#this was a great chance for me to think about and revise his background more :3 }}

[pyrotechnicarus]

Blistered Inkwell: Editing Services for Musicals, Stories, and Novels!

Hi! I don’t think people here know about my editing side gig, so I figured I would make a new pinned post about it. I’m currently doing freelance editing to help put myself through graduate school, and I’m so excited to work on your new project- whether it’s a musical, short story, novel, or standalone song! 

Background

I’ve been prose editing for literary magazines for six years and counting, including running my own litmag twice, and I’ve edited scripts for plays and musicals for three. I’ve also studied creative writing extensively, most recently at Princeton and now at NYU. My framework as an editor is focused on polishing your piece to help you say what you want to say as distinctly and uniquely as possible. 

Strengths

My passion is speculative fiction, which means any story that takes place not in this world. Sci-fi, fantasy, dystopian fiction, myth retellings, magical realism- lay it on me! This isn’t to say I won’t read realistic fiction, just that I feel I can advise speculative fiction particularly well. 

As a lyricist I am best with editing musical-theater-style lyrics (e.g. there is a close attention paid to rhyme and meter, a character development happens in the piece, and it is intended to be consumed by a live audience), though I have a passing familiarity with other styles.

Process 

For most of the tiers below, I will read your piece several times, give you a marked-up copy with detailed feedback, and meet with you to discuss that feedback and answer any questions you might have. My approach bridges developmental and copy editing, so it's best for pieces that you are still in the process of working on (instead of pieces that you really only want a grammar checker for.) Timeline depends on the length of the piece I’m reading, but it usually takes 1-5 days for the initial turnaround. If you’d like more or less involvement, please let me know in your inquiry and we can work out the right price! 

Sounds great! How do I reach out? 

Use the form on my website (www (dot) melhornyak (dot) com) to reach out to me and let me know a little bit about the piece you’re working on and what tier you’d like to work with me under (pricing visible under the cut!)

Tiers

Dabble- $10

The Piece: One song, scene, or short prose excerpt that is 3 pages long or less

You receive: An edited, marked up copy of your piece with comments, questions, and compliments. 

Who it’s for: If you’re just starting a project, or if you want to see if we collaborate well before you commission me for a bigger tier!

Engage- $25

The Piece: One short story, script, or script excerpt that is 20 pages or less

You receive: An edited, marked up copy of your piece with comments, questions, and compliments AND a 15-minute Zoom or phone call to discuss the edits. 

Who it’s for: If you’re ready to polish up your one-act, or you need another eye on your short story! 

Indulge- $50

The Piece: One full script of a musical or play OR several short stories OR one complete novella OR one excerpt of a novel that is 150 pages or less

You receive: An edited, marked up copy of your piece with comments, questions, and compliments AND a 30 minute Zoom or phone call to discuss the edits

Who it’s for: If you’ve finished a short work and you’re revising it, or you want someone else to give it a once-over before submitting it. 

Explore- $75

The Piece: One full script of a musical or play OR several short stories OR one complete novel OR an excerpt of a novel that is 500 pages or less

You receive: An edited, marked up copy of your piece with comments, questions, and compliments AND an hour-long Zoom or phone call to discuss the edits AND a chance to revise your work and have me read it over and mark it up again! Double the editing and twice the collaboration! 

Who it’s for: If you want to work more closely on your piece, you’re still actively modifying it, or you feel like a second round of editing would help your creative process! 

Extravaganza- $90

The Piece: One full script and score of a musical or play OR one complete novel OR 5-7 short stories that are too long to fit into the other tiers 

You receive: An edited, marked up copy of your piece with comments, questions, and compliments AND an hour-long Zoom or phone call to discuss the edits AND a chance to revise your work and receive more feedback AND another Zoom or phone call to discuss that feedback! 

Who it’s for: If you really, really need someone to read your entire 1,000-page fantasy novel, or you want my thoughts on the music of your show in addition to the script and lyrics! 

FAQs 

What do you mean by ‘Zoom or phone call’? 

I personally prefer Zoom, but I know that not everyone is comfortable with a face to face meeting with some stranger on the internet! My availability for phone calls is also generally wider, so I will let you decide whether we call on the phone or via Zoom according to how quickly you want to meet, and what you are comfortable with. 

Can I get you to read over my piece for school/homework/a contest? 

Please check with your instructor or the contest administrator! Most of the time, I’ve found they are okay with outside editors as long as we are properly cited and credited, but it very much depends on your individual situation. You can also always submit your piece first, and then ask for edits afterwards.

Will you read my fanfiction? 

Yes, with two caveats: I can’t guarantee my familiarity with the source material, so if I don’t know the source material I’ll be approaching it as though it is a standalone work of literature. You’ll still receive helpful grammar, style, and arc feedback, but sometimes this means I’ll ask about character development that your main audience would already know from the source. Secondly, I will not read or edit fanfiction of my own creative work. You can understand how the power dynamics of that would be fucked up, right? 

About that Extravaganza option- what sort of feedback can you give on a score? Aren’t you a lyricist and a bookwright? 

Yes, alas! However, I can read music and work closely with composers. I will not be able to give you as specific edits on your music as I can give lyric edits - for that, I would recommend a professional music director, orchestrator, or composer. However, I can approach your score as a lyricist and offer edits on setting, rhythms, tone, instrument choice, and singability, all of which are vital for the success of your music. 

While I’ll listen to demos in any of the tiers if you have them, the distinction in the markup between the Explore and Extravaganza tiers is that I will be making these notes on the actual score of the piece with specific measure numbers instead of on the lyric sheet. 

These are measured in pages... can I make my text real small and get you to edit more of it? 

Please don’t! The prices are calculated based on the estimated amount of time it would take for me to read each of these, so making the font smaller means you’re underpaying me for my work. I provide some fair general formatting guidelines when we enter a working relationship. If I glance at your document and can see you’re trying to pull one over on me, I reserve the right to return any money you’ve paid me and refuse to read your work. 

How much do you actually edit a piece? Will you get offended if I don’t agree with your edits?

It really depends on the piece and what it needs! More edits does not necessarily mean the piece needs more help- I could just have a lot of great things to say about it! I always write a much longer essay-style letter at the end to summarize my overall thoughts, any structural things I want to bring up, and where the next steps are as I see them. 

Whether you eventually take my suggestions is fully up to you! I consider myself an audience member, letting you know about my first impressions, and a fellow writer giving you avenues for changing those impressions, but not an equal creative partner or a dictator telling you what to do with your work.

Should I do this if I can’t afford it?

Absolutely not! I know everyone in the arts world is kind of passing the same $20 around, and that getting a professional editor isn’t something everyone can afford. I am not in any dire financial crisis and if you know someone who is, help them first before thinking about any of these!

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to working with you! If you have any questions, shoot them to me here or on my website above.

[miraclesabound]

Accessory to Murder

Summary: Reader has hit a creative wall, and not even Morpheus's love for her can help. Maybe it's time to go to the actual source.

Pairings/Characters: Slight Calliope/F!Reader, background Morpheus/F!Reader

Notes: Reader isn't a professional writer, but her stories are still important to her. Set after Season 1 of "The Sandman". Even though she doesn't say it directly, Reader has a bit of a crush on Calliope. Also on A03.

Warnings: Within Reader's story - description of injuries, death and medical procedures, realization of murder. Main story - creative frustration, heavy self-doubt, especially painful writer's block, Morpheus accidentally making things worse, cathartic tears

Tags: @ineffablepspspscal @insomniamamma @blueeyesatnight @yayforawesome @whovianayesha @oonajaeadira @depressedswampwitch @heybluechild

When you see your beloved's ex-wife in your living room, all you can do is sigh.

"Morpheus shouldn't have called you, my lady." You love your Lord of Dreams - in some ways, he even TAUGHT you how to love. That said, he has a tendency to overreact when you're stressed, and you suspect that he's the reason that the Great Muse is currently making use of your couch.

"If I'm intruding, I'll go," Calliope says.

Your cheeks burn; you hadn't meant to insult her. "No, please feel free to stay - do you like tea?"

The beverage break seems to be just what you need - after you're done, you're more confident showing Calliope what's been troubling you. "I've got so many orphaned bits here," you tell her as you pull up your scratch document. Seeing your most recent one, you roll your eyes a bit. "This one's the perfect example."

John Glass was no relation to the county medical examiner, Dr. Angela Glass – they wouldn’t have let her do his autopsy if that were the case. She’d heard his name before – he was the pyrotechnician who designed amazing summer fireworks shows for the local baseball team. Unfortunately, his work had caught up with him, according to the police report she’d received. After a game the previous night, John hadn’t returned home – and when his daughter June went looking for him, she had found him dead behind the outfield with a horrific chest wound. He’d been right next to the launch site, and even if he could have called for help, no one would have noticed with all the noise and light and smoke. Angela’s heart twinged for the man laid out on her table. In her years as ME, she had seen her share of ironic deaths, but this one was especially brutal. She could only hope that the mortar that took his life had killed him instantly. Taking a chance to steady her breathing, she activated her recorder and started taking her notes. In the first hour, John’s results were straightforward. The chest wound was obvious, and Angela wasn’t surprised at all to find bits of shrapnel scattered throughout his body. However, at minute 74 of the autopsy, Angela noticed something odd about John’s heart. There was no debris in the muscle – at least not the large pieces that had cut through his limbs and stomach – so Angela didn’t understand why she was seeing cuts on the heart. Furthermore, the cuts in question weren’t jagged like you would expect – they looked almost surgical. So what had caused them? A horrible thought occurred to Angela, and she spoke it into the recorder before she lost her nerve. “The wounds on the heart are more consistent with a stabbing than an explosion. Cause of death may need to be revised to homicide.”

"See?" You gesture helplessly at your screen. "It's all nonsense! I don't even know the murderer or their motive, and everything online says you have to know that first. Plus which, I thought I was being clever with that "not quite family" bit, but now I think it's me being fake-deep."

You can tell you're building into a rant, but you're not sure you can stop yourself. "And every idea I've had lately feels this way!" you tell her. "I haven't been able to write a proper story in months!"

"If this is hurting you, why not try other art forms?" Calliope asks.

You sigh. "Because I did try," you say. "And I'm crap at all of them. Writing's all I've got - or at least it was..."

"Morpheus didn't say this, did he?" Calliope has seen the thawing of her ex-husband's heart, but she knows he can still be callous.

You shake your head. "No - and he even tried to help! He offered to let me find my story in the Library...but that felt like...artistic cheating I guess..." Tears start stinging the corners of your eyes. "What if...what if I can never write again?"

"....there's something else going on here." Calliope's voice makes it clear that she's making an assessment, not asking a question.

You nod, and the tears flow more freely. "I'm so scared, my lady! If I can't write, I have nothing to offer, and if I can't offer anything, then I'm going to be alone..."

The Muse does a double-take. "Wait, you think Morpheus would leave you?"

"Why wouldn't he?? He isn't just a man, he's a foundational power of the Universe! If I can't bring something to the table for our relationship, if I can't MAKE something, then...then...I'm...just another human..."

Calliope cups your face, making you look her in the eyes. "Don't speak that way. I see how he loves you."

"But is it enough?" you ask. "He loved you too once - you had a family together, you have a royal lineage, you inspired Homer - and he still left! What chance do I have!?" Calliope pulls you into a hug, and you break into full-throated sobs. For several minutes, you cry into the fabric of her tunic, and she holds you with the strength of ten thousand years in her arms.

When you're able to catch your breath, she strokes your hair, still letting you rest on her shoulder. "I can't control what Morpheus does," she tells you. "But there are two things you ought to know."

"Oh?"

"Morpheus didn't leave me - I left him. And he wasn't the one who called me here tonight - it was all you."

"What? But how?" you ask, looking up at her. "I made no altar, I possess no scroll."

"My dear girl, your fire for creation existed long before you met Morpheus...I have known you for many years." She smiles and your heart swells. "That passion is still there, and it's what called to me - I wouldn't be here if you didn't have some spark left."

"Then...what do I do now?"

"You make your request of me," she tells you, stroking your cheek. "How formal you wish to be is up to you."

You kneel on the ground before her - if your eyes don't deceive you, her beauty becomes even more dazzling. When you speak, you don't know where the words come from.

"O Gracious One, O Chieftaness of Song, hear the one with aching heart and stopped tongue, and grant relief however you see fit, by inspiration or by other ways."

Calliope offers her hands, and you kiss the knuckles with appropriate reverence. She helps you to your feet, pulling you into another strong embrace. "Don't hesitate to call more purposely if you need me, my dear."

"I won't," you promise.

After she leaves, you feel no sudden burst of desire to write - but you do feel calmer. Perhaps, you think to yourself, Calliope is not only the Muse of Wordcraft, but the Muse of Catharsis.

[industrialisland]

revised season 2 thoughts

Overall I thought it was fantastic.

The tone was different, yes, but the tone was always going to be different after Ed was heartbroken at the end of season 1. There was no way it was going to be the same show.

I loved that Stede honestly didn’t care about his lack of money or fancy things, he just wanted to get to Ed and take care of his found family. And it was completely in character for him to go overboard thinking he was a great pirate when everyone was pumping him up. Stede likes to be liked! He’s gone his whole life being tolerated at best, of course he’s going to embrace feeling powerful and celebrated! Of course he’s going to make Ned Low walk the plank with his crew cheering on, after he insults Ed. Of course he’s going to live it up after Ed tells him to enjoy himself.

But I don’t think Stede gave anything up to be with Ed at the end. He thought his life with Mary was monotonous because he didn’t love her. Being a pirate was a fantasy to get away from that life. Do I think they’ll be good innkeepers together? Hell no, they’re out of their element. But they are together, and now they have a chance to see what that means. A domestic life with Ed might be exactly what Stede never knew he wanted. Or maybe they’ll catch the next ship out of there looking for adventure. Maybe they’ll decide to travel!

And Ed is still working on himself. No he didn’t give great apologies for what he did. But the crew did very much kill him, like he was more or less dead. I think that evens it out for the people who were on the Revenge for the Great Kraken Tour 1717. He tried to make amends with Lucius. And his conversation with Fang shows that he really doesn’t consider what he’s done as something that needs to be apologized for- which would have been nice to see expanded on a little more, maybe apologize to the guys he deserted on the island at least, but I think there was just not enough time and we have to be content with having his apology to Fang as a stand in. Ed isn’t a healthy person. He’s been trying to find a new path for himself since season 1- being an aristocrat didn’t work, he didn’t fit in. Joining the navy didn’t work, Stede left him. Being a kinder, softer Ed didn’t work- Izzy threatened him. Even with Stede back, he’s floundering- he doesn’t want to be a pirate, and Stede does, so he runs away. Pop Pop told him to do whatever he might have been good at- and that’s being with Stede.

Is Ed a good person? Is Stede? None of them are! And that’s what makes them interesting. They love each other and they’re going to give domestic life a go.

Izzy’s death as symbolic for the death of Blackbeard was good. The death itself I still feel was not done the justice it could have been. A random gunshot from a hostage who should have been disarmed is a very disappointing way to go (and I still don’t understand what the plan was), and a thirty second funeral at the end of which Ed says “well, that’s that then” was a gut punch, even for those of us who didn’t like Izzy. But for all their conflict, Izzy and Ed loved each other in some way, and dying in Ed’s arms was right. Yes, I would have liked the crew to have been closer, but at the end of the day, he’s known Ed the longest, they’re family in a way that the crew wasn’t (yet). Their dynamic was fucked on both sides, but Izzy gave Ed closure and hopefully Ed gave Izzy some peace in return.

This death resonated hard with some people and I totally get that. Izzy had a beautiful arc this season and if you would have told me last year that I’d be sad about his death I would have laughed. It will be hard to have a show without him and I do hope that we see him next season in some way (no more flashbacks of things we already saw though please). The writers have their plans and I still trust them.

I still don’t feel like the background crew got their dues this season, and it is what it is. They rushed it, they didn’t have enough time, Max stuck their hands in, who knows. The last episode was chaotic. There were too many flashbacks. Things felt unfinished. But they are unfinished - we have another potential season to wrap things up. And there was no way this season was going to please everyone, even if it had all the episodes and budget it deserved. There was such a long time between seasons in which we all made these characters our own and I think a lot of people forgot that they aren’t going to be written the same way we saw them developing.

But we got some beautiful episodes, and some beautiful moments with Ed and Stede, and I look forward to where it goes next.

My biggest complaint is that I already wrote a fic of them retiring together after last season, I’ll have to find some way to do it again, lol.

[mldrgrl]

The New Addition

by: mldrgrl rating: PG-13 Summary: Hanella welcomes a guest for the weekend

Even more rare than a call from Becca was a FaceTime.  Texting was more her style.  So, when Hank picked up his phone and saw the incoming video call, he answered immediately.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“That’s how you answer your phone?” Becca said.  “Why does something have to be wrong?”

“Many apologies, Daughter, but the infrequency with which you grace us with your face from a remote location are rare as natural breasts on a porn star.”

“Do you think that’s an appropriate thing to say to a daughter, Father?”

“Fuck no, but surprise calls make me nervous.  What’s up, Kitten?”

“Don’t ever call me that again.  Is Stella there?”

“Yeah, I think she was grading some exams or something, hang on.”  Hank turned away from the phone and leaned over the sofa to try to see down the hall to the back room she was using as a study.  “Stella!  Stelllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

“Oh my god, why are you screaming at her?” Becca said.

“I like to take the opportunity to rehearse my Stanley Kowalski impression when I can.  Here she comes.”

Stella came down the hall with her hands on her hips and her brows raised.  Hank held his phone up so she could see Becca on the screen and she immediately dropped her hands from her hips and softened her brows, but she quickened her step.

“Becca, darling,” Stella said.  “What’s the matter?”

“This is why I only text,” Becca said.

“Well, if you called more, we wouldn’t think shit had hit the fan somewhere.”

Hank opened up his arm as Stella came around to the sofa and sat down.  She leaned against him and he adjusted his grip on the phone so they were both in the frame and so that she could also see Becca.

“I have someone I want you to meet,” Becca said.

“How the hell did you meet someone during a pandemic?” Hanks asked.  “Oh my god, are you online dating?  You know those people usually turn out to be serial killers.”

“Dad!”

“Darling, don’t worry, it’s still statistically a very low probability even if related crimes have been on the rise.  Give me his name and social security number and I’ll run a background check.”

“Or her,” Hank interjected.  “We’re still holding out hope she’s a lesbian.”

“This is the last time I am ever calling you,” Becca said.

“Does your mother know about this guy?”

“Or girl,” Stella added.

Becca sighed and rolled her eyes.  She leaned down and tilted her phone at the same time so the view was of her ceiling and then she came back into frame with a small, brown poodle.  “This is Ziggy,” she said.  “A friend of a friend of mine was giving away her dog’s puppies and I picked him up this morning.”

“Lovely,” Stella said.  “He’s very handsome.”

“I haven’t even met him, but I guarantee this is my favorite guy you’ve ever introduced me to,” Hank added.  “Now you’ll be far too busy for online dating.”

“I’m not online dating, but I’m wondering if you can do me a favor?”

“What’s the favor?”

“Next month I have the writer’s retreat scheduled upstate.  It’s just for a long weekend, Friday to Monday, can you watch Ziggy for me?  He’ll probably be housetrained by then.  Maybe.  Hopefully.”

“Of course,” Stella answered, as Hank also said “Not a chance.”

Becca grimaced slightly.  “It’s just that I’d really rather not have to put him in a kennel.  I guess I can call Mom and see if she can pick him up, but it’s so far.”

Stella squeezed Hank’s knee.  “You don’t need to call Karen,” she said.  “We would love to watch him.”

“Fine,” Hank said.

“Thank you.”  Becca smiled and held the dog closer to the phone.  “Ziggy says thank you as well.”

Hank ended the call and then turned to look at Stella.  She tipped her head back to look at him as well.  He tried to scowl and she smiled.

“Why did you say no?” Stella asked.

“Why did you say yes?” he countered.

“I asked you first.”

“I asked you second.”

“Because I don’t see a reason to say no.”

“Because I got her a dog once and where do you think that dog is now?”

“I wouldn’t know, where is it?”

“I have no fucking idea, that’s the point.  I went through all the trouble to steal the little fucker from the boyfriend of this woman I was...uh, actually it’s irrelevant how I acquired the dog, let’s just say I got a dog for Becca and fuck if I know what happened to the late, great Cat Stevens.”

“What in the world does Cat Stevens have to do with it?”

“That was the dog.”

Stella patted Hank on the knee and then tried to get up from the couch, but Hank pulled her back down.  “I have to grade papers,” she said.

“I just wanted to make sure you knew about the naked shower party I’m having tonight.”

“Wouldn’t any shower party be naked by virtue of being a shower party?”

“That’s a very good point, Sherlock.  I’d revise the invitation, but I’d rather just be redundant.”

“Mmhm.”  She pushed on his knee and this time he let her up.  “Text me the details, I need to get back to grading.”

“What, like a dick pic?” he called after her.

She glanced over her shoulder at him with one eyebrow raised.  He waited until she was back in the study to unbutton his jeans.

*****

Becca dropped the dog off on a Friday morning, bright and early.  Stella was awake to prepare for one of her classes, but Hank was still asleep.  He didn’t hear the drop-off, but when he woke up and wandered into the kitchen to make coffee, he tripped over the dog, stubbed his toe, and shouted a ‘motherfucker’ so loud he was pretty sure he was going to get scolded for it later.  The dog ran away.

“Yeah, you better run,” Hank mumbled, limping to the coffeemaker.  “Fuck.”

Stella startled him not a minute later when she smacked him on the ass.  He jumped and rubbed at his stinging backside, turning to her with a pout.  She was holding the dog in her arms and it was whimpering and holding on to her neck with its head turned away from him.

“What was that for?” he grumbled.

“First, for shouting expletives whilst I was on a lecture.”

“I’m sorry, Sherlock, I didn’t mean to.  Did they hear me?”

“No, fortunately, I was on mute.  There are student presentations today.  Which I must return to.”

“The damn dog tripped me and I stubbed my toe.  It might be broken.”  He leaned against the counter and lifted his foot up to show her his foot.  “See.”

Stella reached out and took a light hold on his toe.  He made a face at her and she gave it a rough tug to which he yelped and pulled his foot back.

“You’re fine,” she said.

“You’re mean.”

“Please don’t make enemies with Becca’s dog for the weekend.”

“He started it.”

Stella handed the dog over to Hank and gave it a scratch on the head before she walked away.  “I put the instructions on the refrigerator,” she said.  “Give them a read and then make yourself useful and take him for a walk.”

Hank pulled a sheet of instructions out from the magnet on the refrigerator and read through them.  They were very detailed.  Too detailed.  He wanted to crumble them up into a little ball and burn them.

“Ridiculous,” he said to the dog.  “When we left Becca with the babysitter the only unwritten rule was just not to kill her.  You’re a dog, you should be pretty self-sufficient.  Just don’t piss on the rug and don’t shit in any of my shoes and we’ll get along fine.  Deal?”

The dog twisted and wriggled in Hank’s arms to be put down and so Hank put him on the floor.  The dog sat down and then lifted a paw to scratch at Hank’s knee.

“Make up your mind, Zig.  Up or down, what do you want?”

The dog barked once and then sneezed.

“I don’t speak canine.”  

Ziggy whined softly and pawed at Hank’s knee again.  The coffeemaker beeped behind Hank and he turned around to shut it off.  He poured the coffee into a travel mug and left the cap off so it could cool a bit.

