#well look no further! softs meta collection is here!

[s0fter-sin]

Chapters: 6/? Fandom: Call of Duty (Video Games) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: John "Soap" MacTavish/Simon "Ghost" Riley, John "Soap" MacTavish & Simon "Ghost" Riley, Rodolfo Parra/Alejandro Vargas, Rodolfo Parra & Alejandro Vargas, Valeria Garza & Rodolfo Parra, Valeria Garza/Rodolfo Parra/Alejandro Vargas Characters: John "Soap" MacTavish, Simon "Ghost" Riley, Rodolfo Parra, Alejandro Vargas, Valeria Garza Additional Tags: Meta, Analysis, Character Analysis, Character Study, Canon Compliant, Mission: Alone (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022)), Body Language, Past Relationship(s) Series: Part 1 of soft’s meta Summary:

various call of duty character and story meta analysis

[thedamageofherdays]

This week's (16-08-2021 - 22-08-2021) reading log is here. This week's reading log is super duper long and filled with lots of good things (my apologies for the long post, I really could not find a good spot to do a read more). I discovered some new favourites and re-read some old favourites and while I had an intense week personally at least the fics I read were absolutely phenomenal. I do recommend checking out the warnings as some fics are a bit heavier/angstier and you might wanna be prepared. Most of these fics are Stucky but there are a couple of other ships in between.

If you are looking for more fun and/or good things make sure to check out the @marveldisabilitycelebration as well to see all the awesome art, fics, meta, etcetera people created! And while I am mentioning events I am a mod for let me also just quickly mention that sign-ups for the @stuckygiftexchange are still open until the end of the month <3

Favourites are marked with a 🌻 Fics that are only available to AO3 users are marked with a 🔒 and Tumblr fics are marked with a 🍀

🌻 The Bends by dreamsinthewitchouse @dreamsinthewitchouse [Danbeau, side Stucky, 2k words, Teen]

Memory is not a house you can just walk back into after finding the key you thought you’d lost. It’s a thing you wade into and out of, rewriting it as it rewrites you.

It’s not without its rewards, either - recovering a memory about Maria and Monica, about her life, feels better than socking a thousand bad guys in the face, better than all the photon blasts in the world.

Then again, realising there’s still memories she can’t access, even after all this time, feels like drowning in space.

Not the one out there - the one inside her.

🌻 Sweet & Salty by musette22 @musette22 [Stucky, 3k words, Teen]

Idiots in love. That's it. That's the fic.

When life gives you lemons by moonythejedi394 @moonythejedi394 [Stucky, 34k words, Explicit] (11/15 chapters)

Or 13 Terrible Things to Do With Lemons Other Than Making Lemonade

Steve Rogers is a home health nurse. He works for an agency, which assigned him to the aging Winifred Barnes, the one and only Silent Era Hollywood darling. As her needs increased, she requested the agency assign Steve to her full-time. She could pay for it, so she got it. Steve then moved in with her, becoming her caregiver; he cooked, he cleaned, he managed her medications, he made sure she was comfortable.

Winifred's children treated him less than ideally. He was the help, after all. And then Steve had the audacity to go and turn out to be eldest son James Barnes's soulmate. No one saw that coming.

🍀 SamRhodey Tumblr Fic by ipoiledi [SamRhodey, ? words, Teen?]

“Wilson, this is Rhodey; Rhodey, Wilson,” Tony Stark says, and suddenly some six foot tall sexy guy is shoved right in front of Sam, and they both stumble a little, bumping into each other. This is a crowded party. “You guys have things in common, right?” Stark asks. “Uh, Army stuff. Talk about that. I hate wallflowers; stop wallflowering and talk to each other.”

Shorteralls by moonythejedi394 [Stucky, 6k words, Explicit]

The first time Bucky ever saw Steve Rogers, he was struck by how Neanderthal-like his response was. It was immediately followed by a bout of mental scolding. The second time was just about the same. The third time, it was actually appropriate for Bucky to start a conversation with him, at which point he was determined to be the gentleman.

No such luck. Steve Rogers is, always has been and always will be, a relentless flirt. These days, Bucky's Neanderthal-ist feelings about Steve are consensual and highly appreciated. More so now that they're having a baby.

what the fuck are perfect places anyway by tigerlilycorinne [Stucky, 6k words, Teen]

Steve clears his throat and stands. “Well, I should head in. I might want to begin packing.”

Bucky stills. “You won’t,” he says, trying to sound commanding. It only comes out uncertain. “Don’t.”

Steve shakes his head. “Maybe not tonight,” he says, and Bucky knows they’ll be discussing this again soon.

“Then stay. Play… play cards with me or something.”

Steve’s eyebrows jump up, his mouth tugging up in another of his bemused smiles that do things to Bucky’s insides, but he drops his hand from the doorway and steps back into Bucky’s room. Somehow, Bucky feels as if he’s won—not the war, just the battle.

Steve won’t stay forever. But he’ll stay for cards.

Steve and Bucky, on the run after Civil War (with a few alterations to canon), are laying low in Wakanda. But they can’t stay there forever.

🌻 honestly thought i’d be dead by now, but what you can trust is that i need your touch by moonythejedi394 [Stucky, 105k words, Explicit]

Bucky is 37 years old; he’s unmarried, hasn’t had a Sub of his own, is definitely not ripped, comfortable at his job as an Advanced Practice RN at Brooklyn General ER, and just got his Five Years coin from AA.

Steve is 26 years old; he’s unmarried, his last and only Dom has Alzheimer's, he's worryingly muscular, uncomfortable in his job as the government’s poster Alpha for masculinity and strength, and worries more than he should about his BMI.

Unfortunately, Steve and Bucky meet initially in a not-cute moment. Bucky’s tired as shit thanks to the sudden alien invasion that shook New York and Steve is tired as shit because he hasn’t slept more than 20 minutes at a time in – well, since 1936, probably. Bucky’s Alpha instincts get irritated at the sudden presence of another "Alpha" into his territory and Steve’s suppressed submissive tendencies latch onto this grumpy bachelor Alpha and he only suppresses it further.

Bucky’s grumpiness and Steve’s duckling impressionism aside, both of them are a mess. But since both of them are a mess? Their messes seem to fit pretty well together.

Deep Sea Diving by Aida Ronan [Stucky, 5k words, Explicit]

Steve's wallowing in heat-related misery under a shade tree in Central Park when a man walks by in bright red booty shorts and a crop top. RIP Steve Rogers. It was nice knowing you.

honey, make this easy by steebadore [Stucky, 8k words, Explicit]

Bucky likes the way he looks. His silk button up with the tiny gold polka dots feels soft on his skin and is tailored perfectly; no pulling at his chest or belly. His hair falls in shiny dark waves and his skin is smooth and dewy. He looks expensive. He looks taken care of. He looks like Steve’s.

🌻 let's take it back to the start by howdoyousleep @howdoyousleep3 [Stucky, 6k words, Teen]

How it all began.

This sleepwalking through my life. by barthelme [Stucky, 1k words, Explicit]

The internet is an interesting place and when Bucky came home (or, when he came to live with Steve), Steve did a lot of research. Apparently, it’s not safe to wake a sleepwalker. He assumes that waking a sleepwalker with traumatic dreams and PTSD is beyond just being frowned upon.

And he tells himself--has told himself--that this is safer for Bucky. That if he were to stop him and wake him up, that Bucky would be mortified to be slurping on his best friend’s cock. That all of the improvements he’s made would be lost, would be repressed, would be just--

They’d be back at square one.

So he lets Bucky do it.

🌻 the way i've been craving by howdoyousleep [Stucky, 3k words, Explicit]

"Lunch break at 12:30. My office. Hope you’re hungry…"

It’s the ellipsis that sends Bucky’s insides swimming warmly, his heart beating twice as fast against his ribs where he sits in class. Senator Rogers is concise, direct, to the point. Without an ellipsis this is lunch, this is a meeting. With it though?

This is a booty call.

nasty but classy by howdoyousleep [Stucky, 4k words, Explicit]

“No, you don’t have to know the purpose, that doesn’t matter. Nat showed me this challenge where couples drink a lot of wine and get drunk together but they can’t touch each other. And whoever touches the other first has to...has to give the other head.”

🌻 Put It on Repeat, It Stays the Same by giselleslash [Stucky, 20k words, Explicit]

Steve and Bucky have a one night stand that turns into a friends with benefits situation. A weekend snowed in at Bucky’s apartment brings to light how much that really doesn’t suit either one of them.

Greetings to the New Brunette by victoria_p (musesfool) [Stucky, 10k words, General]

"You said he should have a hobby. That it would help."

"I meant, like, knitting or coin collecting. Motocross, if he was feeling antsy. A baby's not a hobby. It's lifetime commitment."

🌻 Rogers & Barnes: Partners by triedunture [Stucky, 10k words, Teen]

Steve and Bucky have to pose as a couple for a mission. Nat insists it really is the only option. She's checked.

The complication: unbeknownst to even Natasha, Steve and Bucky's friendship has been rocky ever since Bucky confessed his tender feelings and Steve left him out in the cold. Can asexual, completely-in-love-with-his-angry-best-friend Steve complete the mission and win Bucky's heart?

(The answer is yes. Yay!)

this will be our year (took a long time to come) by biblionerd07 [Stucky, 4k words, General]

Bucky's therapist is worried he's using Steve as a crutch and wants him to try going on outings without Steve. It wouldn't be terrible, honestly, if Bucky could just manage to open his mouth and say something to Steve.

I'll hold my breath by Little_Lottie (tfwatson) [Stucky, 8k words, Mature]

Sometimes Bucky’s hands flex in Steve's direction. Neither of them knows exactly why, but at least one of them has a hunch.

Bucky touches everything but Steve, even though Steve is all he really wants to touch.

Start from the Beginning by Mumble_Bee [Stucky, 13k words, Explicit]

What about a sex pollen fic where the pollen-ed one doesn’t remember getting hit in the face with a sex flower, and wakes up midway through the depollenating?

Or: the one where Steve wakes up on his back with a stranger buried balls-deep in his ass.

Match by emphasisonem [Stucky, 4k words, Mature]

The situation’s actually kind of funny from the right perspective, Bucky thinks as he reads the message for what feels like the hundredth time. He’s finally matched with a hot, funny guy. Tall and broad and clean cut. An absolutely breathtaking smile. Bucky’s walking wet dream. And he’s good. They haven’t messaged on the app, but Bucky already knows him.

He knows him because Steve Rogers is an art history professor at his university. His art history professor.

Best friends and married since childhood by StuckySituation [Stucky, 1k words, General]

Inspired by @/peterssquill's post in tumblr: "bucky and steve got married on the playground when they were like eight and though neither of them would ever admit it to anyone, even each other, they still consider it official"

~♥~ ♥~ ♥~

“Natasha, stop trying to set me up with every woman you meet, I’m-”

“Too shy? Too scared?”

“No, I’m-”

“Too busy? You’re mostly retired these days, not a good excuse anymore.” Natasha smirks and then drawls: “Or just too gay?”

Steve flushes at that, even if isn’t true -- he’s bisexual, not gay. “Let it go, Nat, I’m not looking for anything. I’m already married, for fuck’s sake.”

Clearly not what she expected. “What.”

Steve grimaces. He didn’t mean to tell anyone that, ever.

“Sorry, can’t talk about it right now!” he says and jumps out of the plane.

