four years…), but I'm just so tired of everybody acting insane. There's a reason I don't have cable. There's a reason I only get on social media to post pictures and check my notifications. And while I don't buy into all the sensationalism claiming the president has ultimate power, I do believe that he has a microphone. And a Twitter account. And even though our government is based on checks and balances, our media definitely isn't. If Biden is, in fact, our president for the next four years, my only hope is that he'll keep his mouth shut.

Okay, everyone's mad at me now. And that's okay. I put myself out there. I was honest about my ignorance, my bias, and my fear, which is more than I can say about most other people (presidents included). And maybe my honesty will compel others (you?) to reevaluate the "truths" they (you?) assume are self-evident. It's taken me four years, but I finally understand what "Make America Great Again" means. What would it take for our country to be great? Accountability. That's it. If every man, woman, and child did everything possible to give back to our country, we WOULD be great. If we worked hard to repair crumbling buildings, if we painted breathtaking murals, if we learned classical philosophy and used it shape our thoughts, if we refused to blame someone else for our unhappiness, if we did everything in our INDIVIDUAL power to contribute to the greater whole, if we truly loved our neighbors and gave them the shirt off of our back regardless of their political leanings… THAT would make us great. Right now, we're all so divided. We're all so afraid and easily manipulated. I've chosen to put my time and energy into things "smaller" than politics, but that doesn't mean I don't care about the future of my country. Quite the opposite, in fact. And hopefully, when I'm dead and gone, my tombstone won't read, "The guy who didn't vote in the 2020 presidential election."

#voting #politics #trump vs biden #biden #trump #go vote #2020 presidential race

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vcsecretgifts · 5 years ago

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Wipe his blood from your mouth with mine

(Otp shenanigans based on what could have happened between Armand and Daniel post hunting together in the warm rain - in last chapter of Prince Lestat - {Hope that’s okay not a blood communion fan and Daniels not in it…} Lestat and Louis are nosey, helpful spectators/advisors In that order. A little nsfw, soppy and an essay of angst. Hope you like It! Merry Christmas 🤗)

Gift for: @headfrst4halos

From: @auburnandamberangel

…

A few nights had passed since their reunion, they’d hunted together in the warm rain - eyes had acknowledged them slipping out together but no interference, this felt more solid then previous meetings. A certain Roman not such a prominent Father hen presence. Familiarity was steadfast, much left unsaid between but in the spirit of having survived this latest blip in immortality pushed down to be revived at a later time. Negotiating simply being in each others company was rollercoaster enough. Small glances, heated snatched stares. Measuring the changes in eachother, coveting the lack of them.

The huge cinema room, a ridiculous term as he’d paid good dollars to watch a flick in smaller venues, the latest safe space to catch up. A do not disturb sign hooked on the double doors, a lock across them. Not that this meant much to telekinetic mentalists amongst them. But a polite notice to leave them in privacy. Daniel was eyeing Armands form, at least what he could see beneath the knitted Sweaters neckline. No tanning or change in tone to porcelain perfect flesh. The theory of their healing abilities known, but never tried into practice by himself just yet. Not that he hadn’t had the impulse - Marius ha immolation was beneath him, always made sure his charge was safe and sound come sunrise.

Armand noted changes too, still flushed as marked his age in the blood. But more strength coiled than should have accumulated in the decades since their parting. His blood then, nursing his fledgling. Practicality was one thing, necessity another, but his passionate possessive side said hang being reasonable - the implications of the to and fro between his beloved and his maker. Aside from Louis’ attack post interview only his fangs had tasted Daniels blood, only his fangs had parted flesh in his necks favourite crook. Louis had understood his hesitancy to bring the subject up, close companions coming together in a time of mutual vulnerability. Many happy years spent in New York. Trinity Gate their slice of peace. "It's not as if I’ve ever asked Lestat to compare me to David. Though it doesn’t mean I’ve never thought it. Never ask a question you mightnt like the answer to.“ His response had been succinct. "But Cher they were definitely lovers. This situation is less clear cut.“ Louis had smiled then, shrugged meaning everything and nothing. "Things concerning Marius rarely are, are they."Preaching to this choir had been his reply.

Daniel was recalling his own pep talk with Lestat, not so much a pep talk as the brat Prince not so subtly inquiring as to his intentions towards his blood brother. More being spoken at. "I feel responsible for his last brush with oblivion. I’d rather not stand idle at this potential catalyst to my blood brothers well being.”

Feeling peeved and rather touched all at once, he’d nodded. “Lestat you’re many things but thinking of you as my uncle and I your nephew is too, too much to want to comprehend!" Thankfully the mercurial anointed leader took his words in good humour. Always had quite liked him fortunately, could once upon a time have run away on adventures together. Though whose heart that particular fancy was meant to wound more Louis or Armand - Daniel had never quite fathomed. Hands up in a sign of peace he’d added. "Rest assured I’ve always broken my own heart over him, I’d rather that than breaking his ever again. I was off my noodle for way too long. I have alot to catch up on.”

A strange look had passed over Lioncourts face. “I said something similar to him you know. …‘You break my heart you little fool, you always have…’ I think i prefer your sentiment.” Shudder as if someone had walked over his grave. Memnoch related Daniel had assumed.

“Can I ask a favour. Could you make sure Marius doesn’t try to help us in what no doubt will be a charged, embarrassing and classically devil and minion problematic fest." Brow quirked at this request Lestat had smirked, a twinkle in those famed blue eyes. "Run interference as they say. It’ll be a pleasure." Making to turn heel and leave. Pausing. "You know I can’t decide if you smell different or not… Never mind." With that winking and walking away before Daniel could comment what he’d meant.

Back in the room, Daniel edged nearer, leaning across the plush seat between them to better see Armands face. Rewarded with a wistful tug of lips.

"Of all the vampires in Trinity I have your full attention still. Im flattered.” Eyes warmed in a way they hadn’t been in quite sometime. Flitting to Daniel equally captivated violet ones.

“Always will have it too.” Moving almost to sit on the arm of aforementioned middle seat.

“Its…complicated. Or whatever the get out clause for a relationship not happening is these days…online.” He’d tried to keep up to date with modern jargon. Not as much fun as learning with his minion in the eighties, but he couldn’t wouldn’t allow himself to atrophy again.

“There it is breathtaking in every way yet simultaneously so stupid!” Daniel hitting the seats cushion in a burst of frustration. The seat rocked. Oops.

Armand laughed despite himself. “There’s that sassy mouth I’m fond of coming out to play.” Glancing down at the seat, it had been bent. Ah.

“Give my mouth something else to do. Kiss me. I promise I’m same as I ever was.” Just a plain simple kiss, though usually desire took over and wham they were engaging in full on blood sharing in a blink.

“Let’s not rush into things…” Playing with a stray curl, rapidly teasing it out. At this rate he’d have straightened his locks from the sheer tension of it all.

“I’m not waiting six years again for a snog. The chase ended. We’re way passed third base now don’t you think?!” Edge of something darker in his tone. Lestats words echoing in his mind now.

“We hunted together.. Be- Daniel.” Slip of the tongue he’d nearly uttered beloved. “That was alot.” No lies there. He hunted alone as a rule, Daniel was the only immortal he’d shared with.

“I know we shared the kill. Shared the blood. It was great, lovely. But Im not going to lie I wanted to be responsible for your heart racing…” Wow his throat was dry. Blurting all this oit, no holding back or hiding behind word play. “Is it because I smell different.”

“Smell? What do you mean?” Nose prickling as he’d wondered hadn’t he, a moment before about infusions from a twice millennial source. Did he hesitate because on a base level Daniels blood smelt different because it was…

“Lestat said something about me smelling different. Is it because I smell more like him. Like Marius?”

Deep breath. Right to the jugular of the situation. Flush of pride who the hell else spoke to him like this, no one.

“We were parted whatever happened between you is none of my business. It would only be natural for you to seek comfort in his arms… He’s very persuasive.” The words were coming out, but he knew his heart wasn’t so forgiving or clear cut.

“Well fuck! Your going to quote we were on a break. Really! This isn’t Friends. I doubt either of us matches Ross or Rachel.” Daniel realising bow improbable it was for Armand to be up to date with 90s pop culture. “It wasn’t like that. It was feeding not flirting. I wasn’t exactly following a balanced diet. I don’t want him, it’s you it always has been!” Last hit to the seat and it screeched it’s last. “Shit! I’m sorry.” Staring at his hands like he’d just seen them.

