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picturejasper20 · 3 months ago

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The missed potential of Vlad Plasmius

Danny Phantom is an animated series that is known for having good elements and ideas that a lot of times they don't feel properly executed and explored as they should have been. One of best examples of this is Vlad Masters/Plasmius as main villain of the show.

For those who have been following for a while you know that i have been critical about the way Vlad as character was written in the show. It is something i have discussed with other people about, how different aspects of him that could have explored better and rewritten in other ways.

What i want to do in this post is explain more in depth why Vlad, while having some really good things, fails to be written as a villain and character in a way that satisfying and how this is something that hurts the show in general.

Something i want to highlight is that this is going to be more than the problems his character has in Season 3 and it is more in the series as a whole.

What are priorities? Can i eat them?

One of the main problems i see in Vlad through the show is that the writers didn't seem what they wanted to do with him as character. There didn't seem to be a real goal with they had planned for his character and the more you analyse it the worse it gets.

A good example of this is his relationship with Valerie Gray: In spite of being one of the main relationships in the series and Vlad being the person who gave Valerie the equipment to become a ghosthunter, there are only two episodes that explore the relationship between the two- Reign Storm and D-Stabilized.

Near the end of Shadows of Gray it was revealed that Vlad was the one that had been sending Valerie all the packages with ghost hunter equipment for her to use it yet it wasn't until around fourteen episodes later that Valerie got to learn about this in Reign Storm.

Then the series doesn't explore this relationship again until Season 3 episode D-Stabilized, which is the last episode before the series finale, leaving all the things this episode explores answered.

Another problem is that the show doesn't seem to know what Vlad's main goals are and he is constanly chaging them for some inexplicable reason.

A lot of this comes down to Valerie not appearing more episodes because of some weird network restriction but stil, it is weird how Vlad's dynamic with Valerie wasn't properly explored.

If you think about it, it had a lot of potential in showing how manipulative Vlad could be and maybe him even growing a bit of a mentor-pupil bond with Valerie over time. It could have brought a lot of tension to Valerie and Danny's relationship with Danny trying to make Valerie see that Vlad is using her and Valerie denying this. This could have helped with Valerie getting a lot of more of development than she got too.

In Season 1 his goals remain quite consistent with him trying to get rid of Jack Fenton and make Danny and Maddie become his ¨family¨. This gets explored in his three main appearances from that season and even when he is goal is different like in ¨A Million Dollar Ghost¨, it still manages to be tied to getting back at Jack.

However, in Season 2, the writers seemed to forget about Vlad trying to get his revenge on Jack and instead constanly change his goals or just drop them when they get introduced.

The most clear case of this is that Reign Storm has Vlad getting the Ring of Rage and Crown of Fire from the Ghost King. These items were treated as something that was part of a huge plan for Vlad later on- only to never get addressed again the rest of the show. We never got to see why Vlad was looking for these artifacts and what he was planning on doing with them. It doesn't help they don't get any mention in later episodes too.

In ¨Secret Weapons¨ and ¨Kindred Spirits¨ he returns more to his original goal of having this twisted idea of ¨perfect family¨ that he has but it is jarring that the ring and crown from ¨Reign Storm¨ don't get any mention.

Vlad trying to get revenge on Jack isn't brought up in these episodes neither. I think it would be easy to assume he just gave up but if this was the case, it could have easily been addressed in a scene from these episodes.

And in Season 3 it just becomes a whole mess in terms of directions with his character with almost not having a consistent plan at all aside from what it looks like it is to be becoming more powerful and giving up on the idea of trying to make Danny join him.

...Except it doesn't because D-Stabilized explores again this idea of how he still wants to have Danny as son by cloning him. Something that had been hinted it wasn't the case anymore from previous episodes.

Lack of backstory

All this is tied to the problem of how the writers and, mainly Butch Hartman, lost focus of what they really wanted to do with Vlad and what type of villain they wanted him to be.

Which goes to...

Another major problem that can be easily picked up when it comes to Vlad is his lack of proper backstory in the series.

Vlad Plasmius is a character that at his core is defined by being obsessed about his past and the ¨what could have been¨. He believes that Jack stole the life that he thinks should have been his if the protol portal accidental hadn't had happened.

And yet we barely know anything about his past and his relationship with the Fentons. It is something that barely gets explored when it should be given more importance since it is the main reason most of the main plot of the series is happening in first place. The series leaves a clear correlation between the proto-portal accident and Vlad becoming a villain... so why we don't get to see more about his backstory aside from a short flashback?

The fact we know so little leaves the whole situation between Jack and Vlad uncertain because it never gets explained what really went down between the two and what happened to them after the college incident. This on itself is frustrating since we don't know if Vlad pushed Jack and Maddie away, if Jack and Maddie didn't try reaching out or something in between.

It is something i simply can't understand why the writers didn't bother exploring it. I mean, after all there are secondary villain characters that do get their backstory explored, yet not Vlad, who is supposed to be the main antagonist.

Then around Season 2 the episode Masters of All Time appears and tries to give the idea that ¨Vlad was always evil¨ by showing an alternative timeline where he didn't got hit by the portal but he is still as terrible if not worse than his version from the main timeline.

This writing decision is just so weird because Vlad's introduction episode established that he turned evil after he got blasted in the face by ectoplasmatic energy and was left hospilatilized for years, losing some years of his life trying to recover. As i stated, his main motivations are him trying to get back Jack since he blames him for what happened at college, there aren't exactly any indications that ¨Vlad was always evil¨ before Masters of All Time episode.

Some have pointed out that this idea has its implications as well, as it feels like it is trying to potray as Vlad more evil than necessary to lessen the damage that Jack caused by accidentally leaving his best friend in the hospital for years, probably even trying to justify such terrible thing under the logic of ¨he was always evil anyways, he probably deserved it¨

It feels that the writers were trying to made excuses for what Jack did and didn't want to acknowledge the fact that Jack did something bad and Vlad actually has a reason to angry at him. They didn't want to explore the complexities of said situation and instead choose it to turn it more black and white.

While we know that King Andrias's backstory doesn't excuse the terrible things he did, it does give a lot more depth to his character and explains his psychology well, putting him a bit in the role of a ¨tragic villain¨ in the story. It also gives us the idea that he wasn't always like this, something that had been hinted and build up in previous episodes to this one.

For contrast, in the animated series Amphibia one of the main antagonists, King Andrias, does get his backstory explored in an episode from Season 3 called ¨The Core and The King¨.

In this episode it explored how he used to be part of a trio of friends until one of them betrayed him and how that event completely changed him as a person. From that point on King Andrias became someone bitter, manipulative and cruel, obsessed with chasing a past that never happened just like Vlad did.

Much like Andrias from Amphibia, Vlad Masters could have had an episode exploring how his life was like before and after the proto-portal accident; how was his relationship with Jack and Maddie, how his actual family was or if he had one. We could have seen what other events lead him to become a villain too.

At the same time this could have been a great way of using the established parallels he has with Danny Fenton, as he was created to be a foil for him. Vlad's relationship with Jack and Maddie could have been a good contrast to Danny's with Tucker and Sam. For example how Vlad's fell apart after the ghost portal accident while Danny's friendships didn't.

There are a lot of interesting things that could have been done with Vlad's backstory and it is very frustrating that the series didn't do anything with it.

What type of villain is Vlad supposed to be really?

The lack of priorities for Vlad's character and the super weird handling of his backstory in the show made me question: what type of villain was Vlad intended to be for the series?

Because on one hand it seems they wanted for him to be this Lex Luthor like character who was superior to the main protagonist in every way and did what he wanted because he could. He is just supposed to be read as a bastard, nothing much else in between.

This doesn't mean the character can't have backstory or some postive traits, but at the end of the day he does what he does because it is just the way he is.

However, this doesn't fully work because a lot of Vlad's characterization feels quite contradictory to that since he has more of a tragic backstory and he is motivated by desire of getting revenge and to be loved and have a ¨family¨, something he becomes more and more desperate to accomplish as the series progresses.

If he was intended to be just someone who does evil for the sake of lols, then it fails in doing that because he doesn't see himself as a villain and feels justified in doing what he does due to his own past.

On top of that the writers wants to make us believe that ¨Vlad was always evil¨, so that kinda cancels out the idea of how he is supposed to be a ¨tragic villain¨ because he was bad from the start. This means that this idea fails in execution as well.

And if he is supposed to be a ¨tragic villain¨, then the series also messed up with that since it refused to explore and elaborate on his backstory and psychology further, not showing how he became the person that he is today and making it this take feel shallow as result.

The series wants us to believe that Vlad is lonely and miserable but it doesn't do much of an effort of showing us that and instead we are told by the characters that how is we are supposed to see Vlad.

We don't get any scenes of showing if he avoids making any other friendships or how empty his own mansion feels. I think the closest to this would be the scene at the start of Infinity Realms. Outside of that there isn't much else.

In the end it is unclear what type of villain Vlad was intended to be, leaving a character that suffers from some bizarre identity crisis that the writers didn't seems to know what to do with him, specially in Season 3. We don't know what Vlad is supposed to be due to the show lacking priorities and a proper plan for his character.

In conclusion

As someone who really likes Vlad as character, it quite hurts me to see how messy his writing as villain and character can be. A lot of times it is contradictory and other things feel like they were done in poor taste.

There are secondary villain characters that feel more consistent than him like Spectra and Technus. It just baffles me how bizarre his direction in the series is since he is the main antagonist of the show. He should be better planned but for some reason he wasn't.

If this series have had better direction and continuity then maybe Vlad would have been a lot more consistently written and a lot of the aspects i mentioned would have been explored properly.

Vlad Masters is a villain character that has a lot of potential that deserved some better direction and someone that had a clear idea of what they wanted to do with him.

#danny phantom #vlad plasmius #vlad masters #dp analysis #Jack fenton #maddie fenton #Danny fenton #King Andrias #Amphibia

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major-comet · 14 days ago

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i think the thing that's so interesting to me about locus and sharkface as counterparts to wash and carolina is that they're not just simple foils that compliment/contrast each other.

they're like, their ghosts of christmas yet to come. making wash and carolina face off against people who they both came very close to being, and only didn't because the reds and blues showed them a better way. they made good enough choices to change their future, and avoided that fate. and conversely - and they really nail it home with wash/locus in particular, but wash and lina both serve as reminders of what locus and sharkface perhaps could have been had things turned out just a bit differently. if locus had ever decided to question felix and his general orders, if sharkface had made peace with the loss of his friends and laid down his quest for vengeance.

wash stopped blindly following orders and learned to put his faith in other people - namely by trusting the reds and blues when they offered him church's armor and a place on the team to hide from the UNSC. if he hadn't, it's very likely he would have gone back to jail and potentially ended up on the same prison transport that felix and locus found sharkface and price on - we’ll assume for the sake of this hypothetical that the rest of the reds and blues still made it to chorus without him. still as cold and calculating as he was as recovery one before the reds and blues softened him, but with a deeper anger like we saw in 7-8. mad at the reds and blues for not just returning epsilon and getting him into this mess, furious at carolina for showing back up now, after all this time - after the meta has been dealt with, after all their friends are dead. showing again, as he did in 7-8, that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to earn his freedom again, no matter the cost.

carolina found some sense of peace with everything that happened to her and the other freelancers, and accepted that nothing she did to her father would bring them back or make it right - she'd only be left hollow, knowing that he could be added to the list of people whose blood she had on her hands, and that certainly wouldn't make it better. with the director out of the way before that peace had been made, she wouldn’t have known what to do with herself - she’d just be aimless, and it would be even harder to find rest than it was previously. revenge is a common theme in carolina's arcs, and while I wish they had maybe eased up on it a bit as the show went on, I still really like how it's reflected back at her in season 13. and part of what's interesting about sharkface is that he's honestly kind of epsilon's foil, too - partially just by virtue of being with carolina all-throughout season 13, but let us not forget that epsilon is easily motivated by revenge as well.

obviously wash and carolina have aspects to them that make locus and sharkface work as counterparts to the both of them - carolina certainly knows what it's like to blindly follow orders, and wash absolutely knows what it's like to get overwhelmed by a desire for revenge. but the foil pairings we did get are parallels to what I would call their main journeys across the story arcs we meet them in - wash with 6-8, and carolina with 9-10 (but mostly 10)

and all of this is particularly fascinating to me because that's not the case with felix and tucker. felix and tucker are more classic general foils. they fucking hate each other, and contrast each other well and even compliment each other with some of their similarities. but never when watching the chorus trilogy do i ever get the sense that if things had gone just slightly differently, they could have been each other.

part of what I always find so intriguing about thinking of evil mirror characters (a la star trek) is trying to envision what went differently to make the evil versions of the characters turn out that way. but in imagining those evil versions of wash and carolina, we don't have to wonder - the show makes it very clear to us that they'd have ended up like locus and sharkface.

#comet posting #rvb #red vs blue #agent washington #agent carolina #rvb locus #samuel ortez #rvb sharkface

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hrtsdevils · 1 year ago

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you made me love the number forty-three | fall to me au

summary: a close-knit bond is formed between luke hughes and y/n l/n throughout the years. they have their ups and downs, but they’ll always be there for one another.

pairing: platonic luke hughes x family friend!reader

wc: 1564

warnings: fuck ass bob

a/n this is based off of abby by gracie abrams, and it’s very dear to my heart! pretend that luke wasn’t committed to umich 2 years before he graduated… for the plot! sorry jack’s kind of a meanie, i love him!!! i swear!! it just fits w the lyrics <3 enjoy and thanks for reading!

tell me your secrets, ask every question. my door is open twenty-four/seven. think you were made from something in heaven. you made me love the number eleven forty-three.

october 2008-september 2010

Your family had known the Hughes family for as long as you could remember. Your mother had played soccer at the University of New Hampshire with Ellen, and she was the first person to cheer her on once hockey season started. This allowed them to form a close bond over their four years of eligibility. The Hughes family travelled a bit around the country due to the careers of Ellen and Jim, but as soon as they settled in Toronto with their seven, five, and three-year-old sons, your mother followed suit with five-year-old you and your eight-year-old older brother.

The older two boys in each family started hockey, and Jack was soon to follow. This left you and little Luke to hang out in the care of Ellen, and occasionally your mom. At first, you loved him, he was like your personal baby doll that you could drag around, dress up, and have tea parties with. Luke didn’t usually object, except for that one incident where you tried to make him wear “clip-clops”, as you called them, to which he had a temper tantrum about the sheer idea of putting them on his feet.

As you grew older, Luke wanted less to do with you and your girly things and more to do with hockey, along with whatever else the boys were doing. Although normal of him, you still felt betrayed. What can you say; you were seven years old. To try and make you fit in, Luke took craft scissors to your long, wavy hair and cut it to look like the boys. Maybe you’d have looked better if you had a pixie cut done by a professional salon, however, he was slightly less than and you came out with the same shaggy haircut as the five-year-old. You ran to your mom immediately, about to cry of embarrassment.

“Mommy, something bad happened!” You screeched, interrupting her conversation with Ellen and catching the attention of the three boys.

Covering her mouth slightly, Ellen was the first to speak, “Oh, sweetie.. what happened?” She reached out to touch your now chin-length locks and brushed a few stray longer hairs out of your eyes.

“Luke cut it, so I could play hockey with them.” You gesture towards the boys, “And now I... I look like him!” You exclaimed out of horror, finally realizing the drastic nature of your actions.

You started to tear up before your mother cut in, “Baby, you both look adorable! It’ll grow out soon, don’t worry about it.”

You were still seething for the rest of the day, and you were plotting your revenge plan on Luke for weeks. You wanted to kill him, and had been ignoring him since that very moment.

You figured your life was over, and what better way to spend your final moments pretending Luke didn’t exist after what he’d done to you. You decided that he was public enemy #1, or at least that’s what he was until you looked in the mirror, albeit a month or two later, and your hair had grown out into a short bob, framing your sweet features beautifully. You started to feel better about it.

Later that day, you went up to your mom and curled up in her lap. “Do you think Luke and I will ever get along again?” You asked while she was reading a book.

Your mother sighed and smiled at you, “You and the boys just have different interests. When you get older, things will be different and you’ll be even closer.”

december 2015

Your mom was right, although you and Luke were pretty far in age, he was practically your baby brother and best friend. You were close, despite differing interests and he would confide in you on a regular basis. One particular night, Luke rode his bike down the sidewalk in the cold, snowy winter and knocked on the window to your first-story bedroom.

You immediately let him in, then asked him what was wrong. Ten-year-old Luke pulled you into a hug and started spilling out his feelings and secrets. “Jack’s so rude!” He exclaimed into your shoulder, “He thinks he’s so much better at everything! Hockey, Mario Kart, basketball, all of it.”

“And?” You inquired, “Just ignore him, Lukey.”

He sniffed some more and released himself from your arms, “He keeps excluding me from his friends and stuff, they’re over and he pretends I don’t exist because I’m not good.” He wiped his nose and sat on the carpeted floor by your bed, “Quinn’s not home, he’s at a tournament with Mom.” He attempted to clarify why Quinn couldn’t stop, although you already knew because your brother was with them.

You frowned, “That’s not cool of him.” You quickly shot a text message to Jim saying Luke came over here to hang out, so nobody got worried. “Are you hungry?”

He nodded, and you offered to make some Kraft mac and cheese. “Feel free to listen to music or something, love you.” You slipped out the door and went to make him some dinner.

Since you were little, you knew for certain that you’d always be there for him and now you knew you’d always look out for him, whenever he needed it. Even if one day he’d be more able to protect himself than you ever could, today you would refrain from marching over to the Hughes residence and getting in a physical fight with Jack.

march 2020

It was almost your eighteenth birthday, so you were visiting home to hang out with your parents, the Hughes’, and a few other hometown friends. You entered the front door to your house after catching up with your friend over coffee to see your parents and the Hughes’ bent over Luke and his laptop. “What’s up?” You question, hanging up your big, puffy jacket.

“We’re waiting for my UMich college acceptance letter, they sent them out today.” He said, nervously. You could tell by the shakiness of his voice.

You joined them at the table, “Don’t be silly, Lukey. You know that they’ve already expressed interest in you and your game.” He smiled a little as you ruffled his hair, and sat down at the chair to the right of him.

“I wish Jack and Quinn were here.” Luke sighed and scratched his head, “Jack promised he’d call, but I think he’s busy.”

You frowned for him, you knew how much closer he and Jack had become in the last few years, but they’d drifted again when Jack moved to New Jersey last year. A part of you wished Jack had gone to college and stayed closer, but you and Luke knew he was too good for the NHL to wait on. “I’m sure he’ll call soon, bub. Give it a little bit.”

After about twenty minutes of refreshing and chatting, the letter from the University of Michigan popped up. It was nerve-wracking. Luke had already been accepted into a few safety schools that wanted him on their hockey teams, but he really wanted to follow in Quinn’s footsteps and go to Michigan. Luke’s cursor hovered over the email for a few moments before clicking it, and to nobody’s surprise, it was an acceptance letter. Everybody cheered, but you seemed the most excited (besides Luke, of course.)

“Luke!” You squealed, hugging the boy from the side as tight as possible, “You did it!”

He hugged you back, “Thanks for supporting me, and letting me sleep on your floor.. and buying me food all the time.” He chuckled, “Couldn’t have done it without you, sissy.”

present day

It was Luke and Jack’s day off, as they had zero games scheduled for the next few days. You had come to visit them to watch a few games, and you were staying at their apartment. It wasn’t a rare occurrence that you came and watched their games, stayed in the guest bedroom of their Hoboken apartment, and hung out with their team and whatever WAGs were joining them. But today it was just you and Luke, chilling on the couch and watching ‘Elf’.

“Remember last November when we went to New York?” You recalled while watching Buddy run through the city. Luke turned the TV down and grinned.

He nodded, “Yeah, good times. And we ate so much chocolate that you almost threw up.”

“That wasn’t because of the chocolate,” you objected, “it was because you were making me laugh so hard my organs hurt.”

Luke snorted as he remembered the vacation and the hotel room you guys stayed in. It was a spontaneous trip on a week when he was injured to try and cheer him up. You guys sat all night judging random music albums and your boyfriend at the time. It was all just a part of a collection of memories you loved to revisit, a photo album in your head.

“God, I can’t believe how old we’re getting.” You said, a tone of sadness. “You used to fit on my shoulders, and now I think you might break them if I tried to give you another piggyback ride.” You laughed softly.

“I’m grateful that our moms raised us two houses down.” Luke threw a piece of popcorn at your face.

You threw it back, “I’m grateful I get to know you.” You stated, a smile gracing your features.

i’m right here. fall to me, to me. fill your head with sweet dreams, sweet dreams. you’d never hurt a thing, nothing. i hope you know to talk to me.

end

#luke hughes #jack hughes #quinn hughes #nj devils #hughes brothers #hughes family #nhl #nhl hockey #luke hughes x reader #jack hughes x reader #quinn hughes x reader #nhl fic #nhl blurb #hockey fic #hockey #maddie writes stuff #hockey au #umich hockey #fall to me au!

