#we’re having the funniest Bit that this one character who was brought back from the dead and so has Y-incision scars

[yetanothernewcharacter]

memes that only make sense to people in the know about our current campaign

[dreamsclock]

Rivals duo are young teens. Techno befriends a homeless, antisocial necromancer during a school trip (far, far away from home) and has to pretend that Dream has been apart of their class the whole time.

Hilarity ensues as his roommate Wilbur finds out and they have to keep hiding Dream from Sam, the teacher chaperone.

i have been laughing about this au for two weeks and will never get over it this is the funniest fucking idea in the world thank u sm for this ,, this is an au based off the dsmp characters, not their irl counterparts, just so anyone reading this knows!!!

warnings: trauma, mentions of torture + necromancy, child kidnapping, blood

“This is Dream,” Techno announces, holding a scruffy looking kid up by his collar and presenting him to Wilbur, “he’s fourteen like us, he’s homeless, he’s a necromancer, he’s wanted in fourteen different countries for unimaginable atrocities, and he’s gonna be stayin’ with us for a while.”

Dream hisses. Looking insulted, Wilbur promptly hisses back.

“Good first impressions.” Techno says, pleased that his twin and new roommate will be friends. “We are goin’ to have to hide him from Sam, though, so I need your help.”

Wilbur eyes Dream. “Can’t we keep him in a suitcase or box or something?” He asks. “If we bend a few limbs and stuff I think he’ll fit.”

“Tried already.” Nodding to the suitcase in shreds on their floor, Techno sets Dream down, who instantly shrinks into his hoodie, looking sulky. “Apparently he doesn’t like the dark.”

“So he’s a baby.”

“I’ll kill you,” Dream tells him, voice croaky, “being brought back to life is more painful even than torture.”

Looking unimpressed, Wilbur crosses his arms and scoffs. “And how would you know? You’re fourteen. I bet you’ve never been tortured.”

Murky green eyes meet dark brown, and Wilbur lights up in delight.

“Oh my god,” he says breathlessly, “you’re so cool. Tell me all about it while I cut your hair.”

Wilbur doesn’t warm up to many people, so Techno suppose he should count himself lucky here: his twin listens avidly to Dream’s evasive, twitchy descriptions of torture and resurrection, eyes wide in delight, and Techno swears he even takes notes. As he listens, he chops at Dream’s hair to a more acceptable length, and Techno takes the time to look for clothes that might match Dream’s clean appearance better: finding only his own spare shirt and pants, he offers them reluctantly to Dream, who stares at them blankly.

“Put these on,” Techno tells him, “you look like you’ve been dragged up and down a muddy road for a week.”

Dream blinks. “I was on a mission underground before this,” he says, solemnly, “for the Night Men.”

“…Riiiight,” Techno says, “the Night Men. I absolutely know who those are.”

Wilbur’s brow furrows. “I actually have heard that name before,” he tells them both, bemused, “who— oh. Oh.”

“What?” Techno demands, not liking the gleam in his twin’s eye one bit. “What’ve you remembered?”

Wilbur turns to him, grinning, before directing his attention to Dream.

“Tina,” he says simply.

Techno blinks. “Tina?”

“Tina?” Dream asks, something like recognition creeping into his voice. “You know Tina?”

“She goes to our school,” Wilbur grins, “she talks about the Night Men sometimes. She says her mum works for them. I thought she was just making stuff up, but she’s telling the truth, isn’t she?”

Techno looks back and forth between the pair of them, bemused.

“As much as I’m glad it seems we’re gonna have an extra pair of hands to keep you hidden from Sam,” he says, “I’m gonna have to ask who or what the Night Men are.”

“Oh. Simple.” Wilbur shrugs. “Just a group of highly trained assassins that find children with some sort of special abilities and kidnap them.”

Silence. Dream squirms.

Techno stares. “Huh?”

“They tried to kidnap Tommy!” Wilbur says gleefully. “And then they didn’t.”

Techno feels like he’s losing sanity by the minute. “Tommy,” he says, slowly, “like TommyInnit. Our brother.”

“Yeah.” Wilbur sits beside Dream and begins braiding his hair. Dream looks like he’s going to lean into the touch or start going crazy. “But then they realised his ‘special ability’ was less of a special ability and more just a human ability to piss people off, so they left him on our doorstep again the next week. Didn’t Dad ever tell you?”

Feeling remarkably left out, Techno scoffs. “Why would he tell you and not me?”

“Because I was almost taken by the Night Men,” Wilbur tells him, solemnly.

“HEH?!”

“Remember that weekend I showed up in Thailand?” His twin asks. “That was the Night Men.”

“Philza told me that was because you were on a school trip,” Techno complains, “he lied to me.”

“Didn’t wanna worry you,” Wilbur says airily, “I got back, after all.”

Techno struggles to comprehend what he’s being told. “So these... Night Men, have just been going round kidnappin’ my brothers left and right and I didn’t even know about it. Honestly, I’m kinda insulted they didn’t come for me.”

The silence that hangs in the air after his statement leaves him growing stunned.

“Well,” Wilbur clears his throat, “about that...”

“No.”

“You’re literally half pig.” Dream croaks out. “I remember you. That’s your special ability. What, did you think you were just an average human?”

“Honestly,” Techno says, at a loss for words, “I just thought it was puberty.”

“By the way,” Wilbur adds, cheery tone growing less enthused, “they’re probably going to be hunting Dream down. Which means by extension they’ll be hunting us down, too.”

Oh, great. Techno counts to ten and prays to the gods for patience.

“I say we sacrifice him and run,” Wilbur says wisely, and Techno groans when Dream scrambles to his feet in a panic.

“We’re not sacrificin’ him. That’s lame.”

A loud clatter comes from outside, and a boy with a gap-tooth and scar bounces into the room, grinning around, before his eyes settle on Dream, curiously. “Wilbur! Do you know you’ve got a weird little creature sitting in your room?”

“Quackity!” Wilbur beams. “Meet my new pet thing Dream. He’s on the run from shady magic assassins because he’s a necromancer. Wanna help us hide him?”

“Absolutely!” Quackity pokes Dream curiously. Dream has him pinned in a chokehold before Quackity can scream — which he does, repeatedly, until Wilbur drags them apart.

…This is going to be a long weekend, Techno thinks, and buries his head in his hands. The Night Men will be tracking them down, they need to keep a traumatised rabid teen away from their teacher, Sam, and they’ve only been in Spain for one week.

This is absolutely going to be a disaster.

[timeagainreviews]

That time Doctor Who did Tales from the Hood and the Olympics

Content warning: I will speak briefly about domestic abuse at a couple of points in this review. Feel free to skip this one if that’s too much for you. 

They say horror and comedy share similar beats. That the rhythms of their narrative structure are comparable. This is probably why I have always struggled with getting into the horror genre. Much like a comedy, if the premise is weak, you pray it’s brief. This is probably why one of my favourite subgenres of horror is the anthology movie. Tales from the Crypt, Creepshow, Trick-’R-Treat, The Vault of Horror are just a few. But one of my favourites of the lot is a charming film referred to as “Tales from the Hood.” Its cheeky title, an obvious riff off of the then popular “Tales from the Crypt,” franchise, told you everything you needed to know. This was a horror anthology movie made from a black perspective. It stars the electric Clarence Williams III as “Mr Simms,” the movie’s analogue Cryptkeeper. And it’s a lot of fun.

Of the film’s four different stories, my favourite as a kid was always “Boys Do Get Bruised.” In it, a young boy named Walter discovers he has the ability to affect things in the real world after drawing them. He learns this after crumpling a drawing of his bully coincides with his bully meeting a terrible and maiming accident. Throughout the story, both Walter and his mother Sissy are subject to the violent outbursts of Sissy’s boyfriend Carl (played brilliantly by an against type David Allen Grier). Walter refers to Carl as “The Monster,” and draws him as such. Toward the climax of the story, Walter protects himself and Sissy by folding, twisting, and eventually burning the image of the Monster. You can imagine my surprise then, when Doctor Who told basically the same story eleven years later with “Fear Her.”

In Fear Her, we’re introduced to the residents of the appropriately named Dame Kelly Holmes Close, a residential street scheduled to be part of the Olympic torch runner route for the then-upcoming 2012 London Olympics. The local council has taken a keen interest in beautifying their roads to allow Britain to put its best foot forward on the international stage. Only something far more troubling than potholes is afoot, and everyone knows it. No amount of beautification or proud waving of the Union Jack can hide the fact that there are children going missing. Unbeknownst to most of the residents, it all relates back to young Chloe Webber and her bizarre ability to capture people, animals, and objects within her childish drawings.

The TARDIS arrives in what may be one of the funniest materialisation scenes in Doctor Who history with the Doctor needing to readjust the parking. The Doctor and Rose exit, seemingly in high spirits. From my research, I learned that this script had been written pretty early on into Tennant’s tenure as the Tenth Doctor. Because of this, much of the dialogue was written for any Doctor to deliver. I found this funny as I feel some of Tennant’s funniest one-liners come from this episode. Such as when he muses that back in 1948 “everyone had a tea party to go to,” and then goes on to wax philosophic about those little edible ball-bearings on cakes. If that is boilerplate Doctor dialogue, I love it. That said, the Doctor and Rose’s flirting feels out of character and tacked on at times. While the Doctor is busy distracting himself with his own haircare routine, Rose gets the first whiff of danger after witnessing a cat go missing.

After doing a bit of very obvious snooping, the Doctor and Rose have brought themselves to the attention of half the neighbourhood. It’s the concerned elderly woman, Maeve who thinks something is taking the children. Council worker, Kel, is more concerned with smoothing out the pavement of the roads to have noticed much. So the Doctor and Rose go knocking on doors. Meanwhile, Chloe Webber spies their activities from the birdseye view of her first-floor bedroom window. Whatever force has taken over Chole fears what changes these newcomers will bring and it begins to formulate a plan. But through frustration Chloe scribbles across the page, causing a tangled ball of graphite to manifest and attack Rose.

The Doctor uses a bit of sonic screwdriver magic to neutralise the threat, rendering the graphite knot conveniently travel-sized. He then takes the ball back to the TARDIS, where analysis reveals its compounds are pencil lead. I imagine much of the ire for this story comes from Chloe’s being able to draw things in and out of existence, which is fair. Personally speaking, I’ve always loved that concept, ever since I was a kid. It wasn’t just Tales from the Hood either. Eerie, Indiana did a similar story as well. I loved Kyle Rayner as the Green Lantern because he was an artist able to “draw,” things into existence using his lantern ring. I get that it may be a little too far-fetched for some, but I hold that Doctor Who is not hard sci-fi. I would argue that it’s not even sci-fi.  But really, I think the weakest element of this story has got to be the inclusion of the Olympics. 

For starters, this episode came out in 2006. Matthew Graham has gone on record saying that this episode was written for children. So why then, is it so far from the actual Olympics? It’s not as though this is some sort of corporate mandate from the higher-ups at the BBC to generate synergy or whatever. Maybe if the Olympics were in two years, it would have made more sense. With that in mind, it appears to be more of a conscious decision, and what a weird one. If this story was written for six-year-olds, its subject matter wouldn’t come into fruition until they were twice their age. This isn’t really a negative, I simply find it odd.

Even stranger is the fact that this story wasn’t originally supposed to take place on Earth, so the inclusion of the Olympics had to come much later. In trying to understand the usage of the Olympics, I reverse-engineered the story in many different ways to see if it could tell the same story without all of the saccharine nationalism and honestly, I kept coming back to it being somewhat essential to the story. The most likely explanation is that the Olympics are fun and that the story being set in the near future added a bit of realism. Sure, fine, but is that the only function they play?

As I mentioned earlier, Councilman Kel has been proudly minding the pavement with precision as if the Queen herself were running the torch. There’s a sort of gooey sentimentality toward Britain and its inclusion in the proud tradition of the Olympic games. But within this cloying nationalism is a hint of mockery. You can clean up the pavement and shoo away the homeless, but you can’t cover up what happens behind Britain's closed doors. Chloe Webber and her mother, Trish were both victims of horrible domestic abuse at the hands of Chloe’s now deceased father. Even after his death, trauma plagued both mother and daughter. Alienating them from one another, their friends, and even following into their dreams.

After narrowing down the Webber homestead as the source of the disappearances, the Doctor and Rose ingratiate themselves with Trish by presenting themselves as the only people open-minded enough to listen to her. The Doctor uses his famous “Dad skills,” to put Chloe under hypnosis, allowing him to talk to the entity inside. We learn that the entity is a creature called an Isolus, known for travelling in large groups like schools of fish puttering across the murky depths of space. Only this unfortunate Isolus was separated from its family. While seeking out warmth and love, it was drawn to the heat of new pavement and Chloe’s loneliness. Both Chloe and the Isolus are but lonely children seeking company, hence all of the stolen children.

After removing her drawing implements, the Doctor and Rose leave Chloe in Trish’s incapable hands. Seriously, this is the biggest sticking point in the entire episode for me. If your child has the inhuman ability to draw people out of existence, why the hell would you leave them alone? Fearing the Doctor is about to force it back into loneliness, the Isolus grabs Chloe’s coloured pencil stash out of a headless doll and gets to drawing the crowd at the Olympics. That many people gathered in the name of goodwill may be just the ticket. The disappearance of the crowd draws the Doctor and Rose back to the Webbers, but by the time they return, Chloe has also drawn the Doctor into her collection.

Now it’s up to Rose, with a little hint from the drawing of the Doctor- use the symbolic love of the Olympic torch to reignite the Isolus’ pod. Rose deduces that the pod must have been attracted to the high heat of the tar from Kel’s roadworks. She then goes over to his council van, produces a council axe, and tears up the council’s street, revealing the Isolus pod under the bump Kel couldn’t seem to smooth out. Meanwhile, Chloe, still unaware of Rose’s endeavours, furiously draws the earth on her wall in an attempt to further expand her family. Rose tosses the Isolus pod toward the Olympic torch runner just in time, as it attaches to the now roiling flame. The sudden influx of love and warmth draws the Isolus out of Chloe, who restores the missing children and the stadium crowd.

At this point, the episode can’t decide quite where it wants to end. The torch runner gets a leg cramp or something, causing him to drop the torch. It’s beginning to look like nobody will pick up the torch and carry it the rest of the way. That is until the Doctor comes along and scoops it up revealing that not only he, but the Olympics will be alright. Only the human equivalent of a golden retriever, David Tennant, could pull off such a dopey sequence. Seriously, could you picture Eccleston doing that? But the story doesn’t end there. You see, as I said earlier, Chloe’s father was still plaguing her dreams. In order to remove him from her dreams, Chloe trapped her horrific father in a drawing on her closet wall. With the sudden influx of power to the Isolus, the drawing has come to life.

The Doctor and Rose rush back toward the house but are unable to help Trish or Chloe who are racked with terror at the bottom of the stairs. The difference here is that instead of Chloe drawing her abuser into a drawing she can then crush and burn, she is now basically powerless against her father. Except she isn’t, and neither is Trish. The two young women embrace one another and sing “Kookabura,” together as it was always the song Trish used to soothe Chloe after a particularly bad dream. I really loved how at this point in the story, it’s up to two victims of abuse to reclaim their lives and save themselves. By sticking together, they find the strength to overcome their pain. As a former victim of domestic abuse, this scene actually means a lot to me on a personal level. I’m glad they didn’t cheapen the moment by having the Doctor reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.

Now, do I actually think Matthew Graham stole his story idea from a small American indie horror from 1995? No. Stole is a harsh word. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t try to find his Twitter so I could ask if maybe he saw the movie and forgot about it. It would also be a lie to claim I didn’t google his name and Tales from the Hood. All that came up were mentions of an adaptation of “Childhood’s End,” (not that one) and an episode of Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams titled “The Hood Maker.” Really, comparing a childrens’ episode of Doctor Who to a horror movie from the gangsta rap era is a bit lopsided. It’s like when Kidz Bop covers a particularly salacious rap song. There’s gonna be some differences.

The episode ends with what might be one of the weirdest payoffs in Doctor Who history. The Doctor finally gets his edible ball-bearings on a cupcake. With the children of the village returned, the Isolus back with its family, and the world safe for another day, the Doctor and Rose are right to feel chuffed. Everyone lives and no one has to die. A cupcake break isn’t just warranted, it’s well earned. This is why the Doctor’s sudden chilly proclamation that a storm is approaching feels like a bit of an atonal ending to what was really a bit of a daft episode.

As history has shown, the real 2012 Olympic torch was not, in fact, lit by David Tennant, much to my and many other Whovian’s chagrins. Shayne Ward was focused less on music and more on his acting career by then. The Olympics themselves turned out to be less about love and more about keeping the status quo after the 2011 riots. In a way, Fear Her has become a bit of a retro-active historical, while also acting as a time capsule of preemptive revisionism. The reality of the 2012 London Olympics is closer to what goes on behind closed doors. The monster lurking underneath the image of prosperity.