Armands eyes widened. There was that strength again. Not more thsn his own but a progression. Lestats mind voice in his head. *Do I need to come in and break you guys up? Or is this good rough?* That famous timing…*No. He’s broken my furniture, no harm to me. And it’s always good rough between us for the record.* Satisfaction at the too much information wince on Lestats part. *Don’t make me tell on you to Louis, you know he hates you being a voyeur.* Quirk of a brow inside and out. *Its been a while we’re out of practice.* Pleasing ringing of laughter as the brat Prince took the hint. Opening his eyes from a protracted blink to Daniels face and form kneeling right infront of him. Unforgivable this oversight, to allow himself to be this surprised. Hadn’t even seen him move. No threat from this vampire though, no need for high alert physically, only emotionally. Always his heart that needed protection. Minute frown appearing. The urge to reach out and run fingers through Daniels hair almost over powering. Hands death gripping the plush arm rests, clawing into the material and stuffing as well as the metal frame below.

“Don’t you want me anymore. Is that it - Really?” Once he’d thought he’d never get to touch those rosy lips again. Stroke hands through deep russet flaming curls. Hear his voice and those special noises he only made for him. Cold shower for Mr Molloy. “The bloodworks just a primal excuse. The usual vampiric urges BS.” All this aside he wouldn’t force himself on Armand. Never. A time machine to kill any who had. He’d thought him dust to the wind. Well he could feel himself ready to blub. Filled to the brim with so many feelings.

Armand could smell the start of those tears. He could lick them away, like they used to. Drink the pain away. Curled up together after a fight. Entwined. Love through the blood. Strength and stay through that intimacy. “I could never not, beloved.” Time for his own tears, that affectionate term opening his own flood gates. “I don’t think I can love you how you need to be loved, is more the point. What if I make you relapse. I’d never forgive myself…” Nails now through his own palms. Chair two in ruins. His own blood scent filling the air. “My beautiful boy…”

There it was, the spicy scent he could only taste as a mortal, fully appreciating the body of it after crossing over. The aroma. Fearful words sinking in. Shaking his head. “None of that was your fault. It was just our luck to be the tortured star crossed lovers. I’m better, was well on the way to better when I knew you weren’t gone. Not dead. I left, that was on me.. I left you alone, I swore I wouldn’t in our garden but I did. I neber meant to not come back. The rot had set in, nothing made sense. But here you are whole and perfect and as maddening self introspective as ever. Don’t you get it. That was my job as your minion, to save you from yourself. To save my devil from whatever tested you. And I wasn’t there. I’ll be Damned if I ever make that mistake aga-” Words cut off as bloody yet healed hands reached for him, pulling Daniel bodily into his lap. Not an easy task sized as they were.

Armand couldn’t bear him saying one more heart wrenching thing. Broke that physical truce and kissed him as requested. Lips breaking away from his only to lap away falling tears. Poised staring into violet orbs he’d been lost in the moment they’d met, truth be told. Breathy. Quite the achievement for beings who didn’t need respiration. “Mine, you taste like my better heart. With added vintage. Wipe his blood off your lips with mine.” A single bead of blood for Daniels tasting. Hand teasing his lovers skirt buttons, to touch skin on skin.

Years were stripped away and here they were like nothing had happened battle scarred yet together. That’s all the mattered. Familiar elixir warming him in ways he never expected. Picking him up to better remove clothing, they had to map each others bodies like old times.

Sometime later.

Laying on the plush carpeted floor, clothes strewn around them. Not a stitch left on them. A third seat broken on its hinges. Armand was happily listening to Daniels heartbeat. “I think I may need to redecorate.” Glancing around the mess they’d made. Stretching like a cat.

“Agreed perhaps we should make a passion room. But hey we’re super rich so why spoil the fun. At least in this cinema there’s no popcorn stuck in odd places like that time we got romantic in Palm Springs.” Kissing his makers forehead. Basking in after glow. “I’m pretty sure we’ve thoroughly infused each others blood counts.”

“One can never be too careful. We need to hunt. I don’t want you getting peeky as I was so enthusiastic.”

“Agreed, and I don’t mind at all. Drain me I’m your love muffin.”

Armand wrinkled his nose. “Love muffin. Wash your mouth out! We do need to lock this room up tight upon leaving. In case Cupid Lioncourt takes photos.”

Daniel laughed. “He does have a nose in most situations I admit. In this case it’s just as well. How long do you think it would have taken to jump each others bones, without his ear worm about smell?”

Armand laughed at the phrasing, a throaty chuckle sending vibrations down Daniels chest. “Not too long, possibly quicker if I’d gotten that particular ear worm and we’d gone the route of territorial angry me, with your oh so smart mouth baiting. Then we’d have made up, like old times.”

Daniel snorted. “Are we that predictable?”

“Perhaps…Now how he kept a certain others nose out of this… robust reunion is the story I want to hear…” Smiling into Daniels matching grin.

“Now that story can wait.” Winking and gathering Armand closer again. “Round three?”

#2019 VC Secret Santa #VC #Vampire Chronicles #submission #auburnandamberangel #headfrst4halos

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miscellanasaurus · 5 years ago

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MHA 230

Damn this chapter completely blew me away and if this a arc wasn't my favorite arc out of any manga i`ve read before then it certainly is now the hype train just simply wont stop rolling i honestly couldn't stop smiling while reading this chapter. also this review will be a lot longer then most of my other ones as a sort of apology for my lack of recent mha content.

We open up on a flashback as Twice explains to Shigaraki why he can`t clone the bullets ,Though it was a inventive idea, and it seems that this event really fuels Twice`s doubt on his own self worth as he see`s himself as holding the league back as all he`s ever wanted to do is pay the league back for accepting him. small side note but some people think that Twice has been indoctrinated into the league and that`s BS Twice wanted somewhere to belong and he got that, this isn't the message Horikoshi is trying to show through twice if anyone's indoctrinated it`s spinner as he joined the league due to the morals of a man he idolized and even then he`s grown attached to the league. anyway i`m rambling lets move on to the rest of this chapter.

We get this panel of pure badassery as we see twice swarming the field with hundreds of clone`s as the mentioned back up skeptic had set up look on in horror. while i did say horikoshi wouldn't just hand wave his trauma i think this works thematically as twice finally understands who he is so i doubt he`ll be contradicting himself any time soon,

We then cut back to Re-destro ,and the look on his face is priceless, as he stares down at the infinite swarm of twice`s flooding the field however he cant help rubbing salt into the wound of skeptics failure as he just walks out but not before this gorgeous panel

And while i`m obviously curious (pun intended) as to what this failure is ,its not this moment as he states this is not a failure simply a setback, i love the way Horikoshi portrays this barely suppressed rage as he looks like he`s going to explode any moment, clearly failure is his `Trigger` and you can tell that these two have a mutual dislike for eachover and i kinda wanna explore there dynamic a little more.

We also learn ice guys name “Apocrypha” which sounds like the sort of name a edgy 12 year old would name there Skyrim character ,guilty as charged, though its meaning is rather interesting and here i`ll copy paste what it means

(of a story or statement) of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true.

This is intriguing and since names hold a significant meaning i am curious as to what this is referring to if its Destro`s goal`s (perhaps he wanted to eradicate quirk users through his actions building fear and mistrust surrounding them, though this would be a rehash of Overhaul so i doubt that)

funnily enough apocrypha also has a religious connotation further playing into the cult like status the MLA seem to have. a clever foreshadowing considering the racist fanatics murdered in chapter 220.

Continuing on with the fight with dabi and Apocrypha as we see this panal of Dabi and i was kinda confused what was going on with that look on his face but i`m certain that its due to the pain of overusing his quirk , though you could mistake it for terror. some people thought this fight would be cut short which is honestly ridiculous

We get this hilarious moment between compress and Dabi which i think is giving us some vague insights into his character as despite being shown as detached from the rest of the league his reasoning behind not helping compress is not needing too, also is that a look of relief i see dabi?