Nobody Should Be Alone on a Holiday by emphasisonem [Stucky, 2k words, Teen]

“So, um-” Bucky begins speaking again, pulling Steve from his less-than-work-appropriate thoughts. The brunet has shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark slacks, and he’s shifting from one foot to the other as he smiles shyly. “I have a question for you.”

“Shoot,” Steve grins, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his broad chest. Bucky swallows deeply as one of his hands comes up to pull at the collar of his button-up, and Steve can’t help following the motion of his Adam’s apple.

“I was, uh-” Bucky continues- “That is, I heard you don’t have Thanksgiving plans?”

In which Bucky finds out that Steve's going to be alone on Thanksgiving and invites his coworker to spend the holiday with him.

🌻 It's Been A Long Season Through by thiccbuckybarnes @thiccbuckybarnesfic [Stucky, 49k words, Explicit]

Bucky Barnes is in desperate need of a change in scenery, which is why he makes the foolhardy decision to quit his job, leave his asshole of a fiance, pack up his life, and move to his grandfather’s old farm all within a single day.

He expects confusion, hardship, and maybe even failure. But love? He wasn’t expecting that.

--

Or, a Stucky Stardew Valley AU that nobody but me wanted and that’s ok.

oh, peach pit, where'd the hours go? by thiccbuckybarnes [Stucky, 10k words, Explicit]

Can't see the forest for the trees.

--

Or, Steve learns that just because he and Bucky got their happily ever after, it doesn’t mean the past won’t come back to bite them.

I'll find my way by rainbow_nerds [Stucky, 725 words, Teen]

Steve had watched Bucky fall, and nothing had been the same since.

AU-gust day 19: Daemons

special delivery by glim @glim [Stucky, 6k words, Teen]

It's not that Steve's bad at taking care of himself when he gets sick; he just wishes he didn't have to all the time.

At least he can order most of what he needs online. That's some small comfort, that he can have soup and ice cream and everything else brought to his door.

at first chance i'd take the bed warmed by the body by spacebuck @spacebuck [Stucky, 8k words, Explicit]

This close, Steve can see exactly how beautiful his hands are. He’s never really noticed before, or at least he’s never really had a reason to notice, but the man’s hands are large, tanned like he works outside all day. There’s an endearing callus on the heel of one of his palms, and Steve can’t quite work out when calluses became endearing.

Steve pauses the video. Swallows hard. Casts his eyes around for anything that’ll keep his mind off the hands on his screen, off the words inked into those hands, the delicate shape of a bird’s wing, the curling edge of a vine.

He looks down. The name of the channel is right there, blaring the man’s name right into Steve’s brain until it feels like he’s known it all along.

Bucky Barnes.

OR: the one where Bucky's a youtuber who solves puzzles on camera, and steve's smitten and horny

🌻 Rock On! by millesable @marvelousescapism [Clintasha, 700 words, General]

“Hey, Romanoff!”

He lifted his hand, index finger and pinky finger raised, thumb out, all other fingers tucked. Their secret sign; their confession for the world to see, safe in the knowledge that the world wasn’t listening.

“Rock on!”

🌻 You Like the Way I Look by dontcallmebree @iamthe-wo-manwhocan [Stucky, 2k words, Explicit]

Bucky sidles up to him, hand boldly coming to rest on his chest. “What about you, big guy? Care for a dance?” Steve watches Bucky’s eyes twinkle with satisfaction, somehow already knowing he’s got Steve on the hook.

A decade out of the ice, Steve Rogers returns to New York. Reeling from a battle against the Chitauri, a night with the troublesome Bucky Barnes might be just what he needs.

Join the Rebellion by rainbow_nerds [Stucky, 765 words, Teen]

Bucky knew he shouldn't be out after curfew, but he couldn't resist the urge. He didn’t know where he was going, but he knew it was where he wanted to be.

AU-gust day 20: Dystopia

🔒 Five Days in December by mywingsareonwheels @mywingsareonwheels [Evanstan, 4k words, Teen]

“Shit shit shit shit...” muttered Chris to himself, glad that the sound of piped Christmas carols was drowning out his swearing amid the picture books. Most of the store was heaving even though it was Sunday, he’d been recognised at least three times, finding presents for all of his nieces and nephews was proving far more of a headache than expected, and he’d just sent a pile of copies of "Strictly No Elephants" tumbling off the bookshelf.

He scrambled about trying to pick them all up, and then dropped them again as someone bumped right into his backside. He lost his balance, caught himself against a bookcase, and a landslide of "Carter Is a Painter’s Cat" joined "Strictly No Elephants" on the floor. He yelped.

“Ah fuck, I’m so sorry… Chris!”

* * * * * * * * * *

London, December 2021. Amid cats, books, and the cold English drizzle, Chris finds everything he was hoping for and thought he would never have.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Reaching for Fire by dixons_mama @dixons-mama [Stucky, 7k words, Explicit]

Bucky has always felt a fire in his heart (and other body parts) when it came to his boss, Steve Rogers, but he's made sure to never feed those flames. When he finds out about Steve's second job, though, he's tempted to let that fire out.

i've been dreaming of a face like yours by thiccbuckybarnes [Stucky, 3k words, Explicit]

Bucky is about to busy himself with making a small dinner for himself when he stops in his tracks at the figure drinking a cup of coffee in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and smirking at him.

It’s Steve.

“Surprise, sweet boy,” he says before setting his cup down.

--

Or, PWP reunion sex

🌻 Somewhere, Under Your Skin by thiccbuckybarnes [Stucky, 16k words, Explicit]

Bucky Barnes treats himself to a one-night stand after having a very bad no good day.

The sex is good--great, even. Might be the best sex of his life.

But Bucky wouldn’t have slept with the guy if he had known that he was going to continuously run into him every day for the next fucking month.

--

Or, a Big Grump Bucky has a hot one night stand with a college kid who is popping up everywhere in his everyday life and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

(Written for HYBB Bingo Square: Grumpy Bucky)

i've played heartstrings before but not in your key by thiccbuckybarnes [Stucky, 11k words, Explicit]

He glances down, seeing a folded couple of papers, before peering up at Bucky. The older man is biting his bottom lip, making it pretty and red. Steve wants to run his tongue across where his teeth are digging into his flesh.

"What's this?" Steve asks, setting his phone down, emails forgotten. Bucky shrugs and looks away.

"I dunno. You tell me, genius," he says, sounding bratty enough that it makes Steve's dick twitch in his pants. Jesus, there has to be something wrong with him.

Steve glances once more at Bucky, who now has his arms crossed against his chest and is pointedly not looking at Steve, before picking up the stack of folded papers. He opens them, seeing a collection of maybe five or six sheets of paper. His eyes immediately land on the list of familiar words with negative next to each one. -- Or, Steve Rogers is a jealous, possessive little shit that wants nothing more than to mark up his boyfriend and stake his claim. And Bucky knows it. (And he likes it.)

🌻 I'm Home (With You) by BonkyBornes @padfoot-and-the-marauders [Stucky, 2k words, General]

In any other circumstance, the apartment would've been perfect. But it was today, and the fact that he was here meant he wasn’t out searching. He knew they hadn’t had any leads for weeks and he knew Natasha was right; all three of them were exhausted and a break would do them good. It just felt wrong to Steve that he was comfortable while Bucky was still out there—somewhere. Probably cold. Probably hungry.

The knock came again. Sighing, Steve unwrapped his hand from the dog tags and remembered how to move. Cold wind and snow greeted him when he opened the door. The solitary figure was walking down the steps, collar popped against the chill.

“Did you need something?” he called.

The person stopped. They were still. And then they turned. *

Or, the Christmas Steve deserved after Winter Soldier.

The portrait by rainbow_nerds [Stucky, 915 words, General]

Steve Rogers has a Gift. He can help people find their soulmates, all he needs is some art supplies, a quiet place, and eye contact.

AU-gust day 21: soulmates

Maybe A Muse by buckybarnesdeservestobehappy [Stucky, 2k words, Mature]

When Bucky Barnes needs extra money, he’s appalled that his best friends think he should become a model for the art department on campus. Shy, nerdy, and socially awkward, he’s not sure that’s something he feels comfortable doing. Still, he needs money, and he likes the idea of becoming someone’s muse. The problem is he had no idea two things would happen. First, one of the students in the class is exactly his type; second, he has to model nude.

[riddlecrux]

Light seen through the windows: an analysis of windows as a literary tool in Elriel relationship

I would love to preface this meta with my favorite disclaimer that everything that I will be discussing is based on what I have gathered from SJM writing. The quotes used in this post will serve as a starting point for further analysis. Additionally, I will be using things such as symbolism, metaphors, and literary device methods to build up my reasoning and beliefs. On another note, this, as usual, is strictly pro-Elriel meta. If they are not your cup of tea and you wish to comment, please be civil and bring arguments supported by the text.

So many of us like to gaze and stare through the windows daily. Looking at the world behind the glass often is considered a form of tranquility that we feel. Windows are essentially doors that lead us to whatever lies behind them - the last border between being in one place and then in another. It isn't then surprising that windows serve as symbols and metaphors in literature. From the start, whenever I read a passage about windows in ACOWAR I was reminded of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. You may ask why?

Emily Bronte used windows as symbolism in her work. They are very important for her characters and their personal arcs. They are symbols of barriers, misfortunes that characters face. Windows there are metaphors of various obstacles estranging Bronte's characters from achieving their hopes - realizing that the dreams they had will be not fulfilled. As I don't want to get spoilery with Wuthering Heights, I'm going to draw conclusions in a very neat manner. Bronte used windows as a connection to nightmares that one of the main characters was suffering from - it ties to the fact that in his nightmares he sees the person he had loved, haunting him. Because of the relationship with a said woman, the imagery of windows in this particular scene symbolizes death, an obstacle that stands between both of them. Throughout the book, we also get glimpses of how windows might be used as a metaphor for social classes and the contrast between them, and how Heathcliff and Catherine have to go about it. Along with the windows, doors are also used as a symbol of trapping someone in one place, obstructing them from achieving their dream or preventing them from reaching out to their loved one. Not to mention that during a very particular scene with Catherine, she wants the windows open - a symbolism of her wanting to feel free, to connect with something she knows, she longs for. This leads to the conclusion that windows in Bronte's novel are symbols of life and death, they are the in-between - a symbolic barrier.

On the other hand, windows in literature signalize something called "art of watching", and usually it is connected to a female protagonist that observes life, events through the window. Not to mention, the most famous association to windows such as "windows to the soul" - which, of course, is more metaphorical. It allows us, the audience, to connect with the character's inner feelings, struggles, as we are presented with the emotional aspect of said person. They are the bridge between the inside and outside. Windows are also a source of light, which we humans crave. Looking through the window one can absorb the light, which can resonate as a symbol of growth and change. Metaphorically we see the light from the window when we feel a need to light up the darkness inside us. They expose us, our inner feelings, and struggles.

When I read ACOWAR I have noticed that SJM decided to use windows, quite clearly, in the indication of two particular characters. Azriel and Elain. For the first time, when we met Elain again in the third book the window is a big issue.

"The suite was filled with sunlight. Every curtain shoved back as far as it could go, to let in as much sun as possible."

We have a clear description of the sunlit room, curtains shoved to further underline the need for light.

"And seated in a small chair before the sunniest of the windows, her back to us, was Elain."

In the brightest place in the room sits Elain, in front of the window. She is exposed to the sun, to sunlight and is absorbing that light - which is highlighted during this scene (which makes it important to note).

