#this thing is getting out of control pls halp

[nehswritesstuffs]

ghosts speak in whispers and lies; can’t know what’s real ‘til you’re the one who’s died - Part Two

All I can say about this thing right now is holy shit.

The Hearts welcome the only other trusted crew into their midst, while Law is sucked further into the lie. [6687 words]

Luckily, the Thousand Sunny was not too terribly far from where the Polar Tang had landed and was able to make the trip over in a relatively short amount of time, arriving just before dinner. It was all the Straw Hats could do to stop Luffy from breaking down the door to the submarine, the teen absolutely panicked about the state their friend was now in. They had elected to not move him from the table in the mess hall, instead putting a blanket over him and his bunched-up hooded sweatshirt under his head as a pillow for the time being.

“Hmm… I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like this,” Chopper frowned. It filled the Heart Pirates with dread—it wasn’t good when the reindeer looked puzzled, let alone admitted it. He had been briefed on everything that had happened and still it seemed like he had no answers. “I’ll have to cross-reference his collection and my own when it comes to parasites. Jean Bart?”

“Yes, Doctor Chopper?”

“How did the device work that took these things off the slaves in Mary Geoise?”

“It went between the person and the creature and seemed to forcibly rip it off—many people were injured when going through the process because of how it holds on the face.” He grew quiet, unnerved by the situation. “What do you suggest for now?”

“Well, we need to get him out of the mess hall for one,” Chopper decided. “I’m glad you didn’t move him until I made my preliminary assessment. He needs to get into the medbay with at least a sodium lactate drip. When was the last time he ate?”

“Last we’re aware: lunch yesterday,” Shachi noted. The reindeer’s eyes bugged and he shrugged guiltily. “Getting him to eat is sometimes an issue. You know how it is.”

“No, I don’t.” Chopper gestured to Luffy, who was crying in worry for his friend while still double-fisting slabs of meat that he was hoovering up like a menace. Oh, yeah, that was definitely a completely different sort of problem. “Do you have any TPN prepped?” Crickets. “You know: total parenteral nutrition? To make sure he’s getting regular nutrients while his esophagus is blocked?”

“You make it sound like there’s more doctors on the ship than just the captain,” Clione stated. Chopper groaned and transformed into Heavy Point, gingerly picking up Law. “We can help, but none of us are… you know…” Chopper tried to not roll his eyes—expecting too much medically out of Law’s crew was tantamount to expecting medical assistance out of the Straw Hats, which was anywhere from adequate to… lacking, to say the least.

“I’m going to get him set up—Robin, could you please get some TPN bags from the fridge in the Sunny? Everyone else, I’m going to need some space in order to take care of him properly. He’s allowed two visitors at a time, okay?”

“Torao…get better soon!” Luffy demanded as Zoro carried him out of the mess hall, still attempting to eat. Bepo and Jean Bart led Chopper to the medbay, where the younger doctor placed his colleague on the bed.

“Where does he keep his medical volumes?” Chopper asked.

“They’re in his room—I can bring you there once we’re sure he’s stable,” Bepo said. Jean Bart looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Sorry, but I think the captain will understand.”

“I’m sure he will,” Jean Bart nodded. The pair helped Chopper get acclimated to their medbay and watched as he hooked up Law to a couple monitors and put the IV in his forearm, the sodium lactate drip going almost as soon as Robin arrived.

“Here you are, Chopper,” she said, using her Devil Fruit ability to hold three bags in three separate hands. “I got more than one since I don’t think this is going to be solved within a day.”

“Thanks; you can put the others in the fridge there,” Chopper said, taking one of the bags and gesturing towards the wall. Robin put the spare bags in the refrigerator and watched in silence as Chopper connected the bag to the IV line. Jean Bart noticed her stare and things clicked into place.

“I’m going to make sure that everyone is keeping a cool head,” he decided out loud. “Both our crews are fond of the captain for good reason. Have Bepo fetch me if I’m needed.”

“Thanks!” Chopper seemed genuinely thankful, which put the man at-ease. Once he had left, Robin moved into the space he had occupied. She stared at Law contemplatively and it caught the attention of the Mink.

“Are you okay, Miss Robin?” Bepo wondered. She nodded.

“He looks… wrong.”

“Don’t worry—the captain’s strong like you wouldn’t believe,” the bear assured. He placed his paw on her shoulder in solace, though the one who reacted was Chopper.

“What’s going on?” he wondered. “Is something wrong?”

“Torao and I… worked closely together while we were headed to Zou and Wano… while you were going to rescue Sanji,” Robin stated. Chopper didn’t know much about Humans and their emotions, but he was getting better at reading between the lines: something romantic happened at the very least, though to what degree he was unsure. Robin was working through something, though what he didn’t want to know unless she specifically opened up about it, and considering she used the voice she did when she didn’t want to reveal everything at once… well…

“Oh, I understand,” Chopper nodded. He hummed quietly and made a few notes on his chart. “Bepo? Can you show me Torao’s library is kept? I should get to work on figuring out what this is; Robin’s watched over patients for me before.”

The bear quickly obliged, leading Chopper out of the medbay and down the hall. Robin sat quietly with the steady beeping of the monitors; if she concentrated, she could almost hear Law’s breathing. She gently picked up his hand in hers and began to lightly trace the blackwork tattoos, glad that Chopper put the IV in his inner forearm to avoid the ink.

“I know you likely can’t hear me,” she said, “but I want to at least say that Chopper is doing everything in his power to make sure this weird creature doesn’t melt your brain or eat your innards.” He continued to lay there, immobile and unresponsive. The only comforts she had was that his hand was still warm and the monitors doing their job. “I still don’t regret going with Luffy, you know. Maybe next time you’ll think before you get into trouble. You of all people know how terrible it is to be left behind.”

Law still did not answer.

“If you don’t wake up soon, Luffy’s going to try to do something about it.”

Again, nothing; if anything was to work if he was somehow faking, it would be invoking Luffy. His silence confirmed leagues of information for Robin, though the most troubling fact was something to do with her and nothing else. She hated to see him like this and she had to wonder how deep it truly went. With any luck, she wouldn’t have to find out the hard way.

She did not know if she could be left behind again.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Alcohol flowed freely on the Going Luffy-senpai as the newly formed Straw Hat Fleet partied to celebrate having escaped Dressrosa and the certain death that would have welcomed them had they stayed a moment longer. It was a wonderful party, one that easily presented many opportunities to slip away from the main proceedings.

Below deck, Law walked out of the bathroom and looked up and down the corridor to see if there was anyone there—he was alone. That worked in his favor, honestly, as it allowed him to find a bit of peace and quiet to recharge himself with minimal pressure. After having been with the Straw Hats for what felt like ages, plus the varied others who came with them, he needed some time alone before he screamed.

Opening a door, he found that he had only stumbled upon Nico Robin as she studied the contents of the map room. He raised an eyebrow—it looked like she was stealing the only semi-navigable maps the ship possessed.

“I thought it was your crewmate who’s a cat burglar,” he quipped. She simply smiled.

“Who do you think these are going to once we arrive at Zou?” she replied. Fuck—she had him there. Actually, he wasn’t entirely sure if it was the booze or something else, but Nico Robin… she wasn’t bad to have around. “Are you doing alright, Torao? You look a bit pale.”

“Haven’t had that much alcohol in a while,” he admitted. “I’m not normally a lightweight, but that idiot with a hard-on for your captain has some strong stuff in his stores.”

“Yes, I do give him that.” She watched as he closed the door behind him, making it only the two of them in the small room. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll beat you up?”

“No,” he mumbled, avoiding eye contact. His face felt hot from both booze and blush; she was either good at masking being drunk as well, or her tolerance was far beyond his. “I wanted to… uh…” He swallowed hard. “Nico-ya, can I kiss you?”

“An interesting question,” she noted. “Might I ask why?”

“I remember seeing your bounty poster as a child, not long after it came out,” he said. Fuck, words would not stop spilling out of his mouth, Nika help him, and it was complicating things even more. “The sisters at the school used it to warn us about being naughty, that we’d get a bounty just like you. It terrified my classmates into behaving all the way to the end.”

“…and what did the young Torao believe?” she asked, moving closer to him. She placed her hands on his shoulders, then cradled his face, making him look directly at her. He began to tremble and his voice grew raspy.

“I thought that was the coolest shit ever.”

In half a moment, Robin popped up on her toes and leaned in to kiss Law. She materialized an arm out of his back so she could hold his head in place as she ran three hands’ worth of fingers in his hair. Two additional false arms pulled him in closer, all while he struggled to figure out how to both kiss back and find an appropriate place for his hands. Their hesitation melted away as they kissed, the pair breathlessly breaking apart only when they realized that they were getting dizzy.

“Here I was afraid you were with Cyborg-ya,” he chuckled incredulously. She shook her head.

“Franky? He’s just a friend. A very odd friend.”

“Then I guess he won’t mind if I kiss you again?”

“He doesn’t even need to know.”

Law took that as his cue and kissed her again, becoming intoxicated from more than just their host’s choice in alcohol. He walked Robin back into the wall next to the door, pausing just long enough for her to protest, only to find that she instead pulled him even closer. She slid one of her legs between his and felt his growing erection throb against her, chuckling at her find. “Do you have the necessary equipment to take care of this?”

His brain stalled; the what…? Oh…

“I wasn’t even certain that I’d get a kiss. Besides, I…!”

“MISS ROBIN?!” The pair froze at the sound of Bartolomeo’s booming voice in the corridor. “MISS ROBIN?! WE’RE ABOUT’TA TELL STORIES DETAILING YOUR VICTORY AT ENIES LOBBY! DIDJA WANNA COME?!”

Robin pressed a finger to Law’s lips and suddenly he could hear her voice out in the corridor, leading Bartolomeo away from the map room. Once it sounded like they were out of danger, the pair leaned into one another and giggled quietly. He hesitated before burying his face in her neck, not entirely believing his luck.

“Do you know a place where we’re more likely to… be alone…?”

“Why Torao, I thought you’d never ask.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It was lunchtime when Law finally got to sit down and relax, even if it was only for a short time. Penguin, Shachi, and Bepo had joined him in their favorite corner of the cafeteria, the four lazily eating their lunch over a shared break.

“Sooo… the big day’s coming up soon, isn’t it?” Penguin asked. Law shrugged.

“It’s just dinner.”

“Yeah, but you’re having Robin meet your family—that’s kind of a big deal,” Penguin replied. “It’s actually a pretty huge step if you ask me.”

“Why are you afraid of what my family is going to think of my girlfriend?” Law questioned. “I’d say it doesn’t concern you.”

“Except it does concern us,” Shachi said, “because ever since you and Robin started seeing one another, it’s like you’ve been a completely different person. In a good way.”

“Yeah, you’re living proof that getting kinky pussy on the regular changes a man,” Penguin added. “You’re not nearly as cranky as before.”

“You know, I’d prefer it if we didn’t talk about my sex life within potential earshot of people I’ve known since childhood,” Law grumbled. His brain went overtime into thinking about how many of the other hospital staff members there had known him as his parents’ son long before he even gained awareness of his surroundings. “You’re just jealous I even have one.”

“Pffft, nah,” Penguin scoffed, shrugging off the accusation.

“We’re proud that you have yourself a girlfriend, what do you mean?” Shachi added.

“They’re both extremely jealous and wonder what you did to score Robin,” Bepo deadpanned through his food. Ah! Fucking traitor! “Very specifically they wonder whose dick you had to suck.”

“You two are the worst,” Law groaned. Both Penguin and Shachi turned beet red at that, piss completely taken out.

“Hey, come on,” Shachi whined. “It’s just… like… you’re fucking perfect and it’s rough on us normies’ self-esteem some days.”

“Yeah,” Penguin added. “You’re smart, handsome, tall, got that deep voice and talented hands—no wonder Robin’s agreeing to meet your family.”

“…and how would you know I’ve got the kind of ‘talented hands’ she’d enjoy?”

“Dude, it’s completely and totally normal to notice the fact that you’ve got long fingers when you start twirling a pen or are pointing to incisions on patients,” Penguin defended. “Besides, you’re only a surgeon because you’re good with your hands.”

“It’s more than that, but thanks for the vote of confidence,” Law replied sarcastically. “I’m just lucky that Robin doesn’t hate Sora.”

“Yeah! Not even that she doesn’t hate it! She doesn’t think still being a fan at our age is weird!” Penguin stabbed the air with a fry for emphasis. “Smoking hot, tolerant of hobbies, and smarter than you too! We couldn’t get that even in a million years!”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Law scolded. “You’re making it sound like we’re some sort of power couple.”

“Peng, he’s gonna have the smartest, most gorgeous children in all the Cardinal Blues, and he doesn’t even realize it,” Shachi whined. “Fuck, I wonder what it’s like to be that oblivious.”

“I’m not oblivious…”

“Dude, you’re fucking oblivious,” Penguin replied, backing up Shachi. “Tell ‘im, Bep.”

“You’re all oblivious,” Bepo said, hitting all three friends’ egos with laser-precision. “Law’s so stupidly in love that he can’t think straight, but he’s not the only one. Penguin, don’t tell me that you haven’t noticed the blond at the gym, and Shachi’s had his eye on the lady in the gift shop for a while now.”

“You’re cruel,” Shachi mumbled, absolutely devastated. “To be honest, I don’t know who’s worse.”