Honestly this brings a smile to my face and shows that even though hes overcome his trauma hes still the lovable quirky guy hes always been( pun intended/) also this is reminiscent of how deadpool is with his schizophrenia as its played more for laughs and a personal insight with deadpool rather then the dark undertones with twice.

We also get some semi-insight onto compress as it seems he views villainy and heroics as separate roll`s perhaps due to his stage life thats been alluded to before ,after all everyone would have a set roll and would follow it perfectly, perhaps i`m diving to deep into a simple statement but considering compress will probably have some development soon i wouldn't be surprised,

Horikoshi also takes a moment to explain why we wont be getting swarms of Dabi`s or even Rappa`s and while you could ask why cant those same clones take down gigantomachia it goes against the narrative of the story horikoshi`s wrtiting as Tomura`s plan will most likely what gets gigantomachia to respect his authority

I suppose you could also so that since twices clones are so weak gigan would have no trouble tearing through them faster then twice could make them.

However not to be out shined apocrypha straight up one punch`s them as its revealed that he can control the temperature of his ice, this is probably the power given to him by the supreme leader, allowing him to freeze water then manipulate that ice.

We also delve more into Apocrypha as it seems that in the new quirk sociaty that re-destro plans on making quirks will be equal to status and the morepowerfull the quirk the more status you`d receive, this could also be what the apocrypha in his name is reference to as this could be a lie conceived to manipulate apocrypha into aligning with the MLA. interestingly enough the only the strong survive mentality works well as a parallel to Endevour just something i thought to mention

We also see that Apocrypha`s noticed the toll dabi`s quirk has on his body again a reference to the Touya Todoroki as endeavor stated how Touya`s quirk was ill suited to his body which is always something that i liked when exploring that theory the idea that someones quirk is genetically unsuited for them as it clashes with itself is a fun little idea that can lead to all sorts of possibilities.

We end on this beautiful cliffhanger as the doctor prematurely wakes gigantomachia not out of his own desires but due to being unable to face all for one if Shigaraki were to die here. honestly i like the doctor as a character carrying out the will of all for one despite not excepting his successor it creates a interesting conflict within him.

And the chapter finishes off on this gigantic cliffhanger. this chapter is incredibly enjoyable and well written and is currently my favorite chapter in the series as a whole i just hope that this sudden awakening doesn't cut any development we may have gotten on compress as he`s the character i`m most curious about. Dabi`s pretty much already confirmed to be touya so i dont mind waiting.

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chocolate-cream-soldier · 5 years ago

Note

Once

Oh boy, here we go with my drunken ramblings(this is me trying to coherently type for the second time cause i messed up and closed the tab after filling it in, the first time!!) But thanks for the ask Anon<3

my favorite female character

yes yes no prize for guessing it is Regina Mills. I liked her from the start, I tend to like dark, angsty characters anyway so it was a no brainer. She came across as a complete badass, getting shite done, tearing the very fabric of the universe in the name of revenge, oh such a drama queen, my teenage self lived for that , I say as if my adult self doesn't lol, but the thing is her rage spoke to me, her pain, I could feel it, her desire to destroy the people who wronged her felt like vindication to me. But what I related to more was her immense capacity to love, her love for her son was something so raw and pure, it absolutely blew my mind, and her desire to become someone worthy of her son's love, to become a better person, the hero that her son is so enamoured with, it helped to humanize her and helped her character to break free of the confines of the one note aspect of her initial arc. And Lana played it brilliantly imo, she did this character justice, even tho overall it was a shit show. And that is why this character still has such a hold over me, and has become so much more than canon could ever handle. I hope she continues to flourish in fanon, she was too good for the mediocrity that was OUAT anyway.

my favorite male character:

eh all male characters are so poorly written in that show I don't think I ever care for any of them, other than Hen and even then he was reduced mostly to a plot device(I know so did the rest but hey ho).

my favorite book/season/etc:

Season 1, the premise was interesting, it attracted me, I wanted to see what exactly was going to happen, how will they play with this fairytale characters trapped in our reality with no memories of their former selves, how will Emma break the curse, will she be able to break it, what will be the complications of undoing it, and they did touch it but failed abysmally to flesh it out and then they started pandering and it became a huge effing gimmick with no substance oh well.

my favorite episode (if its a tv show):

Despite the stupidity that was in abundance with this show, I did like a couple of episodes from the later seasons but i have to give it to TSSV. As i was a talking about in my previous ask for HP, nostalgia plays a big role, memories u associate with certain things makes it more appealing, and TSSV was THE EPISODE for SQ fans like me, I mean i was here from day 1 shipping remma:P with all my 12 fellow shippers but TSSV kinda made it blow up. I live blogged that episode, I missed my classes for it lmaoo, I remember the hype around the almost kiss and when it actually happened in the show and all of us collectively lost our shite. We were coming from a two weeks break and the anticipation was HIGH AF, it was chaos, the good kind, I was flailing over Emma Swan's arms and getting emotional over Regina's haircut "FLICKY HAIR FEEL" TM, it was so silly but so much fun,it was the best time to be in the fandom, it was just great. Yeah so maybe some other SQ heavy episodes were probably bit more intense but my vote will always go to 1.05, "THE STILL SMALL VOICE" it is.

my favorite cast member:

Don't have any, I used to like the cast but overtime I became quite indifferent to them so don't have a favourite.

my favorite ship:

hahahahahah it's sad but it's also funny because like it's been what, 9 years, right?! and Swan Queen is still and always will be my OTP. It makes me so angry that my ship got stuck in such a shitshow, but also like it was such a good ship and I met some of my best mates because of it. And the fact that we still are so weak for those two idiots, I can't believe it and you see that's why I am so effing bitter about it, that they had such a good thing in their hand and they squandered it all, so much potential all wasted UGH!!! To sum it up this is how I feel about it

a character I’d die defending:

Emma Swan, she never really has many people on her corner, it amazes me cause she was the protagonist and initially she was such a relatable character. She went through so much and she came out of the other side a pretty decent person who actually has a great capacity to forgive and I liked that about her, cause she would not lie down and take it, she would call you out on you bs but she would also be the first person to stand up for you if she believes in you, because she never had anyone doing that for her, so it was important to her that she gets to do that for the people she cared about. And then they destroyed it all and shoehorned her storyline with a self serving bastard and eventually wrote her off her own story like WTF. Emma Swan deserved better. And I for one can never forgive them for robbing and stripping her off her agency and butchering her entire characterization and reducing her to a ridiculous caricature, a shallow husk of her former self, fk them:/.

a character I just can’t sympathize with:

okay we are going to step in the drama hmm. I don't feel like talking about the wooden mop and deplorable dunderhead because it leaves a bad taste but I really loathe those scenery chewing unnecessary lamps.

a character I grew to love:

Probably Kathryn yeah she seemed like a good person trapped in a shitty situation who was trying to make the best of it, she was cool.

my anti otp:

My favourite characters forced into terrible storylines with detestable Love Interests!

This is basically me raging about Once with a smattering of story time ugh I apologize for the ranting but it is what it is!!!

#reply #anonymous #ask tag #opinion time #OUAT #for ts

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disappearinginq · 6 years ago

Note

First of all: Thank you for replying :) What do I want to see wrapped up...? God appearing would be a bit too much wouldn't it be? Maybe a sign or something from his side? But I don't know, like Chloe knows everything. Maybe one of the archangels fixing the mess that happened. and oooh hugs. thank you for considering my thoughts :)

I will always answer asks from people who bothered to read anything I wrote. The day I don’t, assume I’m dead.

But no lie - God actually was going to make an appearance. The original version went that Samael and his brothers in an all out fight accidentally killed Chloe (I think I made it that Ragiel, in an effort to hit Samael, missed and got her instead) and that’s what snapped him out of Delilah’s influence. Except then it got super complicated, because it’d originally been based on everyone thinking Samael was the worst of Lucifer, when really, Lucifer was the worst of Lucifer, and Lucifer in a fit of rage destroyed the Earth by ripping apart the boundaries between Earth and Hell and letting everything from Hell swamp the Earth....and God showed up because Chloe wound up meeting him a la Sam and Dean in the Garden in Heaven style, but...anyway. It was already almost 100k words, and I figured I should be wrapping things up, not making things more complicated, so I decided Lucifer was going to save himself instead.

