#this wasn't meant to have any plot anyway and rather meant as a way for me to remember what I planned for Altani's special echo power! woo!

[joeldarling]

hii! could you do an oldman!joel and reader (the flu) but joel is the one who's sick, thank youu🤍

The Flu (Joel’s Version) - Oldman!Joel x F!reader

Summary: Based on this request, Joel is sick and reader takes care of him way too well. The Flu (Reader’s Version) here.

Warnings: MINORS DNI! F!reader, mentions of Abby, literally just porn without tons of plot, no reader description, handjob, blowjob, established couple, delicious oldman!Joel.

Word count: 1.8k.

A/N: As usual, English it’s not my first language, so I apologize in advance for any typos. I am literally so thirsty over oldman!Joel that I loved to write this one. In my masterlist you can find more stuff, spicy and soft, obviously. My requests are always open, feel free to chat with me too! 💌

Joel would never admit it, but he was sick.

It was like watching an animal thrashing against death, trying to fight something inevitable, but he got the flu thanks to an extra shift on patrol that night. The extra hours he'd spent in the snow had done their work, and Tommy had warned over the radio that he would certainly be grumpier and in a terrible mood when he got home.

But, well, Joel could be rude and stupid to everyone around him, except for you, and that proved true the moment he stepped into the home, already warm thanks to the wood burning crackling in the fireplace. His nose was red, his glasses were fogged up and he seemed to be shrinking inside his clothes, which made you stifle a laugh. Weeks before, when you had been sick, Joel had been as attentive as possible, taking care of you in every way imaginable—you would do the same for him, your old man needed all the affection in the world, and you were going to make sure he got it.

“I made you tea and there’s sum’ medicine here from the other week.” You said, holding out the cup and the medicine to him. Joel, despite displaying an unmistakable grimace, swallowed the medicine in one go, just as he drank the tea in a few gulps, trying to get rid of it.

“Thank you, darlin’. Ya’ don’t need to worry ‘bout me.” Joel uttered, his voice hoarser than usual as you approached to steal a little kiss from him. His strong, calloused hands quickly went to your waist, holding you with their usual firmness. Usually, when he arrived from patrol, Joel was always hungry, especially from you.

The whole mood was interrupted by a strong cough before he could do anything else and your laughter was inevitable. Joel would have to give in. You hugged him for a few seconds before pulling away completely and held out your hand towards him.

“The bathtub is ready and warm, waiting for you upstairs.” You said, and he couldn't avoid a smile. Joel wasn’t much of an emotional man in front of people and you understood that better than anyone; after all, his eyes were all the necessary answer about how he felt anyways.

“Just like an angel, my sweet girl. I dunno what I did to deserve ya’.” He held your hand, letting you guide him to the bedroom. The whole house was simple, in the Jackson style, but, Joel being Joel meant that some of the wall colors were more vibrant because according to him they matched you better, and the bathroom tiles contained small drawings of marine animals that he himself had lovingly painted for you as a surprise when you first moved in; all the little things that would bring a bit of normalcy to the end of the world.

As they arrived in the bathroom, Joel looked at you, and it was rather obvious what he desired: company for his bath. You helped him undress even though you knew he could do it all himself, and right after, you removed your own layers of clothing, getting into the bathtub with him. You adjusted your body so that Joel could rest between your legs, with his back against your chest, and it wasn't long before you started caressing his hair, a way to relax him as your fingers moved slowly through the graying curls that smelled of the lavender soap you often traded with the neighbor across the street.

He smiled, even though you couldn't see it, sneezing loudly the next instant. The temperature of his skin where the water wasn't touching, especially his cheeks, was quite high, giving Joel an extra rosy color. He would deny it, of course, but you knew he wasn't feeling well.

You hurried the bath a little so he wouldn't be exposed to the cold air that sneaked in through the windows. You helped him dry off; Joel's back always ached, so you were kind enough not to let him move excessively. When you were both out of the bathroom, properly clean and warm, you walked quickly to the bed to fluff the pillows on his side, helping Joel lie down and covering him up.

You laid down beside him and let him settle with his head on your chest, completely needing extra affection and attention. Joel mumbled with his eyes closed, trying to fall asleep, but you weren't feeling not even a bit sleepy. He started to sweat, dampening the t-shirt he was wearing and transferring to the sheets. You would change the bedding the next morning, so you just took an extra look at him. His sleep, when it came, seemed restless, and you weren't surprised when he woke up half an hour later, startled, his heart racing and looking for you.

“Right here, darling.” You said, and Joel's big brown eyes seemed to calm down instantly. He had felt immensely guilty ever since he had saved you from Abby's hands and prevented a tragedy. It was obvious that the girl wanted revenge, but she felt that killing Joel wouldn’t be enough, and beating you to death was the perfect idea to see him suffer the same as she did once. Some scars were still scattered across your body, but most of the time you just chose to ignore what had happened. “Not going anywhere, handsome.”

You joked, and then accepted when Joel approached, stealing a kiss from you; slowly and hungry, as if the cure for that damn flu was right there on your lips. He held your neck, forcing the rest of your body to lie down so he could reach you in the way he desired, and the warm touch against your cold, exposed skin sent shivers down your spine.

“My sweet, sweet girl.” He murmured, and then, his possessive touch traveled down from your neck to capture your wrist, guiding your hand to his cock. You hadn't noticed that he was already hard; even in his sixties, he was completely obsessed with you and every part of your body, and it wasn't at all difficult to please the old man. “Help me. Touch me.”

Joel pleaded. Despite being a man in the fullest sense of the word, he enjoyed it when you were in control and took full advantage, especially when his back ached too much and you rode him for long hours until he was completely buried inside you, filling you with his seeds and saying the dirtiest things possible while looking directly to your beautiful eyes.

“As you wish, old man.” You said, and then held his cock over the fabric of the black boxer shorts Joel was wearing. With a nod, you motioned for him to lift his hips and helped him get rid of the worn cotton fabric, soon you were holding the long, pulsating length in your right hand, slowly massaging it, especially the head, and paying complete attention to his reactions as you spread the pre-cum that leaked out in circular motions with your thumb.

“Just like that, sweetheart, yea…” He groaned, completely surrendered to you. His voice clearly indicated that the flu was still there, but especially because of that, your movements remained slow in a tease, acquiring a tortuous rhythm. “Please, darlin’, daddy needs you to take care of him.”

Seeing Joel beg was a rare occurrence, and perhaps that's why something inside you gave way, almost melting. You moved your hand more quickly, feeling every vein in his cock pulse against your skin, something your mouth knew so well. But even though you were salivating, you would make him cum that way first, and then in all the other ways he desired, until he was completely exhausted by your side just as he deserved.

“You look so pretty begging for me to make you cum, daddy.” You said, a soft, short laugh escaping your beautiful lips as Joel rolled his brown eyes, tilting his hips towards you.

“Keep goin’, sweetheart. I’ll cum for you.” His hoarse voice, more so than usual, was your only motivation. You moaned, completely absorbed in him, feeling your cunt fucking wet just from the fact of having Joel melting over you. “I’ll cum over your pretty little hands ‘n then I’ll do it inside of you. I’ll make your tight sweet pussy milk my cock so well.”

The words seemed to have an effect on both of you. You didn't stop for a moment, feeling Joel getting closer and closer to the edge of madness and about to cum, just as you felt your nipples brushing against the old t-shirt you were wearing, bringing an even more exciting sensation. You swallowed a groan or two, pushing the urge to swallow him whole and suck every drop of his cum deep into the back of your mind.

But you couldn't resist; when Joel was almost there, you moved swiftly between the sheets and tilted your body, swallowing his hard cock completely, taking it deep into your throat.

“FUCK!” Joel exclaimed, gripping your hair with a mixture of wanting to help you and the urge to fuck your mouth in the most brutal way possible. You breathed through your nose as you were used to and moved your tongue, lightly scraping his teeth in a tease, concentrating all your attention on his pink and wet head. You brought one of your hands to his balls, gently squeezing them, and allowed him to bury himself deeper into your mouth as the adjustment of your positions allowed. “I’m comin’... Honey… Ah…”

It came in strong, hot spurts, and you swallowed absolutely everything, loving how his legs trembled and accepting all that he had to give you. When you raised your face again, Joel's cum dripped from your mouth and chin. You wiped yourself with your thumb, the bittersweet taste that had temporarily invaded your palate as delicious as ever.

“You taste so good, daddy.” You said, watching Joel completely out of breath, his chest rising and falling in a completely congested, extremely flu-ridden mess. “But I fear that now it’s time to sleep and you can fuck me by the morning. As much as I want it now, you have to rest.”

It was the truth, and no matter how much he wanted to argue with you, the discomfort of the flu started overwhelming him now that he was completely empty. You lay back down and again allowed him to settle his body against yours, resuming the gentle caresses through his hair and across his back.

“I love you, sweet pea.” Joel mumbled. “But as soon as ‘m fine, ‘m gonna end ya’.”

It was a promise, and you had no doubt about it; in fact, you could hardly wait.

[meximango]

Day 27 - Memory - Altani - G

Summary: Altani’s echo manifested differently than her fellow warriors of light.

Ok so this one is basically just a summary so I don’t forget an idea I’ve had for a while, lol. Just like Krile’s echo gives her fancy empathy powers, I tweaked most of my WoLs’ echoes to give them a bit of extra flavor. Luvon’s was touched on/implied a bit in ‘tempest’ this year, and Cahsi’s was in ffxivwrite2022 I believe, I can’t remember the prompt, but it’s on ao3. So it’s time for Altani! 

--

Altani first saw The Starshower in her dreams around the time she met Mogren, almost got her brother killed, and that the entire village determined she was destined to be their next priestess and medium. It was a lively few weeks for sure, everything interconnected. She wasn’t even ten summers old yet, but even so, she understood deep in her bones that it was a turning point in her life. The gate was locked behind her, and whatever had awoken inside her was there to stay. Her life from then on would be full of deceit–lies she had to tell to others, and lies she kept all for herself. 

She had no idea what her dreams meant. That they were a memory. That they would provide her an advantage on her path to greatness. The dreams were scary, and far too real, and instead of offering her comfort as she woke crying and screaming, the elders would praise her for unlocking the ability to see into death itself. They’d ruffle her hair and pat her on the back, telling her to keep training so she could convene with her ancestors and grant them wisdom. She kept up the farce for the sake of Mogren, who’d been mistaken as a spirit Altani regularly spoke to, but it was so much less and more than that. 

In Altani’s head, The Starshower was always Capitalized, because it was very Important. She didn’t know why, but it was a feeling in her tummy she refused to ignore. 

Sometimes she’d wake and remember in perfect clarity as the sky rained fire and desperate screams reverberated all around her. Never was she able to tear her gaze from the sky above, to witness who was with her, what the landscape looked like. It was just the dark red night full of smoke and embers, blazing bright trails falling toward her. It had to be stars. What else could be falling? What could cause such a thing to happen? What if the dream was an omen of things to come? What if it sucked her inside, and she became one of those falling stars, burning up before she could even hit the ground? 

Other times, Altani would wake with a sense of unease, far more tired than was reasonable, completely tangled in her sheets as sweat coated her brow, and she just Knew that she had dreamt of The Starshower. 