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arisveah · 3 months ago

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thought about life series scott, and how infuriating yet so relatable his character can be (especially in relation to double life), and ended up using his and pearls relationship as a metaphor for chronic pain, which not even i know how happened. anyway its below the cut if you want 6 paragraphs of character study :)

life series scott is honestly such an intriguing and infuriating character. he is honorable, but in the same way he is petty and bitter. he pushes aside his wants and values for the better, more agreeable thing so much that he often ends up pushing the burden of emotional health onto his allies, and makes their choices for them. he's so parentified older sibling that becomes over controlling and emotionally repressed coded, yk?

in his never-ending attempts to do good, he saves the short term pain and leaves longer lasting scars and aftershocks. and scott does this a lot with his characters- think season 1 empires scott and his comparison to elsa. when something bad happens, he scrambles to take it on himself and inevitably creates rifts between himself and others in his plight to be a "hero". hes not evil, or even self centered- he cares so deeply about keeping his friends safe that he smothers them with jagged shards of glass, and when it hurts them he tries to deflect the blame. every person he sees is another he feels responsible for.

as a double life pearl apologist, it was kinda hard for me to see scott in a positive light. but if you think about it, all his decisions make sense for his character. in the last life finale, scotts final move is to kill ren as revenge for him killing pearl. they had been close the whole season, and scott lived to the end BECAUSE pearl was there for him to fall back on. for the first time on screen, scott relied on someone else- and then he saw her die and leave him alone. in the next season, its revealed that he will be tied to someone else again, and they'll need to share EVERYTHING if they want to win. and in this position, scott is most comfortable being the breadwinner. but it starts to seem like his soulmate doesn't need him, and he starts to panic, because the death of pearl (the last person who didnt need him) hit him hard and she might’ve lived if she wasnt giving him lives. he worries he will be a leech in their partnership, but he cant quite bring himself to terms with that. so when pearl and martyn step back into the overworld and take initiative on finding the soulmates at last, scott worries. he's never alone, never been alone, so he subconsciously goes to the closest source of non-painful comfort he can: cleo, his long(er)-dead ally from a previous life. he starts making allies, because scott is nothing if not diplomatic. and then he finds out that he is tied to pearl by life and death, again. that every time he dies, she will also lose a life, again. its a scathing reminder of the previous season, so scott pulls away. he cant do that to her, not again, and maybe if he pulls back she won't pity him when he fails to protect her. hell, maybe he wont even need to protect her.

but then pearl starts getting upset. and scott feels like he owes her, deep down, but he also feels like he's paying his debt and she just keeps hurting them, and he can't handle the blame from both sides anymore. he gets bitter, and decides that pearls death mustve been her own fault, that she's too emotional and that will get them BOTH killed- and he thinks of cleo and how much they need an ally and he cant just leave her- he needs to control the situation.

this whole post was inspired by the interaction during pearls video where hes digging at her tendency to hold grudges, and has her make the team diamond swords. it felt awful to watch, and kinda instilled a dread in me about how they are going to interact for the rest of the season. but i'm going to make a crazy analogy here so buckle up. as someone with chronic pain and joint issues in the american health/school system, the best metaphor i can come up with is when you go to a trusted adult for advisory, health interventions, or pain meds, but the system doesn't allow for them to help you. and its not their fault, but it starts to feel less and less like you should be saying thank you for trying and more like they just dont care. and you start to get bitter, and you start to pretend that you dont even care if they can or cant help you anymore, but you do. scott and pearls relationship feels a lot like putting your trust in someone for the first time, but they fall through by external means, and when they show back up you feel bitter and unwilling to let your walls back down. your fine, you can and have handled it alone your whole life. but everyone keeps offering to take responsibility and it just makes you sick that it took so long and now you dont even want their help.

basically, what im saying is pearl and scott could be besties again if they just talked over what they feel they owe eachother. but ALSO what im saying is yeah, life series scott kinda sucks- but he sucks because he tries so to be honorable that it circles back around to unfair and prejudiced. he just needs a bit of therapy and some anti anxiety meds <3 this somehow became a whole thing about disability and child neglect but like whatever

#arisveah talks nonsense #traffic series #double life #life series #trafficblr #life series scott #double life scott #dl!scott #scott smajor #smajor mcyt #life series smp #character study #pearlescentmoon #last life #last life smp #wild life smp #gaslight gatekeep girlboss

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aspiringsophrosyne · 2 months ago

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What’s this season’s theme? They weren’t subtle about it. When the group asks her about Dohla, Allura almost literally turns to the camera and says: “Let’s just say being in dangerous situations with someone you’re close to can lead to friction.”

The show’s CRew drew considerable attention to this idea through Kima and Allura’s old friend, flashbacks to their adventuring days, Zerxus’ telling of the fall of Avalir, Scanlan’s failure to be fully present for either his daughter or Vox Machina, and the group splintering. On paper, this idea is fine, but in practice, its implementation is flawed.

Because what comes of all this setup? Scanlan steps away for Kaylie; what are the repercussions of that? While Keyleth and the twins break off from the rest, are they gone long? Does this season have a capstone with a potency similar to Bard’s Lament?

(For the record, I am neutral on having Bard’s Lament in Season 3, but excluding that eliminates one hefty bit of dramatic payoff. )

What’s interesting in hindsight is the unintentional, surprisingly substantial, and consistent theme that emerges. One that isn’t the Breaking of the Fellowship.

The twins exact their revenge on Thordak. Keyleth gets revenge on Raishan after Raishan gets hers on first the Ashari, then Thordak when he doesn’t provide her with her cure. Last season, Kaylie sought revenge but rejected it in the end, and now the Shorthalts are uncertain of where they stand. Percy wants to abandon vengeance, but Ripley forces his hand. After her fatal confrontation with Percy, the twins avenge him.

Noticing a pattern?

The script tells us this season’s heart is internal strife, but the action repeatedly shows us a revenge tale. With a strong through-line, marked thematic consistency, and multiple clear payoffs. Ironically, these elements develop organically, akin to mushrooms in the dark, shielded from the narrative heavy-handedness the spotlight would impose upon them.

With only a few tweaks, they could’ve had this plot laced up tighter than a 19th-century corset. Let the twins learn the identity of their mother’s murderer earlier, and let them get the last strikes on him. Give us the group HDYWTDT on Ripley. Let the anger Keyleth feels at Raishan initially block her from passing her earth trial—setting her up as a parallel to Percy; they both let go and walk out of this season alive—and you’ve cooked a full-course meal.

Instead of a retread, frame this story as an extension and escalation of the Briarwood arc—which established how self-destructive the old eye-for-an-eye can be—but this time for the villains: Thordak must be thwarted, and Ripley’s and Raishan’s respective revenge quests draw Vox Machina’s ire and ensure their downfall.

Because sometimes, one person’s vengeance is another person’s karma.

And if desired, you could build upon this idea even further in future seasons when the enemies waiting in the wings move to center stage. Some of them might be interested in payback.

The fact this secondary focus emerges so well and so naturally proves that this show's material is good enough that it doesn’t need bells and whistles or excessive exposition to establish and justify itself. Less-to-no spoon-feeding, keeping and bolstering what was great about the source material, and leaning into this revenge theme would’ve given us not just a much sounder narrative thread this season but a subtler and uncontrived one. And it wouldn’t have needed any extra time. It might’ve needed less if Ripley wasn't around as long.

This season didn't need an underdeveloped central theme that couldn't hold together for lack of payoff shoe-horned into it. It's a worse version of a problem season 2 had, where the idea of VM learning to not run from their problems made little sense in context and didn't really go anywhere for anyone except Scanlan.

All in all, it might be better to prioritize capturing what was great about the source material before adding to the story. Otherwise, you run the risk of throwing something in the stew that clashes with its other ingredients, and there'll be significant potential and several opportunities that could end up going to waste.

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ynbabe · 11 months ago

Text

Fake texts au- pt.16 bffs with the rookies+ revenge is a dish best served cold and glittery

When you woke up, you were tagged in many stories, almost all the drivers had put up stories in your support, chastising the paparazzi that had stormed you and asked inappropriate questions, even a lot of the Barcelona team (the ones you knew) were in your support.

Gavi is messaging you to complement your right hook, and Pedri to ask if you were okay.

The man you had punched was fired from his job and now wasn't allowed within 100 feet of you (courtesy of Max's lawyers), you had also gotten most of your things back, only left without your laptop.

And your 'friends'? Well, you knew just what to do to them. You still had some people you could trust back in the UK so you made them fill up all their dorm rooms with glitter and itching powder, and then blocked them everywhere, any and all communication would now be through Max's lawyers and man were you happy about that.

You were sure the next swing you took would be at them.

The university had allowed you to complete the rest of your course online, only giving the finals on ground, they were quite happy not to be spoken to by the lawyers knowing it was partially their security's fault to allow so many paparazzi to storm you in the first place.

You didn't feel comfortable going to the Las Vegas race and even Abu Dabi, just wanting a break but now? Oh now you were back for revenge, revenge on everyone who thought your life was theirs to judge.

You opened your group chat, you’d spent time FaceTiming and talking to the boys individually but it felt to awkward, to real to be in a group again but fuck that, these boys were your best friends! Lando, Charles and Max were like the older brothers you never had! Even Lorenzo checked up on you almost daily. You weren’t going to give all this up just because of some idiots.

You smiled as normalcy set into the atmosphere again. You called up a few people asking them if they could make and they all could, making you happier.

Things were finally getting better and now you could support your friends without feeling guilty about it.

You had missed the season end but had called Max to congratulate him, but hadn't felt safe enough to go to the party however much he asked but now you were going to be there for them, the people who've always been there for you.

This ones a lil shorter than usual but I needed a filler to move ahead😭

and we're back to the og texts!!! Hope yall like this one! Also I still can't comment idk why.

Taglist: @dark-night-sky-99 @cashtons-wife @i-wish-this-was-me @thehufflepuffavenger1 @eugene-emt-roe @fangirl-dot-com @landosgirlxoxo @aquangxl @sachaa-ff @tyna-19 @assholeinatrenchcoat @allenajade-ite @megatrilss1885 @squirreljoe @jsjcue @s4turnsl0ver @yl90 @elijahslover @trouble-sistar @notizzyj @chilwell-mount @hiireadstuff

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elihashadenough · 11 months ago

Text

as the poets say

Pairing: max verstappen x male reader (could be read by masc presenting people)

Summary: i would recognize him by touch alone, by smell, i would know him blind. I would know him in death, at the end of the world

warnings: sad, sad angst, i felt bad writing this. Angst, f1 stuff, talk about burns, fire, negative emotions.

a/n: this was a silly little revenge fic though its not silly anymore...i do wanna apologize to leo...I am sorry leo, apology fic is coming i promise

-> do not repost, copy or translate my works nor post them anywhere else. Read at your own risk. Reblogs, likes and comments are always appreciated.

“𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖔𝖊𝖙𝖘 𝖜𝖊𝖗𝖊 𝖆𝖑𝖜𝖆𝖞𝖘 𝖈𝖔𝖗𝖗𝖊𝖈𝖙,” “𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖆𝖗𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖑𝖋 𝖒𝖞 𝖘𝖔𝖚𝖑”

The moon light softly shone through the curtains in the bedroom window, footsteps could be heard outside the door “now come on off to bed you two” sounds of laughter filled the corridor. Joy, happiness, content all the feelings one could feel that made them at peace Max felt with yn beside him. Max felt happiness everyday he opened his eyes to see yn laying beside him, he felt joy everyday he saw yn, he loved the way he could just rest his head on yn’s shoulder and would feel all the worries of the world fade away.

“Max? why are you standing there like statue, you should be resting” Yn’s voice interrupted max’s thoughts “uh-I-” y/n walks towards max and guides him to the bed of the apartment they were staying in during the race week. “I’m fine ynn, you don’t have to worry about me” max said as he sat down “you just want me to let you race by the end of the week, yet you had concussion” y/n says as he walks into the en-suite bathroom to get ready for bed himself “yeah but that was at the start of the week, I’m fully rested now and feel okay” y/n looks at max with the toothbrush in his mouth before he turns and spits the paste out “okay well then how many times did we go on a date before you asked me to be your boyfriend?” y/n asks with a smirk knowing it wouldn’t do anything but it was fun to tease max “oh come on baby” max whined softly as he walked over to y/n and rested his hands on y/n’s waist and looked at him through the mirror “…” y/n looks at max trying to hide his smile “you are such a tease” max said as he kissed the (h/c) head “learnt it from the best you know” y/n said turning around to see max shake his head “so…can I race??” y/n sighed at that and looked at max “oh oh omg! you are scared that I’m going to win and you’ll lose” max laughed as he said that whist y/n gave him a look that clearly said ‘bitch be fucking for real right now’ max controlled his laughter “well I guess I’ll just have to show you that I’m a better racer then you Mr.Verstappen” y/n said as he turned around and walked out the bathroom “let’s see who wins Mr.Verstappen” max said as he walked after y/n who sat on the bed looking at max, who climbed into the bed already knowing y/n was waiting for his cuddles. He opened his arms as y/n smiled and cuddled close resting his head on max’s chest playing with his fingers. “There is something on your mind…” max says as he looks down at y/n “I know you are trying to hide it, you’ve been doing it the whole day” max adds as y/n shrinks down “what’s going on baby?” max asks as y/n shakily sighs “well…I-I’ve been thinking-” y/n starts talking before being interrupted “a lot of it obviously” max says as y/n smiles and shook his head “let me continue before I chicken out please” max nods with a soft smile “sorry continue”

“so um-I-I’ve been thinking abo-thinking that this…this season might be my last” y/n says after taking a deep breath, Max seemed shocked, he was right to be shocked. Racing was yn’s dream forever, the only thing that mattered to him before max and the children was racing. He would put everything he had into racing, y/n was very clear about when max asked him to be his boyfriend. “are you sure about it?” max asked sitting up as when sat up and looked at max “I think I am…especially after your crash, it-it scared me too much. I-I know we both have had close calls in the past b-but this one was different, it was too real. I didn’t know what was going to happen, I had to keep driving my eyes were starting to water I couldn’t focus. I didn’t know what I’d do without you but you were okay, but as I walked into the hospital room to get you and just I couldn’t help but think” max knew how hard y/n was trying to hold himself together, he grabbed y/n’s hand in his as y/n continued “I couldn’t help but think what would happen to ashton and riley if something happened…to either one of us or both of us” max couldn’t help but pull y/n in for hug, he knew what it would’ve taken y/n to make such a decision “I know this was hard for you and I will fully support you with this in any way you want. It was always going to be your decision, I would never force you to leave and I’d never force you to stay.” Max says as he whispers making y/n smile “thank you for understanding, I was really scared of how you’d react for some reason” Max shook his head before softly kissing y/n “like I said it was always your decision baby”

“but that doesn’t mean I won’t beat you in tomorrow’s race” y/n says with a smirk close to max’s face who thought y/n was leaning in for a kiss “you-” and that’s when y/n leaned in and kissed max while trying to control his smile. Max pulled y/n closer with hands on his waist, the kiss seemed to deepen itself, gentle but still passionate. Flipping y/n onto his back max leaned over him, hands beside y/n’s head “look at you…are you sure you are going to win baby?” max whispered in y/n’s ear before pulling him in for a kiss again…

{The next day}

Light passing through the sheer curtains makes max turn his back towards the window but sleep had already escaped him, he sighed softly opening his eyes looking at y/n who was still sleeping peacefully, blanket covering him though max could still see the marks from last night littering y/n’s body. Max couldn’t help but softly move y/n’s hair off his face, in a trillion years max couldn’t have thought he would have someone like y/n be his husband but here he was laying beside the love of his life, the half of his soul, as y/n would say sometimes or had saved his name on his phone with. Max felt y/n move beside him “good morning ynn” max whispered softly as y/n softly whined and moved closer to max “can you tell the sun to shut up” max laughed and pulled y/n closer “I don’t think the sun would listen to me baby” max says softly as y/n looks at max “why are you more comfortable then the bed?” y/n asks as max runs a hand through his hair, but before max could answer there was a soft knock on the door knowing it was one of the kids. Max grabbed the shirt from the floor and passed it to y/n before grabbing his own sleeping gown as he opened the door for the kids “good morning” y/n whispers softly as both of the kids run over to y/n “good morning papa” ashton says as max walked over to sit on the bed and smiled at you “so no good mornings for dad??” max asks jokingly as y/n looked at the kids as all three of them laughed “dad stinks, so no good mornings for dad” riley says as she cuddles close to y/n, her teddy held close to her. These were the types of morning max loved, slow and gentle sort of mornings where everything was quiet but not in an eerie way but in calm way. In a way that made you want to drag out the morning longer.

{race night}

A kiss shared between the two before getting in their respective cars, ready to get in their racing mode. Y/n closed his eyes before sighing ready to win this.

Time was going by fast out and inside of the cars. At every turn people held their breaths. Max had fallen behind y/n, he smirked at thought as he tried to speed up. He was soon close to passing y/n’s car, but it seemed too easy it was never easy to pass by y/n everyone on the grid knew that “is y/n’s car okay?” max asked on the radio as he passed by y/n “he is having slight problem with the car, he might have to box” the answer came, and max felt sad for y/n but he had to focus on the race.

That was the last time he saw y/n on the track, thinking y/n had boxed and had been pissed. Max had gotten the podium, what surprised was that y/n was not there as he usually was no matter how bad the race had been for him, he would always be there for max. Max had walked into the cool down room, where y/n would usually wait for him if he was in the cool down room before him but y/n was nowhere to be seen, max felt uneasy. Charles and Daniel had entered the cool room and both seemed like they had seen a ghost “why do you both look like you have seen a ghost?” max laughed as he sat down to drink some water in that moment the other two races look at the door to see max and y/n’s manager enter the room with a same face as Charles and Daniel who exchanged a look before looking back at max “Max…we-we have to tell you something before you go on the podium” Charles says as he moves closer to max, max looked at him and Charles was clearly trying to control himself but max didn’t know why though he had a feeling that he wished with every bone in his body wasn’t true. Daniel couldn’t even look at max in this moment, lost in his own thoughts.

They knew they couldn’t let him get on that podium without having known this whilst everyone else knew what had happened.

Max looked at Daniel, y/n’s best and closest friend outside of max, his gaze then turned to their manager who was looking at max and charles. And finally max looked at charles “what is it charles?” max asked holding eye contact with him. The long pause seemed like it was hours long but in real it was mere seconds before charles answered “th-there…max…there was a crash” max knew it deep down what charles meant but he wasn’t ready to believe it “what do you mean there was crash? Was it after I had crossed the line??” max asked pulling himself away from charles a little

“max it-” this time it was Daniel and max’s eyes snapped to him “who was it?” max’s voice sounded urgent almost as if he was in some sort of hurry “max-” charles says as he lays his hand on max’s shoulder but max shrugged the hand off and cut off charles “I asked…who was in the crash?” max asked again, the manager moved closer and looked at max.

“it was-it was y/n’s car…he lost control of it cause of the engine and-” charles looked at the manager to get them to stop “he needs to know” was the only thing they said before continuing while max just looked at them hoping it was some cruel joke and y/n would just come in through the door with his usual teasing smirk but alas it wasn’t “the car caught fire-” Max’s breath was caught is his throat, he felt like every bit of gravity in the world was trying to pull him down but he had to be with y/n, his words playing through max’s mind ‘I didn’t know what I’d do without you’ “max max, wait- wait a max you have to wait…he’s in surgery-” max looks at charles “stop-i-I need to be there when he wakes up he will be- I cant leave him alone” max looks at the manager “I need to go to the hospital right now”

{flashback}

Y/n smiled as he heard the soft tune of the music, he had just put ashton to bed for a nap. Max's eyes lit up with a mischievous twinkle as he walked over to the couch, y/n focused on the book he was reading already knowing what max was going to do. Without a word, max reached out his hand, a silent invitation laced with the promise of an unforgettable moment.

"Care to dance?" Max's voice was soft like a pillow, carrying a hint of excitement. A smile that mirrored his excitement spread across y/n’s lips as he nodded, "Of course."

With that, Max led y/n away from the comfort of the couch and into the centre of the room. The music wrapped around them like a warm embrace of the tune of the song. "You know this song always gets to me," Max murmured, his voice low and filled with warmth as he pulled y/n close. "I do know that" y/n replied softly, feeling his heart flutter at the intimacy of the scene. "It's like it was made for us."

"You're a vision tonight," Max whispered, his breath tickling y/n’s ear, sending shivers down his spine. Y/n couldn't help but chuckle at max’s playful flirtation. "I’m wearing sweats, and you think I look like a vision. Smooth talker," y/n teased, leaning into max’s touch. "It's easy when I'm dancing with the most beautiful person in the room," Max replied, a smirk on his face whilst his gaze remained unwavering as he held y/n close. In that stolen moment, surrounded by nothing but the music and the warmth of Max's touch, y/n felt a surge of emotion welling up inside him as he said

"You are half my soul,"

{flashback end}

“max, Max” the manager shook max’s shoulder to get his attention “we are here” the manager said in a soft voice, max nodded and got out the car walking into the hospital but with the news already broken people were gathering around. Max had no energy to deal with anyone, he ignored everyone around him. The manager led him into the hospital but max doesn’t say much except a thanks as the memories of y/n clouded his mind as if it were a slow motion movie.

Max now sat in the waiting room while y/n was still in the operation room, max was now told that as the car caught on fire y/n tried to pull himself out but he didn’t realise that his legs were stuck. Max felt like his whole world had stopped, he tried to hold in his emotions not wanting to cry.