BUT - because you were kind enough to give me an answer, here’s a preview of what I have written (but I’m not married to), and lemme know if this is a direction I should pursue, or if you would prefer the final chapter be IMMEDIATELY following the previous one.

There was no such thing as normal.

One of those beautifully crafted lies humanity liked to sellitself.

After everything – everythingbeing an entirely mind-warping view of the world, the universe, life afterdeath, the cosmic forces of the existential nightmare that was being human, andthe new found and not easily ignored knowledge that her partner and her friendwas proof of a higher power – Chloe didn’t know what to do. What to think. Everythingsince meeting Michael and Gabriel and allof them, there’d been no time to stop and think about what exactly was going on. To consider all of theramifications, and all that it meant that Lucifer wasn’t human, that there wasa God with a capital G, and…now that she hadtime to process it, it just made things worse.

Somehow, breaking through to Lucifer was the easy part.

Which just explained how much of a shit show circus herreality had become.

The part that really, well and truly threw her though, wasjust how fast everything tried toreturn to normal.

After the better half of…weeks? Months? It felt like yearsfrom her point of view – of investigating serial killer cultists who used magicto try and steal Lucifer’s soul or rip him in half to jump start an apocalypse,of seeing him destroy downtown LA with an epic battle between his brothers andbarely managing to avoid Lucifer killing himself out of spite…

After all that…

Monday mornings at the precinct seemed surreal.

She burned herself twice at the coffee pot because she wasn’tpaying attention where she was reaching, zoning out as she tried to go over again what exactly she’d witnessed. Shewalked face first into a glass door, much to a patrolman’s amusement, becauseshe couldn’t keep her mind off the sight of magnificent, damaged wingssprouting from her partner’s back. She misfiled three separate warrants becauseshe couldn’t stop herself from picturing the almost reptilian features of afully enraged archangel as his brothers threatened to literally drag him toHell bound in chains.

But most of all, she couldn’t stop thinking about the look onhis face when he admitted just how lost he truly was – not just as Lucifer, butas Samael.

And she didn’t know what to do about it.

She stayed away. She didn’t know what to say, or what to do.There was no one to really talk to – Dan hadn’t been there for the finalbattle. He hadn’t seen just how far gone Lucifer had been, or what he wascapable of. Hadn’t seen him turn a crowd with little more than a whisper in aneager ear.

She wanted to talkto Michael. Or Gabriel. Or even Ragiel or Azrael. Any of them. All of them. Itdidn’t matter. But no matter how many times she tried to…contact them…she wasmet with stoic silence. It was like past the moment where Lucifer savedhimself, they ceased to exist. They didn’t stay. They didn’t warn they wereleaving. They said nothing and were simply gone. Maybe she was doing it wrong.But she had asked Dan how exactlyprayers worked, because maybe she was just doing it wrong. Maybe she didn’tmake the right gesture, maybe she hadn’t said the right words.

She just wanted toknow what she should do.

After days of silence, she understood Lucifer’s frustrationwith his biological family. Prayers became littered with vague threats ofviolence, and language that would make a sailor blush. She even caught herselfonce doodling a haloed stick figure getting whacked with an umbrella before shesighed and crumpled the paper up in frustration.

If she was being truly honest, she was more frustrated withherself than angels.

The desk across from her remained noticeably empty, a starkreminder that all was not right in the world.

Lucifer hadn’t come in since…well, actually, he hadn’t beenat the precinct since before he wastaken. It’d been weeks since she’d seen him at work.

She eyed her cellphone.

She could call him.

She should callhim.

But every time she her finger hovered over the ‘call’ buttonon his number, she chickened out.

Because what couldshe say?

Despite her confidence that Lucifer could make his owndecisions and save himself…she felt ridiculous thinking she could offer animmortal being with phenomenal cosmic powers anything like advice. Or comfort. She’d thought she could look pastthe new reality she found herself in. Lucifer was still Lucifer.

Except he wasn’t.

And she wasn’t the same, either.

And every time she thought back to a moment or an instancewhere she lectured Lucifer on humanity and what was right and wrong, she felther cheeks start to burn from embarrassment. It must’ve been like listening toa talking monkey try to tell a god about the world. And now, when she suspectedthat they both needed that connectionto someone who maybe understood, she found herself flailing.

She tried to rationalize that he hadn’t called her either.That must mean he wasn’t ready to talk yet, right? Or maybe he just needed timealone. He had narrowly avoided death.Ish. An undoing of a soul. That must be traumatic, right? She hadn’t wanted tosee anyone, except her daughter, after she’d been shot, either. Maybe he wasthe same way?

Facing mortality for a mortal was one thing.

She couldn’t even begin to imagine what the sameconfrontation meant for an immortal. Lucifer once treated his mortality as agame, but it was one thing to experience the novelty of pain for the firsttime. It was an entirely different matter to consider death.

Chloe stared at her phone. Maybe he wouldn’t pick up.

Maybe he would.

She wasn’t sure which scenario was worse.

Every time it buzzed, she snatched it like a fat kid snaggedfree cake, hardly daring to breathe until she realized that it was just ane-mail from someone else. A text from her mother. A picture from the babysitterand Trixie.

At night, when her shift was over, she purposely took thelong way home, cruising past Lux, telling herself every time that this time would be the time she stoppedin.

Except it wasn’t.

Lux remained shuttered and closed, devoid of the pulse thatgave the building a life of its own. Somehow, what happened there seemed tolinger. It might have been her imagination, except that others seemed to feelit too. No one lined the sidewalks waiting to get in. No one approached thebuilding, peering in windows to see when it would re-open. People skirted thesidewalk, crossing the street without really seeming to know why, because oneblock later, they stopped and looked around, confused as to why they crossed inthe first place when their destination was the other side of the street.

There was no evidence of what happened. Nothing every made itto YouTube, or the news, or any other media platform. She assumed it was thearchangels at work – or at least, some other cosmic force. She had nothing elseto explain why one night, downtown LA looked like an aftermath scene for amonster movie, and the next day like nothing happened.

And stranger still…the more she tried to recall exactly whathappened in the aftermath, the less clear her memories became. Was it stress?Was it shock? Was it the frailty of the human mind? Was it something…or someone…else entirely?

She sat in her car outside of Lux, parked just beyond thehalo of a streetlamp, staring up at the darkened building. Lucifer couldprobably answer her questions. Now that he didn’t have to answermetaphorically, or she knew that he wasn’tbeing facetious, it would probably help them both. Right?

Or maybe it would just make it worse. At least now she had abunch of ‘maybes’ or ‘what ifs’ that she could easily shrug away or make up ananswer that while perhaps being utter BS would make her feel better at night,and not like someone was staring at her from on high no matter where she was.

God saw all, right? How much was all? What kind of pervy God were they talking that?

She sighed and growled in frustration, grabbing the steeringwheel with both hands as she let her forehead drop against it. “Uggghhhh, why does everything have to be so goddamn difficult?”

“Because that’s how the world works.”

Chloe screamed, and almost hurled herself out of the carbefore her brain even processed who’s voice it was.

Maze sat in the passenger seat, feet up on the dash, one armpropped on the open window, sucking on a lollipop of all things, lookingcompletely unimpressed by Chloe’s cardiac arrest.

“Maze,” Chloehissed through clenched teeth as she reflexively put a hand to her heart. “Areyou trying to kill me?”

Maze considered it for a moment, cocking her head to one sidebefore pulling out the stick candy with an audible ‘pop’. “No,” she said. “I am wondering what you’re doing with yournightly drive-bys though. Seems a little stalker-ish, even for you.”

Chloe declined to answer, because she didn’t have one.Instead, she changed subjects. “Where have you been, anyway? I haven’t seen yousince…” she actually had to think about it. When was the last time she saw Maze? The night Lucifer disappeared fromthe penthouse? And how long ago was that?“Since before Michael and Gabriel showed up.”

Maze flat out laughed at that. “Well, duh,” she sneered, lips pulling back an almost feral snarl. “Demonsand archangels are no bueno. We gothistory. I wasn’t about to get in the middle of all…” she waved her lollipoparound in a vague circle, “that.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be Lucifer’s bodyguard or something?”Chloe pointed out.