It would only make sense years later, after speaking with the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, that she wasn’t alone. There were others who witnessed The Starshower, and it granted them special gifts. That her nightmares were actually a boon, a gift from the goddess of the star herself. But it would be many years before that point, and not even Mogren could understand her plight as a child. 

She turned it into a game, pretending The Starshower really was giving her the ability to delve into the lifestream and pluck stories and messages from long-dead tribe members. Each star that fell was just another of her ancestors coming by to say hello. They were already dead, so they couldn’t feel pain! The screams were actually high-pitched laughs. Her ancestors sure were silly, weren’t they, pulling a prank like that on her. It made lying to everyone easier, and sleeping became a little bit easier too. She was brave, and no way was The Starshower going to overpower her! The dreams became less frequent as she got older, and instead a few other types of visions manifested in her. It wasn’t often, but it did help with her priestess duties. 

Every so often, when someone talked to her–most often when reminiscing about something from their past–she’d suddenly be swept away and forced to bear witness to the moment they were talking about. It was as though she were there with them, as though she could alter reality if she just reached out and tried (she couldn’t, of course. She was an invisible entity able only to watch, but in the beginning she had wanted to find out. Thank Hydaelyn it was just a memory; to warp reality would have been too much power for a child who wished to have control over something in her life to have.) She got to witness the truth, even if the teller couldn’t remember it correctly themself or were lying for one reason or another. The downside was appearing as though she had been spaced out for a few minutes, followed by a wicked headache, but it was easy enough to write that one to the villagers as ‘divine communication’. She often used this to her advantage later, recalling the collected memories to help give merit to her own lies that she wove for the villagers about their dead loved ones and advice for their future. The best lies had a grain of truth to them, after all. Rarer, by quite a margin, were visions Altani had no idea how to explain or what they even were. It wouldn’t be until her trip to Norvrandt, well into her adventuring career, that she would begin to understand. Once in a blue moon, something would trigger her to view whoever she was looking at or speaking to in a different light. It started like a memory, with her surroundings fading out and transporting her somewhere else, but instead of seeing the person the vision was about, she saw someone else. Altani didn’t have the gift of aethersight, but she had a feeling, an instinct, that she learned to accept. The vision was about a different version of the person. Sometimes they looked very similar to nearly identical to the person in question, while other times, their race, gender, skin or fur color–everything about them was different. Except the eyes. That was the one factor that didn’t seem to change. Whatever eye color the present person who triggered the vision had, there would be at least a hint of that same color in there for the person in the vision. Even if they changed into a creature with limited eye colors! As much as she’d hoped this was perhaps the key to unlocking real medium powers so she could talk to her ancestors, it wasn’t meant to be. She never met any of her ancestors that way, as most of visions she saw weren’t of au ra, nor did they take place in the Azim Steppe. The second type of vision was far more confusing and far less useful to her, so Altani didn’t much care for them, waiting for them to pass and observing only with a passing interest, for the most part. It was strange, being privy to other versions of people she met, when those same people had no idea about or access to those alternate realities. She tried not to dwell too much on those. 

Some part of her wished she could have seen another Altani, though. Would they share her same gifts, her same curses? Would they be strong or weak, a natural crafter or a clumsy disaster? Were they a hunter, or a fisher, or a teacher? Would they become a parent, a merchant, a leader? Was their life a lie, forced to pretend they’re something they’re not to keep their village happy and their friend safe? Maybe they led a normal, mundane life, and would grow up to be nobody of import. Altani’s visions didn’t work on herself, so she’d never know what any other Altani was doing except herself. Maybe it was better that way, so she couldn’t become jealous of a life she couldn’t have. 

When she became an adventurer, met her fellow Warriors of Light, and discovered they had similar experiences with The Starshower and being forced into people’s memories, she hid her relief behind false bravado and a strong clap on the back. It was like the weight of Hydaelyn had been lifted from her shoulders, learning her affliction had such a tiny, unassuming name as the echo. That there was an entire group of people studying it, and that this thing she’d been confused and frightened about and taking advantage of for so long already was considering a blessing from the goddess Hydaelyn herself. Hear, Feel, Think, indeed.This gift was shared among a select few, and they were often destined for greatness, which was all she strived for these days. She wanted to be strong enough to protect everyone without the power to do it themselves. She knew what it felt like to be powerless and scared, and so she would ensure to keep others from those awful feelings as much as she could.

While the others shared in most of the same echo traits, none of them ever saw those other versions of people or at least made no mention of it, so Altani kept that close to her chest. Only Mogren knew about that little trait, and they’d probably forgotten about it by now, since she only mentioned it a few times when she was younger and never again. 

Luckily, she’d never had to deal with seeing other versions of her family of friends, but of course that changed when she started adventuring with those others who shared in the gift. Maybe it just triggered more easily for those who’d also seen The Starshower? 

During one of her travels with Luvon, she’d had a vision that couldn’t have been of his past, as it took place in a gigantic forest unlike anything that existed on the mainland. Small streams of unnatural, sickly white light passed through the foliage and dappled the ground. She saw a young qiqirn and an older one carving tablets together. The younger had a yellow-green glint of excitement in their eyes as they speculated about what lay in the ruins, and what their home had been like before a flood of some kind. A fear years later is when that ‘memory’ clicked into place. Her moment of breakthrough came through after she was transported to the First. When all major threats were done being taken care of with Cahsi and Luvon, she was helping the Qitari unearth their history. Among the group in Hopl's Stopple, she noticed the pair she’d seen in her vision. Huh. So the person she’d seen in that vision was not a qiqirn at all, but their equivalent on the First, a qitari. Someone from a completely different shard… She observed them from afar, not wanting to barge in with nonsensical questions, but seeing how the little qitari acted and interacted with others, she could definitely see the similarities between them and Luvon. It was incredibly strange, but she’d come to realize by now that nothing was too strange for this universe. 

Despite having fragments of the same soul, they were still their own people. She’d accepted that already with all the visions she’d seen throughout the years. Nobody acted exactly like their other version’s self, even if there were similarities. Ardbert was pretty different from Cahsi, for example. Altani could have smacked herself realizing one of her echo visions of either Cahsi or Ardbert were not about the memory of their meeting and showdown, but rather showing her that they were apparently versions of one another. That news sure might have come in handy before they had to defeat Emet-Selch–but then again, maybe not. Maybe it would have been even harder or weirder for Cahsi to let go. She’d made a close friend of the warrior in her time on the first, and had taken it hard when he had to leave. Altani had finally been able to meet him a few times before the end, thanks to some ingenious spellwork and alchemy on Cahsi’s part. It was sad that he had to rejoin Cahsi, but it was his own choice, and Ardbert had already been dead for so long, so that’s probably why he was able to do so in the first place. Altani wasn’t about to subscribe to the now-dead ascian’s idea that rejoining all shards of the soul into one was the only way to truly exist and lead a worthwhile life. From what she’d seen, other shards were doing just fine for themselves–independently! 

That said, she was pretty sure if she introduced Luvon to his qitari counterpart, that nothing would happen unless one of them were to die. Maybe. She certainly didn’t want to test that, it was a horrifying thought. They’d probably stay two separate entities, none the wiser of their status as parts of one larger, more powerful soul at one point.

Really, this was all a lot to take in and think about, and nobody she wanted to discuss it with. It gave her a headache. One day, she’d figure this out with her friends. Maybe it was selfish to keep this from them, but she’d seen the heartbreak Cahsi went through with Ardbert, and she just felt it was best at this time. They had enough worries on their plate as it was. 

[ckret2]

Chapter 22 of human Bill's still putting up with being the Mystery Shack's prisoner (title tbd), featuring: Dipper's having nightmares about his spirit floating out of his body, just like the Bipper incident. (He's very sure they're only nightmares.) And Bill, kind and generous muse that he is, would love to help, and definitely isn't offering for secret evil reasons. After all, how could a dream demon benefit from telling his enemies how to control their dreams?

Even though Dipper already knew, intellectually, that dreaming about Bill didn't mean Bill was in his dreams, getting immediate physical proof was a relief. Any time he had another nightmare, all he had to do was get out of bed, go find Bill—sleeping, drinking, reading, meditating, watching TV, staring out a window—and see for himself that there was no way Bill could have been in his head.

So tonight, when he "woke" into another Bipper nightmare, his first instinct was to go gripe at Bill about it.

He'd floated through the bedroom door and hovered halfway down the stairs before he remembered that since he was currently having the Bipper Nightmare, dreaming that he was floating ghostlike outside his body, it meant he wasn't actually awake and he couldn't gripe at the real Bill; but then he decided maybe he'd feel better if he ranted at dream Bill anyway.

The TV glowed from the living room. At this time of night, it could be Abuelita or Bill. Dipper's spectral socked feet settled on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, he turned toward the sofa—and froze.

Sitting on the sofa, legs curled feet-on-thighs in lotus position, was Bill—and he was surrounded by a brilliant light, yellow-golden against the dream fog gray. Like the halo of sunlight around an eclipse, or like a radioactive mass close enough to melt your eyes, or like an explosion rushing closer. The light danced around Bill like solar flares. Dipper had to squint his eyes against the light.

"Whoa," Dipper said.

The light dimmed to a faint yellow aura as Bill turned toward him. Dipper nearly jumped out of his skin, except that he was already out of his skin. Bill said, "'Whoa' what?"

No one ever saw Dipper during his Bipper nightmares. (But then, he supposed, it made sense if he dreamed that Bill could see him, didn't it? Since he'd been the only one able to see Dipper after he stole his body.) Dipper gestured vaguely at Bill. "You're, uh. Glowing."

"Aw, flattering." Bill laughed. "You look like a zombie trying to figure out if he wants to return to the land of the living. Shouldn't you be asleep?"

"Ha ha," Dipper said flatly.

"What, another nightmare? Are you here to tell me how your subconscious is my responsibility again?"

"Shut up." Imaginary dream Bill was just as annoying as the real one; but Dipper decided he'd feel pretty dumb for yelling at "Bill" for invading Dipper's dream while Dipper was still dreaming. (Maybe Dipper's subconscious mind was using the form of a snarky Bill to tell Dipper that he needed to seize control of his dreams rather than blame somebody else for them? That Bill might have caused Dipper's recurring nightmares, but only Dipper could do the work to end them? Huh. He'd look into that when he woke up.)

His gaze drifted to the television, which was displaying a man hunched over a bizarrely-angled desk in a black-and-white movie. (He could somehow tell it was black and white, even though colors were already muted and grayish during his Bipper nightmares.) It was like seeing a dream within a dream. "What are you watching?"

"The Counterfeit of Dr. Calligraphy," Bill said. "A hypnotist sends letters to a sleepwalker that have subliminal messages concealed in the handwriting. He brainwashes the sleepwalker into making fake money in his sleep. It's a comedy."

It didn't look very comedic. Dipper wondered how he'd dreamed this plot up. Anxiety about waking up from one dream into another dream, combined with memories of counterfeiting money last summer?

He leaned against the doorframe and watched the movie long enough to confirm it was not, in fact, a comedy, but rather some kind of gloomy noir-ish silent film; then sighed in boredom. His subconscious couldn't even imagine up a fun movie. "I'm going back to my body," he muttered, pushing off the ground and hovering back up the stairs.