{flashback}

Under the shade of their favourite oak tree, max and y/n sat close together back against the trees. Their laughter mingling with the gentle rustle of leaves, their children playing in the background, y/n couldn’t help but smile at mundane and calm it all was. In that moment max stole a glance at y/n, the golden afternoon sunlight painting his features in a soft glow. "You know, you look absolutely breath-taking in this light," max murmured, y/n turned and looked him, y/n’s cheeks red with blush as he chuckled softly “you are flatterer, but thank you” he whispered, with a mischievous glint in his eyes, max reached for his phone, carefully trying to take a picture "What are you doing?" y/n asked, a playful curiosity dancing in his gaze. Max grinned, taking a quick picture now, before y/n could protest. "Capturing the moment," he replied, max heart fluttered at the candid shot of y/n's genuine smile.

{flashback end}

Max is brought out of his thoughts by the nurse coming out the operation room and as max looked at the nurse “he is still under surgery, it will take a while” the nurse said softly before leaving. Max leaned his head against the wall with his eyes closed not wanting to think about anything anymore-he just wanted y/n to be okay. In that moment the manager walks over to max and lightly shakes him “it’s the nanny” max looks at the phone and was quick to realize it was y/n’s, a soft sigh leaves max’s lips as he grabs the phone, as max puts the phone close to his ear he realizes the kids are on the call instead of the nanny “papa?” he hears ashton’s voice “hey kiddo, its dad” max tries to make his voice sound happy as much as he could in the moment “dad, where’s papa?” the 5 year old asked “um-he-he is just busy with something”

“b-but papa said he would read us a story” the 5 year old on the call sounded as if he was about to cry “hey hey ash please don’t cry…how-how about I read the story to you and riley?”

{timeskip}

[sad ending]

It felt like years had passed by just waiting in the waiting room, this time the surgeon appears with the same nurse as before with the look on their faces almost made max want to throw up. Max was still in his entire racing suit, he felt like it was constricting him feeling too close to his skin.

“We’re sorry. Y/n’s injuries were deeper and too severe then we predicted. He passed away, there was nothing more we could do” the surgeon says, it felt like the world came crashing down onto Max’s shoulders, he carried weights everyday at gym yet this weight felt like it would crush him. Max wasn’t even breathing at this point he almost falls back and drops into the chair “we’ll give you a moment” the surgeon says before looking at the manager.

Max’s tries to say something but all that could escape his throat was a sob.

They just had a talk about this, y/n was supposed to announce his retirement after this race. They were going to go back to their house after the season, they had planned it all. All of it lost in mere moments.

Max was the one who was reckless driver, if something like this were to ever happen it was supposed to be him, he’d be the one who was in that room.

Maybe this was a just a horrible nightmare he is getting cause of his concussion, maybe he is still a sleep in the hotel bedroom they were staying in.

There was clear denial, he didn’t want to think about it. It hurt to think about it a sort of hurt where someone had torn his limbs agonisingly slowly to cause him the worst pain they could.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, he looked at the manager before looking at the surgeon “can-can I see him?” max asks his voice trembling and unrecognizable. Cracked and distorted like it was a child asking their dad for something after being shouted at. The surgeon looked at the manager before looking at max and nodding “of course”

The nurse who had come out earlier gives max a sympathetic smile before disappearing to make sure y/n was okay to be seen, before coming out the room and letting max in. Y/n’s body was covered by a white sheet, max walked closer only for him to close his eyes and turn and leave the room.

He couldn’t, he couldn’t see the love of his life like this. He couldn’t see ‘the half of his soul’ like this.

----

Telling the kids alone was an emotional turmoil but he had to tell them, they had the right to know. But having to be at the funeral made max numb, with hearing sorries from every corner and person who walked by him. Daniel and Charles (the kid’s god fathers) were looking after the kids who though didn’t completely understand but knew they had lost something. Max just sat there, not being able to say a word. He hadn’t cried once after seeing y/n in the room. Max just stared at the coffin as eulogies and heartfelt speeches were given.

Y/n’s gone, he’s gone…forever.

Max could never be the same, he could never be able to look at anything in the same way. It was all grey now. Max sat there not wanting to leave, he couldn’t even think about leaving. He sits there until Victoria walks over to him “…its time to go max” she says softly while putting a hand on his shoulder gently “we can come back later” she says before offering him, her hand. To her max had never looked so drained in a way. He looked like someone had sucked all of the joy out of him, max looked weak to her, max was never weak even when they were kids. He always tried to be strong no matter what had happened.

In that moment both charles and daniel came over to the two siblings. Daniel kneeled in front of max whilst charles grabs max’s hand “max come on, you can’t sit here all day” charles says and with that max got up though he didn’t tear his gaze away from the now buried coffin “he-he was supposed to retire after this season, he scolded me about not being safe and careful and being reckless, he we-we were working on having another kid” tears starting to gather in his red itching eyes, blurring his vision. Max’s voice raw and cracked “we will get you through this max, we will always be here for you…always” Daniel pulled max in for a hug. For Daniel, y/n was the person who got him through the darkest of times. Daniel loved y/n, loved him like little brother. Y/n was like a family for everyone on the grid, he’d leave everything that happened on the track on the track and help anyone who’d need his help off track.

Daniel was there when y/n told him about max, daniel was there when the two married, had their first kid. He was there since day one. And the same went for charles. Charles knew, he knew the depth of the love max felt for y/n, he would spent hours and hours talking about y/n even after they were married. Charles wasn’t even sure how they were going to help him through this because really he was not sure there will ever be a day that max could truly ever move on from y/n.

____________

‘I could have never imagined you not being here, its been 6 months and I still don’t know how to live without you. You brought light to my life and now its dark I can’t see anything without you, I miss you a lot more than I realized. Things keep happening and I find myself wishing I could tell you about them’

‘its been a year and I’ve been writing to you every day…I don’t even know why I do it but it just makes me feel at peace, that for a moment I’m hugging you again, that I have you in my arms again.

In the past year we did move from the house we bought together, I wrote to you about when that happened, it was too much to stay in that house for the kids…and me if I’m being honest.

You know whats funny, ever since Riley’s 5th birthday she is been very keen on getting into karting and eventually getting into f1. We had plans on getting both of them into karting and seeing where it went for them so I might do it…but I’m scared, I have fears now. I don’t even want to talk about it or even think about it. When she talks about karting she almost gets the same smile you did when you talked about racing. I try hard for them, I even go to therapy regularly and I know you will be cheering right now. God I miss you every second of the day, with everything I do. From going to the gym, to cooking food, it just makes me miss you too much’

‘its here 14 years later, riley made her debut in f1. She was so excited and instead of her being nervous I was but I remembered what you’d you tell me when I would be nervous ‘I’m right here…always’ but you…you weren’t there but I knew you were there in sprit supporting riley, I could feel your excitement somehow. Especially after she got the podium, it was a feeling, a deep feeling. I guess you were right…you are half my soul’

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

[happy ending for leo:)]

It felt like years had passed by just waiting in the waiting room, this time the surgeon appears with the same nurse as before. Max couldn’t figure out anything from the surgeon’s facial expression “h-how is he?” max finally asked, the surgeon gives a sympathetic smile “...he is going to be okay, he did code during the operation but he is okay” the surgeon says, it felt like the pressure on his shoulders was lifted. Max felt like he could finally breathe, relieve taking over his body that he almost falls back and drops into the chair “we’ll give you a moment” the surgeon says with a gentle smile.

Max sat there for a moment, trying to say something like a thank you but all that could escape his throat was grateful sob.

Max felt grateful, max just wanted to hold y/n. He had assumed the worst, he thought that his whole life would come plummeting down but y/n was okay, his husband was okay.

He felt a hand on his shoulder in that moment, he wiped some tears that escaped his eyes and looked up at the manager before looking at the surgeon “can-can I see him?” max asks his voice trembling trying not to cry for sheer happiness. The surgeon looked at the manager there was some hesitation in the surgeon’s eyes before looking at max and nodding “of course but he needs to be shifted into a room first”

With that the surgeon smiled at left while the nurse from earlier gave max a sympathetic smile before disappearing to make sure y/n was okay to be moved to a private room already knowing about the crowd forming outside.

The nurse from earlier came out the operation room and asked max to follow him. Arriving to the room y/n was taken into the nurse opened the door before letting max in. Y/n laid there, eyes closed, oxygen mask on his face, max took a deep breath as he walked further into the room. He could’ve never imagined seeing y/n like this, in such a condition. Max’s eyes fell on y/ns hand closest to him, wrapped up in bandages “the surgeon is going to come back in a few to explain everything” the nurse says before leaving.

Max looked at y/n before pulling a chair beside the bed to look at y/n “I thought I was the one who would give you a scare… not the other way around y/n/n” max whispered before he hears the door to the room slide open. The doctor looked at max and nodded as max got up and looked at the doctor “how are you holding up?” the doctor asked max “I’m doing okay, I just want to make sure y/n is okay” max answered not looking directly at the doctor, who smiled sympathetically “he will be…if you are by his side holding his hand, he will be okay” the doctor says as max looks at them and nods “I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to reply to me honestly” max frowned at that and nodded “go ahead”

“is y/n passionate about driving, I know you both are race car drivers so I want to make sure” the doctor asks, max frowned “…he-he is passionate about it but we-we just talked last night about him wanting this to be his last season” the doctor nodded “well I don’t think y/n will be able to drive by the end of the season, the crash that happened had massive effect on his legs which also caused blood loss.” Max nodded and looked at y/n, taking a deep breath “yeah…I figured that…is-will-will he be able to walk again?” max asks looking at the doctor now who nodded “there is potential, with extensive physical therapy he will be able to…but with recovering patients it is very common to feel stuck or like nothing is happening and they would need someone to be a shoulder they can lean on” the doctor says completely making sure that it was clear to Max, who tried very hard not to hold y/n’s burned hand “the burns-” the doctor starts but is cut off by max “I-I thought the suits were fire proof” max says as the doctor nodded “they are fire proof, but the fire was too harsh and because of the fire proof suit he got first degree burns that will heal pretty quickly…as for right now he is sleeping cause of the pain meds so he is going to wake up in a few hours. I would recommend you be here when he does wake up” the doctor says with a sympathetic smile and walks out after patting max’s shoulder.

Max looked at y/n, he sniffed and moved his chair to the other side of the room so he could hold y/n’s uninjured hand though there was an IV in it. Max gently grabbed y/n’s hand “you are a real ass you know that” max whispers “all that talk about being safe and careful just seemed to be for me, huh?” max laughed as he was joking with y/n in that moment, hoping for y/n to wake up and laugh at this and make some snarky comment but he was met with silence. Max rested his head on the bed while looking at Y/n, eventually falling asleep himself.

Max felt someone’s hand in his hair, playing with it gently. Eyebrows frowned as he woke up and looked at y/n, max sat there looking at y/n in shock who softly smiled “y-y*groan*you look li-li*cough*like you’ve seen a ghost” max snapped out of the shock and got up pulling y/n in a hug keeping in mind to be gentle “I-I’ll get you some water” max says in a hurry before walking to the table to get the water, he walks back to y/n before helping him drink the water “you are okay” max breaths out as y/n smiled “I-I’m okay” he moved his hand and held max’s hand but max saw the look on y/n’s face “…the doctor told you?” max asks as he sits on the edge of the bed as y/n nodded “i-i…I don’t know w-what to feel” y/n says and looked down at his hand that held max’s who grabbed the had gently and kissed y/n’s knuckles softly “I will be by your side through all of this y/n/n” max whispers as he wipes the tears that escaped y/n’s eyes “I’ll always be here”

{timeskip 3 weeks later}

Both max and y/n with the kids were back home, max had seen y/n’s mood change a lot. He would usually spend a lot of his off time playing with the kids or working on his many hobbies, but after getting back y/n had just either been in their room or in the dining room for dinner when max would help bring him out the room. Max had talked to y/n about it but he just said “I’m fine, I can’t move my legs without your help that’s why I’m in the room most of the day” max would sigh “you can tell me when you want to be out the room” y/n just shook his head and closed his eyes as he was already laying down “I’m getting sleepy, I wanna sleep”

It had been a few days since max had talked to y/n about it, now they were in the car with the kids after y/n’s physical therapy. The car had never been this silent, it seemed like the kids sensed that something was wrong, max sighed and looked at the rear-view mirror and put on a smile “you guys waannnt to get chicken nuggets??” max asked and both the kids perked up and nodded “yayyy” riley says excitedly, max looks at y/n who had small smile on his face hearing riley’s excited-ness “would you like something too?” max asks y/n who nods and moves his hand to hold max’s free hand “I’ll have my usual…” he adds with a soft smile looking at max who nods with a soft smile

Sitting in their bedroom max looks at y/n “you seemed better today…” max said as y/n sighed softly before looking at max “I’m sorry…I know I haven’t been the best hus-anything actually” y/n moves his hand close to max’s before pausing and pulling his hand away though max grabbed y/n’s hand and smiled at him, in a way encouraging y/n to talk “I-I knew I told you that I would leave racing after the season but…I-I was actu-actually excited about the last couple of races but this-this just destroyed everything I had worked for…I don’t-don’t even know if I’ll ever be able to drive again” Max had never seen y/n this disheartened, no matter what would happen y/n would always try and be positive but this was a completely different side of y/n that max had never in the 6 years they had been together. “...you could drive y/n/n, you just need to work hard to get to that point…your physical therapist said today, you were showing improvement way more improvement then last week” max says as he moves closer to y/n, gently pulling him in a hug “I’m sorry…” y/n whispers again only for max to kiss his forehead and whisper “it’s okay baby…we will figure this out”

{timeskip}

It had been a month since the conversation, ever since y/n’s mood and behaviour improved quite a lot, he felt like his old self which not only impacted his mood but his performance in physical therapy.

After having dropped the kids at day-care, max and y/n were now at the physical therapy. As they entered y/n smiled at his physical therapist, they had planned a surprise for max as he hadn’t been there the past week as ashton had caught the flu. After the usual warmup and exercises the physical therapist looks at y/n before saying “why don’t we try walking without the railings?” that caught max’s attention “are you sure he is ready?” he asked in a concerned tone as y/n tries to hide his smile. In all honesty they had tried walking without railing before and y/n exceled in it with flying colours “he is been walking very smoothly with the railings it’s only right to give it try without railing”

“I wanna give it a try” y/n’s voice interrupts what max is about to say, he smiles at max “I think it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try you know…and if does I’ll say” y/n smiled at the joke he made which in turn made max shook his head “let’s give it a try then” max says as he stands up properly just in case as y/n stands up with the help of the physical therapist who gives him an encouraging smile and whispers “let’s surprise him”

Y/n takes a couple careful steps with the help of the physical therapist before dropping his hand and in that moment max moves closer to grab y/n but he stops max “just…just look” y/n adds as he walks towards max who seemed to be in a shock. In that moment y/n’s gym trainer enters the room they were in and just stands there in complete and utter shock. Y/n smiles as he grabs max’s hand and gently pulls him in a hug, max’s mouth hangs open like he is just seen a ghost…but in a good way. Max couldn’t help himself when he pulled away and pulled y/n in for a kiss who laughed softly before whispering “what did you think about the surprise?” y/n had his usual cheeky smile that had made max fall for him in the first place.

{timeskip}

As the moment got closer, his heart raced. Breathing shallow, palms sweaty as with each step gets heavier as doubts ran through his mind. Yet, there is a flicker of determination pushed him forward.

A hand on his shoulder snaps him out of his mind “y/n?” Daniel’s voice enters his ears making him look over his shoulder and put on a smile “ready for the first race of the season?” Daniel asks already knowing the anxieties running through y/n’s mind “a li-little nervous but I’m ready to beat you…again” y/n laughed a little at daniel’s offended look “sure you will” he says as he sees max walking over “well your ‘other half’ is here, that’s my queue to leave” daniel says jokingly before getting up, patting y/n’s shoulder as max walks over and sits beside his husband.

“how are you doing?” max says as he hands y/n his balaclava and helmet “…it’s okay to feel nervous baby” max whispers grabbing y/n’s hand, gently and unconsciously running his thumb over y/n’s wedding ring “I know-I know its okay to feel nervous but-but I have never fekt this nervous before stepping into the car” Max nods “I get that, and the trainer said that this feeling is natural after…after everything that happened” max turns y/n’s face towards him “you are going to be okay…I know you will be y/n/n” y/n looks at max and smiles “…well then get ready to loose Mr.Verstappen” max laughs at that as he shakes his head “we will see who wins, Mr.Verstappen…but whoever does win gets to pick how the night ends” Max smirks as he looks up when y/n stands up and reaches his hand out “deal” the smirk on y/n’s face made max happy to have gotten his y/n back.

Walking over to his car, he looks at max and pulls his balaclava and helmet before getting in his car and closes his eyes for a moment before he hears “its lights out and away we go”

liked by charles_leclerc, maxverstappen1, danielriccardo and 809,988 others

ynln-offcial: From physical therapy, to everyday walks with ashton and riley to getting p1 in the first race of the season. And I want to thank everyone for all the well wishes, and most of all I want to thank max, daniel and charles for supporting me through it. But as all things come to an end by announcing what I should’ve announced during the last season.

I hereby announce my retirement at the end of the 2024 season. I’m a sole believer in looking forward rather than looking at the past, and I believe it is time for me to move on to something more. The decision was definitely a hard one but it does come to the reason of leaving, f1 has always been my top priority and my passion ever since I can remember but as things change so does my passions and goals for life change and racing no longer goes side by side with my wishes and goals moving forward. Though I love this sport and will always have a special place in my heart for all it’s given me and taught me, it’s time to move on. The memories made will forever be ones to cherish and love. Thank you for letting me share the track with you and goodbye.

x yn

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maxverstappen1: ❤️ ❤️ *liked by ynln-official* ynln-official: love you ❤️

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this was longer then i realized so enjoy this angst piece children (lmao) i haven't proof read this so if there were any mistakes, i'm sorry. But i hope you all enjoyed this. I hope you all have a wonderful day/night ❤️

tagging: @leosxrealm (i'm sorry for this)

#eli writes #f1 x male reader #x male reader #f1 fanfic #f1 fic #max verstappen #max verstappen x male reader #f1 x reader #f1 x ftm reader #x ftm reader #max verstappen x ftm reader

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devildom-drabbles · 1 year ago

Text

Snippet - Getting Spooked

Felt inspired by the spooky season to write out a headcanon I've had in mind for a while. Enjoy! 👻

How does everyone react to being jump scared by MC?

Lucifer simply flinches, not making a single audible sound. He quickly realizes from MC’s expression that they were intentionally trying to scare him, which makes him narrow his gaze at them. Luckily for the human, all he does is sigh in annoyance and warn them not to do it again before going about his business. (Unless you’re looking for consequences, MC, you’re better off heeding his words.). In the back of his mind, he can't believe they actually startled him, so he'll be more alert than normal for the rest of the day.

Mammon, perhaps to no one’s surprise, jumps up with a loud high-pitched scream like a classic cartoon character. There ain’t no way he’s stickin’ around with a ghost nearby, so he’s ready to take off running! However, he stops in his tracks when he hears MC’s reaction to his panic. His alarm immediately turns into embarrassment as he proceeds to assert that he wasn't that scared by their "lame attempt" to catch him off guard. He then complains about what they did and demands “compensation” for the near-heart attack he had.

Leviathan yelps in surprise and accidentally drops his game controller in the process. His cheeks are flushed the moment he notices MC near him. Oh no, he must’ve looked so lame to them just now! On top of that, his game character fell off a ledge! Ughhh, this is just the worst! Feeling a mix of frustration and embarrassment, he begs MC not to scare him like that anymore. (His heart already goes “doki doki” for enough reasons because of you, MC, so please don’t add “jump scares” to the list!)

MC’s jump scare causes Satan to tighten his grip on his book as his eyes widen. He whips his head in their direction, and in the next second, he’s scowling at them. Because of them, he lost his focus and the line he was in the middle of reading. They have to give him a good explanation for their action or apologize in order to quell his bubbling anger. He ultimately lets it slide, but he will get back at them for this in an equally playful manner. A jump scare revenge is best served cold...

Asmodeus shrieks in an overdramatic fashion, because if he’s going to be scared, everyone has to know about it and feel inclined to come to his rescue. (Truthfully, he was only startled, so a normal gasp would’ve sufficed.) No matter how much he adores this human, he still huffs at MC for what they’ve done. Look! Now his clothes and hair are slightly disheveled! And what if his skin breaks out later because of the stress from being scared?! They’re now “required" to console him from this experience until he feels better, which could range from helping him fix his appearance to giving him a long comforting hug.

Beelzebub doesn’t react at all. He doesn’t even mildly choke on the food he’s chowing down when MC abruptly appears. Instead, he swallows what’s in his mouth so that he can talk to them properly, wondering if they’d like to try one of his snacks. After MC explicitly tells him what they were doing, he mutters an “oh” before apologizing to them and promising to try to look scared if they ever do it again. If they do happen to give it another try, the most they’ll see from him is his raised eyebrows. He’s just not a very expressive or easily spooked guy.

The main reason Belphegor becomes startled by MC’s jump scare is because he’s just about to doze off. You know that feeling you sometimes get when you’re on the verge of falling asleep and suddenly feel like you’re actually falling, which jerks you awake? Yeah, that’s basically what you did to him, MC, and he doesn’t appreciate it. He grumbles about it before deciding to pull the human closer and make them nap with him as “punishment.”