"Her skin was so pale it looked like fresh snow in the harsh light. I realized then that the color of death, of sorrow, was white."

The sunlight exposes Elain, its harsh light makes her pale, almost translucent. Even Feyre realizes the graveness of this picture comparing this white hue to death. As you can see the chain of events in this scene played like that: sunlit room -> curtain swept away -> Elain sitting in front of the window -> sudden comparison to death.

"She had been always so full of light. Perhaps that was why she now kept all the curtains open. To fill the void that existed where all of that light had once been. And now nothing remained."

Feyre deducts that the need for light on Elain's part is a desperate call to brighten the darkness inside her - which perfectly aligns with the metaphorical usage of windows. Elain basks in light in a helpless cry for help. The very dark void that appeared within her after being Made eats her away. It sucks her immortal life away - the one which she yet didn't get used to. On the other hand, we as readers are presented with the fact that Elain is trapped. In this Fae life, in this room, in this situation in which she grieves for her past and many what-ifs.

Nothing. Not even a flicker of emotion. “Everyone keeps saying that.” Her thumb brushed the ring on her finger. “But it doesn’t fix anything, does it?”

Sitting in front of the window - a sunny one to be precise, which symbolizes life, growth, and change, Elain is presented in a contrast to her surroundings. To show that visible barrier that her person has to overcome. She realizes that her dreams are meant to be unfulfilled, that they are unreachable.

"My stiff, limping steps, at least, had eased into a smoother gait by the time I found Elain in the family library. Still staring at the window, but she was out of her room."

The next time we see Elain she is out of her room - her "cage", but even though she left the boundaries of her entrapment she still chooses to linger around the windows. As Feyre notices, Elain gazes through the window - we are obstructed from Elain's POV and it's hard to imagine what she could be thinking about. Yet the symbolic manner of using the window as some sort of mirror, a passage that happens throughout the series, allows me to think that the metaphorical usage of windows, in this case, isn't a far-fetched idea.

"Elain didn’t turn. She was wearing a pale pink gown that did little to complement her sallow skin, her brown-gold hair hanging in loose, heavy ringlets down her thin back."

SJM uses this sentence to highlight that it isn't just a quick glance out of the window - in fact, it is constant staring through it. It is important for us as readers to note that this thing, window gazing, is an occupation that lasts for long periods of time. It isn't something trivial, it is something that showcases the importance of said windows in Elain's journey.

“What are you looking at?” I asked Elain, keeping my voice soft. Casual. Her face was wan, her lips bloodless. But they moved—barely—as she said, “I can see so very far now. All the way to the sea.”

Feyre decides to ask Elain who is still gazing through the window. Her answer is very ominous and holds a great deal of importance, but also underlines the fact that she is drawn to the window. Not to mention that what she is seeing is the sea - another vastly discussed symbol. In this situation, I believe that the interpretation can lay in a more psychological aspect of the matter rather than a literary one. In the works of very well-known psychiatrist Carl Jung the sea "symbolizes the personal and the collective unconscious in dream interpretation". So from his notes there comes this annotation that caught my attention, "The sea is a favourite place for the birth of visions."

Elain is a seer who constantly gazes through a window which symbolizes the in-between, life and death. These two are connected to one another and SJM used many things to further develop Elain's character as a powerful figure.

"Elain only turned toward the sunny windows again, the light dancing in her hair."

After the whole conversation Elain doesn't move from her spot, quite the contrary she returns to her previous activity. Gazing through the window. Once again we are reminded about the sun and light - which signalizes that Elain tries to undergo through the process of rebirth, but also tries to break free from the unhappiness that came with lost dreams.

"Something in my chest cracked as Nesta’s eyes also went to the windows before Elain. To check, as I did, for whether they could be easily opened."

Here we have an instance of both sisters realizing that Elain spending so much time in front of windows can be dangerous, as in her attempting to jump from them. Once again, the symbolism of death.

"More steps—no doubt closer to where Elain stood at the window."

Elain is still beside the window when Lucien tries to talk to her. Even alone she seeks the place next to the window to stare.

"But sunlight on gold caught his eye—and Elain slowly turned from her vigil at the window."

Elain is still by the window, for the whole scene she is there not moving an inch from it. Furthermore, the word "vigil" is also an interesting choice. There are different meanings of it, but I find these ones very telling and suitable for this instance: a period of sleeplessness; insomnia, a watch kept, or the period of this and a devotional watching, or keeping awake, during the customary hours of sleep. We can speculate about what happened to Elain while she was in the Cauldron, what made her so withdrawn from life and so desperate for the light. I want to believe that we as readers will get our answers in the next book since Elain being a seer with unknown powers makes her a perfect target for Koschei with which she has already had connections.

She looked away—toward the windows. “I can hear your heart,” she said quietly.

Again, during the whole conversation, she doesn't move away from her spot next to the window. Windows for her, start to become a symbolism of change and rebirth - the things she probably wished while being confined to her room.

Elain only stared out the window, unaware—or uncaring.

We have another mention about staring - which further highlights how important windows are as a literary tool for Elain's character. She seeks light, she wants to overcome this barrier that was thrown at her the moment she was Made. She, perhaps, watched through the window to observe the life which was stripped away from her and turned her into this immortal being. Or, maybe she just desperately wanted to brighten up the darkness that gathered inside her because of that whole situation. Another important thing to note is that this scene is a first moment alone with Lucien - her mate, which should have been very painful for her. The conversation also held a lot of weight, yet she valiantly stood by the window as if somewhere behind it she could find an answer.

“So it can’t be a perfect system of matching. What if”—I jerked my chin toward the window, to my sister and the shadowsinger in the garden —“that is what she needs? Is there no free will? What if Lucien wishes the union but she doesn’t?”

Here we have an instance of "art of watching" in which Feyre observes Azriel and Elain through the window. By watching them she comes to the conclusion that both of them are better suited and actually can comfort each other in comfortable silence. The window here is used as a barrier to showcase parallels of two couples: happily mated Feysand and unhappily in love with other people Elriel.

"But I looked to Azriel, currently leaning against the wall beside the floor-to-ceiling window, shadows fluttering around him."

And here we are start with Azriel and windows (also in ACOWAR). He is another character that has an extraordinary connection to windows. He is often mentioned next to them and somehow parallels Elain's behavior - staring through windows, being near them.

"I blinked, realizing I’d been lost in the bond, but found Azriel still by the window, (...)."

As we can see Azriel lingers next to the window without moving away from it - as the scene progresses we know that the conversation lasts a good ounce of time, yet Azriel stands in his place by the window.

"Azriel didn’t so much as turn from his vigil at the window, though I could have sworn his wings tucked in a bit tighter."

The same wording, the same imagery. Both used for Elain and Azriel. Both of them keeping vigils at the windows, staring through them as if they could find an answer through them.

"The main room of the guardhouse was stuffy and cramped, more so with all of us in there, and though I offered Elain a seat by the sealed window, she remained standing—at the front of our company. Staring at the shut iron door."

This scene is when Elain is about to confront her lover - Greysen. It is underlined that she rejected her usual spot, which is by the window, and preferred to face the door. She was trapped, she knew that a very important discussion will take a place here. She chose to look at the door rather than at the window, which in this matter could symbolize hope for a change - she stared at the door which metaphorically means transition or imprisonment.

"(...) close to Elain’s side as she and my sister silently kept against the wall by the intact bay of windows."

Another instance of Elain and her being content with being next to the windows.

"I’d seen Elain staring out the window earlier—watching Graysen leave with his men without so much as a look back at her."

"Art of Watching", but also the window's symbolism of dreams that were unfulfilled. At that moment, we can assume, that Elain realized that her dreams concerning human life and her future with Greysen would only be unattainable dreams/hopes.

“What now?” Elain mused, at last answering my question from moments ago as her attention drifted to the windows facing the sunny street. That smile grew, bright enough that it lit up even Azriel’s shadows across the room. “I would like to build a garden,” she declared. “After all of this … I think the world needs more gardens.

At the end of ACOWAR, we have this powerful moment, in which Elain gazing out of the window sees sunny streets = life. A chance of rebirth, which also beautifully overlaps with the fact that she proposed building a garden! The in-between that she balanced on while gazing through the window for so many times turned from death and misfortunes into life and hopes of the future.

ACOFAS

"Elain politely refused, taking up a spot in one of the wooden chairs set in the bay of windows. Also typical."

From Rhysand's point of view, we can deduct that even they are aware of the fact that Elain and windows are something notable. It is a place where she feels comfortable and probably spends a lot of time.

"Beyond the windows, darkness had indeed fallen. The longest night of the year. I found Elain studying it, beautiful in her amethyst-colored gown. I made to move toward her, but someone beat me to it."

In previous quotes, we could gather information about how Elain craved the light and how desperate she was to lighten up her person. Here, we can see that she also started to embrace the darkness. She is again by the window, observing the darkness as if no one else was around her. And of course, the one person who goes towards her at that moment is Azriel, a personification of darkness in the books.

Azriel strode to the lone window at the end of the room and peered into the garden below. “I’ve never stayed in this room.” His midnight voice filled the space.

Azriel went straight to the window. And not an ordinary one, but the one through which you can see the garden. Life and light. I know many were theorizing if what kept Azriel so occupied by the window was Elain, but I would love to put some of my thoughts in this discourse. Yes, I do think that what caught his attention, or who caught his attention was Elain. However, Elain at that moment represents life and light - the things that are associated with windows. And if you spin it around you have Azriel=darkness, death staring at Elain=light, life. The in-between, the very initial symbolism of window in literature. Not to mention that in this scene we have Azriel watching the light and next we have Elain observing darkness.

“No,” Azriel said, not turning from the window.

Azriel remained at the window. “Will Nesta stay here if she comes?

“I’d still be surprised if they remember once the storm clears,” Azriel said, turning from the garden window at last.

We have a whole scene in which it is so heavily implied that Azriel was constantly staring through the window, not even bothering to move away from it. We also have another highlighted thing which is the fact that it was a garden window.

There was a tiny box left on the table by the window—a box that Mor lifted, squinted at the name tag, and said, “Az, this one’s for you.”

A small thing, yet a very sweet one. The fact that even his present was placed close to the window, which starts to become an Elriel thing.

ACOSF

"She’d barely slept for fear of Elain walking off this veranda, or leaning too far out of one of the countless windows, or simply throwing herself down those ten thousand stairs."

We have a reminder that during her stay at House of Wind, Elain was a symbol of death. She carried it on her while being associated with windows that were used as a source of light that helped her heal.

"Elain stood at the wall of windows, clad in a lilac gown whose close-fitting bodice showed how well her sister had filled out since those initial days in the Night Court."

Even when she visits Nesta, she takes the place by the windows. It is something that is strictly connected to her. As if the windows were part of her now.

Elain’s smile was as bright as the setting sun beyond the windows. “I thought I’d drop by to see how you were doing.”

Light, sun, life = Elain.

“You’ve got good coloring, I mean,” Elain clarified, striding from the windows to cross the room. She stopped a few feet away. As if holding herself back from the embrace she might have given.

SJM still used the passages to underline the passage of time that Elain spent standing next to the window. It is a place in which she feels good and perhaps safe.

"They’d sat in them, before this fire, so many times that it was an unspoken rule that Azriel’s was the one on the left, closer to the window, and Cassian’s the one to the right, closer to the door."