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

okay but full thoughts on the animaniacs reboot i wanna get out: 

dislikes:

i do think there was a bit too much gross-out. i assume it was there bc animaniacs ended before that really became A Thing™ in kids’ tv and they’re experimenting a little? but i didn’t really feel like it fit but that might just be because it’s not my thing 

i get the russian jokes were written in 2018-19 back when we were all pissed about the election but it did go on for a bit too long? i did like at the end though when they were like “yeah we’re not all like this we just have a shit leader” “we know the feeling comrade” but they probably coulda done more on that 

i’m not a huge fan of the human character designs? idk i know the designs in the original were supposed to be just as odd and wacky as the toons but sometimes the designs are just bad to look at now 

BRING BACK SLAPPY 2K21 

though most importantly: 

i want to see the warners fucking up the studio and the world. there’s a reason they live in a water tower, it’s because the wb studio built it over their faerie circle locked them there to stop them from destroying everything in sight. 

i know they’ve probably mellowed a bit and are still trying to figure out the 21st century but i want to see them bouncing off the walls and making the new ceo bang her head on a desk while they sing the song that gets on everybody’s nerves

because like that’s kinda the thing with the warners... they’re wacky and out of control but mainly because nobody gets them. they just get frustrated and lock them up- and you notice that it’s the humans who don’t seem to get them. 

when they interact with other toons (looney tunes cameos, the other segments) they seem to have stable friendships and all seem to get™ each other, like when the warners unleashed mindy on elmyra and then gave buttons the day off or when they go to slappy to get rid of their new nanny. 

i could go on for a while about the implications of this plus the implications of them living in the warner bros studio while being locked in a water tower but i’ll just sum it up with “it really hits with the neurodivergent kids” and anyone who’s in that category. you get it

and i don’t feel that was brought out enough yet? but it’s only season one, they’re still getting back into the swing of things, so we’ll see how it goes

however, the overwhelming positives:

THE SIBLING LOVE THEY ALL HAVE FOR EACH OTHER??? THAT’S SO PURE AND GOOD GIVE IT ALL TO ME 

these writers are NOT backing down from the political jokes and adult humor. i’m sure you all saw my out-of-context compilation but wakko literally said “hell” and yakko called someone a dick, and also they mock drumpf like every other episode. fucking fantastic 

you can tell the writers know how we all see pinky and the brain. they’re slowburn building to that labrat romance 

my GOD is wakko so fucking cute. the real reason dot’s new schtick is being “witty” and not “cute” is because they realized that wakko’s the real babey of the family 

the lowkey sad elements are starting to slip into the show- the brain backstory is the most clear, due to it being framed in such a sad light, but also yakko literally having a breakdown when he feels like he can’t be the “funny one” and can’t speak also a neurodivergent mood really does HIT doesn’t it 

the new ceo seems funny! i like her fast-paced movements and way of speaking. hope we learn more about her or she gets, like. a name? does she have a name yet? 

MY GOD THAT REVEAL ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OTHER SEGMENTS 

the new animation and songs are so good oh my god i literally taught myself how to play “reboot it” on guitar because i couldn’t get it out of my head 

every time dot is just feral and out for blood i’m like “yeah. yeah she’s the youngest sibling you can tell” 

i would still die for these siblings istg 

THE PENNYWISE SKETCH WAS THE FUNNIEST THING IN THE WORLD

tl;dr it’s not perfect but by GOD is it close. really looking forward more to season three than two- cause one and two were made in quick succession, so three will be made knowing how the fans reacted and what they want 

but by god would i still die for these puppy rabbit salamander fae children i--

[baroquebucky]

idk if you’re taking requests but if you are could i get a loki one shot where the reader is super shy and quiet and the only person at the tower she really talks to is natasha but the others have tried and failed. but eventually loki comes to the tower and he gets her to trust him and she opens up to him?? or something along those lines lol i’m just in desperate need of some loki fluff🥺 also i absolutely adore your writing 🥰💓

a/n: yup yup ! i don’t write for loki much so i hope this isn’t too out of character !!

in which loki manages to break down your walls, magic free

word count: 2k

masterlist

You sat next to Natasha, quiet as the others laughed at the movie. You leaned over making a small comment to Natasha causing her to burst out laughing, the other looking over to see what had happened.

“tell them!” Natasha nudged you and you shook your head, looking at your hands as natasha repeated your comment, everyone bustling out into a fit of laughter.

“y/n is the funniest person here nobody can change my mind” Tony piped up, smiling at you as your face burned.

The rest of the night went smoothly, keeping to yourself and whispering to natasha, making her giggle.

“you really should try talking to the other y/n, they love you” nat urged you, walking to your rooms to settle in for the night. You shook your head, heart racing at the idea.

“no, i mean they seem nice it’s just i don’t know i get so nervous i don’t wanna make a fool out of myself and plus they’re so intimidating” you chuckled, shrugging your shoulders as you stopped at your room.

“you know you’re an avenger too right?” Nat laughed as you rolled your eyes, waving her off and saying goodnight.

Morning rolled around soon enough and you walked out, steve and Sam saying good morning and you smiled at them, rushing to make a bowl fo cereal and sitting a couple seats away from them.

“so y/n what are you gonna do today?” Steve smiled, trying to make conversation with you.

You thought for a bit before answering, “not much, just train maybe uh, i might go shopping with nat later” you replied, ending the conversation and finishing up your food.

You excused yourself before they could say anything else.

“you know thor is brining his brother today” sam called out and you looked at him confused.

“battle of New York one?” You questioned and he nodded, you raised your brows in surprise.

“he’s good now, nice guy i think” steve added, not wanting to worry you. You only nodded your head and left the kitchen, going to train for the rest of the morning.

“is everybody here?” Thor boomed, a smile on his face as his brother stood next to him, arms crossed across his chest.

“where is y/n? Will she be joining us?” Thor questioned, slightly upset you weren’t there.

“I’ll get her she’s probably sleeping or something” Natasha smiled, heading to your room.

She knocked on your door, letting herself in after a couple seconds and found you passed out on your bed, a book next to your head.

Shaking you gently she woke you up, “y/n, wake up thor brought his brother Cmon” she spoke quietly as you stirred awake.

“what? what time is it?” you questioned, yawning and rubbing your eyes, looking around for a bit.

“3:12, you knocked out after our session this morning” she smirked and you rolled your eyes.

“told you i stayed up late” you defended, getting up and putting on some socks.

Natasha was in a t shirt and some sweats, so you figured your t shirt and shorts weren’t too bad. Surely the rest of the team was dressed casually too.

You entered the living room, still half asleep following Natasha, waving hi to everybody.

“now that everyone is here, this is loki, my brother! he’s a good guy now and since we’re gonna be splitting time between here and Asgard i figured a proper introduction was over due” Thor beamed at everyone.

“well hi loki, nice to uh- meet you, again” steve spoke up, trying to get the others to say hi.

“mm a pleasure” loki gave him a tight smile, you rolled your eyes at his tone. You finally looked at him, he was dressed in an all black suit and dress shoes, you scoffed at his outfit.

“you always dress like that?” You spoke up, upset that he had been rude to steve. Everyone’s eyes went wide, turning to face you and loki looked shocked.

“and you are?” Loki shot back, checking you out.

“y/n, and you should be nicer” you quipped, narrowing your eyes at him. Natasha smirked at loki, knowing how sassy you could be after a nap.

“you’ve got a quick wit, i like that” loki smiled and you rolled your eyes, shifting your weight onto your other leg.

As everyone else warmed up loki you stayed an arms length away, only speaking up when someone talked directly to you.

You slowly moved away from the group, turning to sneak away to your room. A smile on your face as you turned around, only to bump into someone’s chest.

“leaving my welcome party so soon, love?” Loki smiled as you stumbled back, eyes widening.

“how- you were just over there?” You gawked, looking back where you saw another loki sitting and chatting with the others.

“magic, did they not tell you about me darling?” He asked, cocking his head to the side.

“no yeah they did, just didn’t pay much mind is all” you smiled, crossing your arms across your chest.

“you know, they didn’t tell me much about you, why’s that?” Loki asked, leaning against the wall and you fiddlers with your fingers.

“don’t really talk to them much, i- uh I’m pretty reserved” you spoke, a wave of realization washing over you as you fully woke up.

“don’t seem that shy to me” he smirked and you shook your head.

“no i was just really tired I’m so sorry I’m usually not like that I’m so sorry oh god” you spoke, fumbling over your words as your face grew hot from embarrassment.

“don’t apologize, i liked it” he smiled, pushing himself off the wall and moving so the oath to your room was no longer blocked.

“cant wait to see you around y/n” he spoke, letting you walk past him, biting your lip to contain your smile.

And you sure did see him around, telling him good morning when he sat himself next to you during breakfast, sparring with him when he suggested it after walking into the gym.

Loki found himself gravitating towards you, wanting to know everything about you, your favorite color, your middle name, your biggest fears. He wanted to know you.

He was persistent, constantly talking to you and spending time with you, he found himself doing things he never thought he would just to spend time with you. It’s how he was in his current predicament.

“okay just don’t smile or else it’ll crack” you replied, finishing brushing the green face mask on him, letting him use one of your head bands, one with pink fluffy bunny ears (he chose it himself).

“how can i not smile when the most beautiful person in all the nine realms is right here” he replied, making you roll your eyes.

You settled into you before, scooting next to him and turning on your favorite show. Both of you watching attentively as your masks dried.

“can i ask you something?” Loki spoke suddenly, you turned to look at him, a small hum signaling to continue.

“why don’t you talk to the others?” He asked softly, taking your hand in his to comfort you.

You let a couple moments pass to gather your thoughts, finally speaking up.

“they’re just really intimidating to me, i mean i grew up admiring steve and the other have saved the world countless times, I’ve helped them once but i didn’t even play that big of a role, it’s just really daunting you know?” He looked at the way your fingers intertwined and held back a smile.

“how come you weren’t scared to talk to me?” you looked at him, laughing softly.

“oh no i was scared shitless, you just wouldn’t leave me alone so i really had no choice” you replied, looking at your hands connected.

“is that how Natasha got close to you?”

You nodded, remembering the way she pestered you until you two became the best of friends, never leaving each other’s side for a whole week.

“well, i hope you know that I’m not going anywhere” he spoke, moving to face you. Reluctantly, you looked at him, tension thick in the air.

“what makes you so sure?” You asked, looking into his eyes.

Both of you leaned in a little, your breath hitched in your throat as you leaned closer, and closer, and-

ding! ding! ding!

Both of you jumped away at the sound of the alarm, clearing your throats and moving to wash the face mask off.

After you had both washed off the mask you headed back to your bed, sitting down with some space between your bodies. The sound of the show filling the room, neither one of you saying anything.

“what do-”

“why do-”

You both quieted at the sound of the others voice, laughing a little as you both stopped. He motioned for you to continue.

“what do you think about me?” You asked, fiddling with your fingers and picking at your nails, glancing at him for a second before focusing back to on your fingers.

“i think” he trailed off, scooting closer to you, “that you are one of the most amazing people I’ve met, that you are kind, funny and exciting” he finished, your thighs touching as you looked up at him.

“really?” you whispered, dizzy from how close the two of you were.

“absolutely.”

“what were you gonna say?” you asked, giving him a small smile before focusing on the tv show.

“why are you so sure that I’m gonna leave?” He questioned, eyes flickering between your lips and your eyes.

“i- well i never open up to people so they always just leave” you replied, furrowing your eyebrows before continuing.

“when i was in high school and such i used to be really outgoing and loud, everyone would tell me to be quiet when i got excited so i just kinda stopped altogether, no one complained much then” you laughed dryly, remembering the way your friends would get annoyed at how bubbly you were.

“they all left me after i stopped being loud, said i was boring.”

Loki felt his heart fall in his chest, he was angry at you past friends, but he was sad that you had changed so much for people who didn’t appreciate you.

“darling, look at me” he spoke softly, eyes meeting yours.

“i promise you that no one here thinks you are too much, i mean we have that falcon guy and spider boy, i can assure you they won’t tell you to tone it down” he reassured you and you shrugged your shoulders.

“how about we make a deal” loki smirked and you looked at him with narrow eyes.

“what kind of deal” you asked, suspicious of what he would propose.

“you try to come out of your shell more, and I’ll be nicer to the rest of the team” he stated simply, smiling at the way you thought about his deal, he could almost see the gears turning in your head.

“deal” you smiled, turning to look at him and extending you hand out.

He took your hand and pulled you to him, stopping you centimeters away from his face.

“may i?” He asked, eyes focused on your lips.

“yeah” you whispered breathlessly, crashing your lips onto his.

You both pulled away, a smile on your faces, you laughed at the way he immediately pulled you in for more.

You and Loki left your room not long after, knowing the team would be out and about despite it being almost 12 am.

“hi guys” steve smiled and you returned it, walking at bit faster before loki stopped you.

“remember our deal?” he whispered and you internally groaned, nodding and walking over to steve, heart pounding in your chest.

“hi Steve how has your day been?” You smiled, steve was taken back but quickly replied, easily falling into conversation with you.

Loki watched from a far, a smile on his face as you laughed, making conversation with the super soldier. Natasha stood next the Norse god, a smile on her face.

“Glad you could get her out of her shell” she smiled, eyes settling on you talking with Steve and Sam who had joined in.

“she just needed an extra push” Loki smiled, excited to see you become who you really were. Natasha felt her heart grow, she couldn’t wait for the team to appreciate you for who you always have been.

[hacash]

ted lasso 2x06 thoughts

OK FANDOM HOW ARE WE FEELING

Rebecca texting her 'mystery lightning man' in bed while her hot stupid side piece makes her breakfast is just...that is a power move on a whole other level. I am in awe. Queen. Goddess.

Between Jamie's dad, Rebecca's parents, and the ongoing mystery of Ted's father...does anyone on this show have a good relationship with their parents besides Sam?? Is Higgins going to have to adopt the entire cast?

He'd do a good job of it, to be certain - it was an easily overlooked plot line, but I love that while fan-favourites Ted, Nate and Rebecca all straight away bottle doing the right thing and telling Beard that his relationship is an unhealthy one, Higgins makes the call to step up and do good. Last season one of the core aspects of Higgins' arc was not telling the truth that needed to be told and we saw how much it bothered him, and I love how that's such a key part of his character. He's such a good dad.

And on that note: avoidance of difficult issues was such a part of this episode, from Ted's phone call about Henry to Beard's relationship, to Rebecca and her delightfully batty mum. I do think this is one of those arcs that would probably have landed better if we saw the whole season as a binge-watch, because we'd be able to see it playing out a lot easier, but it's so clear to see that our heroes are dealing with a lot of emotional repression (we're in England, after all) and I am loving this train wreck it's becoming.

The pub regulars were on fire in this episode. Between Baz backing down from his rather...enthusiastic fanboying and their heckling of GBBO (we've all done it, right?) I'm really glad we got them on our screens again.

I loved the little scene of Ted strolling about the grounds saying hi to the non-football employees of Richmond - it's a nice reminder that he's done so much for the club morale beyond the actual team members.

‘I am a strong and capable man. I am not a piece of shit.’ Ok, who the fuck has been hurting Colin?

Jamie was spot-on perfect this episode. I'm amazed at how smoothly Phil Dunphy passed from 'obnoxious little weasel' to 'himbo comedy gold' in the space of one season; he is a really underrated comedy character and I hope the showrunners make the most of it. I'm torn between 'bad hair' and 'so I can go back to being a prick?' as the funniest moment, but honestly it was all good. I also love how he and Roy are clearly settling into the fond exasperation of best frenemies - we got a sliver of it at the gala episode last season and I'm looking forward to more.

Also the first signs that the Gospel of Ted isn't always 100%: it was good to see Roy correcting Ted's coaching of Jamie and arranging that delightfully spiteful foul-and-goal. And Nate! Nate arranging the final play when Beard and Roy were spiralling!!

I'm still so worried about Nate and obviously there's more drama and pain in store, but for now I'm just buzzing about him actually getting the recognition he deserves. Nate the Great!

I'm always excited about the little team moments, because we never get enough of them, but seeing the happiness of the team after the win, inviting Sharon out for a drink, even just the moments of Isaac and Colin goofing around in the taxi (I miss their broship!) all warmed my heart.

And now onto the main event:

SAM IS THE MYSTERY BANTR MAN. Apart from my bemusement about twenty-one year olds who casually quote poets on dating apps (this...does not happen in my universe at all) I am both so worried and so intrigued. I really find the idea of a proper thing between him and Rebecca leaving a bit of a bad taste in the mouth - the age gap is significant, she's his boss, they're so nice as friends - but the show-writers have handled other difficult issues really well, so I trust they can handle this too.

I've already said that the parallels that would emerge between Rebecca 'n Sam (Rebecca dating a much younger man with such a notable power imbalance) and Rupert's own dating history...would be an interesting one. If she does pursue something with Sam I kinda hope this gets brought up? Because honestly if we had a male boss in his forties dating his twenty-one year old female employee on the show we would all be kicking off about it, and it's pretty skeevy not to at least acknowledge that when the genders are swapped.