Maze pursed her lips, raising one eyebrow. “Aren’t yousupposed to be his partner? Where have you been, besides skulking outside theclub like some sort of creeper?”

Chloe cringed, looking away.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Maze said. She fell silent fora moment, sucking on her candy. “It’s the kind of tragedy I expect from his Dadby now.” Maze glanced skyward through the open window of the car. “Giving himexactly what he wants, in the worst way possible.”

She considered it for a moment. “How…” she stopped, trying tothink of exactly what she wanted to ask, whether or not she wanted to know thetruth. She chewed her lower lip. No. She didn’t need to what Maze meant – notreally, not from her. “How is he?”

Maze leaned forwards, looking up at the darkened penthousethrough the windshield. “Different.”

Chloe didn’t ask any further.

Thunder rolled gently in the distance. Another spring storm,coming across the Pacific.

“What are you waiting for? Permission?” Maze snapped. “Go.”

Chloe reached for the ignition. Maze was right. She didn’thave the right to sit out here and stalk someone who clearly wanted to be leftalone. Lux was empty for a reason. He hadn’t come to work, hadn’t called,hadn’t reached out for a reason. Sheshould know well enough what it was like to have someone who didn’t listen toboundaries.

Maze slapped her hand away from the keys. “Not leave go, go see him go.” She pointed towards the club’s front doors. “It’snot locked. He’s in the penthouse. Go.”

Chloe began to shake her head. “No, he hasn’t invited me, hehasn’t reached out – I need to respect that –”

Maze growled in frustration, and for a moment, sounded lessthan human. “Oh, for the love of – he’s not thatdifferent. He hasn’t reached out because youhaven’t said anything. He thinks you’re just like everyone else who’s everfound out the truth about him, and so far, he’s right. Now go.” She wavedtowards the club.

That hit Chloe like a sucker punch to the gut. It was onething to stay away because that’s what Lucifer wanted.

It was another thing entirely to abandon a friend in need whodidn’t know how to ask for help.

“Okay, I just…do I need-” she glanced back over and Maze wasgone. Chloe heaved a sigh. “Of course she vanishes into thin air. What demonninja bartender doesn’t? Using a door would be unrealistic, right? Who does that? No need to say good-bye, oranything. Pfft.”

She made sure the windows were up, the door was locked, anddarted across the street before she could change her mind.

(*(*(

Lux was silent. Eerily so. Not like the sound proofing Samaelhad, or the frigid temperatures, but like all the electronics were shut down.The bar was dark. The screens were off. The central air wasn’t on.

The last time she was here, she witnessed Samael rend his brother’swings from his back and throw him down into Hell through a tear in reality shewatched him create.

The columns were repaired. The piano replaced. The glasspicked up and everything polished to a glass-like shine.

Everything looked exactly the same as it had beforeeverything started on the surface, and yet somehow…still felt dead underneath.

As she watched the numbers climb towards the penthouse, shehad a sudden urge to hit the emergency stop and climb the rest of the way bystairs just to draw it out.

She needed the extra time. She had no idea what to say. Shedidn’t even know where to start. Would he even see her? She hadn’t felt thisnervous facing down Samael, and she’d seenwhat he’d done.

Lucifer was a friend. A bestfriend.

Who was an archangel who fell from Heaven, ran Hell, andthen…took a vacation in LA.

Yeah. She could do this. She could totally do this. Yep. Onehundred percent, she owed this to Lucifer, she owed it to herself, she –

The final ‘ding’ echoed like a gunshot in the tiny space. Shefelt her heart hammering in her chest like she’d run a marathon and she wasn’teven sure why. She wasn’t afraid ofLucifer. She hadn’t been afraid of him as Samael. Michael, Gabriel, Death – she’d faced them all withoutfeeling like this. What the hell waswrong with her?

Maybe she should leave. She should go, she hadn’t beeninvited, it was too soon it was-

The doors slid open and she froze.

The penthouse was destroyed.

Absolutely destroyed.

The piano was upended against the marble walls, the bench inpieces flung to the other side of the room. The bar and every bottle shattered.Bits of glass peppered the floor. Expensive alcohol leaked from broken bottles,drying where it lay on the black floors.

Ta daaaaah!

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sparda3g · 6 years ago

Text

Gintama Chapter 696 Review

youtube

The final chapter is almost here. After this chapter, there’s only two more to go. What does this chapter cover? Is it Yorozuya’s reunion? Joui Three versus Tendoshu? It’s neither of them, though there were a little build to them. Instead, it covered the greatest hero of the universe: Madao! If you believe the countdown is a lie, I wouldn’t blame you at all. For now, let’s throw the countdown away and enjoy this chapter as it is, because it was pretty humorous all in all.

While the chapter largely focuses on Madao and his “newly discovered power,” there were other moments that builds up the anticipation of the climax. The final stage is set with Tendoshu landed on Earth as their cult battle against Edo. Despite Kuyou crashing on top of the Altana Terminal, they can still execute their plan as usual. What’s worse is that they can also deploy smaller ships to send reinforcements. Essentially, it becomes a new warfare. It might end up as the shortest war ever if there’s only two chapters left.

What Tendoshu wants is to spread immortality across the universe. On the surface, that sounds fantastic; clearly, they’re the true heroes. In context, it is madness, even if one wants to live forever. We already saw what happened with Utsuro, so you can expect everyone to experience the same outburst. Plus the population growth will be maddening.

Sakamoto continues to be the star of attraction with his words of wisdom. I’m seriously glad Sorachi didn’t leave him behind just because he’s not part of Shouyo’s disciples. He still can offer something for his friends and that is inspiring speeches. The one troubling feeling they faced is choosing the path and instead of leaving them to decide alone, he assures them that their friends will be behind them all the way. Whether they choose to kill or save Shouyo, they will be there to see it through, because this is their fight. His words benefits greatly to the theme of not just the arc, but the series itself.

When there’s a war going on, you can expect Shinseigumi to be fighting. It’s funny that Kondo does have a valid reason to not understand what they’re doing since he’s been with the gorillas for so long. So long that he remixes his words with his native and gorilla’s language. Oh wait, did I say something redundant? Sougo is savage as usual and happy to know that Kondo still has his human mentality left. Like I said, living with gorillas for too long.

It’s always a good feel moment with Shinseigumi; fighting like they are made to do. It’s like what Kondo said in the flashback: Shinseigumi will never disband. All this nostalgia talk reeks the series is ending feel, but it won’t be complete until Yorozuya finally returns. Shinpachi and Kagura already left, so it’s only matter of time for the actual reunion that fans will be satisfied. Unless we get trolled. That’s all for the buildup to the ending side; now, let’s focus on the main superstar, Madao.

From the beginning of the chapter, the news broadcast is recording the war as they are left bewildered if this is all related to the staged Zurump’s assassination. At least we know Katsura’s plan has worked. With that said, they need a hero to stop this madness. It’s been while that we’ve last seen Hanano Ana, but before the series’ end, there she is reporting live. Last time I get to read that punned name. The citizens are now safe from danger, because here comes our greatest hero of all time. Madao has entered the stage and don’t worry, he’s only sweating due to warm temperature.

Joking aside, this is all around hilarious. Not going to lie, he got what’s coming for pulling off the lie he has been living under. That said I’m glad Sorachi didn’t leave him with a false ending. The amount of pressure was getting to him pretty bad, so he begins to stumble. That crummy sword of his is called Unemployecalibur, which is goofy but so like him, and yet he later calls it Neetcalibur. He’s not even trying to hide his false identity. I’ll bet he has plagiarized.

It’s a Gintama fashion with Madao acting like he’s about to kick ass and chew bubble gum, only to be down-struck by a cursed flame; whatever that means. All the lies he’s spouting is so ridiculous, but that’s how he works things out. Too bad it gets worse for him with Samurai arriving to the scene. At first, he play along and act like a citizen, so he must evacuate the area, but then one of the group recognizes him. What should he do now?

He has the nerve to upturned his chin and break his crappy sword like a stick. That certainly feels nostalgic. That sword was made out of Styrofoam. Hey, you don’t know the power of the Styrofoam! It’s stupid enough that he pulled this off, but it actually works on the Samurai. Wow. It almost went well, until another group shows up and basically reset the dilemma. They’re the good guys and they too want Madao to come for their aid. What should he do now?