Bill, eyes half-lidded, didn't look up from the screen as he sleepily muttered, "Mmkay."

It took a long moment before he said, "You're going to your what?" He leaned out of the living room and looked up the stairs; but Dipper was long gone.

Maybe he'd misheard "bed." He settled back in front of the TV; but he wasn't paying attention to the movie now.

####

"You look exhausted," Mabel said, ruffling Dipper's messy hair with both hands. "Did you stay up late reading again?"

"No," Dipper groaned. "I just slept badly. I had another Bipper nightmare. I dreamed about Bill making fun of me and watching a boring movie."

"Aw, Dipper. I'm sorry," Mabel said sympathetically. She fixed her headband for the day in the bedroom mirror and pulled on her shoes. "I dreamed about a car race where all the drivers are kittens!"

"Oh yeah?"

"It was really intense! Two of the cars crashed," Mabel said. "Everyone was okay though. The drivers were saved by a firetruck with Dalmatian puppy firefighters!"

When they made it down to the kitchen, Bill was already there, sipping burned coffee with his eyes closed. "Hey, twerps." He peeled one eye open a slit just long enough to figure out which set of twerp footsteps belonged to Mabel, and held his coffee mug in her direction. "Top me off?"

"You got it!" Mabel retrieved her pitcher of Mabel Juice from the fridge, refilled Bill's coffee with it, and poured herself a cup.

"What's today's flavor?"

"Blue!"

"That's exactly what I need." Bill took a deep drink, spat a small plastic horse on the table, and sipped more carefully.

"You look exhausted, too." Mabel poured herself a bowl of cereal and milk. "Did you have a nightmare?"

"I don't have nightmares; nightmares have me," Bill said.

Dipper, the person whose nightmares had Bill, scowled and leaned against the stove to wait for Bill to leave so he could get breakfast.

"But no—I was up late watching a German expressionist cinema marathon," Bill went on. "They don't make 'em like that anymore. Which is good, because I prefer my movies with colors and music; but there's nothing quite like watching five movies in a row about going insane in the middle of the night on twenty-four hours without sleep. Second most likely experience to make you see phantom spiders crawl across you skin." He cracked open an eye again and tried to steal Mabel's cereal. She smacked his hand with her spoon and stole it back.

He dragged himself out of his chair to get some proper food. "Get the fridge?" Mabel opened the door for him. As he rummaged around for something appealing, he glanced back over his shoulder at Dipper. "You missed the punchline, by the way."

Dipper started. "The what?"

"On Dr. Calligraphy," Bill said. "You went back to bed before the ending. The sleepwalker's counterfeits are so good that nobody believes the investigator from the treasury when he says they're fakes. He gets hauled to the looney bin—and then realizes the handwriting in all the letters from his boss is the same as the hypnotist's." Bill laughed. "I told you it was a comedy, didn't I?" He dumped some bagels, squirt cheese, and pickled jalapeños on the kitchen counter, then glanced at Dipper again. "What's with that look? Don't you get it?" He sighed and rolled his open eye. "Okay, so the joke is that both the main character and the audience will never know if he was set up, driven insane, or always insane—"

"I didn't go 'back to bed'," Dipper said, stomach twisting. "I—never got out of bed. I didn't watch a movie last night."

"You didn't," Bill said skeptically. And then, studying Dipper's face, repeated, "You didn't?"

Mabel was staring between Dipper and Bill. To Dipper, she said, "Was... that the boring movie in your dream?"

Dipper didn't reply. He didn't want to say anything with Bill listening—not when he didn't know what Bill knew. Or what Bill might have done. Maybe I just heard the movie from upstairs, Dipper thought—and might have believed, if not for the fact that it was a silent film.

Bill was silent for a long moment—longer than Dipper felt safe with. Like a cat sizing up its prey. "Well, how about that," Bill said. His smile was not reassuring. "Looks like Dr. Calligraphy isn't the only one with a sleepwalker on his hands."

####

"Do I sleepwalk?" Dipper demanded.

Bartholomew stared at him in perfect silence. "You can't tell," he said, "on account of the fact that I can't move; but I just did a confused double-take in my head."

"Do I sleepwalk!" Dipper repeated. "I was—I think I was sleepwalking last night—? If I wasn't sleepwalking, then that means Bill was—was in my head somehow, and I don't know how or what he was doing in there—so either he was in my head or I was somehow downstairs, or—I don't know, maybe I was out of my head—but I really need to know which it was, and Mabel was asleep last night so you're the only one who would know—"

"Dipper," Mabel said, shutting the door behind them. "Hold on. If Bill was doing something in your head, why would he just tell you about it at breakfast by spoiling the end of the movie?"

"I don't know!" Dipper said. "To terrify me? To let me know what he can do?"

"But if we know he can do it, that means we can stop him from doing it," Mabel said. "It doesn't make sense—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Bartholomew said. "I wasn't up here last night. I was watching a picture show marathon through the living room vent."

Mabel laughed. "You call them picture shows. You're so old."

"'Move-y' sounds stupid and I'm willing to die on this hill."

"Was I there?" Dipper asked. "Did I come downstairs last night?"

"Yeah, during Dr. Calligraphy," Bartholomew said. "I could hear you talking to Bill. You said he was glowing. Which stood out to me as kind of weird, since he's always glowing." 

Dipper heaved a sigh of relief. "Okay. Great. So I was sleepwalking. That's..." He paused, gave Bartholomew a funny look, and said, "Let's... let's unpack the thing about Bill glowing later."

"Suit yourself."

He looked at Mabel. "I was having a Bipper dream. Do you think I always sleepwalk during those dreams? Maybe that's why they're always about me wandering around at night?"

"Maybe?" Mabel shivered. "Augh, does that mean whenever you dreamed about trying to come to me for help, you were actually just standing over my bed watching me sleep?"

Dipper dragged his hands down his face. "Mabel. Sometimes I visited the neighbors' houses."

"Dipper!" Mabel laughed, but there was a nervous edge to it. "Have you been walking around in the street in your pajamas?"

"Maybe it's not that bad. Maybe sometimes I'm sleepwalking but sometimes I stay in bed. Last night I really wanted to go yell at Bill, maybe that... got me on my feet?" He dropped onto his bed, chin in his hands.

Mabel sat on her bed with her cereal, and handed over a banana she'd grabbed for Dipper. "We can start locking the bedroom door," she said. "So if you do start sleepwalking, at least you can't get out."

"What if I unlock it in my sleep?"

"Maybe Grunkle Ford could teach me the anti-door curse he put on Bill! And I could cast it on you at night so you can't get out of the room?"

Dipper shook his head. "That's not a long-term solution. What about when we go home? Or what if I need to go to the bathroom?" He gestured emphatically with his banana as he spoke. "I realized something last night, Mabel: I'm sick of these nightmares and I'm sick of just putting up with them. They were bad enough when they were just in my head, but now they have to affect me in real life, too? No! I'm just—not gonna have them anymore."

"Yeah!" Mabel cheered. "I like that attitude! I'm with you. I'm sick of being freaked out by my dreams, too. Do you know how hard it is to rescue kittens from a car crash when you've got to stop and ask yourself if this is a Mabeland thing?"

Dipper hesitated. "Um... probably pretty hard?"

"We'll do it together. We'll both stop having nightmares." She paused. "How?"

"I... don't know yet." Dipper sighed. "Our therapist's given me a few tools to cope with nightmares, but they haven't stopped them. I'm thinking our best bet is magic."

They looked at Bartholomew.

"Sorry," he said. "Outside my wheelhouse. I specialize in creepy dolls and necromancy."

"There's gotta be something in this town," Dipper said. "Maybe dream catchers? Do dream catchers actually work?"

"What about that spell to enter other people's dreams?" Mabel asked. "We could take turns entering each other's dreams to help fight each other's nightmares! That would totally work, right?"

"Except then we'd have to take turns not getting any sleep."

There was a knock on the attic door. Mabel called "Yeah?" and hopped to her feet to open it.

Bill was leaning with his elbow against the doorframe, cheek in his hand, one ankle hooked over the other, grinning broadly. "Couldn't help but overhear that you're having some dream troubles! Here, my card!" He handed Mabel a paper towel on which he'd poorly painted his triangle self with coffee grounds and signed his name in an alien language. "Bill Cipher, professional dream demon—at your service."

Dipper said, "We hung up a 'no solicitors' sign."

"I saw it and I ignored it."

"Bill," Mabel groaned. "Get out of here!" She tried to block him with her arms. 

He dodged around her to enter the room with a laugh like this was some playground game, and then immediately tripped over a cardboard box. He recovered his balance by grappling with Mabel's bag of mini golf clubs and drew one out to use as a cane so smoothly it almost looked like he'd planned it that way. "Hey, hold on—I'm here to help!"

"Right," Dipper scoffed. "Like when you wanted to help me unlock that laptop."

"Or when you offered to help me extend summer."

"Or when you were going to 'help' our dimension 'party'?"

Bill said, "I did extend your summer and I did throw a party."

Dipper asked, "And the laptop?"

"No excuse for that! I was just lying to you, kid." Bill laughed.

"Yeah, no," Mabel said, "we don't want your help. No offense, but your help is super evil. Get out of our room."

"No." Bill plopped down in the middle of the floor, arms and legs crossed, mini golf club lain across his knees, smirking defiantly up at Mabel. "Not until you hear me out."

"No! Go. Scoot. Get out." Mabel attempted to shove him toward the door.

"Try it! I weigh more than both of you combined! Physics is on my side! I'm master of this room."

Mabel only succeeded in knocking him onto his side. Bill prodded her back with the handle of the club and said, "Seriously, just listen to me and then I'll go. I'm more or less the reason you're having nightmares in the first place, aren't I? C'mon! How can I make it up to you if you won't even hear me out?"

Mabel paused in her onslaught. "You wanna make it up to us?" Dipper rolled his eyes.

"Sure, why not? Do you think I wanted to traumatize a couple of kids? You just happened to stumble in the way of a force beyond human comprehension! Hey, I stuck you in a paradise bubble, does that scream 'deliberate attempt at psychological torture' to you?"

"You were going to kill me," Dipper said.

"You even left his suicide letter," Mabel said.

"Which was wrong of me," Bill said patiently, with an air that made it sound like he was the one who had to explain this to them, "but I can't undo that unless you want to give me that time tape you're hoarding. On the other hand, I can do something about the nightmares. Just hear me out."

Dipper had been climbing to the end of his bed to try to get past Bill and escape for adult reinforcements, but stopped to stand on the mattress and glare down at Bill. "And then once we've heard you out, you won't leave until we've accepted your offer—"

"There is no offer," Bill said. "I'm giving you information. No 'deals,' no favors, no magic, nothing. Just information. It's your business what you do with it. If you want to throw it away, I've already done my part!"

Dipper hesitated. "I don't trust you."

"You don't have to trust me. Go verify everything I tell you with someone else. Heck, you can even go ask Stanford about it, he'll back up everything I'm about to say."

The fact that Bill was suggesting he talk to Ford threw Dipper off. He glanced at Mabel to see what she thought.

Bill took the momentary silence as a victory. Smugly, he said, "Lucid dreaming."

Dipper blinked in surprise. "Hey, I know what that is. It's when you're dreaming and know you're dreaming, right?"