AND TED. OH TED. I have so many feels about this that I can't all get down - I'm not quite sure why he was hearing replays of Jamie's dad in his head, but the 'father issues' klaxon is blaring loud and clear - but I'm just so glad it ended the way it did, with him finally asking Sharon for help. Roll on next Friday.

ETA: I just realised Sam’s the one who helps Jamie up after his foul and then stops the Spurs player from clobbering him. Oh. My. Heart.

[raphael-schreave]

Challenge 8 (Part 3) The... END?

WE’RE KIDDING. THERE IS NO PART 3. WE JUST WANTED TO JOKE WITH YOU GUYS FOR THE LAST TIME LMAO. 

[Anya’s Message]

After a rollercoaster of an eighth season for the OC, I just would like to thank everyone for being with us and sharing your time as we all try to get by during this scarily uncertain time. We started the OC sometime during the start of my senior year, and I’m only now two months away from graduating! Having the OC has helped keep me sane at my last uni year here at home, and I’d like to thank all of you for wanting to be a part of this. I’ve always wanted to be host and you guys have brought such an amazing cast of characters with rich backstories into the mix. So thank you thank you thank you for making this OC come to life. 

To Myr, who brought in Alassie and kept her principles and advocacies rooted in valid and important issues faced by Indigenous People and have made some of the spiciest edits through her edits and the details in those song titles. 

To Ana, who created Suzy with her fearlessness to have fun but also have fun with Raffy and her constant energy in RPs. 

To Bri, who always makes wonderful characters like Ivy who just knows how to hit the right romantic moment beats in RPs. 

To Milo, who continues to write some of the funniest dialogue with Rhea and some of the best and funniest grade A fics. 

To Sanji, whose put in so much wonderful effort and detail with Diana and who I still suspect as Lady Illéa– I hope she becomes the embodiment of “mom I am a rich man. 

To Simone, with her attention to detail in creating such real-feeling characters that is so alive in Nellie who we hope would reach her dreams and would heal from her past with her parents. 

To Ester, we hope engineering exams are treating you well and who has brought in such detail and fun with Kaden into Sam’s life and making him so flustered. 

To Emi, who continues to pull off such rich and beautiful characters with fics to match in Andreia, and keeps Archie’s life just as colorful and grounded. 

To Anna, who never fails to bring characters out with such elaborate details that are fun to always look back on with Meredith. 

To Elise, who keeps RPs always spicy and fun and for collectively making all of us 🔪🔪🔪 against the character of Illinois Jones with Ramona and bringing in the live ape cam and being our trusty song blogger and tagger.  

Most especially, I’d want to thank Chris, beautiful and wonderful and ever patient Chris who listened to my own crack theories about everyone and for grounding me when things in the OC became overwhelming. I couldn’t have asked for a better co-host who brought to life half of the cast of characters we had, bringing in our steadfast Sam and our lovable Archie into the side romance team and making Sam and Archie her own characters which are better than any way I could have played them. It’s been an honor to be your co-host and you’re always one of my reasons for going at it. Here’s to retirement? HAHA

Lastly, Elise and Anna: who have made it literally phYSICALLY AND MATHEMATICALLY difficult to choose a winner between Ramona and Meredith, you’ve done both great jobs throughout this whole OC. Thank you for giving this so much of your effort and energy and making this such a difficult decision. 

Alright so this is it! This is Anya, OC-veteran signing off for OC 8. 

Love, Anya 

------

[ Chris’ message ]

HELLO! for the last time from this account, I suppose, which is sad but refreshing at the same time... I have been feeling a bit emotional lately so I’m sorry if this gets... weird or like “what are you even talking about, Chris.” 

First of all you must remember how terrified I was to host an OC before I begged Anya to join the ride and I want to thank for all the encouraging and supportive words back then. It wasn’t so hard to convince me, but it was certainly hard to calm my nerves. You all did great at that! I’m glad you did because otherwise I really wouldn’t have done it and I would miss the opportunity to finally host with Anya. Many of you maybe don’t know but she and I had tried to host before a few times and... we are here now! at the end of this OC! All because she took well to accept me, and share with me all these characters she already had created. I’m still thinking Anya was incredibly kind to share Archie, Alessandra, Samuel and Bellamy for me to make them part mine to mess with hehe I certainly hope still I didn’t ruin the image she had of them. 

It was as challenging as incredible to host this OC along side with Anya. She always being ahead, anticipating things, using her magical and amazingly useful documents, sheets, CODE!! I was in awe! During this process we stressed, we work hard, we... get conflicted sometimes haha but not more than we enjoyed and scream with every epic moment you all help us create in rps and for that I’m beyond thankful. 

THANK YOU, really thank you for letting us meet these special ladies. Not only special as character but also as ideas that came out of your creative minds. I know how much energy, research and love it’s behind a character and having that in mind I am still excited about the fact I had the opportunity to interact with almost everyone of them!! I wish everyone could get someone but unfortunately, there’s a limit of voices I can keep inside my head before it explodes! But your characters were unique in their own ways and getting to know their goals, their motivations and their vulnerabilities was a BIG deal for me! Thank you everyone again for let them apply to this selection and making each rp this thing full of emotions!! jdfkjhgbfg Thank you also for bear with us! 

I still remember how HARD was to make decisions when it was my turn to make them and I really don’t miss those times but I still mean what I say on those posts. Thanks for going for the sides and show them so much love. I really enjoyed the fact they were able not only to find ~true love~ but also to develop nice and meaningful friendships.

I don’t address you individually because Anya already do that and I can’t do it better.

As I said we cried, we SCREAM (in a good and in a bad way sometimes), we get  🥺🥺🥺 but most of all I had and I’m still having FUN!!! My men got their good share of gorgeous, talented, and extremely wonderful girls courtesy of two excellent friends Emi and Ester who have been the most comprehensive and now have to deal with my ideas and my random babbling about future plans, etc... I really hope they have the nerve to shut me up when it’s needed hahaha. I know Archie and Samuel LOVE their girls SO SO SO MUCH no matter what they are saying or doing because you know men are dumb. 

In resume, recognition to everyone for the effort, for the creativeness, for being here despite how hard real life can get with school, work, thesis, family, holidays... In the end, the idea is to get some fun and nice distraction from all that, in this game. Hope you, after all enjoyed it as much as I did /do <333 

Recognition and standing ovation for Anya. I’m a witness of how hard he worked and how every decision she took was thoughtful and taken with the best intentions (including this last one. Believe me it took a while! We analyzed EVERYTHING! ) and even most of the times putting everything before her own health (tsk tsk) but I love this team we made!! <333

So see you at group chats and rps! 

Retirement? ... Look, I really need to get into searching my rl true love, okay?! 

Did you read all that?? kjdsngg then thanks again hahaha 

Bye OC8  with my sentimental heart...  - Chris

To Lady Illéa, Song Blog, SOC8 Memes, and Swendway, Chris and Anya would also like to thank all the extra pages in the OC who made some of the funniest content in making the OC World more real, funny, and spicy!

Without further ado, Chris and Anya present to you: The Final Fic.

[troquantary]

Didyme, Part 2: Something, Something, Plato's Allegory of the Cave

Continuing from here, and we’re doing sub-parts for this bit. I’m genuinely surprised I had this much to say. (And fun fact, I almost lost the entire goddamn post, but fortunately I was copy-pasting into Word just in case. Not today, Satan.)

2.1. What Canon Tells Us

Didyme’s murder by Aro (and with Caius’ apparent assistance, either during or afterwards), is only mentioned on the page in Life and Death, the 10th Anniversary gender-swapped version of Twilight. Edythe/Edward mentions it briefly when discussing the painting of the leaders Carine/Carlisle brought back from Volterra, but it’s just background information with little narrative weight. I bring it up just to highlight Caius’ involvement and knowledge -- I’ll get back to that.

Now, here’s the “canon” backstory we have to work with. Per the illustrated guide, Didyme was Aro’s younger sister, and he turned her at some point after meeting Marcus, Caius, and Athenadora. Interestingly, the Guide doesn’t say anything about Aro returning to Didyme out of brotherly love; apparently he just wanted to see if she would have a powerful gift like his, only to be underwhelmed (”disappointed,” according to his Guide entry) by her actual ability -- she made people happy just by being around them. Then she and Marcus fell in love, sharing “the strongest romantic bond of any of the Volturi” (from Marcus’ Guide entry), and this prompted a suddenly very single Aro to seek out his own mate, Sulpicia. The Guide says Didyme “distracted” Marcus from Aro’s goals, and that the pair eventually made plans to split off on their own, leading Aro to murder Didyme so he could hold onto Marcus and his valuable gift. Although nothing written so far suggests that Aro even liked his sister, the Guide does state that Aro “truly loved her” and that his grief upon killing Didyme was genuine.

Apparently Caius’ role in all is was something Meyer thought up later, because none of the leaders’ Guide entries mention him being in on it. (You can’t see me, but I’m staring pointedly at Part One.)

2.2. Fuck Canon, Actually

(This just seemed like the funniest place for a cut. Continued below~)

I’ll be honest with you, person who’s persistent/unfortunate enough to still be here: very little about this murder scenario makes sense to me. I’m going to start with the “disappointing” nature of Didyme’s gift and that it was supposedly much less useful to Aro than Marcus’, because that’s just...stupid, frankly, and there’s no way Aro would have missed the inherent utility of Didyme’s gift. I don’t even have to read into anything to get this idea -- the Guide itself shows us how useful it is! It says right there in Marcus’ entry that Aro went off to turn Didyme, and returned with his sister, “along with the first members of the guard -- vampires who were drawn to Didyme’s aura of happiness.” That is a direct quote.

Just -- I practically shrieked when I read that. You’re telling me that Didyme’s gift was the stated reason their coven got its first subordinates, and I’m supposed to believe that Aro thought that was disappointing? Fuck off! Fuck off!! Even if Didyme’s happiness aura isn’t as powerful as Corin’s opium haze, well, Aro doesn’t have Corin yet, does he? He has every reason in the world to want to keep Didyme around, drawing other vampires to his cause -- even if most of those vampires aren’t gifted or skilled enough to join the guard, it’s still good PR.

At this early stage in the Volturi’s rise to power, it isn’t a good time to lose Didyme -- or any of his inner coven, really. Yet Aro apparently considered her disposable enough that he killed her. I can’t square this with what we know about Aro: that he’s still coherent despite holding god-knows how many people’s lives in his head; that he’s very intelligent; that he’s cunning, charming, and persuasive. Aro, once he learned they were thinking about leaving, would have tried to talk to Didyme and Marcus and done everything in his power to convince them to stay just a bit longer, until the Volturi’s position was more secure. And maybe he did; the timeline of all this is hazy, but nothing in the Guide suggests that Aro jumped straight to duplicity and murder. Clearly, though, whatever negotiations or arguments he presented failed. So what does their desire to leave the Volturi at this critical stage say about Didyme, or Marcus for that matter?

2.3. What It Says About Didyme and Marcus (Mostly Headcanon)

Brace yourself, because we’re into full headcanon territory now. To follow me, please refer to @therealvinelle ‘s meta about the larger mission of the Volturi and why they’re necessary, because I’m starting from the perspective that the Volturi are ultimately a force working in vampires’ and humans’ favor. While Meyer and the Guide would have you believe that Aro’s just power-hungry, actually looking at the impact of the Volturi and the benefits of enforcing secrecy shows that his broader vision isn’t just world domination, but establishing a world in which vampires and humans can both thrive and endure. There’s no way the rest of the inner coven was unaware of this goal; we know Aro talks a lot, so he’s certainly talked his coven’s ears off about this.

Now, we know very little about Marcus and what he was like before he was all dead inside. Based on what would be a logical balance of personalities, with Aro as lead decision-maker and Caius as ruthless enforcer, it seems likely that Marcus was originally the voice of reason and/or mercy. I also think Marcus would have had a strong sense of duty. The Guide says that Aro was the first friend Marcus had as a vampire, and I believe that Marcus cared about him very much and was committed to the Volturi. I think he would have been genuinely conflicted about leaving, especially considering the stabler, safer world the Volturi have been striving to build, and which they haven’t yet secured. Again, it’s a very bad time for any of the leadership to split off -- but in the end, Marcus and Didyme are going to do it anyway.

What for, though? Why leave? @theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin has an interesting take on that question here: that Didyme saw that she and Marcus would be locked into the Volturi life and a thankless existence for eternity and tried to opt out while she still could. I like it a lot, it’s a great post and that scenario makes sense, but the tone of it feels...too forgiving. Maybe that’s because I’m evil. But the way I see it, given the magnitude of the Volturi’s mission, and its (at best) very tenuous grip on power at the time Marcus and Didyme plan to leave (they haven’t even defeated the Romanians yet), jeopardizing the entire operation so that they can pursue their romance unburdened strikes me as...well, fundamentally selfish on some level, so much that I find myself side-eyeing Didyme and Marcus for it. Although to be clear, it’s not the desire to live their own lives apart from the Volturi that I find selfish, just the timing of their departure.

Honestly, I’d like not to vilify another female character if I don’t have to. Given everything I’ve just said, I see Didyme in much the same way as I see Bella: not a bad person, but someone with definite selfish tendencies. At best, she’s likely short-sighted or naive if she doesn’t see how leaving the Volturi at this stage is fucking them over in a big way. However, I hesitate to read into the happiness aura as a straightforward indication of Didyme’s fundamental goodness; I think she probably was kind, charming, and delightful to be around, hence the nature of her gift -- but that capacity for selfishness is still there. (I’m certain Meyer wants us to take her gift as proof of Didyme’s goodness, to reinforce how evil Aro is for killing her...but I think I’ve made my disdain for what Meyer wants me to think pretty clear.)

2.4. MURDER MOST FOUL

I am not saying it was justifiable or okay for Aro to murder his sister. I’m really not. It’s actually better, from a character standpoint, that it isn’t okay -- that Aro has to carry this with him for the rest of his life while Marcus sits in the throne next to him, reduced to a husk, so that in effect Aro has lost them both after all. It’s got that Greek tragedy element @theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin​ mentioned in her post. (Even better from that standpoint, the Guide implies that Aro found Chelsea relatively soon after killing Didyme, which compounds the tragedy.) I mean, it’s terrible, and it hurts me because I love Aro, but it’s compelling stuff.

What I am saying is, I can see how their insistence on leaving might have deeply hurt and offended him. And that brings me to my issue with the calculated murder scenario the Guide gives us -- I still think Didyme’s gift is too valuable for Aro to throw away by killing her in cold...venom (or whatever), even as the price for keeping Marcus in the fold. Plus, there’s the fact that Aro does love Didyme, and I imagine her gift makes it very difficult for people to think of harming her...when they’re calm, anyway.

Yeah, the only way I can really see the murder happening is if Aro killed Didyme in the heat of an argument about her leaving, possibly even by accident -- except you can’t accidentally kill a vampire, can you? It’s a very deliberate process wherein you have to dismember them and burn every piece, which also means it probably takes long enough that any irrational, overwhelming rage would wear off before you were done. But now that you’ve started....

I mean, at that point it would certainly be awkward to put your half-rubble sister back together, and Aro would be in a whole other load of shit even if he did. It’s possible, given what we’re told, that Aro could have lashed out and yanked Didyme’s head off before snapping out of it, only to realize that his sole option now is to finish the job. If he doesn’t kill Didyme now, she and Marcus won’t just leave, they’ll be sworn enemies of Aro from then on. And thanks to Didyme’s gift being the draw for a lot of the guard, and the inherently bad look of a leader who would brutally attack his own sister, a chunk of the guard would probably leave with them, destroying Aro’s plans. No, the only way to salvage it is to follow through.

Then Aro has to call in Caius for help with the cover-up, because it wasn’t actually planned and it’s just pure luck that no one walked in on the murder as it was happening.

And maybe Aro learns a hard lesson about learning to let people walk away, leaving the possibility open that they could be drawn in again. Because if Aro had just waited, he would have found Chelsea, and with her gift he could have had Marcus and Didyme back again.

Assuming everything didn’t fall apart as soon as they left, of course. But that’s a whole other what-if scenario.

[jbuffyangel]

The Domino Falls: Arrow 1x12 Review (Vertigo)

It’s officially 1 year today since Arrow went off the air and I thought what better way to mark the moment than by chatting about the show we all love with a review!

We have begun the slow and steady climb to more Felicity Smoak content 

and “Vertigo” is a monumentally HUGE moment in Oliver and Felicity’s relationship. One little meet up at Big Belly Burger is what tips the dominoes over for Oliver Queen.

Let’s dig in...