He hyped up the moment of his dynamic entry to the battlefield; preparing to restore peace in Edo. But before he could do that, he has to tie his shoe laces, even though they’re sandals. This guy is amazing. I can’t say it was working, but they were waiting for him. That is until the army from one of those small ships arrive. Not only Madao is screwed, but his laces broke off. What should he do now?

It’s at this point where the chapter breaks away from Madao and shows what’s happening elsewhere. I already gone over the moments, so it’s no need to repeat it here. After courageous and inspiring movements from the Samurai, the scene shifts back to the news broadcast, declaring Madao has passed away. Even when famous, he still gets “killed off.” The man can’t escape death. Of course, it’s not true, though pretty messed up to jump to that conclusion. Hell, they even killed off Ana. Even when she responded back, they believe she’s on a verge of death, so might as well declare her deceased. Savage news.

How can Madao explain on why he doesn’t fight back? His reason is his go-mode is so dangerous, when he fights, he kills everyone in sight. That includes Ana, and that’s why he won’t fight. I don’t know how much Madao can run his lies, but he’s pretty damn amazing at it. Finally, he hits the tipping point when he’s surrounded by troops. What should he do now? It’s only one way. He does an epic setup for a grand attack. I was a bit hyped honestly. He jumps high in the air and lands hard on the ground in a bowing positon. It’s his ultimate attack: begging for mercy! The best part is it works! I think?

What happens after he apologizes, a random explosion happens, taking out all of his enemies. He does a different pose, apologizes again, and another explosion occurs. This is just plain BS. Hilariously, he comes up with an explanation of his awakening power. Because of the cursed flame or mouth ulcers, it unlocks an explosive power. That’s very logical. Also, Madao isn’t the one that was apologizing; it was the incantation, “Aym Sah Ri.” He’s a national treasure of lies all right.

But the weird part is Ana also unlocked the power when the explosion in front of her happens. That means she too is special, right? Madao devalues her by inserting a new explanation. Apparently, she was able to do one because of his mouth ulcers spreading out its germ to hers. That’s one unnecessary explanation. All in all, Madao is one lucky S.O.B.; escaping with the lie that everyone believes. That doesn’t paint him the right color; it makes him look absolutely disgusting. Fortunately, Sorachi knows how to balance and eventually, redeems his character at the right time.

Despite all the luck he has, he doesn’t want to keep the hero title. Although I disagree with him on not doing anything special in the war, I understand what he meant. What bothered him is he was given all the achievements that Gintoki achieved; thus, giving him the main spotlight. Sure, he gained fame, fortune, ladies, and gourmets, but he wasn’t happy. All he wants is to spend drinking time with his drinking buddy. That’s why he’s still there; waiting to revisit the good old time. Dammit, Sorachi. Stop making them likeable.

Madao finally makes a proper apology because this time he means it. I was so touched that the next explosion will be epic. Well, it does happen, only it takes Madao out as well. Yeah, that’s karma at its finest. This begs the question. Who the hell was causing it? It’s freaking Prince Hata and his servant. What a full circle. To top it all off, they said the phrase of the chapter, “I’m sorry.” This is definitely Gintama all right.

This was a pretty fun chapter. I know a lot of fans are confused or wondering why the pacing remains the same as if the series isn’t ending yet. While putting that aside, the chapter does leave a really good setup for the most anticipated reunion. It’s all around non-sense with Madao pretending to be a hero that everyone wants, but not the one they should have. As comical it was, it also has charms when it reached the ending. Of course, Madao will be Madao when it comes to downfall, but that’s karma for you. Two chapters to go. What exactly is happening?

#gintama #chapter 696 #review

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mxrcayong-main · 4 years ago

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a rant bc im stressed and emotional and can’t really confide in the people i know in person rn

i’m stuck...

tw: abuse & sexual assault accusations & depression & abandonment issues & ugh

i. got into a huge fight with my brother a month ago and its his birthday today. we blocked each other on all social media and i’m unsure if i should reach out.

the fight was big. it was about how he wasn’t taking responsibility for his tax forms and making me and my dad do it. when i asked if he called the people to find out why his stuff was rejected, and he said some obvious bs that i know isnt true because i called the people the day prior and they were super careful about the information they gave out.

i think he knew i caught him in the lie because he then started accusing my dad of abuse and of lying and turning our family against us. which isn’t true? because my dad may have slapped us with a belt once or twice to make us eat our vegetables, but he never was abused by him. he was saying stuff like “he locked me to a furnace” when we didn’t even own a furnace growing up, and saying the stretch marks are “abuse scars”. when i told him “listen, i get thats how you feel, but we still need to talk to him” and when i told him “i get thats your narrative..” (which i know is bad wording now, but it was a narrative as everyone in my family knew was fake except him

he then called me a rapist and called me “someone just as bad as brock turner”. he then threatened to post it all online, and knowing him, he’ll edit out the bits where i make sense. i showed the screenshots to my friends and my other brother, and they all agree he’s being ridiculous. but im just stuck because i do want to say happy birthday - we were really close, but at the same time, he isolated me.

my dad, not knowing these claims, is trying to make me say happy birthday and act like i love him like i do before but i really don’t want to. i’m tired of being around family that makes me have to explain my every action, my words, and have to pick a side. i hate being around all these toxic family members.

i cant tell my dad these claims because if i do, my mom and brother will yell at me and hit me. both my brothers have hit me and hurt me for less. one of them strangled me when i was 8 because i said “thats stupid”

on top of all this, the only person in the house who i feels care about me is my guardian - who had left us to go take care of her dad who just finished his surgery. its really serious and they are scared he might be in trouble. the dad is so lovely and i hope he’s okay

and on top of that, my dog got sick again and was acting weird.

and on top of that, my boss promoted me and the other supervisors are expecting me to do soooo much that i can’t do because of university obligations and its like they want me to prioritize less than minimum wage work over expensive college obligations.

and on top of that, my ex-step dad is posting stuff everyday and its hard to remember that he’s no longer in my life. i really saw him as a father and he really took care of me like a daughter, but there was language barrier that prevents me from talking to him and when i last reached out, he didn’t respond and i really miss him. he really cared about me. and it reminded me of when my dad left. and how everyone fucking leaves and i get it. if i were someone who knew me, i’d leave too.

and on top of that, i’m just borderline entering a depressive episode.

and on top of that, i think this dude is kind of flirting with me and i really can’t be like “im not interested in you” or “i’m not relaly interested in relationships right now” because like??? im unlovable lol???? like what if this is my only shot but simultaneously, i’m trying to just respond friendly so he knows but idk like im just constantly stuck

and i miss my friends...

before i went for uni, imy friends and i dropped contact because this dude spread a rumor that theyw ere talking shit about me behind my back. they;re the type of people who’d talk shit behind ppl’s back too that like...it didnt surprise me. especially that year, when i was trying to get them to stop talking shit about someone and they’d get mad at me. and like we sorted it out and we’r ekinda back to normal now but like...we did that dumb “what warnings would you give someone about this person” and i got the most personal attack of them all? and i feel like i can’t talk to them about stuff anymore because of that.

and all my friends from uni are busy with work or use social media sites i dont use. and i lost one of my closest friends from uni due to fucking misunderstandings. and again... i get it...if i were them, i’d leave me too.

and i don’t want to leave home to go to uni / my home country where i actually get citizen benefits

but there -- i guess i can merge into the background...not make connections...i’m just tired of this.

and honestly, i’m not okay... i’m really not.

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stop-klancing-around · 7 years ago

Text

Study Time

Well, its been awhile since I have Klanced Around (get it since I'm... nvm) We are back with a new installment of the Daily Shifts series with a full fic about their actual meeting (without the bickering). Thank you @raythenerdyfangirl for betaing this for me.

You can also read it here on AO3

Enjoy😇

Lance’s plans for the day has been blown to bits. First, Hunk had to call in for work for Janet because of a family emergency. Lance had asked Hunk if he wanted him to call in to keep Hunk company but, Hunk texted saying that he was alright and that there was no need to do that. That left Lance to his own devices. Lance could go to the city and spend some time there but he currently doesn’t have the funds to splurge on useless knick-knacks and overly priced foods. He could also stay in his dorm until it was time to go work his shift. Lance knows that he’s going to laze around and nap the entire day without getting much done. So he decides that today is the day that he would study on anatomy and physiology because he has a test on Monday.