“Okay, Stella says you need a walk,” he said.  “I need to put some pants on.  Don’t lay anywhere where you blend into the floor.  I need my toes.”

The dog followed Hank into the bedroom and immediately jumped on the bed.  Hank shooed him off and undaunted, he explored from corner to corner, sniffing the walls and the furniture and the clothes on the floor.  Hank snatched up the jeans Ziggy was nosing and put them on.  He grabbed a fresh t-shirt from the closet and then went to dig through a duffel bag that Becca left for the dog’s leash.

It took Hank several attempts at getting the harness onto the dog.  Number one, because he kept stepping out of it as soon as Hank got it on one foot.  Number two, because he initially put it on backwards and didn’t know how the clip could possibly work when it was under the dog’s chest.  He finally figured it out though and it seemed secure.  He grabbed his keys, his wallet, a mask, and the coffee and headed to the elevator.

The half an hour walk with Ziggy made Hank understand the meaning of the term ‘boundless energy.’  If it wasn’t for the coffee, he couldn’t be sure he’d have made it.  When they got back, he unclipped the dog from his harness and even though it felt like they’d just run a marathon, Ziggy dashed across the room and hurdled himself onto the sofa where Stella was now sitting.  To Hank’s surprise, Stella laughed as she dodged excited kisses from the dog and didn’t scold him at all or tell him to get down.

“I am exhausted,” Hank said, collapsing onto the sofa beside Stella.  He grimaced and let out a pained ‘oof’ as the dog stepped on his crotch and up onto his chest.  “Fuck me, this dog is trying to kill me.”

“Have a nice walk?” Stella asked.

“That thing had to piss every five feet and terrorize all the squirrels and pigeons in the neighborhood.”  Hank pushed Ziggy away when he tried to lick his chin and the dog laid down on his chest, panting hot and heavy in his face.

“How’s your toe?”

“What toe?  Oh.  Not broken, I guess.”

“Lovely.”

“He is a total chick magnet though,” Hank said, waggling his eyebrows at Stella.  “Ladies were flocking to me like flies to honey.  Almost got a few numbers.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t worry I told them my wife would kick my ass before she let me take a hot girl’s phone number.”

“I think I might join you for this afternoon’s walk.”

Hank chuckled and nudged Stella’s leg with his knee.  “Kidding, Sherlock.  Some kid did ask me if Ziggy had an Insta and then had to explain to me that any dog who’s anydog has an Instagram account and we should get on it the sooner the better if we want him to be a doggie influencer.”

“A what?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Looks like you have a new nap partner.”  Stella inclined her chin towards the dog, who had dropped his head down to Hank’s shoulder and let out a deep sigh as his eyes closed.  She smiled a little and stroked the dog’s back a few times.

“I didn’t know you liked dogs so much,” Hank said.

“More of a cat person, really.  I don’t mind them though.”

“Did you read that list Becca left?  It’s more complicated than the Treaty of Versailles.”

Stella chuckled.  “It is a rather overly complicated schedule.  For a dog.”

“I say fuck the list.  I kept her ass alive for the requisite 18 years without a list, I can probably handle a dog for a weekend.”

“Tell that to Cat Stevens.”

“Oh yeah.  Wherever the fuck he is.  Okay, maybe we better stick to the list.  Though I would like to point out, Cat was Becca’s dog.”

“Maybe that’s why she made a list this time.”

*****

Ziggy was sound asleep when Hank turned off the lights in the main room.  The dog was passed out on his back, in his bed beside the couch, tongue lolling out of his mouth.  Hank tiptoed past him into the bedroom and quietly shut the door.  Stella was in the bathroom brushing her teeth.  He came up behind her and pressed her into the counter with his hips, sneaking his hands up her shirt to massage her breasts.

Stella grunted slightly through her nose and pushed her hips back into Hank’s.  She put her hand up to hold her hair back and Hank pulled his hands out from her shirt to do it for her.  She leaned over to spit into the sink and he held her hair with one hand and stroked her neck with the other.

“Thank you,” she said.

Hank finger-combed Stella’s hair up into his fist at the top of her head while she wiped her mouth and then he let it go and rubbed her shoulders.  She turned around and he held her by the hips.

“Where’s the dog?” she asked.

“Outside smoking a cigarette.”

“Do you think he should go outside once more?”

“He’s dead asleep.  He was like…”  Hank imitated the dog, rolling his eyes back and sticking his tongue out of the side of his mouth.

“You’re the one that was worried about him urinating on the rug.”

Hank pouted his lips and then nodded.  “Fine, I’ll take him upstairs.  But, you better be naked when I come back, or else I’m sleeping on the couch with the dog.”

“I don’t think that’s the threat you believe it to be.”

Hank narrowed his eyes and pinched Stella’s hip before putting his mouth to her neck and nipping lightly at the back of her jaw.  She laughed and pushed at his chest until he let her go.  He playfully slapped at her backside on the way out of the bathroom and she swatted his hands away.

The dog was still sleeping when he opened the door, but he whistled softly and Ziggy startled to his feet and then shook himself.  “Come on, hairball, we’re going outside.”  He snapped his fingers a few times and the dog followed him to the door to the roof.

Ziggy was hesitant on the stairs, taking them slowly and pausing every few steps to get his footing as he hopped up.  He ran around the newly landscaped deck, sniffing just about every nook and cranny and lifting his leg on half of them.  It had gotten chilly since the sun went down and Hank, in bare feet and a t-shirt, hopped up and down a few times and rubbed his arms as he called the dog back.

Hank was forced to carry the dog down the stairs when he wouldn’t budge from the top.  He made a few false starts, but ultimately sat down and wouldn’t move.  When he put him down, Ziggy stared up at him and then stayed closed to his legs as he went back to the bedroom.

“You, stay,” Hank said, pointing to the dog bed.

Ziggy sat down next to the bed.  Hank closed the door.  Stella was sitting up in bed, reading a magazine or journal, which she set down on her lap and took her reading glasses off.

“Did you really think that’s going to work?” she asked.

“He’s fine.”

Before Hank even finished, Ziggy was yelping and scratching at the door.  Stella raised her brows and Hank sighed.  He opened the door and the dog came flying through, jumped on the bed and leapt onto Stella with his paws on her chest, wagging his tail and kissing her cheek and chin.

“Settle, darling,” Stella said, turning her face away and pushing the dog back.  He gave a whining bark as he dropped down.

“Do they make ritalin for dogs?”

“He’s just a baby.”

Hank kicked the dog bed into the bedroom and then pushed it against the wall with his foot.  “Go get in your bed,” he said.

Ziggy laid down where he was, next to Stella.  He put his head on his paws and lifted his eyes up at Hank.

“Now he’s giving me puppy dog eyes,” Hank said.

“Shockingly, I believe that’s where that term came from.”

“Well, I don’t like it.  It’s too effective.”

“Resign yourself to the fact that we have a little guest for the weekend.”

Hank grumbled under his breath as he went to the bathroom to get ready for bed.  He stripped to his jockey shorts and snapped off the overhead lights on his way back.  Ziggy looked up from beside Stella like Hank was the intruder.  He even had the audacity to give a little growl when Hank leaned over to give his wife a kiss.  Annoyed, Hank flopped onto his back and the dog scooted closer and rested his head on his arm.

“Oh, now you want to be nice,” Hank said, reaching over to scratch the dog on the head.  “I’m surprised Becca hasn’t called.”

“What do you mean?”

“To check up on the dog or let us know she made it to the retreat.”

“She’s been texting me all day.”

“What?  What did she want?”

“Checking up on the dog.”

“She doesn’t trust us?��

“You didn’t question her motivations five seconds ago when you were surprised she hadn’t called.”

“I like to be fickle to keep you on your toes.”

Ziggy sighed and squirmed until he was on his back, all four paws limp in the air.  Stella chuckled and rubbed his chest before she closed her magazine and tossed it onto the nightstand.

“We’re letting this thing stay up here, then?” Hank asked.

“Yes.”

“I think I’m more of a cat person too.”

*****

Hank was surprised that the dog was no trouble during the night.  He woke briefly when Stella, always an early riser, got up and said she was going to take Ziggy for his morning walk and when she got back, would be entering in project results into her electronic gradebook for a bit.  He grunted in response and mumbled a reminder to leave him some coffee.

When he finally woke fully, left the bedroom far more cautiously than he had the previous morning.  Ziggy was nowhere to be found, but as soon as he started puttering in the kitchen, the dog appeared.  Hank crouched down and gave him a few scratches.

“What were you up to, hm?” he asked.  “Getting into trouble?”

Ziggy followed Hank as he went to the bedroom, most likely interested in the piece of toast in his hand.  Hank held the toast between his teeth, wiped his hands on his jeans, and picked up his phone from the nightstand to text Becca.

Morning sweetheart.  The furball is good.  Not to worry.  Haven’t shipped him off to a kennel yet and probably won’t.  Have a good time at the retreat.

Hank took a bite of his toast and then tore a piece off and tossed it to the dog.  Ziggy caught it mid-air.  About thirty seconds later, he heard Stella calling his name and he snapped his fingers at the dog to get him to follow him out of the bedroom.

“What’s up?” Hank asked, and shoved the rest of the toast into his mouth.

“What did you say to Becca?”

“Hm?” he mumbled, mouth full.

“She just texted me and said you’ve implied the dog has been sent to a kennel and wants proof of life.”

“No I didn’t,” he said.  “I said I haven’t sent the dog to a kennel so she doesn’t need to worry.”

“Why would you say that to her?”

“So she wouldn’t worry.”

“Well, she’s worried.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“I’ll send her a photo.  Ziggy, come here, darling.”  

Stella kissed the air a few times, but Ziggy thought trying to be caught was a game.  He bounded away from Stella and then stopped and bowed down, his hind end in the air and tail wagging.  She patted her knee for him to come, but he just jumped a few feet to the left and went back into the same pose.

“I’ll get him.”  Hank started towards the dog and Ziggy barked and then ran to the kitchen.  Hank ended up chasing him around the butcher’s block several times before he was able to catch him, but keeping hold of him was difficult.  “Stay still, Zig.”

Stella knelt down and quickly opened the camera on her phone.

“What’re you doing?” Hank asked.

“Taking a photo.”

“A selfie?”

“Do you have another suggestion?”

“I don’t know, I don’t do selfies.  Unless they’re dick pics.”

“Yes, I am aware, but we won’t be sending your daughter a photo of your penis.”

“Well hurry up, this guy is a bitch to hold onto.”

“Smile, darling.”  Both Stella and Hank smiled as she held down the photo button, but Ziggy wriggled and squirmed.  

���Anything usable?” Hank asked, setting the dog free.

“A little blurry, but they should suffice.”  Stella got up and texted the photos to Becca.  “She says thank you, and for you to never fucking text her again.”

“Brat.”

“You started it.”

*****

The day passed.  They took the dog to the park.  He napped when they got back.  Hank worked on his book.  Stella worked on a report for her class.  In the evening, they lit a fire in the new firepit on the roof and cuddled up on the daybed with the dog between them.

“Should we get a cat?” Hank asked.

“Do you want a cat?”  Stella countered.

“Not really.”

“Me neither.”

“It is kind of nice having this little hairball around though.  Not that I want him to stay.  He’s also annoying as fuck.  But, nice to have around.  For an hour or two.  When he’s asleep.”

“Kind of like you.”

“Hey!”

Stella laughed and Hank pushed her down onto the bed, rising to his knees to lean over and nuzzle her neck.  It was a ticklish spot for her, especially when caressed lightly, and it made her laugh harder.  Ziggy barked from where he was wedged beside Stella and under Hank.  He wiggled out from under them and then jumped on Hank’s back with his front paws, barking and growling.

“Relax, man,” Hank said, rolling to one hip off of Stella.  

“He’s being a good protector,” Stella said, laughing when Ziggy nipped at the blanket over their legs and tried to pull it away.

“He’s being a cockblocker.”  Hank wrestled the blanket back from the dog and then grabbed him under the chin, giving him a few firm scratches.  “You know what, Zig?  You be a cockblocker.  You be the best cockblocker you can be, at Becca’s place.  Cockblock the shit out of Becca, okay?”

Ziggy barked and wagged his tail.

“Good boy,” Hank said.  “Good little cockblocker.”

“Don’t say that to him,” Stella said.

“Why not?”

“One day you will need to face the fact that your daughter is a grown woman who deserves a healthy sex life.”

“Oh my god, I’m going to throw up.”  Hank groaned and flopped down onto the bed with his arm over his eyes.  “Consider me officially cockblocked.”

Stella moved up onto her hip this time and put her arm over Hank’s chest.  She kissed his chin and then pulled his bottom lip between her teeth.  He grabbed her around the waist and grunted softly into her mouth.  Ziggy trampled the both of them and stuck his cold nose into Hank’s cheek.

“Gah!” Hank groaned.  

The licked furiously at the both of them and Stella released Hank’s lip with a laugh and a scrunched face.  She buried her head down into Hank’s neck while curling into his side and Ziggy tried to wedge his snout down to keep licking her face.

“We are officially never, ever, ever, ever getting a dog,” Hank said.

“No argument from me,” Stella answered, sliding away from the dog and Hank and stepping off the bed.  “Meet me downstairs and I guarantee you won’t be cockblocked.”

“Oh?”

“Naked shower party for two in ten minutes.”

“The naked is redundant!” he called after her as she walked away.  He waited until she had started down the stairs to take Ziggy’s face in his hands.  “Listen.  This is a cockblock free zone, you got that?  Keep it up and you just may end up like Cat Stevens.  We good?”

Ziggy gave a short, gruff bark and then lifted his paw.  Hank nodded and they shook on it.  He got up and let Ziggy explore the roof for a few minutes while he folded the blanket up and put out the fire.  Not for long though.  He had a naked party to get to and he didn’t want to be late.

The End

[sillybub]

If cats ever comes back to tour United States again they should give some Asian actors the right to perform on the play. I would really want them to seize their of triumph. How would that work?

Hello Anon! Thank you for such a great question!

First of all, I HARD agree on wanting a diverse cast! CATS is such a great show for having actors of all different kinds of backgrounds--the diversity of the cast should reflect the diversity of characters within the show. I would LOVE to see Asian actors being cast, along with other actors of color!

Second of all, I sense that you might be talking about the racism towards Asians within the show, and how that can be handled. I am more than happy to address this VERY in-depth.  I’m not sure if this is what you meant for me to do, you have provided me with a good chance for me to talk about my thoughts in-depth.  

So, the first instance of racism we have is in Pekes & Pollicles with the infamous "heathen Chinese" lines.

I've about this before: one fix could be to replace the word "heathen" with any other two-syllable adjective. My favorite fix here is probably "foreign Chinese", but I think the actor would have to be VERY careful with what tone they sing this line in.

My personal fix for this would be to replace that line entirely with something more like "toy Pekingese". Same number of syllables, but we're talking about the dog breed now, and not an entire nationality. Pekingese dogs are classified as "toy" breeds (breeds that weigh 15 pounds or less when they are fully grown), and calling them "toys" would also hint that they're very pampered lapdogs who aren't actually that ferocious at all.

The Pollicle dogs are specified within the song to be Yorkshires, so I don't see why we can't call the Pekes Pekingese on top of that.

Now, more pressing is the Growltiger Issue, which is a little more complicated.

So, first and foremost, I'm strongly in the camp that Growltiger's Last Stand should be eliminated from the show forever.

My reasons for this are as follows:

1. Racism is baked deeply into the character of Growltiger. His song is all bout how he likes to terrorize Asians, original poem calls them slurs, and the entire thing just reeks of Orientalism on top of that. This should be reason enough to take it right out of the show forever.

2. This is much more of my personal opinion, and probably unpopular, but structure-wise, I think that the entire sequence is too long and interruptive. Growltiger's Last Stand in its entirely has a runtime of approx. 10-14 min. The only other song in the show of comparable length is the Jellicle Ball, which is a showcase of all the characters rather than just a very small handful. 10-14 minutes feels too long to focus on a single cat, who isn't even a real character within the show to begin with. The musical is interrupted to put on a different, smaller musical that feels vastly out of place from the rest of it.

Typically, an entirely new set is pulled on stage for the Growltiger sequence, with new pirate outfits for the characters. This is in contrast to the other show within the show, Pekes & Pollicles, where all of the props and costumes are repurposed junk. One of these feels much more authentic than the other. I have always LOVED the decision to give Pekes & Pollicles to Gus; the feeling of improvisation and unprofessionalism, and the absolute chaos of the cats feels much more natural and justified when it was literally an unplanned decision to help Gus relive his glory days as an actor. And since all the cats are involved in Pekes & Pollicles, it feels more intimate as well.

I'm going to expand more on my first point, now.

The Siamese cats are racist caricatures, and non-Asian actors wearing them should be considered yellowface.

Sure, they're supposed to be cats and not humans, but they are so obviously racialized. The masks feature exaggerated slanted eyes, and are very often yellow--hallmarks of a racist Asian caricature.  In early productions, they even sang in a vaguely Asian accent.  For predominantly non-Asian actors to don this costume, it’s yellowface.  

Now, I recognize that the 2020 Asia tour has updated the costumes to be less blatantly racist.  For reference, here is a typical Siamese costume:

(Hamburg 1997)

And here is the revised version:

(Asia Tour 2020).

As you can see, the color pallet has changed from yellow to blue, and there is much less Thai influence in the designs.  In changing the design, the Asia 2020 production has attempted a well-intentioned effort to de-racialize the Siamese cats.  However, these are still racist Asian characters being played by a non-Asian cast.  They context of the song is still the same, even though the costume itself is different.  

So, is it yellowface if an Asian cast plays the Siamese?

No, but it would be incredibly poor taste to cast Asian actors so they can play the Siamese.  

The act of an oppressed group adopting language and symbols that are normally used against them is called “reclaiming.”  For an all-Asian cast (especially with predominantly Thai actors) to put on their own production of Growltiger’s last stand could be an act of reclamation.  I’m not Thai, and only have East Asian heritage on my mom’s side, so it’s not for me to discuss how Growltiger and the Siamese could be reclaimed.

Now, I’m not afraid to call out people’s racism (whether it was intentional or not), so I’m going to talk about a small controversy with the cosplayer Pixiedustjellicle.  She had expressed interest in creating a Siamese mask to sell.  She viewed the Siamese as the heroes of the story, and wanted to create the mask as a homage.  That was a nice sentiment, but as I have discussed already, the costumes and entire concept of the Siamese are undeniably racist.  What Pixie was trying to do is an act of reclamation, but since she is a non-Asian (and specifically white) creator, it isn’t her place to do that.  (After receiving feedback about this from multiple people including myself, she has since apologized.)

Non-Asians should never try to put on Growltiger, and especially not white people.  The Siamese were created and brought to the stage by white men, and there is no way to divorce the racism from their characters. Staging it is something for Asian (ideally with a strong Thai presence leading) cast and crew to do if they so choose.

Additionally, several different Asian cultures are referenced in Growltiger. although there doesn't seem to be much intentional distinction between them, which is why I label it as Orientalism earlier. The Siamese are referred to as Mongolian, for one thing. Additionally, a Siamese cat mauled Growltiger's ear, but now he indiscriminately hates all Asians.

That being said, the Siamese cats are the specific villains of the song; ie, cats hailing from Siam (modern day Thailand) in Southest Asia, which is a very different region that East Asia.  It is for this reason that I place heavy emphasis on leaving it up to Thai people to reclaim the Siamese.

A few people have suggested a major re-write where the Siamese are replaced with the British Navy.  I think that if you truly want to keep the racist song, that’s one option to fix it.  Additionally, you could cut Growltiger and keep In Una Tepida Notte and The Ballad of Billy McCaw, who are fairly divorced from the context of the rest of Growltiger and have no traces of its racism within them.

I’m in the camp that it should just be cut forever, to be perfectly honest.  Even if it wasn’t racist, I don’t care for it.

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

I know the purple lion/palladin would be amazing, but Lotor as black palladin? That would be very sexy of him. Imagine Black choosing him after Zarkon stolen him/died. The bayard changed for him during blood duel. Your headcanons?

Hi, anon! Thanks for the note! Yeah, it seems like Black Lion at least acknowledged Lotor in some way, for him to use that bayard. Even if that were a fluke/one-time thing, then Lotor, as a prince known for fighting alongside his soldiers in battle, commanding generals of varying personalities, being an expert pilot, and being charismatic enough to win enemies to his side, seems to have a lot of leadership qualities that Black Lion would look for.

I could see Black Lion choosing Lotor after defeating his father, but I also wonder if maybe another musical lions event would happen at an earlier time that was critical for Keith as well?

I started thinking about headcanons for a possible Black Paladin Lotor VLD remix…and ahh, got a little carried away into basically writing a story outline for it, haha:

In this AU, Keith’s reluctance to lead and his increasing interest in Blade of Marmora, along with Shiro’s clone being contaminated by Haggar’s magic, would perhaps establish why Black Lion seeks out Lotor and searches his heart as a candidate to begin with.

It could happen in a revised ending to s4, where maybe Lotor’s move to stop Keith from sacrificing himself to save others is a little more harrowing. Like say in the attempt, Keith still gets injured and Lotor’s ship is destroyed, and Zarkon’s forces are pounding down on them. So Lotor boards Black Lion in a desperate attempt to save them both from his father. Black Lion acknowledges Lotor has an interest in Saving the Whole™ in a way that Keith hadn’t grown to understand yet, so it opens its controls to him. The battle continues with Lotor shakingly at Black Lion’s controls, in the lead of Team Voltron.

Bonus if during this entire switch, the consoles to all of the Lions begin to glow brighter, because on the astral plane, the Lions are in communication with Black Lion, deliberating on the decision to accept Lotor as the new Black Paladin. They accept after Black Lion shows them that it will connect with Lotor and make him understand things too. The consoles in the Lions then return to normal, and Lotor’s spirit is locked in on the astral plane, which he feels.

Double bonus points if in this scenario, Keith is fully aware of what’s happening (maybe he just has a broken arm and leg or something), and he’s in a frazzle, trying to tell Lotor how to use the controls to get them out of there. And Lotor snaps back, also in a frazzle, “Don’t tell me how to fly.”

Triple bonus point if the other paladins are kinda freaking out that Lotor just took control of Black Lion, and that Black Lion accepted it.

“If you want to survive to argue with me, paladins of Voltron,” Lotor calls roughly through the controls, “then fight with me now against my father.”

Hunk is squeaking in shock and executive dysfunction. Pidge is flailing like, “Uh, guys??? Can he just do that??” Lance is sputtering because “Excuse me, why is HE the Black Paladin now?” Allura is very, very silent. Her father had connected her life-force to Voltron—so perhaps she felt the Lions’ debate on the astral plane. She very quietly moves to say, “Keith is injured, and we can’t lose Voltron to Zarkon. This is our only option for now.” And she demands to Lotor, “Black Lion has accepted you, which means it—” her face ticks—“trusts you in some way to get us out of here. And we’re taking on fire. We need a unified response.”  

Coran is flailing in the background on the Castle ship. Shiro is eyes narrowed, leaning forward in curiosity about this son of Zarkon.

Haggar is watching through Shiro, in shock.

Lotor reverts to his training, offering simple commands to push back his father’s forces and have the Voltron Lions rendezvous back at the Castle ship for further discussion.

Lotor had no idea how deep the well of power was within Voltron. Like, he knew this thing was a beast of a war machine, but he had no idea it was quite like this.