“I think after the Captain and Miss Robin get married, I’m gonna go home for a bit,” Bepo grumbled. “I wanna meet a cute bear and there’s no bears here, let alone any other Minks.”

“If you opened up your horizons, there would be plenty in the dating pool,” Penguin noted.

“I’m not attracted to Humans and you know that,” Bepo whined. He began to argue with Penguin and Shachi, with Law slowly ignoring their words. None of them knew what it was like, and how could they? The goobers only knew lust and Bepo went through puberty far from anyone even capable of catching his eye. He thought of Robin coming back from her conference and how lonely it must have been for her—if only because he knew how lonely it was for himself—and what he might do to welcome her back. He only snapped back to the conversation at-hand when Shachi waved a hand in front of his face and caught his attention.

“Yo, Captain, stop thinking of your other meals and start concentrating on this one,” he joked. Law scowled at him—it wasn’t funny. “Now, are you going to tell us what the schedule looks like for the outgoing month? I want to see if we can get in a crew camping trip before the snows fly.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Chopper had called a joint meeting of the Straw Hat and Heart Pirates to discuss the situation Law was in. Everyone crammed into the Polar Tang’s mess hall, with crews interspersed amongst each other. Although he acknowledged right off the bat that patient privacy was essential under normal conditions, the extenuating circumstances of the situation made this a bit different than usual.

“The thing that’s attached to Torao’s face is a very rare type of shell-less mollusk that is most-often seen being created via a Devil Fruit,” the young doctor said. He placed a book on the table, open to a page with a drawing of another specimen, presumably latched onto the face of a slave. “The good news is that we have the ability to save him; the bad news is that it’s very tricky.”

“What do you mean tricky?” Sanji wondered. “If it’s a mollusk it can be killed and eaten, right? Just throw some salt on it and it shrivels.”

“It’s not that simple,” Chopper explained. “I’ve corroborated Jean Bart’s first-hand accounts with multiple sources of written documentation—this thing does not give up its prey easily and attempts at doing so can be lethal.”

“Prey?!” the Heart Pirates panicked.

“Yes—what’s happening to Torao is normally a mechanism by which they kill their food, by slowly starving them to death without them even realizing.” Chopper brought out another diagram, which was a cross-section of the creature. “While in this form, it’s just a parasite, feeding off the nutrients in his bloodstream. It has even grown since I began my observation. By continuing the intravenous care, we can keep both it and Torao alive for as long as we see fit, but that’s just it… it’s both of them.”

“…but what happens if you stop the treatment?” Clione wondered. “It’s not like we can keep doing this forever.”

“If we stop the treatment, then Torao will slowly die, and when he does, the parasite becomes a scavenger and will feed on his internal organs and use his corpse as a nest,” Chopper replied frankly. Everyone in the room went pale—what the fuck? “It’s likely used by Celestial Dragons to torture their slaves because of the toxin that it emits while keeping the victim incapacitated. What better way to break someone’s spirit but to show them how good their life could be, only to remind them that they’re still a slave?”

“That’s sick,” Nami frowned. “My question is: how did it get on Torao?”

“I don’t know if that’s the question we should be asking at this point since it takes away from the fact his life is in danger,” Ikkaku said. She grunted as she stared at the anatomical drawing of the creature—it looked nasty as hell. “Jean Bart said he knows these things can come off on their own. Do you know how to do it so we don’t hurt him?”

“The creature’s toxin can be overcome by the victim under certain circumstances,” Chopper said. “They’re sensitive to their victim’s brainwaves and will detach when it seems like its in danger of regaining awareness. That would surely mean getting hurt, since the victim would most likely try to pry it off and hurt the creature in the process. Hurt it while it’s still attached to him and we don’t know what kind of damage we’d do to Torao’s psyche, let alone if it will just try to hide inside him.”

“So Torao just needs to tell it to let him go?” Luffy asked, head cocked to the side as he thought. “I thought he would have done that by now.”

“It’s not that simple,” Chopper said. “According to sources, doing that involves the victim realizing that the dream they are experiencing is not real and using that as a jumping point to shatter that reality. Without that, Torao will keep dreaming until he dies.”

“He hasn’t been sleeping lately because of dreams,” Shachi offered. “The captain’s not exactly brimming with warm and fuzzy memories. Whatever has him in there has his ass good.”

“What kind of a life is better than this one?” Luffy wondered. Penguin sighed at that; Law was going to kill them all when he woke up.

“It’s not really our place to say, especially since I don’t know what he’s told all of you, but his hometown kind of went through two different genocide events and he’s possibly the only survivor. Something tells me that whatever that thing is having the captain see, it’s related to that stuff turning out different.”

“…but that would mean no Polar Tang! No Heart Pirates!” Uni huffed. “What kind of a life is that?!”

“A normal one,” Bepo said sadly. Everyone looked over at him and saw that he was picking at his paws as he stared at a spot on the floor. “Captain’s always wanted to be a doctor… maybe he’s dreaming about being a successful surgeon after never meeting us…” He sucked in a sniffle—the thought was almost too much to bear.

“Is there anything in your research about what we can do?” Jean Bart asked. Chopper grimaced.

“Yes and no,” he replied. “There is some thought to the idea that a victim who is aware of what’s going on from the beginning can have an easier time defeating it, but not a lot of research has been done in that regard. I highly doubt Torao knew any of it going in, and getting data on it is risky. The ethics alone surrounding using a control group in an experiment like that is dubious at-best…”

“…but, we might be able to help Torao,” Luffy said. “That is what you said, right Chopper?”

“Possibly…? I’m not entirely sure how though…”

“Let me go in.” The room went quiet as Robin stepped forward. “I can go into Torao’s dream with full knowledge of the parasite and help him escape. If the parasite is showing him what I think it is, then I know what he’s feeling—I can help.”

“…but Miss Robin,” Shachi frowned, “we don’t even know why this thing is on the captain.”

“You called us for help, correct? The let me help.”

“I dunno…” Chopper mused. “This is not a well-tested method. How do you know that you would be accessing Torao’s dream and not get sucked into your own?”

“You said it yourself: the creature is growing,” she replied. “If it latches onto both of us, it might be able to let me access Torao’s dream since it would have to sync our brainwaves in order to handle us both. Wouldn’t that make sense?”

“Well, yeah, if we were in a science fiction or fantasy novel…”

“…and if I don’t find him, then I escape my dream as quick as I can,” she assured.

“It’s a better plan than nothing,” Penguin said.

“You can’t, Robin,” Nami scowled. “That thing is killing Torao—if you allow it to touch you, it’ll be like signing up for the exact same fate.”

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Robin replied. “It’s a risk I’m sure many of us would take considering how Torao has helped us. Whomever goes in has to know what they’re doing.”

“Robin did pretend she was a bad guy for a long time before we came around,” Luffy noted aloud. He then nodded in approval. “But you better come back, okay?”

“It’s a promise, Captain,” Robin smiled. Luffy smiled back, his grin as wide and brilliant as ever.

“Alright! Now, who’s up for some lunch? Sanji! I’m hungry!”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Family Dinner Night, was—as it often was—awkward.

It wasn’t as though Law did not enjoy spending time with his parents and sister—that wasn’t the case. There was simply plenty more he could have been doing, could have been reading, could have been seeing without his family there making conversation as they shared a meal. Three times a week. It was almost too much for him to stomach.

“You should have seen Law-nii!” Lami said excitedly. She was explaining her afternoon to her parents, the pair amused at her enthusiasm. “Any time he had a complication, he used his Devil Fruit and bap! They were stabilized again!”

“I wonder when bap became a technical term,” her mother chuckled.

“I dunno, but it’s probably around the time our children got old enough for med school,” her father teased. He noted that Law was very quiet, picking at his potatoes almost sullenly. “Speaking of med school, I haven’t seen that face since before you were enrolled. What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing,” Law lied. He shoveled up some veg and stuffed it in his mouth. “Just a little lost in thought, I guess.”

“He misses Robin and his hand doesn’t cut it anymore,” Lami quipped. Law sat up straight and kicked his sister in the shin angrily—what the fuck?!

“Nika save us—kids, what have I told you?!” the mother hissed. “You’re both adults for seas’ sake!”

“Angela, they’re siblings. That’s what siblings do.”

“I know that, Lars, but they are both in their twenties! They should have cut this out a whole decade ago!”

“Relax—just let them be.”

“Yeah; it’s not my fault that she’s jealous I even have someone,” Law sniped. Now it was Lami’s turn to kick him under the table, which only served to irritate their mother further.

“That’s it,” she hissed. “Oath or not, I will end both of you if you don’t straighten up! It’ll be a miracle if either of you don’t mess it up at this rate.”

“Moer…”

“Don’t moer me, young man.” Law flinched slightly at how sharp his mother’s voice was, instead deciding it was worth spearing a bit of potato and shoving it in his mouth. She let out a breath and shook her head. “Don’t make me the bad guy. I don’t like being the bad guy.”

Law swallowed his food and mumbled, “Sorry I kicked you and reminded everyone you’re alone.”

Lami shifted in her chair. “Sorry I kicked you and made it clear I can hear you through the walls in the middle of the night.”

“I don’t know if that’s better, but you know what? I’m going to take it.” Their mother groaned in frustration before taking a long drink of her water. “Whoever said parenting adult children is easier was lying through their teeth.”

“That would be your cousin who, yes, lies through her teeth.” Law and Lami exchanged a glance; their father was treading on dangerous territory. Again. Instead of continuing, however, he cleared his throat and picked up his own water glass. “So, kids, any thoughts on the new provost the college is importing? I hear she’s going to be a rough one when it comes to academics?”

Yeah, maybe that was going to be a safer topic.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It was after dinner and Law was helping clean up the dishes. His mother and Lami were in the sitting room going over her observation notes from the surgery, while Law and his father were in the kitchen washing dishes. It was usually safer to keep the siblings separated after a spat at dinner and their parents kept to that despite the fact everyone in the house was now an adult. They worked in practiced silence until the sound of Lami’s groaning made them both smirk.

“If Lami didn’t insist on kicking and screaming and pouting the entire way, she’d already be a medical professional and your moer would be off her back,” his father chuckled. Law shook his head.

“I doubt,” he replied. Law picked up another dish from the soapy water and scrubbed the crocheted washcloth over it before putting it in the rinse water. “Hey, uh, Vaor?”

“Yes?

“Have you heard anything lately about dream studies from anyone over in neurology?”

His father continued taking dishes out of the rinse water and placing them in the drying rack. “The same-old: no one knows how they originate and interpretation is based on conjecture and bias. Why do you ask? Got someone on your floor insisting otherwise?”

“No… just…” He paused, wondering if he should lie or not. “I’ve been having some… intense dreams lately.”

“How intense are you talking about?” His father paused to allow him room to elaborate, yet he didn’t, causing the older man to lean in a bit closer and drop his voice. “If it’s sex dreams about your girlfriend, that’s normal even if you’re an adult.”

“I wish it was that,” Law scoffed. He took his hands out of the dishwater and leaned against the counter. Fuck… this was so weird. “It’s… have you ever had a dream that took place over a long period of time?”

“Like, a recurring dream…?”

“No, like, you go to sleep and just… live. I recently had a dream where I lived an entirely different life and I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Mmm. I take it that it’s not a pleasant life.”

“No.” Law could feel himself tremble as he swallowed hard. “I dreamt… I dreamt what would have happened if you and Moer hadn’t found the treatment for Amber Lead in time. Everyone was just… gone.”

“Gone? You mean, dead? Come on, Law… even all the worst-case scenarios would have left Flevance with a population mostly comprised of first-and-second-generation immigrants. You’ve seen the data.”

“I know, but…” Fuck, this was awkward to the point he wished it was just a sex dream. “In this dream, no one else outside of Flevance believed it was a heavy metal poisoning. They thought it was infectious instead and… and… between the fires and the bullets I was the only one who made it out alive.” He turned towards his father, who was looking at him curiously. “Am I going nuts?”

“No, I don’t think so,” the older man said. He dried his hands on a dishrag before patting his son on the back. The pair were echoes of one another separated by thirty-two years and at that point they really felt it. “Maybe… maybe you’re just nervous about Robin coming over once she’s back from that conference. It could be that your subconscious is seeing the prospect of settling down and is coming up with different ways your life could have gone. I think it’s just going a little overboard because you don’t exactly have an ex to wonder about.”

“Yeah…?”

“Yeah.” Law couldn’t help but feel like a child as his father drew him into a hug despite the need to crouch slightly into it. “It’s scary to consider that kind of commitment, even if you feel ready.” His father then held him at arm’s length and smirked knowingly at him. “Did you pick the ring up yet?”

“Yeah, it’s in my room.” His face flushed hot as he thought of the piece of jewelry—because that’s all it really was—and how it was going to change everything… for better or worse. “How did you propose to Moer?”

“I was too chicken to do it directly and slipped the ring in her purse while we were doing clinicals together; took her almost three weeks to find.”

“That’s kind of pathetic.”

“Yeah, but the point is that you can’t possibly do it worse than me if you’re coming at her face-to-face.” His father ruffled his hair and chuckled. “Don’t overthink it.”

“All I can do is overthink, what, with the weird dreams and all.”

“You’ll be fine—you’ll see.” Law’s father then gestured back to the sink. “Let’s finish these up before the water gets cold, hmm? I think doing something with your hands will help.”