We also get the information that Azriel always was the closest to the window - which is an odd thing to add without a deeper meaning. As if to further build up that connection between him and Elain - that both of them are aware of the fact that they are also the symbolism of the allegory of windows. I believe that SJM really researched that light and darkness trope, with which she built and she is still building up Elriel. The windows are just another tiny nugget that further envelopes both of them as one. Because while Elain transformed from death to life, she still welcomed darkness and embraced it - and Azriel opened to the life and light, seeking it. As I said, windows are a literary tool, which perhaps wasn't the main idea in the SJM text, but the amount of parallels between both of them and even the same wording applied to different scenes tells me that it's yet another connection between them.

[sumerun]

do you have any tips/advice for a newbie in genshin that has no idea what they are doing?

ofc, anon! fair warning that this post is going to be text heavy bc i wanna cover as much as i can. i’m going in with the assumption that you have little exp with gacha games. however feel free to skip whatever u already know

if you have any more questions, send them my way, i’ll be happy to help! :)

GENERAL TIPS

- to be honest, the best way to understand what is going on with genshin is just to take your time and play. it’s the best way to get into the game imo! like for me, i didn’t fully understand the game until i was like AR 45+ and i’m still learning to this day! so that’s the #1 tip i will give you haha! nothing better than discovering things on your own and having it ‘click’

- take your time with the story, really. mihoyo (now called hoyoverse) is well-known for their elaborate lore and story so take the time to let that sit

- any character can be DPS so play who interests you the most! no characters are ever weak

- if you plan to be smart on who you want to pull for, i recommend looking at character leaks to help make an informed decision

- you’ll spend a large amount of time farming and improve your characters when you’re AR45+ so don’t worry about making your character strong ASAP. i’ll elaborate on this further

PLAYSTYLE

what kind of player will you be? and how will your previous experiences with other games fit into it? it can influence how you enjoy genshin

- meta player: live for unga bunga numbers, always striving to improve their characters or get the highest scores

- collector: collects all waifus/husbando

- free to play: don’t spend a single coin

- spender: spend every now and then

- whale: spoils their character and spends a ton of money

- avg player: a mix of everything

this way you can set goals and expectations for yourself bc this game can be very repetitive and grindy which can speed up burnout

WISHING FOR CHARACTERS

this is a huge part of the game so i will be more detailed here. i will be referencing the banner that is live as of this post, 2.5 or yae miko’s banner

so i just want to preface that genshin is a gacha first and it can be extremely predatory. therefore, always take precautions if you know you have bad impulse control. that being said:

- there are currently 3 types of currency: intertwined fates (pink, used on limited character banner, weapon banner), acquaint fate (blue, used only on standard banner), and primogems (used to buy a plethora of things but in this context, can be exchanged for the fates). 

- there are 3 banner type: limited (characters), weapon, and standard (weapon + characters)

- familiarize yourself with the pity system which is the # of time you need to wish to get a 5* character or weapon. know that you can literally get a 5* in your first pull EVER so know that it’s all RNG. the chance of you getting a 5 star is 0.06%

on character banner, the soft pity is around 76 pulls while hard pity is 90 pull but i have yet to know a single person that actually hit 90 pity. there is something called ‘50/50′, which is when you finally pull a 5* there is a fifty-fifty chance you get the promotional character. losing 50/50 means you got a 5* character from the standard banner pool (diluc, mona, qiqi, jean, keqing) and your next 5* is guaranteed to be yae, the promotional character. winning 50/50 means well... you got yae without having to another 76 pull! and pulling a 5* rests your pity :)

on weapon banner, soft pity is around 50-60 pulls and hard pity is 80 pulls. pulling on this banner is not recommended for f2ps or low spender bc it can take more than 200 pulls to get the weapon you want. pull here at your own risk. the pity system there is called epitomized path. i wish i can explain it simply but i’m not very good at it LMAO the in-game explanation is pretty clear imo

- pull on the beginner's wish banner (it has noelle on it)! that should give you some nice weapons/characters to start with

- never spend your primos on standard banner (the very far right, blue/purple banner). it is almost never worth it, even if you’re close to pity. you’re not guaranteed a weapon or character so it is a huge gamble

- make sure you pulling on the right banner!! i’ve heard so many stories of people converting to the wrong type of fates lMAO

- new 4* character/weapon gets added the following patch. none of the new 5* weapon/character have yet to be added and i don’t think it’ll happen for long awhile.

ADVICE FOR PULLING

- pull for who you like, like seriously. primogems and fates are hard to get so make sure you love the character you’re getting

- if you’re f2p, you will have to accept the fact that you will skip banners

- new character > getting constellations/best weapon

GAMEPLAY

- when you’re playing in overworld (the open world where ur free to explore), don’t worry about team composition and damage, the game will not punish you for having weak characters or wack team comps. the world is your oyster when you’re in overworld

- abyss is where you can challenge and test the progress of your team. you earn primos here. it can be very stressful and sweaty so i don’t recommend it until you’re fully prepped

- learn about elemental reactions. this is where the majority of your damage will come from. there is a domain in mondstadt that will teach you the basics of it!

- and of course, explore your heart out!

LEVELING CHARACTERS + RESIN USAGE

- confused about what to level up first? i recommend: character ascension > weapon ascenscion > talent

as for what type of character to prioritize, i recommend: main DPS > secondary > support/dmg buffer > healer

- level DPS up to level 90, supports/healers can stay at 80 OR ascend them without leveling them up so you can worry about talents. 

- resin is the little crescent moon thing you see on the top of the map. you generate 1 every 8 minutes, up to 160 resin. you will use this to farm materials for your characters (like literally EVERYTHING lmao) 

early game (lower than AR45), i just recommend you use your resin to level and ascend your character, weapons and talents. try not to farm artifacts because you will only get purples pieces when you actually want gold

- artifacts is a huge part of making your character stronger but it can be extremely tedious bc artifacts are also RNG-based and it can take you months to get good pieces

this is why i recommend you don’t focus on farming domains for artifacts until you’re AR45 or higher bc you’re guaranteed a gold artifact piece 

until then, use your resin to farm bosses or talent domains (if ur at the right level) to level up your characters

- if you want guides to help build your character, visit Keqing Mains’s website, their discord, and the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor discord because there are so many helpful guides you can find there.

CONCLUSION

so as you can see, there’s a LOT to take in. but don’t worry you will come to understand this as you play. once everything ‘click’ and in place, this game will be as easy as pie lmao. so just enjoy yourself. play however you want to plan and have fun!! <3 this is a PvE game so there is no pressure to be the best.

[max1461]

Just read Scott Alexander’s post on “conflict theorists” vs. “mistake theorists” and, hmm. I have several thoughts. First, to summarize the concept for anyone who hasn’t seen it before: Alexander links to a reddit post by user u/no_bear_so_low, who originated the idea, saying

There is a way of carving up politics in which there are two basic political meta-theories, that is to say theories about why different political ideologies and political conflict exist. The first theory is that political disagreements exist because politics is complex and people make mistakes, if we all understood the evidence better, we’d agree on a great deal more. We’ll call this the mistake theory of politics. For the mistake theorist, politics is not a zero-sum game, but a matter of growing the pie so there is more for everyone. The second theory is that political disagreements reflect differences in interests which are largely irreconcilable. We’ll call this the conflict theory of politics. According to the conflict theory of politics, politics is full of zero-sum games.

u/no_bear_so_low claims that both the far left and far right are more amenable to conflict theory than liberals are, who lean more towards mistake theory. Alexander seems to agree, though in his own post he’s speaking mainly about Marxists in particular. He summarizes the concept as follows:

To massively oversimplify:

Mistake theorists treat politics as science, engineering, or medicine. The State is diseased. We’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the best diagnosis and cure. Some of us have good ideas, others have bad ideas that wouldn’t help, or that would cause too many side effects.

Conflict theorists treat politics as war. Different blocs with different interests are forever fighting to determine whether the State exists to enrich the Elites or to help the People.

In addition, Alexander subdivides the categories further into “hard” and “soft” versions:

Consider a further distinction between easy and hard mistake theorists. Easy mistake theorists think that all our problems come from very stupid people making very simple mistakes; dumb people deny the evidence about global warming; smart people don’t. Hard mistake theorists think that the questions involved are really complicated and require more evidence than we’ve been able to collect so far [...]

Maybe there’s a further distinction between easy and hard conflict theorists. Easy conflict theorists think that all our problems come from cartoon-villain caricatures wanting very evil things; bad people want to kill brown people and steal their oil, good people want world peace and tolerance. Hard conflict theorists think that our problems come from clashes between differing but comprehensible worldviews.

So what do I think about all this?

Well, it seems to me that this framework is (a) a fairly reasonable descriptive dichotomy, in the sense that, yes, a lot of people do genuinely seem to fall into one of these two camps, and (b) a horrible dichotomy on which to base any prescriptions about political meta-theory, in that these are both awful (and obviously wrong) ways to think about the world. Now, Alexander doesn’t explicitly give any such prescriptions, but he does describe SCC as “hard mistake theorist central”, and generally speaks of mistake theory in approving terms, while speaking of conflict theory in disapproving ones. I think this is bad.

At a base level, my problem with both these “theories” is that they’re, in some sense, just too optimistic.

I agree, for example, with the hard mistake theorist sentiment that the world is full of extremely challenging technical problems, that these problems can be the source of real human suffering, and that the only way to address these problems is through data collection and empirical analysis and hard technical work. And I agree that this will often produce unintuitive conclusions, that run against people’s gut sense of what the right policy might look like. I agree that the state is diseased. I do not agree that “[w]e’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the best diagnosis and cure.” People, it turns out, often do have genuinely different and irreconcilable values, and genuinely do envision different ideal worlds. In addition to that fairly mundane observation, there genuinely are a lot of bad actors, who are just in the game for their own benefit. The world is full of grifters, schemers, and petty (or not so petty) tyrants; on an empirical level that’s just not something you can deny.

On the other hand, I agree with the easy conflict theorist sentiment that, e.g., “bad people want to kill brown people and steal their oil.” There’s plenty of pretty immediate proof of that to be found if you look into the history of colonialism¹, or the slave trade, or US foreign election interference in the twentieth century. Actually, just so I’m not pissing anybody off by only mentioning “western” examples, I’ll include the Khmer Rouge and the Holodomor and comfort women and uh, you get the picture. For god’s sake, the Nazis really existed, and yeah, they really believed all that Nazi shit. In retrospect they may seem like implausibly evil cartoon villains, but in fact they were real flesh and blood humans, just like the rest of us. You think that was just a one-off?

And on a much more mundane note, sometimes (actually, very very often), ordinary people just have incompatible ethical axioms. Sometimes people have genuinely different values, and there are no rational means to sort out which value-set to choose. I suspect this is at least part of the reason for the rationalist community’s skew towards mistake theorizers, in that their favored intellectual tool has more-or-less nothing to offer when it comes to selecting your values (=ethical axioms, =terminal goals, etc). I mean, of course rationality is good for diagnosing contradictions in your value set, but it can’t tell you how to resolve those contradictions. That’s the domain of intuition, empathy, and aesthetics, were data cannot light your way.

However, I do not agree with the conflict theorists’ underlying sentiment that if “the good people” were just in charge, everything would be better. After all, there are all those pesky technical problems with unintuitive solutions getting in the way, requiring all kinds of expertise and thorough empirical study and uh, plenty of them might not even be solvable.² This is a huge deal. It’s incredibly easy to have the best of intentions and still make horrible mistakes by virtue of just... happening to have the facts wrong. Not through malice, or self-interest, or even some nicely-explainable sociological bias like white fragility or whatever. Just because problems are hard, and sometime you will fail to solve them. Even when people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake.