Lotor tiredly boards the Castle of Lions, helping a limping Keith out of Black Lion. The sight makes Hunk and Pidge hesitant to throw Lotor into the Tube of Shame. Lance and Shiro move to help Keith, who’s trying to awkwardly brush off that he just tried to commit suicide and that he has a broken arm and several sprains. Shenanigans abound.

Allura walks up to Lotor, eyeing him hard. He eyes her back. (Is this the first time he’s really seen Allura???). Bonus if he blushes holding her gaze. Just a lil.

Allura moves to demand of Lotor, “How did you manage to convince Black Lion to give you control? What did you see? What did it tell you?”

Lotor admits he intended to board Black Lion to plea for his life in exchange for information about his father, who clearly despises him. Black Lion responding to him in such a way was a complete surprise to him as well.

Keith is meanwhile getting bandaged up and is leaning against Black Lion’s paw. He’s kinda relieved he doesn’t feel the leadership bond. But he’s also relieved that Black Lion still sends him positive waves. Black Lion simply knows his heart is elsewhere and that he is a good Blade, in the way of his mother. And good leaders know resources work best where they’re happiest/most productive. Black Lion knows they will see lots of Keith yet.

Lotor sighs and offers himself up for incarceration and interrogation for how to undo the bond with Black Lion. He didn’t want to be like his father, anyway.

The fact that he rejects the legacy of his father makes Allura hesitate. She knows Black Lion wouldn’t choose someone it couldn’t trust or teach, and that its own ears had grown deaf to Zarkon. Instead of incarcerating him, Allura does demand that Lotor live up to Black Lion’s expectations, and that he accept the Castle scanning him for potential bugs or possible security breaches. Also, that he undergo the same tests she put the paladins through originally.

Black Lion often shows Lotor visions of the past—of a version of his father who once did great and protective things for the galaxy. Things that Lotor has dreamed of being able to do, and that he can do through Voltron. Lotor tries to understand what all went so wrong with his father and how he might have some things in common with this pre-corrupted version of Zarkon. He panics when he realizes that Haggar is actually a corrupted form of his true mother, and he tries to deny it.

Haggar, meanwhile, has not yet recalled her life as Honerva. She knows Voltron is still the key to opening the rift…or else that she can do something with the comet Lotor had started building ships out of…

Season 4 ends/Season 5 begins with Keith temporarily in the healing pod, and Lotor picking up the armor of the Black Paladin. There might be some form of Lion musical chairs again, unless Keith convinces Lance that being someone’s right hand also means working to ensure that the leader has his head on straight. Which, honestly, Lance might be a little over the top, but he is good at questioning stuff and was shown in s3 to admirably pick up slack where Keith flailed.

Bonus points if Lance activates that Altean broadsword again during Lotor’s training and fights him, with Lotor praising his tenacity while also schooling him on technique and strategy. This reiterates Black Lion’s judgement in naming him Black Paladin and results in Lance tentatively accepting Lotor as Black Paladin. Lotor perhaps realizes that some of the animosity has nothing to do with lions and mostly to do with Lance’s interest in Allura. He wins some favor with Lance by offering to teach him the art of the sword.

Lotor ends up sleeping in Black Lion often because he doesn’t quite trust the paladins either. Not yet. He blushies if he ends up accidentally running into a pajama-clad Allura in the middle of the night. Realizes awkwardly that the paladins call his father The Turtle, and that he himself is also afraid to take off his armored shell. Which means he is a little more like his father than he thought. But he doesn’t feel safe enough to take his armor off yet with the paladins around….until he realizes that they are not wearing armor around him at all.

Keith is easily healed in the Altean healing pod and takes up his position in the Blades full-time. The Blades and Team Voltron get closer than ever, working together most days to take down strategic Galran outposts.

Kolivan interrogates Lotor at least once.  

Hunk is probably the most diplomatic with Lotor during the initial integration phase. He asks questions about Lotor and what it was like growing up as Zarkon’s son. Lotor trusts Hunk’s opinion on most things, especially when it comes to the sensibilities of other Voltron Coalition allies. But he does rely on Hunk to help him know what’s good food, too.

The colony plot doesn’t exist in this AU, but I could see a version where maybe past!Lotor tried to help out Alteans like Bandor escaping his father’s genocides—and that the attempt to help them escape didn’t go so well. So Lotor clings hard to the concept of Black Lion giving him the chance to protect people again. Maybe in this remix, Pidge helps Lotor to hack into top-secret Galran systems that Zarkon had blocked him from. It creates the opportunity for Team Voltron to break out various Altean prisoners from Zarkon/Haggar’s clutches, who were either being harvested or forced to work for the empire in secret locations. Bonus points if Bandor was one of those prisoners who gets freed and lives to reunite with his long-lost sister. The s5 arc would therefore in part be the Voltron coalition working to actually establish a true Altean colony based off the number of prisoners they free. Allura is breaking down in happy tears that she and Coran and Lotor aren’t the only ones left.

Lotor starts piecing together that Haggar was searching all of these Alteans for information about a place called Oriande. He comes to realize that it’s a real place and encourages Team Voltron that they have to get there before Haggar does.

Lotor gets his cat back somehow. Kova probably tries to chase Allura’s mice around, resulting in shenanigans and at least one overturned table and a food goo fight. Bonus points if it ends with the mice cuddling up to Kova for warm sleepy time.

Keith’s space wolf he picks up during a Blades mission, Kosmo, ends up chasing Kova at least once.

Kova has very odd diet demands that occasionally make Team Voltron go on a side adventure to look for something. Lotor had gotten used to his generals doing this for so long but enjoys trips to the Space Mall to find toys for his kitty.

Coran and Krolia tend to mother-hen a bit more over Team Voltron during this time. Lotor finds better parental figures / role models in them. Lotor might open up to them about Haggar being Honerva.

Dayak comes to visit at least once, upset that Lotor has turned his head from the position of emperor of the Galra. She might be how Lotor gets his cat back. Dayak thinks Team Voltron is beneath Lotor but sticks around because her ultimate loyalties are to Lotor.

Lance gets Lotor into video games.

Lotor sometimes assists Keith with understanding certain odd things the Blades do as Galrans, which helps Keith rise in ranks there and continue to provide cavalry support to the Voltron Coalition.

Allura and Lotor both play in Monsters and Mana. Lotor is a bard, dumps all of his points into charisma just to see what chaos does to strategy. Keith joins in when he can, plays a princess because why not.

Lotor likes Shiro but feels there is something deeply wrong with him. He keeps information about Oriande away from Shiro, but the trip to Oriande reveals at least its location to Shiro and Haggar.

Haggar successfully reaches Oriande and passes the trials, inheriting deep knowledge. But the ancestors are silent with her and unwelcoming. Unperturbed, she then rebuilds Lotor’s fallen/abandoned ships with the comet ore, realizing how to build an anti-Voltron (the Sincline mecha). Her goal is a bigger and better mecha for Zarkon to pilot once and for all against Voltron. Because they don’t need Voltron anymore.

Being Black Paladin doesn’t mean Lotor immediately wins his way in Oriande. But he still has the Mark of the Chosen and determines that he will one day go back to finish the trials so that he can experience being connected with the ancestors.

Lotor had rather pleasantly forgotten about his old ships until he sees his designs in the risen Sincline during a battle with Zarkon. He is incredibly incensed that his father slandered his ships’ original paintjob. The paintjob honestly bothers him more for a time than the concept that Zarkon has rift technology, but he soon gets his priorities straight.

Team Voltron suffers a significant loss to Zarkon/Haggar tag-teaming Sincline. Lotor’s parents have also begun to reopen the rift, which is destroying planets and the very fabric of reality.

The Blades are called in to help.

Because Sincline is in part Lotor’s creation, the mecha has a weakness. Lotor is able to connect with it long enough to deflect some of Zarkon’s commands for it. It’s possible that a Haggar-contaminated Shiro activates at this time to try taking Black Lion back over, or to specifically unseat/injure Lotor.

Cue a major face-off again between Haggar and Allura, with Keith moving in to try and stop Shiro while Lotor desperately tries to maintain hold of Black Lion and Sincline. The entire Team Voltron spiritually works together to decouple Shiro from Haggar and to hold off Sincline long enough for other allies to arrive as backup.

Lotor’s old generals switch sides and end up helping Keith and the Blades.

Zarkon and Haggar flee, realizing that Sincline has a weakness they did not expect. A weakness they have to kill, because they’ve sensed that Lotor can and will kill them to stop them.

Haggar is unsettled because she saw in Lotor’s memories that she was actually his mother—and that he is genuinely disgusted by Haggar. This awakens a part of her entirely that not even the rift creatures/dark entities can fight.

In a symmetry to revised s3, Keith takes controls of Black Lion—which still accepts him because he’s worthy of it—to help an injured Lotor pilot to safety.

Team Voltron reconvenes in the middle of a fairly damaged galaxy, building a plan to take down Sincline before it can try opening any more rifts.

Zarkon demands that Haggar poison Sincline entirely against Lotor.

Haggar, who realizes she’s actually Honerva, starts to have significant breakdowns in trying to fulfill Zarkon’s wishes, who is her husband trying to kill her son. The more she remembers of Honerva, the stronger and more solid she becomes about who she is and how dark entities have deceived/manipulated her worst aspects. She begins to understand why the Altean ancestors had been silent with her.

Honerva realizes that Zarkon is too strongly controlled by rift creatures/dark entities, but that she’s also ruined her own chances of creating a backdoor in Sincline. Zarkon turns against her upon discovering she is no longer like him. He reaffirms that he will kill his own son to achieve supremacy, and that he will kill Haggar too if she defies him.

Honerva desperately tries to run away.  

Meanwhile, Lotor acknowledges that Shiro is perhaps in a perfect position to slip past Sincline’s defenses—having had Haggar’s magic on him and her technology—and take over the ship from the inside out.

Cue an epic battle where Zarkon loses, and where Team Voltron and Lotor win because they believe in the power of teamwork and strength in unity. This results in a battered Voltron still standing, with a battered Sincline being piloted by Shiro, who has successfully connected with Sincline. In this AU, Shiro is stronger than ever in fighting off the darkness, in a reversal to his arc as Haggar’s puppet.

Sincline has been growing increasingly sentient and recognizes Shiro as the Galra’s Champion. Sincline accepts Shiro’s command to stand down.  

Even with Zarkon killed, the rifts he opened are beginning to expand to destroy worlds, and Allura is trying to hold it off with the spiritual help of her fellow paladins.

A secondary, mysterious source kicks in to help her heal the rifts.

It’s Honerva, somewhere, trying to undo what she helped create.

Lotor remains Black Paladin post-battle and helps to redesign Sincline as part of a Defender Fleet. He helps the universe pick up the pieces as everyone limps along together toward a new era of peace and undoing the evils of the empire.

The Galra, recognizing Lotor as Zarkon’s son and as the inheritor of Black Lion, ask if he would be their new leader.

Lotor is tempted because he has always wanted the validation of such a title. But he already has a home with his found family—with the Fleet, where for once he feels like he’s where he is meant to be.

Lotor functions as Emperor Pro Tem to help ensure order through the next Kral Zera, backing Kolivan as the best possible leader. Which also opens up the Blade of Marmora as needing a new leader….which Keith has been training for…

Some Galra are disappointed that the reign of Zarkon’s lineage will be broken. But Lotor is in fact peaceful about it. He knows he’s going to be quite busy exploring and helping to defend the universe from whatever else may come, alongside the people who came to accept him as family.

He still ends up with an ambassadorial/very high official title within Galran government, gaining a greater respect for Kolivan and the ways the Blades work to unite the Galra under what their culture was before it got hijacked by Zarkon.

Keith’s actions in the final battle result in everyone else agreeing that he has achieved a level of leadership that is perfect for the Blades. Team Voltron attend the ceremony where he is named a Commander.

Lotor’s old generals receive honors and become official members of the Blades as well.

Lotor connects deeply with Allura and the Altean colony, and spends time on Earth learning about the human culture of his fellow paladins. He gets to explore, just like he always wanted to do. Team Voltron works in the aftermath of battle to assist in stamping out the Fires of Purification rebellion, rebuilding fallen worlds and their cultures, and protecting against dangerous space anomalies.

Black Lion is a happy Lion, keeping in contact with not just Keith, but also Sincline and by proxy the healed Shiro as well, as part of its own expanded Fleet. Black Lion recognizes it was built originally to protect just a galaxy—and it needs a greater Fleet for a much larger universe, working in harmony with more leaders. Black Lion can evolve and grow too, to recognize that Voltron really is stronger when it works together with others.

Lotor consistently spends quality bonding time alone with Black Lion—not because he doesn’t trust his expanded family. But because Black Lion was actually his first true friend who believed in him.

Black Lion enjoys getting washed and scrubbed. Lotor is very insistent that Black Lion be clean and sparkle like new at all times, because he recognizes he is a tenant of Black Lion and that Kova has a tendency to shed, and—“Kova, get down from the console! How many times—?”

The end!

Oh my god, this post got so long. I’m so sorry, anon. I really ran away with this prompt, oof. Thanks again for the note!

[bedlamsbard]

All right, reactions to Mando 2.05, “The Jedi”, in...semi-coherent form. Spoilers, obvs. I hated this episode, so keep scrolling now if you don’t want to see negativity.  This is not in any kind of order except stream-of-conscious.

again, I reiterate, spoilers.

again, I reiterate, this is REALLY negative.

Rosario Dawson...yikes.

how...did Bo-Katan know that Ahsoka was on Corvus? are they in contact? since when? Ahsoka seems to have been on Corvus for long enough to be a nuisance to the Magistrate (Morgan Elsbeth), but normally Ahsoka is very efficient and she just...really does not seem to be here? I did not get the impression she was planning on sticking around for any period of time.

(the same could be true for Frog Lady and Bo-Katan on Trask several episodes back. that wasn’t a convert, that was three Mandalorians hanging around the port in cloaks. I guess they could be doing that on the regular, but? would the Empire not then be more worried about being attacked by Mandalorians?)

there was only ever a very, very slim chance that I was going to be happy with any translation of Ahsoka from animation to live action.  I am on record as thinking that animation is the medium for Star Wars and that live action is always going to be a weaker medium than animation and that a lot of things that can be done in animation just cannot be translated to live action in any meaningful form.  I knew Ahsoka’s fighting style couldn’t translate to live action convincingly (here’s what I said about the mo-capped duel in TCW); it never occurred to me that they couldn’t pull off TOGRUTA given that Shaak Ti, you know, exists, and also there are so many excellent Ahsoka cosplayers.

(Consider KM Creations’ excellent silicone lekku (S7), which have beautiful movement; the cosplayer behind that is CallMeSnips and her epilogue prototype is from SWCC is in there somewhere.  I think Rei Kennex’s are latex (you can tell they don’t have much movement) but at least they’re the right length.  I think Ahsoka94′s are also latex (again with the movement); this is her Mortis vision grown-up Ahsoka.)

AND YES, THE LEKKU/MONTRALS WERE A DEAL-BREAKER FOR ME.

I feel very “you have made your bed and now you have to die in it” about that -- apparently the reasoning is for stunts and movement, but for me here’s the thing: her lekku length wasn’t optional.  This is not the equivalent of changing a hair style, which some people seem to think (believe me, I have read so many hot takes); this is like...I’m trying to think of a good comparison.  Like putting Peter Mayhew or Joonas Suotamo in a wig because Chewie’s head was too hard for the actor to see out of, or giving them normal human hands because they can’t grip with the Wookiee hands.

Also your main character wears a helmet at all times that (if it’s anything like my Mandalorian helmet) is pretty poor visibility and full body armor and THIS was your breaking point for stunts?

Ahsoka’s lekku and montrals grow as she ages. These are about S7 length; as @reena-jenkins put it, THEY DE-AGED HER HEAD.  Ahsoka fans coming in know this.  PEOPLE SAW THE REBELS EPILOGUE.

I wonder how many of the people being self-righteous about being totally fine about Ahsoka’s lekku are the same people who claim that Katee Sackhoff is too young to play Bo-Katan.

this also puts them in a weird position in regards to the inevitable merchandise: do they go with normal Ahsoka from TCW and Rebels, the one everyone is familiar with, or do they go with these stunted lekku?

(I can’t believe they’re going to make Her Universe sell merch with this Ahsoka on it. it’s not going to happen but I wish HU was going to be petty enough to not sell any nu!Ahsoka merch.)

Here is some nice art of how Ahsoka’s lekku and montral should have looked.

hoo boy were those prosthetics also just Bad.

“but the stunts” buddy I’m sure Pedro Pascal and his various stunt doubles aren’t having a great time in full armor with almost no visibility either

if you’re going to put the character in, do it right

YOU CAN’T CHEAT

look, I am really, really aural -- the best example I can give is that even though intellectually I know that Matt Lanter and Hayden Christensen both play Anakin Skywalker, I literally cannot parse them as both being the same Anakin Skywalker and for that reason TCW and the PT don’t exist for the same continuity for me.  (This also goes for Ewan McGregor and James Arnold Taylor, Natalie Portman and Cat Taber, and Samuel L. Jackson and TC Carson. I can kinda cope with the multiple Palpatine VAs. Yes, the decision to use Hayden and Sam in Ahsoka’s vision in “Shattered,” even blending into Matt’s voice from Hayden’s, threw me so badly I couldn’t take the vision seriously.)  Ashley Eckstein has a very distinctive voice, and moreover has been the only person to ever voice Ahsoka up to this point (even in the Ahsoka novel audiobook). Barring a MIRACLE I was never going to be able to parse another actress’s voice as Ahsoka’s, solely because of how my brain works.

I could probably have parsed someone else’s face because animated Ahsoka is pretty stylized but the voice thing is a huge problem for me because of how aural I am.

(I say this but when Squadrons did a more live action-style Hera -- knowing they mo-capped Vanessa Marshall I think they used Vanessa’s face for Hera’s, which is also what it looks like on the revised art and face sculpt for the Black Series Hera -- I kind of had a meltdown about it (for...weird reasons). And that was the same VA.)

(The timeskip between TCW and Rogue One, then Rebels, probably saved Saw Gerrera for me here, but he was also never a main character.)

can you believe that Sam Witwer’s Maul got more live action respect than Ashley Eckstein’s Ahsoka

I love Sam’s Maul but wow

this is particularly jarring because Dave Filoni and Ashley Eckstein always seemed like they were friends? I realize that this gets skewed by how little of their actual lives we see online, but that is the vibe that I’ve gotten from interviews and social media posts.

can you believe that TROS gave more respect to Ashley Eckstein’s Ahsoka than Dave Filoni’s Mando episode did (here is her statement on TROS.)

back in March, when the Dawson casting rumors first dropped (or leaked, as the case may be), Ashley posted a statement about it saying that she was not involved in The Mandalorian. she has over the years been very vocal about desperately wanting to play live-action Ahsoka, who is a character solely associated with her up until today, and honestly this just breaks my heart.

I am not the massive Ashley Eckstein fan that many Ahsoka fans are, but I have never heard anything bad about her (I saw her at my hotel at SWCC while I was waiting for my roommate to arrive! that’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to her, a distance of about six feet), and I really desperately hope that someone told her about this beforehand and she didn’t find out from watching the episode.

Also, while I’m here talking about Ashley Eckstein, the characterization here was extremely off, in that specific way that happens when a writer/director is working with their absolute favorite character, DAVE FILONI. I do trust Ashley to course-correct Dave on Ahsoka (in the same way we’ve heard about Sam Witwer pushing back on people about Maul), and that...was not happening here.  (I think Katee Sachoff said something similar to this about Bo-Katan in her interview last week, as well.)

how did you get Bo-Katan so right and Ahsoka so wrong

look, Dave Filoni is truly living up to George Lucas’s legacy in that he can story tell pretty well but he’s not actually that great at nitty-gritty of writing and directing. (none of the really good TCW episodes are his.)

this episode made me think of A Friend in Need (which he directed) which is not, like, a BAD episode but quite notoriously includes the Bo-Katan ass-slap and also Ahsoka beheading four Mandalorians at once.

it also includes a helpless village of oppressed and exploited Asian-coded civilians who are there mostly as background scenery so the bad guys can be bad and the heroes can feel righteous

I’ll come back to that one

the level of violence in this episode was...weird. honestly, too high? in a way that probably would not have registered if it was anyone but Ahsoka. look, I am an animated shows person. I know TCW and Rebels inside and out. I know that neither one is particularly shy about killing off faceless bad guys (though if you watch Rebels S1 compared to Rebels S4 they really dial back the amount of fatal violence the main characters commit in the last season, lol).  But this felt off for Ahsoka in a way I can’t really articulate.

why is Ahsoka attacking a random Mandalorian (her allies are Mandalorians!) who is walking through the woods WITH A BABY? WITHOUT WARNING?

part of that is just her movement -- when they animated her for TCW back in 2008, they made a deliberate decision to give her mannerisms and movement and a fighting style that a human can’t do because she isn’t human and animation can do that. which means that they hobbled themselves when they came to translating her to live action because uh a human can’t do that.

something about her lightsaber blades looked really, really wrong and I can’t put my finger on what. it’s like they just used the illuminated blades of the stunt sabers but didn’t do the extra CGI that the films do? I don’t know.

Ahsoka did a LOT of dramatic posing and what WAS that?

Dave can’t direct live action, that’s what that was

since when can you canonically convey that much information mind to mind

are Ahsoka and Grogu a dyad in the Force (I know the answer is no but also: what? what was happening?)

the only people we’ve seen who can do that sort of thing are Quinlan Vos and Cal Kestis, who both have the rare talent for telemetry, and even that’s not mind to mind communication, that’s touching a thing and going “YIKES”

you are telling me that Ahsoka Tano, whom six months ago we saw take on Darth Maul, a whole barrage of Mandalorian warriors, and her entire clone trooper battalion and walk away without a scratch, had to work up a sweat fighting one woman with a spear

you do know that we all saw TCW and Rebels right

and here’s the problem! this episode makes zero sense if you HAVE seen TCW and Rebels because (1) she doesn’t look right (2) she doesn’t fight right (3) timelines? we’ve never heard of them? (4) is Thrawn back? did you find the Chimaera? (you all do remember that Ezra and Thrawn aren’t out there alone and are in fact with a 40,000 man crewed star destroyer right) (5) did you NOT find them? (6) are you even looking? (7) this is supposed to be AFTER the Rebels epilogue unless you’ve decided to take advantage of that specific ending scene not being super specifically dated and if it’s before IT MAKES IT EVEN WORSE! because I desperately hate that epilogue and its implications EVEN AS IT IS! (8) why would you call this episode “The Jedi” when since 2013 Ahsoka’s whole thing has been not being a Jedi

to be fair I’m pretty sure S7 tried very hard to course correct that but unfortunately, they could not because the rest of canon exists

are you still trying to deny me grown Ahsoka and Rex when we know you got Temuera back for a five second shot of Boba

to be fair I would have the same aural problems with Temuera voicing Rex because that’s Dee Bradley Baker as far as I’m concerned (I reiterate that this is because of how my brain process character and sound, not anythign else)

if you haven’t seen TCW and Rebels this is a random Jedi wandering around for no specific reason namedropping a completely random person who has no prior significance unless it’s going to turn up later

this entire show has consisted of namedropping random people and things with no prior significance within the show itself and it remains entirely unclear whether they’re ever going to have significance within the show itself

look, I can buy Ahsoka not wanting to train the kid both for her stated reasons and for some implied stuff from earlier on in canon (the kids in the Ahsoka novel, the babies from Future of the Force), even what happened with Ezra, and obviously she has Plans and cannot haul a baby around with her when that baby is going to be a baby for an indeterminate amount of time

which honestly is something that ought to come up because even if Ahsoka wanted to train the kid by the time she grew old and died he might, if we were very lucky, have advanced to being essentially a pre-teen and then would be on his own again? this is also true for Din.

lol sure go cast yourself out into the Force, I’m sure there’s absolutely not a single darksider still wandering around the galaxy who might perk up at “ooh, free apprentice!”