“Yeah, something that won’t risk traumatizing the neighborhood kids,” Lami snarked, standing just outside the kitchen. It was clear that she had just slid into the conversation, so Law took pity on her and when he opened a Room, all he did was switch the dishcloth with a speck of dust over her head and not an entire soapy dish. Who ever said he wasn’t charitable?

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Twilight had long given way to the dim darkness of the city as Law made his way down the maze of streets that was Flevance, finding his way towards a street settled on either side of a moonlit canal. The night chill made him pull the collar of his coat tighter as he tried to not look like he was suspiciously hurrying. He found a specific door and used the key to enter, then another key at the top of the staircase that led into the flat. The moment he was over the threshold a sort of calm overtook him as it usually did; it was difficult to be on-edge in Robin’s place.

Not wanting to fail his original purpose for going, Law shucked off his coat and grabbed the watering can, getting to work on caring for Robin’s multitude of plants that were scattered around the studio flat. Could she have left it to one of the downstairs neighbors? Of course she could have, but that would have given him less of an excuse to leave his parents’ house… to be in the space that was very, very her. He put down the watering can and picked up one of his hooded sweatshirts from its perch on the battered sofa—one deep breath and he could smell her perfume still on it.

Okay, so he had been planning on jerking it in the flat before his sister mentioned his relationship at dinner, but now the entire idea tasted sour. He put the sweatshirt back down and continued to water the plants, eventually heading back to the sink for a refill once the watering can emptied.

“I missed you,” he said aloud, trying to imagine what he would say to Robin next time he saw her. No… that wasn’t right. “How was the conference? Did they like your presentation? I missed you.” No, that wasn’t right either…

Law put the watering can down on the dining area table and looked around. Their lives were already beginning to meld as his things began to lay about abandoned, often in preparation for them to have sex. Both of their book collections sat on the shelves and in piles everywhere, evidence of many a night they spent together studying and working. Little things here and there made the place their own little haven, and it was something he didn’t entirely want to let go.

“Robin, I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and…” He trailed off, unsure how to continue. “Robin, I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and do you want to make this permanent? No… that’s fucking stupid.” He scratched at his scalp and began to pace, wondering how he was going to do this.

Should he wait a while or ask her right after she returned from her conference? In the flat? At the park? No, nowhere public—he knew better. Should he go down on one knee or hide it in the flat so he could take it out after they had sex? If he hid it, would he keep it within an arm’s reach, or would Scrambling it into his hand be enough? Law took the ring box out of his coat pocket and felt its weight in his hand. It was not a heavy box by any means, but it was enough to feel a difference, which was honestly enough.

“Nico Robin, will you do me the hono—no, not that. Robin, will you—no, shit. Do you want to make this permanent? Because I want to make this permanent.” He grimaced. “Trafalgar D. Water Law, you are a fucking idiot.” He allowed his feet to take him to the bed and he flopped into it, the unmade linens rumpled and askew underneath him, looking up through the skylight at the city-dimmed stars.

“If you know any pointers, I’d like to know,” he said to no one in particular. Law kicked off his boots and pulled his legs up into the bed, curling up in the space he was well-acquainted with sharing. It smelled like her soap, the books she was always absorbed in, the coffee that was a staple during their late nights… it was so comforting that he felt like he could sleep there.

“We shouldn’t have to be punished for wanting to learn history!”

Law inhaled sharply as his dream came back to him, the words weighing down on his chest. He had said those words, but only in the auspices of his highly-realistic dream… but why? Most Flevench citizens worth their weight in the Amber Lead extracted from their bodies distrusted the central government nearly by default, but in the dream he had been saying it to an Emperor of the Sea as he and some metalhead from the South Blue readied to take her down. Why was he telling a Yonkou that? What knowledge was she keeping under lock and key? The dream was becoming hazy—as all dream did—but that did not mean it wasn’t still bothering him.

“Robin,” he whispered, “I never want this to end. Can we get married so that it doesn’t have to?”

The silence that met him was more assuring than it had any right to be.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Robin flexed her arm as she looked at the IV hookup that was already placed in her forearm as a precaution. Chopper, Bepo, and Jean Bart were in the process of transferring Law to a larger bed, placing him on his side, positioned carefully so that his windpipe remained clear. They were the only ones on the entire Polar Tang, as everyone else had to be sequestered to the Thousand Sunny so that work could get done. It had been less than two days since the Straw Hats had gotten the call and yet they knew that time was extremely important to making sure that not only Law lived, but now Robin as well.

“It looks like everything’s set,” Chopper said with a nod. He watched as Robin sat down on the edge of the mattress, mentally preparing herself for what was to come. “Last chance: are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yeah—I can still go in and get the Captain,” Bepo offered. “He’s been my best friend for years.”

“Thank you; I think having someone as a backup will be important,” she replied. Robin shifted in order to lay down, placing her forehead close to where Law’s was underneath the parasite. The creature clicked and purred, reaching out tentatively towards Robin with one of the tentacles on its back. She watched it as it inched closer to her without losing its grip on Law.

‘None of it is real,’ she thought to herself. ‘None of it is real. None of it is real. Everything this thing shows me will not be real…’ She took hold of Law’s inked hand in hers, hoping it would help ground her.

Nico Robin gasped and the world went dark.

[sluttywonwoo]

halp pls vernon saying he's not gonna last much longer just being inside got me feeling some typa way 🥴🤤 what do u think would make each member cum untouched? (whether clothes on or off)

seungcheol: if it’s gonna be anything, it’s praise. that man needs praise to live and if you’re laying it on extra thick, he might not be able to resist… even if you’re not touching him

jeonghan: dirty talk!! especially if you don’t usually use that kind of language— hearing you tell him all the filthy things you’re going to do to him would have him ruining whatever pair of pants he’s got on instantly

joshua: kissing :( you can’t tell me he doesn’t love making out with you, not with those pouty lips he has… he loves kissing you, loves it so much that occasionally he’ll get ahead of himself and you know…

jun: i feel like his tits might be his downfall here. like he’s really sensitive and ticklish and if you play with them enough you can get him to cum for you

soonyoung: he’s a very visual person so anything to do with you and no clothes is your best bet— like a striptease, sending him random nudes (or videos), etc.

wonwoo: not exactly untouched but i think he’d really like dry humping and sometimes he might get a little too carried away with it iykwim

jihoon: watching you touch yourself really does it for him !! and even if he can’t touch himself (like, for instance, if you have his hands tied behind his back), he’ll still cum with you because he’s a gentleman like that

seokmin: your voice, specifically your moans. to be honest, he cums pretty easily anyway, so if he’s pleasuring you or watching you pleasure yourself and thinks about how pretty you sound a little too hard… he’ll be making a mess all over both of you in no time

mingyu: eating you out/you sitting on his face. making you cum turns him on so much that sometimes he can’t control himself and has to cum with you

minghao: if you tie him up and tease him for a bit, you can get him to blow. it would definitely take effort on your part because minghao has amazing self control, but it’s not impossible!!

seungkwan: showering together :) it’s something so intimate and it’s part of your daily routine, washing each other’s hair and bodies, but oftentimes one thing will lead to another and it’ll get heated fast. and in those cases, he’s already so content and so full of adoration for you that it takes very little to get him there, even if you’re not touching him

vernon: domming him but not even really domming him like if you’re mean to him that’ll do the trick

chan: edging has to be the way to go (please don’t tell me wait). like you are touching him, until you’re not and he’s cumming all over himself like a loser you know?

[asterekmess]

(I was gonna save this for tomorrow, but FUCK IT) Eyyy, still being salty over here. Pls block the tag ‘rant’ if you don’t wanna see anymore of these. Or maybe ‘anti-scott mccall’ though, tbh, I’m not sure how much fun it would be to follow me if you aren’t anti-scott mccall. I’m pretty vocal abt disliking him.

ANYWAY.

I wanna talk about the concept of Derek being a ‘creeper’ because of all his wandering around the lacrosse field, at lydia’s party, etc. And by talk about, I mean ramble about incoherently. By which I mean, please know that I’m not trying to insult or fight anybody who makes this joke or uses this concept in fic or whatever. I’m just ranting bc I love this boy and his trauma makes me sad.

ANYWAY. (This is insanely long, so I’m adding a “Read More”)

I just have a lot of feelings about people seeing Derek as a stalker/creeper because he keeps showing up at lacrosse practice and in Scott & Stiles’ rooms, etc. It gets mentioned in loads of fics (I see a lot of “Creeperwolf” which I think is supposed to be an endearment?) (And there’s lots of fics that talk about how ‘you used to be/are really creepy, following us around’ Again, not judging) (Dude it’s even a whole tag on AO3 ‘Creeper Derek Hale’) and it’s joked about a lot in fandom (the vine with the ‘every step you take’ song and the swans on the building comes to mind). I see it a lot, and dude, it hurts me.

Let’s look at Derek’s current mental state and what he’s been dealing with, going all the way back to Paige. (Or, tbh, his birth) Derek is a werewolf. He was born a werewolf, to a family of werewolves. He grew up within the supernatural world, in a whole different culture to humans (honestly, my fury at the lack of werewolf culture/history/worldbuilding is worthy of its own post. Let me know if by some ungodly chance, you actually wanna hear my thoughts on it.) and presumably the number one rule in all of werewolfdom is “Keep the Secret.” Now, Derek’s fuckin’ 14/15 (I put his birthday on Christmas, like most of fandom, and if his house burned down when he was 16, in the spring, and he was dating Kate for a while before, he would’ve dated her when he was 15, and we don’t know how long there was between paige and kate, but let’s give him a summer of mourning. So. 14ish with paige) and he starts dating this human. He’s kinda shit at keeping the secret, implying that either he’s only dated werewolves before, or she’s his first girlfriend ever (also implying that maybe some of the people on his basketball team are werewolves, bc they don’t seem to notice his weird way of talking [pack members maybe? fuck, my heart]) and he’s maybe not as careful as he should be. (More implications arise, and we begin to build our own history. If Derek was never taught not to say dumb shit like ‘i caught a scent’ then was he even in public school before freshman year? Were the Hales all homeschooled before high school to help keep the secret? How soon do wolfy abilites arise? Do they hit with puberty? Fuck, I digress.) He says some dumb shit, and Paige gets suspicious. Of course, he doesn’t know that, and he has some kind of meltdown about her eventually finding out his secret. We hear from Peter (who’s villainized, so we’re not supposed to necessarily believe what he says, but what we see in the flashback doesn’t make a huge amount of sense either so *shrug*) that he enlists Ennis to bite Paige, believing that if she is bitten she won’t spill the secret and she’ll be more inclined to accept that Derek is a werewolf. Now, she fucking dies. Paige dies in Derek’s arms because of this, and he finds out at the last second that she already knew the secret. He feels guilty enough abt getting her killed but now he’s got a whole new batch of guilt from finding out that apparently he’s so bad at keeping the secret of his ENTIRE SPECIES that she found out he was a werewolf. She could’ve exposed them all at any time. He had to be terrified. Next, he’s 15/16 and he meets a gorgeous older woman who presumably showers him in affection, and all the horrors that go with that whole situation (I don’t wanna go into detail, because obviously). But again, whether Derek tells her himself or she just knew or she finds out, whatever it is, Kate knows Derek and his family are werewolves. AND SHE KILLS THEM ALL. Derek has no clue what the fuck is going on. All he knows is he is the only link between Kate and his family, which must mean that it’s his fault she knows about them. Once again, he’s revealed the Big Secret and people Died. He and Laura bolt to NY for six years, where presumably they live in hiding thinking the Argents are coming after them to finish off the Hales. Then Laura gets sent a funky letter and goes back to Beacon Hills. Now, we have a lil more confusion (i’ve got a whole buttload of issues with the timeline, but let’s not get into that now) because he says he came looking for Laura, but later he mentions that he knew she was in Beacon Hills and was searching for...whoever burnt down their house...that whole plotline confuses the shit out of me (derek knew kate did it. he blamed All the argents, but he knew kate was involved. So why was Laura looking for the pendant. and if he didn’t tell her then why was he looking for the pendant?? And what did the pendant have to do with the deer and the spiral?? Halp.) but whatever. He shows up and finds his sister dead, the hunters arrive in town the next day, and suddenly there’s an angry alpha Attacking Humans.