Here’s a handy latex-formatted table for your comprehending pleasure:

lol, we live there.

So this all sounds a bit pessimistic and, well, I suppose it is. I think we have a responsibility to acknowledge the gravity of our situation. We could, conceivably, live in a world that was structured according to either the conflict theorist’s vision or the mistake theorist’s vision, but we don’t. We live in a much scarier world, and if we don’t face that terrifying reality head-on, we’re not going to be able to overcome it.

Now, in general, I’d say I spend a lot of my internet-argument-energy-allowance trying to persuade [what I perceive to be] overly conflict-theorizing leftists in the direction of a greater recognition of the genuine technical difficulty of the problems we face. It's probably worth making a separate post about why I think a “denial of unintuitive solutions” is so common on the left, but I’ll just mention here that I think it relates to what I once jokingly called the “Humanistic gaze”. That is, the bias to view everything quite narrowly through the lens of the humanities, and to view all problems as fundamentally sociological in nature. When the world is constructed entirely by humans and human social relations, there’s a level at which nothing can be unintuitive. After all, an intersubjective world must ultimately be grounded in subjective experience, and subjective experience is literally made of intuition.

I usually don’t spend much time pursuing the dual activity (trying to argue liberals out of [what I perceive to be] an overly mistake-theorizing perspective). This is largely because, well, I think the optimistic assumption that mistake theorists make —that most people have basically compatible goals, and that relatively few people are working out of abject self-interest or hatred or whatever— is so obviously false that it doesn’t warrant as much genuine critique as it warrants responding with memes about US war crimes. The principal of charity is best extended to ideas, not people or institutions. You can take the neocons’ arguments seriously without extending charity to the neocons as agents.

The post concludes with Alexander writing

But overall I’m less sure of myself than before and think this deserves more treatment as a hard case that needs to be argued in more specific situations. Certainly “everyone in government is already a good person, and just has to be convinced of the right facts” is looking less plausible these days.

And uh, yeah. Indeed.

So, in conclusion: is politics medicine, or is it war? No, it’s politics.

There are disagreements, and conflicts of interest, and coalition building, and policy-wonkery, and logistics. There is, as with anything involving the state, the implicit threat of violence. (That’s where the state’s power comes from, remember? Whether it’s their power to tax, or their power to enforce individual property rights to begin with. Their power to regulate or build infrastructure or legally construct corporate personhood or whatever. There’s more than a bit of game theory involved, sure, but the rules of the game are set through the armory.) Every scholarly technocrat with double-blind peer reviewed policy suggestions still ultimately just decides who the guns get pointed at, if at several layers of abstraction. Every righteous people’s vanguard is still bound by the mathematics of production and the dynamics of a chaotic world. There are no easy solution, not conceptually easy nor practically easy. And unless we recognize that on a very deep level, we have no chance of fixing anything.

[1] I’d quote my go-to example here, of the truly ghastly stories relayed to linguist R. M. Dixon by the Dyirbal people of Australia about their subjugation at the hands of white settlers, but unfortunately I don’t have his book with me at the moment. Also this post would require several additional trigger warnings.

[2] I mean, after all, there are only countably many Turing machines, and the set of all languages with finitely many symbols has cardinality 2^(aleph_0)!

[austarus]

Harry Wells x Reader Crisis of Infinite Wells (Part 5 of 5)

**A/N: The picture/edit/gif does not belong to me. 

*It’s finally over! This took multiple showers to get it right even if I had everything planned out and outlined. But goodness is it over. I’m possibly going to take a break for a few weeks since my summer uni work is now killing on top of medical scribe classes. Yeah, my mental health is really being pulverized this summer. Trying to learn how to drive on the highway to the city too since I’m moving to the city. But ugh, I just don’t want to do anything other than watch Tik Tok, make fics, read fics/books, and sleep ;-; Big thanks to @natsukitakama​ for translating all the French that happened with Sherloque and a big thanks to @mintchipcupcake​ for letting me know her view on neural frequencies for Harry. Thanks to @crazythoughtsandlove​, @sarah-i-khel​​, @countlesswells​, and @multiwells​ for supporting me. I could not have done it without you guys!

I hope everyone has enjoyed this series and went down the lane of feels. Please remember to comment and reblog, it helps us content creators so much so we can keep on creating.

Part 1    Part 2    Part 3    Part 4    

Word Count: 5732

“Nn,” a tired noise left your throat. Clearing said throat, you licked your dry lips as a yawn escaped you. Instinctively, you covered your mouth with the back of your hand. You languidly moved your limbs to cuddle into a pillow even further. Your phone laid beside you on the bed in silent mode. Breathing in gently, your senses registered a certain kind of musk that usually clung to a particular person. A dull ache echoed through your body as every organ began to wake up for the day. Your eyelids remained shut as a brisk of sunlight filtered through the blinds. Everything felt so foggy, but goodness was the rest well deserved. After all, you hadn’t been sleeping well once you found out that your idea had been perfectly sane and in the works. And it did work. You blinked a few times, giving up on going back to sleep. Another yawn left you. You were still in the clothes that you had worn yesterday, locks in a tangly mess. Adjusting your body to lay on your back, your mind recognized that you were indeed not in your room or in your home. You frowned as you gazed up at the ceiling. What the hell? How did I get in Harry’s room? I thought-

“Allen, I didn’t ask for your help.”

Harry! Perking your head up at the familiar roughly-toned voice, your body drifted to the side a bit as dizziness coursed within your being since you had bolted upright on the bed. You failed to recognize how your legs had been tangled in the sheets from your deep slumber and fell off the bed when you got up with haste. The cold concrete floor greeted you mockingly in comparison to the softness of the bed you were just on. Your body further protested when it absorbed the impact. Groaning, you shuffled off the floor on wobbly legs heading out of the room on socked feet. You didn’t care if you looked like a chaotic mess or that you were in your socks. Only one thought rang in your mind as you grew close to the frustrated voices. He’s here!

“You said you needed someone to watch your back and I was the only one available.”

“Yes, watch my back from the coms, Allen. From the Labs. Not someone to speed around the entire property. It was a delicate instance that I could have handled myself! And what do you know, you triggered most of the sensors and traps set.”

“You looked like you were in a bind!”

“Help me, Barry. Save me, I can’t handle a little reconnaissance without your speedster abilities. Not.”

“How many times have I told you not to touch my stuff?”

“What are you talking about, Cisco?”

“You played with my tech again! What is it up with you Wells and tampering with my things?!”

You walked in with hurried steps right as Cisco had his outburst; the haze of sleep had left you all together when you had rounded the corner. The boys stopped when you entered the Cortex abruptly out of breath. Your eyes scanned around, head moving from side to side. But you only saw Barry and Cisco and Nash as you seemed to be frozen in place. Your heart dropped in your chest at the absence of Harry, eyes sparkling as you had casted your gaze downward. Grueling thoughts had swirled through your mind as the growing whole of doubt further widened in your chest. The voice you had heard came from Nash, not Harry. Reality had picked you up and thrown you into Central City’s lake of cold water. Harry’s not here. He’s- I- He’s not coming… Your pursed your lips, whispering a little apology for barging in on the three’s argument. Nash moved his gaze to his gloves fiddling with it when he saw the sadness flicker through your eyes. With a somber expression, turned around on the spot and collided with a very solid body with a very sturdy chest. Instantly, arms encased your being at the collision, a deep voice cut through the silence. A voice that thrilled your insides.

“I finally caught you, my love.”

Swallowing thickly, you slowly looked up to see those gentle baby blues that rested behind black-clear frames. The dark-haired man cupped your face gingerly as you gathered the strength to speak. “Harry?”

“I’m back.”

A tear trickled down from your eyes, cascading down your flushing cheek, no longer wanting to be bound within your glassy eyes. Harry softly smiled down at you with his own glimmering eyes, his thumb wiped the tear that fell, but his touch caused more to fall. A whimper escaped you as you pressed your head into his chest, sobbing quietly in relief with your arms tightly holding him. The taller man took in a breath, fighting his own tears before he placed a kiss to your forehead. Harry whispered soothing words while rubbing your back as you cried into him. These past couple of weeks had been rough for everyone, but rougher on you and him. Barry and Cisco elbowed each other that the King and Queen of the Underworld have finally reunited and of course made bets on who knows what. Nash rolled his eyes at the two. Jesse stood be the door, watching her dad and you reunite. Her dorky dad and his sweet as a button girlfriend. The young speedster had a pack of tissues at the ready with a wide smile on her face. Tilting to the side, she waved at Barry and Cisco and Nash. Jesse looked oddly at Nash, observing him eye you and her dad for a moment before turning his gaze to meet her eyes. The other Wells doppelganger nodded at her, briefly seeing all the things and qualities that Harry would ramble about regarding his daughter. Nash’s heart gripped in his chest, but truthfully there was a glimpse of happiness for you. He was learning to be content with your happiness. The boys made eye contact with Harry, who only nodded at them as they decided that it would be best to leave you and Harry and Jesse alone. Barry sped them out of the Cortex.

Pulling away, you rubbed your puffy red eyes only to see a tear fall from Harry as he watched you. His eyes ran over every detail of you as if he had been seeing you for the first time in his life. You gripped his face with both hands and pulled him close. He rested his forehead against yours as you wiped his single tear. The both of you closed your eyes and just relished in each other’s presence. Breathing gently with each other and calming any doubts the two of you had. He was here and you were in his arms. The pent-up anxiety that had been increasing since the Crisis had finally burst.

“You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Harry nodded at your stumbling voice from all the crying. “I’m not going anywhere.” The two of you collected yourselves, a lovestruck look crossing your eyes.

Jesse held a pack of tissues up to you when you and her dad had pulled away. You sheepishly smiled at the young Wells. “I decided to drop by as well, can’t miss out on the Hades and Persephone reunion.” You giggled at her while whipping your tears and blowing your nose, knowing Cisco had essentially looped her into shipping you and Harry with those names. The speedster pulled you into a huge hug, giggling with you.  

“I missed you too Ms. Jesse Quick,” you gave her a squeeze. Harry couldn’t keep the smile off his face. Both his girls were with him. His daughter and the love of his life. His heart felt utterly in bliss.

“Thank you for bringing him back,” Jesse whispered, pulling away with a smile. You knew that look in her eyes, the same emotion she had held when she had initially found out what Devoe had done to Harry. How he used Harry as a guinea pig and lost himself as a result. You returned the smile, feeling Harry’s large hand find your smaller one and holding it firmly. Glancing down, you intertwined your fingers with his before looking up brightly at him. The three of you glanced at each other as a wave a serenity passed over you three before Jesse bid you farewell as she headed to the break room because of her grumbling stomach. Thanks to her increased metabolism from being a speedster she’s due for speedster protein bar that Cisco’s come up with.

Walking through the corridor, Jesse entered the break room with furrowed eyebrows as her green eyes landed on an unfamiliar person. The dark-haired Hispanic was typing away on the couch when she looked up to see the young speedster. Papers and articles were plopped beside the young adult.

“You’re Allegra, right?” Jesse quired, hands in her jacket pockets.