"You obviously don't know any more about it than that, or else you wouldn't be having nightmares." Now that Mabel wasn't attacking him and Dipper was actually listening, Bill perched on a crate and crossed an ankle over the other knee, getting comfortable. "Knowing you're asleep is step one of lucid dreaming. The next step is controlling your dreams. If you've fully mastered the techniques of lucid dreaming, you'll essentially be a god inside your own sleeping mind."

"Like we did in Grunkle Stan's head!" Mabel said. "When we beat you with kittens."

"And eye lasers," Dipper added.

"And stomach lasers!"

"And 80s music."

"And hamster balls—"

The corners of Bill's mouth twitched a little further down with each sentence. He forced a smile back on. "Right! Haha! You kids." There was friendly good cheer in his voice and wrath in his eyes. "Exactly like that. Except you weren't asleep at the time. That wasn't lucid dreaming, that was imagining. It's a lot easier to do inside of someone else's dreams. You've got to learn an entirely new set of techniques if you want to do it in your own."

Dipper dropped down to sit on his bed again. "Like what kind of techniques? Does it involve meditating, or...?"

Bill laughed. "And here I thought you didn't trust anything I had to say! What, do you want me to teach you how to do it now?"

"No."

"Didn't think so!" Bill grabbed a sparkly pen off Mabel's bedside stand and a scrap of notepaper off their table. "I'll give you some names of authors. Human authors. Experts on the psychology and spirituality of dreams. And if you don't want to trust these authors because I recommended them, fine, just find their books in the library and anything sorted on the same shelves will teach you the same techniques. But master lucid dreaming, and your dreams will be your playground. No more nightmares."

Bill offered the paper to Mabel, but his smirk was aimed at Dipper. "Just like I promised: no magic. Nothing that could invite the big scary dream demon into your precious little heads. All I'm telling you is where to learn your own species's skills. If you don't believe me, go ask for yourself."

####

Sitting back in the guest room's desk chair, Ford frowned at the list of authors Mabel had handed him and stroked his chin thoughtfully. The kids sat on Ford's bed and waited for him to render judgment on the Latest Bill Nonsense.

"That look doesn't look like a good look," Mabel said. "Is Bill up to something bad?"

"On the contrary, I can't think of any way that your learning how to lucid dream could benefit Bill," Ford said. "In fact, if anything, it would be actively detrimental to him. That's what has me so puzzled."

Dipper asked, "What do you mean, actively detrimental?"

"Lucid dreaming is the first line of defense against Bill's mental tricks," Ford said. "By itself, it isn't enough to drive Bill from a dreamer's head; but instantly telling the difference between dreams and reality takes the power out of most of his simplest psychic illusions." He nodded toward Dipper. "For instance, knowing you were dreaming might have saved you entirely from Bill taking over your body."

Dipper blinked. "Wait. What do you mean?"

Ford stared at him. "The computer," he said. "When Bill waited for you to nod off and used a dream to make you think the computer was going to self-destruct."

"He did what?"

"Dipper, Fiddleford never installed a self-destruct sequence on that computer," Ford said. "I... thought you figured that out?"

Dipper stared at Ford. He slid to the floor, lay down, and stared at the ceiling. Mabel leaned forward to pat his head.

Ford did not let himself grin at Dipper's reaction. Dipper had been through a traumatic experience, and finding out there was something else he personally could have done to avoid it all had to be devastating, and therefore—therefore—his dramatic reaction was not funny.

Ford cleared his throat and politely avoided calling attention to Dipper. "And—actively controlling your own dreams won't prevent Bill from controlling them as well; but it arms you with the same weapons he has—just like when you drove him out of Stanley's head. Plus, if there's anything in your dream you can't control, you can be surer that it's Bill's influence rather than a product of your own subconscious. Which... is what makes it so strange that Bill would suggest you look into lucid dreaming. I'm not sure what to make of that."

"Maybe he just told us to be nice?" Mabel asked. "Maybe he really is trying to fix some of his mistakes."

Dipper raised a brow. "Do you really believe that?"

Mabel briefly looked thoughtful; then cracked up laughing. "Okay, I tried! But nope, not for one second!"

Ford chuckled. "Attagirl." He propped his chin in his hand as he thought. "There's a chance that Bill might not be up to anything actively nefarious. I strongly suspect he can't invade others' dreams in his current form—and if that's true, it might not make any difference to him if you know how to defend yourself against attacks he can't even use. And the only thing he's told you is to go look up lucid dreaming—a technique invented by humans, for humans. He might be trying to ingratiate himself with us by offering up cheap information he suspects you could have found on your own."

Mabel said, "So he told us to be nice, for selfish reasons."

"I think that's the most likely explanation. He likes to offer little scraps of wisdom to his 'students'—and then hold them over your head later." Ford hated the possibility that Bill was trying to adopt his niece and nephew as his newest "students"—Mabel especially—but dancing around the uncomfortable possibility rather than pointing it out would just leave them more vulnerable to his tricks.

"That sounds like him," Mabel sighed. "Like the free birthday cake thing."

Ford tried to remember whether he'd mentioned how he'd gotten his cake when they'd been in Portland. "He told you about that, did he?"

"Yeah. While feeling bad for himself about not getting to go to your birthday party."

"Ha."

Dipper said, "So... you don't think there's any risk in learning how to lucid dream? Except that Bill might start bragging about how good he was to suggest it?"

Ford glanced again over the list of authors Bill had given Mabel. "Well... I don't immediately recognize any of these names; but I can double-check to make sure none of them are affiliated with Bill's known protégés or worshipers. But with that risk aside, I'm sure learning about lucid dreaming would be good for you."

"Yes!" Mabel pumped a fist in the air, startling Ford and Dipper. "Time for Mabeland Two, Electric Boogaloo: Democracy Edition! Founded by the people, for the people, with one hundred percent less psychic police states and zero triangle dictators! All the disco coconuts and yarn castles you already know and love, but this time with open borders and free speech!" She ran from the guest room, opened a door, slammed a door; opened the door again, and yelled, "Grunkle Fooord, can you give us a ride to the library!"

Dipper grimaced and looked at Ford. "Uh... Should we be worried about that?"

Ford considered that with pursed lips, then stood and grabbed his keys. "If she starts napping excessively, let me know so we can stage an intervention."

####

Mabel trudged into the living room, lay face down on the carpet between Bill and the TV, and said, "I hate you."

"Sure," Bill said agreeably.

"I mean it. I really hate you." And she said it with such vitriol, such vehemence, that Bill was absolutely positive she didn't hate him at all and would probably never be able to hate him again.

"All right, I'll play," Bill said. "What did I do this time?"

Mabel held a thick, dusty book over her head. It was titled Sleeping Awake: A Meditation and Study Guide for the Initiate Oneironaut. "You gave me homework over the summer."

"Oh, is that it? That's the limit, is it? That's the worst thing I could possibly do to you."

"Yes," Mabel said to the carpet. "It's completely unforgivable." She paused. She lifted her head. "Um. You... do know we're joking, right? The joke is that we're pretending homework is worse than all the other stuff you did, when it definitely isn't? I'm stiiill not exactly sure what your moral compass looks like."

Bill said, "Relax, kid." Bill did not say that he understood that they were joking. "Here, lemme see how painful this is." He plucked the book from Mabel's hand, flipped through a few pages, and grimaced. "Oh wow. Oh, wow, this is drier than the Atacama. This isn't a 'meditation,' it's a textbook. Do they really spend a whole chapter talking about Frederik van Eeden? Gag me with a spoon." He flipped to the index, muttering, "Does this thing even go into milam, or are they completely reinventing the wheel?"

Mabel propped her chin in her hands. "Is it that bad?"

"Well, at first glance, it's not promising." He flipped toward the middle to skim some of the recommended exercises. "Pfff. I think the closest it'll get you to lucid dreaming is boring you to sleep."

Mabel groaned. "Dipper and I checked out like a dozen books on dreams and that was the least boring-looking one."

Bill shut the book and studied the cover. It showed a lush fantasy world with rainbows and colorful planets in the sky. "You know what they say about judging a book by its cover?"

"I know, I know." Mabel rolled over and flopped onto her back, staring at the ceiling. "I guess I'll try reading one of the other books." She let out a sigh. And then, deciding she hadn't expressed herself properly, she let out an even louder, deeper sigh.

Bill laughed, then considered the cover of Sleeping Awake again. "Ahh, what the heck," he muttered, "what else am I gonna do with myself today?" He waved the book at Mabel. "Hey. What if I read through some of them for you? Let you know which ones are a waste of time and which ones might be helpful?"

Mabel considered that. "Seriously? It's a lot of books and they all look boring."

"Sure, why not? If it's too boring to stand, I'll quit. But oneironautics is one of my specialities, I'll probably find the contents more interesting than you would. And, anyway—" Bill glanced away from Mabel self-consciously, voice dropping a tad, "anyway, I recommended lucid dreaming to fix a problem I caused, didn't I? I get why you kids won't let me teach you how to lucid dream—but it's not fair if I throw a couple names at you, make you do all the hard work, and pat myself on the back for helping out. The least I can do is endure a little boredom."

"Aw, Bill..." Mabel offered him a warm smile.

Bill looked at the ceiling. "Don't look at me like that, jeez. You're a sap, you know that?"

"You're the sap! You're like a tree: all bark on the outside and sap on the inside."

"I'll kill you if you ever say that again."

"I'll be right back!" Mabel sprinted upstairs; and a minute later, trudged back down, carrying a double armload of books. "Here." She dumped them in Bill's lap. A couple spilled on the floor.

"Whoa!" Bill scrambled to catch the escapees, and dropped another one. "Is this all of them?"

"All except the one Dipper's reading. The Encyclopedia of Dreams or something."

"That sounds like a waste of time. There's about as much overlap between dream interpretation and lucid dreaming as there is between astrology and astronomy. But hey, toss it my way when he's done with it. I wanna see what it says about dreams with pyramids and all-seeing eyes."

"Your ego's so big."

"Big as a universe, kid!" He started stacking the books beside him on the sofa, setting aside a promising-looking one that mentioned "Tibetan Dream Yoga" in the subtitle.

"I'll let him know. Thanks for the help, Bill!" Her afternoon now freed up, Mabel went upstairs to call Candy and Grenda and see what they were up to.

Bill listened as her footsteps ascended. He waited to hear the attic bedroom door shut.

And only then did he allow himself a small triumphant giggle.

He adored that girl. She was so trusting. He'd never have gotten his hands on this kind of educational material without her help. Finding her the most short-attention-span-friendly book was the least he could do as thanks; maybe he'd go the extra mile, leave bookmarks on the most useful chapters. Let her know just how good he could be to the people who did what he told them to.

He turned off the TV, cracked open the first book, and settled in to re-teach himself how to control dreams with a human mind.

####

(Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, I'd really appreciate a comment!)

[finniestoncrane]

Two Heads Are Better...

KTJL!Boomer x Fem!Reader, word count: 500 this is completely cheesy smut with no plot whatsoever but please enjoy reader and boomerang giving king shark the time of his life for no other reason than he deserves it 💙 request info • prompt list • send me a request • kofi • masterlist minors DNI!! 🔞 cw: oral sex, two dicks YEAH, idiot boomer my beloved

George's pace got faster and more aggressive as his own arousal grew. He was proud of himself, smugly satisfied with his skill-level, which meant even the act of giving any pleasure made him feel exponentially good about himself. Though he really did prefer getting his cock sucked rather than slobbering over someone else's dick, if he had to choose.