We’re finally in the present. Derek has lost what little family he had left, except for a catatonic uncle. He already has two instances in his past where the worry of keeping werewolves a secret has caused deaths. And now there’s this teenager. No, actually, two teenagers. One who was bitten, and one who shouts out “You’re a werewolf!” in the middle of the preserve, instantly figuring out a centuries-old supernatural secret. Derek is fucking terrified, and things are only getting worse. This kid who got bitten? Derek follows him to see if he’s really a wolf, to find out if he knows what’s happening to him, if he believes the other teen. He finds the kid JUMPING OVER PEOPLE’S HEADS in broad daylight in front of everyone. Derek might’ve had a couple verbal giveaways but this is just ridiculous. Then, even better, the kid goes on a date on the FULL MOON with THE YOUNGEST ARGENT. There’s about a billion reasons to follow Scott to the party. It’s a FULL MOON, for one. HE’S WITH AN ARGENT for another. And of course he can’t just walk into the party. He’s fucking 22 for fuck’s sake. This is a high school party. He’d get arrested. And of course he doesn’t introduce himself to Scott beforehand. He has no way of knowing if this kid is on the Alpha’s side. He’s the Alpha’s Beta, it would make perfect sense for him to be obeying the Alpha. OR since he’s with the Argent, maybe he’s working with them. Maybe he’s a plant of some kind. a hunter pet. Laura was used as bait to catch Derek, why not Scott too? But he sees quickly that Allison has no clue what’s going on, at least with Scott, and he takes her home and steals her jacket to lure Scott into the Preserve where he can’t hurt anyone. Then, when he sees Scott get chased by the hunters, with no Alpha coming running to protect him, he decides “Alright, guess this kid’s my ally. Gotta protect him.” Yeah. He says some weird shit. But the evidence points to Derek not knowing much about bitten wolves. He tells Scott that he doesn’t know how to train a bitten wolf, but he does know how to help Scott recover memories (the memory loss appears to only happen in the early days of shifting, which lends more credibility to the possibility that born wolves don’t start shifting properly until later in life [puberty being the most likely milestone] and he therefore has experience with that, but not with the kind of control Scott needs, that he’s known his whole life). Born a werewolf, he’s never considered the bite anything other than a gift. He also just lost his entire family, so sue him for trying to find some kind of connection between them. (It honestly makes total sense for him to use the term ‘brothers’ bc he KNOWs Scott won’t understand the concept of ‘pack’ yet) So, now that’s decided to help Scott, to protect him, he goes back to the school. SURELY now that Scott knows what he is and how dangerous he is when stressed, he’ll reign himself in during lacrosse, or even just back out of it altogether. There are lives at stake here, be them human, or if Scott exposes the secret, werewolves. SURELY this kid wouldn’t put everyone in danger over a fucking game. But no. Not only does he keep flaunting his abilities, but he SHIFTS ON THE FIELD. If Stiles hadn’t Dragged Scott out of there, the entire supernatural world would be EXPOSED by this ONE KID. Derek passed Terrified about a hundred miles back. He’s gotta be fucking out of his mind with fear. I don’t blame him even a little for threatening Scott. If Scott’s not gonna do the right thing on his own, then threatening him is worth it if people don’t DIE. Then, bc Scott’s a pissy baby and goes to shout at him and be a fuckwad, and Stiles is nosey and neither of them have boundaries (I love Stiles, but fucking seriously, digging up a grave?) Derek gets ARRESTED. He pleads with this lanky teen who is brave enough to climb into the cruiser with a WEREWOLF. Who’s FRiends with a Werewolf. Who figured it out so quickly. He pleads with him to understand how dangerous this is, to stop his friend. And Stiles looks like he’s gonna, but Scott bolts bc of the wolfsbane (Which...listen if I’m being really salty, a deep bitter part of me genuinely wonders if he was that freaked out, or if he overheard Derek beg Stiles not to let Scott play, and Scott ran away from Stiles so he wouldn’t get told no, bc he wanted to play.) and by the time Stiles finds him he’s already dressed for the game. And DEREK WAS RIGHT. Scott DID lose control. He DID shift on the field. At LEAST one human saw him shift, and the coach for the other team knew something was up too. He DID expose them, and he did it further bc Jackson is suspicious now. Now, I’ve reblogged a gifset of it before, the moment when Derek shows up at the lacrosse field and finds Jackson standing in it after Scott’s run off, staring at a glove with a claw hole in it. He is watching his worst nightmare come true. Scott has exposed them and Jackson is going to figure out werewolves, just like Stiles did. He knows right that instant that people are going to die. I’ll reiterate what I said in the tags on that gifset. It’s extremely likely that Derek bit Jackson out of self-preservation. Jackson had been threatening to tell the hunters and the entire world if he didn’t get what he wanted. The safest thing to do was give Jackson the bite so that at least he would be putting himself in danger too if he exposed werewolves. He forced Jackson to have to keep the secret for himself because he knew Jackson wouldn’t do it for anyone else. (And he knew Jackson had some self-preservation, compared to Scott, and wouldn’t want to expose himself.)

Listen, I just. I just get so sad watching Derek sneaking into people’s rooms and standing on the edge of the field and showing up in the locker rooms. He’s trying to help. He’s trying to protect. He wants to be there in case Scott does something stupid (which he does, again and Again) to protect him, even after Scott REFUSED to help him stop a SERIAL KILLER because there wasn’t anything in it for him. Even after Scott fucking blackmails him by leaving him hanging on a grate with wires plugged into his side and his abuser on their way back to hurt him, he still helps him protect Allison (who watched him be tortured and did nothing. [He still has the capacity to acknowledge that it’s not her fault. That she couldn’t save him. He doesn’t blame her for it and he certainly doesn’t want her to die.]) He wants to keep his Betas safe. He stands in the parking lot waiting for them to test Lydia because he doesn’t want them to have to go through with killing her alone (and he only tries to kill her because she DOESN’T pass the test [although I admit it’s a dumb test] and because the kanima is KILLING people. More people have died and I don’t know how the fuck Derek manages to keep standing, let alone having such capacity for empathy and optimism and sarcasm after everything he’s dealt with. He’s constantly being hunted by hunters or humans, or fuck even Scott himself, since every time Scott gets upset he blames Derek for everything (I’m still fucking disgusted that he turned up at Derek’s place and accused him of murdering his own sister.) And STILL he shows up. No matter how many times he’s shoved away and ignored and yelled at. He shows up and he stands on the fringes and he waits for the chance to help.

And what’s creepy about that?

[moonraccoon-exe]

Hi Coonie! I'm your recent Ignis and Gladio Anon, and I wanted to drop you a note to say I adore your replies to the asks I've sent you. They make me smile so much, and I'm so glad that they could help you feel better. Hmn? Will I stop? No. Never. ♥ Unless you want me to that is! Although I should say they plan on visiting you again soon so we'll have to scoop the molten puddle that is you off the floor and get you ready for the next time they come to visit. ♥ With love - Gladnis Anon

BUT WHY WOULD I WANT YOU TO STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

HOLY

MOTHER

OF 

COWS

IT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*TACKLES WITH ALL THE POWER OF MY LOVE WHICH IS LIKE WOWEE GIGANORMOUS U DED NOW BUT GONNA BE ALIVE AGAIN SOON DON’T WORRY NO KILL IN THIS SAFE PLACE IT’S JSUT A RETHORICAL EXPRESSION TO EXPRESS HOW MUCH OF MY RACCOONIE MAGICAL WUV I’M THROWING UR WAY*

*SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM*

HONESTLY BUDDY I’D PUT MORE GIFS HERE I WANT TO PUT A GLOMP ONE AND MAYBE A FALIL BUT I’LL MAKE YOUR PHONE/DESKTOP CRASH LMAO IT OKAY JUST KNOW I’M HYPER TURBO EXCITED TO BE ANSWRING TO YOU AND I KNOW IT’S BEEN SO LONG AND OMG THIS IS GETING SO LONG I’M SORRY I’M TERRIBLE AT ANSWERING SHORT I HAVE TOO MUCH HYPE AND EMOTIONS AND THERE’S NO OTHER WAY TO LET THEM OUT OKAY THANK U I JUST AM SO H  AP  P E H AND EXCITED AKLSJDLKGJD OMG IT U YOU TOOK THE TIME AND THE BEAUTIFUL GESTURE TO WRITE A NOTE AS YOURSELF AND I’M V I B R A TI N G WITH EXCCITE DMKADGMHF BECAUSA EOHGFHM IT’S LIKE RECEIVING GIFTS AT MY DOOR AND I CAN LEAVE BEHIND A NOTE SAYING THANKS BUT IT AIN’T THE SAME THAN SAYING THANKS TO UR FACE THEN YOU DROP BY AS YOURSELF AND I’M THERE LIKE SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK ABBLE TO SAY THANKS TO YOUR FACE SO BE PREPARED I SMACK U WITH

THANK YOU

ASKLDJFALKDGJDLKHAJLKGAJDKLADJ SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM

okAY OKay lemme add a keep reading here real quick aksldjfklgjafh

GLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS ANOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNN!!!!!!!!

IT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*TACKLE-HUGS YOU AND SNUGGLES TIGHTLY*

HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( ´ ▽ ` ).｡ｏ♡

*SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZEEEEEEES* ( ˙꒳​˙ )❤

Seriously, I feel so HAPPY and so excited to be answering this ask!! It really does feel as I said above, like I received gifts but they were always left there, and now it u here!!! GODS DAMN ME, THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME AND GESTURE TO WRITE TO ME!!!!!! HEWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Aaaw, hahaha, thank you so much!! I’m happy that you like my replies to your asks. I mean, I stay short anyway because YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOUR ASKS HAVE DONE TO ME LIKE KALSDJFDLKAGJHFALKGJA THEY TAKE MY FEELINGS AND TOSS THEM AROUND LIKE A RAG DOLL IN THE MIDDLE OF TWO TORNADOS SPINNING AROUND WITH NO CONTROL AT ROCKET SPEED WHILE SCREEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAMINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

Lords and ladies above in the heavens, YOUR ASKS ARE JUST. GLORY. ABSOLUTE EXQUISITE DELIGHTS TO READ AND RECEIVE IT’S LIKE…LOOK I DON’T EVEN HAVE A DESCRIPTION, IT’S JUST PERFECT. The fact that someone takes the time to write to me little stories of Gladnis pampering and spoiling me I MEAN

HAH

WHAT THE 

FUCK

HOW AM I SO GODDAMN BLESSED ASKLDJFDG AHKL JALKGAJG SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

*THROWS A TANTRUM*

Gladnis is my OTP and Gladdy and Iggy both by separate are two of my faves aND I HAVE A GIGANORMOUS CRUSH ON BOTH OF THEM SO READING YOUR ASKS MAKES ME GO HFDGKJKGJKLGDAKLGDKJGDKLJSGJLLGKDJ DLFKHDFJHLKDJ AND THE SYSTEM (MY SYSTEM) CRASHES AND I DIE MOMENTARILY FAHK

Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I’m so happy to know my replies make you smile!! Haha, WE BOTH WIN! AIN’T THAT FANTASTIC?!?! Like, you make me happy and- OH MY GOD I JUST NOTIC- I MEAN OF COURSE IT’D MAKE YOU HAPPY!! It’s just natural, you gift happiness, you receive it back! BUT I REALLY. HAVE TO HIGHLIGHT THAT LAMENTABLY YOU DON’T RECEIVE HALF OF THE HAPPINESS YOU GIVE ME BECAUSE S R IOU SLY HONESTLY GODS HAVE MERCY ON ME YOUR ASKS MAKE ME EXPLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE IN UNCONTROLLABLY JOY THAT’S TOO MUCH TO FIT IN MY BODYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

GASPS

THEY PLAN TO WHAT?!!??!?!?!?!?!

BUT I’M NOT….RE A DY AKLDFJGKF GNLKH KFGKM FKLGF ((honestly I never am lmao)) LOOKIE MY HAIR IS NOT. GOOD I’M SMELLY AND MY SOCKS ARE RIDICULOUS I’M NOT PREAPRED OMG MY BOYFRIENDS ARE COMING OVER AND I’M AN IDIOT THAT’S NEVER READY BECAUSE MY BOYFRIENDS ARE SO GORGEOUS AND FANTASTIC HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE UNIVERSE DOESN’T COLLAPSE FROM HOLDING THE WEIGHT OF THEIR PERFECTIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

*EXPLODES*

AShfkadgklhjflkhfdj gkaldjf lakh jlafkhafjkljslkfdjalkhj omg yes I need halp, pls do scoop this molten puddle because I GO BACK TO REMEMBER ABOUT THAT LAST ASK AND I MELT OVER AND OVER AGAIN AND I DON’T WANT MY BOYFRIENDS TO WALK IN AND FIND ME IN THIS SHAMEFUL EMBARRASSING STATE LMAO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

“With love” I MEAN I’VE NOTICED

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECCCCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

LIKE YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TO TRY YOU’VE THROWN LOVE ENOUGH AT ME FOR LIKE THE NEXT DECADE HFDGJDKJHGD BUT DON’T STOP WHY WOULD I WANT YOU TO STOP OHMYGAMMWKDJ  I’M BECOMING STUPID AGAIN HALP AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

*SMACKS YOU WITH ALL THE POWER OF MY LOVE*

HONESTLY THERE’S NO WAY TO THANK YOU ENOUGH, BUDDY. LIKE, I CAN TRY AND BURY YOU IN A MOUNTAIN OF RACCOONIE LOVE BUT DO I GET ANYWHERE NEAR THANKING YOU ENOUGH?

NEIN.

ASDHFkdaladjflkasjgalkdjgakdgjdaklgajgl aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, but seriously, thank you so much!!!! Taking the time to write an ask is something I always treasure, and thank you as well for not just writing to me, but making it so fantastic!!! By the way, you’ve got a pretty way with words. I hope you write fanfic because you’d be blessing the fic side of fandom; you’ve got a very pretty way with words and wonderful grammar! I mean, I don’t speak the language as a first, so I can’t judge you on that, but what I mean is your punctuation is wonderful and well done and you write with no typos and stuff. It’s a delight!!!