I’m literally starting to think that this show takes place in an alternate universe where Luke and Leia either don’t exist or died at some point in the OT

me, baffled, last season: you’re telling me Cara Dune, Alderaanian, had never heard of the Jedi? was she not keeping up with whatever Leia Organa was doing? was the Rebel Alliance actually big enough that PEOPLE IN IT HADN’T HEARD OF LUKE SKYWALKER?

what...is Luke doing right now. isn’t he training Leia?

WHAT HAS AHSOKA BEEN DOING FOR TEN YEARS are we seriously supposed to believe she peaced out of the Rebel Alliance after Malachor and whatever the hell they’re going to make that out to be (honestly at this point I’m betting on “they will never touch it”)

does or does Ahsoka not know that Luke exists

hoo boy can you just see them trying to cast a younger Luke, or do you think they’d CGI de-age Mark Hamill?

oh yeah let’s go through this again in a season with someone else playing young Luke, let’s, I’m not emotionally invested in that so I’m prepared to be entertained

hasn’t Sebastian Stan been floated (even if just on Twitter) for young Luke?

why are these not-imperials on this planet. what are they doing here. what’s the point.

 why is the planet...being burned? I was half-expecting, like, normal deforestation (in terms of logging for lumber) but I’m also a bit ??? about this.

since when is beskar resistant to lightsabers, I thought cortosis was the only thing that was? whatever, it’s new canon, they can do whatever they want. (ETA: apparently that’s been true for a while; I am more a Jedi person than a Mandalorian one as far as the EU goes and my Mandalorian lore is my weakest point.)

dear god were these fight scenes bad

I did spot Morai and I appreciated the tookas

okay, I am taking the next thing out of bullet points because I was really, really upset by it, and as an Asian-American woman it affects me directly.

I was really, really shaken by the use of village of (space) Asian people who were portrayed solely as background victims to be tortured and exploited.  Star Wars has a long history of Orientalism, and some of it I can look away from and some of I can’t.  Mando especially has a very bad track record with its treatment of Asian characters (Fennec Shand), and in recent years the rest of Star Wars live action has also been pretty bad about it; I will never forget how shaken and upset I was by Paige Tico’s death at the beginning of TLJ, and Rose’s sidelining in TROS was a lot to deal with. There has also been some pretty appalling anti-Asian racism from the Mandalorian fandom that I have seen in regards towards casting rumors about Sabine (which brought me to the point of tears as recently as yesterday).

I had been braced for Rosario Dawson Ahsoka because it’s been rumored for so long, if never officially confirmed by Lucasfilm, and after they pulled the original VA for Leia from Resistance a few years ago (without ever making an official statement but it was after she made really dismissive statements during the Kavanaugh hearings) I was still really hoping they’d pull Dawson for the transphobic assault allegations, or that the rumors were false, or...something.  I was not expecting the way that they treated the Asian civilian population here.  I kept hoping that there was going to be something, and it’s like they kept almost going there with Governor Wing (you want to make either his name or his position clear in the actual episode, maybe?) but then kept pulling back, which just made the whole population victims that had to be rescued by outsiders. And exploited, and tortured, and abused in general.

And yes, I’m aware the Magistrate/Morgan Elsbeth is an Asian-American woman.  That doesn’t make it better?  Since Ahsoka presumably kills her offscreen?

(Also Diana Lee Inosanto is a stunt performer and a fight choreographer, why is that fight scene so wooden, damn.)

okay back to bullet points to wrap up

I realize I haven’t said much about Din and the kid and that’s because they didn’t...do...much? I guess if you’re actually invested in them “YAY HE HAS FEELINGS” is a major thing but I’m not

I have flashes of being invested in Din, but the problem is that I never know what the hell this show is doing because it’s all over the place.  We are 5/8 of the way into season 2 and I have no idea what it’s trying to do: they keep setting stuff up and then not doing anything with it. I can make vague predictions based on what’s set up and based on my knowledge of canon, but this show is so weirdly set up and paced that I can never tell if they’re something for A Reason, for the lulz, or for the Aesthetic.

I feel extremely vindicated by the revelation a few weeks ago that Din grew up in a cult but I also straight-up feel like I spent the past year being gaslighted about what Mandalorians were, and that’s...not a great feeling. Do I think that the show is going to do anything with that? Fuck, I don’t know. I hope so. I know what I’d do as a writer. But I can’t predict anything they’re doing and that makes me really uneasy.

jeez, at least when George Lucas was making Star Wars you knew he was doing it to entertain himself and tell a specific story rather than constantly having to go back and wonder what story lines got compromised for a project down the road.

like, is this why they did mo-cap Ahsoka in S7, to brace us for live action Ahsoka here? I know they had already filmed Mando S2 before S1 came out. WHY THEY DIDN’T THEY REUSE LAUREN MARY KIM AS AHSOKA’S STUNT DOUBLE THEN? it’s not like she hasn’t stunted in Mando before?

if this was supposed to be a backdoor pilot to a Rebels sequel...I will flip a table

I enjoyed the Bad Batch eps in TCW S7 but knowing that there’s going to be a Bad Batch show I’m now wondering if they’re only in S7 to backdoor pilot that show

how far back does this go? did they put the Legacy of Mandalore story line in Rebels S4 solely to set up for this? especially considering that that’s the one thing in S4 that actually has saga weight and then they immediately got rid of everything it accomplished to set up for this?

I presume that this is the reason they refused to release the turnaround for Ahsoka’s epilogue look two years ago. apparently it doesn’t matter given they changed her entire epilogue color scheme and also her lekku and personality.

Look -- at the end of the day, there was only about a 2% chance I was ever going to like this episode, but I was holding out for it nevertheless. I do get surprised from time to time! I liked the Bo-Katan episode! This was, however, a hot mess. And yes: a lot of the things that bother me are not going to bother other people. (I haven’t seen anyone comment on the Asian villagers, for example.)

[letterboxd]

Siren Song.

Undine writer-director Christian Petzold talks to Reyzando Nawara about modern-day mermaids, Tinder culture and finding the magic in life.

“Love stories always change. A kiss in Berlin 1933, for example, is not gonna be the same kiss in Berlin today, right?” —Christian Petzold

“If you leave me, then I’ll have to kill you.” Undine’s threat to her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Johannes, after he has told her that he has met someone else, seems at first like an over-the-top reaction to the breakup. But it is a curse that Undine must fulfill, for she will become human only when she falls in love with a man who is doomed to die if he is unfaithful to her.

From Splash to Ponyo to The Lure to Song of the Sea, mythical water spirits, usually female, sometimes horse, have powered many film plots. The sixteenth-century European myth of Undine, in particular, lies behind many screen adaptations of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, though the Danish writer was not the first to popularize the fairytale in his century. Decades earlier, around 1811, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué of Germany had produced his romantic novella, Undine.

And it is to Germany—specifically modern-day Berlin—that writer-director (and fellow German) Christian Petzold transports Undine in his contemporary magical-realist take on the myth. There, she does not take the form of a mermaid or siren, but a beautiful young woman (played by Paula Beer), who works as a historian at a museum, where she guides tours of Berlin’s architecture and its reconstruction. The breathtaking cinematography, by regular Petzold collaborator Hans Fromm, crystallizes both the romance and the beauty of Berlin, while Petzold’s leads root every scene in reality, even as aquariums explode and giant catfish drift past.

Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski fire up the streets of Berlin in ‘Undine’.

Water may be the dominant element in Undine, but Beer and her co-star Franz Rogowski bring fire to their scenes together. Where Beer brings charisma and intensity to the titular role, Rogowski, as Undine’s new love interest, an industrial diver named Christoph, offers charm and sweetness.

In the frenzy of Parasite’s world domination, it is easy to forget that Petzold’s previous feature, Transit, appeared in two of our 2019 Year in Review lists—the 50 highest-rated films and the highest-rated international films—and was one of the top romance films of the 2010s. His riveting Phoenix is still his highest-rated film on the platform—one of many to center a complex female character in search of love at a time of personal and/or political crisis. In Undine, Petzold does it again, a welcome departure from other adaptations, including the Colin Farrell-starring Irish romantic drama Ondine (2009), that have mostly told the myth from the perspective of its male characters. Petzold also revises the fairytale, by giving Undine a chance to try to emancipate herself from her curse.

We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Petzold about his fascination with water, the magic of Berlin history, modern dating and of course, his ongoing collaboration with Beer and Rogowski.

Spoiler warning: this conversation contains plot details regarding the ending of Petzold’s film ‘Transit’ (2018).

Your movie is inspired by the myth of Undine, but you reinvent it by giving it some modern twists. How did the main narrative for the film come about? Christian Petzold: I think the idea of the story first came to me around twenty years ago when I had a project in Germany. It was together with Claire Denis and also Kathryn Bigelow, and everybody had to make a ten-minute short film for a project based on the museum near the Rhine River. I had written a little dialogue—oh, by the way, Steve McQueen was also part of the project—and it was the scene that we can see in the movie in the first few minutes where Undine’s boyfriend, Johannes, said that he doesn’t love her anymore and that he wants to leave her and she said to him, “If you leave me, then I’ll have to kill you.” Then she goes back to work, and later when she comes back to try to find him again, he isn’t there—so she knows that she has to kill him now.

Then when I made Transit with Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski, I told them after a very lucky and happy time of shooting, that I had written a short story and wanted to make a 90-minute feature movie out of it together with them. I wanted to keep working and making movies with them because we’ve had an amazing experience together in Transit. This was basically the start of how the movie and my collaboration with these two actors came about.

Paula and Franz are actors who didn’t come from the basic German acting school; their backgrounds are dance and theater. But they both have so much curiosity about cinema—when I met Paula for the first time, for example, she told me that she had bought 50 movies by Alfred Hitchcock and wanted to see all of them, and to me, this is the best kind of school to learn about cinema.

So to some extent, Undine is a spiritual sequel to Transit? Yes, you’re right. It has so many things to do with Transit. Marie, Paula’s character in Transit, finds her own death in the sea—she’s drowned. And Franz’s character, he’s waiting at the land, hoping that she may come back from the land of the dead. So I said to them, “Okay, the next movie is gonna be about a woman coming out of the sea and going to the land to search for love and also about this young man who is a diver, who is going underwater, to find love as well.” So to some degree, it’s a sequel, you’re right.

Beer and Ragowski in ‘Transit’ (2018).

You mentioned earlier that you had a great experience working with Paula and Franz in Transit. Can you tell us what it was about these two actors that you thought would capture the story you wanted to tell in Undine? Paula is a very young actor—she was 23 when we started Transit, and she was around 24 when we made Undine—but when you’re filming her, she has this ability to make her characters much more mature beyond her real age. In one second, she’s 45 years old, with a whole experience of someone who’s had a hard life and has gone through so many bad things, then one second later, she’s thirteen and innocent. And to have that kind of ability—to go from one point to another—is just really fascinating to me. I’ve never seen other actors do this before in my life.

Franz was a dancer, and if I remember correctly, I think he was also in a clown school for a circus, so he can do everything with his body. It’s unbelievable what he can do. He has this amazing physicality that I admire and haven’t seen before in other German actors. When they’re together sharing a scene, they dance with each other. And this is the thing that I like so much about them and the thing I need in Undine, because I need actors who can float from one scene to another as if they’re dancing underwater.

In literature and pop culture, the myth of Undine has been mostly told from the male perspective. You reframe the narrative, to give Undine the opportunity to maybe emancipate herself from both the male figure in her life and the curse. Tell me more about that choice. Two or three years ago, I had a retrospective in New York, and I had the chance to see some of my previous movies again—[laughing] I’ve actually never done it before, revisiting my own movies. And at that time, I realized that I’ve always tried to rewrite the stories centering on women, which were made by men in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, from another perspective: the perspective of the women.

When I was in Venice for the first time, Claude Chabrol [was] in the same hotel as me, and he had a Q&A. I wanted to say hi and tell him how great he was but I couldn’t do it because I was very young and too shy for those things. I heard what he said when asked why in his movies, the women are always the main characters. His answer was, “Men are living, women are surviving. And cinema is about surviving.” It was such a fantastic answer.

All the movies I [have] made, including Undine, are about surviving. Undine wanted to survive her curse—she tries to, every time, since centuries ago. In so many iterations of the myth, Undine always has to go back into the lake and to the life the curse has set for her. I really wanted to zoom in on that, to liberate the character of Undine from the myth and the curse.

In the movie, Undine works as an historian at a museum, and in her tours, she talks about Berlin’s architecture and its reconstruction throughout the years. How is this related to the romantic aspect of the movie? Everybody says you can take a love story and put it in the sixteenth century or the nineteenth century, and it’s always gonna be the same kind of love story. But I think that’s not entirely right. Love stories always change. A kiss in Berlin 1933, for example, is not gonna be the same kiss in Berlin today, right? Therefore I want to take the historical aspect of Berlin architecture and its reconstruction to tell the story of two young people in Berlin nowadays, to see the evolution of both this love story and the myth of Undine itself.

What’s the significance of all the buildings Undine mentions in the movie? The buildings serve a very important role in the movie because Berlin is between two rivers on an island, and the city is built on dried-out swamps, so the element that Undine is coming from, which is the water, is destroyed in Berlin. It doesn’t exist anymore. And therefore Undine doesn’t have any habitats, so she has no choice but to adapt and to live on the land.

In some way, I always think that the modernization in Berlin erases history, and when there’s no history, there’s no magic, which means magical creatures like Undine won’t exist. That was the main idea of the architectural elements in the movie.

Is that also the reason why there are two locations in the movie: Berlin, and the small town where Franz’s character, Christoph, works and lives, which is still full of swamps? To show that in this small town, magic still exists? That’s a good question. The romance and the myth of Undine is a part of German and European history. It’s a unique enchantment. But in Berlin, where modernization and civilization keep growing and changing, there’s no enchantment anymore. So I want to show how in this small town where everything is still kept as closely natural as possible, the enchantment and the charm of Germany are still there.

There’s a beautiful and romantic poem by Joseph Eichendorff that says, “You must find the right world, so everything can sync again.” To me, that line encourages us to find the magic of the world back. We live in this world surrounded by retro buildings and retro behavior and retro music, but it’s all actually just an illusion of magic. The real magic, that’s something that we have to find—either by movies or camera positions or poems or even by preserving the naturality of a city. And the Undine myth actually has a lot to do with this.

Another thing that fascinates me about the movie is how the dynamic between Undine and Johannes, in some way, reflects the state of modern dating. Is this something that you also wanted to capture when you wrote the script? [Laughing] Funny story, when Paula read the script for the first time, she told me that she liked it so much because the story reminded her of Tinder and modern dating. And on some level, it’s true; part of Undine is about modern dating. I always think that in the era of dating apps, everything gets much simpler—you meet someone, you have sex (or perhaps not), and if you feel like this someone is not handsome or beautiful enough for you, you can keep scrolling until you find someone new. So, dating right now is like going to the supermarket.

Johannes leaving Undine to be with another woman, who for him is better-looking than Undine, reflects the culture of Tinder. And the line I mentioned earlier, “If you leave me, then I’ll have to kill you,” is the opposite of that kind of dating life. And Paula, who hates Tinder, loves that line a lot. Some of the actors are on Tinder, I’m sure, and that’s understandable. Actors are sometimes very lonely because for six to eight weeks, they are deep inside of a character, and when they’re on break, they’re in some sort of “black hole of loneliness”.

Writer-director Christian Petzold.

Undine being a water nymph, of course, makes the water element very important in this movie. But water has actually been heavily featured in some of your previous features as well, like in Yella, Barbara and Transit. Can you tell us why you find water fascinating? I’ve seen a documentary by Agnès Varda, and in [it] she said, “The place where one element is touching one another is the place where cinema builds its stories.” That’s why she loved the beach, because on the beach, there’s water and there’s the earth and there’s also wind, and they’re touching each other. So to her, the beach is the perfect place where you can tell a story.

For me, however, the reason I like featuring water or the other elements in most of my movies is because it has something to do with seeing my characters coming from one element then going to the other elements; to see them act and react in a new and sometimes uncomfortable place. Also, when you see pictures or paintings, so many of them are about people looking deep into the sea. I always feel like that kind of painting is actually about a desire. And most of my movies, at [their] core, are about desire. That’s why water is so important to me. Deep under the water, there’s the place of desire.

What’s the first movie that made you want to become a filmmaker? The first movie I loved very much as a kid was The Jungle Book, but the first movie that made me want to become a filmmaker was by Alfred Hitchcock, The 39 Steps. I was fourteen or fifteen years old when I saw the movie for the first time, and I loved it from the first moment. The movie is about a man and a woman who are bound by handcuffs, and they don’t like each other, but because they’re on the run, they have to communicate and come to an understanding. And the love story starts because of that communication, not because of looks, and I love the movie so much for that reason.

If you could program a double feature with Undine, what movie would you pick? Good question. I would say The Night of the Hunter. Also maybe Creature from the Black Lagoon or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or The Son’s Room by Nanni Moretti. These are the movies that I would recommend for a double feature with Undine.

Related content

More ‘Little Mermaid’ adaptations: a list by Katherine

Paula Beer strolling around towns cinematic universe

Diogo’s mega-list of Mermaids in Film

Horror’s History with Scary Mermaids: a Bloody Disgusting list

Follow Reyzando on Letterboxd

‘Undine’ is in theaters and available on VOD in the US now.

[themonkeycabal]

Wandavision Ep 6 Spoilers

No really, spoilers. 

Previously on Wandavision — Wanda told SWORD to shove their drones right straight up their asses, Vision woke up to the reality that his utopian sitcom life was in fact a dystopian hellscape, their children were extremely creepy, and Agnes was being bizarre as hell and super sus. In the real world, Acting Director Dick was a dick, and Darcy and Jimmy welcomed Monica into their sciencey weird-crime-fighting team. Monica also mentioned an aerospace engineer she knows, which some suggest may be the first mention of Reed Richards in the MCU. I have conflicted feelings about the Fantastic Four. Mostly I never liked them. But, I'm open to revising my opinion.

Oh, and also X-Men 'Verse Pietro showed up suddenly and that was fun.

Anyway. the roommate and I tried to sort out a timeline — so Monica unBlips and goes back to work at SWORD three weeks later. AD Dick tells us Wanda stole Vision's body nine days previously. That means, just three weeks ago Wanda was in the middle of a battle, lost her boyfriend, was Snapped, was then unsnapped to fall right into the middle of another battle. Lost THREE additional teammates. And then sometime in the following week found out a shady government agency had Vision's body and she probably went "OH HELL NO". Because that's what I would say. So she goes to SWORD, dents a few doors, takes Vision's body and swans off to New Jersey. Look, she's been through a hell of a lot in the last couple weeks, is what I'm saying. I don't blame her a tiny bit. But, also, I don't think she's entirely behind this.

10-year old boy plus video camera = the 90s. Obnoxious opening credits. But, you know, I kind of liked them (as a one off). WAYYY better than last week's.

It's Halloween, and *sigh* Billy is breaking the fourth wall and narrating to the camera. There's childish twin bickering as you expect, Tommy's the wild and crazy twin, and Billy's the buttoned up twin. And Pietro is passed out on the couch at 4 in the afternoon. Living his best life. He teasingly scares the boys, chases them around, and there's awkward child acting.

Wanda comes down the stairs in the classic Scarlet Witch costume, and says she's a Sokovian Fortune Teller. Sokovia was more wild than I realized.

Genuinely funny flashback to Wanda and Pietro trick-or-treating in Sokovia as kids, 'the year we got typhus'. lol. Was it the fish that gave them typhus? Or was that just a special treat? Wanda doubts this version of events, and Pietro suggests she suppressed the memory due to the trauma. This gives Billy the chance to tell the camera that mom's been weird since uncle Pietro turned up to crash on their couch.

Next it's Vision's turn to appear in the classic Vision costume. Yikes. Wanda thanks him for humoring her, and he says there were no other clothes in his closet and they have a very weird second where he's not playing along and she's not sure what to do, and then he breaks into sitcom character says something about "just kidding, i know how much you love mexican wrestling" like it's a luchador costume, and then there's some super weird flirting. TMI you two.

Meanwhile, Pietro is a large child and the kids love him, of course. So there's that.

Back to Wanda and Vision, she's ready to take the kids out trick-or-treating, but Vision says he can't go, he's on the neighborhood watch and must patrol the streets ever-vigilant for wild gangs of child hooligans who might TP trees. He's gone off-script and it takes Wanda a second to figure out how to play this. She says it's the boys' first Halloween so he has to be there. Pietro breaks up the almost argument and says he can be a father figure-type and he'll help with the boys. Vision's still pretty off-script but Wanda doesn't fight it but looks uncertain, and he goes off to protect the night — or early afternoon.

Pietro is a child hooligan and wants to go do hooligany things with the kids. Wanda says he doesn't have a costume and he grabs Billy and they speed off only to return dressed in classic Quicksilver duds. Well, cheap-looking, thrown together Quicksilver duds. I laughed. The hair. lol. Good one.

Outside in the real world. The Hex field is still kind of glowing red and making bad force field noises. It only started doing that when Wanda got pissed in the last ep. Oh, goody, it's Acting Director Dick. I've learned his name is Hayward. I don't care.

Blah blah Stompy Mc-I'm-In-Charge blah. Monica is not pleased about the whole trying to kill Wanda with a missile while she was talking to her plan. AD Dick just says "now we know who we're dealing with". Um … what? You tried to kill her and her response was to tell you to go away. Yeah, boy, she's a monster.

Darcy is there to helpfully remind AD Dick that Wanda made him look like the fool he is. ILU girl. "Hey, there he is; the guy who almost got murdered by his own murder squad." Jimmy just makes a 'i'm so disappointed in you and your choices' face at him in the background.

I despise characters like Hayward. They are so tedious. Narratively they are there to incite conflict, but given the situation conflict naturally exists, surely there are other ways to bring up/drive that tension without the trope of the government heavy ready to solve the problem with the most extreme amount of force available to him. OH no! Our plucky heroes will have to find a way to save the day and fight the Man! Can they do it? Boring. It's too bad General Talbot went insane and then died; he could probably give tips on How Not To Be That Guy.

Anyway

Hayward wants to know if Darcy works for him and she's like "dunno my dude", Monica claims her, AD Dick says "which one of you is the sassy best friend" and Jimmy's like, that is quite enough Acting Director Not Very Nice Man. "There's no time to diminish your colleagues when you're about to start a war you can't win." AD Dick just wants to take out Wanda so the whole nightmare ends. Monica's like um, we literally do not know what's going on. Like, for real we have no clue. So that might not, in fact, end the nightmare, Director Murder Britches.

They argue a lot and Director Dick goes off the rails. Dude's like more unhinged than seems warranted. Unless he's just so embarrassed that he pissed himself when Wanda returned his murder drone to him, he's decided SHE MUST BE DESTROYED FOR THE GOOD OF … NEW JERSEY AND MY SOILED UNDERWEAR OR SOMETHING. 