“Yeah, who-”

“Great, I’m Jesse Wells. You’re just the person I was looking for.” Allegra’s frown deepened but deemed that this was the Jesse Wells you had mentioned to her. Harry’s daughter. Two irreplaceable members of Team Flash. The UV meta figured that the speedster was no harm, especially since Jesse seemed to be around her own age. “We need to talk. I know this great bar we could go to.”

“Wait, what-”

Allegra wasn’t able to finish her sentence as Jesse had sped them away to a bar in a torrent of yellow-green lightning.

***

Harry had ushered you back to his room and away from prying eyes because he knew that if Cisco and Barry came around you and the scientist would not hear the end of it. Plus, as much as Harry was balanced now, he currently preferred to capture your full attention inside the bedroom rather than outside. Especially with Nash still around the labs.

The two of you found yourselves cuddling into each other on the bed. Harry’s head rested close to yours while you slipped off his glasses and kissed his nose before threading your fingers through his hair. The Wells doppelganger let out a content sigh at the simple gesture of affection, but one he deeply enjoyed, while shutting his eyes for the moment. His arms rested comfortably around your waist; your figure pressed close to his as if he was afraid you were an illusion that would escape him. He had already discarded his black jacket, leaving him just in his classic black short sleeve shirt and dark wash jeans. Reopening his baby blue eyes, Harry plucked his glasses out of your hand to twist his body over to the side and tossing them onto the counter. Turning fully to you with a lovestruck smile and half-lidded eyes, he slowly leaned in with every intention of kissing you till your lips were red and swollen.

“Wait you can’t kiss me yet!” You moved your head back slightly to which Harry frowned irritably because he’s been holding back from kissing you silly in the Cortex. … Amongst doing other shamelessly pleasurable things to show you just how much he missed you.

“Why not?”

You simply took out the vanilla bean flavored chapstick from your pocket and apply it to your lips. Harry watched you smack them a few times and wondered if you were either tempting him even more or testing his patience or both. “Now you can kiss me.” Harry had quirked an amused eyebrow at you. “What? I wanted it to be perfect. Plus, you know I bite my lips when I get too wori-” You pouted at your boyfriend, who instantly shut you up with needy kiss. Without words, the kiss showed you just how much he had missed you and that his patience was running thin.

Your brain froze for a second before responding. His lips smacked against yours before Harry pushed his tongue into your mouth, yearning for your taste. You gasped, fighting him for a bit before giving in. His fingers had crawled up under your shirt, rubbing soothing circles on the skin. Your hands had rested on his face, pulling him impossibly closer as the smooches continued to heat up. The air in the room felt as if on fire but you wouldn’t have it any other way. Nipping on his bottom lip, you kissed Harry with just enough passion as your body moved to lay on top of his. His hands retreated from under your shirt to fold themselves on your lower back. Your hips pressed down against his own, feeling every part of his body meld with yours. Ragged breathes left the both of you as you continued to make out, biting and licking and sucking at each other. Harry’s hand snuck down to smack your ass causing a yelp to fall off your lips. You pulled away for air, your lungs exhausted and your head was spinning. You were met with a cheeky smirk while you pouted at your boyfriend with a frown. He licked his lips wickedly once more before leaning up to kiss your swollen lips while you adorned a flushed expression. A sight he took great pleasure in seeing on your face. And only he can elicit that kind of reaction from you. His lips tingled delightfully from the sweet chapstick on your lips.

“When did you even get here?” You asked once you regained control of your breathing, fixing your hair to the side as the two of you laid back. Harry resting on his back while your snuggled beside him, your head pressed to his chest as you listened to his racing heartbeat. You shifted your gaze to eye him with one hand against his chiseled chest. Harry sighed, collected his thoughts before tucking a piece of stray hair behind your ear as he spoke up. His arm was firmly wrapped around you.

“Last night. Jesse and I found you asleep on Sherloque’s lap.”

“How-…What’s with look?”

“What look? I don’t have a look.” Harry spoke quickly as if he’d been caught red-handed.

“Harry, yes you do! You have a look for almost everything. Everyone does.” You teased him a bit before turning to the more serious thoughts that had kept you up. And it showed. Harry can see it clear as day on your face. You had not been sleeping well without him. He couldn’t sleep either without you. “Anyway, what took you so long?”

“I- We… When I woke up Jesse had been monitoring my vitals, keeping me hooking up to a life support system. She was crying, wouldn’t let me go and saying how she was scared to death. Scared that she lost me for a second time. Every single day she would check on my vitals and try to talk to me. Jesse wouldn’t leave my side, going over all my vitals as my consciousness fully set into my body. We had collaborated everything, but…”

“But?”

“I was feeling weak when she took me off the life support. So, she quickly synthesized a blood sample to do a blood transfusion, just like you showed her, to flush out anything that had been hiding in my body from the Crisis and the neural separation. My vitals and cells returned to normal. It worked fast; I won’t deny that. Speedster blood and everything. Once I was feeling moderately better, we tried the last session.” Harry pointed to his head with a free hand, baby blue eyes twinkling with such knowledge and intellect that was rightfully his. “I’ve got it all back. Everything.”

You grinned up at him, “I told you, if anything Jesse would be the one to figure it out.”

“My pride and joy.”

“So, what went wrong? I-I mean, why didn’t it work the first time 2 years ago.”

“Well, Jesse had profusely voiced her irritation that Marlize had done a sloppy job after she looking over the blueprints and all the notes, but Marlize had also neglected the fact that I’m from another Earth- or in this case dimension. My neural frequency is at a different interval in comparison to everyone on Earth-1. A unique signature for each Earth, if you will. That’s why I was able to retain basic functions, but not reach my full potential regarding intelligence and neuron firing. And it’s a good think the dark matter didn’t leave any neural scars or that could have been a complication since the brain doesn’t do well with regeneration.”

“Look at you talking all science-y again. It worked; Jesse fixed you.”

Harry pulled up one of your hands, kissing the knuckles. “You’re the one that figured out how to bring me back. Back to my daughter, back to you, back to my family.”

You dropped your gaze, feeling the heat rise in your cheeks from his intense and adoring gaze. A bashful smile returning to your lips as your eyes met his. “I told you so.” You pressed your lips against him in triumph. Harry hummed against your lips before you pulled away.

“You’re not going to let it go, are you?”

“Nope,” you deadpanned with a cheeky grin. “Now I can admire you while you ramble on about physics and math that I’m totally clueless to and tend to tune out just to hear your voice.”

“Wait, you don’t actually listen to me explaining things?”

“… A little.” You sheepishly responded to which Harry retaliated by running his fingers over your sides. Your fiendish sides that always betrayed you. A giggled bubbled from your throat. “Harry, don’t you-” But the scientist paid no mind to you as he continued his carefully planned assault on your sides. Snorts and little laughs flood out of your lips as cringed and attempted to move your body away from his hands. A toothy grin crossed his features at your shrieks, his fingers ran over every ticklish area on you. Flopping onto your back, Harry’s tickle attack subsided as his heart flipped many times over. He watched your chest rise and fall as your giggles gradually quieted. You gazed up at him with stars in your eyes, his own were full of adoration and love but… with a certain other emotion hidden behind us. A thought struck you.

“By the way, where’s Sherloque?”

“Babe, he left. Said he had some business to take care of on his Earth- well, dimension actually.”

“Oh, I hope everything’s ok on his end. …I heard about Renee and everything.”

“He’ll be fine. Sherloque just needs his mind to mull over a few things.”

“I hope he finds what he’s looking for…” you whispered, to which Harry oddly looked at you, wondering if you knew, before the look behind his eyes shifted. You caught onto the sudden, but subtle change.

A particular glint sparkled in Harry’s eyes as you trailed off, one that had you hypnotized. One that you knew all too well as he towered over you on the bed. Those lust-filled eyes that pulled you in like a riptide. Harry licked his lips, leaning down with half-lidded eyes. Then a pesky thought hit you causing you to push against his leaning chest which had Harry inwardly grumbling.

“Wait, Harry, I haven’t washed up!”

“I figured, I had Jesse go out and buy you a few things. Those skin care products and face wash you idolize so much. She probably set them in the bathroom already.”

“The avocado and cucumber facewash? And the hydrating facial cleansers? With the pomegranate-berry face cream?”

Harry nodded, but kept you firmly beneath him, “If you can stand to hug me after I came back from Gorilla City- after all the shit they did and threw at me, then I think I can stand being around you in the clothes you’ve worn from yesterday and unfreshened up.”

“Yeah, not your best moments.” You teased him and slithered from underneath his grasp, hopping off the bed.

“Hey!”

He watched you step into the bathroom. God, I love you. Harry went on his phone, staring at the picture you and he took on New Year’s as the water ran in the bathroom. Maybe now wouldn’t be the best time no matter how many times Jesse’s been pestering me about it. Coming back, you dove right into his side and cuddled him close with a jubilee smile on your face. Harry swears his heart melted for the 100th time that day.

“If you want to… do stuff later, we’d have to do that back at my apartment after I shower and everything,” you traced patterns with your finger over his chest. “And so, no one interrupts and…. Yeah…”

“Definitely want to ‘do stuff’ later.” You blushed at his wink and how he wiggled his eyebrows. Babe, you’re going to need to shower after that too. Leaning in Harry caught your ear between his teeth before whispering all the dirty things and positions he wants to put you in. “I’m going to make sure my name is the only thing you remember tomorrow morning, my sweet, sweet Persephone.” Covering your face, you resisted the urge to scream in frustration at this man’s level of teasing. Knowing he had impeccable patience for the nightly activities to come later. Harry knew the exact effect he had on you, how he can make your body scream in ecstasy as he’d show you just how capable he is in loving you. Blow out a puff of air, you calmed yourself and hormones. Your thirsty side would need to wait until you two went home.

“Harry?”

“Hm?” He blinked out of his thoughts and gave you a quizzical look.

“Do me a favor and flex.”

Harry blinked at you for a moment before sitting up and flexing. You won’t deny that your thirsty thoughts took over for a bit again when you reached up to run your fingers over the toned muscles. Before you could do anything else Harry’s strong arms wrapped around you as he snuggled his head into your chest. Soft. Your cheeks turned a rosy color as you felt him kiss your exposed chest from all the rolling around in bed.

“I don’t think I’m needed anywhere else today,” you mused, ruffling his chaotically messy locks. He breathed you in like a man taking a huge breath of air before diving into the depths of water.

“Perfect, because for the record, I wasn’t going to let you out of my arms all day.”

You chuckled and kissed his forehead, “Neither will I.” Shutting your eyes, the both of you slowly drifted off in each other’s embrace.

***

Sherloque sighed to himself as he stepped out of the dimensional portal into his home. The detective adjusted his coat around him. It was cold and empty again, but at least he had arrived safely again. Everything was still in place. His mind could not help, but to wander before he left you in the hands of Harry and his daughter.

(Flashback)

“Eh bien il était temps,” Sherloque remarked with a confident smirk. Harry and Jesse strolled closer to the detective with Harry rolling his eyes at him. Sherloque’s eyes landed onto Jesse, who only smiled at him politely. Jesse’s dealt with HR before so she likes to think she can handle another of her father’s doppelgangers. But she won’t lie, she’s a bit curious on what her doppelgangers are like. “You must be Jesse Quick.”

“That I am, nice to meet you…”

“Sherloque. And likewise, your father ‘as talked so much about you. ‘ave-” Her father had sent the detective a hard and threatening look, meaning that Sherloque should likely think twice before deciding to psychoanalyze and deduce Jesse. The Wells doppelganger chose his next words carefully, “-’ow was it?”