Diavolo is somewhat surprised initially and even asks MC what they’re doing. After they explain they were trying to give him a jump scare, a wide grin stretches across his face as he expresses his amusement and how they did a pretty good job of catching him off guard. He thinks the concept is fun and will want to do it to MC in return in the near future. (He also tries to scare Lucifer and Barbatos repeatedly in hopes of getting a good reaction out of them, which eventually leads to him getting lectured by them just to make him stop.)

Barbatos is impossible to jump scare, as he seems to have eyes in the back of his head and ears sharper than any other being in existence. As such, when MC tries to startle him, he’s completely unfazed and merely looks over at them with a polite smile. “Oh? You were trying to scare me? My apologies. Such tactics don’t work on me, but if you’d like, I could pretend to be alarmed next time.” At least he’s willing to humor you, MC...

Simeon just blinks at MC with wide eyes before greeting them in a friendly manner and asking what they need. It takes him a few seconds of looking at their disappointed expression for him to realize that they were trying to scare him. He’s rarely ever startled by things like this, so he genuinely feels guilty for not giving MC more of a reaction. Expect him to come up with something to make it up to them, even though it’s not really necessary.

“Oh!” is all Solomon says when MC tries to scare him. He wasn’t expecting this, but he’s dealt with enough surprise attacks over the years that he doesn’t panic or overreact the moment something jumps out at him. (He did nearly use magic on them, though...) Upon learning MC’s intentions, he chuckles and compliments their efforts. You’ll have to try a lot harder if you want to scare him, MC, but just know that this incident now gives him permission to do the same to you whenever he wants.

Luke is quite alarmed to the point that he stumbles backward onto his bottom. Once he figures out what happened, he scolds the human with a pout while getting up and dusting himself off. That wasn’t very nice or funny, MC! He really doesn’t like being scared, or teased in such a way. Despite how upset he is at first, he soon forgives them and moves on to eagerly tell them about an interesting food he found at the local Devildom market.

Mephistopheles screams from the shock of it, but unlike Mammon, his pitch is only a little higher than his normal voice. There’s an awkward silence between him and MC for a few seconds before he regains his composure (save for a light, embarrassed blush) and angrily reprimands them. He seems ready to give them a full-blown lecture on their “immature behavior” at the rate he’s going, but fortunately, it doesn’t last too long since he’d rather not spend much time on this matter. Plus, a sincere apology from MC or a disruption from Lord Diavolo will make him stop sooner.

The moment MC jumps out, Raphael instantly summons a spear in his hand to retaliate, thinking that this is an attack. (You weren’t expecting to be jump scared in return, huh, MC?) MC has to quickly explain themself in order for Raphael to relax and send the spear away. He admits that they did catch him by surprise, but he advises against any further attempts at doing this to him. He likes them enough that he’d rather not impale them, accidentally or intentionally.

Thirteen does gasp in shock, but she recovers fairly quickly from the abrupt scare. She’s sort of mad that MC managed to startle her, especially for their own entertainment. Still, she can’t help but be a bit impressed by their success, which she’ll only confess aloud if she has a closer bond with the human. Afterward, she vows to give them a good fright in return at some point, so they better prepare themself for one of her newest scary traps!

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crowandmousewritingco · 4 months ago

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A Taste of His Own Medicine

Pairing: Oberyn Martell x trans!reader x Ellaria Sand

Words: 3.1k

Rating: PG (there's some sexy flirting cause hey it's Oberyn plus some slightly darker elements)

Warnings: Attempted poisoning (reader receiving), getting revenge, sexy talk all around.

Summary: Someone was not happy about Oberyn winning his fight against the Mountain. Their new target? You.

Author: Mod Mouse (back from the dead)

You hated banquets. The food was always magically cooked and seasoned to perfect Dornish standard, and the wine was the top of the line. But it was the politics that brought down your excitement for such events. You would much rather be stuck in bed with Oberyn and Ellaria chatting and fucking the day away rather than hearing the annoying woes of some foreign dignitary. But Doran told Oberyn that if he missed another royal banquet that he would stop his access from the wine cellar.

So begrudgingly the three of you prepared for the night festivities. To offset the unenthusiasm of the event, Oberyn insisted he have new outfits made for all of you to wear to such an event. His eyes had caught the attention of a local seamstress who was elated to create such beautiful outfits for the Prince who of course paid her handsomely.

Oberyn made sure that he didn’t see the final product until the day of the event. He wanted to be surprised when he saw what masterpieces you both looked like in the new attire. “You better have your eyes closed,” You called from behind the curtain where you and Ellaria were getting changed as you prepared for the evening’s events.

“Of course I always obey my partners,” Oberyn replied from the bedroom.

Finishing up the last touches you sneaked a kiss on Ellaria’s cheek before asking. “Are you ready, my viper?”

Oberyn chuckled.” I’m always ready for you two.”

You pulled the curtain aside and smiled as the both of you stepped into the bedroom. “Then open your eyes.”

He obeyed and purred when he saw what you were modeling. For you a robe in a similar style as the Prince’s usual attire that sloped down your flat chest showcasing the prominent scars on your chest, marking you not only a man but a warrior. For Ellaria, a golden garment that flowed with her curves that followed down her body as easily as water flowed in the famous Water Gardens. A braided belt cinched at her waist giving her an hourglass figure both you and Oberyn savored at every chance. The fabric ended at her ankles leaving two long slits that exposed her legs up to her mid thighs. Golden chain adorned both of your necks symbolizing the partnership with Oberyn and was a gift for your one year anniversary.

The sight made Oberyn saunter over to the two of you with an evil grin. His eyes hungrily took the creations. Oberyn’s fingers traced the metal down to your clavicle. “My darlings you look stunning in those garments,” He kissed your shoulder as his fingers tangled in the chains. He bit down on your neck as he pulled you in closer with the chain causing a gasp to escape your parted lips.

“My paramore, you mustn’t get our lover so riled up,” Ellaria teased as she pressed her body against your back, weaving her hands across your hips and resting them just above the hem of your pants. “We both know he can’t focus if he’s all worked up.” She nuzzled her nose against the other side of your neck just next to your pulse.

“Gods be damned about this feast. You two are my meal,” You breathed raggedly as you hungrily kissed Ellaria, her soft lips pressing against yours. You wished you could keep kissing her throughout the night, keeping your flushed body company.

Oberyn chuckled and kissed your cheek. “Unfortunately we must attend, but don’t worry my sunflower,” He paused to lean closer to your ear, “I will make sure you get all the sex and love for enduring such an affair.”

Your body shivered as Oberyn’s body left your touch making you pout. Ellaria chuckled and kissed your cheek. “Now now little one you have both of us to accompany you.”

Oberyn kissed Ellaria quickly before grabbing a cup of wine. “We will keep you by our sides for the whole event.” He leans down and while kissing your neck adds, “Plus I can tease you until we get back to our wedding bed.” He chuckled before taking along swing of the alcohol.

“You two always know how to rile me up,” You shuttered and kissed Oberyn’s tan cheek.

Ellaria smirked as she set the wine aside. “As much as I could watch you play, we must be seen at this event.”

Oberyn sighed. “You are right my dove.” He offered his arms to both of you and you happily lace your arm through his, Ellaria doing the same. “Let us be off then.”

The music grew in volume as you walked down the open halls of the Dornish castle. The ballroom was packed with people. Many nobles and lords across the kingdom of Dorne were in attendance, and even some foreign dignitaries were amongst the people mingling. You had always found these crowds to be overwhelming.

Unconsciously you shifted your body to press closer to Oberyn’s side at the sight of the crowd, needing more of his touch to comfort yourself. Feeling your presence Oberyn glanced down at you and gently tipped your face up with his finger to meet his gaze. “My sweet dove, if this becomes too much, tell me and we will whisk you away to our bed for some much needed attention. My brother be damned.”

You relaxed and gently kissed his bicep. “I will love.”

Oberyn smiled down at you before scanning the party. “Now let's find some refreshments.”

The event was in full swing. A glass of wine had eased your nerves and now your little group found a table, settled on Oberyn’s knee with Ellaria balanced on the other feeding each other the array of small snacks. You giggled as Ellaria would feed you fruit. Your tongue gently licking off the juices on her finger. Oberyn happily took in the sight of his lovers enjoying themselves.Time was flying by as your partners were the only thing in your vision. That was until Doran sauntered up to your table.

“Ah brother I see you’re enjoying yourself,” Doran mentioned gesturing to the two of them.

“Of course I am, I have the best entertainment in the kingdom right here,” He replied, kissing both Ellaria’s and your cheeks.

“Yes and as much as I love seeing you with your um partners, you did promise to make yourself seen to the dukes and sorts here.”

Oberyn gestured with his hands in a wide sweep. “People can see us can’t they?”

Doran sighed. “Yes but you promised to talk to the Merchants Guild tonight lest you forget our little deal.”

Your partner let out a long exhale before kissing your cheeks again. “My apologies, my paramores. I must attend to business.” He shot Doran a glare as you two stood up from his lap. “Forgive me. I shall return swiftly.” Oberyn followed his brother into the crowd.

You sighed and took Ellaria’s hand in yours. “Well it seems like we must make our own fun now.”

Ellaria kissed your lips with a quick peck. “Let's see what other delicacies we can occupy ourselves with.” You nodded and Ellaria led you through the crowded space. You weaved through the different groups of people chatting and laughing together. Everything seemed to be in order, but one strange person made you slow your pace. A hooded figure slipped around the corner, and you could swear there was a lion emblem on the back.

“Everything alright my love?” Ellaria asked with a bit of concern etched on her face.

You shook your head and kissed her softly. “Nothing my sweet. Oh look, they're putting out more sweets!” You said excitedly as you pulled Ellaria to the decorated spread.

“Oh love, these look delicious,” You mentioned as your eyes scanned the fast array of food lined up for the guest’s enjoyment. Large beasts cooked to a golden brown dripped of oils and seasoning line the tables. As much as they were delectable to the sight, the desserts are what drew you in. Lines of freshly baked pastries and sweets arranged in a variety of patterns and shapes. The sight made your mouth water.

One of the servants smiled as he set a tray of blackberry tarts in front of you. “If I may good Sir, these were made specifically for you at Oberyn’s request.” He smiled gesturing to the desserts.

“Oh by the gods that's so kind of him! He knows I’ve been craving these,” You moaned as you grabbed two gently balancing them in your hand. “Would you care for one my love?” You asked.

Ellaria shook her head. “As much as they look delightful, I am not one for berry desserts.”

“More for me then,” You lightly tease and kiss her cheek.

Your partner picked out a few desserts for herself. “I hope you enjoy them, Sir.” You gave a small head nod to the servant as you and Ellaria headed back into the crowd.

“Now let's go to the gardens. It is unbearably stuffy here,” Ellaria mentioned gesturing to the crowd. You giggle and once again let her lead you to your destination.

The scent of flowers hit your nose and you took a deep breath of the sweet aroma of the fast variety of blooms that filled the greenspace. The fountains trickled with water as it flowed throughout the greenery. Many arrays of flowers and foliage sprouted on the pathways contrasting against the rough stone. There was a variety of places to sit and enjoy the beauty of nature including some delicately carved marble benches.

“Here is perfect,” You said pointing out a stone bench just enough away to be quiet, but close enough to still enjoy the ambience.

Ellaria kissed your cheek and settled herself against the stonework. You sat beside her but wasted no time digging into the desserts. The soft and warm jam hit your tongue as it mixed with the buttery crust. “Oh by gods this is almost as good as sex.”

Your partner chuckled. “Better than sex?”

You playfully nudged her arm. “I said almost.” You share a quick laugh as you continue eating, spending only small moments savoring the dish. The tarts had disappeared by the time Ellaria finished one of her desserts.

“Well someone enjoyed himself,” Ellaria teased as she kissed your cheek.

“Can’t help myself. You know how I like to indulge,” You smirked as you kissed her lips.

“Of course. How can you not indulge when Prince Oberyn has an eye for you,” Ellaria teased, taking your hand in hers.

“A whole new world of possibilities has been opened to me since our first night,” You smile, leaning your head on her shoulder, enjoying the warm Dornish evening.

“I’m glad it was you whom I can enjoy those possibilities with,” Ellaria sighed, kissing your head. You let yourself cuddle up next to her letting your stomach digest the delicious treats. But as the minutes ticked on, something started to feel off.

You squinted, feeling a pounding in your skull as if something was trying to break out of your head. Where were you? Was this always your reality? What even was reality? Your mind spiraled at an alarming rate. Words and voices that you swear weren’t yours whipped around in your head. You must have let out a small whimper because Ellaria turned to you.

“Darling what’s wrong,” Ellaria asked with a hint of worry in her voice, but that seemed so distant. When you didn’t answer her she asked again this time kneeling in front of you cupping your cheek in her hand.

Ellaria frowned when she touched your skin. “You’re burning up,” She gently remarked as she felt your forehead. Sweat was already forming in your hairline as you tried to take deep breaths but somehow didn’t feel the need to.

You tried to reply but your stomach cramp so hard that it sent you bent over pressing your heated skin into Ellaria’s cool shoulder. The whispers grew louder as you felt your stomach churn earning a gag emanating from your mouth.

The world blurred as you felt Ellaria shift, her hands grasping the back of your head soothingly. Her voice said something but you didn’t understand what words were right now. The voices were loud and another whimper escaped your dry lips.

“You’re okay Oberyn will be here soon,” You heard her comfort you as she shifted underneath you. The sudden movement made you gag again and Ellaria cursed under her breath as she shifted you up and away from her shoulder. The movement was just in time for you to throw up on the stone pathway with wet coughs.

Minutes stretched as you heaved the remnants of your treats seeing the light of day again. You tried to catch what little breath you were able to get into your lungs, making your head spin more from the lack of oxygen. A hand soothingly rubbed up and down your back trying to give you some sort of comfort. A flash of yellow entered your vision as you heard the muffled voices of speaking once again. Another body entered your peripheral as a pair of strong hands touched your forehead.

“Dove dove, can you hear me?” Oberyn asked gently, bringing your gaze back up to his. Your blurry eyes could barely make out both of your partners looking at you with intense worry. You whimpered softly and Oberyn leaned in to kiss your slick forehead.

“Shhh everything’s okay. Let me look at you.” He gently lifted your hooded eyelids with his thumb assessing your eyes. You weren’t sure what was happening but the next thing you knew Oberyn was calling out for a Maester. Soon Ellaria replaced Oberyn when the Maester arrived, and hurriedly explained the situation.

But you weren’t holding onto any of that. The world was slipping and you felt yourself trying to drift into unconsciousness. “No no not yet dove,” Ellaria gently shook you as Oberyn continued discussing with the Maester. She brought your head into her hands caressing the slick skin. “Stay with us,” She softly commanded as Oberyn knelt beside her once again.

“Tip his head back,” He softly commanded as he uncorked a small bottle.

Ellaria did as she was told and gently tipped your head back. You whimpered at the sudden shift and both of your partners shushed you softly.

“Keep your mouth open,” Oberyn instructed as he tilted the vial into your mouth. The liquid slipped down your throat leaving an herby and spicy tang on your tongue. “Good boy. That’s it, everything’s okay.” He cooed and guided your head to his shoulder. But before you could make it, the world finally went black finally giving you a respite from these hellish symptoms.

Soft whispers brought you back to consciousness. You opened your eyes, but quickly closed them again when the world was too bright. A few seconds went by before you tried again this time adjusting to the light around you. A steady pounding in your head made you want to stay asleep where the pain was absent, but soft voices piqued your interest. Oberyn and his head guard talked quietly off in the corner, Oberyn’s concern lacing his words.

“We have to find him. I’m not letting him live after this,” Oberyn growled softly.

“I know he won’t escape. We have witnesses noting his movement since he left the party. We’ll catch him before he gets on that boat,” The guard replied.

“Good now go gather as many guards as we can take with you,” Oberyn commanded and the guard bowed before slipping through the ajar door.

A gentle hand caressed your hair in soft touches. You shifted your head slightly to get a better look. At your movement Ellaria glanced down and smiled when she saw your tired eyes. “My dove, you're awake.”

Oberyn’s head whipped around when he heard his paramore speak. He was at your side in an instant, taking your hand in his. He planted a soft kiss on the palm. “My dear, are you alright?” He asked, kissing your forehead.

“What happened?” You asked, your throat hoarse from being unused.

Oberyn glanced up at Ellaria with a frown. “You were poisoned my dear.” She answered gingerly, running her fingers through your hair.

“Poisoned?” You sat up a little at his words causing a cramp in your stomach. You winced and Ellaria gently guided you back down to the bed. A whimper escaped your chapped lips as the pain mellowed out.

“Yes it seems like someone wanted to hurt me…by hurting you,” Oberyn explained softly kissing your temple.

“But why would anyone want that?” You asked, tears welling in your eyes.

“Shhh my sweet dove,” Oberyn shushed as he gently laid down beside you pressing his body into your heated skin. “We’re figuring out why now. Can you tell us what happened?” He asked gently, caressing his fingers against your cheek.

You nuzzle your face against his chest before settling. “Um all I can remember is we went to get some desserts and there were these delicious berry tarts that they said you had requested for me. And then we went to the garden where I enjoyed those tarts and soon after…” Your voice trailed off and you blinked your eyes closed trying not to cry again.

“Tarts what tarts?” Oberyn asked in confusion, lacing his words as he gently stroked your cheek.

“They said you had requested them to make those tarts,” Ellaria added, looking down at her partner.

Oberyn frowned. “But I didn’t…” His voice trailed off and he scowled. “Those tarts. That’s how he poisoned you.”

You opened your eyes to look at him, and he continued. “It was belladonna berries. They appear to be any other berry. So this person brought the berries to the chef ordering him to make these tarts using my name to get to you.” Oberyn scowled.

You squinted as you tried to recall more of your memories. “There was a stranger darting out the door when we approached the dessert table.”

“The head guard is gathering his forces to capture that man,” Oberyn reassured you before kissing your forehead.

“There’s something else though.” You stated. “The stranger was wearing a cloak of some kind, but, I might be wrong, I think the cape had a lion embroidered on it.

“A lion why would…” Ellaria started before her eyes went wide.

“Why what?” You asked looking between your partners.

“Those filthy Lannisters,” Oberyn growled and you were taken aback by how angry your viper had become. You had never seen your paramore so angry before. “Coming to take revenge on me.”

“Oberyn?” You asked softly, placing your hand on his bicep soothing him with strokes of your thumb.

The prince glanced down at you, a sense of eerie calm washing over him. “Don’t worry dear.” He kissed your forehead. “Don’t worry about anything.”

You wanted to believe him, but staring at his almost black eyes, you could still see the anger brewing in his soul. War was coming for the Lannisters.

All Works Taglist

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@littlemisspascal @burntheedges

@carusolikey @thebeldroramscal

@morallyinept @lady-bess

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Thanks to the lovely @tsunami-of-tears for the pretty dividers!

#crow and mouse writings #mod mouse writing #oberyn x reader #oberyn martell x reader #oberyn x trans!reader #oberyn martell x reader x ellaria sand #oberyn x reader x ellaria #oberyn martell #ellaria sand #oberyn martell x ellaria sand #game of thrones #pedro pascal fandom #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #pedrohub #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro brainrot #fanfiction #trans reader

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scoobydoodean · 1 year ago

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ok so I deeply love and respect your thoughts on supernatural because the majority of them line up with what I've been thinking for years but you said something the other day that I keep turning over in my brain and it was something along the lines of carver liking dean more than sam - I know you're in the middle of rewatching s4 but I would love to hear you expound on that (if you have time) because I remember being in the fandom while carvernatural was airing and it was pretty much when the deangirl exodus started. in fact I think people tore into him worse than dabb even 😭

feel free to hold onto this until later when you start the carver seasons if you wish :)

<3 I'll go ahead and answer this one, because it's more of a "broad strokes" thing for me, and I've been rewatching very slowly (on purpose) so that could be a very long wait.

This is so funny because I can just picture Sam fans reading it and turning red and their blood boiling with the fire of a thousand suns but the TL;DR is that season 8-11 (Carver era) broad strokes to me are:

Sam sucks and is a worse brother and person than Dean.

Sam spends the first two seasons of Carver's run thinking he's a better person than Dean anyway and then the second two knowing he sucks, deciding to embrace his moral flexibility to keep Dean alive no matter the cost, and trying to mend things.

Dean is circled by many potential suitors who also in a sense represent Sam replacements because Sam sucks: Benny, Cas, Crowley, and Amara.

Dean knows that Sam sucks and part of him wants to get tf away from him very badly but another part of him feels guilty for wanting that. Family is suffering. Family is a chain around your neck keeping you tied to them via guilt. (Demon Dean represents the desire for escape, as does Amara).

Everybody wants to be with Dean, be Dean, and/or be loved by Dean. Dean is love. Dean is the world. Dean is the reason for existing. Everybody is lovesick about him. Sam is just there.

Sam needs to stop blaming Dean for so many things and learn to own his own choices.

That was fun to write down.

Longer commentary/explanation below the cut.

Season 8 (Carver's first season) literally begins with a Sam character assassination. It begins with us learning that Sam knowingly left Kevin to spend the rest of his life kidnapped and tortured without even telling a soul what happened to him. Not only did he abandon Dean and Cas as well but he didn't even look for them, and refuses to give a satisfying answer as to why.

Season 8 Sam's abandonment as distinct from previous behavior

I have had people this year who I love and respect tell me they don't view this as a character assassination and say they believe this is in character for Sam. I simply do not agree with that. I talk about this as it relates to Kevin here.