Olicity

Let’s get right to the good stuff. Of course, there’s other stuff that happened in this episode, but do we care? Only a little. Oliver is on the hunt for The Count – the man responsible for the Vertigo epidemic and Thea’s looming drug trial. The Count is in my Top 5 of best Arrow villains. Of course his first episode coincides with an Olicity milestone. That rat bastard worked the hardest for our ship.

The judge has decided to make an example out of Ms. Queen in hopes of deterring others from trying Vertigo. Seriously, does that ever work? 

So, he chucked Thea’s plea agreement right out the window. Big Bro in The Hood is hoping to serve up a bigger fish – THE FISH – to help get his sister off the hook. Oliver is generally anti innocent people dying from illicit drugs, so there are unselfish reasons at play too.

No one knows the identity of The Count, so after roughing up the streets and getting nowhere, Oliver reaches out to Alexi Leonov. We met Leonov in 1x03, but for those who need a refresher - he leads the Starling City chapter of the Bratva. This is the first time Diggle meets Leonov, discovers Oliver speaks Russian, is a captain in the Russian mob, and can fake kill someone. 

It was a big day for John.

Leonov sets up the meet with The Count and Oliver attempts to buy some Vertigo off him, sans mask and arrow. The cops show up and Oliver tries to run down The Count as he escapes, but is stabbed in the chest with two syringes full of Vertigo. 

Never fear, Oliver has his magic herbs from Lian Yu which apparently can cure drug overdose. (Maybe share with the rest of the world?) Vertigo makes him momentarily murderous (more than usual) and he screams a lot.

THE POINT OF ALL THIS EXPOSITION IS ALL ROADS LEAD TO FELICITY SMOAK.  

Diggle and Oliver think it would be wise to have someone analyze the Vertigo… for some reason. This leads our dynamic duo to Queen Consolidated and to our favorite blonde hacker. 

Felicity rambles about Oliver’s haggard appearance (re: see drug overdose) and a cat being tased (she connects those disparate dots, I assure you). He offers yet another ridiculous lie and we embark on one of the funniest scenes in Arrow’s history.  

Arrow struggled to find its footing for a long time, but “Vertigo” is the beginning of the writers settling on to solid ground. If you ever have to wonder why the show focused on Oliver, Diggle and Felicity as the core characters you only need to watch this scene for the answer. 

The chemistry between all the actors is amazing. Arrow is not known for its humor (especially in Season 1), but between Emily Bett Rickard’s perfect delivery of another one of Felicity’s awkward and inadvertent sexual slip ups,

Stephen Amell’s inability to stay in character as he laughs right along with us,

and David Ramsey’s stone cold straight man reaction –

this entire scene is comedy gold. 

I vividly remember watching it live, laughing my ass off, and wanting more of EVERYTHING these three have to offer. And that’s exactly what we’re going get. 

“I ran out of sports bottles” reigned as Arrow’s funniest scene for a solid two years (until this episode), but it also marks the worst of Oliver’s terrible lies to Felicity. It’s so bad even Diggle has to remark on it in the elevator. Oliver’s lies are horrible, everyone knows Felicity doesn’t buy a word of it, and their need for her help is increasing with every day. Something has to change.

As we discussed in 1x11, Oliver is prone to distrust and very reticent to change his mind – ever. He’s been burned so many times in the past it’s difficult for him to view anyone through a trusting lens. 

And yet, Oliver told his deepest and darkest secret to a man he’d only known for a few weeks. Yes, Diggle had soldier skills Oliver would find useful as a partner. He knew John could hold his own in the field, but it’s not just about his abilities. It was also about the person Diggle is. Oliver did his homework and realized he needed John to survive. There was a wellspring of humanity in John that Oliver wasn’t able to access inside himself. He was subconsciously reaching out for help - like a moth to a flame.

It is the same with Felicity. Yes, Oliver needs her abilities – perhaps even more than what Diggle has to offer. (It’s not like Oliver Queen can’t handle himself in the field). But he is also drawn to Felicity’s warmth, kindness, humor, compassion and openness. Oliver’s heart is encased in iron and welded shut. He doesn’t know how to open it back up. It’s been dark and alone for so long. And yet, Oliver returns again and again to this brightly shining light and why? Because he craves it.  

Something has to change. We need that final push, the first domino to fall, so Oliver can make that final step and tell Felicity who he really is. Diggle was easier. He’d fought a war before. Oliver also knew about Andy’s death. Remember – Oliver brought Diggle onboard when he needed help with Deadshot. Manipulative? Yes, but it worked.

Felicity is trickier. I’m sure Oliver has done his research. 

Well, yes that kind of research, but also into her background. There’s no dead family member requiring retribution. No war zone she’s recently returned from. She’s an MIT graduate with a penchant for hacking working at a global conglomerate as a wildly overqualified IT tech. The girl doesn’t have so much as a parking ticket. The leap to vigilantism would be rather big.

I also think a fair amount of his hesitancy to involve her in anything related to The Hood is the danger. Diggle can handle himself. Felicity is a different story. Oliver is constantly battling the need for Felicity’s help versus the risk he’s putting her at by asking for it. The lies are to protest Oliver’s secret identity, but also to shield Felicity from it.

Whether it is Oliver’s own distrustfulness, his inability to see an angle to reel Felicity in, his desire to protect her or all three – it doesn’t matter. He continues to lie to her. Oliver isn’t ready to make that big leap either.

Source:  yet-i-remain-quiet

Until… Felicity asks to meet him at Big Belly Burger. Oliver waits for her, looking out the window on a rainy night, thinking of Yao Fei.

Oliver feared Yao Fei betrayed him and was really working for Fyers, but neither was true. He convinced Fyers of his loyalty by pretending to kill Oliver. (So that’s who Oliver learned it from!) Yao Fei wakes Oliver just as he rolls his “dead” body into the waterfall. He also slips Oliver a map with a location marked with the words “Survive.” 

Oliver doubted his trust in Yao Fei, but in the end was shocked to find out he had it right all along. Yao Fei was exactly who Oliver thought he was – a good man. That final and literal push cemented Oliver’s belief in his friend and to trust his gut.

There will probably always be a debate as to when the writers began the shift towards Olicity. “We DiDn’T dEcIdE uNtIL sEaSoN 2,” is the standard story, but I’m a firm believer it began in Season 1 and often include this scene in my massive pile of evidence. The last scene in the episode either tees up the next or contains a lot of emotional significance. Felicity beings to carve out a lot of final scene time as the series progresses.

The last scene in “Vertigo” is romantically lit with rain drops shimmering on the window. Oliver and Felicity are meeting outside the office and ALONE.  Soft instrumental music plays in the background. It feels more intimate than any scene they’ve shared before.

Source: andjustforthismoment 

I still cannot get over Oliver “The Sex God” Queen waving at Felicity Smoak like a giddy school boy and then shaking his head over how completely uncool he looked. We watched this man leave a criminal suspended in the air with an arrow through his hand in the first scene and in the last he acts like a puppy. THE RANGE.

It’s clear Felicity is a little nervous as she exhales walking in. Is she nervous to be meeting with Oliver or nervous about what she has to say? Both. She tips her hand a bit by thanking Oliver for meeting her at Big Belly Burger. She did not want to have this discussion at the Queen mansion. (THE PLOT THICKENS).

It seems Oliver and Felicity are having similar conundrums about each other. Felicity is uncertain if she can trust Oliver and has been debating for weeks whether or not to tell him the full truth. SOUND FAMILIAR? Felicity has far more evidence of Oliver’s untrustworthiness. There’s no rambling this time. She lays out the cold hard facts which is Oliver Queen is a big, fat liar and she knows it. He knows it. They both know it. Felicity Smoak is nobody’s fool.

And yet, she trusts him. Even though Oliver has given her no reason to. Even though there are clearly things he’s not telling her. Even though Oliver has yet to show her the same trust. There is something Felicity sees in him which tells her Oliver is worthy of it. It is an unsubstantiated truth. Felicity is going with her gut and her gut says Oliver Queen is a good man.

This doesn’t stop her from asking him the simple question though. Felicity needs that little bit of reassurance before she makes the final leap. 

At first, Oliver plays it off in his smarmy, smart ass and flippant way. It’s the Ollie Queen façade that always works with L*urel, Tommy, Lance, Moira and Thea.

It’s an act that’s never worked on Felicity. She sees through it now just like she’s always has. Her smile fades. Felicity breaks eye contact with Oliver and doesn’t hide her disappointment. She is tired of the games and lies. Felicity wants to talk to the real Oliver Queen. That’s the only man she will share this secret with.

All it takes is five seconds of Felicity’s disappointment for Oliver to drop the façade like a hot potato. 

He even apologizes and promises Felicity he is worthy of her trust. Then, Felicity lowers the boom and hands him The List.

It is difficult to surprise Oliver Queen, but this one has him reeling. She hands the book to Oliver, the same book Robert gave him, but he hesitates taking it. He has no idea where this is going, so he defaults to his standard operating procedure and lies.

Oliver is not doing a stellar job covering his “my world is upside down” reaction, so I highly doubt Felicity believes him, but she lets it slide for now. 

The more information she shares with Oliver the worse it gets. Felicity begins to fill in all the missing pieces to Walter’s disappearance and the guilt is pointing directly at Moira.

This is not the first time Oliver has reason to doubt his mother, but every time he’s able to reason away her involvement in anything nefarious. If he can’t do that on his own then Moira provides very plausible explanations (LIES), which allow Oliver to continuing looking at his family with a blind eye. But this? This is impossible to easily explain away. Particularly since WALTER was beginning to suspect his own wife.

Source: green-arrows-of-karamel

If The List cost Walter his life then Felicity is risking her own by showing it to anyone, particularly a Queen. She is literally putting her life in Oliver’s hands when she handed him that book. The first domino falls, but it’s not Oliver who pushes it over. It’s Felicity. She gives Oliver the truth when he’s given nothing but lies. Felicity trusts him absolutely when he’s done nothing to show he’s deserving of it. She risks everything while Oliver continues to hide everything.

Felicity shocks Oliver no differently than Yao Fei shocked him.  We’ve been waiting all this time for Oliver to make that final step and in the end it is Felicity who gives their relationship the necessary push over the waterfall. It’s a cold awakening, but he can see things clearly now. She is like a flashlight illuminating all the answers clouded by his distrustfulness and hesitancy. 

Felicity reveals so much of herself in this moment. First, she is willing to take risks if the cause is worth it. Giving Oliver that book took real courage. Second, the girl can keep a secret. She never said boo about anything related to Moira or Walter during Oliver’s little visits. Not even a hint! Three, Felicity Smoak sees clearly all the things Oliver is blind to. 

This serves as an important lesson for Oliver. Felicity knows so much more than he ever gave her credit for. Most importantly, his gut was right about her and he was wrong to ever question it. Two mistakes he will never make again.

And now everything will change.

Thea and Moira

I’m not gonna sugar coat this for you guys. I was one hundred percent okay with Thea going to jail. Season 1 Thea is a pain in the ass. A couple episodes with her sitting in the slammer would be a welcomed break from the teenage ‘tude.

L*urel and Lance work out a sweetheart deal for Thea after the judge basically said he would throw the book at her. Thea will serve 500 hours of community service under the watchful gaze of L*urel Lance at CRNI. And Thea flat out refuses.

Now, typically I am a fan of anyone who tells L*urel Lance to go screw herself, but even this was too much for me. Thea wants to go to jail to stick it to her mother because she’s still convinced Moira cheated on Walter. 

She didn’t cheat on Walter, Thea! Your mom just kidnapped him. So it’s fine.

Oliver decides to drop the Robert “I’m not the man you think I am” Queen bomb on Thea and tells her their father was a big hoe. Thea refuses to believe him and Moira is ticked because Oliver told the truth. Queens don’t do that EVER. 

Moira: He loved you. No matter his faults. He loved you.

Thea wants to know why Moira took all the punishment for Robert’s sins and her answer is very simple. She was trying to protect Thea’s memory of her father. Moira Queen is as shady as they come, but her desire to protect her children is always the driving force of any decisions she makes – good, bad and the ugly.

Moira: One day I hope you’re lucky enough to have a daughter and then you’ll know why.

This is the essence of motherhood. We will serve ourselves up on a platter and take the brunt of their hurt and anger if we believe it protect or help our children in the long run. Right or wrong - it’s just the gig.

Source: queensarrow.

L*urel and Lance

L*urel and Detective Lance are really Thea’s only hope of avoiding significant jail time and, despite their history, Oliver has no problem groveling at their feet if it means protecting his sister. Luckily for Oliver, this week L*urel likes him, so she’s willing to do Thea a favor.

But her reason for wanting to help Thea turns out have very little to do with Oliver. It’s about Sara. When L*urel looks at Thea she sees all the wild abandon of Sara with all the red flags.

L*urel: For so long you and I have blamed Oliver for Sara's death, but Sara is to blame too.

Detective Lance isn’t too keen on helping Oliver or Thea, but L*urel calls out her father on his hypocrisy. He had no qualms about bailing Sara out after she shop lifted. The youngest Lance daughter seemed to get herself in to trouble long before she ever stepped onto the Queen’s Gambit and her father always helped her avoid the consequences of her actions. Until those consequences finally caught up with her.

This is the first time L*urel lays any blame at Sara’s feet. I find it wildly disturbing whenever I agree with L*urel, but damn it she has this one right. Oliver wasn’t the only one who cheated. Oliver wasn’t the only one who lied. Oliver wasn’t the only one who was selfish. Sara was all of those things too. Just because she paid for those mistakes with her life doesn’t erase the choices she made and the pain she caused. If someone held Sara responsible without destroying her life, like L*urel is trying to do with Thea just maybe she would have never gotten on the boat. Maybe.

The game of “What if?” is a torturous one. It never gives any definitive answers. But Detective Lance refusing to help Thea to stick it to Oliver isn’t fair. L*urel is right. Sure, it may hurt Oliver, but it won’t bring Sara back.

More importantly, it doesn’t hold Sara responsible in any way. Detective Lance is treating Sara the same in death as he did in life. She wasn’t a saint anymore than Thea is – no matter how much Lance romanticizes his memory of his daughter. L*urel and her father don’t resolve the Sara issue, but Lance helping Thea is an important step towards his acknowledgement of the truth and putting some of the blame where it belongs.

Stray Thoughts

Oliver is shirtless and handcuffed in the bunker is an absolutely wasted opportunity for an Olicity sex scene. Pretty sure I read a fic that started like it though. Source: @olivergifs​

Bratva Oliver is cold, calculating and stylish. I don’t know what it is about that jacket you guys. It doesn’t things to me.

I say this as a person who was very anti murder throughout the show, but sometimes it’s great to watch Oliver do a little violence.

“Whoever you fear, fear me more!” As vigilante lines go this was a damn good one.

“I’m not the one going to prison.” Give it time, Moira. Give it time.

McKenna Hall makes her first episode appearance as the rotation of female guest stars continues while show desperately searches for a love interest Stephen has chemistry because it ain’t Katie Cassidy.  (Psst! You found THE ONE already!!! Call off the search!)

Just for you multifandom folks out there McKenna is also Qetsiyah on The Vampire Diaries.

Why doesn’t Oliver give a sketch to the police of The Count? That could be helpful.

“I don’t need the bow.” Yeah, but you need to walk straight!

Musings of the Kiddo

Kiddo: How many times does he do this to her?

Me: Lie? A lot. She was very patient with him.

Disclaimer: Any gifs on the blog are not mine. If you would like a gif removed from my reviews, please message me.

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[tumblezwei]

Why Kyoko Mogami is the GOAT

And why y’all are SLEEPING ON HER

Spoilers for Skip Beat, but honestly idk how much of the story I’m gonna get into for this since I’m flying by the seat of my pants. Still, read at your own risk.

Also this is LONG lmao

Kyoko Mogami is a 16 year old middle school drop-out that works two jobs day and night in order to pay rent for the Tokyo apartment that she lives in all by herself 6 days out of the week. Going into the first chapter, there are three things immediately clear about her. 

1. She’s cheerful, kind, and also kind of batshit insane. From the first moment we meet her, her personality is throwing itself at our faces and refusing to calm down. (apologies for the bad quality images, I work with what I have)

2. She loves Sho Fuwa, her childhood friend and rising rock-star that asked Kyoko to come with him to Tokyo after middle school graduation to support his career

3. Nothing matters to her as long as Sho is happy. Sure, she laments that her love for girly dresses, cosmetics, and fairy tale princesses will never amount to anything since all of her money is going toward paying the rent on her and Sho’s apartment, but that’s fine. As long as her precious Sho is happy, so is she. 

And, as you’d expect, things go to shit pretty quickly afterwards. During one her off days from her night job, Kyoko decides to visit Sho at his recording studio with dinner. After sneaking in past the hoards of squealing teenage girls waiting outside to catch a glimpse of him, she overhears him talking to his manager. 

“I’m the heir to a prominent Japanese inn, do you think I’ve ever cooked or cleaned all by myself?” She hears. 

“That’s awful,” the manager replies, “you make it sound as if you brought her just to be your maid.”