“I got it all back, minor headaches, but nothing else out of the ordinary,” Harry shrugged, knowing what Sherloque had been referring to and rubbed his temple as his eyes fell to your slumbering form. Your chest rose and fell with each relaxed breath.

“Right, well it was nice meeting you, Sherlock,” Jesse unfurled her arms, mentally plotting something vengeful.

“Sherloque, it’s French.”

“Yeah, cool, whatever,” She shrugged, not really caring before speeding off to scare Team Flash in their respective homes that she’s back. Especially Cisco and Barry, who Harry’s told her to get back at them good.

“She’s finally asleep.” Harry moves to pick you up from the couch and Sherloque’s lap. His arm hooked under your legs while the other held you around your lower back. Your head lulled into Harry’s neck, unconsciously breathing in his scent. He had already decided that a bed would be much more comfortable than a couch.

“You should zhank Nash for zhat,” Sherloque stood up, following the Harry to leave the Speed lab. The chaotically dark-haired Wells spared his counterpart a glance as a snort left his lips. “After all he’s zhe one zhat slipped a sleeping agent into ‘er drink. I called it drugging, ‘e ‘ad opposing zhoughts to zhat, as you can imagine.”

Harry remained silent, knowing he would have to thank Nash eventually for watching out for you these past couple of weeks in his absence. Especially when you had been sacrificing every moment of sleep to ensure everything had gone according to plan. Entering the familiar layout of his old room, Harry gently placed you on the bed and pulled up the thick blankets to keep you warm. Your boyfriend took a seat beside you, but across your sleeping form, leaning down to kiss the crown of your head. Sherloque smiled fondly at you and his doppelganger as he stood beside the end of the bed. Tout comme Hades et Perséphone des mythes grecs.

“Will you be sticking around? We can use all the help we can get with Bloodwork and Eva,” Harry asked, turning his head to the detective, a hand was in his lap while the other had linked his pinky with your own.

Sherloque blew a puff of air, his eyes glancing around before looking to you and Harry. He pressed his lips into a hard line before speaking up, “Actually, I must return ‘ome, zhere are… a few zhings zhat I need to take care of. Somezhing zhat your petit fleur ‘ad said to me.”

Harry raised an eyebrow but left it alone, it had been a matter between you and Sherloque. The two nodded before Sherloque used his extrapolator to leave Earth-Prime, throwing once last look to this Earth’s ironic ‘reincarnation’ of Persephone and Hades.

(End Flashback)

Sherloque only tipped his head lower before your words echoing in his already distracted mind as his feet carried him out of his home and to his Earth’s Central City’s precinct. The rain lightly cascaded down onto the city, a rough breeze howling past.

-“You deserve better. You really do, Sherloque. Love will find you.”

“Easy for you to say.” Sherloque snorted, blowing on his tea.

“Hey, head up,” You found yourself sitting beside the now cynical man as you wrapped your arms around him in a comforting hug. “It could even literally run right into you one day when you least expect it.”-

Il est facile pour vous de dire, petite fleur. Sherloque sighed. Je souhaite secrètement qu’il avait été avec vous. Quelles sont les chances que je puisse rencontrer un bel esprit comme vous dans ma dimension?Sur ma terre?

The detective was relieved that the Earth-1 Renee had had mercy on his being and not demanded money from the detective, instead wishing to go back and to never see him again. Typical, yet unlike his other ex-wives that have been milking him for any penny that he owns. Why he always chased after the same women was always a question that his mind and heart clashed with his desires on it. Sherloque’s eyes blurred slightly then refocused, he was still lost in his mind as his feet picked up the pace. His shoes tapped against the cold, wet surface of the concrete path. The taller man quickly collided with a shorter body, his chest lightly stung from the impact as he took a step back and ready to scold the other person. Sherloque’s eyes widened as he felt his world stop. Lo and behold your doppelganger had crashed right into him. The detective blinked a few times, speechless.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” You picked up his fallen hat, patting off the water that had gotten onto it from its fall into a shallow puddle. You rambled, “I can’t believe I did that. I’m such a ditz, I promise- If only I was paying more attention to where I was walking and not my phone- and honestly I can be really oblivious-”

Sherloque processed only half of the words that came out of your mouth while his mind went into its deductive phase. Your eyes were red and puffy from crying, hair knotted, possibly from rushing to work this morning. The detective faintly smelled dimethyl disulfide, ketones, toluene, and other chemical compounds that are used on cadavers. You worked with dead organisms, particularly humans. He deduced that your rumpled lab coat that stained with old blood and chemical burns and sagged shoulders from the weight of your bag. You had been fired from a research facility belonging to a medical institute. Picking up on the clues, you had been framed. A scapegoat to the recently missing human cadavers from your long nights at the labs. Long nights spent on carefully analyzing tissues and cells that have not yet degenerated. A means to collecting and keeping those samples viable for regeneration of the spine, brain, and heart. Organs that scarcely regenerate themselves after scarring or attack from autoimmune diseases.

“-What’s your name?”

“(Y/N) (L/N), I’m a biomedical scientist. I uh- sorry, I don’t know any French, I think that was it?”

“Oui, it was.”

Peut-être... L’amour n’a pas besoin d’être avec une Renée.Peut-être qu’il peut venir de quelqu’un d’autre- quelqu’un de précieux qui peut rendre la pareille à l’amour que j’aspire.Cela peut prendre soin de moi comme je le ferais pour eux. Your doppelganger stood worriedly in front of him. For some reason, the dark-haired Frenchman look vaguely familiar. Sherloque saw that there was nothing but kind intentions behind those glimmering eyes. A spark of light illuminated within your doppelganger’s eyes when yours met his. The similarities between your Earth-Prime self and the one that stood in front of him were impeccable, as were the differences… He could read your personality, little details that indicate the kind of person that you are. But he voiced none of his deductions. It was then that Sherloque had made his decision.

The tall Frenchman picked up the umbrella you had dropped from the force of the collision. He ensured that it was not broken before handing it to you. Taking his fedora, Sherloque smiled keenly at you as he gestured with his head for you to follow. “Come along, petit fleur, I require your expertise for a crucial case. Lives depend on it.”

“But I’m-”

“Currently free since you’re now out of work judging by your sullen eyes. Yet zhey twinkle wizh zhe desire for somezhing… more than the basic lab life.”

You directed your gaze back up at him with guilty, but curious eyes at his deduction. “That’s amazing, how…?”

Sherloque tilted his head at you before he held a hand out to you. For some odd reason Sherloque felt that this time would be different. Things would be different. The way you made his heart thrum warmly in his chest. C’est ce que ressentent Nash, Wolfgang et Harry? Quand vous les regardez avec ces yeux pétillants d’intellect et de générosité? “Come, our clients await.” He watched you hesitate before wordlessly setting your hand in his with curiosity filling your mind. The detective observed you as he placed a gentle kiss on your knuckles then tugged you along with him.

L’amour est une chose mystérieuse. La petite fleur pour laquelle j’avais une étincelle de sentiments avant d’être aveuglée par une autre Renée... Cette fois, je serai prudent avec mon cœur.Cette fois, j’apprendrai à aimer cette petite fleur qui m’a déjà intrigué.Cette fois, je vais poursuivre le bonheur et le changement avec un autre qui n’est pas Renée.Cette fois sera différente

French Translation:

Tout comme Hades et Perséphone des mythes grecs - Just like Hades and Persephone from the Greek myths

Il est facile pour vous de dire, petite fleur - It is easy for you to say, little flower -

Je souhaite secrètement qu’il avait été avec vous. Quelles sont les chances que je puisse rencontrer un bel esprit comme vous dans ma dimension?Sur ma terre? - I secretly wish that it had been with you. What are the chances that I can meet a beautiful spirit such as you in my dimension? On my Earth?

Peut-être... L’amour n’a pas besoin d’être avec une Renée.Peut-être qu’il peut venir de quelqu’un d’autre- quelqu’un de précieux qui peut rendre la pareille à l’amour que j’aspire.Cela peut prendre soin de moi comme je le ferais pour eux. - Maybe… Love doesn’t have to be with a Renee. Maybe it can come from someone else- someone precious that can reciprocate the love that I yearn for. That can take care of me as I would for them

C’est ce que ressentent Nash, Wolfgang et Harry? Quand vous les regardez avec ces yeux pétillants d’intellect et de générosité? - Is this what Nash and Wolfgang and Harry feel? When you look up at them with those sparkling eyes of intellect and generosity?

L’amour est une chose mystérieuse. La petite fleur pour laquelle j’avais une étincelle de sentiments avant d’être aveuglée par une autre Renée... Cette fois, je serai prudent avec mon cœur.Cette fois, j’apprendrai à aimer cette petite fleur qui m’a déjà intrigué.Cette fois, je vais poursuivre le bonheur et le changement avec un autre qui n’est pas Renée.Cette fois sera différente - Love is a mysterious thing. The little flower that I had a spark of feelings for before being blinded by another Renee… This time, I will be careful with my heart. This time, I will learn how to love this little flower who has already intrigued me. This time, I will pursue happiness and change with another that is not Renee. This time will be different.

[retvenkos]

secrets // ralph dibny

The Flash (Season 6) - Ralph Dibny x Meta!Reader, fluff

request: can you do a ralph x reader (flash) where you go to investigate the dearbon case at a party and he has to kiss you to not be seen or something? you know what i mean. and maybe the reader is insecure about liking him or something.

A/N: I know I can’t write kiss scenes well, but just pretend like I can. 

Summary: Under any other circumstance, you wouldn’t be caught dead in this place, schmoozing with Central City’s elite, rubbing elbows with arms dealers and assassins for hire. Under any other circumstance, you would be able to hold your ground, insisting that missions like this weren’t your strong suit. // Under any other circumstance, that is, except for when it was Ralph Dibny doing the asking.

Swanky parties where you had to kiss the rings of everyone you met weren’t exactly your forte. You had only been to one once before, and it ended up in a lot of people getting shot, and you having to use your meta powers in order to get out in one piece.

Needless to say, you were on edge.

Under any other circumstance, you wouldn’t be caught dead in this place, schmoozing with Central City’s elite, rubbing elbows with arms dealers and assassins for hire. Under any other circumstance, you would be able to hold your ground, insisting that missions like this weren’t your strong suit.

Under any other circumstance, that is, except for when it was Ralph Dibny doing the asking.

He knew you had a soft spot for him - all of Team Flash knew it. It’s why you had left in the first place, giving some lame excuse that you needed some time off from fighting crime to reset your volatile abilities, make sure the next time you were threatened, someone wouldn’t get hurt. You played up the scared meta-human story, hoping it would give you reason for being distant for a while. No one wanted an unstable meta. That had never been the issue, though, had it?

It had been that cheeky private eye that had turned your world upside down, and, now, here you were, voluntarily teaming up with him in a mission that might be your breaking point.

“You look a little tense,” Ralph passed you a drink, his smile deeply contrasting his low tone, a deep rumble that sent shivers up your spine, “everything alright?”

His eyes, wide and caring, had always been quick to notice your nervous ticks and tells. Ralph knew you better than you knew yourself; his insider knowledge scared you. You couldn’t lie to him, you couldn’t pretend with him, but you couldn’t stay away from him for long, either. You could fool yourself, but him... never. He was your only weakness.

A superhero couldn’t have a fatal flaw, but yours stood beside you in a black and white suit, leading you into a ballroom where the chandelier was made of gold and the walls were lined with diamonds.