But I’m digressing aksljdkadgjdaklgdjag

I was saying that I really appreciate that you take the time to write to me, and I appreciate so much that you’ve been so creative and have been writing those Gladnis + Raccoonie ask. :3 

BY THE WAY I HAVE AN ARTWORK OF THAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE IT AKSDJDKGJ LMAO but more than the third partner, I BE THEIR PET. IT’S HONESTLY ONE OF THE CUTEST THINGS I’VE DRAWN AHAHAHA

Thank you so much for everything, buddy!!! And besides your gorgeous asks, this ask radiates this color that…hnghng. How do I explain. I don’t know, buddy, but everyone radiates a color through the way they write their asks to me, and you look so…vibrant and colorful and bright omg YOU HAVE SUCH A PRETTY PRECIOUS COLOR, AND WITH THIS ASK ALONE I CAN STRONGLY SMELL KINDNESS AND A VERY GOOD SOUL AND HONESTLY HOW THE FUCK DO I DO IT TO BE BLESSED WITH GOOD PEOPLE TALKING TO ME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

*SMACKS YUO WITH LOVE*

YOU GORGEOUS CREATURE MOST MARVELOUS HOOMAN.

Ayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, but not gonna make this too long, sorry!! 

SO THAT’S THAT! ヽ(・ω・)ﾉ

BUDDY

ONCE MORE

Thank you LOTS for taking the time to write to me and for all the wonderful things you’ve sent me!!! 

I HOPE YOU’RE HAVING A MOST FANTASTIC DAY OR NIGHT! DO RECEIVE LOTS OF RACCOONIE HUUUUUUUGS! (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ

[amageofhope-blog]

uncle gull tells yall bout twewy, part 2: there’s an actual game behind all that thar story

ok. so in the world ends with you (twewy), the raddest ds game, you take control of neku sakuraba (the protagonist; see part 1) and run around shibuya (the location), doing missions in order to survive the reapers’ game (see part 1). information under the cut.

ok, so there’s an overworld: a fair amount of your time is spent wandering around the hip and urban city streets of shibuya. you can use the d-pad, baxy, or the stylus to get neku to walk places. the phone icon in the upper right of the screen activates the pause menu when tapped (you can also press START for this).

proof in the pudding... of your doom: the skull icon on the bottom right is your “Player Pin”, which is proof that you’re part of the reapers’ game. touching this allows you to read the thoughts of npcs and passers-by (a neat touch, not to mention essential for some of the game’s missions). while in this state, you can also see red symbols floating around the screen. these represent “Noise”, the game’s monsters which you battle. tap one and you’ll be sent to battle (no random encounters here!).

i am not very gud to batl pls to halp: in battle, you take control of both neku and his partner at the same time. on the bottom screen, you control neku, using pins (more on those later) to lay the smackdown on your foes. on the top screen, you control neku’s partner with the dpad or baxy, completing chains of directon presses leading up to a fusion card, which helps you gain fusion stars. when you gain enough fusion stars, you can use a totally radical and strong combo attack. hp is shared between neku and his partner on a single bar, so watch out for that!

literally air hockey: neku and his partner in battle, after completing combos, pass a “light puck” to the other. this is a good thing, as whoever has the puck can deal extra damage. eating food (more on that later) boosts the sync rate, which influences how long the light puck will stay on one character before disappearing.

stop! wait a minute: opening up the pause menu lets you check on where you are in shibuya, as well as equip Threads (clothing, which boosts stats and provides bonuses), eat food (which boosts sync rate and stats; it lowers a “bytes” bar, and you have to actually wait for the food to digest by batling), and equip pins (more on those later). you can also adjust your level (which you gain by battling, and only changes how high your health is; lowering your level raises your drop rate at the cost of health). oh and you can save too i guess.

the power of fashion: equipping stylish pins (up to six at a time) allows you to do battle with your foes. every pin does something different- some have you drag across the screen to create pillars of fire, some have you slash across enemies to give them a punch, some have you press the pin to heal you, some give enemies statuses at the beginning of battle... there’s a lot of variety!

the power of fashion, part 2: throughout the game, you can buy clothing items. however, to equip these “Threads”, you need a certain BRV (bravery) stat, which you increase via eating food. these Threads boost stats, and can provide bonuses if you’re in the know (more on that later).

dating simulator lite edition: the more you buy items (food, clothes, etc.) from shops, the friendlier you get with them. the more you know them, the more tips you can get on certain clothes’ bonuses. (also all of the shopkeepers are totally great)

please turn it down: you can change the difficulty of battles on the fly, by not only adjusting your level but also adjusting the actual difficulty (there are 4; 3 gotten during normal play). different difficulties have different drops from defeated Noise (the enemies). you can also chain together a group of Noise symbols by dragging the stylus over them, boosting your drop rate. (normally you heal fully after battle, but during these chain battles you don’t heal between rounds, so be careful!)

tl;dr: twewy is great and you should play it.

[fapangel]

Difference between F-18, F/A-18, and F/A-18alphabetsoup? Am Canadian, want to know why we should buy new aircraft rather than more hornets from AUS.

The F-18 is a substantially larger, more powerful, longer ranged, more capable airframe in pretty much every aspect. The Hornet is a legendarily great knife-fighter (which should tell you how utterly full of shit Pierre Sprey is for claiming it’s a “dog” compared to his precious waifu F-16) but the Super Hornet is almost its equal in that realm simply because of improved engine thrust that offsets its larger size. And despite the larger size, it has a substantially reduced RCS compared to the legacy Hornet, because they realized that was going to be a Thing when they designed it. Also note what that linked article says about the AESA radar: 

In the air-to-surface environment, there are not too many differences between the jets. Both aircraft use the JHMCS and ATFLIR. However, the Rhino’s APG-79 allows for synthetic aperture radar mapping, or SARMAP. When I first saw this I couldn’t believe it; the radar was painting the ground and displayed an image as good as the ATFLIR.

Now, specifically, for Canada’s use-cases, the greatly improved radar, the greater capacity for external stores (i.e. air-to-air missiles) and above all, the markedly superior unrefueled range. Canada, as you might know, is a really big goddamn country - and the Hornet only has a combat radius of 350 miles or so. The only aerial tankers Canada has are two CC-150 Polaris airframes. (None of the CAFs C-130s are tanker-configured.) This drastically limits the force’s flexibility when covering/controlling Canadian airspace over the interior. On one’s own ground you can plop a small auxiliary airbase anywhere you please, and I’m sure Canada still has some in operation left over from the Cold War/NORAD buildup, but such spartan facilities only offer utility for actual war or national emergencies; they’re not an effective way to base aircraft long-term. The support infrastructure for planes is immense and for the pampered, prima-donna pilots, even greater - this is why the US has flown so many strike missions against theaters worldwide from bomber bases in the continental United States. It’s much more easier and cost-effective to build base facilities to accommodate a dozen KC-135 tankers across the world than it is to accommodate three dozen B-52s anywhere we might need them. The same will be true of Canada. 

Oh my, here we go, have a map. Note that every airbase in the inhospitable north are actually old NORAD Forward Operating Locations (hence the FOL.) And they have “accommodations for up to six fighters.” Going by the 1/3rd rule (standard operational tempo, if you want to keep a constant air presence in operation, usually works out to 1/3rd of the force in the air, with 2/3rds being maintained/turned around at any time,) so that’s a whole walloping two Hornets airborne to cover any one part of that vast northern frontier at any given time. Considering the F/A-18s short legs, that’s not much coverage at all. And you’ve got a whole two tankers to support them. Yeehaw. Sure, you could surge a larger presence to them (they’re built into existing civilian airports, after all,) but still - as far as I can tell, Canada’s plan for defending its north-west airspace boils down to “Americans in Alaska.” 

Now a while back someone asked me if Canada should buy the F-35, and my answer boiled down to “it depends on if Canada wants to actually participate in NATO operations, or only wants to defend their own airspace.” I get it, Canada - just because you’ve hitched your defensive wagon to a big empire with global commitments doesn’t mean you’re keen on getting dragged into their every foreign entanglement. It wasn’t fun with the Brits, it’s not much fun with the US. But if you wanna go that route, you’ve gotta expect said nation to shrug if you come calling for help and most of their assets are tied up elsewhere. You have to be able to defend your own airspace - and presently, there’s not much Canada can do to stop a zerg-rush of Tu-95s from nuking half of Canada, aside from “all our important cities are close to the US border, US pls halp.” 

Okay, sure, Russia’s not going to do that. But in international affairs, planners look at capabilities, not intentions. That’s because capabilities usually determine intentions. For instance, South Koreans hate Japan with a hot, hot hate, probably because of all the murdering and raping they inflicted upon Korea in WWII and before. So does North Korea. But Japan and South Korea are allies, because they need each other’s support against the likes of North Korea and China - whom also hate Japan, for the same reason. Likewise, North Korea’s Japan-hate didn’t mean much until they started acquiring ballistic missiles, and nuclear warheads to put on them. Their ability to act on their intentions determines just how much of their shit-talk they’ll walk the walk on, because of the allies capability to push their shit in. If one’s capabilities are weak, one often finds reasons to not piss off people that can kill them. As Will Rogers said, “Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggy’ until you can find a rock.” 

Canada benefits from relative geographic isolation and relative irrelevancy - it’s like inverse Russia, a vast cold chilly forest filled with funny-hatted polite people. So maybe you don’t need that much capability to make attacking you more trouble than its worth... but you do need something, for fucks sake. And a bunch of obsolete, worn-out F/A-18s you buy secondhand from the Ausfags ain’t gonna fucking cut it, pal.

As an example - and this is just one example - consider the radar. Not so long ago the Russians started bragging about sending one of their cruise-missile subs for a stroll along our coastline with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, which is why Washington, D.C. now has permanent airborne radar platforms in the form of tethered blimps. All the ground-based radars in the world can’t overcome the simple problem of the earth’s curvature, which is one reason why AWACS, airborne radar, is so important - it can “look down” and see terrain-hugging cruise missiles. Canada doesn’t have any AWACS capability, so its fighters would have to find incoming cruise missiles all on their own. I fired up CMANO to give you a rough idea of the difference in radar coverage between a CAF Hornet and a modern US Super Hornet: 

Fucking seriously, lads. The legacy Hornets days are numbered - even if the airframes were NOT simply wearing out, you’d have to spend just as much money pouring upgrades into them as you’d spend on a much more capable, upgradable, and cost-effective Superbug. Canada needs to decide if they’re a real fucking country with their own armed forces, or just America’s hat. 

UPGRADE YOUR SHIT. 

[elizabethrobertajones]

12x10 watching notes

tl;dr Yockey owes me dinner

There's a large part of me (the part that's getting larger) that just wants to eat pasta in a mug in peace and watch this episode before midnight :P But I always regret not starting to write meta on an episode as I watch if I don't do it, so here I am, cup of pasta and all.

Expectations - well, the spoilers all suggest some crazy angel hijinks in period costume. I'll be fine if we make it through this episode without Cas turning out to have had a baby with Lily in the past or something.

If the spec is true and he's in a female vessel I am however always going to have an exemption that Cas can be lesbians with her in the past, and may even WRITE Cas being gay with her in the past if I have to. >.>

The sanctity of the OTP has a few override buttons :P

Aside from that, well, it's Yockey, and I loved his first episode and he seems like he should be mostly unproblematic, after 12x06, but of course we barely have a handle on him and he's never written a full plot episode or Cas, and it seems like he'll not only be writing Cas but presumably a past version of Cas in a different vessel so... This is going to be a bit of a wild ride no matter how chill 12x06 made me feel about Yockey as a writer :P

-

The trouble with pasta in a mug is that it's still really hot towards the bottom of the mug so you have to keep stopping eating it, and I think that is a perfect metaphor for how I approach watching new SPN episodes >.>

-

Right back to 4x02 as a starter of the recap :')

-

I may be getting older but I swear recaps didn't habitually re-tell entire chunks of the story like this re: the entire everything that happened with the nephilim plot so far.

Side note: I really don't want to think this much about the nephilim plot and would rather it just kind of went away and didn't come back until like, season 30 or something when the kid's a bit older and ready for the drama.

Honestly the show has a sort of built in expctation of longevity at this point, why not, uh, plant some seeds.

Anyway maybe just because Buckleming are the only ones with direct contact with it so far, but I really don't trust the show to be equipped to deal with this, ethically, or maybe even in good storytelling way. Which just leaves me with a ton of dread that problematic shit is coming >.>

-

Also recapping an entire chunk of the story for Billie getting killed :< Thinking of problematic stuff and lazy editing.

I supopse it's a terrible balance between the netflix bingers (who'll skip it anyway) and the casual viewers who may not remember everything or are not reliable enough viewers to have caught every episode so they need a weighty reminder. It may just be that whoever's editing the recaps has changed because they used to be much more efficient at conveying everything and now they're just sort of laying everything out. The mini road so far last episode was really bland. I think the art form's disappeared :P

-

If anyone's wondering, the arcade game angel is now my favourite character forever. It reminds me of in Steven Universe when Garnet got addicted to an arcade game, and couldn't be budged. Weirdly specific but excellent trope: immortal black ladies who have terrible impulse control around arcades.

I'm going to be so sad when Lily kills her.

-

[crazy awesome fight scene interlude]

[kind of sad we already know she's called Lily because even though Lily Sunder is an incredible name, I wanted to call her Eyepatch Lady and I don't have to]

-

Aw Benjamin :< God dammit why did she have to die first and SO soon after Billie... I mean I knew they were killing off the angels and have flashbacks to flesh them out so I assumed some would bite the dust immediately, and basically all of them but Cas are probably gonna die in the long run because haha recurring friends for Cas... But ugh, it seems kind of cruel to end the recap killing one badass WoC, and then start the episode and introduce and kill another >.> I mean I guess not intentionally cruel but definitely making a depressing trend REALLY obvious.