“She’s basically been my maid since I was a kid, or else I wouldn’t have brought her along with me. It’s not like I forced her, I asked her a question and gave her the choice. It’s only natural that she’d work her butt off to support me.” 

And he just keeps going. Once he’s made enough to live independently, he’ll send her back. How dare his parents try to set him up with a plain-looking girl like her. She doesn’t even wear make-up! 

As images of flash in Kyoko’s mind of standing in front of make-up stores with no money to buy anything, she takes Sho’s words just as well as one might expect. By unleashing the box of tucked away emotions she’s held in her chest and swearing to take revenge on Sho for using her and throwing her away like this.

. I failed to mention this at the start, but the beginning of the chapter introduces us to the most important piece of symbolism in Kyoko’s character development: Pandora’s box. 

For Kyoko’s entire life, she’s held this box inside herself. In myth, once this box was opened, all of the evil of the world is unleashed, never to be put back inside. So for Kyoko, the metaphor is quite apt. Hearing Sho’s words unlocks the box and unleashes a kind of anger that not even Kyoko knew she was capable of, a kind of determination and vengeance that has her dyeing her hair and staking outside of a talent manager’s house for days on end to whittle down his willpower and give her a chance to audition at Sho’s rival talent agency, LME. Every time she hears his name, or sees his picture, she’s filled with myopic sense of rage that no one can calm her down from. 

Her sole mission in life is to get revenge on Sho Fuwa, a sentiment that finds her at odds with LME’s top actor, Ren Tsuruga, who sees her one-sided quest for vengeance as an insult to people who truly love acting. But as if Kyoko cares, she needs to get revenge! 

I’m gonna drop the pseudo-narration for a bit because I actually need to skip over a fair bit of plot to get to what I think makes Kyoko incredibly compelling, outside of being the funniest female character in existence. We’re going to jump forward in time to Kyoko’s first acting gig. Well, not so much an gig as much as it is a competition. She’s been tasked to play the role of a dignified inn keeper that’s serving tea to the main male character. After having broken her ankle and been challenged by the real lead actress, this is her first shot to prove she has the talent to make it in the acting industry. So in order to immerse herself in the role, she utilizes her experience of being trained by Sho’s mother to take care of the inn that his family owned. It’s here that we finally understand that Kyoko giving up her life back home for Sho wasn’t just a spur of the moment decision brought about by infatuation. It was something she’d been doing for her entire life. Everything she knows how to do, every skill she’s obtained, has been because of Sho. And this is the moment that she realizes that fact too. (the first image is from after the scene is done, wherein Kyoko cannot snap herself out of her character due to the lessons she was taught as a child, despite her sitting position making her broken ankle unbearably painful). 

Even her righteous fury at being left in the dust is focused solely on Sho fucking Fuwa. Is there anything that she has than can be attributed to her own success? Does she have any skills that can’t be traced back to trying to make Sho happy? Who is Kyoko Mogami? Is she worth anything without Sho? 

And I want to make this clear right now, because I know the term “shoujo” makes people hesitate. THIS is what Skip Beat is about. Kyoko’s journey to find out who she is, and with every new role she takes on and with every experience she gains, she becomes just a little closer to finding out who she is and what she wants for herself. 

We watch as her love for acting slowly eclipses her thirst for revenge. A few arcs after this moment, she is contacted about a job to act in a music PV with none other than Sho himself. In the beginning, she accepts the job in order to prove to Sho that she’s climbing the ladder and catching up to him, but her performance suffers whenever she thinks about her revenge. And what saves her isn’t even putting aside her revenge, but prioritizing her own feelings above it. She wants to act! She wants to put on a good performance! So she needs to put aside those feelings of anger and draw from her past experiences to create a character that leaves Sho in the dust. 

I’m gonna bet y’all are wondering about the romance, though. Because this is a shoujo, and of course it has romance. But hey, guess what? That romance is equally compelling and is an integral part to Kyoko’s character too. In the first....5 or so arcs, Ren Tsuruga ‘s relationship with Kyoko crawls it’s way out of the it’s rocky beginnings, and he slowly becomes a mentor figure to Kyoko. He’s her superior in acting, and she looks to him often for support and guidance when she’s struggling to perform a role or having difficulty with her fellow actors. To Kyoko, Ren is the goal, his level of acting is what she aspires to be, so she can stand on equal footing with him. Before there’s even a whiff of romance between them, there develops a solid bond of trust and support. And once the romance starts. Hoo boy. 

To fully understand why it’s taken 12 years irl for a confession scene to finally take place, we need to bring back the metaphor of Pandora’s box. Because not everything escaped Pandora’s box when it was opened. Pandora was able to shut the box just in time for one thing to stay locked inside: hope. In the myth, this is a good thing, while negative and vile emotions run free, hope still exists within people to become better. But for Kyoko, the box isn’t a safe place, it’s a repressed place. She spent her entire life locking away the negative emotions she felt, placing a smile on her face and hoping for Sho’s happiness. And when those emotions are set lose, she locks the box back up, sealing something else inside. Her hope, her confidence in anything having to do with love. 

It’s not just that Kyoko isn’t in love anymore, she feels as if she can’t be in love anymore, that she’s entirely incapable of it. The idea of falling in love with someone else terrifies her. What if she goes back to the way she was before? An empty shell that exists for other people and not herself. The box has been sealed tightly again, and by God this time she’s not going to let anything open it. And like, I don’t want to spoil much in this, as contradictory as that sounds. Because the scene where she realizes she loves Ren? One of the best fucking scenes in any romance manga ever. 

And. God. I haven’t even touched on her mom. Kyoko’s desire for love, that became so warped under Sho and so desolate after his betrayal, can all stem back to Saena Mogami. A woman who, no matter what Kyoko did, rejected any affection that her child tried to give, and gave none in return. “Even a mother can hate her own child.” We get bits and pieces of what Kyoko’s mother was like, and the environment that a very young Kyoko was raised in before her mother left her in the care of Sho’s parents. And eventually we realize that Kyoko isn’t afraid of her love being rejected twice, but a third time. 

Like, y’all, I’m not good at these kind of essays. I keep wanting to go off on tangents, nothing is ever focused, I spend to much time just reading the manga instead of writing this fucking post. But please believe me when I tell you that Kyoko Mogamis character development is like none other. She’s truly at the top of her genre and it’s an actual crime that she’s so underrated. 

I HAVEN’T EVEN TALKED ABOUT KANAE, THE WEISS TO HER RUBY, THE TSUNDERE TO HER GENKI

Before Kyoko gets even a single arc with Ren, she gets two with Kanae. The first with Kanae as a central figure, and the second where Kanae is her support. She’s the one that gives Kyoko the eureka moment she needs to pull of her performance with Sho. They are one of the most developed and deep friendships in shoujo that I’ve ever seen AND Y’ALL NEED TO STOP SLEEPING ON IT. LOOK AT THESE TWO

And don’t take this poorly assembled post at face value, I’ve left out a lot of shit. Starting with how fucking funny this manga is. Kyoko’s special talent for her LME audition is peeling vegetables, there’s a running gag where Ren asks for her advice while she’s in a giant chicken costume, unaware that it’s her, the president of LME is an eccentric millionaire that likes to dress up in different themed costumes every day and loves throwing extravagant parties, Kyoko’s hobby is making voodoo dolls and talks to a miniature Ren doll whenever she needs encouragement or advice. 

And it’s all packaged alongside some of the most compelling character development I’ve ever seen (for both Kyoko and Ren), and some absolutely heartbreaking drama. You will never know true pain until “I don’t have a daughter.”

Read this, ya’ll. You won’t regret it. 

[bewitching-elizabeth-olsen]

Press: Streaming, With Only a Little Trepidation

“I’ve never had more fun on a job before,” says the WandaVision lead who spoke with the Ted Lasso star about their shows, the Scarlett Johansson lawsuit, and what happens to the theatrical moviegoing experience now.

In Reunited, Awards Insider hosts a conversation between two Emmy nominees who have collaborated on a previous project. Here, we speak with WandaVision star Elizabeth Olsen and Ted Lasso co-creator and star Jason Sudeikis, who previously starred in the 2017 film Kodachrome.

VANITY FAIR: Elizabeth Olsen and Jason Sudeikis met for the first time just before filming their 2017 indie Kodachrome, but they already had at least one thing in common: a “big old crush” on Ed Harris, as Olsen describes it. “He did not disappoint at all,” adds Sudeikis. “He stuck up for us. He cared about us. He cared about the movie.”

A guide to Hollywood’s biggest races

Now, the two have much more in common, as first-time Emmy nominees. Olsen is nominated for lead actress for her work as Wanda Maximoff in WandaVision, a Disney+ limited series that explores grief and loss, through a superhero story wrapped in a parody of TV sitcoms. Sudeikis earned four Emmy nominations for Apple TV+’s darling Ted Lasso, which he cocreated, cowrote, and stars in as Ted, a cheery American football coach who attempts to coach an English Premier League soccer team.

In early August, Olsen and Sudeikis reunited over Zoom to chat with Vanity Fair about transitioning these characters to TV, their views on the new streaming empires, and what they think of the lawsuit Scarlett Johansson recently brought against Disney regarding the strategy to stream Black Widow simultaneously with its theatrical release.

Vanity Fair: It’s been quite a few years since you shot Kodachrome. What do you remember about where you were on your trajectories at that time?

Elizabeth Olsen: Of life? It was when I was at a down trajectory.

Jason Sudeikis: Personally or professionally? I feel like from the outside, it only seems like you operate in one direction [motions upward].

Olsen: From a personal standpoint. So, I was excited to get to do a small movie, an intimate job that had some levity. And that was really nice. And I have a big old crush on Ed Harris and I still do.

Sudeikis: Yeah. To know that the director was like, “hey, we’re thinking about Jason Sudeikis for this role” and then Ed Harris stayed on, It was like, “all right, pleasant surprise. Pleasant surprise.”

Your current projects, WandaVision and Ted Lasso, may seem very different but do have one thing in common: they both feature characters that originated elsewhere. Wanda is obviously from the Marvel films and Jason you played Ted Lasso in commercials. Why did you feel these characters would work on a TV series?

Olsen: I got really comfortable in the Marvel movies, taking up my piece of the story and my piece of, how does my little arc work in this much larger arc with 30 other characters? And so the idea of all the focus being on me and Paul [Bettany] totally freaked me out. And that it was on television felt weird because these characters are superheroes and maybe they should be seen on big screens and not televisions. But the entire DNA of the show was meant for television. It was written for television. The arc has to be told through television. And from an actor’s point of view, it was something I’d never done. I’ve never done sitcom acting, let alone go through the decades with it.

And I’ve never had more fun on a job before. We got to go to work and just feel like an idiot all the time. And all of us, we’d be like hamming, hamming, hamming, and use each other as these barometers of “are we doing this too much? Is this now just a parody? Is this a joke? At what point are we supposed to dial it back?” And at one point I did, I think, a quadruple take, and that was the first time the director asked me to pull it back and just do a double take. So it was pretty incredible to get to expand on the character and this world, but do it from a totally different perspective. I’m so grateful for that job.

Sudeikis: Have you hosted SNL yet?

Olsen: God no!

Sudeikis: No? Well, I’m not going to agent you and be like, “if they ask, would you ever want to?” But, look, I know you’re funny. It was really fun to watch you do multi-cam sitcom acting. And then the genre thing, it made me be like, “oh, she would crush on SNL”. You’re always going to internalize stuff because you’re, in my opinion, very, very talented and very, very smart. So then even when you externalize things, like a quadruple take, it would be joyful to watch even in the attempt. Watching the show, it didn’t seem at all like an aberration or like you were putting it on. It felt well conceived and well thought out. And it almost made me wonder if the creator was aware of that or was it all just an act of faith on their part.

Olsen: It was a total act of faith. What they did is they took comedy actors who are really funny and gave them the more dramatic stuff. Because they thought that would balance out when we failed. And we’re like, “You guys are very smart for doing this.”

Sudeikis: Now, are you putting that on them or was that articulated to you day one?

Olsen: We talked about it. We were so open about it. We’re like, “this is very clever that you guys put some of the funniest actors in MCU in these dramatic parts.” But SNL, I watch it every Saturday when it’s live. I’m obsessed with SNL and that’s why I would never! It’s like the ocean. I respect the ocean so much and that’s why I don’t need to go in it.

Sudeikis: I don’t know. I think we’ll see. This is going to be like Charles Foster Kane’s declaration of principles. “I would never host SNL.” And then, “And your host, Elizabeth Olsen.”

Olsen: So tell me about Lasso: small to big.

Sudeikis: Me and my buddies, Joe [Kelly] and Brendan [Hunt], did those commercials in 2013, 2014, and we then sat down to talk about it in 2015. And it was kind of like, “okay, is it another set of commercials? Is it a movie?” I knew what the character was and we all grew up with great sports films, by Ron Shelton and Rudy and Hoosiers and things like that. But then also liked Nora Ephron, you know? We wanted to make something that had a little bit of romance. And romance may not be sexual, it’s also a platonic version of romance. And the story just sort of spooled out of us in a way that garnered a pilot episode and then a well-beat-out outline for a season. Because we were kind of modeling it after the British Office where it’d be like six episodes, six episodes, and then maybe an hour and a half special, like a movie type thing. Not wanting to take up too much space and not knowing how long it would go. And so it only could be a TV show, was the way it felt.

And so then it went away for a while because that was in 2015. And then lo and behold, it comes back around when I met Bill Lawrence for this other project. That one didn’t work out, but he was like, “Do you have anything?” I said, “Well, we have this.” And I remember having a whole bunch of stuff in this office, more work than I think he realized. He’s like, “Oh yeah, this is definitely, this is a whole thing. Okay. Wow. You guys have really thought this through.”

Olsen: Did you have a [writers] room or did you already write most of it?

Sudeikis: No, we definitely had a room. It was like I knew the chords, I knew the structure of things. We had a great room of 11 people for the first season. With hiring people, we just had good fortune. I didn’t know it was interesting at the time, but asking people during the interview process who their mentors were, who were the people that encouraged them, who made you think you could do this for a living—you can learn a lot about a person by listening to them talk about their mentors, their heroes.

Olsen: With the jokes, I feel like they’re so quick, but they’re so specific to people who watch sports and who knows sports. Well, not all of them, but a lot of the jokes are. Do you have a list of ones that you want to get in there or are these coming up in the room? Because it gets me as a big sports person.

Sudeikis: It really depends on it. There’s some ideas that I’d had for years and years that are just from old notebooks that I used to carry around when I worked on SNL before you would type things into a phone. And storylines and themes and characters that have just been ruminating in my head based on other ideas for either movies or sketches that didn’t make it. And then a big part of the room is that we have this collective consciousness that isn’t all sports.

And then with specific soccer jokes, we do try to include jokes that we call “two percenters” that only football fans would like. Just as our little tip of the cap because we wouldn’t be here without that group of people digging our shit back in the commercial days.

Your shows were on Disney+ and Apple TV+. Did you have any concerns about them being on streaming services, which were relatively new at the time, and finding an audience?

Sudeikis: It’d probably be more so if it was like Goodyear TV+, if it was some brand that didn’t already rule the world of entertainment and technology.

Olsen: I did a version of that with Facebook. And I didn’t like that experience. I loved my show [Sorry for Your Loss] and I loved everyone that I worked with. But the Facebook relationship was frustrating because of the lack of television experience and how the platform is organized. When we went to season two, we had a meeting that our show called for Facebook to have with us, so that we can give them our notes about their platform and why we think it’s really hard to find our show on their platform and how it’s congested. So I was anxious going into Disney+. But I knew it was Disney. And I think I was more anxious with the Marvel characters being on television than I was about the Disney+ element.

Sudeikis: Golly, I didn’t even consider that. And you’re absolutely right, because Facebook would be closer to Apple. Truth is we didn’t have a choice. We pitched it to a bunch of different places. They were the only ones that would open the door and say, “yeah, come in out of the rain, you can hang out in here. You can do your little show in here.” And so, the trepidation was alleviated by the fact that there was nowhere else open to us.

Olsen: Facebook and Apple I feel like aren’t that similar.

Sudeikis: No, but they hadn’t created content before.

Olsen: Well, Facebook now is [scaling back] scripted content.

Speaking of streaming, both of you have starred in big theatrical movies. Are either of you worried about the theatrical experience, in the way that COVID has changed how movies are being released at this point? We saw how that’s playing out with Scarlett Johansson’s recent lawsuit.

Olsen: I’m worried about a bunch of things. Not worried on Scarlett’s behalf. But I’m worried about small movies getting the opportunity to be seen in theaters. That was already a thing pre-COVID. I like going to the movies and I don’t necessarily want to see only an Oscar contender or a blockbuster. I would like to see art films and art house theaters. And so I do worry about that, and people having to keep these theaters alive. And I don’t know how financially that works for these theaters. I do hope that there’s some sort of solution that the larger companies are coming together to keep, at least in L.A. this is going to happen. But I do think it’s going to be how it kind of used to be when studios owned theaters. And I have a feeling that we might go back to that being the only way to keep them alive with such expensive real estate. But when it comes to actors and their earnings, I mean, that’s just, that’s just all contracts. So it’s either in the contract or it’s not. What about you? Are you worried about Scarlett?