"Captain Rambeau, you are an impediment to this mission!" Oh no! He's gonna tell her all about how hard it was to survive in a post-blip world, all those lucky blipped don't know what it was like! You just can't understand! Monica tells him not to use that as an excuse to be a coward. I'm so bored with this scene. Let me guess, the trio will have to go behind his back to save the day.

"Maybe it's a good thing you weren't here with your mother died. Because, clearly you don't have the stomach for this job." … non-sequitur much? Or is he saying she would have inherited the Director-ship (which should probably not be how that sort of agency works, let's be real). Is this scene five hours long, or does it just feel that way?

The Dick banishes the trio from his base.

"Hayward is way over-stepping his provisional authority". Jimmy Woo, you're so great. Monica says he's up to something. Yeah a tactical nuke and murder. Clearly he doesn't want to actually solve the problem, he just wants the problem to go away with a big show of macho explosions and whatnot. I suspect he might be in over his head, like he was not meant to be Acting Director, let alone Director. Also, he's a boring cliche stereotype and I loathe it.

JIMMY! I legit did not see that coming. He just pure hauls off and clocks one of the soldiers escorting them off the base, to a transport truck or something. Monica seems just as surprised for a second but then she's like "hell yeah!" and jumps in. Darcy sort of stands back and watches. lol. "Why didn't anyone tell me the plan?"

Oh look, it's my shipping container! They put the soldiers in there. Guys, it was for Hayward. Come on.

The trio disguise themselves with ponchos, which is a big step up from the usual MCU disguise of "baseball hat". That was a good bit in Ant-man and the Wasp "it's not a disguise, it just looks like us at a baseball game" (I watched that like last week. I missed Luis). Anyway …

Back in the sitcom world. The kids are ready for their early afternoon trick-or-treating. They're still talking to the camera. It's so awkward. I'm not a fan. I get it's meant to reproduce the very 90s Nick-era sitcoms and so, you know, it's spot on. Still, though.

Pietro is encouraging and supportive. "Unleash hell, demon spawn!"

Dang there are a lot of kids in that neighborhood. Wasn't Vision wondering last episode why there weren't any kids? Is the program correcting itself?

Wanda tries to test Pietro, asking him about some kid at an orphanage when they were kids. Pietro calls her on it, and says he knows he looks different. Wanda wants to know why that is. He says, "You tell me. I mean, if I found shangra-la, I wouldn't want to be reminded of the past, either." Hmm.

The kids speed off with uncle Pietro. Wanda wanders over to talk to neighbor Herb, who has a g-man earbud in and is clearly part of the neighborhood watch. In the background Pietro is stealing all the candy and smashing pumpkins and spraying the place with silly string. The hijinks are so wacky. Wanda tells Herb maybe Vision can help out with the chaos, and Herb says Vision isn't on duty. Oh no, he lied to her!

Herb goes weird "is there something I can do for you, Wanda? Do you want something changed?" Hmmm.

Elsewhere Vision is wandering the wild streets of Westview. He finds people caught in some type of weird decorating loop, the woman seems trapped but aware.

Commercial time!  What the fuck was that. "Yo-magic! The snack for survivors." No, really, what the fuck.

Night has fallen, the twins and the twins walk the streets. Wanda's making the boys give back all the candy they stole. She says Pietro is a bad influence. He says "I'm just trying to do my part, kay? Come to town unexpectedly, create tension with the brother-in-law, stir up trouble with the rugrats, and ultimately give you grief. I mean, that's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"What happened to your accent?"

"What happened to yours? Details are fuzzy, man. I got shot like a chump in the street for no reason." AHAHAHAHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHA! no really AHAHAHAHAAH! Thank you, Pietro! Holy shit, perfect. That's some delicious shade. I expect to see this gif'd fifteen different ways when I load tumblr today.

"Next thing I know, I heard you calling me. I knew you needed me."

The kids interrupt. And now all of a sudden Tommy can zoom. Character development!

Everyone is so careful to give Wanda what she wants. Why? She's not cruel. Who wants to keep her pacified? And whoever it is cannot possibly be pleased with AD Dick messing things up. Assuming it's an outside or outside-ish force/entity, of course. I mean, I don't think she's doing this entirely, she might be the battery powering it, but despite her thing last episode to get SWORD to leave her alone, she does seem a little confused about the where, why, and how things are going.

"Don't go past Ellis Avenue." Just a kid thing or a boundary of the sitcom control world?

In the real world, our heroes are sneaking through a tent city and into the server room. The scene with Pietro and Wanda discussing his accent is playing in the background. Darcy seems put-out that Pietro was recast. lol. "He brought the wrong face."

Darcy hacks into Hayward's devices. "Hayward figured out a way to look through the boundary." "And he didn't share it with the group." I don't like Hayward. 

Something is blipping on the map on the computer. Jimmy asks if it's Wanda, but Darcy says "it's tracking the decay signature of vibranium". So Vision. Monica wants to know why Hayward is tracking Vision. Well, I'd super like to know what SWORD was doing with Vision in the first place, because they weren't just storing him, they were doing something. So …

Jimmy notices that there are other dots, the ones closest to Vision, who are other residents. Jimmy says the ones near the edge of town are barely moving.

Back to Vision. He's found a cul-de-sac to patrol. Everybody's frozen in place, the street lights flicker. Eerie. They're all dressed for Halloween. Does this mean the field is shrinking, or the effects spreading and so it's closing in, slowing and then freezing people who were earlier moving about just fine? Vision is unaffected by this whatever it is. He turns himself into himself and flies off, up above the town. part of the town is dark, and part alive with voices and laughter.

He spots a car at the edge of town. It's Agnes. She seems frozen-ish, but when he asks what she's doing there, she says "Town Square Scare. Where is it?" all robotic like. Vision helpfully tries to give directions. lol. "Took a wrong turn, got lost" she says.

Vision touches her head and she wakes up. "You! You're one of the Avengers. You're Vision. Are you here to help us?" "I am Vision. I do want to help. But, what's an Avenger?"

Hmm. Well, I guess he did say last week that he couldn't remember anything before Westview.

"Am I dead?" she asks. "No, why would you think that?" "Because you are."

What was news coverage after the Snap like, do you suppose? I mean, ridiculous, of course. But, like, I think they had bigger problems then wondering about snapped/dead Avengers, didn't they? Well, maybe not. "WHERE ARE AVENGERS TO HELP US?" or "HOW DARE THE AVENGERS NOT HELP US!" "TOTALLY THIS IS ON THE AVENGERS!" "WE'D ALL BE DEAD WITHOUT THE AVENGERS!" "NUHUH! BOO AVENGERS!" "EXCEPT VISION WHO DIED HEROICALLY, WE ALL LIKE THAT AVENGER!" "TONY STARK AND PEPPER POTTS SHARE THE DECORATING TIPS THAT TRANSFORMED THEIR RUSTIC RESTORATION PROJECT INTO A CHARMING FAMILY HOME".

Agnes starts screaming "Dead" at Vision. She's not coping well. Vision says he's going to try and reach outside town and try to figure this all out. "How? No one leaves. Wanda won't even let us think about it." I SUSPECT YOU, AGNES! Why would Wanda keep everybody trapped and miserable? I could see if she did it on accident, but this implies she's purposefully hurting people. I don't buy it. Agnes, again, seems to be in the right place at the right time to make Vision doubt Wanda. You're a very suspicious character, Agnes.  

She starts to laugh. "All is lost." Vision touches her had and she resets to sitcom Agnes. Somehow she can move again, she turns the car around on Ellis Ave and heads back into town. So, that answers that.

Vision walks across the Eillis Ave to the field beyond.

Meanwhile, Darcy continues to hack. Monica gets a text and says "that's it! My way back into the Hex will be here in an hour." Jimmy's all ready to boost a ride to take her to meet her aerospace buddy. But, Darcy says, nope. Can't do it. Monica's been through the Hex twice, and it's rewritten her cells. "It's changing you." Monica is undaunted. "I know what Wanda's feeling and I won't stop until I help her." Alrighty then.

Jimmy's finally going to get to hotwire a car! But wait, Darcy's not going with them. AD Dick has something hidden behind one last firewall. Darcy thinks it's big and can help them. She's going to find it.

I don't think Jimmy had to hotwire that humvee. It just started right up. Motorpool, pfft - they always leave the keys.

Back in Westview. Halloween continues at Town Square. Pietro asks Wanda where she was hiding all those kids. Whu? Says Wanda. "I assume they were all just sleeping peacefully in their beds. No need to traumatize beyond the occasional holiday cameo, amiright?" What is Pietro. "Hey don't get me wrong, you've handled the ethical considerations of this scenario as best you could. Families and couples stay together. Most personalities aren't far from what's underneath. People got better jobs. Better haircuts for sure."

"You don't think it's wrong?"

"Are you kidding me? I'm impressed. It's a pretty big leap from giving people nightmares and shooting red wigglywoos out your hands." No, really, what is Pietro? "How'd you even do all this?" Hmmm.

"I don't know how I did it. I only remember feeling completely alone. Empty. Just endless nothingness." She looks back at Pietro and for a second he's dead Pietro. Poor Wanda.

Darcy continues to hack Hayward's systems. Cataract classified weapons something something. They're still tracking Vision. Who continues his walk across the field and comes to the hex. He tries to push through it. Looks painful. SWORD rolls out to go overreact at him. He makes it through the barrier, kind of. It's a struggle.

Hayward standing there looking like a jackass "he really does want out, doesn't he?" Like he’s just amused by this turn of events, or watching a lab rat try to get out of the lab. 

Darcy's standing behind watching all of this. Bits of Vision sort of fly off and back into the Hex. Darcy says "oh no!" and runs towards him, screaming for them to help him. Way to give away your sneaky hiding, girlfriend.

In Westview. Billy looks up, he can hear what's going on outside. "I hear daddy in my head. He's in trouble."

Vision calls for help, while SWORD prioritizes arresting Darcy. Phil Coulson would never have behaved like this. Boo to SWORD. Vision is dissolving. It's kind of gross and sad.

Wanda asks where Vision is, and Pietro interrupts "Don't sweat it, sis. It's not like your dead husband can die twice." Wanda wallops him with some red wigglywoos.

Billy sees soldiers and thinks Vision is dying. Wanda stops everything and makes a big red boom. The Hex appears to be expanding. Whoops, now you've done it AD Dick. He runs away like the brave brave guy he is. They leave Darcy handcuffed to a jeep. "Are you serious right now?"

The Hex overtakes Vision and then Darcy. Trapped soldiers become clowns, and we're in the circus. Well, SWORD seems like a circus, so Wanda's not wrong. I'm pretty sure Jimmy and Monica made it, but sadly the bravest Director who ever braved also escaped. He deserved to be a circus clown. Better luck next week, Wanda.

Credits.

Well, I just don't know anymore.

Hayward doesn't care about Wanda, except where I think because of this someone will figure out what he was doing to Vision's body. And Vision is ultimately the thing he cares about in all this. I hope Wanda drops a house on him.

Hmmm.

Quit suggesting I watch Age of Ultron next, Disney. It’s not happening. 

[ginnyweasleywannabe]

How James found out- James' Pov

Companion piece to my other story "How James found out" but from James' POV. Gives more of glimpse to Marlene and James' friendship with a little background Blackinnon tender moment.

((I still don't know how to format a tumblr post so if you want to read the first piece, just go to my page and search tag #my writing))

As always you can also read on AO3 @inthemiddle

Notes: IDK honestly I just wanted to write more of the thoughts behind the other story. I thought about writing the talk between Marlene and James' after this event but I think I'll make that a separate piece. As always minimal editing because I just wanted to write and then be done and get it out-there.

Start:

Honestly, James was tired. He had been really pushing himself both mentally and physically lately. Revising was starting soon so he was working his school work more than usual. Revising and the end of the year also meant the end of quidditch season. They only had a few more games which mean they really needed to make them count to have the best chance at the cup. He had been looking forward to dinner all day, all the workouts meant bigger appetite. He was currently diving in deep into his shepherds pie, only half listening to the talk around him.

“Peter was great, he took a step in front of me and held up his wand. He didn’t even have to say anything, they just left!”

“Well, it wasn’t quite like that Mary….” Peter said sheepishly, “I think they knew that if they messed with us then it would become a whole thing with you lot, that’s all.”

“Peter, I think it was nice of you to stand in front of Mary. They truly believe as a muggle-born she’d be worth the easy fight.” Lily wanted to help boost Peters confidence.

“It shouldn’t matter! Mary is great at defense, she could’ve taken the whole lot without even breaking a sweat!” Marlene’s word were encouraging but James could tell she was really annoyed. Marlene tended to have a short fuse. James couldn’t blame her. He felt like things were getting worse and worse. He was of the firm belief that it was time for the staff to take more action. Dumbledore was a believer in keeping the peace and that there was always more to the story. James felt like that was bullshit.

“Uggghhh”

He looked up to see Marlene staring down some Slytherins down the table. He knew what she was thinking. He could read Marlene like quidditch through the ages. He got it but tomorrow was really important to him. He just wanted to make it through the game then deal with this.

“Just let them pass, Marley, it’s not worth getting suspended from tomorrow’s game” James urged her with a pleading glance.

Rosier sniggered to Snape “I saw the little chubby one staring at the redhead mudblood earlier, she must had something special to get them all worked up”

Okay screw keeping the peace, James was out of his seat. And so was Marley… and so was Sirius. But he was just not going for the Slytherins, he standing in front of her, back to Snape and Rosier. He had his arms wrapped around Marley’s waist, trying his best to stop the lunging girl. James felt small quick relief, Sirius had Marlene. If things turned physical, which it would with Marlene, she had a good ex but much preferred a punch, they would definitely have to forfeit tomorrow’s game. He glanced away from the focus of the two for just a second, taking in the whole scene as Rosier said “She’s got all of you wrapped around her finger, maybe I ought to give her a try.”

Marlene went to lunge again but James knew Sirius could hold her steady. He went to turn back and give the pair of Slytherins his mind but suddenly he was more focused on Marlene and Sirius. They had exchanged a few words but now it was time for Snape to cut in “Yeah Black control your girl” welp. James knew that wasn’t good. Back in 5th year Marlene had dated Luke Wilson for a few months and hated being called “his girl” She was not a piece of property. James knew the chances for the game tomorrow were gone, or so he thought but then Sirius just leaned into Marlene and whispered something in her ear. She slowly relaxed and let her feet back down onto the floor. Marlene never relaxed that easily, especially with the way things had been going for her today. Then with one arm still wrapped around her waist, Sirius used his free hand to push a piece of hair behind her ear. James suddenly felt like he was invading in a private moment. A private moment between his best friend and his sister.

What. The. fuck.

Before James could even blink, Marlene straightened her robes and excused herself. James whipped his head to Sirius. Sirius looked at James like everything was perfectly normal, like he didn’t just stroke Marlene’s hair and comfort her. He gave a quick shrug and then agreed with Lily to go check on Marlene. The whole group went to get up and James was still stunned for movement before storming ahead of the rest of the 6th years. He found Marlene pacing out in the corridor. James charged ahead, he wanted answers.

“What the hell was that?” He couldn’t help but raise his voice.

“Oh, sorry Jamie, I know I should have let it go but its just been a long day” Marlene sighed letting her shoulders hang.

James wasn’t mad at her outburst, how could she think that. This just got him more worked up, why was she not answering. “Jamie” that was she had always called him. She was the only person he allowed to call him that, it was their thing.

“I don’t care about that… what the fuck was that” James knew he wasn’t making a ton of sense but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words, so waving his hands around like a mad man would have to suffice. Marlene just stared at him with a face of confusion.

“James…”

Oh yeah that bastard was still here. During this whole thing James had been processing things at lightning speed and thinking everything through but at the sound of Sirius’ voice James didn’t think, he just whipped around and punched Sirius. Sirius stumbled a little but remained on his feet. James was seething. Marlene was his everything, he would give his life for her. She was the first person outside of his parents he ever loved, it wasn’t romantic but that’s what made it so special because he felt so much love for her it went beyond lust.

“James, its not-“ it’s not what he thinks?! Was he actually about to say that? What else could it be. Sirius had been sneaking around with his Marley behind his back, after he promised he would stay away from her. Sirius had taken advantage of her, her willingness to love everyone and want to fix broken things. James hit him again, this time knocking him to the floor

“MY SISTER?? I asked you for one thing and it was not to sleep with my sister!!” James was yelling as loud as he could. Sirius felt the blood from his nose. He lunged back at James. James was caught off guard expecting to just let him have it. They both tumbled to floor, it didn’t last long before the group was pulling them apart.

James was breathing hard. He was glaring daggers at Sirius while Marlene quickly wiped his cheek. Why was she doing that, why was she comforting her. She suddenly whipped around to James.

“What. the fuck. was. that.”

James recoiled into himself for just a moment. He took a lighter tone remember that this was his favorite person, he hoped his tone was filled with love so that she would listen to him. “Marley...”

“What. did you. Mean. He. Promised.” Oh yeah… had he said promised. He had never meant for Marley to find out about the promise. But once he explained, she would understand, he wasn’t the person she should be upset with. He was doing this for her.

“It’s Sirius, you know how he his. After fifth year anyone with eyes could see the way he was looking at you. I just wanted to keep you safe, I mean, I mean HE” but Marlene cut him off.

“You had no right to do that, James. You don’t get to hold your good deeds over him for a favor in return. Especially one that controls MY life.” Marlene was still glaring up at him. Her voice never taking the soft tone they usually used with each other.

James released his breath and hung his head. He was tired and he hated fighting with Marlene, he just wanted to go somewhere with her and they would talk, move past this and laugh.

“James…” Sirius had started barley above a whisper.

“Don’t.” James removed any emotion from his voice but anger. He couldn’t be here anymore, he turned and left the group.

[dorminchu]

Insult to Injury: The Director’s Cut — Chapter 01 [PREVIEW]

Note: Please view on the main blog page for an optimal reading experience. :D Chapter One is about 95% revised to my liking. Here is a somewhat lengthier preview whilst work begins on 02 & 03.

June crawled by. Currently the MSF were in the process of dealing with a new influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the surrounding prefectures and villages, all of whom had to be tested and separated from those not stricken with disease—as this did not necessarily mean they weren’t carrying others. Thanks to the cooperation with the local civilians and tireless efforts on part of the medical staff, there had been a forty-five-percent decrease in fatalities compared to the start of the year.

The atmosphere within the hospital was not improving. The topic of insurgence was the new favourite with patients. Allegedly there had been several attacks on neighbouring villages; a sign of impatience at the lack of tangible progress coupled with deep-seated mistrust of government officials. Now the Force Sécurité/Protection, or FSP, had been brought on in collaboration with an additional Protective Services Detail (PSD) by the name of Kerberos, to ensure the hospital and surrounding property remained untouched.

Their project coordinator called them all in for the sake of reviewing protocol in the event of an attack, starting to seem like more of a possibility. Criticism of the government’s method in handling the situation was discouraged during their meetings with the project coordinator. Madeleine was savvy enough to keep herself abreast of any controversy. For the rest of the Psychosocial Unit, she presumed they were either too naïve or willing to look the other way.

The only exception to this was the Vaccines Medical Advisor, Francis Karner; a stoic older man with thinning hair and glasses. He and Madeleine had cooperated a handful of times at the behest of the Medical Coordinator. Madeleine had found nothing wrong with his conduct. A diligent worker, he acknowledged her judgement fairly but did not overextend his gratitude. Outside of his work he was straight-laced and private. Whenever they had a break, he would often disappear frequently on calls. He’d been coming back tenser as of late and apologised to Madeleine.

“I was supposed to be sent home last month, but with the situation being what it is, I decided to stay on until things are resolved.” He did not sit down. “It’s madness. We’ve already waited until things are too severe to think of bringing in a proper security detail—who the hell does the project coordinator think we’re fooling?” Madeleine ignored him. “Dr Swann. The Medical Coordinator tells me you’ve been involved in volunteer work for a while.”

“Five years, as of March.”

“Perhaps they would be more willing to listen to someone with your expertise.”

“Well, it’s fortunate that I was not selected for my personal opinion.”

Karner chuckled. “You’ll go far.”

Madeleine had no interest in pursuing this topic any further. “Who were you speaking to?” Francis didn’t answer immediately. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have been so blunt. But you leave often enough and it appears to be taking a toll on you.”

“Just my wife. This past month has been no easier on her. But I find that it can help somewhat, just talking to someone outside of this element.” Madeleine nodded. Francis paused. “I’ve never seen you contact anyone outside of your unit.” Madeleine did not anticipate the conversation to take such a turn, nor did she particularly wish to divulge much about herself. But she could not deflect as she could in the clinic back home, and Francis seemed forthright enough to warrant a harmless response.

“I’m living with a friend. We graduated from college together.”

“And you keep in touch while you are abroad?”

“He tends to lead his own life while I am away.”

“That’s a great deal to ask of someone.” Madeleine inclined her head in his direction. This was not a man that emoted often; now the thin mouth was set, and the eyes behind the glasses disillusioned. “Few women your age would devote themselves to a thankless vocation. Not everyone is going to want to stick around until you decide you want to settle down.”

Madeleine’s smile did not touch her eyes. She hadn’t even mentioned the nature of her relationship to Arnaud. “We have an understanding, that’s all. Besides, I don’t bother him about his social life.”

Karner shook his head. In a few minutes the break subsided and they were back to work as usual. By the end of the day, Madeleine resolved to let him dig his own grave without further interference.

The next few days blurred together in her recollection. Karner made no attempt to converse with her. Madeleine found her mind snagging easily on technicalities. She became less tolerant of the Psychological Unit’s personal hang-ups with the lack of resources and lack of any obvious moral closure. Smell of rot and disinfectant permeated into her clothing and hair until she had begun to associate the smell itself with a total lack of progress.

She left the window to her hotel room cracked most nights, afraid to open it completely. Alone with her own mind and the recorder. The conversations now circled back readily to death and terrorism. An overwhelming fear of retaliation from insurrection.

It was just past one in the morning. In six hours she would return to Donka Hospital and repeat the process. A month and a half from now she would be on a flight back to Paris. Her mind refused to settle in either direction.

Outside her window she heard the distant voice of Francis Karner. He was conversing in German, from a few storeys down, but as Madeleine came over to the window she understood him clearly:

“…I’ve been saying it for weeks, and they dismiss me every time. These wounds are the result of prolonged exposure from chemicals. We’ve seen evidence of IDPs coming through, exhibiting the same symptoms as the PMCs we treated back in February. How we can expect to make any progress if the project coordinator refuses to bring this up? We’re putting God-knows how many lives at risk waiting for a vaccine that we don’t know if we need—and even so, it won’t be ready for another week. There’s not enough time to justify keeping silent….”

Madeleine closed the window carefully. She’d never been one to intrude on family matters.

⁂

When Madeleine exited her room the next morning, she found the project coordinator waiting for her in the hallway, along with the head of security from Kerberos and a couple Donka Hospital staff Madeleine knew by sight but not intimately.

The vaccines had arrived earlier than anticipated. Several members of the Medical Unit had stayed on-site in order to determine if all had been accounted for and subsequently realised it was rigged. Thanks to the intervention of the FSP the losses were minimal. Several doctors, including Herrmann, had suffered chemical exposure and were currently isolated from the rest of the IDPs to receive immediate medical attention. A few others, including Dr Karner, had been less fortunate.