Sam has displayed selfishness and a big ego at many points in the series up to season 8. He's told a lot of lies (sometimes to the point of gaslighting), he's gone behind Dean's back to do things that affect Dean's life, he's taken traumatic experiences Dean opened up to him about and ultimately harmed Dean with them, he's shown resentments and anger, he's displayed jealousy, he's displayed a sense of superiority. He has never abandoned his brother to die without even trying. The Sam of season 3 would eviscerate season 8 Sam for this.

Sometimes Sam says and does things he shouldn't, but his crimes do not include "abandoning Dean to die without even looking for him" up to season 8. Many of his crimes happen at least partly because he really really doesn't want Dean to die or is desperate to save his life. He lets go of his anger at John and returns to make sure Dean is safe in 1.11. He refuses to give up and finds a way to save Dean in 1.12. In 1.22, he's willing to put John's life at risk for revenge, but in 2.01 he gets into an outright screaming match with John in the hospital under the belief that John's prioritizing the demon over Dean. Sam spends all of season 3 raging and angst-ing about not being able to save Dean to the point of considering and doing some shady as hell things/abandoning some of his more stalwart moral stances (3.05, 3.11, 3.15, 3.16). Dean's death and later, the desire to secure his safety/future, is one of the catalysts for Sam's descent into drinking demon blood (3.09, 3.16, 4.04, 4.09, 4.12). When he dies in "Swan Song", he urges Dean to pursue a normal, safe, life because he knows that at that point in time, Dean wants to get out but has always felt trapped (2.09, 2.10, 2.20, 3.01, 4.12, 4.16). Even Soulless Sam (who isn't the same as regular Sam) tried to look for Dean in 6.09 "Clap Your Hands If You Believe"—it was simply that when leads for the night dried up, he hooked up with someone because he had nothing more to go on and in soulless Sam's head that was the reasonable thing to do. But soulless Sam also certainly isn't representative of the real Sam—the fact that he doesn't care as much is supposed to point us to differences between him and regular Sam. Season 8 opens with Sam abandoning Dean in a context that makes him arguably worse than his soulless self.

(I talk about why Sam actually abandons everyone in season 8 in a very long post here).

Season 8 and 9 more broadly

So Carver has Sam abandon Dean to die without even trying. Then he has Sam refuse to give any kind of actually reasonable explanation that makes sense to anyone who was paying attention. Then he has Sam say that he's going to leave the life and Dean needs to get over it and accept that Sam's new life will not include contact with Dean (just like his life at Stanford didn't). While saying he's going to leave, he still wants to exert control over Dean's relationships and leverages the threat of leaving (as if he were going to stay) to get Dean to shut up about Sam abandoning him and then again to try and get Dean to cut ties with Benny. He wants to kill Benny before knowing a single thing about him. He assigns someone (Martin) who he knows is mentally unstable and has a more black and white perception of monsters to track Benny and gets Martin killed. He watches Martin knock Dean unconscious and chain him up in a room and doesn't stop it because he wants Benny dead that bad, but then has the audacity to act as if Dean sending him a fake text is worse than Sam literally chaining him up in a room to prevent Sam from killing an innocent person (someone Sam would normally—btw—defend based on episodes like 2.03 and 4.04 or even a few episodes ago with Kate in "Bitten"). He tells Amelia he wants to fight for their relationship then the moment Dan says they should leave the choice to Amelia, he leaves so that it becomes his choice, and then he returns for one episode just to be a homewrecker. He insists on doing The Trials while promising to survive them and giving a big speech about how he's going to save Dean from his own suicidal ideation and then drops the promise as if it never existed two episodes later. Sam loses confidence in himself to complete The Trials and then acts like Dean is the one who doesn't believe in him because Dean is caring for him and insisting he rest and this is an unforgivable offense. At the end of the season, he basically says he's going to commit suicide because Dean has friends besides him. He acts as if he deserves to be Dean's most trusted confidant after an entire season of him being an absolutely fucking terrible brother and acts like Dean is just a big meanie whose feelings are irrational.

After all of this, he has the audacity, in season 9, to suggest that Dean is a bad person who can't stand the thought of being alone. He tells Dean he's the worst person ever and they can only be work partners from now on because Dean is so so bad and evil for stopping him from committing suicide and then not telling him about Gadreel. At the end of the season he admits this was a lie. He just wanted to punish Dean (9.23).

I can see how—if you were watching live at the time (I started watching when season 11 was airing) you'd lose hope. You'd quit the show over all of this, because it seems to go on forever. It's like torture. I would drop kick season 8 Sam into a pit full of lava without hesitation so I get it. If I believed that Carver was actually saying "Yes so true Dean is The Worst™️ and Sam is morally superior <3" for two seasons straight I'd quit the show too. But that isn't what he's saying. We're supposed to read between the lines and realize how unbelievably full of shit Sam is—how deeply selfish and hypocritical he's being. How yes—Dean has made mistakes—but Sam is NOT a better person than him and has gotten away with some absolutely rancid garbage. And season 10 and 11 go on to beat you over the head with it if you didn't get it the first time.

Season 10 and 11

Season 10 opens with this dialogue from a demon:

I heard the rumors. I said "no, that can't be." A Winchester, one of us? But it's true, isn't it? Whatever soul you had; whatever boy scout code you cuddled up to at night; it's all gone. Leaving what? Look at you!

We're meant to think she's talking about Dean who just woke up with black eyes, but then the camera cuts to Sam torturing her, demanding to know where Dean is.

In 10.03, we learn that Sam talked a man (Lester) into selling his soul so he could use him as bait. Demon Dean ends up being assigned to fulfill Lester's deal (to kill his wife for cheating on him). Dean immediately clocks Lester as having cheated on her first and kills Lester for being an insufferable hypocrite... and while he's doing it, I'm pretty sure he's also thinking of Sam's flaming hypocrisy.

SAM: I never meant— DEMON DEAN: Who cares what you meant?! That line that we thought was so clear between us and the things that we hunted, ain’t so clear is it? Wow. You might actually be worse than me! I mean, you took a guy at his lowest, used him, and it cost him his life and his soul. Nice work.

NOTE: 10.03 also recalls 4.21—an episode Sam fans have always tended to emphasize as a "Dean crime" episode where Dean risks Sam's death to force a detox. Sam does the reverse—pumping Dean full of human blood here in 10.03 and explicitly risking his death.

Sam gets Suzie killed in "The Werther Project" while searching for The Book of the Damned.

SAM I’m sorry, okay? I’m so sorry. SUZIE Lot of good “sorry” does me. Look at me. Look….at….me. [She points to her corpse.] There she is. The first casualty of your misguided mission. But what’s another human life to you? Anything’s worth it, as long as you two make it out alive. And how’s that search going? Any closer to a cure? SAM This isn’t real. You’re not real. SUZIE You think Dean’s the wild card, the loose cannon. But don’t you see? Making deals with witches, opening Pandora’s box down there? You’re the reckless one. You’ll do anything to keep clinging to that doomed brother of yours. How many more will die, Sammy? You know it. You have to be stopped. And the only one who can stop you is you!

A few episodes later, Sam orders Oskar's death for a spell to remove the Mark of Cain. I've seen hilarious posts before about how he had no choice but to do this because MoC Dean is so scawy and bad but that quite explicitly is not his motivation. They could have done so many other things. Throw him into space. Bury him in a really deep hole. Put him in something like The Cage. But Sam didn't like any of those options, because all of them meant being without his brother, and he's realized he doesn't want to be without him no matter the cost (10.18).

SAM So, awhile back, we had a chance to, um…close the gates of Hell. And in order to do that, I would’ve had to die. And, I was okay with that, and I am okay with that, but Dean was not. And so, he uh… CHARLIE He saved you. SAM Yeah, he saved me. CHARLIE And let me guess, in doing so, he did something you didn’t want, and that pissed you off. And you said something that hurt him? SAM Yeah, that sounds about right. [...] SAM You know, when Dean came to get me at school, I-I told myself… one last job, you know? One more job. And then when – when I, um…. When I lost Jess, I, again, told myself one more job. There’s always one more job, you know? And one more job, and one more job, and then I was gonna go back to law and – and to my life. CHARLIE You were the Dread Pirate Roberts of hunting. SAM Yeah. I guess I really understand now that….this is my life. I love it. But I can’t do it without my brother. I don’t want to do it without my brother. And if he’s gone, then I don’t…. CHARLIE I got it. I-I do.

This all culminates in 10.23, where a very mentally unstable MoC Dean attempts to reason with Sam about them both being evil and needing to take themselves out:

DEAN: Remember when we were in that church, making Crowley human, about to close the Gates of Hell? Well, you sure as hell were ready to die for the greater good then. SAM: Yeah, and, Dean, you pulled me back. DEAN: And I was wrong. You were right, Sam. You knew that this world would be better without us in it. SAM: No, no, no, wait a second. You're twisting my words here, Dean. DEAN: Why? Because we -- we track evil and kill it? The family business? Is that it? Look at the tape, Sam. Evil tracks us. And it nukes everything in our vicinity -- our family, our friends. It's time we put a proper name to what we really are and we deal with it. SAM: Wait a second. We are not evil. Listen... We're far from perfect, but we are good. That thing on your arm is evil, but not you, not me. DEAN: I let Rudy die. How was that not evil? I know what I am, Sam. But who were you when you --when you drove that man to sell his soul... Or when you bullied Charlie into getting herself killed? And to what end? A-a good end? A just end? To remove the Mark no matter what the consequences? Sam, how is that not evil? I have this thing on my arm, and you're willing to let the Darkness into the world. SAM: You were also willing to summon death to make sure you could never do any more harm. You summoned me because you knew I would do anything to protect you. That's not evil, Dean. That's not an evil man. That is a good man crying to be heard, searching for... some other way.

Dean is saying a lot of shady shit here, but some of what he's saying... isn't wrong?

Sam is willing to let The Darkness destroy the world, and he does, and then standing in the aftermath of a town being destroyed by the force he unleashed, Sam says:

SAM: I unleashed a force on this world that could destroy it . . . to save you. DEAN: And I told you not to. SAM: And I'd do it again. In a second, I would do it again.

Thousands of people are dying and Sam says he would do it again. This post about Sam's actions versus Dean stopping Sam from closing the gates of hell is highly relevant.

Season 11 continues with Sam taking a little more responsibility for his own decisions, while praying for Dean to live (11.02):

SAM: So . . . I know it's been a long time, but . . . Dean and I, we've -- we've been through a lot of bad. But this is different. This is my fault, and I don't know how to fix it. And if I have to die, I've made my peace with that, but . . . Please. Dean deserves better. Dean deserves a life. There are people out there, good people, who are going to suffer because of me, and I am not asking you to clean up my mess. Hell, I don't even know if you're out there, but . . . If you are . . . And if you can hear me, I, um . . . We need your help, God. We need to know there's hope. We need a sign.

And then there's the VERY long-awaited apology:

SAM When I was with Lucifer, he, um... He showed me things. It was like a highlight reel of my biggest failures. DEAN Yeah, he was messing with you. That's what he does. SAM Give me a sec. I should've looked for you. When you were in Purgatory, I... I should've turned over every stone.

Family (Sam) as chains

While all of this is happening, we also have Benny and Cas and Crowley and Amara.

Benny is contrast—someone whose goodness and selfless loyalty only makes Sam's horrible flaws stand out more sharply in season 8. Under the influence of the specter, Dean says, "Benny has been more of a brother to me this past year than you have ever been" and Sam can't stand it. It haunts him so bad he tries to kill Benny, and can't get over it even after the end of the season when Benny is fucking dead. He is unable to accept that the contrast between himself and Benny is his own fault.

Crowley and Dean's flirtations begin in season 9, as Sam suffocates Dean, and at the end of the season, Crowley has literally convinced Dean to run away with him. In 10.01, there is a delightful phone call where Crowley rubs it in Sam's face that Dean is with HIM:

SAM I don't know how you did this, what kind of... Black-magic stunt you pulled, but hear me --I will save my brother or die trying. CROWLEY You know what tickles me about all this? It's what's really eating you up. You don't care that he's a demon. Heck, you've been a demon. We've all been demons. No, it's that he's with me and he's having the time of his life. You can't stand the fact that he's mine. SAM He's not your pet. CROWLEY My pet? He's my best friend, my partner in crime. They'll write songs about us, graphic novels. “The Misadventures of Growley and Squirrel." Dean Winchester completes me, and that's what makes you lose your chickens.

It's this cruel callback to Sam's jealousy of Benny and Cas in season 8—how Crowley convinced Dean to finally ditch his smothering, controlling brat of little brother who can't stand him having friends, and now Dean is having the time of his life howling at the moon. The problem is, Dean also feels a little bit like maybe Crowley wants to control him too, and that isn't working for him.

Amara in season 11 goes on to further speak on terrible brothers who think they're better than you, who leave you betrayed and diminished, who abandon you. She's raging against the concept of family as chains—she wants revenge... but all the while she's in pain because she still loves her brother. Amara's attraction to Dean is based on that commonality—what she feels is a shared experience and how she wants to cut the last remaining pieces of love she feels for her brother away so she can finally be free of the pain of him—and she doesn't care if she destroys everything—including herself—in the process. (See: Dean slowly losing his identity through the MoC arc). Sam and Dean's relationship is in rehab over this whole season though, and so Dean's role ends up being to convince Amara not to destroy herself—to instead do what Sam and Dean have done and make up and work on improving their relationship.

#writer disk horse #carver #mail #multiseason #season 8 #season 9 #season 10 #season 11 #sams moral compass #deans moral compass #amara #crowley #benny #charlie #family chains

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sammysdewysensitiveeyes · 9 months ago

Text

My Morph primer

Since X-Men 97 is drawing in a lot of new fans with varied levels of experience with the original animated series or the comics, I figured I could give a write-up of who Morph is, where they come from, and why you don’t see them in any of the movies or other media. This is also an excuse for me to write about an obsessive fave, seriously, they are all over my blog. I'm not necessarily an "authority," but I've watched TAS and read the comics, which are the basis for this write-up.

Who is Morph?

"Wolverine! Fall back!"

Morph is a shapeshifting mutant who was added to the X-Men team in the original X-Men: The Animated Series as a redshirt/sacrificial lamb, to be killed off For Real in order to show that the stakes are really high. Originally it was actually going to be Thunderbird, a short-lived X-Man who died in the comics just a few issues after he was introduced, and has remained dead for decades. But creators realized that killing off the only Native American character on a mostly white team was a bad look, and went with Morph instead. Morph proved surprisingly popular with (mostly child) viewers, and was brought back in the 2nd season as a result. Morph in TAS was originally presented as male using male pronouns, but I’m gonna use they/them for the character since they are nonbinary in X-Men 97.

(Btw, even Morph's TAS costume shows their redshirt nature, as they are basically wearing a variant of the standard X-Men uniform that different groups have worn, with the Original Five (Angel, Jean, Cyclops, Beast and Iceman) and the New Mutants all wearing something similar. There was a time in the 90's when all the X-Men were wearing this uniform to try to give them a team look, but thankfully that didn't last, the individualized looks are much better. Morph's amazing disappearing reappearing jacket are the only personalized touch in their uniform, and I hope X-Men 97 gives them a costume upgrade after everyone gets used to the new look.)

Morph doesn’t appear in many episodes of TAS, but here are the definitive ones:

Season 1:

Night of the Sentinels Parts 1 and 2: Morph seems to be an established part of the team, a wise-cracking shapeshifter who is so naively overconfident about their mission that they’ve practically got a target painted on their back. When the mission goes wrong, Morph pushes Wolverine out of the way of Sentinel lasers, and gets blasted all to hell. Morph’s supposed death (which was meant at the time to be a real death) is sensed by both Jean and Xavier. Cyclops orders a retreat because the team is getting their asses kicked, abandoning both the (dead) Morph and (alive but injured) Beast, who spends the rest of the season in jail. Morph is quickly forgotten as a character, BUT the impact of their death is felt throughout the season. We get Wolverine yelling “This one’s for you, Morph!” while slicing up a Sentinel, and Cyclops in the finale insisting, “I’m not leaving anyone behind! Not this time!”

Season 2:

Till Death Do Us Part, Parts 1 and 2: Morph returns as a villain, but a sympathetic, brainwashed villain under the control of season Big Bad Mr. Sinister. Sinister is an evil scientist who likes to fuck around with mutant genetics and is especially obsessed with getting Scott and Jean to fuck, because their child will supposedly be an extremely genetically superior mutant. After Morph’s “death,” they were taken by Sinister, who revived them and implanted a control device into Morph’s brain that he uses to literally torture Morph into compliance. Morph seems to have a kind of split personality, which Sinister exacerbates and encourages, shifting between a haggard-looking Evil Morph who wants revenge on the X-Men for abandoning them and cracks jokes while attacking the team, and a normal-looking Good Morph, who doesn’t want to hurt their friends, and is generally scared and confused and having a Bad Time. If you are wondering about Morph turning into that version of themselves with dark circles around their eyes in X-Men 97 “Fire Made Flesh,” it was a reference back to this:

Evil Morph lookin' reeeeeaal creepy.

Morph uses their shape-shifting trickery to fake marry Scott and Jean (as the priest), impersonate Xavier and turn the team against each other, until Wolverine identifies them by scent. The team then chases Morph to Sinister’s lair, where he’s captured a honey-mooning Scott and Jean. Morph has been struggling with the brainwashing the entire time, and breaks free long enough to attack Sinister, then runs off away from everyone.

Whatever It Takes: Wolverine, who has declared the Morph is “the only one who could ever make him laugh,” chases Morph down to Brazil in an attempt to drag them back to the team. Morph, still fighting their dark side and flipping back and forth between the two personalities, taunts Wolverine in Jean’s form, fights him, and eventually gains enough control to tell Logan to back off. (“I have to get through this by myself!”)

Fighting your friend in an abandoned mine shaft, a totally normal thing to do.

Wolverine reluctantly lets them go. This the B-plot, the main plot of the episode features Storm and Rogue confronting the Shadow King in Africa, and is also really good.

Reunion Parts 1 and 2: Morph leaves a message for Wolverine stating that he wants to return to the team, in what seems like an obvious set-up for a trap. Wolverine, Jean and Cyclops go to retrieve them, and find that yes, it is a trap. Morph attmpts to warn the group to leave, but they are jumped by Sinister and the Nasty Boys, and the fight ends with Jean being taken, and Morph (still struggling against Sinister’s control), going semi-willingly. The whole team winds up at Sinister’s base in the Savage Land and there are a lot of good character moments, like Gambit telling Rogue he loves her. Morph spends the whole time still fighting against the brainwashing, but throws it off completely at the end (with Xavier’s help) and turns on Sinister, helping Scott and Jean defeat him. Morph is then Put on a Bus to Muir Island so that the writers wouldn’t have to deal with the character but could hold them in reserve to use later. Xavier comments that he can remove Sinister’s mind-control chip from Morph’s brain, but that “removing the psychic damage will take longer.” So the answer to “Where’s Morph?” in later seasons will always be “Recovering on Muir Island, probably hanging out with Moira and Banshee.”

If you are a Morph fan, Season 2 is THE Morph season, they get a great character arc that fleshes them out, and establishes their close relationship with Wolverine. I’m glad they didn’t toss out Morph in X-Men 97, both because I like the character, and because Morph’s entire arc in Season 2 was about their struggle to come back to the team, and constantly reaffirms that Morph is one of them, and that they belong with the X-Men. Also, I know Tumblr love an angsty, suffering blorbo, and good God does Morph suffer in Season 2.

(Someone is having a Bad Time).

Season 4:

Courage: After getting only a couple of non-speaking background cameos in Season 3, this is Morph’s comeback episode in Season 4. Morph believes that they are fully recovered and ready to rejoin the X-Men, while both Moira and Xavier seem to think they are not ready, and warn them to slow down a little. Morph tries to jump back into their old role, makes jokes, and goes on a mission with Wolverine, but is clearly still dealing with PTSD and completely freezes up when Sentinels attack the mansion and kidnap Xavier. Morph is left at the mansion while the X-Men go to rescue Xavier, but follows them anyway, and manages to play an instrumental role in stopping the Sentinels and saving Xavier. Despite this, Morph decides that they are not ready to return and cannot be relied upon in battle (because the writers didn’t want to deal with using the character on the team), and goes back to Muir Island. It’s a standard “character fucks up at the start of the episode but saves the day in the end” superhero cartoon story, and I was a little disappointed that the episode focused entirely on Morph’s “near death trauma” from the Sentinels and not the much worse “brainwashed and tortured by Sinister to the point of developing a second personality” issue. The closest we get to addressing that is Morph pointedly walking up to Cyclops with “Scott…been a long time….” which sounds like a way of saying “We’re cool now, bro, I promise I won’t try to kill you.” Still, we get some great Morph and Wolverine moments, and Morph kicks a lot of ass at the end. After Morph spends most of the series either dead or suffering, I don’t mind an episode where they get to kick ass. This episode also establishes that Morph was suffering from serious nightmares for awhile, so consider that a canon excuse to put that in your angsty fanfic.

(Morph also gets a non-speaking cameo in Beyond Good and Evil Part 1, sitting next to Jubilee at Scott and Jean’s second wedding. I think it’s sweet that they were invited, but can also imagine Scott putting them in the front row just to ensure that there are no more “fake priest” shenanigans. “Let��s put Morph where I can see him….just in case.”)