Sudeikis: Of course. How could I not? She’s married to my comedy brother [SNL’s Colin Jost].

Olsen: I think she’s so tough and literally when I read that I was like, “good for you Scarlett.”

Sudeikis: Well, I mean, it is appropriately bad-ass and on brand. I think it’s also married to yes, the COVID of it all and success of the streaming sites. But also just technology. I mean this thing [points at his TV] is as good as any movie theater, and all that stuff is getting cheaper and cheaper. If you’re a family of five and you’re going out there and it’s a whole thing. And yet the communal experience, towards Lizzie’s point is, is one that you can’t replicate in home. You can’t replicate through social media. I think both of our shows have succeeded greatly on their own merit, but it’s certainly written further through people’s love of them socially. Which would have happened back in the day around a water cooler. And while that’s nice, it’s still not the same as sitting next to everybody and getting scared at the same time or cheering at the same time and laughing at the same time.

I do think though, if we just use anecdotally, Kodachrome as an example, more people probably have seen it because it got on Netflix than they would have in the theater. And the more that happens, the better. So it’s like there is that reach that as long as those streaming sites are still paying to make those little movies, they have the opportunity to be seen. And so it is this balance. I just hope that with that still comes creative autonomy, and we don’t lose sight of that.

What about the experience of making these shows will you take on to your next project and the one after that?

Olsen: Well, I definitely had a shake-up to use my full body as an actor. I had to create a character and voices. And just all the technical stuff that I have loved doing my whole life was just shook up a bit. And so I’m now really excited to do more of that and to feel a bit freer in building characters. And so that has really informed the next thing I’m working on now and preparing for. It’s just kind of put me back in my actory body in a really good way.

And hosting SNL.

Olsen: Of course, now I’ll host SNL because stage fright has nothing to do with that. I can do a monologue in front of people and make them laugh.

Sudeikis: Not a prerequisite. Having worked there for 10 years, not a prerequisite. Well, the tacky answer is it’d be tough not being the boss again. And I’m fucking flabbergasted that people have picked up so much what we set down for them. You know what I mean? From colleagues on the writing and acting side to just regular folks back home, people I’ve never even met. It’s thrilling. I have to try to make sense of that for myself. And I think a lot of it has to do with it being something so personal. And so that might be the thing to lean into.

Olsen: It’s interesting you say that because immediately three days after wrapping, I had to go into a film where we’re not in WandaVision land, obviously. I mean, they kind of are a muscle, these Marvel movies. Instead of going back to that routine of it, I tried to do what you’re saying. I was like, “okay, so what can I play with that I haven’t gotten to that’ll at least satisfy something inside me that I want to play with right now?”

Sudeikis: I don’t know when I’ll get to do that again, when I’ll do that next. Because yeah, it’s Lasso—

Olsen: Lasso forever.

Sudeikis: At least for a little bit longer.

Olsen: Is it what you said, three seasons and then a special?

Sudeikis: I mean, the special would have been the third season with the initial thing. Now you sound like you’re my agent or manager.

Olsen: Oh good, that’s what I came here for. That’s what I wanted to do.

Sudeikis: Who sent you? I know the end of this story. I mean, the fact that we have a third season could fucking blow it all and ruin what would people like so much of the first season. We might be in the middle of doing it now in the second season. I don’t know. We’re just doing it the same way we did it last time. So we’ll see. But yeah, that’s a big old, long winded question mark.

Olsen: Or an ellipsis.

Press: Streaming, With Only a Little Trepidation was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

[chicksung]

One Last Time || Park Jisung

Genre: Fluff, best friends to lovers!au, nonidol!au. Part of the @neo-the-stars-net halloween collab

Pairing: best friend!jisung x fem reader

Word Count: 2.9k (I didn’t intend for this to happen)

Warning/s: Mentions of fake blood (red paint), singular mention of alcohol (not consumed by either party)

Synopsis: Senior year. Full of teenagers trying to pack the most into their last year of high school to make it memorable. You and Jisung have decided that this year will be the end of your tradition, trick or treating. Better make it count, right?

A/N: I was so happy to be able to be a part of this collab and a special thanks to @ncitythoughts for letting me bounce ideas off you. I really appreciate it, elle! This concept also one my favourites. I also couldn’t find a gif of it but the costume that jisung is in is his one from Halloween 2018! Enjoy, spookies!

Adding the final touches to your makeup, you smiled brightly at your mirror image and stood up, looking the same reflection up and down at your costume. You had recently found your obsession with Stephen King horror movies, your favourite of which being It. You knew that was basic, but the character design of Pennywise was something that continued to fascinate you. So, with your slowly growing sewing capability and enough dedication, you created your genderbent Pennywise cosplay. White top with ruffled sleeves, ruffle white skirt, a lot of white, but for a bit of fun (and what was pretty much canon) you had splattered the clean material with red paint, creating fake bloodstains.

Now your face was coloured white and your lips were shaded into the creepy and sinister smile that Pennywise always harboured. Once satisfied with your reflection, you turned to your best friend. “What do you think?” You called out to him, drawing his attention away from the whiskers he was drawing on his cheeks. He looked you up and down for a moment before smiling.

“Truly terrifying.” Jisung smiled, turning back to his reflection to add the last whisker. He placed down the eyeliner pen and stood up. Jisung’s costume was also mainly white, but his taking on a more animalistic and innocent portrayal, polar opposite to your ‘blood’ splattered clothes.

“Look at you, Jwi. So cute.” You said, playfully pinching his cheeks, causing him to groan.

“Y/N stop~ We’re not five anymore.” He stated.

He was right. You weren’t five anymore. You were both eighteen and in your final year of high school. Funniest thing about this whole thing is that you didn’t even know Jisung when you were five. The two of you didn’t meet until you were eleven and the seating plan the teacher had set up had graciously introduced you to Jisung, the soft spoken, gangly boy who spent way too much time in the gymnasium for your liking, yet the two of you became inseparable.

To be quite honest, you had no idea how it happened, it just did. Asking for solutions for the math homework ended up turning into the most important friendship you’ve made.

“Y/N! Y/N! Are you ready?” Your little sister, Gyuri squawked, running into your room in her cheap Halloween store Princess Aurora dress. The young girl was six and only came up to Jisung’s knee, but her excitement was measured to approximately seven feet tall. It was the first year that your mother had let her go trick or treating but only if you went with her, and knowing Jisung, he wasn’t going to mind the girl tagging along. You knew he was very much whipped for Gyuri and she looked up to Jisung like the older brother she never had.

“Give us a minute, GyuGyu. We’re almost done here. Why don’t you go and get the little bags I bought. They’re the purple and black bags I put on the kitchen table. There’s one for each of us, and our names are written on them. Can you do that for me?” You said, slowly shrinking down to her level so she hopefully wouldn’t be to intimidated by the creepy clown makeup, but thankfully she remained bubbly.

“I can do that!” She said, her hands curling up into little fists before running back out the door she had entered not long before.

“Does she ever just...stop?” Jisung asked. He was honestly jealous with how much energy the six year old had. You shook your head, a reminiscent shine glazing over your eyes. You didn’t recognise the trance you were in until Jisung was waving his hands in front of you.

“Hello? Earth to Y/N? Do you copy?” Jisung huffed, his big brown eyes almost touching your own. Your eyes finally snap back to now and you see how close in proximity your face was from his.

“Yes, I copy. Now get out of my face.” You rolled your eyes, shoving Jisung away from you. He chuckled and stepped away from you, a warm feeling buzzing in his chest. A buzz he recognised way too well, and one he only felt when he was with you.

“Okay you two, stand in front of the door. I think you know the drill.” Your mom smiled, camera clamped firmly in her hand as she gestured towards you and Jisung.

Another one for the scrapbook

You shuffled towards the tall boy, looking towards your mom and smiled. Jisung did the same. His heart shaped smile revealed his teeth and gums to the camera and your mother couldn’t stop herself from fawning over him a few seconds after the shuttering of the camera was heard.

“Aww, Jisungie, dont you just look adorable?” She cooed, making you roll your eyes. “Mom, stop it~ It’s embarrassing~”

“What? Am I not allowed to compliment someone?” She teased back before you rolled your eyes and strutted over to see the photo, a soft smile gliding across your face. This was really the end of your tradition, huh?

You and Jisung retreated back to your bedroom and from under your bed, you pulled out a scrapbook with its spine cracked from how many times it had been opened.

It had been your mother’s idea to scrapbook your friendship. Although you thought it was dumb at first, you’re really glad she had suggested it. Calling for Jisung to pass you one of your many orange gel pens, you made small decorations in the page before writing ‘Halloween, Senior Year’ at the top in cursive and glued the picture onto the page.

You couldn’t help but flick back to your very first Halloween together, you dressed in a cheap princess dress and crown (very similar to your little sister’s), and Jisung in an equally as cheap vampire costume, complete with fake teeth. Your pumpkin shaped candy buckets clutches tightly in your hands.

The more pages you flip, the more you watched yourselves grow. Jisung went to being shorter than you to being five feet taller than you and you grew into your body and developed as every girl did.

“God, I was so cringey back then.” Jisung groaned when he saw what picture you were looking at.

“And what makes you think you grew out of that?”

“And what makes you think that...that...” He tried to find something to fire back at you but all he came up with were bent bullets.

“Better luck next time, Sungie.” You smirked slyly, your hand creating a ‘V’ on his face and squishing his cheeks. He puffed his cheeks out and stood up, walking towards your little sister, who was busy imitating a spinning top in her dress.

“Gyuri! You silly, if you keep spinning like that, you won’t be able to come trick or treating with us!” Jisung told her, placing his hands lightly on her back to stop her. Gyuri stumbles for a second when she stopped before smiling up at Jisung.

“I’ve stopped now. Can we go?” She asked excitedly, bouncing on the balls of her heels and with a singular nod from your mother, she squealed (which rang through room in a pitch you didn’t like to think about) and grabbed her little black and purple bag and raced to your side.

“I take it you’re ready to go?” You asked the little girl, who nodded her head enthusiastically. You looked back to Jisung, but his eyes were trained to your sibling and an unconscious smile touched your lips.

“Have fun, kids!” Your mother voice broke your train of thought and you nodded.

“We’ll see you later, mom!”

As dusk turned to nightfall, you, your best friend and your little sister went to the doors of the decorated houses, which broke the familiarity of the normal picket fences neighbourhood. The excited rap on every house’s door was opened with an equally excited parent, placing candy into each of your buckets. There were a few who questioned you and your friend, asking if you were too old for dress up.

“It’s been our tradition for years. It’s what brought us closer together.” You would always tell them before taking Gyuri’s hand and skipping back up the path and onto the next house.

By 9pm, Gyuri was in Jisung’s arms, fast asleep, her pudgy cheek squished up against her eye. The stars were out now and the moon’s reflective rays were the only thing that lit up your path aside from the occasional streetlight. You opened up the front door, Jisung pushing passed you to deliver the six year old to your mother.

“Are you two going to stay out a little later?” She asked the boy. He nodded. “Yes, we are but not too much later.” He promised. Your mom smiled. If there was anyone who was just as whipped for Jisung as you were, it was your mother.

“Alright but no later than midnight, alright kids?” She called out as Jisung made his way to the door. With a call of reassurance delivered, you and Jisung left the house once more and began to wander the streets.

The memories from the past seven years crashed over your mind like a tidal wave, images of a younger set of best friends, running like crazy through the streets, playing chasy with all the other neighbourhood kids while the parents sat around and drank and conversed. The memories of your younger self. A younger friendship, a younger mindset, a younger crush.

Neither you ever confessed your feelings but you lost count of how many people (particularly adults) who assumed you were a couple.

“Do you remember when I would sleep over, if the sky was clear, we would say we would sleep under the stars but chicken out and just sleep in your room?” You reminisced on the story aloud, Jisung giggling in return.

“Yeah. We were so scared something like a cougar was gonna eat us or something.” His laughter picked up again, his eyes squinting as he did.

“The wild imagination of a child, I guess.” You concluded, falling back into comfortable silence before stumbling across a part of the neighbourhood that was all too familiar.

The woods.

Many games of hide and seek and murder in the dark were played here, the latter being played with other friends and children on the same street. You remember the nights of giggling until your sides ached, hiding until you had to find the seekers, being too good that you were always made the seeker.

“We basically know every inch of that wood.” Jisung cocked his head to the side, trying to peer into the wood, seeing if there were any creatures of the night lurking around. There weren’t but it wouldn’t hurt to check.

“I remember making so many cubby houses with Yuna and Seulgi. You, Renjun and Chenle wouldn’t let us into yours so we made our own. Turns out ours was much more stable when it came to windy days.” You teased, letting your shoes tease the edge between the woodly maze and the street. Jisung scrunched his nose up and folded his arms, mumbling something about Chenle being dumb and Renjun being just as dumb when it came to stability.

Jisung stood there for a second longer, before his eyes lit up with an idea. “We should play hide and seek.”

You snapped your head towards him so fast, it almost gave you whiplash. “Huh?”

Jisung looked at you and felt his chest was about to explode from the warmth inside it. “I mean, if we’re stopping our tradition tonight, might as well finish it properly. Let’s play hide and seek one last time, before we become boring adults stuck in office jobs and getting more paper cuts than hours of sleep.”

You couldn’t see why not

“Since it was your suggestion, you’re the seeker.” You declared as you dashed into the woods, looking for the same pile of old plywood that you would hide behind and no one could ever seem to find you. Jisung tried to protest but you were too far into the wood that his complaints fell onto deaf ears.

You could hear Jisung’s footsteps approaching and distancing themselves from the spot you sat. ‘Even after all these years, that idiot still can’t find me.’ You thought to yourself. You checked your phone and you had been crouched in the same position for ten minutes.

“Y/N! Y/N! Where are you?” You heard Jisung’s voice echoing from the other side of the wood.

“Over here, you stupid!” You called out, knowing that he was nowhere near close to finding you. He dashed back to the centre of the forest, looking around and trying to pinpoint where your voice had called out to him moments ago.

“Where’s here?” He asked, but this time, no reply. He groaned before calling your phone. You were quick to decline the desperate boy’s plea and watched as he tossed his head back in annoyance. You watched him slowly make his way closer to you, and you were in perfect alignment with his ankles. Yes. Yes. This is what you wanted.

One step. Two steps.

When he reached his third step, you grasped his right ankle, causing the boy to screech in a high pitch and high decibel rating. You were laughing your ass off, while Jisung calmed his racing heart (mind you, you were dressed as a psychopathic clown). You pouted at him before wrapping your arms around him.

“I’m so sorry. I saw the opportunity and I had to take it. Please please forgive me.” You pleaded, squeezing him tightly and listening as his heart slowed, but his heart still had a skipping rhythm to it.

“I suppose I can. But I can’t promise anything.” Jisung sighed out, plonking down at the base of a thick oak tree whose branches reached over the night sky, obscuring the stars that dimly shimmered above. You sat down beside him and sighed, your head resting against the tree.

Jisung watched over your smiling form, your fascination with the stars saving him from being caught staring at you. His heartbeat quickened once more and unbeknownst to him, a soft pink hue poked at his cheeks and reddened his ears.

“Y/N?” He called out to you, pulling you from your starry trance. You caught the flaming red that flowed on the tips of his ears.

“Yeah, Sungie?”

“Can I tell you something? Something I’ve been hiding from you?” His question was hesitant and his tone was shy, like he was scared of your reaction.

“Jisung, we’ve been friends for years. You don’t need to ask me to tell me something.” You chuckled, nudging his arm to try and get him to lighten up. The blush in his cheeks darkened crazily fast and he sighed.

“I’velikedyouforareallylongtimebu-” His words were jumbled and close together and you couldn’t understand anything he was saying.

“Woah, woah, woah. Slow down, Jwi. Take a deep breath and try again.” You reassured him, turning your body towards him and rubbing his shoulders. Jisung followed your instructions, sighing out his breath and trying again.

“I’ve liked you for a really long time but I didn’t know how to tell you. I felt like tonight would be my last chance before I chickened out again.” This time, you understood him and you couldn’t quite still your pounding heart.

“You don’t have to accept and I know this might ruin our friendship but I had to shoot my shot, you know and Haechan said-”

“I like you too.” You interjected, your own cheeks dusting pink. There was a silence, filled with processed emotions and spiked heartbeats.

“So...”

“Guess Renjun was right.” Jisung snapped his head towards you. “What do you mean?” You chuckled at the boy’s confused face and hummed.

“He said that if we didn’t like each other by the end of high school, there was something wrong with us.” Jisung scrunched up his face and mimicked the words you just, imitating Renjun’s voice. “Well, he wasn’t exactly wrong.” You smiled, picking yourself up and dusting off your knees and butt.