That is mostly the reason why he is in front of the Smythe’s Library with a bookbag full of studying supplies. Part of Lance wants to actually study and not fail this test in a few days from now. Another part of him wants to bother the absolute hell out of one of the librarians that Lance knows that he is working at the moment. As soon as he walks into the library, he was greeted with the smell of old paper and coffee. Lance goes straight to the stairs and jogs up to the fourth floor. The fourth floor was void of actual people so it was easier for him to start and stay studying for ample amounts of time. After looking around, Lance takes a seat near a window and places his bag on the table to take out his notes and textbooks.

Lance starts to tackle the notes from his anatomy class with highlighters and worksheets. With the silence and occasional light taps of the keyboard from the other students on the floor, he easily finishes the first two thick packets that he printed out two days ago. Lance's phone gives out a tiny ping and he quickly reaches to put the device on silent, after checking what was the notification. With a quick unlock, Lance checks to see that it was one of his professors sending him more work for him to do before class. Lance begins to swear quietly. Normally, he wouldn't have minded the extra work being sent to his email but this particular professor for (koff) anatomy (koff) loves to send work very late. This email was no exception. He is down to 473 pages out of the 600 free pages the university issued to him and most of it is because of this class.

He sighs and gets up to semi pack up while grabbing a folder of printer paper from his bag. The library doesn't have the paper in the printer and buying from the library is too much for him. He hasn't been paid yet and the last thing he needs is to buy overly price paper when he can bring his own. He could go to the computer lab in the Balmerian Center but he is too lazy to make the walk.

Lance begins to walk around in search of an empty computer with a printer. A few minutes into the search, Lance notices a tall stack of books with a tiny figure next to it and decides to check it out. On further inspection, he recognizes the heavily freckled boy as Keith, the one who calls in to be walked over to his car every time, was just sitting in the corner brooding with a rack of books on one side and a tall, unstable stack of books on the other side reading of all things. Lance just looks at him with confusion. Understanding that yes, Keith works in the library as both a clerk and shelver, but this is ridiculous. Why spend your break on reading when you can actually leave for lunch? Keith could be studying for something for all he knows, but Lance starts to walk up to Keith with the full intent of telling him to leave for L-U-N-C-H.

“Hey, Keith” He gives Lance a quick look up from one of the books that he was reading and goes back to reading, paying Lance no mind. Lance was mildly offended and begins to pester him. "Muuuullleeeet. Keeeeefff. Freeeeckles." Lance loudly whispers to get his attention. Keith closes his book and looks up at Lance in annoyance.

“What do you want Lance? Can’t you tell I was working?” Lance rolls his eyes at the ‘work’ that Keith manages to pile up.

"Hardly, Freckles." Keith gunts before opening another book.

"Can you stop calling me that? It's annoying."

"But its a cute nickname though.”

“To you yeah but not to me.” Keith thinks that maybe if he ignores Lance hard enough he will leave quicker. He picks up from a bookmark he left from one of Shakespeare's plays with full intent on finishing the last act. Lance, on the other hand, didn’t take the hint to leave.

“Hey Keith, I looked at your blood test and I found out that you are 100% back on your bullshit.” The moment Lance's lips come to a complete stop, Keith looks Lance in his eyes and delivers a look of displeasure. He closes his book and clasps his hands together and looks up like he was pleading with God himself to give him the patience for today. He takes a deep breath and looks back at Lance.

“Lance, if I wasn’t working in a library at this very moment, I would of kick the ever-loving shit out of you. I’m not in the mood to deal and keep up with your antics”

“Are you sure because you have been talking with me for the past ten minutes. Apparently, you have the patience to keep up.” Lance walks up to Keith while the said boy gets up. They meet half-way into the tall shelves until they were at an elbow's length. Lance looks down at Keith, he isn’t that short but, MAN does Lance thrive off the height difference.

“My patience has been wearing real thin today, Lance. If you like to keep going I suggest you don’t.” There was a warning in Keith's voice.

“Are you threatening me?” Lance mocked a shocked face with a hand over his chest.

“It’s not a threat, it's a promise. Keep testing me.”

“Ooo, but freckles, I already gave you the pop quiz.” Keith knows that Lance is playing around, but it was starting to get to him. In the morning he had with a few of the students and actually kicking them out with a few verbal insults thrown at him, he is not having the greatest time at the moment. He holed himself in furthest corner study so that he could calm down. It just so happens that Lance found him before he could actually calm himself. He could feel himself getting pissed off. He was hoping that Lance was taking the hint to back off with this.

Lance, on the other hand, was enjoying this. He lives on riling up Keith. It's not that he had nothing to do like actually studying because he had intentions of looking for a computer to print out his assignments. Lance was just bored and didn’t really have anyone to study and talk with. He saw Keith and began to annoy him because he thought that just needed something to kickstart his day. Lance thought wrong this time when he notices that they got louder and Keith looks like he was about to use one of his burgundy high-top Vans on Lance’s jaw with the way he was bouncing on his left foot.

Allura just so happens to walk in on the silent fight between the both of them or just Keith fuming in the corner with Lance standing idly.

“What seems to be the problem, gentlemen? I have been getting a few volume complaints of bickering here” Lance turns around to see Allura cross her arms and glare at them. She was a manager in the library and Keith’s boss. She can literally kick the both of them out and/or fire Keith.

“Nothing, there is no problem. My buddy Keith and I were arguing about-” Lance quickly picks up a Hamlet copy behind Keith. “Whether or not Hamlet was really acting crazy or not. It got really heated.” The great thing about Lance was that he can lie his ass off if it was needed.

“I can see.” Allura takes a quick look at Keith to see him calm down just a bit. “Just keep your argument and volume to a minimum. I don’t want to hear a complaint again about the both of you.” Her voice was warning them to not to try any funny business.

“Yes, Allura.” They said unison.

“And Keith, I understand your need to read, but those books need to be placed back. Got it?”

“Yeah. I got it.” Allura leaves the both of them to their devices. Keith slides his hand through his hair and takes a deep breath. Lance faces Keith again to apologize.

“Look, I’m sorry for being extra irritating to you, I thought you needed a little boost” Keith waves his hand and walks back to the stacks of books.

“It’s fine. I was already ticked off before you came over with your BS and I didn’t have the patience for the usual banter. If she didn’t come over, you would have gotten a foot to your jaw, causing me to lose my second job.”

“Second job? What happened to the first one.” Lance walks over to Keith to help him out. It was the least he could do right now.

“I kicked my boss in the face for disrespecting a coworker of mine.” Lance whistles. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was reminded of how Hunk was telling him about how some dude in his job got fired for drop-kicking his boss. That was a week before Hunk quit that job to become a security guard with Lance.

“How did you manage to do that? Aren’t you like 5’3”

“Rude, I'm not that short. Let’s just say that you don’t want to catch me in a fight anytime soon.”

“I’ll keep that in mind?”

“Good.” They fell into an awkward silence. The both of them place all of the books on the rack. Keith speaks up after the silence begins to become uncomfortable. “You didn’t need to help me. I got it from here.”

“And, so? I probably got you in trouble with your boss.”

“With Allura? Probably, to be honest.”

“Okay, then consider me helping you.”

“Seriously there is really no need. Plus, don’t you have other things to do?” Lance takes the rack starts to roll to the left. He still had to print out his assignment. He could print it out later before he leaves.

“Too late, I’m helping.” Keith sighs and walks to the end of the shelf to see Lance at the end of the Art section.

“You are going the wrong way, dumbass...” Keith can see Lance making a K-turn with the rack and running in towards and pass him.

“I knew that.” Keith shakes his head and follows Lance.

Throughout the time that they put the books back in their respective places, Lance discovers that Keith is actually a sophomore here at the university because of skipping a grade at the Garrison; the same High school that didn’t leave a career untouched with all of its programs. He also learns that Keith was homeschooled for a few years before becoming a senior at the Garrison. When Lance asked why Keith mentions something about jobs and switches the conversation to talk about majors. Lance rolled along with it while dismissing the odd switch. By the time they were done shelving all 83 books in their rightful places, the both of them beat. They settle at Lance’s table, where all of his stuff was still in its place. Thankfully, nothing was taken.