In the throes of his passion, and down to the fact that he had begun to grin wide, his teeth pressed down a little too hard on the sensitive skin, grazing along the head of the cock in his mouth.

"Be careful!"

The deep, booming voice was stern, disappointed more than angry.

"You do not need to approach this with violence and speed. It is not a competition, Boomerang."

Nananue took time between heavy, ecstasy laden breaths to chastise Digger. Looking up at him, George let one of Nanaue's cocks fall from his lips with a saliva enhanced 'pop', letting it bounce mid-air as strands of drool fell from it. With a familiar shit-eating grin, and his hand holding onto Nanaue's length at the base, he spoke.

"Yeah, but if it was, Sharko... who would be winning?"

George glanced at you from the sides of his eyes, smiling wide as he waited for what he hoped was the correct answer.

"I refuse to acknowledge this, although I will say that you have stopped, while your 'opponent' has continued."

Your heart fluttered at the minor semblance of praise, knowing that you were right not to get dragged in George's childish behaviour. Instead, you had kept your lips around Nanaue's second cock, bobbing your head down the length as far as you could go without gagging, knowing that the sound often upset him. You could almost see a sliver of a smile on his thin lips as you caught his stare, eyes focused on him as you holloed your cheeks and slid your own mouth down his shaft.

The moment of connection was ruined, however, by George's hand suddenly snaking up your thigh. Shooting him a sideways glance, you watched him back off immediately, hands in the air before curling one of them around Nanaue's cock and starting to stroke it.

"Alright! I just thought maybe we could all get a go! No need to be a baby about it."

In a strop, he turned back to face Nanaue's thighs, his hand listlessly stroking his cock, very little enthusiasm in his efforts now that he knew that he wasn't going to get any praise, and he certainly wasn't going to receive any pleasure in return either. In a churlish tone he mumbled some more, griping and somehow managing to stroke his ego in one swoop.

"How come he gets to have all the fun anyway... just cos he's got two. Size of mine, it would take both of you to cover it anyway."

His insolent muttering was quickly stifled as Nanaue gripped the back of George's head and pushed his mouth to his cock, which was immediately enveloped in his wide, open maw. The only way to truly get him to shut up.

[vanishedinvain]

𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐩

summary: the night before anthony and simon's duel from benedict's perspective.

warnings: angst, anxiety

a/n: wc: 546. this is a cut scene from ch. ii. of perfect all-american bitch, my benedict bridgerton x reader series where benedict becomes the viscount, but can be read as a standalone since this is a flashback sequence! despite how long the chapters already are, that's after i've spent a full day editing them lol, so i'm thinking of posting scenes that i've cut/would've liked to include in the main story but wasn't super relevant to the plot (like this one)

Benedict and Colin exited the study feeling about a decade older than when they walked in. Anthony had provided them grimly detailed instructions on what to do in both of the worst case scenarios. The two younger brothers congregated in Benedict’s bedchamber to go over the logistics one last time. 

Colin was to remain on guard at the home. He would arrange for a hired hack to be at the house to transport Anthony to either the docks or the hospital. He needed to keep Daphne from interfering, their other siblings away from any violent sights, and their mother calm.

Benedict needed to contact the solicitor to secure their financials. They would need to give notice of either death or disappearance to the people of Aubrey village and to Parliament. They might have the Bow Street Runners called on them in a few days time. Benedict might have to arrange for the funeral and a casket and—

Oh dear, the room was spinning.

Benedict had been running through the list in his head for the past few hours, his cursed version of counting sheep. Colin was snoring on the bench at the foot of the bed, occasionally bumping against the frame. 

Colin seemed a great deal calmer than Benedict. He seemed quite sure that the duke would yield, or that they would both fire their pistols wide. Perhaps, he was truly that optimistic, if a bit naive. But perhaps, he was only putting up a front. Because when Benedict suggested Colin go back to his own bedchamber once they were through, his younger brother had insisted he was too comfortable to move.

It was a bald-faced lie if he ever saw one. Colin was taller than Benedict, which meant his legs were scrunched up when he was horizontal on the bench. But he managed to fall asleep anyway, and Benedict draped a spare blanket over him before retiring to bed himself. 

And truthfully, Benedict did not want to be alone either. If this was their last night of normality, he would rather spend it together than apart. He laid staring at the ceiling until the first streams of sunlight threatened to breach the inky sky.

It was time.

They made their way down to Anthony’s study. This would be Colin’s post; close enough to the main entrance to execute his tasks, but hidden away from the staff, and more importantly, their mother.

Benedict clasped a hand on Colin’s shoulder; he hoped the gesture came across strong and reassuring, but Benedict felt more like he was grasping onto a life-jacket.

Colin was still boyish, the baby fat not quite melted off his face, and looked entirely too young to be dealing with this. He mirrored his brother, also grabbing Benedict’s shoulder. “This whole affair will all be over in a few short hours,” Colin said with a small smile.

Benedict couldn’t bring himself to agree as it would be disingenuous. There was something peculiar in the air this morning, as hokey as that sounded. Something just wasn’t sitting right with him, but he couldn’t put doubts in Colin’s head. 

He was the older one, so act like it. “The only way out is through,” he said with the solemn resolve to bring this business to an end.

why was this cut? as much as i liked exploring the relationship between colin and benedict (tbh i love getting the chance to explore any bridgerton sibling relationship hence why beneloise got a whole prologue), but 1. i was approaching a ridiculous word count and 2. it didn't entirely make sense for benedict to start the story from the night before.

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[soulofatorturedpoet]

my opinions on the 2002 the count of monte cristo film

Idek why i even do this to myself anymore, why do i even try to watch any movie adaptations of books with complex female characters. I finished the 2002 the count of monte cristo film and in short it was absolutely horrible. I hated how much the story changed/removed so many detrimental things to the plot. Aswell as the characters, the thing i hated most was how horrible they portrayed mercedes. Ofc I didnt like how they portrayed any of the characters truly, but what made me the most upset was how mercedes was done. Im beginning to see a pattern among female "love interests" in these types of adaptations. They are always watered down to being helplessly reliant on men around them. rather than being able to be their own person all they become is the shadow of the men around them. A big thing about all of this is the fact that its a movie. A story this complex and this long should in no way be turned into just a movie. Anyways, mercedes never loved fernand and was taken advantage of by him when she was at her lowest, and moved on from edmond a long time ago. By the end the only person that was on her mind was her son. She was at peace with edmond after she got everything off her chest and was ready to let him go. So in no way should she be reliant only on one man when she is fully capable of having her own articulate thoughts and is completely fine on her own. And about fernands character, which i do not support what he did, just from picking up the book i know that he would never say anything along the lines of "whore" about her. They made his whole character revolve around his love for mercedes rather than showing the true evil side of him, such as his past with haydee (who wasnt even in the movie) and how he was overly obbsesed with his honor. He even shot himself in the end over losing it. The way he was characterized in this movie just sucked really. Another thing i absolutely hated the was the watered down revenge plan. In the original novel edmonds plans for revenge were complex and lasted years to complete, but in this movie, which again should not have been a movie in the first place, took his revenge plan and threw it out the window. As said in the movie itself "death is too good for them" but then he turns his back on that and just kills his enemies rather than giving them the long agonizing suffering just as he had to go through. He becomes too lively, rather than the revenge filled spirit of a man he is supposed to be. Also, by the end of it, edmond wanted to let go of his past life, along with mercedes. He no longer had any desire to live a life with her after feeling so betrayed, even after he figured out her side of the story. He just wanted to let it all go and this adaptation took that away from him. The lack of such important characters in the story such as the entire morrell family plus a few of the villeforts really put the nail in the coffin of his final grasps of humanity. Without these people edmond would be as good as a walking corpse. He wouldnt have any belief in love if it wasn't for julie and emmanuel. He wouldn't have any desire to protect anyone if it wasnt for Maximilian and valentine. He wouldn't have felt any remorse or have fallen from his trance of revenge if it wasn't for edwards death. He would have lost all hope in humanity if it wasnt for morrell being the only one who hadn't betrayed him after so long. These people are all detrimental to edmonds character development and they were either removed completely or given a different role in the story. All of this shows the person who made this adaptation didn't care to even open the book and read a few sentences, all they thought was "ooo cool revenge guy who had his girl stolen....this will make for a good movie!" This is the worst thing someone could do to such a masterpiece and i think if we cant learn to interpret books how they are meant to be interpreted then we have no business trying to turn them into any type of movie/film adaptation

Sorry for the rant i just had to get this out

[lovepollution]

Watching The Split: Barcelona like

Anyway, I have THOUGHTS.

There is NO WAY Christie wouldn't have come back from NY for Hannah. He has been in love with her since he was a teenage, he never got over her, but we're meant to believe he was just like, "lol no your family is too much"?! I don't fucking think so.

Liv was annoying in the series and honestly, she's even more annoying in the special. I would have much rather have had it been say, Nina's wedding to someone she loved since she got a weak storyline that offered no character growth anyway.

How were Nathan and Hannah OK with Liv, who is like 20, getting married?! All the shit they've been through themselves and seen and it's just like, "Yeah, this is fine."

Speaking of Nathan: didn't we already resolve all this "I'm having a midlife crisis and I still love Hannah but I'm with Kate now" stuff at the end of s3? If Nathan was going to be there, a better storyline would be him and Hannah having to come together to try and convince Liv to call of the wedding.

I get that Tillie and Vinnie never really had any storyline or even dialogue in the series, but it was still a pretty weird move to just have them backpacking (?) and then Facetiming but we don't see them.

While I'm sure in 2024 vicars do have sex outside marriage, I find it pretty hard to believe the Church of England would be happy if a vicar got a woman who wasn't his wife pregnant. I mean, Glen seemed very nonchalant that Rose didn't want to get married and it was weird.

That whole Archie having a fake fiancee plot point was just plain weird, very Hallmark movie-esque and frankly, made no sense; why, exactly, would Alvaro want his secret mistress at his son's wedding under the guise of her being engaged to another man?

I know that a lot of the law stuff has always been very sketchy factually, but English solicitors just instantly knowing how to navigate the Spanish legal system was farcical.

I generally think Abi Morgan is a great writer - I loved s1 and s2 of TS, although s3 made me go hmm in a good few places - but the writing on this was not it. One of the only moments I really liked was the scene between Archie and Hannah at the end where she's talking about feeling insecure and sacred, despite me obviously not being for their relationship.

Anyway, I spent the whole thing thinking up a way I can make a fix-it fic where Christie comes back into Hannah's life with a good reason why he didn't come back and I might have the germ of an idea... (Also, definitely still gonna finish my canon continuation incase anyone might be wondering.)

[itsnothingofinterest]

So was the quirk singularity dropped entirely or was it just a reason to give shigaraki a body horror power while still having erasure stop his quirks all along and never meant to be a problem. Like it’s never come up or been used except for as a reason for afo deku and shigaraki to be stronger.

Yeah that plot point was never resolved, not even in a super contrived way like the bystander effect thing.