Now there was additional pressure from the doctors and Logistics Team to begin moving the high-risk patients to a safer area. The fear that this story would circulate and any chance of obtaining vaccines would be discouraged could not be ruled out. So they would not be reporting this as a chemical attack to the government, but as an interception of an attack by local terrorists.

 “Dr Swann.” The head of security, Lucifer Safin, gave Madeleine pause. His accent and complexion would presume a Czech or Russian background but he could have come from a variety of surrounding countries. The MSF on staff commonly referred to him by surname; perhaps Lucifer was simply an alias. What set him apart was his face. Gruesomely scarred from his right temple to the base of his left jaw, though the structure of his eyes and nose remained intact. In spite of the weather, she had never seen him without gloves. “I understand that you were one of the last to speak with Dr Karner?”

His manner wasn’t explicitly taciturn, more akin to the disconcerting silence one might experience while looking into a body of still-water—met only with your reflection.

“Yes,” said Madeleine, “but that was nearly five days ago.”

“You were instructed to monitor him during that period by the Medical Coordinator?”

 “That’s correct.”

Safin glanced at the project coordinator. “I’ll speak with her alone.”

“Of course.”

Safin nodded. They walked down the length of the hall back to her room. His gait was purposeful and direct. He had a rifle strapped to him. Madeleine tried to avoid concentrating on it. Her attention went to the window. She had not locked it.

“Dr Swann.” The early morning light put his disfigurement into a new, unsettling clarity. Too intricate to be leprosy or a typical burn wound, it was more as if his very face were made of porcelain and had suffered a nasty blow, then glued together again. “What was the extent of your relationship to Dr Karner?”

“I did not work with him often. We talked once or twice but that was all. I have my own responsibilities with the Psychosocial Unit. From what I could tell, he never made an effort to befriend anyone.”

“You were asked to monitor Dr Karner. Why?”

“I was requested to do so on behalf of the Medical Coordinator. There were concerns that Dr Karner was somehow unqualified to continue his work. In observing him, I had no reason to suspect he was unfit for the position psychologically.” Safin said nothing. “The only issue I could see worth disqualifying him for, was that Karner and the project coordinator had very differing views on protocol.”

“He spoke to you about his views?”

“He expressed to me once, in confidence, that he did not understand the project coordinator’s hesitance to bring in a security detail.” Safin’s attention on her was razor-sharp, unwavering. She’d said too much. “He also told me he’d elected to continue volunteering here past his contract duration, just to ensure the operation was successful. That was my only conversation with him outside of a work-related context. You would be better off asking the other doctors about this.”

“We have video surveillance in place on the Grand Hotel de L’independence. At around one in the morning, Dr Karner exited the building and contacted an unknown party by mobile phone. Then, a minute later, you were at your window.”

“Oh, yes. I have been forgetting to close it. With so many longer days, it can be difficult to remember these things.”

“Your room was the only one to show signs of activity at that hour.”

“I was reviewing my notes from that day’s session. I heard a voice from outside, though not clearly. It was distracting me from my work, so I closed the window.”

“Do you commonly review your notes in the early hours of the morning with an unlocked window?”

“I just wanted some quiet. And I leave the windows open because otherwise I seem to find myself trapped with the smell of rotting flesh as well as humidity.”

Safin’s expression became easier to read, but not in a positive sense. This was not a man you wanted to be on opposing sides with. Madeleine kept the apprehension away from her face and her voice tightly controlled.

“Look. Without information about Dr Karner’s lifestyle outside MSF, I cannot give you an answer in good faith. I was assigned to survey him. He showed no signs of dereliction in his work, and to my knowledge kept his personal views separate from his duties. Whatever he said to me during outside hours was assumed to be in confidence. Many people say things to one another in what they believe to be confidence that they would not admit to otherwise. If I had reason to suspect he was unfit to work, I would have contacted the Medical Advisor privately.”

Safin held her gaze. She did not dare avert her face. Then he said: “The project coordinator is waiting for you downstairs. Thank you for your time.”

The rest of the day she spent in a different wing of the hospital. The Psychosocial Team was cut down from four members to three. Another inconsequential day of thankless work that never seemed quite good enough. That night Madeleine laid back on her bed and watched the shadows on the ceiling stretch over peeling paint, slowly overtaken by daybreak.

When she’d first arrived at the airport she could stave off her doubts with shallow, private reassurances. As long as you are here, you are just Dr Swann the psychologist consultant. Your father is many miles away and he won’t contact you. No one else of importance will come for you in a place like this.

With a guy like Safin around, she was safer than she would have been with the FSPs alone.

Safer, but no longer invisible.

[ferusaurelius]

Day Two

For @the-wip-project #100DaysOfWriting challenge.

Prompt:  

For your current WIP: (do you have many WIPs? I have so many WIPs. So I mean current as of right this moment, the project you’re thinking about right now.) What motivates you to write this specific story? What makes this story special for you? Is there a special twist/trope/setting you want to explore? What got you started on this particular story?

I answered a bit of this in Day One but have some more meta for how and why I picked no-Reapers (and other tidbits and world details) for my “Air Needing Light” Mass Effect-based universe.

Ferus, why no-Reapers?

I immediately loved the world of Mass Effect and the whole visual phrasing of going off to retrieve an artifact where humanity was the galaxy’s quintessential new kid on the block. I thought that was great! And then Nihlus Kryik ended up dying in the prologue and we ended up with deep space eldritch horror monsters. Not sure if I should admit this, but that’s about the moment I went: oh, so it’s that kind of story.

I knew from that moment, early in my first playthrough of the first game, that I was going to just have to grin and bear it through the eldritch abominations being the big bad behind the scenes, whatever the game implied up front about Saren, the geth, and whatever else was going on in this universe.

It ended up feeling very flavor-of-the-week episodic with whatever villainous obstacle du jour we were going to encounter on each mission. In retrospect, I’m surprised I caught as much of the story as I did? I loved ME1 for the atmosphere and the background world, but I knew it wasn’t going to tell the stories I was most interested in.

The Reapers, in that sense, are just the primary plot element of ME1 that never worked for me.

While I can appreciate some excellent takes and rewrites in the fandom that have done great things with the Reapers, I wanted to go in a different direction.

Okay, so no-Reapers. What’s the central thesis of your plot?

I want to write something about the political tensions between the human Systems Alliance and the batarian Hegemony in the Skyllian Verge. That’s it, that’s the reason!

Batarians were criminally underutilized and ignored. Historically, they made contact with Citadel space 1000 years before the turians and 2000 years before humanity, and if you didn’t read the codex entries you’d never know it.

Wait, I thought Air Needing Light was about the First Contact War?

I’ve got roughly a trilogy planned. Every fic is designed to be standalone with some easter eggs present for anyone who reads all three.

There’s just enough background changes that I need to rewrite from the First Contact War, which gave me an opportunity to do something a little different with Saren’s character and throw him into a great political game. Nihlus also becomes a more central figure, as does his backstory. 

The first fic is setting up Saren’s military background. While there are allusions to later plot points which will crop up in this fic, you won’t have to read it if you just want to skip to the other two.

The second fic is setting up a very different galactic situation and environment before Eden Prime. The focus is on a few critical events in the Skyllian Verge and the motivations for Saren recruiting Nihlus to the Spectres. Batarians and Nihlus’s mercenary background play more of a role. This is going to be the ‘turian mercenary / batarian culture’ fic.

All of this setup then serves as the backdrop for the third fic, covering a very different Eden Prime and Normandy SR-1 crew. Assuming I get there? I’ll be happy if I just finish the first two. The third fic would be the icing on the cake. 

The third fic and outline breaks far enough from canon that I’d have to decide where to go after I finished it? So it’s just a different take on what I’d have liked to build into during ME1.

So what about all those one-shots? Got any more?

Funny story. I’ve got four one-shots in WIP. I think? Maybe more.

YOU WHAT.

Yeah, sorry, I’ve got a lot of ideas, I swear!

When are you posting next and what will it be?

Your guess is as good as mine. I’d like to think the next chapter(s) of Air Needing Light will finish up first, but if I have a really good day on a one-shot, that’ll get posted, instead. 

I have to roll with what I feel like working on, or the drafting and revising would never end.

I’ve been working on chapter (2+) of Air Needing Light for months at this point, but the bright side is that the rest of it shouldn’t be as complicated as I get over this hurdle. I’m also introducing the last primary member of the cast of characters! 

There’s a chance my next update for this story will be two or three chapters long...

[misha-moose-dean-burger-lover]

Wait For It

Dean stalks out of the Impala agitatedly.

It's a sunny afternoon, and Sam's on the porch, coffee on the table next to him, flipping through his political science handbook. He looks up when he hears the car door being slammed, and his eyes follow Dean as he lands in the other chair around the table.

Then, without warning or premonition, Dean starts to talk.

He's got a new colleague.

Novak, he calls him. With gritted teeth, frowning eyebrows, and feeling.

They don't usually talk about people. So Sam listens.

Considering the amount of time Dean devotes talking about how Novak walked into his office, stride radiating importance as though he'd been summoned by Dean himself - well, he really must be a pain in the ass.

*

Over the next week, Sam's not always outside when Dean comes home from work. When he finally is, on a Thursday, Dean plants himself across him and starts speaking immediately.

Sam closes his book, purses his lips and pays attention.

Castiel, he's become.

Horrible, he's remained.

When Dean's done ranting, the sun's gone down. He gets up, hands on his hips. "He's just a jackass about everything, Sammy. Who's pretentious about eyecolor? Nobody's eyes can be that blue."

Sam nods sympathetically.

Dean goes away to make dinner, satisfied.

*

Midterms are round the corner.

Without really paying attention to it, Sam's stopped flipping through his handbook, and started highlighting in his textbook. He stays up late, and wakes up early, determinedly chipping away at the ginorminous block of syllabus, bit by bit.

He also stops being out on the porch when Dean comes back from work, and Dean tends to not barge into his bedroom to talk about the awful people he works with, so that's that.

But dinner isn't saved.

It's a simple conversation about mashed potatoes, and Dean goes off. "You won't believe how ridiculous Castiel is about honey, dude." Sam asks for a second helping, he also receives an anecdote on Castiel's ungrateful attitude towards Dean.

Sam doesn't even dare to mention his dislike for bacon once, for all the times Dean offers him it - because he's sure he'd get another indepth analysis of how Castiel hates Dean.

But when they settle down to watch Law & Order after dinner that night, Sam gets a chance to think. He wonders, not for the first time, how truly terrible Cas must be, for Dean to talk about him all the frigging time, and by the end of the episode, he's decided to be the pillar of support his brother needs, right now.

So when Dean starts, randomly, about how Castiel doesn't even appreciate good music, Sam whips out his puppy eyes, and listens to the entire tale.

*

Weeks pass.

His first paper is Tuesday, Ethics. Sam spends most hours of the day on his desk, holed up in his room.

It would be unfair to Dean to say he used up all the time Sam did spend around him, to talk about Cas.

(Which Castiel had ended up being, obviously.)

He only used like sixty percent of it.

*

"He's just...a weird, dorky little guy." Dean ends, biting his lip, eyes cast to the floor. His hands play with the hem of his jacket - he's still in work clothes.

Sam sighs.

"You know what?" Dean stands up. "I'm going to make coffee. Do I get you a mug or a thermos?"

"Thermos, please." Sam calls after him, gratefully.

"Okay. Carry on, bitch."

*

Sam feels guilty.

He's been so caught up in college, deadlines and exams, he's hardly talked to Dean except to thank him for all the coffee and sandwiches.

Dean may be a jerk all year, but he can get really supportive when Sam needs him to be.

Sam feels bad for not doing the same.

So when Dean puts a peanut butter sandwich in front of him, at one am while Sam panics through his last night revision, he looks up at his brother blankly and asks. "Hey, how's the guy who's been making your life hell? You stopped telling me about him."

"Oh, uh." Dean pauses.

Sam waits, but Dean takes too long, as if he's contemplating, so he takes a bite of his sandwich instead.

"He's not that bad." Dean finally lets out, exhaling into a hint of a smile.

Sam raises his eyebrows.

*

"To you kicking Stanford's ass!" Dean raises his bottle, perhaps the sixth toast of the night, giant grin plastered on his face.

"I keep telling you the results are a far way from being out yet - but hear, fucking hear!" Sam clinks his glass to Dean's beer, smile equally wide. He's finally done. There's finally no more papers, no more tests, no more revision.

He made it through.

"I'm proud of you." Dean mutters lazily, leaning back on the seat.

"Y-yeah. I know." Sam returns joyfully, neither of them really thinking about what they're saying. They've been drinking for hours. "Thank you."

"Yeah, yeah. I know." Dean repeats, and proceeds to chuckle at his words. There's a moment of silence - well, as silent as it ever gets in the Roadhouse. Then Dean speaks up. "Guess what, Sammy?"

Sam doesn't even correct him.

"What?"

"I'm going to ask Cas out today." Dean declares, and Sam's eyebrows go up again, because while he's definitely known his brother's into guys for years, he hadn't expected Dean to come out like this.

But six beers in, and a declaration of pride out, Dean just ups and says it.

"I think I have a crush on him."

*

Many months go by. It's Sam's final year. And he's moving back onto campus.

"I'm going to miss you." Sam tells Dean, after they've finished lugging all of his bags into Jessica's room. Dean's half sitting on Baby's hood, and Sam has his hands shoved in his pockets.

"Shuddup." Dean throws back, and he definitely sounds weird. "I'm like, seven minutes away."

"Still." Sam grins, earnest.

"Yeah, alright. I'm not making you move out, okay?" Dean straightens, scoffing. "Have fun convincing Jessica to make you breakfast food at midnight."

"Yeah but," Sam laughs. "You live like, seven minutes away."

"Like hell I do. Get your ninety-percent peanut butter ass over here." Dean sighs, and Sam walks up to him, letting Dean pull him into a hug.

They hold onto each other, safety in the familiarity. Both of them know that they're probably not going to live together again. Sam has a plan after college, which doesn't involve moving back to Dean's. But they've shared a house for so long, it's going to feel weird.

It's going to be strange.

To lighten the moment, Sam whispers. "So, uh. Cas is moving in after I'm gone, isn't he?"

"He's probably already redecorating the place to get rid of your nerd cooties." Dean thumps him on the back, as they separate. There's a smile lingering on his face.

"What about your nerd cooties?" Sam bitchfaces at him.

"He likes those." Dean defends, crossing his arms on his chest.

"I bet he does." Sam snorts, and Dean reddens, realizing he just walked right into that, and then he just swears under his breath goodnaturedly as Sam walks into his new place.

*

Sam's phone rings.

It's only eight, on a Saturday, and Sam doesn't have to leave for office at nine like everyday, so he's sleeping in. Amelia's next to him, and she elbows him when the annoying ringtone wakes her before it wakes Sam.

"Sorry, babe." Sam tells her, kissing the top of her head distractedly, picking up the phone and sitting up when he hears Dean's voice.

It's trembling with excitement.

"Sam!" Dean gushes, and there's really no other word for it. There seems to be a commotion behind him, but the happy kind. Dean's tone is almost ecstatic.

"Dean?" Sam confirms, groggily.

"Dude, Cas just asked me to marry him!" Dean let out, almost breathless. "And I said yes! Of course, I said yes! We're getting married, Sammy!."

A smile grows on Sam's face. "Dude. You're getting married."

"I'm getting married!" Dean repeats, and proceeds to chuckle at something Cas is saying apparently, because then he tells Sam he's putting him on speaker.

"Hello, Sam." Cas greets him, sounding thoroughly overjoyed.

"Congratulations, Cas." Sam says, beaming now. He's so happy for them both. Cas is amazing, and he gets Dean, and Sam knows Dean loves him so much. "And, uh, Dean? You better fight a good fight for my Bestmanship, versus Castiel's brother, okay?"

Dean laughs, and it's the kind of rare excited laugh which makes everyone around smile too.

Cas answers, instead, his voice just as excited. "Don't worry, I'd rather have Gabriel be the caterer."

Sam chuckles. "Good."

"Give the phone back a minute, Cas," Dean says in the background, and then it's off-speaker, and just Dean, again. "You're not busy being important or anything, are you?"

Sam looks around him. "No?" Dean hesitates for a beat, until Sam catches the gist. "Dude! Of course I'm not busy. Tell me everything!" Dean lets out a sound which is definitely a squeal, though he'd never own up to it. "How did it happen? Why did it happen so early?"

Dean exhales, happily, and Sam can picture the smile on his face.

"Wait, is there a ring? Dean, I need you to show me the ring." Sam adds, just before Dean starts to tell Sam about it all. Just like he had, at the very beginning.

*

Six days to the wedding, Sam sits on the old porch chair, tapping his pen on his notebook.

He needs to write a speech.

There's so much to tell. The two of them are adorable, for god's sake. They tend to be cheesy even in front of him, and so unaware of it - Sam wonders if they turn into mushy marshmallows when his back is turned.

Maybe he should include that in his speech. "Mushy Marshmallows" is a cute alliteration. Huh.

After an entire evening of thinking, he pushes himself off his seat to get a cup of coffee. (He'd try to convince Dean to make some, but him and Cas have an appointment with a florist for the wedding.)

In any case, Sam may not be done with the speech entirely, but he figures he's earned a break. You see, he's already got an unbelievably great title. He can work from there.

"How Dean Is The Worst Judge Of People."

He has a good first line, too. "Exhibit A: Novak-slash-Castiel-slash-Cas."

[les-mooserables]

Hello, John

[AS SOON AS HE BEGINS SPEAKING, A WHIZZING STATIC KICKS IN FROM THE BACKGROUND.]

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

Apologies for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you started reading, so I thought it best not to announce myself.

I’m assuming you’re alone; you always did prefer to read your statements in private. (slightly strained) I wouldn’t try too hard to stop reading; there’s every likelihood you’ll just hurt yourself. So just listen.

Now, shall we turn the page and try again?

[THE ARCHIVIST MAKES A PAINED COUPLE OF SOUNDS OUT-OF-STATEMENT-CHARACTER, AS IF HE’S TRYING TO TEAR HIMSELF AWAY FROM THE STATEMENT AND PHYSICALLY CANNOT.][WHEN HE PICKS THE STATEMENT BACK UP, THE WORDS SOUND LIKE THEY’RE BEING TORN FROM HIS LIPS.]ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

Statement of Jonah Magnus regarding Jonathan Sims, The Archivist.

Statement begins.

[A SLAP ON THE TABLE – OR A CRACK? SPOOKY.]

I hope you’ll forgive me the self-indulgence, but I have worked so very hard for this moment, a culmination of two centuries of work. It’s rare that you get the chance to monologue through another, and you can’t tell me you’re not curious.

Why does a man seek to destroy the world?

It’s a simple enough answer: for immortality and power. Uninspired, perhaps, but – my god. The discovery, not simply of the dark and horrible reality of the world in which you live, but that you would quite willingly doom that world and confine the billions in it to an eternity of terror and suffering, all to ensure your own happiness, to place yourself beyond pain and death and fear.

It is an awful thing to know about yourself, but the freedom, John, the freedom of it all. I have dedicated my life to handing the world to these Dread Powers all for my own gain, and I feel… nothing but satisfaction in that choice.

I am to be a king of a ruined world, and I shall never die.

I believe there are far more people in this world that would take that bargain than you would ever guess. And I have beaten all of them.

Of course, this desire did not manifest overnight. When Smirke first gathered our little band – Lukas, Scott, and the rest – to discuss and hypothesize on the nature of the things he had learned from Rayner, I felt what I believe we all felt: curiosity, and fear.

But as he compiled his taxonomy and codified his theories on the grand rituals, I began to develop a very specific concern. Smirke was so obsessed with his ideas on balance, even as our fellows began to experiment and fall to the service of our patrons.

I began to worry that if one of them successfully attempted their ritual, then I would be as much a victim as any, trapped in the nightmare landscape of a twisted world.

At first, I attempted prevention, but the cause seemed hopeless. The only way to ensure I did not suffer the tribulations of what I believed to be an inevitable transformation was to bring it about myself. So what began as an experiment soon became a race.

Beyond that, I was getting older, and mortality began to weigh more heavily on my mind. How much in this world is done because we fear death, the last and greatest terror?

I convinced Smirke to work on Millbank, leading him to design it as a temple to all the Fears in equilibrium, such that my own modifications to the design of the Panopticon went… unremarked.

It. Took. Years, for the dread of the prisoners to fully suffuse the place, and I was an old man before I made my first attempt at the Watcher’s Crown, sat in the center of that colossal eye, the great ring of cells encircling me like a coronet.

It was… flawed, of course, as all Smirke’s rituals were, and none of the inmates survived as the power I attempted to harness shook the building almost to pieces, and the murky swamp upon which the prison was built consumed it.

But it left me a gift: For sat in that watchtower, I could see everything I turned my mind to.

It was a dizzying power, and one I discovered I maintained even as I found vessels to extend my life. Of course, I had to make sure the location was kept under my control while I worked on revising my plans, and so I moved the organization I had founded to assist in my research down to London, and the Institute as you know it was born.

I’ll not bore you with details of my bodies and failures through those intervening years. Suffice to say I kept busy, both planning my own next attempt, and doing my best to stymie those others who tried versions of their own.

Surely my interpretation of the Watcher’s Crown had been incomplete; there had been some element of the ritual I had overlooked.

It was not until I met Gertrude Robinson that things began to really come into focus.

You see, the role of Archivist has been part of the Beholding for as far back as my research can go. This isn’t uncommon for the Powers; most of the beliefs around them are guesswork and fallible human interpretation, but there are certain throughlines and consistencies that can be spotted, regardless of the trappings.

But Gertrude was unlike any other Archivist. She simply did not care about compiling experiences or collecting the fears of others. She was driven to stop those who served the Powers.

More than once I thought she must secretly be of the Hunt – but there was never that sick joy in her, that thrill of predator and prey. She had simply decided that this was her position in life, and went about it with a practicality that even I found disconcerting at times.

I once asked her what drove her, what had started her down that path. She told me the Desolation had killed her cat.

I don’t know if she was joking, and, to be honest, I could never bring myself to look into her mind and find out for sure.

In any case, Gertrude’s ruthless efficiency in derailing and collapsing rituals threw into stark relief a question that had been bothering me for almost a hundred and fifty years: In the whole span of humanity, why had nobody ever succeeded?

Perhaps there were a long line of Gertrude Robinsons throughout history, but I found that hard to credit. Could it be, then, that there was something in the very concept of the rituals that meant they couldn’t succeed?

She was clearly having similar thoughts in that last year, all of which culminated with the People’s Church.

When I saw that she was making no preparations whatsoever to stop it, I realized she was putting into practice a theory, and one she couldn’t afford to be wrong. She was going to wait, and see if the unopposed ritual succeeded, or if it collapsed under its own strain as mine had all those years ago.

Knowing Gertrude, I’m sure she had a backup plan if she had miscalculated – but she had not. The ritual failed. And all at once, I realized what had to be done.

You see, the thing about the Fears is that they can never be truly separated from each other. When does the fear of sudden violence transition into the fear of hunted prey? When does the mask of the Stranger become the deception of the Spiral?

Even those that seem to exist in direct opposition rely on each other for their definition as much as up relies on down.

To try and create a world with only the Buried makes as much sense as trying to conceive a world with only down.

Every ritual tied itself so closely to a single power as to render itself impossible. They could bring their patron close, but never sever it from the others, and eventually it would be violently pulled back into the place next to reality where they dwell.