Season 5:

Graduation Day: After Xavier is attacked, Morph returns to help calm mutants world-wide by impersonating Xavier and making a public call for peace. Morph doesn’t do much in the episode, but they get an individualized goodbye from Xavier while he is addressing the team one by one, and it is clear at the end that Morph is officially back with the team. In other words, the writers could give Morph a happy ending of coming back since the show was ending and they didn’t have to deal with it going forward. Thankfully, the X-Men 97 writers were happy to pick up that ball and continue running with it, and I love what they’ve done with Morph so far!

Were there shippy vibes between Morph and Wolverine in the original series?

I dunno friend, watch “Whatever it Takes,” and “Courage,” and you tell me. Morph shifting into Jean to taunt Wolverine definitely gives me vibes of “There’s something going on there.”

Is Morph in the comics?

(Note – I’m using he/him for all comics versions of Morph because those versions all apparently ID as male.)

The answer is yes, sort of.

Changeling:

Morph was loosely based on an obscure, long dead shape-shifting mutant from the X-Men’s original 60’s run. Changeling was a villain with a tacky costume who acted very much like a standard 60’s comic book villain, associated with a terrorist group called Factor Three. Look at this fucking dude:

At the end of the Factor Three arc, it turns out that Factor Three’s leader, Mutant Master, is an alien who wants to destroy ALL life on Earth to make way for his own people, and the mutants in the group turn on him and help the X-Men. Changeling is the first one to question Mutant Master’s motives, and that’s probably the only interesting thing he does in the whole story. Several issues later, Xavier supposedly dies while helping defeat a villain named Grotesk and save the world. This story is retconned near the end of the run, when Xavier is revealed to be alive, and explains that the dead “Xavier” was actually Changeling. Changeling had discovered that he was terminally ill, and came to Xavier seeking redemption. Xavier asked Changeling to temporarily take his place as Xavier while he shut himself up in the basement to prepare to stop an alien invasion (and no, the X-Men were not informed of this, besides Jean, and yes, that is really fucked up). So Changeling became a reformed villain and honorary X-Man who went out in a heroic sacrifice, and was almost never mentioned again. (Even now Changeling appears to still be dead in the comics, even though the current storyline has allowed ALL the dead mutants to come back. Even Thunderbird is back.)

Changeling was greatly reworked to become Morph, totally changing his personality and origins. The only similarities are the shapeshifting powers and physical appearance. You can see how this guy:

Became this not-actually-a-guy:

Or even this version:

X-Men 97 Morph got a real glow-up to their human form.

Of course, they also share the trait of being a sacrificial lamb plot device, and X-Men TAS creators were originally going to call the character “Changeling,” but changed the name to Morph because DC’s Beast Boy was called Changeling at the time.

Age of Apocalypse Morph:

In the 90’s, there was a cross-over event over all the X-Books called the Age of Apocalypse, in which a time-traveller (Xavier’s son Legion, long story) murdered Xavier in the past before Xavier formed the X-Men, and created a dystopian alternate reality in which Apocalypse had taken over and Magneto led the X-Men. This was a kind of what-if event that let writers have fun with switching up character relationships, turning good guys bad and bad guys good, and of course, killing a lot of characters off. The event only lasted about four issues before it was all undone and we returned to the main Marvel universe, so they could really go wild. In the AoA book Astonishing X-Men, Magneto’s team includes a character called Morph, a versatile shapeshifter with a pasty white made-of-clay look, and a jovial, upbeat personality that is clearly based on TAS Morph. (This change to character design is where X-Men 97 Morph’s white, featureless appearance comes from).

Just a silly little guy!

AoA Morph is also stated in the book to have been formerly Changeling, before undergoing a name-change and attitude adjustment, making him an AU variant. He explains to Sunfire at one point that he never takes anything seriously because fuck it, he’s probably gonna die anyway, he may as well die with a smile on his face. AoA Morph is pretty cool, he does great shapeshifting tricks, and has some depth and heart beneath the obnoxious jokes.

Exiles Morph:

After Age of Apocalypse, the fan-favorite character Blink (like Morph, another alternate version of a short-lived character in the main comics timeline) gets pulled out of the AoA timeline and placed on a team of time-displaced X-Men. This team, all coming from alternate realities and including some other minor neglected characters (like versions of Thunderbird and Mimic), is tasked with hopping through realities, putting things right that once went wrong, and hoping each time that the next leap will be their leap home. The team also includes a version of Morph, who is so similar to AoA Morph that Blink mistakes him initially for her old teammate. This is another AU variant of Changeling who was never Changeling, but instead was recruited into the New Mutants (a bit of an age retcon for the character, as 60’s Changeling seemed much older, while Exiles Morph is clearly much younger.) Exiles Morph was a popular hero in his reality, served as both an X-Man and an Avenger, and is an incredibly powerful shapeshifter. He also winds up being a long-running mainstay of the Exiles team, so this is really the book to read for Morph content. Exiles also fleshes out the character’s past, stating that he was born as a shapeshifting blob with X-gene already activated, and only assumed a human appearance to fit in with peers. He also lost his mother to cancer at an early age, and his obnoxious jokey personality was partially a reaction to that, an attempt to both cheer up and get some attention from his grieving father. Exiles Morph is a great character, my only complaint is that he is a bit of a sex pest, constantly making “jokes” that border on sexual harassment of his female teammates. I don’t think he’s meant to actually be a creep, he never actually does anything, and when the teammate he has a crush on reveals that she is a lesbian, he steps back and acts as a supportive friend. I think Exiles Morph just suffers from late 90’s early 2000 writing where the funny jokey character has to be all “LOL, Boobies!” all the time, just so we know he’s straight. (Funny, given how not-straight X-Men 97 Morph seems to be.)

The Other Morph: Benjamin Deeds:

Brian Michael Bendis, in his Uncanny X-Men run, introduced a new character named Benjamin Deeds who could shapeshift, and looked suspiciously similar to a teenage version of Changeling/TAS Morph. His personality was different, though (more of a sulky teen trying to deal with being a mutant than a funny guy), and the nature of his powers is different. Benjamin has what is described as “chameleon-like” shapeshifting, taking on the physical characteristics of people when he gets close to them rather than fully shifting forms. He also exudes a chemical that makes people automatically like and trust him. Emma suggests the codename “Morph,” and although Benjamin doesn’t like it, it becomes his official codename going forward. I don’t think Ben actually has any real connection to Changeling or TAS Morph, he seems more like a legacy character or winking homage, like Pyro II (Simon Lasker, who inexplicably has the same powers and looks almost exactly like original Pyro, St. John Alledyce). He’s fun character and a cute lil’ guy, though.

There are people who call TAS Morph an “original character” completely invented for the cartoon, and I don’t think they’re entirely wrong. Morph is VERY different from Changeling, But to me, it makes the most sense to consider TAS Morph another AU variant of Changeling, given all the influence back and forth between the comics and the cartoon. Morph was based on Changeling, and Morph’s popularity led to AU versions of Changeling in the comics with TAS Morph’s personality literally named “Morph,” and now X-Men 97 Morph has been redesigned to match AoA/Exiles Morph’s appearance. They are variations of the same person. And it’s not exactly the first time that a comics character has been drastically reworked in an adaptation – I’m looking at you, First Class Mystique and Evolution’s “Lance Alvers.” I wonder if people would still be calling Morph an “original character” if they’d kept the name “Changeling,” since keeping the name seems to be all it takes at times. Still, TAS Morph is kind of right on the border between OC and “adapted from the comics,” and even I tend to include them in groups of “created for the cartoon” characters like Firestar, Spyke and X-23.

Why is Morph tagged as “Kevin Sydney/Sidney”?

Because that is the character’s name, more or less. TAS Morph didn’t have a “real name” in 92, because Changeling didn’t (similarly, Rogue also didn’t have a real name because the character hadn’t been given one in the comics.) In Age of Apocalypse, characters called Morph “Sydney” or “Syd,” and Morph even referred to himself that way in a thought-balloons, but the Exiles writer apparently decided, “Nah, it’s a last name,” and officially named Morph “Kevin Sydney.” The name stuck, and the 2004 Marvel “Book of the Dead” gave Changeling that name in the entry on him. Morph’s name has never been given in the cartoon, but it’s probably safe to assume that their official “human name” is Kevin Sydney, just like TAS Rogue is probably Anna Marie (her official name in the comics.) Interestingly, even in Exiles, the book where the name originated, Morph always goes by “Morph” and never “Kevin.” Maybe Home Alone ruined the name for him. I tend to use the Kevin Sydney tags on Tumblr and A03 to differentiate from other uses of the “morph” tag. In particular, Tumblr has a lot of body modification fetish posts tagged as “morph,” and no offense to the fetishists, you all keep doing what you are doing, but that’s not the content I’m looking for. I’m sure the fetish people are probably a bit annoyed at their own tag filling up with an X-Men character, but hey, it’s their name.

How old is Morph? How long were they with the team and when did they join? Is the featureless white face their “real form”? What’s their history with Wolverine?

I don’t have answers here because we don’t know. There’s a lot we don’t know about TAS Morph, and the origins of their comics counterparts don’t really translate well into cartoon continuity. Like I can’t imagine TAS Morph ever having been a willing member of Factor Three.

Personally, I tend to assume that Morph was with the team for awhile before their “death,” given that they have an established “old friend” relationship with Wolverine and know the team extremely well. I also tend to assume that TAS Morph is a similar age to the other young adults on the team like Scott and Jean. They sometimes look older in the original series, because they were based on Changeling (who also looks older), but the voice acting and general personality of the character seem younger, plus Wolverine calls them “kid”a couple of times. And it seems like their “human form” may not be their “real face” anyway, given that they’ve now defaulted to the white blank-face look. The white blank-face look IS the real form for Exiles (and presumably AoA) Morph, so the same is probably true for TAS Morph and Changeling. But this is all just my own headcanon and speculation, based on what I’ve seen in the original cartoon and the comics. You are all free to come up with your own headcanons fleshing out the character, I’ve already seen great stuff in fanfic out there!

Edit: Actually, I thought of a bit more:

How does Morph shift their clothing? Does Morph even wear clothes? How can they create accessories like Psylocke's swords?

Honestly, I dunno, this is Rule of Cool and Morph as a vehicle for character cameos in affect here. I will say that, in the comics, many characters with shapeshifter-type powers, like Wolfsbane, wear costumes made of unstable molecules that shift with their bodies, the same may be true of Morph. Exiles Morph, when commenting on his female teammates' skimpy costumes, at one point jokes that he "wears even less," so he may just be literally making clothing out of his own body. Although I would think that would get cold, or painful with no protection against the elements.

I assume that Morph does form accessories like Psylocke's swords out of their own body, which also presumably means they can't drop them. I wonder if it would hurt Morph if one of the swords broke? Exile Morph regularly turns his own body into accessories that he can hold (but not separate from his form), so presumably X-Men 97 Morph is doing the same. This is a step-up from TAS Morph, who never did that. Exiles Morph seems to be able to turn their body into whatever they want.

Does Morph copy the powers of other mutants?

Morph seems to be able to mimic only the physical-based powers of other mutants, under the shapeshifter logic of changing their body to give themselves larger muscles, claws, etc. So Angel's wings, but not Cyclops' eye beams. Nightcrawler's tail but not teleportation. In X-Men 97, Morph takes a couple of shots from X-Cutioner after shifting into Colossus, so apparently they can do the whole metal skin thing. But in TAS, when Morph turns into Wolverine, their claws are not adamantium and Wolverine easily slices through them.

I would add that Exiles Morph is also extremely durable, and can literally be ripped to pieces and shapeshift himself back together. This doesn't seem to be the case of "died from Sentinel lasers" TAS Morph, but maybe they just aren't there with their power levels yet. Exiles Morph IS especially susceptible to burns or laser blasts, and almost dies when Hyperion hits him with a beam at close range.

That’s it, hopefully this is helpful for people completely new to the character who got into X-Men 97. Mostly I just love writing about Morph. I encourage you to go back and watch the original series, or at least the Morph episodes. It’s a good show, if a bit 90’s corny, and will let you fully appreciate X-Men 97 (which has been, so far, an absolute banger of a series). Presumably we’ll see more character development of Morph as the show continues, which will maybe answer some of these questions.

#morph #kevin sydney #morph x-men

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battleline · 1 year ago

Text

The Stella Problem

THE STELLA PROBLEM

AKA

HOW TO MESS UP A POTENTIALLY GREAT ANTAGONIST

Hoo boy, where do we begin with this one? Well, let’s start with the introduction and go from there.

Who is Stella?

Stella’s original design (Helluva Boss (Pilot))

Stella Goetia is the wife of Prince Stolas Goetia, one of the main cast members, who we first meet in the pilot briefly for a few seconds, having been splattered with cake when Blitzo drops in, telling her that he slept with her husband and runs off with the grimoire (being the thing he came for). The fallout from Stolas’ cheating on Stella is one of the major plot points within the show, with it almost always being prevalent in episodes involving Stolas.

Stella’s first appearance in the series proper (Loo Loo Land (S1, E2))

In ‘Loo Loo Land’, the episode starts with a brief flashback, where Stolas is stirred awake by Octavia’s crying for them, and we are given a glimpse of Stella, who had undergone a redesign between the pilot and now, and when Stolas tells her that Octavia is calling for them, Stella simply tells him to take care of her, and you can see her hogging the blankets.

Stella being furious (Loo Loo Land (S1, E2))

Later on, in present day, some times after Stolas and Blitzo’s affair, Stella is furiously shouting at him, going as far as to throw stuff, stating her disbelief that Stolas had slept with ‘an imp’ in their bed, getting more aggravated when Stolas brought up not having time to go to a motel, and after throwing one of their imps at Stolas, she calls him a ‘goddamn embarrassment’ before storming off

As you can tell by now, Stella is not the most pleasant person to be around. Even before the affair, it seems Stolas and Stella’s relationship is not the greatest, and Stolas’ affair seems to only have made things a lot worse. On top of that, she has a pretty nasty temper, throwing stuff around and shouting. On one hand, she has anger issues, but on the other hand, she was cheated on, and if the amount of revenge Reddit stories surrounding cheating that I listened to taught me anything, cheating really pisses people off. Although, it would seem that she was more angry about Stolas’ affair partner being an imp rather than the cheating, suggesting that she has a bit of classism about her.

We would not see Stella again for the rest of the episode (or the next two for that matter), but she would get a brief mention towards the end of the episode, when Octavia runs away from Stolas at Loo Loo Land, having grown sick of Stolas flirting with Blitzo throughout the episode. Stolas would come to find her again in a funhouse, and the two would have the following discussion:

Stolas and Octavia’s heart-to-heart talk (Loo Loo Land (S1, E2))

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

Stolas: I take it you are… not having fun.

Octavia: (crying) I didn’t even want to come here!

Stolas: I’m sorry, sweetie. I… I thought you loved it here.

Octavia: (sniffing) When I was a kid and my parents didn’t hate each other… and my dad didn’t flirt with some… weird red dickhead the entire time.

Stolas: I'm sorry, Via. I'm sorry for... everything... happening right now. I know it's... a lot. I, uh-- I should have listened.

Octavia: (crying) I just want to go home... but home doesn't even feel like home anymore... You ruined it.

Stolas: You need to understand... your mother and I... I just-... I felt-... She's always been... I haven't been- Ha-... We weren't in... I'm sorry, I- I- I don't have the words.

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

This talk illuminated two things: one, Stolas and Stella’s relationship was at a point where they did not hate each other. Now, this could mean many things, but at the very least, things were better. Two, it is implied that they weren’t in love, suggesting that perhaps that they were in an arranged marriage (which would be confirmed in season two, but we will get to that soon). But I do want people to remember the above conversation when we do.

Stella speaking to Striker regarding killing Stolas (Harvest Moon Festival (S1, E5))

We would see Stella again in ‘Harvest Moon Festival’ towards the very end, being revealed to be the one who hired Striker, a cowboy-themed assassin, to kill Stolas. Striker reports that he failed to kill him, but he won’t fail again, and Stella angrily states that he better not, as she quotes:

“I want this cheating prick dead! I don’t care who you have to go through! MAKE IT HAPPEN!!”

Stella

Stolas, Octavia, and Stella at the dining table (Harvest Moon Festival (S1, E5))

We then cut to her pretty much stating this right in front of Stolas and Octavia, but neither seem to take notice, though Stolas does pause for a moment.

It would seem that Stella’s anger towards Stolas for his infidelity had finally reached a breaking point in which she now wants him dead, giving zero regards as to the consequences or the effect it could have on their daughter. Indeed, it would seem she would be an antagonist for I.M.P. and Stolas to overcome in a future episode… but let’s put a pin in that for now.

Unfortunately, this would be the last episode in which Stella has a speaking role in the season, although she would go on to make a silent cameo in ‘Ozzie’s’, when a image of her and Octavia are brought up to shame Stolas during the ‘House of Asmodeus’ song:

Ozzie showing an illusion of Stella to Stolas (OZZIE’S (S1, E7))

“You used to have a smoking wife, a kid, you had it all”

“I hope you didn’t give it up. So, you and him could get it on”

House of Asmodeus

Now, following this line, Stolas would go on to hide behind a menu in shame, most likely because he was ashamed to be dating an imp (thus caused a rift between him and Blitzo), but from the way Ozzie phrased those lines, it could imply that Stolas has regret for his actions, not just because of how he hurt Octavia, but perhaps for how he hurt Stella. Either that, or Ozzie had no idea (which is just as possible).

And that would be all for Season 1, and due to legal issues for ‘Queen Bee’ (which I will probably talk about for another day), we would skip to Season 2 nearly a year later. While what we saw of Stella was really short (amounting to 36 seconds of screen time within the entire first season), it would seem we had a potential for a very intriguing character.

Sure, all we saw of her so far was her telling Stolas to take care of Octavia, her yelling at Stolas over his affair, her yelling at Striker to not fail again, and then a silent cameo. But hey, surely Season 2 would finally give us some much needed development. Maybe we would get a glimpse of how she and Stolas met, a better look at what Stella was like before Blitzo, and maybe see how her relationship with Stolas had deteriorated. And maybe finally see what her and Octavia’s relationship is like. Heck, in February 2022, we learn that she has a brother in Andrealphus (described as Stolas’s shitty brother-in-law):

Andrealphus

So, yeah, it looked like we were in for something very neat… but what we got was…

The Circus (woo…)

After a long hiatus brought upon by an episode being stuck in legal limbo, the season 2 premiere came out, being ‘The Circus’, an episode that would go into Stolas’ past at two points in his life, being his childhood and to right before his affair with Blitzo, as well catching up with him after the events of ‘Ozzie’s’. Naturally, Stella would be in this episode.

The episode opens up on a child Stolas’ birthday, where he meets with his father Paimon, who proceeds to tell him what is expected of him as a Goetia, giving him the grimoire. He would also point out briskly that he is to be married, showing a… well, not so flattering pic of his to-be wife.

Child Stella tormenting two quieves (The Circus (S2, E1))

(Yeah, that’s what they’re called. Vivienne (or someone) made the conscious decision to name a species after a woman’s genital flatulence. Riveting 🙄)

And naturally, child Stolas is not enthused, crying on sight.

Okay, so Stella apparently was a little terror growing up. Okay, not too terrible, I mean, considering what we have seen of her in the first season, it would track that she grew up with anger issues her whole life, and it followed her well into adulthood. But it does confirm that Stolas and Stella were an arranged marriage… so perhaps, this could simply be her lashing out? I mean, Stolas wasn’t thrilled, so I doubt she would too.

Now, despite being shown this pic, we never do see child Stella in person, this part of the episode being dedicated to Stolas meeting and spending the day with child Blitzo, culminating in him tricking Stolas into helping him rob the palace blind and give the loot to Blitzo’s asshole dad Cash. All of which is a whole nother beast. But let’s save that for another day.

We skip ahead 25 years later in the episode, where we see a grown up Stolas waking up and going about his morning, eventually seeing Stella on the phone:

Stella on the phone (The Circus (S2, E1))

She seems to ignore Stolas as she goes about talking loudly to someone on the phone talking about how being married still is not a big occasion, but apparently, ‘it’s not easy being married to a boring stiff.’, and brushes Stolas off when he tries to greet her. Seconds later, Stolas would frown and ask about a ‘Still Not Divorced Party’ that she is throwing, where she nonchalantly said she likes throwing parties, and it’s true either way, and then said he could come if he wants.

Okay, this is… nothing new. I mean, Stolas and Stella were already on the decline even before Stolas and Blitzo happened, if that flashback at the start of ‘Loo Loo Land’ was any indication, and since we know they were forced to marry, even more of a reason for Stella to not be kind to him. But hey, at least in this scene, she’s not yelling, like in 90% of the screen time she had in season one.

We then cut to the ‘Still Not Divorced’ party where we see Stella chatting with those two owls that Stella (her old design at least) was with in the Pilot and…

Stella with those two owls that were in the Pilot (The Circus (S2, E1))

(seriously, who are these two?)

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

Stella: (laughs loudly) No! Stolas is terrible in bed! I swear to fuck, he just lays there staring at the wall, and I have to do everything! It’s embarrassing! (sighs) I’m glad one egg fell out of me, so I could stop pretending to want to fuck his scrawny twig ass. (it’s shown that she said this right in earshot of Stolas, as the trio walks away, Stella giving a smug grin at him) Stella: What a pathetic fucking man

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

O-kay, this is before Stolas’ affair with Blitzo, right? I mean, we do see Blitzo sneaking around at the start of this part of the episode. If so, why is Stella being such a bitch here? I mean, I get she isn’t a pleasant person, but at least in season one, when we did see her, she had the excuse of Stolas cheating on her. Sure, it doesn’t justify trying to have him killed, but you could at least understand why she might not care for Stolas.