I guess humanity's just going extinct sometime in the next century or so.

Although as I believe I've said before, I'm reasonably sure Shigaraki's body horror hands weren't related directly to the singularity, but instead to the singularity-proofing procedure he went through. Like hey just come with the improved hardware to handle more complex software (quirks).

And as for Deku...how did he relate to the Singularity again? I mean Yoichi says OFA passed it, but it never really got uncontrollable for Deku (except that one brief time, does that count?) and it almost seems like Yoichi was just talking about the threshold where Deku could talk to the vestiges rather than anything related to Garaki's theory.

(Honestly the term/concept seemed to kind of just get thrown around haphazardly to things unrelated to what Garaki & meatball boy described to us once or twice like that, basically just attached to any quirk looking really strong or scary.)

I'm pretty sure the only semi-confirmed basic quirk we saw to be truly post-Singularity all by itself is Eri's Rewind.

Goodness was the Singularity a very weirdly handled plot line in the end, wasn't it? Anyway, sorry I went on a tangent there. But yeah, doomsday plot line got dropped, guess that means the world is ending. Sucks I guess.

[changetheprophecy81]

Unpopular opinion

Ron and/or Hermione should have died in the deathly hallows. And I say this as someone who loves these characters (probably Hermione more than Ron), but here me out

Now let's be fucking real, I really like ron, but he really wasn't skilled or prepared enough to fight in a war against voldemort, be it magically or mentally. And that's ok! He's still 17, he's not meant to be fighting a war. And to some degree he probably knew that the chances of him actually making it were pretty slim too. But he still stuck with Harry anyways coz there's no way he was going to let his best friend go through with this alone. Because that's who ron is, he'd rather die fighting beside his best friend, for his family, his muggleborn gf and for the cause than play it safe and hide.

Now coming to Hermione, things get a tad trickier here. Yes, she is very skilled and powerful and quick on her feet. But is she powerful enough to take on an army of adult DEs who've trained for years and have experience from the first wizarding war? To win against the darkest wizard who ever lived, who's said to be worse than Grindelwald, who's the most powerful wizard in the whole world after Dumbledore? No, I'd say she isn't. Because she's also fucking 17, she's not even done with school yet. But I think she'd live longer than Ron, or that there's a better chance of her making it out alive. But if she did die it would be extra heartbreaking coz a) Harry (and the readers) just lost 2 of the people who had been there from the very beginning, b) Hermione's parents would live on in Australia, not remembering that they had a daughter, not knowing that their daughter gave her life in hopes of saving her friend and creating a better world.

I majorly have 2 specific reasons for being this sadistic. The first one is the fact that the plot dumbs down it's main villain and his followers just to make the kids win. Voldemort (during Harry's time) is probably the dumbest villain ever written, he doesn't live up to his hype. People have already discussed how stupid his gof plan was. In ootp, during the DoM fight Lucius says that voldemort can't come get the prophecy himself coz the ministry is filled with ppl and he would risk revealing himself. But it's possible for 6 mostly dumb teenagers and an army of DEs, (who hv just escaped azkaban and are sought after by the ministry) to enter in undetected? Doesn't 👏 make 👏 any 👏 sense. The supposedly feared DEs who were trained by voldemort himself can't win against a group of teenagers. It's surprising how long it takes them to take the kids down in the DoM battle. The thing is though, this is out of character for ALL of them. It seems like they were dumbed down just so the MCs could make it out alive. Voldemort during the first WW started out as absolutely no one to having the highest class of the wizarding society obeying his every command. The whole wizarding world was so afraid of him that they wouldn't even say his name. The DEs picked out member after member of the original ootp, mostly coz they were outnumbered but also coz they're fucking death eaters. And ur telling me these guys can't fight kids? Pathetic. Also it doesn't make sense that most of the adults from the first war are dead but all the kids live. Like did the war become safer or sm shit? Instead i would have loved it if the trio got away with things in the first few books, but then realised what a war against voldemort actually means later on. But they won't back down, and they'll still stick with their friend and fight for each other and the cause anyways, and that vil have real, legitimate consequences

Now, the second reason is that it would have been an amazing but heartbreaking callback to book 1. Ron sacrifices himself in a game of chess and Hermione says that there are more important things than books and cleverness, like friendship and bravery. Ron's line of "It's you who has to go on Harry, I know it! Not me, not Hermione, you!" would have also come full circle. Back then they were still 11, so they could still get their happy ending. Now they're in a real war and the stakes are higher, but they'll stick to what they started anyways. Ron sacrifices himself so the other 2 can move forwards, Hermione's intelligence gets her further but she still needs to part with Harry. Harry needs to leave them behind and face voldemort alone because that's how it was always meant to be

And finally, it would have given us a more bittersweet ending to the series instead of that vanilla 'all is well' epilogue. Harry has lost almost every one he loved. But there's still life, there's still hope, and he lives by cherishing their memories and making their sacrifice have meaning. Kinda like the ending of the hunger games. Ik this is a kids book, but Harry Potter as a series is incredibly deep and deals with a lot of fucked up shit, so I think it could handle it if it was written well.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk

[green-eyed-prophet]

@windsson (plotted starter)

Life in the Encanto had been quite different for everyone since the gap in the mountains had opened up. Knowledge of the once-isolated community had proven to spread rather quickly once its citizens became free to explore and conduct business out in the world that lay beyond its borders.

As such, the tiny village found itself receiving newcomers more often than ever-- and no longer were they just desperate refugees who always happened to stumble across the valley in their greatest times of need. No, they were visitors from all sorts of faraway places and unique walks of life, most of them traveling there out of curiosity towards the place that had somehow managed to keep itself off of any map for just over five decades.

Some of them, however, came in search any truth to the tales about a place of miracles and magic.

Although all the members of la familia Madrigal were expected to assist any person in the town's limits, visitor or otherwise, Bruno had largely tried to keep his distance from most of these strangers unless specifically requested to help. He had always felt extra awkward around people he didn't know too well, anyway, and the absolute last thing he needed was to somehow trigger the local rumor mill into once again soiling his not-yet-completely-clean reputation with those outside of his family. However, as much as he wanted to continue to keep himself out of the way of any potential scrutiny, he knew there was good reason for him to be at least somewhat involved in such affairs now, as the arrival of the Encanto's two most recent travelers had been heralded in one of his visions.

It had been a vision of two men, one old and one young, walking together-- with the older one rather roughly pulling the younger one along by the arm as he stumbled behind, a walking stick of some sort grasped in his free hand. ...It hadn't been either a good vision or a bad vision, per se, it had just been a vision. But even so, he knew from lots and lots of prior experience that if any person made even the smallest, briefest appearance in a vision, it meant without the shadow of a doubt that fate had something planned for them.

Upon recognizing the two men as they walked into the valley in the exact manner that he had seen in the vision just days later, he had made the decision to report what he had seen to his mother, who had in response given him the short, simple advice to "keep an eye on them," and keep her in the know of any further developments.

So, that was exactly what Bruno had been doing over the past couple of days-- keeping an eye on the young, blind man, Makani, and his father as they sought to fulfill their goal to curing Makani's condition with the help of magic food, all the while silently wondering if such a thing was even possible to accomplish. Agustín and Mirabel had both been eating Julieta's cooking for years, and it hadn't cured either of them of the need to wear their glasses, so was it really going to help someone who completely lacked sight?

Nevertheless, Julieta, ever the kind soul she was, seemed to certainly have been trying her best to make something work, and thus, Makani had been spending a great deal of time eating meals at la casa Madrigal as they slowly made their way down the list of every recipe in her repertoire. During many of these mealtimes, Bruno had been attempting to sit within earshot, never speaking but always observing and listening to what was going on in a way that he hoped wasn't too obvious. ...Well, not that Makani could see him trying to gather more information, but still.

Yes, it was nosy, but it had to be for the greater good, right? Makani and his father had to have been in the vision for a reason, and he wanted-- no, needed to know what it was.

He was currently sitting in a chair near the corner of Casita's dining room, only really half-reading the book he held in his hands. Julieta had disappeared into the kitchen to work on her daily batch of healing arepas, while Makani's father had gone off to do... something or other, leaving his blind son alone at the table to eat the rest of the soup that, like all the other food he had consumed in his time here, had seemingly failed to restore his eyesight.

A few of the floor tiles beneath the chair suddenly shifted in a familiar gesture for attention, and Bruno glanced down quizzically at them.

"...What?" he asked the house in a barely-audible whisper.

A few more tiles rolled up towards where Makani was finishing his food, followed by the floor giving another small nudge to Bruno's sitting spot. Casita spoke in a language only the Madrigals could understand, and to Bruno's trained mind, its message was clear as day. Go talk to him.

He hesitated, an all too familiar feeling of shyness washing over him. Sure, talking to the other man might've helped him in his quest to figure out what his vision had meant, but other than a passing greeting or two, he had never actually spoken to Makani before.

"...I-I can't-" He was in the process of saying when the tiles suddenly shifted hard enough to nearly knock him out of his chair.

"Ah-! Okay, okay... Geez..." Knowing he wouldn't be winning this fight, Bruno sighed as he stood up and closed his book, being sure to give the floor a quick glare before making his way over towards the table. He knew Casita only wanted the best for him and the rest of the family, but boy, could the house be pushy sometimes.

If Makani had heard his footsteps, or the soft knocks he had performed upon the wood of a nearby wall for luck before approaching, he didn't show it. Bruno was never sure how to start conversations, especially with strangers, but eventually mustered up the courage to take a deep breath and speak.

"Um... hi." he greeted softly, giving a small wave on instinct despite the fact that the gesture would go unseen. "...Er... Makani, right...?"