“Hey, what time is it?” Keith asks.

“It is 12:30, why?”

“It's now my break. Do you want to come with me to the Cafe or you going to stay here?”

“I’ll follow you. Let me get my wallet and my phone” Keith waits while Lance takes his wallet and phone. They walk towards and down the stairs.

“Hold up, if that wasn’t your lunch break, then what were you doing in the corner earlier?”

“I already told you that I was pissed off and I needed a place to cool off. Plus, I was hiding from Coran because he always gets me to find the rarest books and I just wasn’t in the mood on finding Alex Bitter ‘Awakening of Scars’ or some shit like that. I won’t lie the book was okay. What bothered me was the protagonist’s name was Chrome and nobody was taking the opportunity to call her google chrome.”

“Hummus?” Lance questions as he looks Keith in his eyes. Keith looks at Lance and starts laughing.

“Are you always saying some type of sauce in confusion? This is the fourth or fifth time now.” Keith asks while he catches his breath.

“No, it really depends on the response, like that one. I was not expecting that Google Chrome thing.” They continue their chat from leaving the library to the mess hall, where the both of them decides to grab a small lunch and quickly walk back to where Lance left his studying supplies.

“Freckles?”

“What and stop calling me that.”

“Are you sure that’s enough for you to get through the day because that looks like it's enough for at least an hour or less.” Lance points to the granola bar, a small bowl of salad, and a bottle of water in Keith’s hand.

“I’ll be alright”

“I can buy you lunch.” Lance was hoping that Keith turns him down because he can’t afford to pay for Keith’s lunch if he goes off campus. Let alone himself on campus.

“Lance. I’m serious, I’m fine. Trust me on this.” In Lance’s mind, he was fist pumping. He should really stop offering to take people places when he hasn’t been paid for work.

“Alright. The next time you're on break, we’re going to Subway”

“Sure Lance” The both of them got to the library and went to the fourth floor to Lance’s table. They sit down and ate their respective lunches.

“Sup, nerds” Pidge manages to find them and joins their table.

“Wait, how do you know Freckles?” Lance asks Pidge.

“Freckles?” Pidge looks to Keith and shakes their head. “Do I have to ask why?”

“I don’t know why myself Pidge. It probably has something to do with my face and my hands.” Keith pushes his hair back and shows the back of his hands to reveal more freckles. Pidge lightly shoves Keith while mumbling ‘asshole’ towards him. Keith smirks at Pidge. Lance, on the other hand, looks at Keith exposed forehead and starts choking on his lemonade. The both of them gives Lance a questioning look while Lance dismissing it as the drink going down the wrong pipe. Pidge gives Lance a sly look before patting his back.

“Before I forget, Keith was a childhood friend of mine and we manage to meet up last semester,” Pidge speaks up once again to confirm Lance’s question.

“Oh, that’s cool.”There was a tiny ding from Lance’s phone. He checks up on the device and a single eyebrow rose up. “My mom just hit me up.”

“Why and what for?” Pidge asks.

“I don’t know” Lance checks the message and both of his eyebrows hit the roof while his mouth hangs open. “She said if I liked both boys and girls then why was I still single.” His hand begins to cover his mouth. Keith takes Lance’s phone to read what Lance said was true. Pidge takes the phone from Keith and begins to snort. With a beat, Keith returns with his answer.

“I guess you’re by yourself on that one” If Lance’s jaw wasn’t open before, it's now hitting the floor. Keith made an actual joke. A pun, with a straight face.

“The level of disrespect in that sentence was too much for me. What the hell Keith.” Lance can hear the snorts that were coming from Pidge. He looks at Keith and he looked so confused. Poor Keith, He didn’t realize that he made a pun and Pidge had to tell him directly before he was red in the face. Keith was trying to contain his laughs but failed completely with the small giggles coming out in small gaps of air.

“Hold on” He chokes out as he walks out of his chair and jogs around on the shelves before coming back with silent laughter. He sits down in front of Lance to laugh right in his face. The good thing was the fourth floor was somewhat empty with a scatter of students. They could laugh as much as they could as long as they keep it down.

“Keith, I hate you so much for that” Lance wants to get mad about this situation but he can't find anything to get mad at. It was an unexpected pun from Keith of all people and damn he was starting to tear up from all of the laughing he was doing himself.

“Lance... your... face...” Pidge was wheezing from the other side of the table. Keith calming himself down before looking at Pidge and starting round two of their silent laughter. Lance was on the floor trying to control his breathing. All that Pidge was saying in between breathing and laughing was bi-yourself while looking at Lance.

By the time all of them was calm enough to look at each other and not combust with snorting, they have gotten a few shushes and ‘quiet over there’ from a few of the students that were on the fourth floor. Keith was wiping his eyes and Lance started to pack up. Pidge had already packed up and mumbled to Keith that they were going to stay a bit more in the library staff lounge before walking off.

“I still need to print some things off,” Lance mumbles out. It wasn’t intended for Keith to hear it but he heard it anyway.

“The computers are still here when you need it. Why did you wait so long to print?”

“I don’t know, to be honest.” Lance started to leave with Keith walking.

“Let me tell you something about this place, you do realize that you can go to the Balmera and print without paying 50 cents for paper.” Lance stops and looks at Keith, while Keith kept walking on another foot before turning to see that Lance wasn’t following. “You didn’t know about that?”

“Do you know how much money I wasted here because of that stupid fee.”

“I can see.”

“Freckles you don’t know how annoyed I am right now” Lance groans into his hands.

“Don’t tell Allura I said that.”

“About how the library is robbing students of their money for paper? Suuuure” Lance raises a thumbs up before groaning again. He takes out his phone and gives it to Keith.

“Hey, Keith let me get your number” Keith looks at Lance’s phone for a bit before making up his mind. He pulls out his phone as well.

“Why?”

“Because I want to make fun of you when I’m not here. Why else would I ask for your number.”

“Oh joy, now I can block your number now that you are giving it to me.”

“Wow, you’re rude you know that?” Keith plugs in his number on Lance’s phone while Lance was doing the same. They give back their phone to their respective persons and continued to walk. Keith’s phone started to ring and when he checked it, it was Lance.

“Lance, what the hell? I just gave you my number!”

“I was just checking” Keith raises an eyebrow while showing Lance his ringing phone. Lance caves in. “It's a habit because of a long and funny story”

“Figures”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Find out on the next-”

“Keith, don’t finish that sentence.” Lance snorts out while Keith begins to giggle. They get to the first floor towards the entrance and Lance says his goodbyes to Keith as he walks out the door. Originally, wanted to bother Keith but, he got to know Keith a bit more and there was less bickering today then the times he would walk Keith to his car. Today was fun, instead of actually studying for his test, Lance hangs out with Keith and goofs off with him.

He realizes that he didn’t get any studying done and curses. Lance could always study in the dorms anyway. He checks the time to see that is was 2 o'clock. He can still go and print the pages out at the Balmera with time to spare so he starts his walk there.

Keith, on the other hand, was back on the fourth floor and was about to start his rounds of misplaced books when he looks over to see some books on Lance’s table. He walks over to see that it was his book and that his neat handwriting was on the top of the first page.

‘It looks like Lance forgot his books. I’ll just hold them until his next visit’ Keith thought as he places the books on the rack for later.

“Keith! There you are I was looking all over for you. I need you to look for this book for a reader.” Keith’s head looks up at the owner of the voice and sees Coran quickly his way.

“Shit” Keith curses.

#klance #voltron #keith vld #lance vld #klance fanfic #Voltron legendary defender #daily shifts au #cas writes

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captainalwayslazycollectort-blog · 6 years ago

Text

What are the listings for African American or black owned auto insurance companies and agents.?

"What are the listings for African American or black owned auto insurance companies and agents.?

I want to support my people,because no one else is going to support us. Many immigrants only support their business owned by their people,but we blacks have very few businesses. We need to unite and support each other to survive in this every changing country. It feels as if we are second class citizens in our own communities. We have to do business and pay for services of people who dislike us,because we have no alternative. We blacks need to control,manage,and build business in our own communities. P.S. I love America USA is # 1

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