But here? All unprovoked and take note of what she said, because I will get into that soon.

So, after Stella leaves, Stolas and Blitzo reunite and we get a re-enactment of Blitz sneaking out with the grimoire from the Pilot, this time from Stolas’ perspective, and Stella simply shouts at him what the fuck was that, and Stolas smugly shout that it was the SOUND OF A FUCKING DIVORCE… even though in ‘Loo Loo Land’, he was being completely apologetic and said it was a spur of the moment thing and they didn’t have time for a motel, completely contradicting this scene, thus making it another point against this episode. But hey, at least it can’t get worse? Right?

Anyways, we cut to present day, after the events of ‘OZZIE’S’, where a heartbroken Stolas sings a song that’s supposed to be sorrowful, but just comes off as a bit wangsty, and then Stella comes in, wondering what he’s blubbering about, and Stolas asks what Stella is doing here and…

I like tormenting you

Tormenting you

Tor. Men. Ting. You.

(Okay, this would make more sense if this was in a video format, but imagine if the audio get lower and slower)

So… yeah, turns out Stella… is a psycho bitch, who just likes to make Stolas suffer because… well, there is no reason. She’s just into that shit.

And if that wasn’t enough, when Stolas calls her out for her cruelty and tells her that they’re getting that divorce… she tries to hit him.

So not only is she a psycho bitch, but she’s also a domestic abuser. Well, that’s a whole nother can of worms right there.

There’s so much to unpack here, but I feel we should at least cover the rest of her appearances in the series so far.

She would not appear again till ‘Western Energy’, but she does have a brief voiced cameo in ‘Seeing Stars’, the following episode (and another stinker at that), where Stolas is arguing with her while overseeing the ‘safe transferal’ of her possessions:

“What? No! I’m not turning her against you!” - Stolas (Seeing Stars (S2, E2))

Now this line could mean two different things. One, Stella is simply trying to start shit by bringing her up. Two, she is genuinely concerned (in her own way) that Stolas would try to turn her against her, which would be a legit concern in a messy divorce (this is coming from a child of such a divorce).

However, we have no way of knowing as Stella and Octavia had never interacted, like at all. Again, we’re gonna get to that, but this is another problem.

Anyways, we get to ‘Western Energy’, which opens up on Stolas, Stella, and…

…I’m sorry, who the fuck is this guy? (Western Energy (S2, E4))

Yeah, so we are joined by Stella’s brother, Andrealphus… and the show just acts like we should know who he is already.

Mind you, he has never made an appearance before this point. The only allusion we get that he existed (in-show) was Stella mentioning his name before she tries to slap Stolas in ‘The Circus’. All we get is that and that he’s apparently ‘arrogant’, according to Stolas.

Remember that tweet from February 2022, that first showed off Andrealphus? Yeah, apparently Viv and the writers thought that the tweet would suffice for an introduction, and they could just slip him into the show as if he’s always been there. This is a problem for so many reasons, the main being Vivienne and co, had already developed a bad rep for hiding lore and contextual details in supplementary media, such as Patreon or Q&A livestreams, as well as making tweets after a episode to explain something that really should had been in the episode to begin with. But not everyone has Twitter (or X as it’s called now), and unless someone showed him to you beforehand, you probably would have been confused as to who he is.

Like god damn, Viv, it’s not like there was a certain ‘Still Not Divorced’ party consisting of Goetias that Andrealphus could had easily been a part of, especially since he’s Stella’s brother, that would had not only introduced him but possibly established his role in the series, but naw, let’s just hope people seen that tweet and know who he is.

But let’s get back to Stella, shall we? Anyways, Stella and Andrealphus called Stolas here to discuss ‘compensation’ for his cheating, which amounts to some name-calling, and is quickly interrupted by Striker, who proceeds to kidnap Stolas (with Stolas catching on that Stella hired him to kill him).

We join them again halfway through the episode where Andrealphus and Stella are having tea at his palace, the two having some cheerful evil sibling banter… but then…

Andrealphus scheming… and Stella’s just sitting there (Western Energy (S2, E4))

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

Andrealphus: You silly minx, you (giggles). Though, you know, if your husband dies it won't turn out well for you.

Stella: He'll be dead; why wouldn't it?

Andrealphus: (somewhat concerned) Because, my dear sister, he's already produced an heir; when he dies, his duties, his possessions, his legions, it'll all pass to.... Via.

(Stella absentmindedly continues to drink without acknowledging him.)

Andrealphus: (annoyed) If you kill him, you would....

Stella: Laugh? Ha-

Andrealphus: (facepalms in anger) No, you stupid cow! You'd get nothing!... You're so lucky that you're attractive.

Stella: Well, what do you propose we do? He won't leave me anything willingly; he hates me almost as much as I hate him.

Andrealphus: Hmm. Well, this kind of situation is extremely unique; a Goetia has never behaved like this before. *stands up from his chair and walks behind Stella* But, with him alive, we have options. Opportunities. An eternity's a long time, my dear; I say we bide our time, and wait for our chance to... GAIN the upper hand.

Stella: (begins to pout and whine) Oohhhhhh, but I want him dead so badly!

Andrealphus: And he will be, in time, my fiery vixen. But, patience first; now, *hands her his customized phone* call off your mangy stray.

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

…Okay, so not only is she a psycho bitch, a domestic abuser…

Pictured above: a air-headed bimbo (Western Energy (S2, E4))

A DUMBASS.

I know I said Stella wanted Stolas dead, be damned the consequences, but they make her so narrow-minded that she does not realize that she would definitely get nothing, Andrealphus having to spell it out for her. In fact, that’s pretty much was the point of Andrealphus’ being in this episode: to tell Stella to tell Striker to not kill Stolas. You could have easily removed him and had Stella come to this conclusion herself… or better yet, since Striker would lose to Moxxie and Millie, just remove the scene altogether and have it be just another failure.

I could have bought that this narrow-mindedness was a product of her anger issues, because that has been established… but here? It’s because she’s dumb and she needs her big brother to tell her no. Not only does it already make her already wallowing character worse, but she is practically now playing second fiddle to her brother, making her less of a threat, and not helping Viv in beating the allegations of her female characters only be props to males. Also, what is that incestuous vibe they got going there? Is that something that’s going to be important or be forgotten with the rest of the hanging plot threads?

And that’s pretty much all we see of her up to this point. It is possible that she will appear in the season finale (if the leaks from January 2023 are anything to go by), but considering there’s 5 episodes left in the season, and what we did get of her so far was… it’s bad. Bad, bad, bad.

So… what went wrong here?

Well, to put it in layman’s terms, they took a character with a lot of potential, a wife scorned by her unfaithful husband to the point of wanting him dead… and turned her into a one-note baddie whose sole purpose is to make Stolas miserable and nothing else… plus she’s stupid.

That’s pretty much the way to put it. And many people had voiced their dismay at this… and all the defenders and stans came out and tried to argue (or harass) people for voicing their displeasure with how this character was handled. So, I will try to voice why I feel that the writers here royally fucked up.

Point #1: Was this always fated to be? Was this a retcon? I don’t know, I barely know the lady!

So, one of the most common arguments that came up regarding Stella when ‘The Circus’ came out and messed everything up was:

“This was always how she was meant to be.”

“She was always a bad person.”

“Stella simps be mad, lol.”

I’m paraphrasing of course, but yeah, the consensus among the defenders and stans was that this was all part of Vivienne’s big plan, and she was always going to be this evil psycho bitch.

On the flip side, I had heard many fans (including the simps) complain that this was a retcon, that they had decided partway through production to just go full ‘I’m an evil piece of shit who strangles puppies and drinks childrens’ tears’ with her.

As for me, I personally disagree with the retcon… but not because it isn’t. It’s for the simple fact that for a retcon to occur, there would have to be something to retcon to begin with!

This must bear reminding, she only had 36 seconds of screen-time in the entirety of season one. 36 seconds, little over half a minute. And it’s spread across these three scenes in two episodes (excluded the cameo in Ozzie's):

Loo Loo Land (Scene 1): she didn’t want to get up with Stolas to tend to Octavia, and she hogs the blankets.

Loo Loo Land (Scene 2): She’s pissed at Stolas for cheating on her with an imp, throwing imps and stuff around

Harvest Moon Festival (Scene 3): She wants Stolas dead for cheating on her, hiring Striker

In my opinion, the only scene that could undeniably be considered evil in this scenario is her hiring Striker to kill Stolas, but even then, it’s fueled by her wanting revenge for his infidelity (or rather, cheating with an imp). The other two were subjective, and could be interpreted many ways. All that could really be established before ‘The Circus’ was her and Stolas’ relationship was already on the decline and the affair really pissed Stella to the point that she wanted him dead. Everything else has been pretty up to interpretation, and that’s the problem.

On top of there only being 36 seconds of Stella, this was all over the course of a season, which lasted a year (excluding the delayed ‘Queen Bee’ which aired nearly two years later), and it would be around nine months before she and the series returned in ‘The Circus’. With what little there was of her, people had to use their imagination to determine what kind of character she would be:

Would she be a psychotic elitist racist, driven mad by the humiliation and rage of being cheated on with an imp? Or is someone fueled by the human desire to keep up appearances, beaten into her by a draconic hierarchy of Goetias who frowns upon the first sight of weakness? Does she see her daughter as a chess piece, intending to use her to further her agenda, or mold her into a replica of herself? Or does she truly love her daughter, which factors into why she loathes Stolas for ‘shattering’ their family? Hell, were she and Stolas friends at one point, or at least acquaintances? And was she capable of speaking like a normal person instead of screaming almost all her lines?

There were so many ways Stella’s character could have been utilized, some of which I had seen done in several fanfictions and fan comics over the course of the series. With such possibilities created expectations and hype that probably got a bit too high, but surely, if at the very least, after a very decent season one, they wouldn’t mess this up?

Well, they did.

Of all the ways they could had gone with Stella, they settled for what I believe to be the lowest denominator of a personality which is simply:

‘I am evil… maniacal laugh’

Now, I can already hear someone saying:

‘Oh, you’re just mad that Stella didn’t turn out the way you wanted.’

Granted, that is a fair argument. Again, with how little we got of her and how long the wait between episodes are, it is possible that people had set their expectations too high and they got themselves overhyped. But counterpoint: this argument only works if the character still turned out good and you just weren’t happy with the end results.

Emphasis on ‘if the character still turned out good’.

This ‘characterization’ Stella got in ‘The Circus’ amounts to ‘She was evil from the day she was born, and she hates Stolas. She hates Stolas very much.’ That’s it. That’s the rub. And following that episode, we could also add that ‘she’s dumb and narrow-minded, with her brother being a bit too infatuated with her’.

One of the big problems with this character we got is that it’s so flat. Like cardboard cutout-flat. This is infuriating because this is the same show that gave us characters that are layered and complex: you got a foul-mouth crazy clown in Blitzo who harbors a lot of guilt and self-hatred. You got a perverted demon prince in Stolas who might want something more with his impish plaything. You have a neurotic straight man in Moxxie, struggling with his own self-image. Hell, even Loona has some sort of a heart under that cold surly front. There’s also Millie, but that’s another issue for another day.

The point is, all these characters had depth and nuances to them… and Stella does not. I am not saying Stella being irredeemably evil is bad. There are several villains designed like this that are loved and applauded. In fact, later that year, we would get a villain like Stella, but done a lot better.

Jack Horner (Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022))

Meet Jack Horner. He is one of the three antagonists from ‘Puss In Boots: The Last Wish’. Compared to the far more sympathetic Goldilock and the Three Bears and the force of nature that is Death, Jack Horner is as evil as you can get, intending to use the Wishing Star to hoard all the magic to himself, callously treating his men as expendable till it comes down to just him, and is willing to do anything, going as far as to shoot a puppy (in the face by the way, why you ask), that even his ‘conscience’ (the Ethical Bug that’s clearly supposed to be Jiminy Cricket) outrights calls him a ‘irredeemable monster’. His response?

“Woah, woah. What took you so long, idiot?”

However, despite this, Jack is considered one of the best parts of the film, many finding him hilarious and hammy, yet somehow managing to be a menacing threat. But what made him stand out was at the time, there was this belief that irredeemable villains (or rather ‘evil for the sake of being evil’), examples being like the villains from the older Disney movies or from Saturday morning cartoons, were considered boring, less interesting than other villain archetypes, such as tragic villains or twist villains (which was Disney’s go-to for villains when not using generational trauma). Jack was considered a breath of fresh air, managing to be a memorable villain without needing any complexity or sympathetic qualities.

Now, where did Jack succeed and Stella fail?

To begin, it’s hard to make a fair comparison, as Stella is an antagonist from an indie animated adult series while Jack is from a film made by Dreamworks, and a part of a famous franchise that is Shrek. Be that as it may, I do strongly believe that Jack Horner is a good example of how to do a villain like Stella properly.

Now, Jack only has five and a half minutes of screen time and by god, does he make every scene he appears in count. Whether it’s John Mulaney’s voice-acting, the comedic timing, or just how he owns how evil he is. And he is given a backstory, where he was overshadowed by Pinocchio of all people, but the movie makes no attempt to try and make him sympathetic. They even lampshades this in a scene where he said he didn’t have much… and then proceeded to describe a very well-off lifestyle.

I do believe that why ‘I like tormenting you’ Stella doesn’t hit the same marks is that we initially had no clear indication that Stella is this horrid, irredeemable monster that hated Stolas just for breathing in season one. Sure, she wanted him dead for cheating, but this takes place in Hell, where murder and destruction happens on a daily basis. Aside from that, we had no idea how Stella treated Stolas before Blitzo came along, or how she is when she isn’t being pissed off.

Even then, all of Stella’s evilness in Season Two pretty much revolved around just hating on Stolas for no reason and wanting him dead. That’s it. It’s the same ‘Stolas is (insult)’ in the little time she has that would get old if it had time to get old. In fact, literally all but one scene with her revolves around Stolas of some sorts. The one scene that didn’t was her and Andrealphus interacting in ‘Western Energy’, and I would say that, aside from Stella being portrayed as stupid, her banter with Andrealphus was one of her better scenes and that’s a very low bar to set.

It is possible that this kind of characterization would have worked if Stella was just given more time in season one to establish this ‘I like tormenting you’ mentality. I’m not saying add her in every episode willy-nilly, but if she had even a minute or two more of screen time they could have at least made her characterization in The Circus easier to digest and nip all the hype and rampant interpretations in the bud. Another idea, though harder to pull off, would have been to just remove her from the season altogether. She was already barely in the show to begin with, and maybe with some tweaking, she could have made her debut in season two, since that’s when she became more prominent. That way, people aren’t left waiting nearly two years speculating what kind of person Stella is only to be disappointed.

Even then though, there’s no guarantee that doing this would had salvaged canon Stella, as there’s a very glaring problem that would be:

Point #2: Screams of Silence: The Story of Stolas G.

Trigger Warning: Domestic Abuse and Implied Rape

In ‘The Circus’, there are two scenes here that carry some very heavy implications. In the ‘Still Not Divorced’ party scene, as you may recall above, she says this line here:

And at the very end of the episode, when Stolas said they were getting the divorce…

Yeah, so it is pretty much shown that Stella is abusive to Stolas, both mentally and physically, and judging from Stella’s line at the party, it’s possible that Stella had also raped Stolas till they had conceived Octavia.

Now, this is a very dark and possibly interesting turn for the series: it is very rare to see a woman abusing a man in media, and considering how Stolas has homosexual leanings, that and the possible ‘rape’ could make for commentary regarding the awful things the LGBTQ+ community faced.

Honestly, it would have made for a good story… if this wasn’t Helluva Boss, a series that was supposed to be a comedy. A COMEDY. And here Viv and the writers go and drop both domestic abuse and rape in a show that would go on to have scenes like this:

Dicks in the wall (Exes and Oohs (S2, E3))

And this:

Not heard: Fizzarolli describing Ozzie’s dick (Oops (S2, E6))

Before people go and complain, I am aware that there have been dark scenes in otherwise light-hearted shows, and Helluva Boss is a black comedy, so dark stuff is to be expected. But there’s a very fine line you have to be careful of when inserting stuff, lest you have scenes like the attempted rape scene in Beethoven’s 2nd.

No. I am not making that up. In Beethoven’s 2nd, a family film mind you, there is a scene where a guy attempted to rape the eldest daughter. Nothing physical happens, just him locking her in the room with him, and Beethoven ends up saving her, but yeah, imagine finding something like that in a film aimed at kids.

Up to this point, Helluva Boss had been a show that didn’t take itself too seriously. Sure, there were some dramatic scenes here and there, especially when it came down to ‘Truth Seekers’ and ‘OZZIE’S’, especially regarding Blitzo and Stolas. But even then, it was mostly relationship drama, which is par for the course for most comedy series.

But the two things that are very dangerous to handle in a comedy series, if not done tactfully, is domestic abuse or rape, and now, Helluva Boss had pulled that pin on the proverbial grenade.

There are several problems with this and I will try to tackle them. First off, let’s address the ‘possible’ rape allegation.

Note how I have been saying ‘possible’ for the past few paragraphs? Well, here’s the thing: like Stella herself season one, it’s all up to interpretation. Yes, it’s possible to see where people drew the conclusion that Stella did what she did to Stolas, but it is also very possible that Stolas simply was not attracted and therefore saw no point in trying to enjoy it. Whether this is because he was gay (fun fact: Stolas has not been officially confirmed to be gay. Look it up. I mean, it’s obvious he’s not straight, but it’s possible he could still be bi (or pan). So if you wanna ship girls with Stolas, go nuts), or were simply not into Stella in particular, no one can say for certain.

Also, there’s a line that I feel people either hadn’t noticed or ignored in Stella’s conversation:

“I’m glad one egg fell out of me, so I could stop pretending to want to fuck his scrawny twig ass.”

Unlike Stolas being bad in bed, this line pretty much spelt it out that Stella didn’t want to have sex with Stolas either. But since an heir is what was expected of them, they pretty much had to, with Stella probably being the one who had to make the effort. A fellow critic, Schjiro, explained it to me as ‘Emotionless Fornication’, where neither party had any feeling whatsoever when engaging in intercourse. So, as far as we know, neither party wanted to do it, but had to in order to produce a precautionary heir, with Stella being the one to make the effort. Again, it is possible to see how one drew the horrid conclusion, but one thing to remember is that implication does not mean facts. Not to mention if Stella really did ‘rape’ Stolas, this would in turn mean that Octavia was a product of rape, and that is a new level of dark that I feel Helluva Boss is very ill-equipped to tackle. And even then, why is no one paying attention to the fact that Stella herself didn’t want to have sex with Stolas? That I will cover in the next point.

Now, for the domestic abuse aspect of the relationship.

Unlike the rape, there’s less room for implications, as canon Stella really took no prisoners when it comes to laying out the verbal abuse. And with it comes mental abuse. That part is covered. However, when it comes to physical abuse… that is where things get a bit wonky.

Aside from throwing objects at him in ‘Loo Loo Land’, this is the only instance in the series where Stella had physically attacked Stolas directly. Many fans/stans had taken how Stolas caught her hand so easily as her having done this many times in their marriage and Stolas had gotten so used to the physical abuse to expect it. While a plausible theory, one of the issues I have with this is if you recall that image from before...

Stella’s slap could have been seen a mile away. Now, arguably, Stolas could have just taken it, having grown accustomed to the abuse, but it’s just as plausible that Stolas caught it because it was so easily choreographed. Even then, there’s another issue I have with this.

Can Stella even physically hurt Stolas? No, I’m serious here. Can Stella actually hurt Stolas and make him bleed and stuff? It is something I have seen in many fanarts depicting the abuse, but the thing is, it was established in ‘Harvest Moon Festival’ that demon royalty can only be killed by blessed weapons. However, the show never establishes if the same rule applies to being hurt.

What I mean is, there has never been an in-show occurrence where Stolas was hurt by anything that wasn’t a blessed weapon. The only time we ever see Stolas being hurt by something at all is in this Instagram post here (after ‘Truth Seekers’):

Stolas apparently needed his arm bandaged due to a bear trap. Now, this would have made Stella being a physical abuser work… but the thing is: the instagram posts aren’t exactly canon. They do allude to things that do happen in the series proper but I believe Viv went on record to say that they were mostly for fun and weren’t to be taken seriously. So that’s a bust. But even if Stolas was able to be hurt by normal means, there’s another problem: look at ‘Western Energy’:

Striker using a ‘blessed’ weapon (Western Energy (S2, E4))

Striker here was using a blessed weapon to torture Stolas, and was gonna use it to kill him (until Stella called off the hit). And because of it, Stolas was in pretty bad shape. Now, it could be argued that Striker made his dagger ‘blessed’ so that when torturing Stolas, it would hurt more, inflicting maximum pain before going for the kill. But the thing is…

Stolas, tortured to an inch of his life by blessed weapons, was completely and utterly fine within a week as of 'Oops'. And yes, it has been a week. Earlier in ‘Oops’, Striker flat out states that he had a ‘royal on the ropes just last week’ (being Stolas). Like god damn, if Stolas could easily shrug off injuries inflicted by blessed weapons, what does that say for anything Stella could do? It’s not like Stella’s hands are made of blessed metal. And Stella has not been shown to have any sort of powers or abilities that could be considered harmful.