I don't think anyone will care about the representation when no matter what awesome roles the characters have, they keep on dying >.>

-

I'm going to sulk off and get some tea, because I saw that coming from a mile off and it's still annoying me :P

-

I also did the dishes and gained some dark humour perspective on it because of the little glimpses of the angels standing around doing seemingly nothing while Benjamin warned them - at least Benjamin doesn't have to have the conversation, "so what have you done since we last saw you?" "I have been playing video games since they were invented, non stop." "Oh, cool. Cool. I rebelled against heaven and stopped the apocalypse and was god and - "

-

"Cas has been pretty busy, huh?" - confirmed, all the other angels are lazy butts and Cas has been hard at work.

I assume his fixation on finding Lucifer's offspring and dragging out all the noticeboards to set it up is a continuation of what's up with him and hunting. He was feeling more than useless with just some vampires, and so now he is trying 1000% of his hardest to do this right, especially as it's the loose end he's got left in the way of any attempt at happiness... He basically ALWAYS has one of these... times like this I miss Steve!cas and his simple happiness (uh on top of a yawning void of depression) at doing a few human things right, like Nora's praise that he did basically everything to open the store without her because when he has a few simple things to accomplish, he can get it all done, and everything is ordered and in the right place, and... God I feel bad for Cas being at loose ends and feeling useless.

Dean immediately is a dick about Cas NOT finding Kelly yet, so I assume he's in a good mood since last episode...

-

I do like that Cas is clearly at least allowed to hang out at the Bunker and use their resources even if Sam and Dean aren't helping him or part of this project, and just sort of walked in on it. I guess this is a "good morning" meeting, only they walked into Cas staying up all night on this. There's no weirdness about the fact Cas is here or has been doing it, he's just an accepted part of their living space, albiet one doing weird art projects that mean they can't use the war room for their own crap :P

They're also really enjoying sprawling on their furniture now they're free

-

Transitioning to the ongoing disappointment in Mom not making chicken soup for them - Dean continues finding it hardest to accept Mary has apparently adjusted, but to a life without them, instead of adjusting to a life living in the Bunker with them. It's also bitterly amusing me that now Cas is finally kind of just around them by default, they have another character who is explained away in the opening of the episode...

-

Oh god Dean and Cas are "walking past each other in the kitchen" while not making eye contact. WHY is Cas in the kitchen. HE DOESN'T EAT. Is he strategically walking in past Dean? Bothering Sam to know if he wants coffee so he has an excuse to go get it while Dean is making a sandwich? How long has this been going on?? I want this entire soap opera episode pls.

-

Oh no DEAN IS PISSED BECAUSE HE IS WORRIED ABOUT CAS. He says it's just about the consequences in a vague way, but CAS is the one who clearly incurred them because it's not like this deal had any strings attached to random stuff in the universe a la releasing Amara, it was a blood pact between Winchesters, on a family level, therefore Dean is most worried about Cas.

Halp.

I don't like this new trend of Sam and Dean actually communicating and talking about their shit. This is awful. Can we go back to them not talking about anything?

-

Cas walks in on Sam defending him. My heart.

Although tbh he can hear through walls so unless the Bunker maaagically dampens that, he's come stomping back because he can't take listening to them going in circles about why Dean is ignoring Cas, because ouch, hearing how Dean is concerned about Cas's actions... I bet HE'S taking it as Dean thinking that he made a mistake >.>

-

*snipey snipey Destiel arguing* (Yeah, Dean just pretty much accuses Cas of that :P)

-

I love the old "all our friends are dead" type moment that they all have when someone comes up with "personal" business elsewhere. Like when Dean ran off to help Benny or Sam wandered off to deal with Amy Pond. Personal??? we don't get personal lives! aaand Cas is truly a Winchester now.

-

Oh third wheel Sam. Cas wants Dean to come but snarks at him like he's not gonna, Sam looks at Dean, Dean looks at Sam and Cas and rolls his eyes and accuses Cas of doing stupid things, but comes anyway because he will still look after Cas even if they're not talking...

-

Aaand the promo scene which left me amazed Sam did not open the car door, jump out onto the road, and take his chances there.

-

[patented angry Cas squinting]

-

I think that was the stage direction - Yockey might be new at this but he knows what he's doing.

-

Oh NO the bit we saw before the episode wasn't even the half of it. Dean and Cas are having an Actual Married Argument, deliberately projecting their fight onto talking about Benjamin. I am waiting for Sam to roll down his window and climb out to spend the rest of the drive on the roof.

-

The fact Cas says "Benjamin wouldn't call for help lightly" as well as about putting himself in harm's way - Dean probably latches onto that last part because it suits their argument more - also firmly confirming very clearly and loudly that Dean is worried about what will happen to Cas because he's upset that Cas put himself in harm's way, so this argument is now definitely, textually, 100% on Dean's side about how CONCERNED he is for Cas (and probably now a heaping of that Cas wouldn't deserve it and that Dean wasn't worth it because self-esteem issues... (The way this is going they'll probably say THAT in text too in like 3 lines) But yeah, also raising the issue that Cas doesn’t ask for help. Watched him rake leaves, anyone?

-

Dean is going to CRASH THE CAR. Sam's breaking point is Dean literally rotating 180 degrees in his seat to talk back at Cas. :P

*sound of a car horn and something narrowly missing them* 

GUYS.

-

Cas values sarcasm as a trait he really likes (nice, perfect need for someone who is going to resentfully be married to Dean forever), but would also like to be appreciated more :<

-

Aaand the info about Benjamin and his vessel has officially murdered me, especially as he's already dead. :< Angel/human friendships! *flails emotionally* Also no angel has ever been shown so close to their vessel. Hannah came to appreciate Caroline and gave her back, but without bonding with her (rather, traumatising her, I guess); Cas being so happy Jimmy was devout now has retconned emotional impact about Cas knowing how his friend appreciated his vessel and Cas was excited to have that same bond. But Jimmy died early on, Cas didn't have the luxury to be kind and friendly to him or to start doing that later; although he returned in 4x20 saying of course he'd keep his word to Jimmy and look after him (in that very angel way that Cas had back in season 4), it took him until Hannah and Caroline to remember this bond with a vessel and go attempt to make it right with Claire and Amelia.

*flops over and slowly slides off my chair*

-

*resumes watching from the floor because of Cas staring at Benjamin's wings* You know how we spend way too much time as fandom imagining crap about Dean having Cas's wings burned on him or his car or whatever? This is like that but with a character I've known for like 8 minutes of the show and I have a tear in my eye.

Poor Cas :<

-

*continues a non-stop "poor Cas" litany through this scene*

-

Oh my god even though all the angel blades look the same, Cas can TELL which angel they belong to THIS IS THE WORST NEW INFORMATION I'VE EVER HEARD.

-

Well, aside from the longing retcon. Hey, it must be 2 years old around now - that was 10x10

-

Having Cas being upset about losing a close friend that he fought together with right after saving Dean, a dear friend he has fought together with, and getting super judged for it, is way on the nose. Ow.

-

It's pretty cool that Lily has learned to talk on angel radio.

-

Oh gosh, Lily has a dead child I WONDER WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT

-

I love as well that Lily is dressing like angels used to, in a black and white suit, can talk on angel radio, has an angel blade... She's like the ultimate hunter becoming the thing she hunts in a sort of parallel to grizzled old hunters wearing a big ol bear skin or something :P

-

place behind them when they get out the car called "The Wright Spot"... guess which director is directing this episode. Go on. :P

-

"If I plan to do anything else stupid, I'll let you know" - I honestly did not think it was possible to love Cas more than I already did but he keeps on proving me wrong.

-

Cas is catching up on what feels like a 3 year backlog of angry squinting. He's definitely gone over the edge since last episode, as a result of last episode, but at the moment I think as long as Dean and Cas make up, in a good way where he's getting to vent some things about not feeling appreciated and so on, this will be okay.

-

Hang on this is the diner scene - aren't Sam and Dean going to crush into this both with Cas? I need to see how this happens...

-

Anyway AAAAAH Cas talking to angels! Angels who aren't trying to kill him immediately!

They are judging him for being careless and having to take a different vessel. Lol. "I liked the old you better" *Cas inspects himself*

Mirabelle then gets at Cas for the angel fall which obviously I was expecting since I already joked about this exact scene at the beginning of the episode :P I like that they went right ahead and addressed it. It's quite an elephant in the room, and of course the fact Cas's old battalion hadn't crossed paths with him at any point in the angel drama previously... Well, they HAD to have not picked Raphael or they wouldn't have made it past season 7. They may or may not have picked Metatron but they can't have been in Cas's army because he'd have actually chatted to them. There were still angels after season 10 who hadn't really got involved in all that at all, so I assume they laid low, perhaps knowing Cas better than most, or thinking they do >.>

-

Oh yeah just go ahead and remind him of how terrible things went with Uriel and Balthazar while you're at it :P

-

The "i just stared at a wall in a church for 100 years" angel is very boring. Mirabelle seemed to be pooossibly meant to be standing in Heaven's prison when the call went out? There were bars in front of her or something like that, so I assumed she was doing some job there. No idea what beardy angel was doing.

-

Also pls stop reminding Cas of literally everything he's ever done because in every previous encounter with angels, bringing stuff up like that is a fast way to manipulate or upset Cas and he's in a wee bit of a precarious place right now...

-

"spanner in the works" has someone actually called Cas that in canon or is that maybe like, something Edlund said in an interview or something?

-

"I'm not a hero, but sometimes doing the right thing requires sacrifices" You know what, not that I wasn't already thinking it, but Yockey can keep Cas :P

-

In this case, that line is tapping into his fight with Dean as well. He knows he didn't do anything particularly noble and definitely not honourable in a literal sense as he broke a blood vow, but it was what Cas deemed the "right" thing and he's in a sort of waiting zone to see if he broke the world again or what will be coming for him next... The sacrifices he's willing to take to make sure Dean etc are safe, because to Cas Dean is his moral compass and what is "right" is Dean and has been since season 4, even if Cas often goes against it or struggles with it or doesn't live up to Dean's standards or Dean has no idea Cas is trying to do right by Dean's way or -

(My mum's on holiday so I'm stuck at the start of season 7 wallowing on the end of season 6 fight right now :P)

-

"But it always seems like it's other angels sacrificing for your good deeds" Yeah, buddy, we've watched Cas every freakin' step of the way and he has SUFFERED for this okay, so back off. CAS KNOWS ALREADY AND IF HE SLEPT HE WOULDN'T BECAUSE HE'D BE LYING AWAKE THINKING ABOUT THIS

-

"Are you here to insult me or talk about Benjamin?" "Can we do both?"

ily Yockey

-

"We didn't think you'd care"

fuck off Yockey :P

(I love that this contrasts with at the start Dean complaining about Cas caring as part of his rant to Sam about it all - drawing a line between what Cas cares about here and there... Obviously Cas DOES care a lot about these angels because ARGH his reaction to Benjamin HURT SO MUCH. But he's been understandably distracted for the last few years, and with these guys off having their own problems, say this started RIGHT after the angel fall, CAS WAS HUMAN and would potentially have missed anything on angel radio meant for him to warn him about this because he was so bad at tuning into it. If he never answered the call the first time one of their number was murdered, well, of course they'd think he doesn't care)

-

Also I love that this episode clearly shows that Yockey has a very full awareness of the show's story so far.

-

Ahahaha Sam no. (Please keep Sam-ing like this. You are the Sam I love so very much :P)

He has been observing Dean's behaviour all his life and he knows when Dean's patience snaps when it comes to worrying about Cas.

-

Describe them in one picture

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Why does Sam cram in on the end though.

He doesn't wanna be left out either, though the bench is only big enough for Dean n Cas

If you want to talk definitions of third wheels, Sam is definitely it this episode, but he's got enough of a sense of humour that knowing he's along for the ride trapped in a lovers' spat, he can at least have some fun with it, since he's basically got to be the buffer between them. Or else towed in their wake.

(I also like how this shows Sam knows there's no point arguing with Dean about this, so going along with it mocking him for his behaviour is about the one sort of resistance he has left to him :P)

-

"My friends who don't listen very well" *Dean smirks at Cas* Okay, but I'm taking a screencap of that to use as like, a phone background or something.

-

This has mostly turned into me not listening to the conversation and screenshotting their faces so I need to go back and try again

-

Mirabelle better not get killed just because Sam and Dean showed up.

-

Noooooooo

-

I can see these coming from so far off but

-

"Who wants some pie"

-

Dean trying to play happy families with this weird group of people.