The solution, then, is simple: A new ritual must be devised which will bring through all the Powers at once. All fourteen, as I had hoped I could complete it before any new powers such as Extinction were able to fully emerge. All under the Eye’s auspices, of course. We mustn’t forget our roots.

And there was only one being that could possibly serve as a lynchpin for this new ritual: The Archivist. A position that had so recently become vacant, thanks to Gertrude’s ill-timed retirement plans.

Because the thing about the Archivist is that – well, it’s a bit of a misnomer.

It might, perhaps, be better named: The Archive.

Because you do not administer and preserve the records of fear, John. You are a record of fear, both in mind as you walk the shuddering record of each statement, and in body as the Powers each leave their mark upon you.

You are a living chronicle of terror.

Perhaps, then, if I could find an Archivist and have each Power mark them, have them confront each one and each in turn instill in them a powerful and acute fear for their life, they could be turned into a conduit for the coming of this – nightmare kingdom.

Do you see where I’m going, John?

It does tickle me, that in this world of would-be occult dynasties and ageless monsters, the Chosen One is simply that – someone I chose. It’s not in your blood, or your soul, or your destiny. It’s just in your own, rotten luck.

[THUNDERCLAPS.]

I’ll admit, my options were somewhat limited, but My God, when you came to me already marked by the Web, I knew it had to be you. I even held out some small hope you had been sent by the Spider as some sort of implicit blessing on the whole project, and, do you know what, I think it was.

Of course, I had to bide my time, get a measure of you before I began to push, learn how you worked – So I decided I would wait until something came for you, and see how you reacted. Attacks upon the Archives were not uncommon during Gertrude’s tenure, and, while she was always prepared, I made sure you would not be.

I reasoned if you couldn’t survive a single encounter, you were unlikely to make it through all fourteen. So, when Jane Prentiss attacked, I watched eagerly, one hand on the gas release from the start.

You acquitted yourself well enough, so I decided to see how far you would get, though I waited until the worms were in you before I pulled the lever. I needed to make sure you felt that fear all the way to your bones.

The discovery that one of the Stranger’s minions had infiltrated the Institute in the aftermath was certainly a pleasant bonus. Even if that sliver of paranoia, that vague wrongness you couldn’t quite place wouldn’t count as a mark, it was only a matter of time before it confronted you in a far more direct and affecting matter.

Admittedly, given the advent of the Unknowing, I needn’t have bothered. But what’s the old saying about hindsight?

More important to me was Sasha’s encounter with the Distortion. If it had taken an interest, then I very much wanted it to cross your path.

[THUNDER CONTINUES AS HE GOES ON.]

So I found one of its current victims and convinced her to make a statement.

Poor Helen. I actually had to put her in a taxi myself, she was getting so lost in those narrow London side streets.

It worked, though.

[SOMETHING CREAKS. ANOTHER LOUD SNAP/CRACKLE.]

Between the stabbing and at least two desperate flights into its doors – you’re marked very deeply by the Spiral.

Jurgen Leitner was a surprise, of course, and I was forced to improvise. I had no idea how much Gertrude would have told him, and he could very easily have derailed everything if you learned too much too fast.

I… justified it to myself saying I was going to have to send you out into the world anyway, if you were to encounter more of the Powers, but I can’t honestly pretend it wasn’t a… rather rash move.

Still. I’d requested Detective Tonner be assigned to the case when they found Gertrude’s body in the hope that having a Hunter in the mix would eventually lead to a confrontation, and setting you up as a killer certainly hastened that.

Then it was just a matter of feeding you statements to lead you to a few Avatars I thought were likely to harm you – but probably would stop short of actually killing you.

Jude served her purpose exactly as I had hoped, as did our dearly departed Mr. Crew, marking you for the Desolation and the Vast.

Honestly, I had – nothing to do with Melanie and her Slaughter adventure, but when I saw the situation, I made sure to trap her here, so when her rage bubbled over you would be right there, a ready target.

I didn’t foresee the mark coming from surgery gone wrong, but it was a very pleasant surprise.

The Unknowing was a distraction, but not an unwelcome one. For this to work, you needed more than just the marks; you needed power. And that was something the Unknowing served to test, though it posed no actual danger in the grand scheme of things.

And it did serve another purpose, of course. It inadvertently pushed you to confront death, a mark I had been very worried about trying to orchestrate. If I tried too early, you’d just die. Too late, and you might be powerful enough to see the attempt coming, and maybe even understand why.

As it was, it was just right, and once again, you came through with flying colors.

By this point, your abilities were coming along in leaps and bounds, and I was concerned that meeting face-to-face might end up with you – (sigh) – Knowing something you shouldn’t.

I had initially planned to go into hiding, but when your colleagues surprised me with the police, well. It was simple enough to cut a deal.

All that remained, then, were the Dark, the Flesh, the Buried, and the Lonely.

I was a little put out when that idiot Jared Hopworth misinterpreted my letters and attacked the Institute too soon, before you were even out of the hospital, but then – Ho, you should have see my face when you voluntarily went to him.

I couldn’t see what happened in there, of course, but given how you came out, I’m very sure it counts as a mark.

I suspected the coffin might turn up again, and once it did, it was simply a matter of getting any, uh… restraining factors you might have had flying off on a wild goose chase, and waiting.

Honestly, Detective Tonner has been proving invaluable through this process. I’d been racking my brains for months about what I could use to lure you in.

And, of course, I knew the Dark Sun was just sitting there waiting. So when it came time, I just whipped up another apocalypse and sent you on your merry way.

Then all that remained was the Lonely.

Poor Peter. He really should have left well enough alone. (cruel laugh) Or just done what I’d asked in the first place.

Ah well. He knew what I was attempting, and was very unwilling to cooperate until I made him a little wager about Martin.

Of course, he had no way of knowing that, in addition to setting you up for the final mark, he was giving you all the tools you needed to escape from it.

How is Martin, by the way? He looks well. You will keep an eye on him when all this is over, won’t you? He’s earned that.

And there, I think, we are brought just about up to date. I have enjoyed our little trip down memory lane, but past here lies only impatience.

You are prepared. You are ready. You are marked. The power of the Ceaseless Watcher flows through you, and the time of our victory is here.

Don’t worry, John. You’ll get used to it here, in the world that we have made.

Now. (cruel, cruel laugh) Repeat after me.

[WHEN THE ARCHIVIST BEGINS TO READ THE INCANTATION, A HEAVY, DENSE STATIC RETURNS AND BEGINS TO BUILD, ADDING IN HIGHER PITCHES AS IT DOES SO.]

You who watch and know and understand none. You who listen and hear and will not comprehend. You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right.

Come to us in your wholeness.

Come to us in your perfection.

Bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies!

Come to us.

I – OPEN – THE DOOR!

[linyi-is-dreaming]

The Drop Of A Tear - 10

BTS V x Y/N (Reader)

Summary: Tae meets a woman who is very manipulative. Before he even notices anything, she got him around her finger. He decides to leave his wife Y/N and his four kids to start a new life with the new woman. This perfect house of cards that he had just started to build, starts to unfold as she starts to show her true face. Piece by piece it makes him feel sick. Tae notices his wrong doing as his house of cards starts to fall apart. Regret and hate towards himself makes him wish to turn things around. Will he be able to safe his house of cards and to get back what he once threw away?

CHAPTER 10

It might be thirty minutes or even an hour since Y/N is reading through the divorce paper which were written by Jungkook’s lawyer. Everything she wants, is written in black and white. In disbelief of reading everything she wants to read, she reads the paper again and again. She can still hear the sound of the shower that Jungkook is taking as she continues to keep reading carefully. The sound from the shower sounds almost like background music. As she finishes the last page, her eyes wander along the floor towards the bathroom as she thinks about her chances to get Tae to sign the papers. She could not describe in words how thankful she is for a friend like Jungkook. Someone who would simply redecorate their own apartment just for her kids to stay for a few nights. Y/N does not even bother to ask if there is a bed for her or if she would have to sleep on the couch tonight as she is just happy that her kids do not have to sleep in a car or somewhere else where it would not be safe for them. As she puts the divorce paper to the side to get a hot beverage, she notices another print of divorce paper which are lying underneath the coffee table. It makes her curious why there would be another one underneath the table instead of on the table as if Jungkook was trying to hide them in an obvious spot. With a weird feeling in her stomach, she picks up the paper. Y/N notices quickly that the paper she is holding in her hands are the changed divorce papers by Tae’s lawyer. That this one is the revised version is noticeable by date that is noted on the right side of the top lines. As she wonders if there were any changes made, she reads through them almost automatically. It surprises her to read the changes that were made until she finds the one sentence that confuses her. It states that not her nor Tae are allowed to get married nor to live with anybody else within their home as long as the kids are not adults. The more often she reads this one line, the more she wonders for the reason, he would want it in the divorce paper. But before she gets too lost by asking herself why, she finds the explanation. There, right below the two sentences which follows the statement, she finds the explanation. It states that it is meant as a protection for the kids; to keep the kids safe from another changing life circumstance which could have a mental effect on them. It is hard for her to imagine any other situation than the situation the kids are going through now, could happen any time again. Even though, Jungkook is walking up to her quickly, she seems not to notice his presence until he stands in front of the living room. Even though, she is looking at him for a few seconds, her reaction does not appear as his eyes find her. That she is lost in thoughts, is easily notable as she looks at him with big eyes.  

“I guess you read through the divorce paper?”, Jungkook asks as he sits down next to her without paying any attention to the paper in her hands as he keeps looking at the one in front of him which was written by his lawyer. His eyes are studying her face as he bends forward to meet her eyes. “Are you okay?”   

“Huh?”, she asks as she looks up at him. His hair is still wet but obviously brushed back with his fingers. The way he looks at her shows that he is waiting for her response which becomes even more obvious as he rises his eyebrow. Instead of answering him, she simply shakes her head as she rubs her eye. “Uh yes, everything is fine.”  

“I asked if you are alright, because you look quite pale.”, Jungkook explains slowly. “Do you need anything? A snack or-” Jungkook stops to talk in the moment when she shakes her head once again.   

“No, no. I am still full by the food you bought us.”, she smiles. “Your lawyer did a great a job by the way.” Her fingers move along the paper as she looks down. “I am thinking about if there is any point that might have been forgotten, but it seems as everything, I wish for the kids has been written down by your lawyer already.”  

“Good.”, he says as he takes the paper from his lawyer in his hand. Jungkook smiles satisfied as he places the divorce paper on the table in front of them as he notices the paper in her hand. At first, he tried to ignore that she found them but on the other side he becomes nervous as he notices that she discovered them. Jungkook knows what is stated in the paper as his lawyer gave him those papers as well. Nervously he clears his throat as he tries his best to keep avoiding to look at her hands. He smiles at her to assure her that he is satisfied as well. His smile fills her heart with the warmth she is longing for  a while now. She cannot help but to return a smile. “Just let me know when you are a hundred percent sure that you want use this paper to file for the divorce. My lawyer is waiting for the confirmation.”    

“Thanks a  lot,  Jungkook. I promise I will pay it all back!”  

“Do not worry about money. You have   enough problems  that are stressing you out.”  

“Still-”  

“Still you need to sleep, right!”, Jungkook states as he interrupts her words.  

“I can sleep with the lights on if you got work to do .”  

“I will not work in my bedroom, Y/N.” As the word bedroom repeats itself in her mind, she looks at him and by her facial expression, he starts to smirk. “You’re okay?” Irritated by his words, she turns her body towards him.  

“Bedroom? I am talking about the living room. You only have one bedroom left and that one is yours.”  

“Did you think that I will let you sleep on the couch?”  

“Well, yes. You have no other spare room left-”  

“You are really something else.”, Jungkook jokes as he laughs for a moment. “You can sleep in my bed. ”  

“Where will you sleep?”  

“I will sleep here, on the couch.”  

“No, I am your guest. I will sleep  on the couch.”  

“I often sleep on this couch. It is no big deal.”  

“But-”  

“No but! Sheets have been changed this morning and the bed is waiting for you. In case you forgot your shower gel or hair shampoo, I got those ready for you in the bathroom. For you and for the kids. Towels are on the shelves, even reachable for them as well. Just take what you need, if anything is missing let me know.”  

“You are such a  sweet friend, thank you.”, she says as she hugs him. “I really do not understand why there is no woman in your life.”   

“If you only knew…”, he sighs quietly as he leans his head against her shoulder.  

“What did you say?”, she asks carefully as she leans her body away from him.   

“Nothing.”, he answers as he moves away from her as well. The nervously playing with his fingers does not stay unnoticed by her as she keeps looking at his fingers for a few seconds before she looks back into his eyes.  

“I thought you said something...”, she explains as she touches his wrist to calm him down.  

“Uh, that. Sorry. That was just a sigh that my work is waiting for me.”  

“I do not want to keep you from your work.” The way she removes her hand from his wrist, makes him miss her touch immediately. It felt good to feel her fingertips on his wrist, but as his feelings start to make him excited, he clears his throat again. “I will just jump in the shower and then go through the paper again. Let me know when you need the space for your work.”   

“Do not worry about that either. I already planned to work into the night in the little studio over there.”, he explains as he points to the room in the back of the hallway. “I am in there if something should be needed.”  

“Well, I will take a shower then.”, she announces as she gets up.  Jungkook says nothing as he nods while he steps away from the couch as well. “Thanks again!” Those two words stop him in the tracks in a second.  

“Stop saying thank you, Y/N. I am glad I could help but next time you let me know on time.”, he winks as he smiles at her. “It is much easier if I am informed in advance.”  

“Next time will not happen.”, she says as she walks pass him towards the bathroom. “I am already working on a financial plan and I am writing job applications. Hopefully soon, I am independent again and I will pay you back. I will pay every single penny back, promise!”  

“There is no need to pay me back.” Just as he finishes his sentences, she puts her hands next to her ears. “Y/N, I mean that. You do not need to pay back anything.”  

“What? I cannot hear you.”, she sings childishly as she walks away. It feels good to see her so carelessly and  happy,  but he knows that this is only a mask. Even though he knows that she is not feeling as she is showing, he is happy to see her a little less stressed.  

“What a woman…”, he says quietly to himself as he walks into his small studio. When he sits down on his studio chair to start his work, he notices one thing. His smile is still there just like the feelings that he tries to hide so well. Jungkook’s smile is as big as a kid’s smile in the candy shop. Three deep breathes. It takes three deep breaths until he  is able to  focus on his work. The longer he listens to what he had written so far, the more often he catches himself looking at his milky studio door with the smile appearing every time he thinks about her facial expression as she passed him in a minute ago. Disappointed to be even less focused as when she was not here, he slaps himself. “Stop smiling, Jungkook. Stop smiling!”, he scolds himself as he looks at the computer screen. “Just one song… At least some lyrics… You got this, just do not think about her…”, Jungkook sighs as he starts to read the lyrics that he had written before again with more focus this time.

💧💧💧

For whatever reason, Y/N does not feel tired at all even after this long day. Not even after a nice warm shower. Not even after a long day of driving around with the kids seems to have not taken a toll on her at all. Even though the thought of something might be missing in those papers keep crossing her mind, she feels positive about it. Positive to get her wishes through in the court just as she plans to do. The love that she feels for Tae, might be there but what he did to her family, is something she cannot forgive. Even if she would try, would it be right, she wonders as she touches her stomach. A miscarriage because of the stress and the emotional stress her daughter is going through right now. The way her daughter begged to not move back to her own father, would she truly be able to look over it all? Forgiving is an act of strength, but how much strength does it take to ignore what the heart is hoping for? When the heart only knows how to love someone so deeply, can it heal with a new love? Y/N touches her chest as she feels the pain that she is keeping inside is starting to burn within her chest. Irritated by why her mind is trailing off to Tae, she wipes her face. Her eyes wander to her phone in her bag as she thinks about taking notes about the points of both divorce paper versions, she looks up as she hears a yawn from the hallway. “Are you still awake?”, Jungkook asks as he walks towards the kitchen. “You should get some sleep. If I did not misread my phone, it showed twelve am.”  

“Twelve am?”, she wonders as she checks the time herself. “Oh damn! Just a little more,  then  I would be done with this... I did not mean to stay awake for this long.”  

“I thought you want to read it just once more and head to bed afterwards.”  

“I am just trying to work out the differences between his lawyer’s and your lawyer’s paper and what could be added for the kids.”  

“You mean money wise?”  

“Yes, I want him to start a little budget account for them. For example, let’s say he pays monthly one-hundred bucks each month per child into it, they would have a nice start into independence once they become eighteen.”  

“You want them to have money in case they want to move out as soon as they hit adulthood?”  

“I do not want them to struggle as hard as I did. Is it selfish to make him pay that amount? Maybe I should ask for only fifty-”  

“No, I think he is able to pay the one-hundred-fifty each month per kid.”  

“Is it not to eager?”  

“What is eager about it? Those are his kids too.”  

“You are right, he can pay that much. Okay, then we will higher the amount.”  

“What else are you struggling with?”  

“His papers say that I would get each month three-hundred bucks from him to buy the kids food, clothes and to pay for school trips.”  

“Three-hundred for all four?”  

“Yes.”  

“He has to pay more. You must be kidding!”, he says shocked. “That is not even enough! You are joking with me right now.”  

“The papers are mentioning possible extra payment, but it does not specify what an extra payment is. It stands right there.”, she says as she shows him the sentence. As he cannot read it from the distance, he walks towards her to read it. “Right there.” Y/N points at the sentence she was talking about. “Are you reading that part or the rest as well?”, she wonders as he takes his time to read.  

“I already pay up to two hundred bucks for myself on food. How shall you survive with three hundred? You have four mouths to feed plus yourself...”  

“It is not that impossible...”  

“How? If I pay two hundred for myself, how to you want to feed four kids with three hundred?”  

“I will figure it out. I always find a way to feed my kids.”  

“Do not say by skipping your own meals again! Y/N, there are other ways to save up for your kids food.”  

“It is an option.” Jungkook drops onto the couch with a long sigh near her. “Are you okay?”  

“Promise me, that you will not move out until you have a job with which you do not have to live like this. Promise me, that you will not starve yourself just so that your kids have something to eat.”  

“Why do I need to promise that?”  

“Y/N, that is not healthy. Your kids want their mother to be healthy as well, don’t you think? Nor do I want to see you do this ever again.”  

“Do not worry about me. I will be alright. I always have been alright in the end.”  

“You will not be alright if you start skipping meals again. Do you want to be back in the hospital?”  

“No, but my kids come first.”  

“I know they do. If you decide to live like this, I will visit you and the kids every dinner time with junk food if necessary. Just do not do this to yourself.”  

“Do not overreact that much. We will be fine.”  

“It is for sure not healthy. I am not even sure if it is healthy for you to think like that either...”  

“It might not be the  healthiest,  but I have to think about them first before-”, she stops to talk as Jungkook walks back into the kitchen. “Where are you going?”  

“Getting us tea.”  

“Do you not need to sleep?”  

“I can sleep well even though I am drinking tea.”  

“Tea is a good idea. Even though I would prefer coffee to stay awake.” The big yawn that leaves her lips makes Jungkook laugh. “Is my yawn this funny?”  

“Not really. There are more entertaining things than your yawn.”, he says sarcastically as he takes the mugs to sit down next to her. “I must admit, it feels good to not be alone in this apartment for once. I miss the life in the dorm with the boys sometimes. I love to have my own space but to live alone can be quite boring.”  

“You hate being alone here?”  

“Sometimes.”, he confesses as he places the mug in front of her. “I am glad you are staying with me. The kids make it feel differently.”  

“I hope not in a bad way.”  

“Not at all. Uh, yeah. I changed the sheets, so if you want to sleep in the bed, it is free for your use. If I did not mention it before.”  

“Do you really not want to sleep in your own bed? I can sleep here on the couch. The couch is very comfortable.”  

“Do not worry about me. I  must  stay up. I told Namjoon that I want to work on my writing skills, therefore I will need to write something. I promised him to finish the one song by tonight... Needless to say, I did not send him anything yet.”  

“Sounds as you are struggling.”  

“I just do not know how to stop the block in my head.”  

“Can I help somehow? Shall I cook something quickly?”  

“No, it is all fine. My thoughts are just all over the place. I know what kind of song I want to write, but my head is drifting off to a different melody.”  

“Apparently I am no help for this matter... I also do not know how to sort out my thoughts right now.”  

“Makes us two. One more person and we have a party.”   

“Sometimes I wonder if you are just a child in a man’s body.”  

“Don’t be so mean to me.”, he jokes as he gets up. “Alrighty, time to continue.”  

“Uhm, Jungkook.”  

“Yes?”  

“Thank you for the air beds. I hope we are not taking in too much space with it all including the crib.”  

“I did not use the spare rooms anyway. Nothing to worry about.”  

“No guests?”  

“Guests usually do not stay the night nor do my parents when they visit me. I am  planning  to move anyway. That is why I did not do anything yet.”  

“You plan to move? But you moved in like three years ago...?”  

“True, but I want something bigger. Maybe I can finally adopt a pet or make a spare room to a workout room... Not quite sure yet. I will figure it out along the way.”  

“But this apartment is already not cheap. Will it not be too expensive to move into a bigger apartment?”  

“Well, I keep my eyes open.”, he says as he leaves the living room area. The longer his phone vibrates in his pocket, the more curious he gets who it could be. “As he would know that I am talking about him.”, Jungkook comments as he looks at his phone.   

“Is Namjoon calling you?”, Y/N wonders as she brings her empty mug into the kitchen.  

“Yes. I will have to pick up.”, he says as he walks back into his studio. “Hey, Namjoon. Almost done. I know but can I send it to you within the next few minutes?” She smiles to herself as she looks at the mug.  

“What am I even smiling about?”, she asks herself as she stares into her empty mug.

💧💧💧

“Hello?”  

“Finally! I thought you would be asleep already.”  

“Jungkook? Is that you?”  

“Yeah, it is me. Who else is calling you from my phone?”, Jungkook wonders. “Namjoon, are you still there?”  

“It’s Jungkook.”, Namjoon says.  

“Are you talking to me right now? I know it is me.”  

“No, my wife just woke up because of your phone call as well.”  

“Tell her I am sorry for waking her up.”  

“Babe, he says he is sorry for waking you up. You can tell this into his face when you see each other next time. No, do not be mad at me for that! I will not be the messenger between you two. If you want to yell at him, take the phone next to your bed side.”, Namjoon tells his wife as Jungkook waits patiently for Namjoon to speak with him again. “Now, back to you Jungkook. Why are you calling me so early in the morning?”  

“So, I got this song done. I sent it to you a minute ago.”, Jungkook explains happily as he leans back in his chair.   

“It is almost two am!”, Namjoon states sleepily as he checks the time.  

“Did I just  truly  wake you up? I thought you would stay up until I send you the draft...”  

“Well, yes. Wait a minute.”, Namjoon says as he gets out of his bed. Jungkook can hear how Namjoon’s wife is scolding him for picking up the phone at such a time. “Just a second.”, he comments dozily.  

“Uh, huh.”, Jungkook adds amused by the scolding in the background, he holds is laughter as good as he can back. “Did she just throw you out of the bedroom?”  

“She was not happy that I stayed up so  long,  but she is even less happy that I am leaving the bed again. Both is your fault!”  

“You could have texted that you are not staying up anymore.”  

“Would you not have begged me to stay up until you are done? Would you have not  annoyed  me until I would have said that I will stay up for you?”  

“Probably. But that is not the point.”  

“Jungkook. Do not take it personal, but why the hell shall I listen to the song at two am?”, Namjoon asks angrily as he sees his wife standing leaning at the doorframe.  