[itsdefinitely]

Definitely, can you pretty please go into depth about the MC outfits because I would LOVE to hear that /gen

WOOHOO!! YIPPEE!! DANCING AROUND MY LITTLE CORNER FULL OF RED TAPE AND MADNESS!!

gonna start in no particular order

TINKY COSTUME my beloved and beloathed (the colors fucked me up). to be honest most of it is pretty obvious. the maze design on the sleeves and the box on the shirt is meant to represent the bastard's box, but i imagine that box glowing in the game. for important plot or something. i just want the box to glow. the pants are pretty much directly because i wanted to give the MC boots (i didn't draw shoes because hell if i was gonna design six good looking pairs of shoes) and they fit in with the pattern on the sleeves + the overall steampunk-ish vibe tinky has. the outfit itself wasn't really steampunky or yellow, but these outfits were made to compliment the lord, so rather than two engineers, it's like a mad scientist and his loyal lab rat. so something that would be easy to move around in

and now is a good a time as any to mention this. all of the outfits were made with the CoTSC designing them in mind, which is why they look all different, because i feel like the church has different views on how each lord wants to be treated. like they're pretty sure nibbly is good with things being more modern, but wiggly and pokey would be more "traditional" i guess. the church is just convinced some of them need to be held to the same standard they were given decades ago

anyway. blinky. the whole thing with the blindfold is that the CoTSC thinks you're not meant to look at blinky. blinky actually doesn't care whether you look at him or not, but there's this air of "you're not supposed to do this" when the MC tries to take the blindfold off. the eye button-thing was very fun for me to think about because i saw this button a while ago that was the pupil as the button, and i've been trying to incorporate it into something ever since. the pants are more of a stylistic choice than anything, so interpret it how you will

nibbly's costume was actually so fun for me to draw. i wanted it to look like something out of a fucked-up twisted willy wonka. the base for the top is really similar to tinky's but that's fine because they probably all steal something from the others. tinky's costume steals the specific yellow from blinky's costume, who steals the midsection part from pokey's costume, who steals the whole robe thing from wiggly's costume. also there's no cape or flowy thing for nibbly's costume because if the MC failed i don't think the CoTSC would want nibbly mad at them for having to chew extra fabric. also you need to be able to run without tripping over yourself if you try to escape him :]

pokey's costume was also really fun. obviously the grey, blue, and the cracks (it's also supoosed to be lightning!) are from his canon design, but the glasses are because i wanted something on the MC's face like the mask. it couldn't be another mask because pokey would get offended by that i think, and sunglasses are in the superstar/thespian ballpark. this costume also has the most stars on it (they go all the way around the hem of the robe) because of pokey's connection to space

finally, wiggly's costume. this is the one i think i have the most to talk about. first and foremost: there's a full black outfit under the robe. the fingerless gloves and pants are actually one jumpsuit, like president howard's suit in black friday. the collar thing is connected to the cape, which is split into six parts to be kind of like wiggly's tentacles. the fluffy collar is meant to be like the doll's fur. the whole thing is meant to keep the MC insulated, because i imagine the temperature drops whenever a lord is around, and especially when THE lord in black shows up. all of the sniggles (+ blinky) have fur, so they've probably had to adapt to the cold. now that i'm thinking about it, the CoTSC aren't that antagonistic in the costume design process. they cater to both the lords and the MC's needs, or whatever they think those needs are. like i said before, wiggly's costume is meant to be more "traditional", like the robes they wear. this costume is similar to what they'd put you in before sacrificing you

thanks for coming to my braindump

[galvanizedfriend]

S5 rewriting which season five? what are you re-writing? I have questions many questions

Hi! Thanks for your ask! 😊 Also, apologies beforehand because this is me right now:

I have a toxic trait and that's wanting to rewrite the show. 🫠 I once had a convo with @definedareasofuncertainty about what TVD would've been like if The Originals had never happened, and we started imagining what season 5 of TVD would've been like in that scenario. We unearthed an interview where Julie Plec 🤢 said that the baby plot was always going to be a part of the story anyway, they just didn't know whether they'd actually get the green light from the network to move forward with the spin off. So then we started thinking what TVD would've been like with the magical mystery baby in it, and the S5 rewriting was born. 😂

So it's not what dream S5 would've like for me, but rather a more realistic take on what the show could've been like. Because hear me out.

When you think about it, there are certain aspects of TVD S5 that suggest that Klaus was always meant to be a part of it, which explains why S5 is so bad tbh. Everything feels so very pointless. It's the most forgettable season of TVD, and that's saying a lot, considering how bad some of the other seasons were, because the entire thing is just fillers. If you consider the idea that the Travelers abhored vampires, thought they were abominations and wanted to free the earth from them, then it would make sense for them to want to get rid of the Originals instead of just going for a bunch of teenagers who are at the very base of the supernatural food chain. And if you add in someone pregnant with a mystical anti-Christ, then it makes even more sense that the Travelers would want to obliterate Mystic Falls and everyone in it to make sure the baby wouldn't be born. The whole 'we know what's coming, this child will be the end of magic as we know it' makes much more sense with Travelers than regular witches because how would they know that? The whole concept of Travelers just makes more sense to me if we put them up against the Originals. Even the Augustine society plot makes more sense with Originals thrown in. I'm sure Wes knew exactly who Klaus was and would be dying to get an introduction, not to mention the idea that they would've probably had close relations to Mikael when trying to create the ripper virus.

And it also kinda justifies the choice of Hayley as the mother figure, something that never made any sense to me. It's because she was completely expendable. She was barely an extra on the show, so it would be very easy to get rid of her. And in my head, she would definitely be dead by the end of the season. Where the witches caused her death in TO, it would've been the Travelers, except in TVD she wouldn probably not come back as a hybrid, she would've just stayed dead. She wasn't that important to the plot throughout S1 of TO, just carrying the baby around, which to me means that she was never meant to be a central point, but suddenly she had way more screen time than they'd anticipated she would get (also because Claire Holt decided to leave the show), so then they had to figure out how to write her as a lead.

Anyway, the source of all of this are the voices in my head, so take it with a grain of salt. 😂 I just think there are CLUES about the fact they did mean to write those two storylines as one at some point.

And that leads me to the fact that everything pointed towards Klaus and Caroline being together in S5. That part wasn't even subtle, S4 was a huge build up to them becoming a thing. And I think it would start with them kissing in that last scene of S4, Klaus showing up to save the day and Caroline's ass and gifting her with allowing Tyler to come back to town (I'm sure that would've been a greater discussion between them if he had stayed on the show for the final episodes prior to that, plus it would be more meaningful if Klaus was actually in town 😂 What was he going to do to stop Tyler anyway if he wasn't even there anymore?).

So in my rewrite they'd start the season by showing the two of them had spent a hot secret summer together. Then school starts and Caroline sort of expects things to go back to normal because it's convenient to her and how she excused herself in her guilty head, by rationalizing it all as a summer fling. She's leaving for college, where she will be rooming with her two best friends, and Tyler is expected to join them at some point even though she hasn't had any responses from him all summer, and in her mind, Klaus doesn't fit into that. There's no way to reconcile a romance with the big baddie and still lead the normal-ish life she expects to have. Klaus is obviously pissed off because he knows Caroline is in denial, and there's also the fact he's way too proud to be someone's dirty secret. Meanwhile Caroline is miserable and faced with the harsh truth she'd been denying all summer which is that she likes Klaus a lot more than she expected to but she's terrified of what everyone would think of her (and I personally think the next step in Caroline's TVD development would really be to let go of how much other people's opinions mattered to her. She had been on this journey since S1, of 'trying to become a better person' by shaping herself to meet other people's expectations, and it was about time she realized that she shouldn't have to change who she is in order to be liked or accepted, she shouldn't have to beg to be anyone's priority, which then leads back to Klaus and the fact he always admired her big personality, flaws and all, and the fact she gets to be 100% herself around him is a huge part of why she feels so much more at ease with him than she did with Tyler, for instance, but I digress).

While they are caught in this crossfire of sorts, him sulking in MF and her pretending not to sulk in Whitmore and having to deal with the mysterious new roommate's death and all, Elijah shows up with someone he just rescued from the hands of an angry witch mob in New Orleans: pregnant Hayley. And that's where the two plots would come together.

Obviously the whole baby thing would've been a much smaller plot within the whole of S5 than it ever was in TO, for obvious reasons. But it would be a point of contention between Klaus and Caroline and it would tie in the several different running storylines of the season at the end. I'm thinking Caroline would probably be the one trying to save Hayley and the baby from the siege of Mystic Falls at the end. And obviously, by the time we get there, with Tyler having come back and tried to kill Hayley, and revealed the secret to the whole town, etc, etc, Caroline will have come to terms with how she feels for Klaus and the two of them will be unapologetically together.

In a broader sense I also think this would offer a good chance to explore Elijah's character and his relationship with Katherine and everything she meant to him. The fact he wasn't there when she dies (and Klaus was) was just baffling to me. We see him him giving up on her in a 1 minute scene and that's it. Bringing him back to MF under these circumstances would create a much broader opportunity to explore what is his character's eternal conflict of family duty x self satisfaction, where he would realize that in order to keep the whole home situation in control, and mantain Hayley hidden and as secret, he'd have to stay away from Katherine, and then eventually she would die, and he would realize he'd once again missed a chance of being happy for the sake of his family while Klaus gives fuck all to fatherhood and all that.

I ALSO think it would've been so much fun if Caroline would invite Klaus instead of Katherine to help cure Stefan's PTSD. Klaus would have the time of his life tbh. And this is 100% my wishful thinking, but Klefan is real in my heart and it was about time the show incorporated that into its canon (although I very much doubt they'd ever do it, the cowards).

I'm so sorry for how long and rambly this is. 🥲

[andreal831]

I understand you have your favorite characters and preferred ships, but you don't need to tear down characters and ships you dislike to uplift the ones you do like. People can like their Klaus ships, just the same way you like your Elijah ships. And it's even to create fantasy ships for fanfic purposes. Fanfic isn't real anyway, so it's not that serious. It's all just in good fun. And as for your point about Klaus and Genevieve, it's okay for Klaus to have some fun too and for women to be interested in him too. Klaus and Genevieve were both consenting adults, it wasn't even a serious relationship, so I don't see the problem with it. You make it sound as if women who show interest in Klaus and not Elijah are any lessee than those who are interested in Elijah. Not everything revolves around Elijah, not everyone had to be pining over him only. He's not the only one allowed to have sexy time. I'm just saying.

I say this with all due respect, if my post about my least favorite ships upset you, you may need to take a step back from fandoms or just tumblr specifically.

When we are in fandoms, it's important to protect our own peace, so block tags you don't want to see or avoid reading posts that may trigger you. I was specifically asked what my least favorite ships are. I tagged it correctly and emphasized it was my opinion multiple times. It doesn't need to affect you or your opinions/favorites. If you disagree, that's absolutely fine. It does not impact my opinions, just like my opinions shouldn't impact you. Fandoms are fun and we can have great discourse but this response isn't it.

I'm not sure if you are a regular follower and just having a rough day and this set you off or if you are new and went through my blog, either way, you've read my posts and know that I always answer truthfully and try to stay as consistently as possible. Yes, I have biases and welcome people to call me out on them. However, I don't believe that's what's happening here. But I'll still address your concerns.

First, I never tore down any characters in that post. Rather I addressed why I didn't like the ships. Critiquing a character/ships is not the same as tearing them down. Art is meant to be critiqued. Second, I did not use that post to uplift any of my ships I like. I personally think you should be able to like characters/ships without having to discuss others. I often avoid talking about characters/ships I don't like because it brings discourse like this and I don't prefer it. But again, I answered an ask. I also never said you can't like a Klaus ship. Klamille is a top 5 ship for me. But I won't apologize for not liking his other, more abusive ships. You can like them all you want, but just because you do, it doesn't mean I need to. Yes, Klaus and Genevieve are consenting adults, I never claimed they weren't. That is the least of their problems. The problem lies in the fact that she was plotting against his family, specifically plotting to murder his unborn child. Especially considering Klaus has always made Rebekah feel bad for her choice in men when he is actively inviting their enemy into their home.

And finally, I get you were upset by my post but this idea that I don't like these ships because they don't revolve around Elijah is a little absurd. I even mention an Elijah ship I don't like. There are actually several that I've discussed. I don't like this idea that every character has to be obsessed with one character. It doesn't make sense for the specific characters and makes a boring story. Again, Cami is one of my top favorite women in the show which negates a lot of the points you made.

I'm sorry you go so upset by that post. Tumblr should be a fun place where you engage with material that makes the fandoms exciting. If you have any more concerns, I welcome you to reach out. Hopefully in a less hostile tone next time.

Hope you have a great new year!