“How long have you liked me?” Jisung asked, standing up himself as the two of you started to wander aimlessly. You looked up to the sky in thought, the stars helping you connect the question to the last seven years.

“Since I was like...13? 14? We had been friends for a while but I kept it quiet because you were still dating Heejin.” You could hear Jisung audibly cringe at the name of his ex-girlfriend. Yes, he and Heejin were only together for two months but she was awfully clingy and had tried to drive you and Jisung apart.

“You know what’s good about this though?” Jisung said, looking back to you, still seeing the sparkle in your eye despite it being almost pitch black.

“What?” No sooner had you said that, you felt Jisung’s lips touch the burning skin of your cheeks and your face flushed red. He laughed at you before pulling your arm towards the street once more.

“I should get you home. Your mom said to be home by 12, didn’t she? Don’t want her thinking I’ve Up and left with her daughter.” He smiled at you.

As the two of you walked side by side, like you had done for years, your pinky fingers wrapped around each other as you set off home. Down the same road you had walked for years, with the person you loved more than anything.

[muertawrites]

Hey! I absolutely loved your Zuko x reader one host you wrote, and I was wondering if you could do one where Zuko and the reader barely talk, but she’s part of Azula’s friend group. At the beach some stuff happens, and Zuko finds out she’s not as crazy as he thought she was. Kind of angst. I totally understand if you can’t, or don’t feel like it! I hope you’re safe and healthy, and everything is going well. Thank you!

From Eden (Zuko x Reader)

Word Count: 1,776 (FUHREEDOM MOTHERFUCKERS 🎆🦅🦅🦅 🎆 )

Author’s Note: Ok this request is P E R F E C T. I don’t think I need to tell anyone I love the psychology of this show, but I love the psychology of this show - especially with Zuko and his relationship with himself and others. And this episode??? Ohhhhhh I have some THINGS. TO. SAY. about this episode. I have been in this boy’s place and I feel 👏🏻 for 👏🏻 him 👏🏻 he 👏🏻 deserves 👏🏻 better 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻. I went in a sliiiiiiightly different direction, but I didn’t drastically change it (it turned out cute I think). Also, I named this “From Eden” because as I was writing it reminded me of the Hozier song. I’m such a sucker for a Broken Babe™, especially when the babe in question has a lot of personal growth and learns to love because of it. Thank you so much for this, anon, you’re absolutely gorgeous and I hope you’re keeping safe and healthy as well ❤ 

~ Muerta 

(Also, if you’d like to request something, I have a list of prompts tagged! Feel free to ask for anything from fics to headcanons to imagines - I’m also open to new character suggestions!) 

“Hey.”

Zuko sat on the porch of his family’s old vacation home, his mind miles away. Your greeting made him snap his head towards you, glowering down at where you stood at the base of the front steps. You crossed your arms, responding to his gaze with a defiant glare. 

“What do you want?” he growled. 

“To have normal friends,” you spat in reply. “Seems I’m stuck with you instead.” 

A few hours ago, Zuko almost made a crater in the beach from the campfire you, his sister Azula, and your friends Mai and Ty Lee had started a screaming match around. Insults were flung, tears were shed, and skeletons were evicted from closets, all resulting in your realization that maybe political survival wasn’t worth the dysfunction of constantly being surrounded by a sociopath and her cronies. Pretending to have a super fun sleepover with them back at the guest house was proving to be too much for your fragile sense of self-containment, and you weren’t quite friendly enough with your newfound death wish to tell Azula how you really felt about her, so you went where you knew it would be quiet. You didn’t expect to find Zuko and his anger issues there a second time, but he honestly didn’t scare you - you’d take his obvious rage over Azula’s subtle calculations any day. 

“I don’t know why you’re complaining,” Zuko jeered. “You’re just as emotionally fucked as the rest of them.” 

“Ty Lee’s got herself pretty much under control, despite her gullibility,” you answered cooly. “Also, if you really wanna talk about emotionally fucked, I’m not the one who almost roasted my ex-girlfriend alive earlier.” 

Zuko furrowed his brow at you, leaning forward as if to challenge you. You stayed exactly as you were, regarding him with a hard, unimpressed expression that revealed just how little he intimidated you. You couldn’t bend and weren’t a trained fighter - you knew he knew this, and that he wouldn’t actually attack you, despite how convincing he tried to make his empty threat appear. After a long, intense moment of wrinkled foreheads and competitive frowning, he backed off with a sigh, leaning back against the pillar behind him. 

“So, what, you want to come and make peace? Talk it out or something?” 

You shook your head, climbing the steps and lowering yourself onto the second highest; just below him, with a few feet between you as a courtesy. 

“The last thing I want to do is talk about that dumpster fire on the beach,” you told him. “I just needed some time alone. But, since I found you, I guess it’s a good time to ask if you’re okay.”  

Zuko looked you up and down, a confused and partially concerned look on his face. You half expected him to raise the back of his hand to your forehead to check for fever. 

“What do you care if I’m okay or not?” he asked bitterly. “We’re not friends.” 

“Zuko, I’ve known you since I was a toddler,” you said. “I’d say we’re friends. It’s not like anyone else really is.” 

“Mai is my girlfriend,” Zuko snapped at you. “She’s the best friend I have!” 

“Mai dumped you for being a possessive asshole,” you deadpanned, “then she let her best friend convince you to commit arson. Friends don’t let their friends’ sisters manipulate them into felonies.” 

Zuko huffed, slumping back defeatedly. 

“You can’t act like Azula’s never made you do anything you didn’t want to,” he grumbled. 

“I don’t,” you replied shortly. “I’ve just stopped caring about making her like me, since she really doesn’t like anyone. She doesn't get under my skin like she used to when we were kids.” 

You noticed Zuko’s lips curl upwards into the ghost of a smile. You mirrored him, leaning your arms atop your upright knees. 

“What?” you asked. 

Zuko chuckled faintly, shaking his head. 

“Nothing,” he responded. “You just… Do you remember when you were eight, and Azula teased Ty Lee about being too slow climbing the trees in our courtyard?” 

Your eyes widened in realization, your mouth parting into a wide smile as you let out a gasp of hysterical laughter. 

“Oh, that was awful!” you cried, though the memory only brought more fits of giggles to your gut. “I was such a little brat!” 

Zuko was laughing with you too now, arms wrapped over his stomach as he tried to speak between breaths. 

“It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!” he exclaimed. “Watching her fall out of the tree like that, the shock on her face, and then I caught you with the knife and saw where you cut the branch... She deserved it. You should give her a taste of her own medicine like that more often.” 

You blushed, looking away from him as your laughter died down. 

“Now she could kill me if she wanted,” you said. “I try not to say or do anything around her if I can help it.” 

“... Is that why you’ve been so quiet since then?” 

You nodded. 

“She beat me up when she found out what I did,” you explained. 

You stood, pulling down the waist of your sarong to reveal the burn scar on your right hip. Zuko’s eyes burst with shock at first, wondering exactly why you’d be disrobing in front of him, his expression softening when he saw the mark Azula left. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Most brothers feel like they should protect their little sisters. I always felt like I should’ve protected all of you from her.” 

“You did,” you assured him. You sat back down beside him, closer this time, so that your hips almost touched. “I remember you jumped in front of her once when she threatened us. And that time…” 

Your voice faded, the memory almost bringing tears to your eyes. You couldn’t figure out why. 

“You hid from her,” Zuko finished your thought. 

You nodded. 

“You let me hide in your room,” you recalled. “Remember? Azula punched me. I ran to the first quiet place I could find and accidentally went to your room.” 

Zuko hummed. 

“You were crying,” he added, “and your eye was all red and swollen.” 

“You held me.” 

Zuko’s eyes fixed on you. He didn’t say anything, though he remembered; you burst through his half open door, sniffling, tears and spittle running down your cheeks and chin. It was the first time Azula had actually, physically hurt you, and you were terrified and confused. He asked if you were okay, and you shook your head. Being so young, the only thing he could think to do was hug you, since that’s what his mother did to make him feel better, and you clung to him, sobbing into his shirt and using his much bigger body for protection. After that day, he let you use his bedroom as a hiding place whenever Azula got to be too much - until she found out about it and started teasing you about wedding dresses and baby names. 

“We were friends,” you breathed. “I wish we still were.” 

There was a long silence in which the two of you stared out at the horizon, down the steep hill leading to the vacation house and into the ocean. The moon hung in a small sliver, barely flickering across the calm waters that rocked below; you could hear the gentle rush of waves as they crawled over the sand and shrunk back into themselves, creating a calming din that echoed up to where you sat. 

“... I still remember your favorite game to play with me,” Zuko said into the warm air between you. “Those times you hid in my room. You used to pretend to be a Kyoshi warrior. My mom gave you one of her old fans and we’d jump on and off my bed, trying to catch each other.” 

You grinned. 

“I would wrap myself around your legs to keep you from walking,” you recalled. 

Zuko laughed. 

“I loved that,” he admitted. “It used to make me laugh so hard when we were kids.” 

He looked over to you, and you turned to face him as well. The anger in his eyes was gone completely, in its place a warm, steady sadness that made you ache. 

“I miss you,” he whispered. 

You reached cautiously for his hand, relieved when he slid his fingers between yours and gripped your palm tightly. 

“I miss you, too,” you replied. “I’m sorry I let Azula drive me away from you.” 

Zuko wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into a tender embrace. Your hands latched together on either side of his back, gripping into his shirt a little bit as you buried your face in his shoulder. He felt and smelled the same as he did when you were little; hard like the walls of a sturdy house and sweet like the last embers in a fireplace.

You didn’t know how long you held each other, but when you broke apart, you sat together for ages, existing in silence on the steps of his childhood house and beside one another. You felt small again, but in the best way - you felt like the girl who was brave enough to cut through the branches of a maple tree so your tormenter would fall out of them. 

“I want to run away,” you blurted. “I could be someone totally different if I weren’t stuck here.” 

“If you do, I’ll go with you,” Zuko said. “We can be different people together.” 

You grinned, leaning your shoulder against his. 

“We could move to Kyoshi Island,” you suggested. “I’m too old to start warrior training now, but we could start a business. Open an inn or something.” 

Zuko chuckled at the thought. 

“I’ll call myself Lee,” he mused, “and you can go by Izumi.” 

“Maybe we could be married. And we could adopt orphan children and cats.” 

“Just cats. You can’t emotionally destroy a cat like you can with a kid.” 

You glanced over at him, noticing the hard gleam in his eye. You wrapped your arms around his bicep, holding him close to you. 

“You’re not your father, Zuko,” you whispered. “You don’t want to be.” 

Zuko nodded. He reached for one of your hands, curling his own around it. 

“... I feel like I am going to leave,” he said, “at some point. When I do… will you stay? So that I have at least one friendly face to come home to someday?” 

You nodded, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. 

“I will,” you promised. “And when you do, I’ll give you Azula’s severed head as a homecoming present.” 

Zuko laughed at that. 

{ epilogue }

[wanderinginksplot]

Clone Trooper Rambles

Today’s journal/creative writing practice. As always, featuring a bunch of clone troopers who inexplicably roast me for no reason.

Captains, Again

“Why is everyone dressed like that?” Hound asked, gaze critical.

“This movie is set a few hundred years ago in Earth’s history,” I answered, glad it was a slow point in the film, plot-wise. “The basics are that England had colonies everywhere and the colonies were held by military power. However, the militaries and merchants traveled only by ships and the guns took forever to reload, so many ships were vulnerable to attacks. Pirates took advantage of this and preyed on ships and cargo as they crossed the ocean.”

“So, like Hondo Ohnaka?” Rex crinkled his nose in distaste. 

“Yeah, pretty much,” I admitted, feeling more than a little stupid for failing to draw a correlation between ocean piracy and space piracy. It would have been a much shorter explanation.

As Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl progressed, the gathered group of troopers continued to draw correlations that I hadn’t. But they didn’t always focus on the plot. Eventually, the conversation turned to certain connections and their implications, which is a fancy way of saying that most of the points went as follows:

“Hondo is definitely Captain Jack Sparrow,” Tup said, glancing around the room for support.

“Obviously,” Crosshair snorted. “But who else is which character?”

“General Kenobi is most like Commodore Norrington,” Echo suggested.

“Then who would be Elizabeth?” Jesse asked, swatting at Tup’s hand as the younger clone tried to steal some of Jesse’s mountain of snacks.

“No one. Jedi can’t have attachments, remember?” Boss said imperiously.

Sinker nodded in agreement. “But Grievous is definitely Barbossa!”

I tried not to frown at that, thinking about Barbossa’s redemption in later installments of the franchise. Not super in line with Grievous, but I didn’t want to explain that and ruin a pretty major character arc. Despite my best efforts, the bit of the sentiment that came through anyway drew the attention of some of the troopers.

“What’s wrong?” Rex asked, eyeing my expression.

“Sinker is and she knows it,” Wooley told him, interrupting his own heated conversation with Boost. “Dooku is clearly Barbossa.”

“Don’t be a di’kut,” Wrecker reprimanded, half-emerging from his typical nest of blankets to make his point. “Dooku would never work that closely with his own men.”

The trooper dissolved into shouts of laughter at Wrecker’s comment and I couldn’t fight back a grin of my own. 

“Aw, don’t worry about her,” Sinker said with a smirk that immediately warned me that he was going to say something sassy. “She’s just upset that we’re comparing Hondo and Jack Sparrow.”

There was a trap there, I knew there was, but I still had to ask: “Why would I be upset about that? It’s the funniest thing you guys have said all day.”

That caused some good-natured grumbling from the troopers who thought they were comedic geniuses, but my attention was fixed on Sinker, whose triumphant expression had stretched even wider.

With more than a bit of relish in his voice, he said, “Because you have a thing for captains. I heard all about it from Thire.”

“Shut up, I do not,” I told him immediately, but everyone was already gone.

Troopers were howling with laughter, Cody even slapping Rex on the shoulder in teasing congratulations while Fives and Scorch complained that officers had all the luck. 

“Wait,” Echo said loudly, halting the chaos for a moment. For that alone, he had earned my eternal gratitude. “If that were true, she wouldn’t be bothered by the comparison since Hondo is a captain, too. Logically, she can’t have a thing about all captains, because she doesn’t like Hondo.”

I mentally took back all of the nice things I had just thought about Echo. This was going to go from bad to worse in three… two… 

“Echo, haven’t you seen it?” Jesse asked gleefully. 

Tup guffawed, pointing into the kitchen. “Look behind you, vod!”

Echo turned around and I could see the moment his eyes landed on the small Hondo Ohnaka Pop figure, brought home from a visit to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. I had thought it was unobtrusive, tucked away into the small gap between the top of a cabinet and the ceiling just above it, but of course the troopers had seen it.

The laughter was deafening then. Despite how many times I tried to explain that the tiny pirate bobblehead belonged to my roommate Elena, my voice was lost to the teasing tide, and I just turned my attention back to the film.

Previous | Next | Masterlist 

[raisedbyfandomwolves]

prompt: write something bad :)

YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD ME WITH THIS.

BUT YOU WERE WRONG.

I TRIUMPHED.

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

...

(clears throat)

Anyway, enjoy.

Once upon a time, there was a kingdom called Cryptun and it was ruled by the kind and beautiful Princess Ka-rah. Princess Ka-rah was as kind as she was beautiful and everyone in her kingdom loved her because she was the best princess ever and she made sure they were always happy.

One day, Princess Ka-rah was travelling to a village on the border of her kingdom when she found a handsome young man lying on the side of the road. He looked hurt so Princess Ka-rah decided to bring him back to her castle and help him get better.

When the handsome young man finally woke up, he told Princess Ka-rah that his name was Mi-key and he had been attacked by evil pirates who had stolen everything he had. Princess Ka-rah felt bad for him so she told him that he could stay with her until he was all better and could go home.

While Mi-key was getting better in Princess Ka-rah's castle, he caused a lot of trouble like a naughty stray puppy. Mi-key played a lot of pranks and made Princess Ka-rah very angry a lot of times but the pranks were actually really funny and no one ever got hurt and also he would say the funniest jokes ever and she would laugh until she forgot why she was angry at him.

After another one of Mi-key's pranks one morning, Princess Ka-rah was chasing him through the palace garden to scold him when suddenly a giant robot T-Rex appeared and attacked her. Just as it was going to really hurt her, Mi-key flew into the air and used his magic cape to defeat the giant robot T-Rex.

Princess Ka-rah was very happy he had saved her and actually she secretly like-liked him a lot so she asked him if he wanted to stay with her forever. Mi-key was also very happy because he secretly like-liked her a lot too so he said yes and the giant robot T-Rex became their pet.