Now, I’m not saying that men can’t be abused by women, clearly they can. And there has been a couple of times in media it has happened. But the problem I am having is Stolas time and time again is proven to be a powerful demon prince capable of fucking shit up, yet we are expected to believe that Stella could ever lay a hand on Stolas.

In fact, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say Stella abusing Stolas would be like if Lois Lane was abusive to Superman. Like, be a total piece of shit all you want to this person, the only reason you’re still kicking is because the other guy is too polite, too chicken-shit, or just doesn't care enough to raze you into the ground.

The only edge Stella would have on Stolas is the fact that she is more social and being a woman, she could easily play the wounded gazelle and manipulate the Ars Goetia family into turning on Stolas, not to mention there’s Octavia to consider, arguably Stolas’ biggest Kryptonite by far. However, even then, that’s debatable, on the fact that Stolas by all accounts should outrank Stella.

If Stolas and Stella’s marriage failed, it would more than likely be blamed on Stella more than anything, and as Andrealphus pointed out, she would end up with nothing. And to be frank, it’s not like Stolas had been facing any actual legal repercussions for his affair with Blitzo. As it stands, Stella is only a threat to Stolas… because the writers want her to be. Never mind that Stolas is stronger, has more importance and the fact that Stella is pretty much a joke next to her, which makes the fact that we’re supposed to fear her as this domestic abuser even more laughable. And on that side note, if Stolas is a battered spouse who suffered under Stella for so long, why the hell did he agree to meet her and Andrealphus at that cafe? You would think that a victim of abuse, even if they had gathered the courage to leave, would think twice before agreeing to meet a person that physically and verbally abuses you. Especially if it leads to an assassin kidnapping you and torturing you.

Even then, that barely scratches the surface of why this domestic abuse angle doesn't work.

Now, as it had been established, canon Stella as of now has little personality beyond hating Stolas and being a psycho bitch. The line ‘I like tormenting you’ sold that pretty well. But here’s the thing though:

The face of an awful domestic abuser… apparently

Am I expected to believe that this woman is a heartless abuser, let alone take her seriously?

Remember, this series was meant to be a comedy, and Stella, in every other scene except the one at the end of ‘The Circus’, had been established as a loud-mouthed, crass, entitled, bratty bully. You know, the kind of antagonist you expect out of a comedy. Yet, here they are, trying to shoehorn in a domestic abuse plotline that’s supposed to be taken as serious. If this was in a series like Bojack Horseman, or hell, even a younger-focused series like Avatar: The Last Airbender, where drama and serious storytelling take priority over funny moments, this might have worked.

But the thing is, there’s a reason abusive women characters worked. Case in point:

Lady Tremaine & Mother Gothel

These two are probably some of the first characters that come to mind when you think of abusive characters. And they share a lot of similarities to Stella herself. Granted, their abuse was more aimed at children rather than a spouse, but they are good templates for what makes a good ‘abusive’ character.

Lady Tremaine (otherwise known as The Stepmother) is a status-focused woman who carries herself with a sense of superiority and smugness (not unlike Stella) strongly mistreated her stepdaughter Cinderella, forcing her to serve her and her biological daughters as a servant. While we don’t see this abuse on-screen (as this was a Disney movie for kids), every time she was on screen, you worry for Cinderella, especially in scenes like when she is talking to Cinderella from her bed in the bedroom, when she raises her voice. Her scenes are pretty much devoid of the light-heartedness and comedy you expect out of a film with talking mice, and despite never raising a hand towards Cinderella, she’s god-damn scary, and is considered one of Disney’s better villains, up there with the likes of Maleficent (who by the way, would be voiced by the same voice actress years later). And like Stella, she isn’t given a sympathetic backstory (though the live action remake many decades later would try to humanize her), and while nowadays, she might not be as compelling, she’s the poster child for the Wicked Stepmother archetype.

Mother Gothel is portrayed in a way more akin to how abusers would act in real life. When we first meet her, it’s established that she’s a selfish vain woman obsessed with maintaining her youth, hoarding a magical flower for herself to do so. And when this flower was taken and used to cure the ailing queen, Gothel goes as far as kidnapping the queen’s baby Rapunzel, who retained the flower’s power, when she couldn’t simply take her hair. Since then, Mother Gothel raised Rapunzel as if she was her own and pretty much emotionally and psychologically manipulates her into staying within the tower, her roots taking hold so deep that Rapunzel herself dare not defy her, out of fear of being a bad daughter to her, and Gothel does all this with such a saccharine demeanor. However, there are moments where the mask slips, like at the end of her song ‘Mother Knows Best’ where she flat out told her never to ask to leave the tower again, or towards the climax of the film, where she willingly put Rapunzel in danger with the Stabbington Brothers just to prove her point and scare her into coming back with her. But the mask is pretty much off when Rapunzel wises up to her manipulations and she flat out willing to force her into servitude to her just so she can maintain her youth forever. Oh, and side note, in the animated series, she abandoned her own biological daughter so she could steal and hide Rapunzel. Real mother of the year there. I’m not a psych expert, so I can’t go into all how Mother Gothel is a stellar example of an abusive villain, but someone that Stella wishes she could be.

So why does Stella not work like these two? Well, a major factor to consider is: domestic abuse is not a joking matter. Lady Tremaine and Mother Gothel are characters that are often written in a way that they are treated as serious threats, with their horrible actions never played for laughs. Sure, Gothel does have a few funny moments, but it never takes away from the horrible things she did in the film. This is often applied to almost every abusive character in media, from cartoons to movies. When done properly, the abusive characters are almost never played for laughs, and their abusive actions, be it towards spouses or children, are never taken lightly. If abuse is ever treated as a joke, it is usually done in poor taste… or you’re South Park or someone into edgy humor.

Stella doesn’t work because she is a supposed abuser in a show that plays physical abuse for laughs. In other words, she is:

Jeffrey Fecalman (Family Guy, Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q. (S10, E3))

Jeffrey Fecalman, or just Jeff, is a minor one-shot character that appeared in ‘Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q.’ (he did actually appear a few seasons earlier in a scene in ‘Jerome’s The New Black’) in the season ten episode of Family Guy, and hoo boy, this episode is considered one of Family Guy’s worst episodes for its very poor handling of the subject matter.

The problems were numerous: one, the abuse victim Brenda is the sister of Quagmire, who is infamous for his sexual exploits that would not fly today in the current tv environment, taking advantage of women just like his sister. Two, the way the main cast handled the situation is so awful, from victim blaming, to Joe the cop not arresting Jeff when he flat out is abusing her right in front of him, to deciding to kill Jeff on the belief that abusers never change, getting so much about domestic abuse wrong.

And lastly… well, Jeff is characterized as an unsympathetic piece of shit who beats Brenda over the littlest things, yet for some reason, Brenda refuses to leave him, and has no personality beyond that. Sounds familiar? Jeff is pretty much Stella, but over ten years earlier. And like Stella, Jeff is portrayed in such a ham-fisted way that he is impossible to take seriously as a domestic abuser. And that should be a warning that you have done something severely wrong.

Now, I should state this, because I recall a conversation on Twitter I had when talking about Stella a year ago, when I criticized just how too cartoony Stella was to be a domestic abuser. A person did call me out, saying that they knew someone just like Stella, down to her demeanor. I am by no means trying to say that people who behave just like Stella or Jeff can’t exist. After all, reality is stranger than fiction. And I am sorry that you had to put up with someone like that and I hope you’re doing well.

That being said, it does not take away from the fact that Jeff and Stella are terrible as abusive villains, not just because they act in such a way that’s impossible to take seriously, but because of the world/series they live in.

Jeff is a serious domestic abuser in Family Guy, a show that is infamous for all sorts of abuse that is always played for laughs, especially towards Butt Monkey poster child Meg Griffin. Hell, this episode is immediately after another infamous episode where Meg called out her family for their abuse… but then proceeds to stay and take the abuse so they wouldn’t lash out at each other. Needless to say, it’s no surprise that Family Guy got lambasted for this episode.

But what about Stella? Well, on top of Blitzo treating Moxxie like crap and disrespecting him time and time again, we get lovely scenes like this in the very next episode of Helluva Boss.

Shown: Loona kicking Blitzo in the balls (Seeing Stars (S2, E2))

In this also very divisive episode, Loona treats Blitzo, her adoptive father, like absolute dogshit, beating him up in the first image for offering constructive criticism over her job as a receptionist (which we never seen her do since the pilot), letting Octavia slip in and steal the book (probably out of spite for Blitz), disregarding Blitz’s orders to find Octavia until she had a ‘change of heart’ when Blitz and Stolas are taken to the studios, and lastly, Blitz, feeling sudden remorse for threatening to replace her (even though she dared him to do it) tries to apologize… only to get kicked in the balls. And mind you, this is right after a touching scene with Octavia, where Loona told her to cut her dad some slack (someone who she had zero interactions with beforehand) because they screwed up… when Blitz really hadn’t screwed up at all in the series that we had seen. It all comes off as very hollow.

And not once is Loona’s abuse and disrespect of Blitzo treated with a modicum of seriousness. Hell, I’ve seen many people rush to Loona’s defense, arguing that Loona was justified because of her past and that she didn’t like being touched. Hell, one person tries arguing that Blitzo used micro-aggression. I got the whole ‘media literacy is dead’ for speaking up about Loona’s behavior. It’s all something that we are supposed to just laugh and find amusing…

One question though… WHERE THE FUCK WAS ANY OF THIS DEFENSE FOR STELLA?!

This is the very reason domestic abuse is not something you can just drop in a show, let alone a comedy that uses physical slapstick as a joke. Because if you drop in a domestic abuse story and play it straight for an episode, but then turn around and do an episode where another person do the same shit for the funnies, it causes a massive tone inconsistency (something Helluva Boss is infamous for now) and confusion, making people wonder if they are supposed to laugh or take things seriously. Even then, doing the abuse for the funnies gets old real quick, which is a problem Family Guy constantly combats with to this day.

Simply put, if you’re going to make a villain an abuser, you best be prepared to handle them seriously, and make sure it doesn’t go against the kind of show you’re running. Otherwise, don’t get mad when people get upset.

That being said, now is the time to tackle the last problem about Stella:

Point #3: Making Stella look bad so Stolas looks good

A very common complaint that people had concerning Stella following ‘The Circus’ was that Stella was written the way she was so that Stolas, her husband and one of the main characters, would appear better in terms of morality. And hoo boy, there is so much truth to this statement than you realize.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s get familiar with Stolas.

Stolas Goetia is a prince from the Ars Goetia family, based on the demon of the same name. He is Stella’s husband, and the father of Octavia, and his affair with Blitzo is a major plot point within the series.

He’s a very divisive character in the fandom: either you love him and would die for him… or you think he’s the worst thing ever and should go die in the ditch. Regardless, his character in season one was one of intrigue: he is similar in some ways to Stella, treating imps, Blitzo included, as lesser races, and constantly flirts (to a very uncomfortable degree) and condescends Blitzo on several occasions. In fact, some fans goes as far as to say he’s sexually coercing Blitz, if the nature of their deal is anything to go by (to make a long story short, in ‘Murder Family’, he proposed the infamous full moon deal where he and Blitz must have sex for the book… while Blitz is running for his life from Satanist cannibals). Yeah, not a very good look.

Not to say he was without good points, as he loves his daughter Octavia dearly, but Stolas is a very flawed individual whose affair and behavior had an effect on the people around him, Stella and Octavia included, and it was for these flaws that he and Blitz were called out in ‘House of Asmodeus’ and Stolas ends up creating a rift between him and Blitz as a result of it. While Stolas may be divisive, his character was complex and intriguing, and hey, it’s not everyday that you see a flawed queer character in media. The keyword being ‘was’. Yeah, Stella wasn’t the only victim of ‘The Circus’.

Pictured: A very sad boi (The CIrcus (S2, E1))

So, as mentioned in Point #1, ‘The Circus’ served as the backstory of Stolas, revealing how he was arranged to marry to Stella at a young age, and to get him to cease his ‘bitch crying’ from his less than stellar father, he took him to the eponymous ‘circus’, where Stolas meets Blitzo as a kid (that’s an issue for another day), Paimon ‘buys’ Blitzo for a day and Blitzo’s dad have him rob the place with no consequences and serve no purpose other to maybe let Blitzo know that Stolas had a grimoire?

25 years later, we find out Stella is always a P.O.S. and Blitzo comes back into his life, and rather than it being a sordid affair that happened all the sudden… it is now Stolas really misread the situation and thought Blitz was coming onto him and Blitz only fucked him out of pity (another issue for another day). We then cut to the next morning, where we get a recap of the pilot scene with Stella, except Stolas proudly brag that it was the ‘sound of a fucking divorce’, which contrasts how apologetic he was in ‘Loo Loo Land’ (Vivienne said it was a ‘high’ Stolas was experiencing at the moment but eh…).

Then we cut to the present day, and the scene above. Stolas is sad, takes antidepressants, and begins to ‘lament’ about his love life. Except, he’s not lamenting how badly he hurt Blitz or anything… he lamenting how he misread Blitzo not being in love with him. I mean, that is a problem, but not the right one to be focusing on.

Anyways, the song ends with Stella’s interruption, and we get the infamous ‘I like tormenting you’ scene, but there’s a line here that bears reading:

“I know what I did. I would feel bad if I hurt you, but we both know I didn’t do that. You and I were arranged for one reason; to birth a precautionary heir to the Goetia family, nothing more. I tried so many years to make it comfortable for us; to have this family, but it was never enough. The only reason I have endured your constant insults and cruelty was for that girl to have a normal life… I cannot do this anymore. I want you out. Now.”

Stolas

So… yeah, you may notice how unbelievably ‘sad’ Stolas was portrayed in this episode. Well, I hope you enjoy this sad gay owl because this is Stolas’ character now. That’s right, gone is the complex, morally dubious owl who arranged a deal with this random imp to fuck him for his book, whose affair that strained his relationship with his daughter and made his wife want to kill him. Here now is a wangsty owl who’s sad that the imp he knew only for a day, who robbed him and then try to rob him again of his grimoire only to fuck him out of pity, and is a poor, poor victim of his evil wife who he was forced to marry and couldn’t divorce for some reason for his daughter.

And this here marks one of the major reasons I did not like the direction they took with Stella. By making Stella a flat evil gay husband beater of a wife, they’re absolving Stolas of his affair with Blitzo. If you think I’m overexaggerating, just take a look at this line in ‘Western Energy’

“Andrealphus, cheating implies there was a betrayal. This woman never gave two shits about me or our very much arranged marriage. As far as I’m concerned, this divorce is far overdue.”

Stolas

Like I said, absolving him of cheating. I’m not going to get into the argument of whether or not it’s morally correct to cheat on someone who treats you like crap. However, I’m of the belief that two wrongs don’t make a right. His cheating may or may not have hurt Stella, but it certainly hurt Octavia, and I find it weird that he apologizes to Octavia for his affair (that he continued to have) but not the woman he cheated on. Not to mention, as of time of writing, he isn’t brought to task on any of his other wrongdoings so far in season two.

He doesn’t reflect on his elitism and racism towards imps, he doesn’t reflect on how his cheating had hurt his family, or how kinda messed up his deal with Blitzo is. He’s just sad that Blitz doesn’t share his feelings. Hell, they never even had that conversation about their falling out after Ozzie’s, unless you count the text messages at the end of ‘Western Energy’. I mean, it could change with ‘Full Moon’, the very next episode to be released, but I’m not feeling hopeful.

Back to Stella, it speaks volumes how at the same time Stolas is made to be this poor sad perpetual victim, Stella is made to be this psychotic abuser. Which really sucks because Vivienne said that Stolas and Stella was supposed to be this whole thing where not one person was in the complete right. Yet, here we are, with Stolas being good and Stella being evil, with no nuance, complexity, or all that jazz. It definitely doesn’t help that Stella only had 36 seconds of screen time while Stolas had way more, making the imbalance even worse.

Not to mention that in ‘Loo Loo Land’, Octavia flat out mentioned that they didn’t used to hate each other. Yet from what we saw in ‘The Circus’, Stella… always hated Stolas. This could mean one of three things: one, Stolas somehow managed to hide the fact that Stella hates and possibly abuses him for 17 years. Two, Octavia is so sheltered and god-damn oblivious (or stupid) that she could not see her mom obviously hating on her father. Or three, this line was completely forgotten by Vivienne and her writers and should be disregarded. Any of these three does not scream good writing in my eyes.

While a simple black and white dynamic isn’t the worst thing, that was not what was set up. Stolas was flawed. Stella was flawed. They were both shitty people who handled their dysfunctional relationship poorly and it hurt their daughter. To simply change that into where the closeted gay owl is in the right while the evil straight swan woman is in the wrong just comes off as boring.

Another issue I have with this is… why is Stolas getting the preferential treatment? Yes, Stolas is the one being abused and insulted by the woman she was forced to marry… but that doesn’t quite change the fact that Stella herself was forced into the same arranged marriage. She was forced to produce a precautionary heir with Stolas. As TV Tropes put it, she’s drowning in the same pool as Stolas, and there’s that whole incestuous vibe going on with Andrealphus going on, implying not so good things. Yet, Stella is given no sympathy, not from the writers, not from a lot of the fans, nothing. I’m not saying Stella is justified in her horrible actions, she’s not, but the fact is a lot of fans just write her off because the writers chose to depict her as this flat villain. There are examples of many villains that would go on to do horrible things but have sad and/or tragic backgrounds that while does not justify their actions, it allows you to understand how they got to be the way they are.

Examples include a lot of the rogues’ gallery from Batman or Spiderman, Azula from ‘The Last Airbender’, Goro Akechi from ‘Persona 5’, Tai Lung from ‘Kung Fu Panda’ or Lord Shen from the sequel, Homelander or Soldier Boy from ‘The Boys’. Hell, Jack Horner from earlier would count. The list goes on and on. There are villains who go on to do the most heinous things, in spite of their backstories, yet they would all go on to have fans who like them.

Which brings to another point that irks me: the treatment the fans of Stella get. If you had been in the Helluva Boss or Hazbin Hotel fandom long enough, you would find that it is not a friendly place. I won’t get too much into it, but let’s just say criticism, good faith or not, was a big no-no, and questioning the questionable choices Viv and her writers make will get you harassed or labeled a misogynist or a homophobe.

When ‘The Circus’ came out, anyone who voiced their liking for Stella got it pretty bad, as fans/stans took anyone who liked her as a problematic person who supports her horrible actions and hates gays like Stolas or something to that effect. While it could be possible that some people do think that, others certainly don’t. And it really sucks because Stella fans get it the worse, especially compared to other abusive characters’ fans, such as Crimson (a homophobic mob boss who flat out hits his son on screen and murdered his wife) and Valentino (a pimp who rapes Angel Dust, a fan favorite). It was ostracizing to many fans who just wanted to enjoy their favorite character.

And I feel as the series goes on, it will probably get worse.

Closing words

So, where does that leave us now?

Well, unless someone from the development side of things speaks up, we will never know for sure what decisions were made that lead to the characters we are given today, but what we do know for certain is Stella got shafted. And shafted good.

An abysmally low screentime of 36 seconds in season one alone. Many ways that her story could have developed, only to go with the most barebone and arguably laziest direction imaginable. Even then, her character archetype was done better by villains such as Jack Horner. Her being an abuser and a possible rapist clashes with the tone of the show, as well as her given character, and again is done much better by other characters.And worse of all, her fans get shat on by other fans of the show.

As of today, she is a one note flat villain who serves no purpose but to make Stolas more sympathetic in spite of all of his problems that are still unaddressed and to now play second fiddle to her brother who literally was dropped into the show with no fanfare but a tweet from over a year earlier. We still have no idea what her relationship is to her daughter, but it is safe to assume that it will probably not be good (or if it is good, it would be because Octavia cannot see how obviously evil Stella or her brother is) and that’s even if it gets touched upon at all.

While there are other issues plaguing Helluva Boss (such as the treatment of female characters, especially Millie and Loona, or the fact that a show about imps running a murder business has hardly any imps running a murder business), Stella stands out as a shining example of how to botch a possibly compelling antagonist, and serves as a bitter reminder of what we could had versus what we have now.

Now, I should state that a lot of this is introspection and opinions on my part, and I’m sure if I were to show this to people on Twitter, they would rip it apart and call me a media illiterate fool who knows jack-shit about anything, and that’s if they don’t try to harass and dox me for talking at lengths about Stella of all people. Who knows with this fandom nowadays,

If you do not agree with any of this, I am more than willing to hear you out, but I won’t promise that I will change my stance. It’s all about having an open dialogue.

As for why I did all this? I cannot say for certain, but I guess I just wanted to share my two cents on why Stella failed so hard as a character for me, and how I wished she could have been so much better than what we ended up getting. That and possibly out of spite to all the people who insulted me for having opinions about this show and how Viv lets all of that bullshit go unchecked.

Well, I guess that is all for now. I guess I will see you all the next time I decide to try and do something like this again. If I ever try to do something like this again. Who knows. Thanks for reading and hearing me out. Also, I do want to apologize if all of this looks wonky to you, first time posting an actual blog and due to the image limit, I had to fix a few things so it would make sense. If there's any issues, let me know.

#helluva boss criticism #helluva critical #vivziepop critical #helluva boss critique #helluva boss critical #s

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