Well, one weird rando angel, since Mirabelle is now dead, which means that I was right but this is an even more alarming rate of side character death than I was expecting

-

Still don't think I've caught beard!angel's name

-

He accuses Cas of "how far he's fallen" *shot of him being lovingly elbowed in the kidney by Dean* I wonder what the implication is here :P

The description of him as a warrior is interesting but we already knew that. I like "angel's angel" though because it mirror's "man's man" I suppose as a phrase, which is the sort of stereotype of a manly dude who does all the manly dude stuff, well, like Dean presents the front. I think, like, the sort of dude who goes fishing with his mates every weekend rather than stay home with the wife :P

idk if angels go fishing aside from Daniel but that's the second time I've thought of him in a few minutes of TV time so

-

*Dean and beard!angel really stare down each other* Not jealous at all, are we Dean? ("want some coffee with that sugar" I am so amused) Beard!angel accuses Cas of being homeless, which is really mean because he lives at the Bunker now, but, uh, essential to the arc of Cas REALISING that he lives at the Bunker and is in fact his home and GOOD ENOUGH and also he's totally welcome there and Dean loves him and Sam's only being weird about this because he feels like a third wheel and is making DEAN'S life hell for it in the only way a little sibling who learned to punish people through well-meant bratty little sibling behaviour can... :P

Well, home will still be very snarky and passive aggressive when he lives there but at least it will feel like HIS snarky passive-aggressive hunter-filled home.

(Angels referring to humans as monkeys is an age old sign they can't be trusted or have the Wrong Morals, like Uriel especially since that's how we were introduced to the idea that calling us "mud monkeys" was "close to blasphemy" - which already undermines that Cas was always an "angel's angel" because it sounds like this is exactly how to describe beard!angel, and hey MAYBE CAS WAS PROJECTING BASED ON HIS ENVIRONMENT, NOT LIKE DEAN DOES THAT ALL THE TIME TO FIT IN OR ANYTHING)

I have collected so many emotional parallels between season 4 Cas and early seasons Dean in this one conversation that will utterly destroy me next time I wander through season 4, which was already riddled with this parallel in the original subtext >.>

-

Also not for nothing but beard!angel does look vaguely like John & seems like him in the older male alpha authority figure way he acts. Dean is rejecting him which is great, but he has standards about what makes an angel (read: man) which doesn't fit with the true self we know of Cas (read: Dean, who is of course, "humanity") and clearly these are outdated societal angel things which he holds to...

welp

-

"have some pie" (why do I feel like he's walking off to be Lily Sundered?)

Great parting words though. Dean is like "don't mind if I do" when he sees how much money the angel threw down. Of course it's mocking them for their attachment as family, but it's a value that is the CORE of the show - humanity and love and family - which pie represents in all its forms. A barb telling them to have pie because it's apparently demeaning to like these things (and below an angel to care for a family of humans like this) is no insult at all to the people who ACTUALLY LIKE PIE.

-

Sam moves over so Dean and Cas can share the seat together. Nicely done.

-

Captain of the SS Destiel and desperately trying to steer it through the storm to its berth :P

-

"Ishim" apparently. Dean immediately defends Cas against him once he's gone, like, Cas doesn't deserve to be treated that way. BECAUSE DEAN APPRECIATES HIM.

Not that Cas may be able to recognise what just happened there because wow they're all dug in on their fight :P

-

"No one gets to be a dick to my husband except me"

-

Not surprisingly, Ishim then gets attacked and lightly stabbed.

(that was a pun. Because angels bleed light -

I'll show myself out)

-

Cas shows up and injures Lily in a surprisingly similar way.

-

I'm still impressed with her absorbing and using an angel smiting for power.

-

Ishim says "I'm fine" which is such a part of the SPN vocabulary I don't even know what that means except that he's absorbed the same rules about it somewhere or other. :P Cas had to explain it to Hannah about why humans do it, but I think angels come on a range of personality types and Ishim is definitely of the better socialised type than say, Mirabelle, who was very angel-y, especially with how she stood the whole time watching them, and still had more of a uniform look to her clothes then Ishim who's just wearing a nice suit.

-

I do like the church they're holed up in

-

Hrm, vaguely annoyed about the "came to earth" turn of phrase, because I always took the watching over it to mean they were literally around on earth, though not in vessels and obviously as true forms very distant and above it all.

It's making my thumb itch that Cas had a vessel before Jimmy but I've been bracing myself for this retcon for ages so I'm just going to have to live with it :P

The fact that Ishim is the one dude and the other angels are all in female vessels does look, in this period costume, kind of odd. He has a little flock or something :P Weird gender role stuff going on here. I mean, from an outside view. To Cas, gender is nicely explained by that little exchange where Dean was like "Benjamin's a woman?" and Cas was like, "Benjamin's an ANGEL. His vessel is a woman" - so pronouns apply to them if they like them, but the real distinction is really not that important because what they are is genderless wavelengths with a consciousness that may like to be one or the other in a vessel or for it not to matter, or to prefer a pronoun that applies to them regardless of vessel or... it's wobbly. The important thing is they're angels :P Idk if I should have celebrated this louder back in the car discussion because I always took it as canon and especially with Hannah in season 10 something the show sort of went over again to make it a bit more clear, but with more hindsight maybe this really is taking what was strictly still sort of headcanon when it comes to expressly TALKING about how angels identify, and putting it in the text, aka definitely and finally queering all the angels ever, forever)

Anyway I had it paused on a lady with the Perfect Eyebrow and idk how the casting went for this but it was probably "can you do Cas's Eyebrow" so now I should see how she handles the rest because I'm sold just on her resting Cas face :P

We know since 4x20 Cas would possess Claire, with absolutely no weirdness about it, but there's enough blah about the circumstances that he might only have done it because the bloodline, emergency moment, Jimmy was in trouble etc... But here we have Cas clearly having freely chosen a female vessel (maybe an ancestor of the Novaks? Which would limit his choice if she was the only suitable one around at that point but eh >.>) and so that's sort of... a big moment I guess... *see above: conversation about angel gender* I'm so used to thinking this is a totally normal thing that I have no idea how mindblowing this is for them to happily show Cas in a female vessel like this :P There was so much weirdness about Raphael swapping vessels - several characters got a shot in towards the end of season 6. And at least Metatron made a crack about Hannah swapping out Caroline and using a male one. But Cas is a major character and unlike Crowley briefly possessing women, the way angels possess people is very different (and the reminder that Benjamin was friends with his vessel from the start of the episode sort of works in general to show how angels have to have a more mutual compatibility with their vessel...)

It’s a pretty big thing, I guess. 

-

Benjamin is complaining about how wet it is on earth, but Ishim just confirmed all the spec that this is a human marrying an angel and I'm contemplating going out to stand in the rain and shriek into the sky so he's got that all wrong. Rain is great, when you need to shriek :P

-

Obviously this is forefront a parallel to the Lucifer and nephilim thing, buuut I mean they're in LOVE and MARRIED

who else in this episode is MARRIED

Oh right Sam had to yell at them to not drive into oncoming traffic because they were too busy being MARRIED

-

For the record, the description of the Nephilim here is killing me - it has grace and a human soul, and I've been speculating that Cas never lost his soul he had after being human, so he too has both. (Which makes him dangerous)

Revisiting nephilim is all Dabb because he wrote 8x22 which originally introduced the idea, and so I am now in a sort of danger zone for getting sucked riiight back into angel fall spell nonsense :P I have picked up a real aversion to wild speculation but this is my weak spot. The season 8-9 crazy Destiel optimism about that damn spell, and Dabb's picking at all the loose ends this season, especially to get to the Nephilim, which plays such a key part in that beautiful, horrible idea that the last ingredient was "the grace of an angel in love with a human" and this is specifically WHY the spell makes the angels fall... Brings them down to the monkeys' level :P Ishim would hate to know that detail of why he has no wings :P But, yeah, that the spell was a punishment or reward that comes as a result of angels mingling with humans (and I still think God preferred angels to like humans, so this taboo comes from angel society, that Ishim represents and is denouncing in front of Cas)

It's times like this I remember the translation to the angel tablet is just sitting in the bunker in a language Cas can read and I need to go shriek in the rain some more

-

I guess Ishim is like the homophobic, racist uncle, we should treat this accordingly :P

(Benjamin also confirmed this is an angel-made rule)

-

Castiel moves like the Cas we know better :P I like her a lot.

-

I mean, she IS Cas, after all.

-

Aww Lily's husband has great hair.

-

Ishim says that he was only supposed to watch and instead he took up with a filthy animal... hahahahahahahahaha *flashback within a flashback to the diner scene and Cas all crushed up against Dean*

No I'm fine why do you ask

-

"How could anyone know them and not love them" (re: humanity)

Help meee

-

Oh no, Castiel does the whole speech about why this angel broke the rules before they kill him :<

I mean... Delicious irony making Castiel say it because obviously later Cas has done a complete about turn on this, at least where loving humanity is concerned. Maybe not the fathering nephilim bit as he's still out to get Holly and this is explaining WHY he knows it's such a big deal (8x22 also showed him hesitant to kill the nephilim there until she turned on them and proved she was ready to act monstrously, and then he had no hesitation) although I hope this inspires him to be more sympathetic, remembering HOW cold and angelic he was back here and how he's all in contrast to this now.

(I don't think it's weird Akobel makes that speech about humanity being great in front of Castiel, because although Cas clearly softens towards humans later and has a more sympathetic feeling than say, Uriel, who clearly is on a level with Ishim on this subject, by the time we meet him, or at least, after 3 episodes putting up with Dean, this mirrors Dean's 4x22 speech, which means that this is a trial run that doesn't convince Cas, because, well, there's no weight behind it to TRULY make Cas think. 4x22 in contrast is SO powerful that Dean's similar words have a huge weight of their friendship, his growing understanding of humanity, etc, that they land squarely on him and convince him to rebel)

-

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah and then Castiel flinches, clearly affected by this even though he knows the nephilim is an abomination and has to die :<

Always had that crack in his chassis...

-

I am glad that this is HOPEFULLY, via what they've set up in Cas's emotional landscape here so far, going to let him get to a place where he chooses to either let Holly go and forget about this, or at least track her down but give her a choice and maybe some actual HELP with having to raise a devil baby if she chooses to do so. >.> Definitely showing us Cas feeling bad about killing nephilim that haven't done anything, or given a chance to live their lives normally might NOT grow up awful (Jesse the forgotten antichrist comes to mind, never mind the nephilim we saw before who was living a completely peaceful life until Metatron ruined everything, as he tends to do)... I suppose it's been Cas vs 2 nephilim now and Lucifer's baby is the 3rd, so...

-

The message in 12x08 was so weird about it, there's so much salvage work for me to even be sure I know which way is up with this but as a bare minimum making Cas conflicted about what to do about this issue is a start to make it less crazy with all these guys coming rushing to tell the woman what to do with her baby, even if it seems justified by the story that they seem to know best >.>

-

"It was necessary, it was right," Cas says, looking horrified.

(Sam and Dean do too, and as I said, emotional compass...)

-

This is such a terrible plotline :P A sensible response back in 12x08 would have been like "hey you were coercively raped by the actual devil, just FYI about your baby" and she'd be like "oh shit that's terrible" and go willingly choose to have an abortion (and therapy probably >.>) without anyone telling her to do it but the main characters weighing in with their info on nephilim and anti-christs they've already met and dealt with to give her some best case/worst case scenarios to help her decision >.> That's the most political route because of actual choice and agency on the mother's part but eh. A lot of times in media they toe a safe line of considering abortion and confirming it's a thing that happens and isn't inherently evil but then the preggers character involved magically decides that they're fine and will keep the baby for personal reasons for the story to avoid going there and praising abortion for saving desperate people >.> Or well, unless it's a tragedy, but still a terrible idea to have the baby for everyone involved, in which case stories tend to throw a last minute miscarriage their way...

12x08 was just a mess though so had the poor woman in a room full of people yelling at her and attacking her in Lucifer's case about what she was supposed to do, and then she legged it and immediately decided to keep the baby and - this could have been better handled, even in a toeing a really safe bland line, is all I'm saying >.>

-

"we completed a mission, it was necessary, it was right." - Cas falling back on old angelic behaviour to explain it because the mission and their purpose was absolute and you didn't question it.

"You say so," says Dean, still annoyed with Cas for the last big decision he made where he thought he was doing something necessary and right by killing Billie.

(I notice this involves a lot of murder for the protagonists to work out how they feel about the big issues... Great :P)

But yeah, killing kids is like the no.1 no-no and used to show Dean stepping over the line in 10x22, and now Cas reveals he was complicit in killing a kid before. (Ishim is probably not going to make it out of the episode, and certainly doesn't deserve to, by SPN's rules :P)

-

I love the exchanges where they're like just "Dean." "Cas." because saying each other's names is enough to say everything they need to because they've been over arguments like this so much by now.

(I think Sam and Dean do it too but for some reason I don't pay as much attention to it :P)

-

Meanwhile: Sam puts his foot in his mouth implying to Cas that the angels sort of deserved what was coming to them (which is a fair opinion but maybe don’t tell Cas if you think that :P)

The following orders thing tends to go pretty far with angels when you throw in brainwashing (and how Cas was already at this point many many layers of reprogrammed by Naomi since she refers to doing it to him in Biblical times, so if he felt bad about this it may have been hammered back out of him for a while after) but Ishim really is kind of being presented as a total dick about it in a sort of unrepentant way that paints a target on him as a rightful character to feel deserves it, while though Cas and the others were following orders and enforcing their society's rules that they never questioned (and would be killed if they questioned too hard or lost faith in the power structure) and in COMPARISON to Ishim who is being used as a scapegoat by the story, clearly are less deserving of punishment, especially Cas who has learned SO HARD in many ways what is right and wrong (though this seems to be a big hurdle he has left). It makes it a bit unfair to only have left the most symapthetic angel by a billion miles compared to any of the others, because we've been so far with him, and Ishim, who has clearly not changed a jot :P

-

Sam says Cas is "different now" :3

-

Clearly the easiest way out is to be like, "look Cas is now married to Dean so OBVIOUSLY has changed his ways" and honestly Captain Sam of the SS Destiel, I'm not sure he's not suggesting it.