While they were having a party to celebrate Mi-key staying, however, a dark cloud of evil magic appeared in the room and two ugly evil-looking women came out of it. The older ugly evil-looking woman turned out to be Queen Le-xe of the nearby kingdom of Daxxim and the other one was her daughter Princess Lee-na. Queen Le-xe was actually the evil stepmother of Mi-key who was actually the prince of Daxxim and she was there to kill him so that her daughter Princess Lee-na could rule Daxxim instead.

Princess Ka-rah was very angry at Prince Mi-key for not telling her that he was actually a prince but Prince Mi-key told her that he had been hurt that day by evil pirates that Queen Le-xe had sent to kill him. He told her that he had been scared to tell her the truth because he didn't want to go home and get killed but also because he like-liked her a lot the moment he saw her and wanted to stay with her instead.

Even though she was still a little angry at Prince Mi-key, Princess Ka-rah decided to forgive him because she was super kind and because she still like-liked him a lot too so she told Queen Le-xe that she wasn't going to let the ugly evil stepmother queen or her ugly evil daughter hurt him.

Queen Le-xe and Princess Lee-na were very angry so they decided to try and kill Princess Kara too but Princess Kara and Prince Mi-key used their magic capes to fight the evil queen and princess and they won. Then the giant robot T-Rex which had also been sent by the evil Queen Le-xe to kill Prince Mikey chomp-chomp-chomped the evil queen and princess because they were really really mean to him last time.

Now that Queen Le-xe and Princess Lee-na were dead, Prince Mi-key was safe and he could go home to become the king of Daxxim. Even though she was very happy for him, Princess Ka-rah was also very sad because she didn't want to say goodbye to Prince Mi-key.

Then Prince Mi-key said he didn't want to leave her so he asked her to marry him and bring their kingdoms together. Princess Ka-rah was really really happy to hear that so of course she said yes and they had a big beautiful wedding and lived happily ever after and had lots of beautiful babies.

---xXx---

“The end,” Abigail finished reading with a proud smile on her face before looking up at her parents who were sitting on the couch in front of her. “What do you think of my story, Mommy, Daddy?”

Both Kara and Mike could only blink, stupefied, as they tried to find the words to answer their daughter. “Well... it's, um... it's very... unique,” Kara ventured hesitantly. “Just, um... I just have a few questions?”

Mike covertly pinched her thigh with just enough strength to get her attention. “Kara, are you seriously going to critique our six-year-old daughter's writing assignment?”

“I'm not critiquing! I just want to clarify a few things!” Kara hissed angrily before plastering a smile on her face and turning back towards an earnest and oblivious Abigail. “So, um... Why is... Shouldn't Princess Ka-rah be a queen if she's ruling her kingdom?”

“But princesses are cooler than queens, Mommy!” Abigail protested with a frown.

“I... I see...” It was only then that Kara remembered they'd had a Disney Princesses movie marathon during Abigail's sleepover party just a week ago. “Okay, um... So how was it Princess Ka-rah didn't recognise... um, Prince Mi-key if he was from a kingdom so close to hers? I mean, she had to have seen him at least once before, right?”

“Oh, she's just silly like that,” Abigail giggled.

Mike made a shoddy attempt at disguising his snicker with a cough that turned into a pained wheeze when Kara ground her heel into his foot.

“A-And... why a giant robot T-Rex?” Kara asked next, knowing that her husband would be even more insufferable if she asked more questions about Princess Ka-rah's 'silliness'.

Abigail beamed. “Because robots are cool and dinosaurs are cool so robot dinosaurs are twice as cool!”

“...I see.” It struck Kara then that 'because it's cool' was probably going to be the reason for all the random elements in her daughter's story. “Is that... Is that why Prince Mi-key suddenly has a magic cape too?”

“That's because he's a superhero!” Abigail cheerfully corrected her mother as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Mike instantly sat up straight. “Wait, he's a prince and a superhero?”

“Uh huh!”

Kara glared at her husband and the stupid self-satisfied grin growing on his face, all too sure exactly what he was thinking. “Well then, that means Princess Ka-rah is a superhero too since she also has a magic cape, right?” A magic cape she didn't have until that last moment out of the blue, she added mentally.

Abigail nodded vigorously, too caught up in her enthusiasm to notice the looks her parents were giving each other. “That's another reason they're perfect together!”

“...Okay...” Deciding that she was probably going to get even stranger answers if she asked any more questions about this particular aspect of the story, Kara moved on but not before throwing one last glare in Mike's direction. “So... um, one last question: Was it really necessary for, uh, Queen Le-xe and Princess Lee-na to be, um... eaten by the... giant robot T-Rex?”

“But they're evil, Mommy!” Abigail insisted in a way that only a six year old could. “Evil people should get eaten by giant robot T-Rexes! Then there would be less evil people in the world and the robot T-Rexes won't go hungry!”

It was at that point that Kara finally gave up and decided to let things be... until she heard Mike let out another poorly disguised snicker. That was it. If she had to suffer – okay, so maybe she had brought it on herself but that was not the point – then so did he. “So what did you think of the story, honey?” she asked in a voice that dripped with false sweetness.

Mike predictably choked once he realised both his wife and daughter were now looking at him very intensely for different reasons. “Uh... I've, uh... never heard anything like it before,” he floundered for a bit at first before inspiration struck and he beamed. “It's very avant-garde for sure.”

Abigail's eager expression turned into one of adorable confusion. “Evan... card...?” she tried and failed to repeat what her father had said. “What does that mean, Daddy?”

The smile on Mike's face instantly vanished. “Uhhh... It means rich people will pay a lot of money for it!” he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

Just like that, Abigail's smile returned in full force. “So it's good?”

Once again, Mike was rendered speechless and even Kara had to blink at their daughter's conclusion. “Uhhh... yes...?” he offered uncertainly.

“Yay! Thanks, Mommy, Daddy!” With a great big cheer, Abigail ran over to hug both her parents in turn. “I'm going to go draw pictures to go with my story now!”

For several long minutes after Abigail had run off to her room, both Kara and Mike could do nothing more than stare blankly at the spot where their daughter had been standing.

Unsurprisingly, Kara was the first to speak. “She's not going to... draw us, is she?”

Mike levelled a flat look at her. “Considering the names of her characters are nearly identical to ours, what do you think?”

“Oh god...” she groaned in embarrassment as she buried her face in her hands. “Her teachers are going to think- I don't even know what they're going to think about us now.”

“You're overreacting,” he brushed off her fretting breezily. “At most, they'll probably chalk it up to how much she loves us or something. Which, you know, is pretty true since she clearly thinks we're cool enough to be royalty and superheroes at the same time.”

“Of course you'd focus on that part...” she muttered accusingly. “I bet you didn't even notice that our daughter seems to have forgotten the 'stranger danger' talk we had with her if she's writing about bringing home random guys lying on the side of the road as a good thing...”

“Kara, it's a story that didn't even make sense most of the time! I mean, pirates on land? A giant robot T-Rex? Magic capes appearing out of nowhere? You're really taking it way too seriously.”

“Am not! I-I'm just... concerned about what it might mean! Mike, our daughter is writing about... about people getting essentially murdered in a very gruesome manner!”

“Evil people, Kara. And they're just characters.”

“Characters very obviously based on two people we know!”

“Two people we know and really don't like, I might add. Which is probably where she got the inspiration. Although I'm not sure how to feel about the idea of a fictional Lex Luthor in drag being my evil stepmother...”

“Mike, would you please focus?! Our daughter's apparently in favour of some kind of... extreme vigilante justice!”

“Again, it's just a story. Besides, if you can fantasise about throwing your sadistic boss into the sun with powers you don't have to blow off steam, I think we can let our daughter imagine obviously evil people getting eaten by giant robot T-Rexes that don't exist.”

“I should've known you'd react like this. Or should I say I should've expected nothing less especially since she probably got this from you?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You! You're such a... a... weirdo sometimes! Like how you insist that orange juice should go well on cereal just because it's normal to have them both in a single breakfast!”

“Yeah, well, you married and had a kid with this weirdo so what does that say about you?”

Abigail paid no attention to the sound of her parents bickering in the living room. After all, she already knew that this fight would end the same way all the others had in the past: They would get all kissy-kissy, lock themselves in their bedroom, make a lot of funny noises and then be really happy for the rest of the day.

Sure enough, the sound of their bedroom door clicking shut followed not long after but by then Abigail was too engrossed drawing the wedding of Princess Ka-rah and Prince Mi-key to notice.

[playitbackreplay-moved]

NEW PATH !

SUMMARY :: In which Jiwon fights for his team. CHARACTERS :: Noh Jiwon , Jeon Sunwoo , Jang Jinhwan , Han Donghan , Nico Matsui WORDS :: 2.0K WARNINGS ::  fighting ( but like not really , just to be safe really ) ( if i missed anything let me know ! )

Jiwon took a deep breath, rubbing his now sweaty palms onto his pants as he looked back at the door in front of him. He knew this was coming, ever since their last day of promotions, when they walked away empty handed yet again. He knew their time was coming and that Banana Culture just had to pull the trigger and actually disband them. 

Jiwon had shoved himself into his work in the days following the end of their promotions. First, he had tried to make new songs, hoping that if the company heard some promising tracks, they would think again about letting them go, but it felt like every track he made just felt more wrong each time he tried. Once he gave up on making music, he looked more into other companies around them, hoping that he could find something, anything that would let him stay together with the group of people he had grown so fond of. He scrolled and scrolled, debating with himself on emailing some places when Sunwoo burst through one of the practice room doors, telling him that enough was enough and pulling him all the way back to their dorm. Sunwoo had thrown Jiwon’s tired body onto his bed, sitting on top of him until he had slipped into one of the best sleeps he had in a while.

It was all nice until he woke up to a message from their manager, telling him that the CEO wanted to see him, his heart sinking instantly in his chest at the conversation he knew was going to come. He had slipped out of bed that morning, careful not to disturb anyone in the dorm in the early hours of the morning. It was almost peaceful walking around the dorm with nobody milling about and he couldn’t help but hope that the rest of the boys would sleep peacefully, without any of the stress Jiwon was currently facing.

That brought Jiwon to standing in front of their CEO’s door, wondering how he could wiggle their way out of disbandment, how he could keep this group going as long as he wanted. He let out one last sigh, knocking on the door with a firm knock that surprised him. He waited until he heard a small, deep voice on the other side telling him to come in, before he made his way into the room, instantly sitting down in front of the man.

The older man let out a sigh, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in his chair. “I’m sure you already know why you’re here,” he sighed, looking Jiwon straight in the eye. “We’re disbanding Replay and we’re going to have a formal meeting with everyone later, but I wanted to give you the rundown on how this would work before we move forward.”

There was a pause as the man waited for Jiwon to nod or show any sort of approval. It was dead silent in the room, but Jiwon had never felt like it was so loud before. He started at his hands for a moment, biting his lip to keep him from saying something, no matter how much he wanted to. The man in front of him sighed lightly, about to continue, but Jiwon couldn’t hold it back anymore.

“Sir,” Jiwon’s voice broke out into the silence, much louder and stronger than he thought it would come out, considering how scared he was inside. He watched as his CEO’s eyes widened at the sudden intrusion, but Jiwon continued before he could stop him. “With all due respect, I think it would be a mistake to disband our group.”

“Jiwon, you’re group hasn’t been gaining much attention,” the man started, looking frustrated. “We sent you guys onto Road to Kingdom, hoping it would gain you guys attention, but you didn’t win, so nothing happened. We can’t keep wasting money on a project that isn’t giving us anything in return.”

“But we’re getting bigger each comeback!” Jiwon protested, looking into the older man’s eyes as he raised his voice lightly. “I’ve seen the album sales and we’ve been nominated for number one multiple times! If you would just give us a few more comebacks I’m sure we could get bigger!”

“The answer’s no, Jiwon, and that’s final.” The patronizing tone of the man’s voice only served to frustrate Jiwon even more. 

“If you won’t let us continue, then let us find someone else that will,” Jiwon’s voice was deep as he glared at the man in front of him.

The man barked out an ugly laugh, throwing his head back as if it was the funniest thing in the world. “And who would want to take in a group like you? No wins, bad sales, barely any production credits? You guys have nothing going for yourself as far as I’m concerned.”

“One month,” Jiwon said, closing his eyes and breathing through his nose to calm him down. “Give us one month to look for a new place, if we don’t get it by then, then you can disband the group.”

The man smirked, leaning forward. “Fine, one month and when you don’t find anyone to take in your group, you guys will disband without any more of a fuss, got it?”

“Yes,” Jiwon said, getting up from his seat and leaving the room, without another glance back at his CEO.

“We’re doing what now?” Donghan’s voice filled the small dorm, his eyes wide with confusion and his mouth hung open. The other boys stared back in similar states of shock, though Donghan had always been the more vocal of the younger members of the group.

“We’re going to find another company to take us in,” Jiwon shrugged simply, looking over to Sunwoo to see if he was as confused about the situation as the rest of them. He didn’t seem to be, but Jiwon noticed the small, scared look on his face, unsure of what to make of the situation.

“And how exactly are we going to do that?” Jinhwan said, his voice much more quiet than normal. He had his legs pulled up to his chest and his long black hair was messily thrown into a ponytail, or as much of one as he could get. He was clearly worried, and Jiwon wanted to do nothing more than to console the younger one. 

“We email companies and just hope that they take a look at us?” Sunwoo suggested, causing all eyes to turn to him. “Look, I know it’s not ideal, but I’d rather do anything than actually disband.”

All the other boys nodded, looking more solem than when they started this conversation. “How do we know that the companies will even look at anything we send?” Nico’s soft voice broke the small silence, asking the one question that they were all wondering.

“We don’t” Jiwon shrugged, running a hand through his hair. This was going to be a lot harder than he thought, but Jiwon was determined to make it through and keep this group together.

“I can talk to some of my friends from when I trained at SM and see if they know anything,” Jinhwan suggested. “Worse come to worse, we could always look at Jinhee’s company.”

“That would be great, Jinhwan,” Jiwon said, his voice tired as he rested his hands on the back of his neck, the worry finally starting to catch up with him.

“Why don’t we take a break, it’s been a long day,” Sunwoo interjected, seeing how Jiwon was close to losing it, knowing when he needed to stop Jiwon from going too far. “We can pick this back up later.”

The boys nodded, getting up from their position on the floor and making their way into their rooms, leaving the oldest two alone. 

“I’m worried,” Jiwon said after a moment, not looking at the younger man next to him. “What if we don’t get anywhere to pick us up?”

“Then we’ll disband anyway, you’re at least giving us another shot we wouldn’t have had.”

Jiwon had to admit that Sunwoo was right, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it would be his fault if nobody picked them up. The thought kept playing over and over in him mind and he couldn’t help but worry.

“Whatever happens, you know it’s not like we won’t see each other again, right?”

“Will we, though?” Jiwon questioned, turning to finally look at Sunwoo. “Yeah, you and me will still see each other, and we can probably see Jinhwan and Donghan too, but Nico will probably move back home, what’s keeping him here other than being an idol? He can go back to his youtube channel and we would barely ever see him again. I just don’t want to lose any of them.”

“I know,” Sunwoo nodded, his face falling slightly at Jiwon’s words. “But, we’ll make it work, okay?”

Jiwon just nodded, not trusting himself to actually talk with the lump that was beginning to form in his throat. He just wanted everything to turn out okay.

It was two weeks before they heard back from anyone that they had sent anything out to, and all the boys could feel their heart start racing with excitement before Jiwon opened the email. They could also feel their hearts drop at the sight of the rejection.

That one was only the first, but many more rejections kept flooding in after the first one, making the boys less and less hopeful as the days went on. Slowly, every company they had reached out to came back with the same answer. No.

There was only one company left and all the boys knew it was a long shot. P Nation. It had started out as a joke between the boys about how Psy was constantly picking up stray singers and that maybe, just maybe, he would actually look into them just a bit. Then, Jinhwan mentioned how he used to train with one of the promising trainees back under SM and how he could probably give him a call and see what could happen, if he could plant any seeds in any higher ups mind. 

They all knew it would probably be a no, but seeing the email rolling in had all the boys at the edge of their seats, waiting for Jiwon to open it and read out the email. Jiwon looked around at the boys one last time before he took a deep breath and opened the email. He scanned it quickly, not wanting to read it to the boys if it was bad news, but he couldn’t help teh way that his eyes lit up at the words.

“We got in?” Nico asked, noticing the way their leader’s eyes lit up, his smile bright and hopeful.

Jiwon smiled. “They want to meet us!” His voice was bright and happy and he could see the way all the other boys lit up at the words.

Screams filled the small dorm as all the boys jumped up, hugging each other tightly as if they had just won the lottery and in a way they had. Jiwon couldn’t stop the smile from spreading into a big, full-blown, teethy smile. They could say no still, but Jiwon couldn’t find it in him to care about that right now. Right now they had hope, they were safe for another moment and they might have a new label to take them in. It wasn’t perfect, but for Jiwon it felt as close to perfect as it could get in that moment, and Jiwon was prepared to savor every moment of it.