[evedaser]

allllrighteo folks I finished cligés you know what that means:

ripping the bandaid off first - i did not like cligés. not the character, the character is fine, but i sighed and said "thank god" when i saw "Here ends Chretien's work" written at the end of the page.

why? you may ask. uh. how do i say. the short of it is that i don't like romance.

the long of it is that the love-at-first-sight is uncompelling to me, and having multiple full pages at a time of internal discussion and pining is fucking annoying. i don't care!! shut up!! i understand that this love is causing you suffering because you do not know if the object of your affections returns your desire, you don't need to waste BOTH our time by explaining it in the most tell-don't-show, over-wrought, verbose way that was humanly possible. these two characters are beautiful and lovely and made for each other and yada-yada-yada you haven't made me care even half as much as i would need to in order to enjoy any part of any of those sequences. unfortunately for all of us it happens multiple times.

once again chrétien shows his mastery in ways completely separate from the insufferable romance plot in how fun and compelling all the battles and tourneys were. i loved them!! cligés using subterfuge and trickery in his battles was incredible and created palpable tension, and was a wonderful mirror to alexander having done the same thing back in britain to help arthur earlier on. both the battle against the traitor of london and the duke of saxony were wonderful and fun and interesting, i appreciated the tactics of the greeks relying also on cleverness rather than just on strength and glory like they often do for british knights. arthur and his court were a lot of fun, and apart from the pages where alexander and soredamors were thinking about each other, i really liked his story!!

that being said, i wasn't AGAINST any of the romances. i was happy for alexander and soredamors when they got together, as i was for cligés and fenice. i WAS rooting for them, but god it was just those really annoying sections that i talked about earlier, they really got to me. uh i also didn't particularly like the romeo and juliet plot they pulled but tbf i don't have any better ideas apart from like poisoning the emperor or something. ok anyways silly time

the NECROMANCER NURSEMAID named THESSALA OF THESSALY. incredible. unbelievable. perfect. i love her. chrétien have you ever spoken to a woman in your life. name one woman

chrétien trying to frame john the architect as a man who is loyal to and who loves cligés, but also his response to cligés' request being "there is nothing I would not do at your bidding to secure freedom for myself and my wife and children. also i don't have a choice because you're my lord" is. hey you're not doing a great job convincing me that this man likes having cligés as his lord.

ok so i get that alis had bad counsel and stuff, but what kind of crack was the emperor of germany smoking when he, immediately upon hearing the request, promised fenice to greece AFTER already having promised her to saxony??? bro double crossing his fucking neighbours/vassals what an idiot. like, everyone else in this story can make their excuses, but this guy truly just made a bad stupid dumb decision with no reasoning behind it at all except that greece is apparently cooler than germany

cligés doing the equivalent of swapping masks at a masquerade and genuinely confusing hundreds of trained knights for sometimes days at a time on multiple occasions is hillarious actually. keep it up liar boy!

ok no but actually why did we spend thirty pages with alexander and soredamors before getting to cligés. i really really do understand setting up all the narrative parallels between father and son, but truly the parallel was never mentioned and never meant anything. i don't even think alexander was mentioned after his death, alis' promise was always considered "to cligés" after that point. more than it just feeling pointless to the overall story (i really enjoyed it), WHAT HAPPENED TO THE COOL SHIRT???? THEY SPENT SO MUCH TIME TALKING ABOUT THAT DAMN SILK SHIRT AND IT JUST DISAPPEARED 😭

"For since her days every emperor has been fearful of being deceived by his wife when he remembered how Fenice deceived Alis, first with the potion he drank, then later by that other ruse. Therefore every empress, whoever she is and regardless of her riches and nobility, is kept like a prisoner in Constantinople, for the emperor does not trust her when he recalls the story of Fenice. He keeps her confined each day to her chamber ... and allows no male to be with her unless he is a eunuch from childhood," 0_0 w h a t .

[rudnitskaia]

I'll probably regret this note later, but I need to sort my thoughts on this somehow, so let it be. It's not a review, not a feedback, it’s just a skein of thoughts.

Let me start from afar: I wasn't going to watch Joker: Folie à Deux after all the scathing reviews I've seen. But then I accidentally found out that Sylvain Chomet took part in the creation of the credits for it, and I decided: to hell with it, at least for the sake of the credits, but I have to see it. I'll watch the first part and then the sequel in a row.

And now I'm in such contradictory feelings that it's hard to describe.

Don't get me wrong: this is a really bad movie. Everything about it is broken beyond repair: the genre, the plot, the pace of the narrative, the dialogues, the characters’ development arcs. Everything that could be screwed up is screwed up…

…on purpose.

The team that made the first movie couldn't have made its sequel so exceptionally bad by accident. It's really pure sabotage.

And from that point of view, this picture is genius. Joker: Folie à Deux is the bloody Taras Bulba of the cinema world. “I gave you life, I will also kill you!” Todd Phillips says from the screen with every misplaced song, every drawn-out scene, every gratuitous feint. I know of only two precedents of this sort, and both are from the world of literature, not cinema. Burgess, who considered and told everyone that A Clockwork Orange is unworthy of attention and even dangerous to read, and Conan Doyle, who hated Sherlock Holmes so much that he tried to kill Sherlock, but had to resurrect him anyway to meet the public's desires.

Joker: Folie à Deux truly fell victim to its creator's hatred of both the character and the industry that demands to put a comma, or even never-ending ellipses, to the place where a period is unquestionably placed. I can only applaud Phillips’ courage to bring this statement to the screens so unashamedly explicitly.

What I can't neither understand, nor justify, on the other hand, is Phillips' apparent inability to draw the line between fiction and reality. To treat a character as a real-living person is sacrilege. A fictional character, no matter how vivid and solid this character is, is still a character who is meant to tell a story, to be a tool, a prism through which the viewer or reader perceives certain events. For some unknown reason, Phillips hates his character, or, to be more precise, his actions, as if he was a real person. And this statement he conveys through the story of Arthur Fleck in the second part in full. Phillips literally forces his character to become pathetic, so that God forbid anyone to have pity for him or desire to empathize and sympathize with him, forces the character to personally debunk the image he himself created, as if telling us from the screen: “Wake up, idiots, this is not the way it fucking happens”.

Thanks for the revelation, bro, we're aware. We're watching a movie. A fictional story about fictional people.

I can kind of understand that level of judgement from people who’re not involved into creating any fictional stories, at least it’s explainable, but from a person who is a long-term director himself? Never. That's a level of judgement like "videogames make people violent".

I'm fully convinced that if there was to be a second part of Joker, it shouldn't have been about him. Arthur Fleck's story didn't need a continuation, at least not a direct one. But the world Phillips created in the first movie still had plenty of material to explore, and Harleen Quinzel's character could have mediated that journey for us. She is a fan of a serial killer (there is a wagonload of such people in reality), a person living in illusions, a victim of a fake idol. You want a musical? Let it be. In her head. Like that very episode of Scrubs, you know which I mean. But it had to be her story. Not Joker’s/Arthur’s story. Not a love story, not at all — or rather, not a story about the romantic kind of love that Phillips mocks and makes fun of for the entire sequel. It must have been a story of love that was fanatical, sick, false a priori, doomed to shatter in the end. In this story, Joker was needed purely in the background, not as a real character, but as an image in fantasies, and then Harleen, blinded by his fame she extols over herself or anything in her dull unremarkable reality, would’ve been our guide to the world that was changed by Joker’s unintentional influence, and I think you yourself are quite capable of realizing how many subjects could’ve been explored in interesting, multifaceted ways from such a delicious starting point. Not to mention the fact that it's just one variant of the starting point, because the main character could have been someone other than Harleen, and the time period relative to the events of the original could’ve been different... well, you got it, there was plenty of material to explore and develop.

And that's a damn shame it wasn’t.

One thing I know for sure is that I will not forget this movie. It's a fascinating specimen that I'll put in my personal mental cabinet of curiosities for two reasons. Adoration for how filigree bad it is — it takes courage, ingenuity, and a lot of resilience to do so, for any creator; and frustration over the fact that a really existing potential that could’ve been perfectly brought into existence in talented hands was thrown into the trashcan because of the creator's mere lack of understanding (which is doubly ironic in the context of the movie I’m talking about) of where the line between fiction and reality lies.

[esta-elavaris]

From @softdandelion for this writing ask ✨ (thank you!!)

hc + 🐈 for a pet/animal-themed headcanon

Early on, the dogs would be one of the few points of actual contention in their relationship - the kind that leads to arguments rather than just their usual love language of bickering.

When they get them, Theo would absolutely see them in a modern sense "these are my babies, they are to be treated as such" from a standpoint of like, pampering them (but she'd also have them well-trained because she's not one of the stupid types who's all "let's get a BIG dog and then let them be insanely aggressive and pretend it's cute, y'know?) -- and James would uhhhh disagree. He'd have much more of an "these are animals" view rather than Theo's "these are members of our family."

Lots of "if you're going to let the dogs sleep in the house that's one thing, but for the love of god they're banned from the bedroom - why...why is the dog on the bed? No. Absolutely not. This is ridiculous." while Theo insists that it's just as much the dogs' house as it is their house, and not allowing a pet on the furniture is basically fascism.

Eventually, though, I think James would have big "dad who said he didn't want a dog" energy. Theo would catch one (or both) of the puppies sleeping on him and just give a look while he's furiously pretending he hasn't grown stupidly attached to them.

I do think he'd be less permissive with them than Theo, but I also think he'd come more around to her way of thinking than vice versa, not just from being actually convinced, and not even from a weird boomer "happy wife happy life" thing, but because it would matter more to her than to him and he knows which hills to die on. I also don't think he'd have much of a heart to really fight her on it, because of how stupidly happy the dogs would make her.

But he'd still be adamant about keeping them off of the bed.

Any time he goes away for a few nights and then returns, it's a habit that has to be trained out of them once again. Theo pretends she has no idea how it happens.

hc + 🗡 for a weapon-themed headcanon

Theo never actually ends up with any kind of big weapon attachment in CTW. Like, you know how there's the thing with James' sword, and Jack's hat, and there are certain items you see in fiction and just associate them with their owner? That doesn't happen with any swords for her - although it might in As It Was, because it feels like a missed opportunity.

There just wasn't room for it in terms of plot and logistics, based on what happens she really would just need to get by with what she had available to her (which is a strong Theodora-ism, anyway).

Seeing as the action doesn't completely stop for them after the events of the main story - they can still sail with their company's ships any time they have a hankering for adventure - they'd definitely have to end up splashing out for a proper weapon for her. Like, one made to her preferences/measurements, and one that's meant to be hers, rather than just whatever she can grab and cause damage with.

At some point, James would also take it upon himself to see her fitted with a firearm. Probably because he'd despair at how happy she is to abandon "proper" fighting methods and dive in for close quarters in order to grapple with an opponent, because that's where she's comfortable and that's where she has the upper hand. She kinda sorta uses a gun in the final battle, but by that point everything's been done for her and all she needs to do is point, aim, and make the most of the shots she has because there's no chance of reloading. So I think they'd make A Day of seeing her educated on that. James would have a "well, that's awakened something in me" moment watching her fire it, but he's late to the party considering she had that moment all the way back during the battle at the end of the first movie, when he shoots the member of Barbossa's crew who's attacking her.