-

Cas talking about how she "won't quit" to avenge her family reminds me that this is a plot we have had before, with whatsisface in 10x02 coming back for Dean. I also watched 7x03 last, with Amy Pond's poor son who vowed vengeance on Dean and disappeared to grow up some more and honestly season 7 is now so long ago he MUST be ready to come kill Dean but here we are with Cas finally having it happen to him :P Oh the Dean and Cas story overlaps :')

-

I really really really love Lily Sunder and her actress is great :D That healing scene was, no pun intended, SO CHARGED.

(little bit of a pun intended)

-

(Kinda sad after seeing the flashback I can't write her and Cas as lesbians :P)

-

Meanwhile in Cas's healing scene - weird shades of 8x17 and Cas and Meg, with the way Cas is tending to an ambiguous friend with a history (Wait. Same director? Yeah, same director), and clearly caring about him enough to heal him (didn't heal Meg magically and I've always suspected angel magic is a bit of a blunt weapon that would had smote her if he'd tried, even if he meant no harm >.>) - something about Cas's face while he tends to him, especially, because he's poking around instead of just flinging some glowy light at him, which makes this whole set up of playing nurse, which Cas never normally has when healing people since he just puts his hand on them and fixes them. It's automatically a much more tender, intimate scene. If this was Dean and Cas, people would spontaneously combust.

-

God damn this episode is doing some amazing things with inverting and playing with gender and stuff

-

Ishim has to ruin it by complaining about Cas letting the 'simians' talk to him...

"When did you get so gooey" I mean really, this is so seductive the way he's lying there and Cas is messing around with taking off his clothes? He and Lily had very similarly placed wounds for this parallel... but.

But yeah, calling Cas "gooey" really, really sounds like Meg.

oh god this speech from him...

"You know why we're meant to stay away from humans? It's not because we're a danger to them. They're a danger to us."

UGH

Brb

/rain /shrieking

etc

-

If this episode has not already confirmed on at least 3-4 occasions already that Cas is totally in love with Dean I don't even know what it's for :P

-

"My friendship with Sam and Dean has made me stronger" "You can't really believe that" NO AND THAT'S THE PROBLEM RIGHT NOW.

Dean needs to do the whole boombox held up outside Cas's window love declaration and fix this >.>

I mean it is true that Cas is stronger, infinitely, than when we first met him, because of all he's been through for Sam and Dean, but... He doesn't see it :<

-

I think it's stopped raining so if I need to shriek I don't know where to go

-

I LOVE that after Cas is done healing the ding from the elevator overlaps him fixing Ishim and almost seems like a microwave ding telling us he's ready.

-

The fact this is about someone killing angels (never mind the Uriel reference) really does make the plot mirror 4x16 on Cas's side; that episode ditches Sam and Dean not long past the halfway point to become completely about angel drama and Cas's decision... Nice.

-

Lots of Edlund mirroring this season.

-

"Then we burn that bridge when we come to it" HAH. :D Love that messed up idiom so much. It's such the Winchester way.

-

I love how they just walk into Lily in the corridor.

"We don't wanna kill you" "I don't want to kill you" "Okay! Good, look, there we go, agreed" Sam you fucking third wheel master level dork. He's been mediating so many fights that even when he's in the middle of one as a participant he takes on this role :P

-

Also aaaaaaaah saying Cas is their family. I mean it gets said a fair few times, but it's always so lovely to hear it coming out of Dean's mouth.

-

Oh my god Alicia Witt is amazing

-

*looks around for something to scream into*

*picks Mittens's chat bubble since the sky is not in the right setting*

Love triangle plot twist!

Which I probably should have seen coming if I wasn't comparing what Ishim said to Cas so much that I forgot he was also saying it about himself. I sort of dimly registered it without thinking it would apply to something immediate :P

I guess now we know Cas has been super lied to he's even more blameless (in the narrative) for acting out orders that were wrong, aka basically all the Heaven nonsense where the angels get manipulated. LIKE 4x16 WHERE HE HAD BAD ORDERS TO ASK ALISTAIR WHO WAS KILLING ANGELS... Now it's WHY she's killing angels (showing again in 2 words how the show has changed in tone :P) Anyway... because they were clearing up Ishim's petty family feud for him in an abuse of power, it makes the other angels victims of Ishim's choice, especially now Lily is killing them for it.

-

I wonder if her research ended up with the MoL because it's always been a weird question of how they had so much info about research on angels and if this is clearing up a weird thing from 9x11, well... Robbie's being taken to the cleaners this episode on a few things already :P There’s literally so much going on I haven’t managed to cover it all.

-

ANYWAY everyone's in love with humans, and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

-

What is this episode even saying about Cas.

-

I mean I know what I will interpret it as saying but

-

Yockey, explain yerself

-

"I loved you" "You were obsessed with me, that isn't love" Oh dear, we're getting into details about what is and isn't love now.

-

You know, like the whole "love and... love" distinctions.

-

angel love triangle drama is so tense.

-

"You are powerless" So she goes and becomes the Most Powerful Ever - a human literally on the level of angels, or BETTER than them, to get her revenge. Nice.

I really love Lily Sunder, and I thought I would because of the name, but yeah, good hunch about that. :P

-

"You broke my heart so I'm going to break yours" :< :< :< :<

-

....

TERRIBLE timing to bring it up, but... 6x20 > 6x22, Cas breaking Sam's wall to keep Dean out the way. >.>

-

Oh no the daughter was human... WAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

-

This is like 1000% worse. I suppose for the previous stuff I was saying about it comparing to the Nephilim arc, Cas's guilt over this if/when he finds out will I suppose be a really heavy blow about Heaven's rules about Nephilim, since his obedience to them was used against him - and all the others who were in the dark - for this petty, evil revenge.

-

I like how Dean is just "he's a tool" about Ishim and phones Cas to... check Ishim is a big old tool?

Letting Cas know while he's alone with Ishim seems like a great way to flip from hunting Lily to needing her to help save Cas and get revenge on Ishim :P

Also I suppose Ishim turning on Cas (I hope but AAAH NOO CAS) would be a good way to convince Lily he's not evil/complicit if Ishim is having problems with him.

-

Heh, Sam's being left with Lily and Dean goes to check on Cas. What a wild surprise.

-

Oh dear, Cas is sassing Ishim which means even Cas knows he's contemptible now. The "oh goodie" sounds like Cas in the same room as CROWLEY. I suppose we're meant to assume Ishim stole his phone as well now

This would be a very good time to address that Lily can hack angel radio to message them but Dean doesn't think to pray?

Anyway Cas is not doing so great which seems to parallel that Lily healing herself seemed to really hurt her?

-

Can't believe they cover a plothole with Lily being like, nah, I just thought I'd wait and see what happened and if any of them came back to Earth I'd get them. 

Then had the angel fall spell dropped in her lap.

It seems like there should be a way to bridge her research with Metatron and the fact he made up his own spells including potentially that one. Off the books angel know-how. Like the MoL have... 

The show is never ever going to link this all up so it will just continue to bug me forever I guess :P I'm patient, I can wait over 100 years for more information to drop from the sky.

-

The fact the angel fall spell is connected to nephilim and has been mentioned a couple of times is making me reeeeally itchy in those old thumbs again

-

If Dabb wants a second crack at all that teasing, BE MY GUEST

-

Sam asking questions about magic... uhoh.

Nah, the price is soullessness, of a sort. Maybe becoming an angel? Is that possible? She might just burn out, hand of God style. Anyway Sam won't go for it. HE KNOWS THAT COST. 

FOILED AGAIN. No witch!Sam this year.

Meanwhile: actually tearing at my own soul in horror about the fact she's burning away her soul to use angel magic and I am of the opinion Cas has a soul and HE does angel magic but... he's caring more and more?? Can you do this in reverse? Use up your angel grace and if you have a human soul waiting underneath, just reboot in a different operating system?

What the heck.

I need to eat more pasta. Can't deal with this.

-

But yeah the episode has made a big deal about human souls and angel grace, and suggesting how they can live in a body together, either with Lily slowly replacing her soul, or with the nephilim having both naturally... Cas of course is an abomination.

(sorry Cas, your own words will eventually always come back to bite you :P)

-

Oh no, Lily's reached the stage where she doesn't dream any more :( Oh no Lily.

-

Lily is so good at patience. I love her. Although argh it's because she's got the emotional room to wait. Less soul to worry her. She just has to hope she reaches the end goal before she runs out of caring for it, or that her robo-self like Soulless Sam did, will carry on the "job" they define themselves by without emotionally caring for why they do it - also very Mark of Cain-y, taking on a thing like that to fling themselves at the target without a care for what happens to them in the process...

-

I'm guessing by now that Ishim has done something to Cas to make him weak :<

-

I did the "AAH OTP INTERACTING" fist pump when Dean rushed over to Cas all urgent and worried, and now Dean's just... like. Holding Cas. Help. I think I dislocated a finger making frantic handwaving :P

-

My arm legit really hurts.

-

Oh god Ishim is making Cas choose between "heaven" aka Ishim’s shitty side, and Dean. Guess we're back at 9x22.

-

"Why do his words bother you so much, Ishim" Ooooooh

This is going to be so bitchy

so so bitchy

-

*Cas squints harder*

-

"Well it sees some of my choices may need to be questioned" if you HAVE to concede a fight with your husband, this is the most badass way to do it so that it still seems like you at least half-won :P

-

Aw Caaaas all the beating up on him from the promos we assumed Lily did were Ishim's fault.

-

Dean just needs to know a human girl was killed and that's it, he goes for Ishim with a knife :D ("You're not going to like the answer" says it all, by implying that Cas's love for humanity will of course be what makes him hate it... AAAH)

-

"I used to envy you, Castiel" was that because he WASN'T in love with a human and now that's changed? :P

-

Oh no, he "just" cites Cas being chosen by God, before pointing out he's now sad and weak. Ishim sees that love as weakness.

-

Also Cas getting straddled by Ishim goes with that weirdly erotic subtext from earlier when Cas was healing him.

-

:< Cas lying there miserably after being beaten into submission. Now this has shades of 10x22 at the end - Ishim in the place of Dean - are we working through THAT trauma too... I am not up to this. Ow.

-

10x22 getting a little revisit (OH CAS NO) followed by Ishim saying he's going to go "cut out Cas's human weakness" by going to kill Dean

uh

paralleled directly to how he KILLED HIS HUMAN LOVER

I also thought from “cut out” it was going to be a reverse 8x23, and Ishim would split his throat and literally take something from Cas, like a SOUL or something. Then he said about himself, but split second panic there.

-

no biggie this is only literally THE MOST DESTIEL SHIT TO HAPPEN IN YEARS

-

HOLY CRAP then Dean picks CAS over banishing Ishim when he shows Cas is Dean's weakness too i

am probably burning my dinner in the oven

-

Yay hi Lily

-

KILL HIM

-

YAY more teamwork

I love when they do the teamwork thing. It’s a reoccurring theme this season, or maybe Yockey just likes it because 12x06 had the best teamwork ending.

-

AAAH LILY

-

This parallels 4x16 and Sam vs Alistair almost directly in staging

Except then Cas backstabs Ishim

he had it coming :P

-

Oh god and then Cas is on his knees, I mean, he drops to them because he's weak but it also puts him in a penitent position in front of Lily

LOOK AT MY BEAUTIFUL BLOODSTAINED SON

This also mirrors 4x16 and how he was on his knees in front of Uriel, the real threat of the episode for him.

-

I guess she decides not to kill Cas

-

Nice.

-

Oh look at poor Cas sitting there :(

-

I love that even though Lily's threat was she'd be beyond emotion, Dean tries to make this about revenge and killing some more to handle what next, but Cas goes straight to "i'm sorry" and Lily looks genuinely moved

-

Oh CAS you're so good.

-

And Lily thanks him and walks off :')

-

Oh dear, some over-running the episode length into a scene at the Bunker

Awww Dean giving Cas a beer and a shoulder pat and secret loving shoulder stroke. Dude. Someone needs to gif that in slow mo.

-

Oh god they're actually giving Cas a REAL you're family speech without any reasons to cut this short or make it not feel good

-

Sam's there too despite this having been all about Dean and Cas, just to smooth things over. :P

-

"I'm not mad I'm worried" Oh man all this stuff in the main text sucks because I deduced this back at the start through clever analysis of their dialogue and now what I can tell from this line is that... Dean is worried about Cas.

-

Look at their eyes

-

Waaah

-

Cas still looks beat up which is rare for him not to immediately snap back to normal. I worried.

-

Heh, Cas hasn't changed that much - all that and he still has carefully set separate rules for each situation, and KNOWING that Lucifer's baby really is Lucifer's, well... Unless he's been lied to about HOW dangerous Nephilim are... He still thinks he has a point.

Sam tries to compare scenarios

And Cas says he doesn't know what he'll do or if he'll hesitate. It HAS affected him. YAY. Episode’s goal accomplished in the final moment.

-

Okay this is clearly a motto of the ENTIRE show: "let's drink, and hope we can find a better way"

-

Can't believe Dean and Cas are married.