“You said you would listen to it as soon as I am done.”  

“I know what I said.”, he says as he sees his wife waving him back to the bedroom. “I will listen to it after a well-deserved sleep. Deadline was last night though.”  

“I know... Let me know what you think of the song as soon as you heard it.”  

“Night, Jungkook.”  

“Good night.” Before Jungkook even gets the chance to hang up his phone, Namjoon already hung up on him first. “Somebody is moody.”, he jokes as he looks over his desk. In a slow tempo, he starts to shut down his computer as well as the light before he walks out of his office. At first, he did not see Y/N lying on the couch as he simply did not take a proper look. As continues to walk closer towards the lamp next to her, the more he notices that the somebody who is lying on his couch is Y/N. He wipes his eyes as he walks towards her face. “Y/N?” Quietly, he calls her a few times but as she does not react, he takes the notes and the pencil carefully from her hands and places her stuff on the table. With a few careful steps he walks around her to get into the bedroom to get a blanket for her. As he grabs the blanket, he notices a second one beneath it. For a second, he looks at the bed. “I could have changed the sheets tomorrow... Why was I stressing myself so much when she sleeps on the couch anyway...?” Just in  case, he  takes the second blanket as well before he leaves the room.  

Jungkook notices something else on his way back to the living room. It might have been a second, but it caught his eye. The light got switched off in the kids’ room. The more he wonders why, the less he notices that he is already walking towards them until he stands in front of the door. “Shh!”, the girl tells him as he investigates the room. “They are still asleep.”  

“Lovely? Should you not be asleep too?”, Jungkook whispers as he looks through the room to see if any other child would be awake as well.  

“Sis is awake too.”   

“It is okay if you both are awake, but you should try to go back to sleep. The morning is not here yet, okay?”  

“Okay.”  

“Good night.”, Jungkook comments as he closes the door slowly. The closer, he walks back towards the couch, the more angelic Y/N appeals to him. He places one blanket on the empty love seat and the other one carefully on her. The sound of footsteps fills the room as he lets go of the blanket. Curiously, Jungkook  looks into  the direction of the sound. It does not take long until he figures out which child seems to show itself in the dark. “Did I not just say 'good night'?”, he wonders.  

“You did, but I did not say ‘good night’.”, Y/N’s oldest daughter explains to him.  

“Okay, you got me there.”, he jokes as he follows her into the kitchen. “Must have been a great dream if you are smiling like that.”  

“The dream was okay.”  

“What are you smiling like this about then if the dream was just okay?”  

“I am not smiling.”  

“It might be  dark,  but I still see you smile.”  

“Uncle Jungkook, I wanted a glass of water. The glasses are too high up. I cannot reach there.”, she explains as she points towards the kitchen cabinet. Without saying anything in return, he nods silently.   

“Let me help you there.”, he comments in front of the kitchen cabinet as he gets a glass for her. “Here we go.”  

“Thank you.” Even though he feels exhausted, he keeps an eye on her as she fills up her glass with tap water. It is obvious that she is doing everything very slow as it seems as she would not want  to go  back to bed. This game of winning more time just to not go back to sleep, is not new to Jungkook. He smiles to himself as he reminds himself on all the funny conversations they had about kings and queens, only for her to gain more time to stay awake. “Can I ask you a question?”  

“Of course,  you can. Did I ever say no to your questions?”  

“I don’t think so.”  

“So, what question cannot wait until later on today?”  

“You will not be mad at me if I ask you something personal, right?”, she asks nervously as she takes a sip from her water.  

“Of course not. Ask away.”  

“Do you like our mom?” For a second, he thought about his emotions towards Y/N before he looks into the child’s eyes. Her face looks very much alike to her mother’s face that it makes it hard for him to not say anything wrong. Y/N should not know about the feelings he hides from her. Which makes it harder for him to understand the question in any other way as his heart starts to beat faster the more, he thinks about his feelings for her. Jungkook licks his lips nervously before he pays attention to his facial expression to not give it away. With a sigh leaving his lips, he puts a smile on his face.  

“Would I let you all in my home if I would not like your mom?” Y/N’s daughter starts to laugh as an idea comes to her mind. “Did you think I dislike your mom?”  

“I only wondered because our father is so close to you. I know that it is not ideal right now and that you should keep it a secret.”  

“What do you mean?”  

“I mean maybe you would not like her in that kind of way because you have to keep it a secret from our father. Will that change how you see our mom?”  

“Your father and I are friends. That will not change anything about me and your mom.”  

“Is she a friend to you?”  

“Yes, your mom is a friend of mine too. Why are you asking?”  

“Just so...”, the girl says as she smiles to herself. “But you like my mom, right?”  

“Yes, I like your mom.” The smile from her face starts to turn into a grin as she starts to laugh as quiet as she can to not wake up her mother.  

“What is so funny? I want to laugh too. Tell me!”  

“I just thought about something.”  

“It is not a prank or is it?”  

“No prank. I thought that it would be just great... If everything would turn out this way.” 

“What would be just great?”  

“It would be just great if you would become our dad.” Jungkook’s eyes widen as he swallows hard. To his luck, the girl is not paying him any attention as she finishes her glass of water. “It would be nice if you would be our dad.”  

“‘Our dad’? What do you mean by that?”  

“Our father hurt our mom a lot and you are just there for mom all the time. You are not talking to her like dad did and you are obviously helping her a lot. Something our father did not do for almost a year now.”   

“Is that why you want me to become your dad?”, he asks almost stuttering. His face looks so pale in comparison to what he looked like at the beginning of their conversation. “Do you want to replace the empty spot your dad left?”  

“It is not about replacing.”  

“What is it about then?”  

“You are like a second dad to us.”  

“A second dad?”  

“Yes. I already talked with my sister about it.”  

“You did? Oh, princess. You should not think about things like that.”  

“My siblings and I think that you would be an amazing dad who would respect our mom. You are different than our dad. That’s why we agreed that we would accept you as our new dad if the time would come.”  

“I appreciate that you see me in this way, but it is not as easy as it seems.”  

“But you said you like her! If she likes you too, then it should be easy.”, she says loudly.  

“ Princess  keep it down. We will wake up the others if we are speaking loudly.”  

“I am sorry. But, is that not why you let us stay at your place?”  

“What do you mean?”  

“I talked with a friend when I heard that mom denied  staying  at somebody else's house.”  

“Were you listening to conversations which you have no business of listening to?”  

“You know that uncle Jin has a loud voice, right? You know that, am I right Jungkook?”  

“I know that of course, still it sounds like an excuse.”, he scolds her as he takes the stray of hair out of her face. “No uncle? You are calling me simply Jungkook from now on?”  

“If you become our dad, why should I call you uncle?”  

“Look, if two people really like each other and I mean like really, really like each other-”  

“Then they love each other.”, she interrupts.  

“Yes, but that was not the point.”, he corrects her as he bends down to make a direct eye contact to her. “For two people, to fall in love and to stay in love, takes time. Both must love each other equally on the same level, you know?”  

“ I know. I am not two years old and I read a lot.”  

“I know you are about to become a teenager, but please do not see me as a father as long as your mom is married to your dad. Your dad will be  hurt,  and it might stress your mother even more.”  

“What happens after the divorce?”, she asks disappointed. “Will you become our dad afterwards? Will we be on our own without you?”  

“Do not be disappointed, but right now is not a good time to talk about these kinds of stuff. Your mom is already stressed about the divorce and many other things. We, that includes me and your siblings, have got to give your mom time. Once everything settles down, we will take about it all once again. We do not want to stress your mom even more, do we?”  

“No, we don’t want to stress her even more.”  

“Good. Then we will talk about it another time, okay? I even make a pinky promise that we will continue this conversation another time.”, Jungkook offers as he holds up his little finger.  

“Okay.”, she agrees as she crosses her finger with his.  

“Thank you. Now, back to bed.”  

“Just one more question, please!”  

“Last question? But it must be the last question.”  

“Can you at least try? When the divorce is over, can you try to talk with her about it then?”, she intervenes. “Please? Mom seems to be happy when you are around. My little brother sees you as his dad anyway.”  

“Did you speak with your mom about it? Does she know how you feel?”  

“No.”, she answers as she puts the glass onto the  kitchen  counter. “That is your job. I only tell you that it is okay for us.”  

“My job? I think it is time for you to go back to bed  really  quick.”  

“Mom might not see it. But the way you look at her, I can tell, you really care about my mom. Our father used to look at her like that too.” For a second, Jungkook does not know what to say until she stands in front of him. Her face looks disappointed and sad. He hates it, he hates to see those sad faces. Without even thinking twice, he hugs her tightly as he pets her shoulder.  

“I am sorry if everything is confusing to you. I hope one day you can look back and be not mad at me for telling you the answers I gave you.”, Jungkook tells her as he stretches his body.  

“I just wanted to let you know that it is okay for us. Good night, uncle Jungkook.”, she says in a sad voice. Jungkook feels how his heart breaks as he watches her walking out the kitchen whilst he goes through the conversation within his mind once again. The desire to be with Y/N became stronger every time he sees her and since she moved in last afternoon, it becomes almost overwhelming to him. As he walks pass her to get the blanket from the empty couch, he looks at Y/N for a moment. A smile appears on his face as he looks at her peaceful face.  

“Good night, Y/N.”, he says as he turns off the lamp before he goes back into the office to sleep on couch in his studio. Once he is inside his studio, he leans his head and shoulder against the door. The idea that Y/N might like him back, makes him nervous and happy. At the same time, he wonders how much he can trust the girl's words. Would she say anything to Y/N? Will she keep asking? How true are her words? Questions over questions are crossing his mind as places himself on the couch. “What is right thing to do when everything feels wrong? What am I supposed to do?”, he asks himself as a tear runs down his cheek.

💧💧💧

It’s been a while since Y/N woke up to prepare breakfast. She truly thought that Jungkook might wake up from the smell, but apparently, he did not. As she sees her kids spending time with each other in the living room, she decides to check the bedroom to see if Jungkook might have left already. “Jungkook, are you awake?”, she asks through the door as she knocks on the door. “Can I come in?” As there is no response after a few seconds, she decides to step inside. “Jungkook?” Even though her eyes scan the bedroom, she cannot find him. “Is he already working on the song?”, she wonders as she leaves the bedroom to walk towards his office. Slowly, she opens the door to peek inside. It does not take long until she finds him sleeping on the couch. Just as she thought to let him sleep, he starts to yawn loudly. Her body starts to freeze as she is unsure if she shall run outside quickly or if she should explain herself.   

“Y/N?”, Jungkook questions as he starts to open his eyes. “How late is it?”  

“It is about ten o’clock.” Shocked, Jungkook jumps up to look for his phone.  

“Ten? Did you just say ten?”, he asks in a stressed tone as he grabs his phone.  

“It is ten o’clock.”  

“No. No. No!”, he says as he grabs his phone. “I have to hurry.” Her eyes follow him as he runs out of the studio pass her. As he passes her quickly, she decides to pack some food for him to go. Interested on their mom’s fast movements, her kids keep watching her.  

“Mom, why are you stressing?”, her son wonders.    

“Uncle Jungkook has  overslept,  and I prepare his breakfast to go.”, she explains as she finishes packing. As Jungkook rushes into the kitchen to grab an apple, Y/N holds up the meal that she had packed. “Your breakfast to go.”  

“My breakfast to go?”  

“It is a little way to say thank you.”, she smiles. The longer he looks at her smile, the less stress he feels. As he does not want to refuse the packed food, he smiles at her.  

“That is perfect, thank you!”, he thanks her as he takes the food. “I see you guys later!” Fascinated on the speed that he starts to run towards the door, the kids’ eyes follow him.  

“Wow, uncle Jungkook is super-fast!”, her son comments as he turns to his sisters.  

“Mom, do you have a key for the apartment?”, her oldest child wonders. For a moment, she needs to think about as she cannot remember that she had received one from Jungkook.  

“No, I forgot to ask him for one.”  

“I guess, we stay here then?”  

“Sorry sweetheart. But we will have to stay here.”, she explains as she starts to clean the kitchen. “Does somebody want to get the UNO-cards?”  

“I will.”, her younger daughter announces loudly as she jumps up.

💧💧💧

As soon as Jungkook arrives at the agency, he speeds up the stairs to the dancing studio. It felt like his lungs are about to be ripped as he opens the door of the dancing studio. “I am so sorry!”, he apologizes as he looks at everyone as he bows to apologize.   

“Look how fast he can bow!”, Jin comments as Namjoon steps closer to Jungkook.   

“I am so sorry. I forgot to place an alert as I was too busy to finish the song!”  

“Well, it has been an hour since we started...”, Namjoon adds.  

“I am surprised you made it on time.” As soon as Jungkook finishes his sentence, all the other members of their band start to look at each other confused.  

“What kind of leader would I be if I am late?”  

“Uh.”, Jungkook laughs as he notices Jimin’s hand sign.  

“Uh?”  

“That ‘uh’ left my lips for no reason at all.”, he explains as he changes his shoes.   

“Hurry up! We would like to finish on time!” Jungkook nods as he ties his shoes. Jimin looks at Namjoon for a second before he walks towards Jungkook.  

“Did you really forget your alert?”, he asks very quietly.   

“I did.”, he answers quickly as he sees Tae walking up to them. “Are you doing alright, Tae?”  

“Yeah. You do not seem so well. Did you sleep so badly?”  

“The sleep itself was nice.” Jimin helps Jungkook back up as Tae steps closer to Jungkook. “The awaking was just a nightmare.”  

“You are very pale.”, Tae states as he takes a closer look at Jungkook’s face.  

“I am feeling good though.”, he answers loud enough for the others to hear him. Like on a clue, a few members call them over to start their practice. As Tae stepped away, Jimin turns his body closely to Jungkook.  

“Why did Y/N pack you breakfast?”  

“Why do you think she packed it? I could have done it myself. you know?”  

“Come on! We know you to well. You would have not been late and cook yourself something before you get here.”  

“She cooked and I overslept. I guess she felt sorry and packed some-”, Jungkook stops to talk as he moves his body slightly away from Jimin. “How did you know that it is from her?”  

“I only guessed. Do not worry too much. Tae will not figure it out. ”,  he whispers. “So, now remember, the steps are in the same rhythm at the beginning of the chorus but slightly different in the end, got it?”, he asks him loudly for everyone to hear.  

“I think so.” The tension which comes from Tae is not clearly for everyone to notice, only to those who saw him staring at the food package which Y/N made. Namjoon’s and Hoseok’s exchange of looks caught the attention from Yoongi as he looks in the mirror.  

“You could have brought us something to eat too, you know? ”,  Tae says with a smile as he pets Jungkook’s shoulder. That is the moment when Yoongi discovers what Tae had discovered.  

“Wait, what do you have in there?  I think I  know where you were. ”,  Yoongi says as he walks to Jungkook’s stuff.  

“Yoongi, leave my stuff alone. ”,  Jungkook says as he crosses Yoongi’s path.  

“Relax. I just thought it is from this one restaurant. Let me take a peek.” Jungkook swallows hard as Yoongi opens his breakfast. “Just as I thought! It is from the restaurant two streets from here. I knew I knew this packaging from somewhere.”, Yoongi says. It is not a lie, as the restaurant does use the same disposable packaging, but it is not true that he ate there before.    

“So, now that we discussed this, how about starting to practice for real now?”, Namjoon asks slightly annoyed as he noticed Tae’s confused look. Even though Jungkook thinks that Yoongi saved him well from the situation, Tae’s focus is more on him than on the practice itself. “Hoseok and Jimin. Could you work on the dance with Jungkook until Tae and I find our choreographer who seems to have lost the way by trying to find something to drink...”    

“Sure.”, Hoseok agrees as he explains the steps one more time to Jungkook. When the voices of Namjoon and Tae seem to  disappear , Jin slaps the back of Jungkook’s head.  

“What  were you thinking?”  

“Ouch!”, Jungkook says loudly as he touches the back of his head. “What is that for?”  

“You bring food even though you  overslept?  That was a stupid act.”  

“Shall l have told her that I do not eat her food?”  

“Maybe you should explain that it would be obvious that you did not make it yourself and that Tae might think that something is going on...?”  

“Whatever. Yoongi saved me well.”  

“Let’s just hope that he does not figure that out.”, Yoongi says. Just as he finishes his sentences, the door opens. The happy smile on Namjoon’s face brings their thoughts back to their work.  

“Look who I found. I guess we can practice!”, Namjoon states loudly as he walks into the room first, followed by the other two men.  

“Good luck.”, Jimin tells Jungkook as he steps to the side.

[randomfandomimagine]

End Of The Year Faves

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 8 (ish) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome work!

I was tagged by @myriadimagines and @musicallisto, thank you, lovelies!

10. Zack Fair (FFVII) gif imagine

I really love this one because it’s like the definition of short and sweet. It’s adorable, warm and I think I got Zack’s characterization pretty well and I often reread it when I need a smile. I just love my boy Zack and how this little thing turned out.

9. Connor (DBH) prompt (”I shouldn’t be in love with you”)

The reason I love this one it’s because I wrote it as one of my favorite things to write: a character study. I tried to express Connor’s struggle as he develops feelings for the reader and how conflicted he would be to have fallen in love with someone, having developed such a human thing as feelings. One of the many reasons why I love Connor is because of his arc in the game, because of how guilty he feels for becoming deviant despite being the very android that hunts them, it just gets to me. I’m just really glad that I could explore that in this prompt and that I managed to show it properly as well as make this more angsty, since my specialty is usually fluff.

8. Yennefer (Witcher) prompt (”I shouldn’t be in love with you” “Are you jealous?” “I’m so scared”)

This is the only Yennefer request I’ve ever gotten (besides one for a dating would include that I had already written), and I had so much fun writing it! Yennefer has appeared in my Witcher writings a lot, but never as a main character and never as a love interest, so that’s why this was so cool! I think she’s a very interesting character, so I really enjoyed getting the chance to explore her personality. I love how it turned out because I think it’s the perfect balance between her being sly and also being loving and showing her feelings for the reader. 

7. Too Nice (John Ambrose McClaren, TATBILB ficlet)

John Ambrose is another character I really like writing for. What can I say? I fell in love with him and it was great to write something for him. This is somewhere between love and almost hate, with a lot of misunderstandings and complex feelings that ultimately lead to a happy fluffy ending. He’s just the sweetest and it was curious to write his reactions to someone who doesn’t always respond well to his kindness, even if because it flusters them.

6. Special (Howl Pendragon, HMC ficlet)

And yet another character I love. It was a bit hard settling on just one version of the character, because I love both the movie and book versions, so I tried to make it a little bit of both... even if this Howl is more suave and charming like in the movie rather than the absolute endearing disaster that book Howl is. Still, I always have fun getting other characters involved with the reader and their love interest, so I loved adding Calcifer and Marko to the mix. As well as the cute interactions Howl and reader have, I love the ending in which he hints at the fact that the reader unlocked something in his heart that he didn’t think was possible.

5. Kind (Jesse Pinkman, Breaking Bad ficlet)

I don’t often get to write about Jesse, so this was awesome! Peekaboo was one of my favorite episodes and it was amazing to get to explore it. While it’s not perfect, I really like how the connection between Jesse and reader turned out, how kind (:D) he is and patient and respectful, and I think I also poured a lot of emotion to the reader with that background.

4. Separated (Zuko, ATLA ficlet)

By this point, it’s obvious that I’m more proud of ficlets (because they’re longer and take more planning and more time and effort) and about characters I love because I think the passion I have for them is more obvious. I wrote this one right when I was watching ATLA because I loved (and still love) Zuko so much. It’s sort of a character study as well (it’s established that I adore writing them) and I’m so glad that I had the idea of getting Iroh involved because he’s awesome. This ficlet just has a lot of pining and repressed emotions that come out in the end and I love it.

3. Weight On His Shoulders (PS4 Peter Parker ficlet)

This one if pretty recent, as I wrote it after beating the game myself. This game is just awesome, and this is my favorite representation of Peter ever. He’s cute, charming, nerdy, loving, kind, a bit awkward and just everything that Peter and Spidey should be (at least for me). I wanted to represent both his personas in this one, and I like the balance I achieved with it as well as the emotions, the pining, the secret identity and in the end the understanding of the reader. The part with Spidey saving reader is great and I’m very happy with how reader is prepared to confront him about it once they learn he’s Spiderman only to change their mind when they see how much it’s weighing on him so they decide to relax with him for a bit.

2. Reunion (Cloud Strife, FFVII ficlet)

I’ve written a lot of things for this fandom this year because I was super inspired after beating the remake with my brother, I loved it (honorable mentions to Heal My Heart and Stars In Your Eyes, two other ficlets that I wrote and I’m very proud of). Cloud has always been one of my favorite characters, and in this one I got to examine a side of him I usually don’t. Not only does this ficlet include Zack Fair (another one of my favorite characters) but it also goes along with an idea I had been thinking about for a long time of a female reader pretending to be a boy to get into SOLDIER and becoming friends with them, but it also shows Cloud as the meeker and shy boy he is in Crisis Core. It was so cool to write about him back then and after once he had joined AVALANCHE. His relationship with the reader was also bittersweet because of their past and it’s just so complex and emotional that I love it, especially their reunion at the end.

1. Soul of a Warrior (Jaskier x Nissa, The Witcher Fanfiction Series). This was a big project, as series always are. I spent several months planning and plotting the story and even more months writing it, and also revising it once it was finished before posting it. I put so much effort, love and time into this series that it absolutely had to be number one. Soul of a Warrior is probably the thing I’m most proud of (that I have written) in 2020. 

As most of you know (my mutuals definitely do, as they have gifted me amazing things with him), Jaskier is probably the character I fangirled the hardest about this year. I wrote many things for him (the ficlet What Would You Do Without Me? deserves another honorable mention because it’s probably my favorite thing I’ve written this year along with the series) and working on each of them has brought me so much serotonin. Jaskier is just such an amazing character, loving and compassionate but cheeky and selfish while at the same time being charming, optimistic, bubbly, extroverted and a huge flirt. So many layers!

But back to the series... Soul of a Warrior had one of the best faceclaims I’ve found, the sweetest friendship between my OC Nissa and Geralt and the slowest of burns romances with Jaskier. Him and Nissa are very similar in some aspects, so much so that they’re both too blind to realize the other’s feelings (idiots to lovers, am I right?) but they care so much about one another. The three of them were strangers, but they become family (found family, another one for the fandom bingo!) and I’m the proudest of how real and organic their relationship feels. Not to mention that their dynamic was super fun to write because Geralt is the only one that knows they’re in love and is so fed up and exasperated with their obliviousness. As well as this, I think I managed to mix action, emotion and depth really well. My secondary OCs feel more alive than others before them, Nissa was pretty complex and coherent and had a true voice of her own, and their part on the story feels important. There are tense moments, cute ones, sad ones, tragic ones... a little bit of everything. I think this one as a lot more angst and whump because I was in a bit of a dark place when I wrote it, but it still has hope and light in it, which I really love. The series also has a lot more violence than what I’m used to, but it was interesting to get out of my comfort zone a bit. 

Overall, not only do I think it’s fun to read, compelling, funny and emotional all at once, I’m just very proud that I managed to write something a little different from what I usually do and feel like I did it well. I put a big part of me in this series and for that reason Soul of a Warrior will always have a special place in my heart 💜

That it’s, sorry if I ranted a bit! I tag anyone who wants to do this!!