“Oh, yeah.” You smiled, but it turned into a grimace. “I just love hanging out with the dregs of humankind.”

Ralph chuckled, his eyes lighting up in a way that made your heart ache. “Well, I mean, you do hang out with me so…”

You looked at him, unimpressed. It was all you could manage.

“I know, cheap joke,” he sighed, turning away from you to survey the crowd of fine silk and expensive jewelry. When he turned to you again, there was something that was almost protective in his eyes, his voice calm and reassuring. “But I promise, everything will be fine. Just trust me and follow my lead.”

“And that will do me any good?”

You clinked your glasses together. It was going to be a long night.

…

“So who is this Sue Dearbon, anyways?”

As the night grew later, the party moved deeper underground, the decorations and furnishings still lavish, the air thick with cigar smoke and the drone of low conversations. You sat with Ralph in a corner, observing everyone with lazy eyes. If you let your mind slip it would remind you of the warmth his body gave off, so close to you; the scent of alcohol on his breath, almost inviting you nearer; the relaxed nature of his body, arms spread wide, tie loosened, just begging to you feel the same.

He was close enough that you could kiss him and blame it on the intoxication. His eyes, still bright and calculating despite your hazy surroundings, pulled you back into reality.

He considered you for a long moment, almost as though he were committing you to memory, his gaze lingering on you for a fraction of a second too long. His brain was working overtime behind his calm, collected face, trying to sense what you might be feeling, how you were thinking.

“A missing persons case… with something a lot deeper under the surface.”

You hummed in acknowledgement, scanning the room again, wondering why she would be here. If you could just disappear, why stay somewhere so suffocating? “I suppose we all have our secrets.”

You could feel the intensity of Ralph’s gaze as it searched you, scanning your eyes as though they could bear your soul. They could, if you looked at him. If you let your guard down for just a moment, everything would fall. You couldn’t allow that to happen.

He averted his eyes when something else caught his attention, on the other end of the room, almost out of sight, but not quite. “It’s time to get some answers.” A smile - one that made your stomach flip - made its way onto his lips. “I’m going to go get us some drinks.”

You nodded deftly. After a minute or two, you would follow him.

You watched him walk away, his movements languid but clear enough to mark the way. He fit right in, going undercover like this. How was it that he could play a part and yet be so genuine?

You wondered idly if all of it was an act, if you had been duped all along. But, no. That couldn’t be the truth. Part of it was real, you didn’t trust yourself enough to think otherwise.

You stood slowly, matching the pace of everyone else in the room, following the same path Ralph did, touching shoulders with a feather touch as you passed, your smiles as soft and far away as you wanted to be. As you moved further and further away from your corner, you noticed a hallway, plain and lightly furnished, just dim enough that no one with glittery gems and gold on their mind would notice.

“When you get to the hallway, take the door at the very back. It leads outside.” Ralph's voice echoed in your ear, his words barely over a whisper. It made you stand on edge, reminding you of the mission and what was at stake.

You checked over your shoulder, but no one was following you. It didn’t lessen your nerves like you’d hoped, only adding to the anticipation that settled into your bones.

“Right.”

The door made no sound as you slipped through it, closing it without a sound. Greeted by the night air, you breathed out slowly. A hand closed over your bicep and you found Ralph, beckoning you toward the side of the building.

There was a woman there. Tall, thin, in a dress that looked like it was in the process of falling off, the fabric clinging to her delicately, the thin straps that held it up seemingly stronger than they looked. She was with another, a man who was arguing with her quietly, his voice curt and strained.

“Is that…?”

“No. He’s an informant.”

“And the girl?”

“Figuring that out…” Ralph dragged out his words, a sing-song lilt to them that was a little louder than intended.

You pulled Ralph away from the corner, careful not to startle him and blow your cover. You strained your ears to hear the insistent whispers, but the night was silent. You looked at Ralph and your eyes alone were enough to send the message that you had to get out of there, before something bad happened.

Ralph leaned into your ear and whispered.

“Trust me.”

Then his mouth was on yours. You stiffened, but just for a moment before you were kissing him back, deep and hot, the adrenaline making your hands shake as they wrapped themselves around him. You could taste him: alcohol, chocolate, and mint - like those Andes candies he was always slipping between his teeth, his smile teasing and beautiful.

Your bodies molded together, impossibly close and fitting perfectly, and you were chasing his mouth for more. Your mind was wiped of all thoughts that weren’t of him, right here and now and entirely yours.

You heard two sets of footsteps come up behind you, and you pulled away just enough to be polite. Ralph gave the two a smile, saying some excuse that made the man laugh and the woman roll her eyes. They walked back into the party, but Ralph still hed you close.

“So…” you looked away and Ralph lets his arms go slack. “Did you figure out any secrets?”

“Only that I want to do that again.”

[mountain-ash-and-rusted-iron]

this is an oc masterpost of all my haf-formed ocs languishing on pinterest with their messy aesthetics and unedited blurbs, in roughly chronological order of their creation, plus sorted by fandom. this post is only asoiaf, harry potter, hunger games, and riverdale, cos i have tooooooo many original characters otherwise and the post was getting incredibly long. (note that i love my ocs but these one’s are not polished or even the final versions of their characters, i just wanted to post them lol)

under a read more, if you’re on mobile start scrolling i guess, sorry,,,

Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire:

Laeya Targeryen: (child of Rhaella and Aerys Targaryen, born 280 AC - three years older than Danaerys) 

Fearful of her impending marriage, Laeya is eleven when she takes her younger sister and flees across the sea to Dorne, hiding herself and Dany with dyed hair and badly controlled magic. As Leia and Dani Sand they learn to live normally. At 15 Leia joins the Royal Guard and secures Dany work as a tailor's apprentice. When she is 17, an assassin tries to kill her in front of the Dornish court and everything changes...

- so laeya straight up has magic, which im considering an extension of the dragon thing dany has - she can control flame and for the disguise uses her ‘inner fire’ to make her eyes white-blue like super hot flames, cos the purple eyes are super distinctive. and then she’s discovered and suddenly politics are happening. honestly she’s entirely a way for me to remove the child marriage bits of the targaryen storyline (stop marrying off your twelve-year-old baby sister viserys u asshole) - in terms of meta/basics, laeya doesn’t have a fc cos most of my early ocs don’t, and bcs i picture her as emilia clarke with faked dark hair and blue eyes lol

and a quick aesthetic below:

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Kyrra Snow: (child of Robert Baratheon and Maery Snow, birthdate ???)

Kyrra Snow is the eldest natural-born child of Robert Baratheon, current King of Westeros, and daughter of Maery Snow, a Southron (but Northern-born) merchant woman. After her mother realises Kyrra was growing up a little too much like her father in looks and needed to leave the far South before she caught the wrong sort of attention, Kyrra was sent off to travel with her aunt and cousins. She is 17 and heading further north, to Winter Town, when Jon Arryn dies.

- kyrra’s another child of everyone’s favourite asshole king, and she’s got a lot of people after her head, but she just wants to travel and continue her work as a simple peddler. (riiip poor girl) honestly she’s not that developed but yolo -

aes:

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Brynn Stark: (child of Catelyn and Eddard Stark, Robb’s twin sister)  

Brynn believes in honour and family, and she is loyal to Winterfell and the North above all else. Likes - archery, embroidery and weaving. Betrothed to [some young Northern lord] to keep the bonds between the Norther families strong.

-i basically made brynn as a contrast to sansa’s pro-southnness and excessive femininity and arya’s anger and desire for swords (relatable mood tho lmao). so brynn is here to mediate, extoll the virtues of both needlework and weapons, make a decent marriage to someone she likes, if not loves, and hold down the fort in the North while shit gets increasingly messier in the South. and a possible faceclaim is Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey - 

aes:

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Rosienne Lannister: (child of Joanna and Tywin Lannister, born 273 AC)

Rose is looked at by the realm with dismissal, a consolation prize for her father, a spare daughter only useful for matchmaking, but at least able-bodied and pretty, unlike her brother. After a long betrothal, Rose is married to Willas Tyrell at the age of eighteen, cementing her role as the next Lady of High Garden...

- Rosie/Rose is a bonus Lannister, bcs why not. likes cyvasse and the harp, soft and kind and maternal, powerful in her own way. originally she was from a minor divergence where joanna survives tyrion’s birth and goes on to have another kid, but not sure if i’ll keep that aspect, so for now she’s tyrion’s twin -

and her aes (yes that quote is cropped, no i don’t care rn):

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honourable mentions to my other got underdeveloped got/asoiaf ocs who need more effort before i post properly about them:

Tamlen Storm, a rookery apprentice (working for the Maester of House Tully, managing the ravens) who may or may not be a reincarnated si-oc trying to save westeros, 

and an unnamed northern huntress who stumbled into the plot somehow and wants her normal life back (entirely inspired by Keira Knightley as Gwyn in Princess of Thieves, when she’s doing archery stuff and looking v butch).

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Harry Potter:

Taurus ‘Ara’ Lestrange:  (child of Bellatrix and Roldolphous Lestrange, born 1978) 

Raised by the Goblins after a legal mix-up following her parents' imprisonment in Azkaban, Taurus is good with a sword and aiming to be the next Minister of Magic. She attends Hogwarts with the other magical kids her age, under the fake identity Ara Burke, unknown cousin of a minor half-blood family. When the Potter brat’s drama starts destroying her change at an education just as her fourth year, her OWL prep year, begins, Ara intervenes.

- im tangentially aware that as bellatrix’s kid she’s almost occupying the place of whats-her-name from the cursed child, but considering that i know nothing about the cursed child and don’t care about it anyway, i have elected to ignore this. her actual parent might turn out to be some smitten half-blood from a minor branch of the Greengrass family, or it might actually be Rodolphous, who knows. slightly inspired by the fic ‘Harry Crow’ (by robst on ff.net) where harry is raised by the goblins -

messy aes:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Valerian Potter: (child of Lily and James Potter, born 1980)

After the Potter twins’ parents are murdered by Voldemort, they’re dumped on the doorstep of Number 4, Privet Drive. Dealing with two traumatised magical orphans, Petunia and Vernon Dursley turn to violence and neglect to stay in control, acting far more harshly than expected. With the arrival of two Hogwarts letters, life gets complicated incredibly quickly. (Self-sufficient and scarred from abuse, Val and Harry are immediately Sorted into Slytherin). 

- val’s fic is basically an angst fest, okay,,, -

aes:

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and shout-outs to: holly addison potter, a half-baked reincarnation si-oc (i love that concept a lot, can u tell) and my fav girl thea dursley, who already has her own fic and so isn’t getting a proper spot in this post 

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The Hunger Games:

Asher: (District Two, age 18) 

[rip no blurb for asher]

-asher is a career from two, who wins the 70th games. mostly im focusing on her recovery and how the games function in two, with training volunteers and mentoring and collecting sponsors, plus eventually the rebellion. lots of the D2 headcanon i have is inspired by @/lorata but i defintely made a distinct effort to have my own stuff, cos where’s the fun in plagiarism -

aes for Asher’s Games:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  Rowan Everdeen: (District Twelve, age 19)

Rowan will do anything to protect her family. This extends to going to Head Peacekeeper Cray on a cold winters night, charging the most she can get for her virginity.  It extends to Reaping Day, when she steps out in front of the crowd and says “I volunteer as tribute” in the steadiest voice she can muster.  It extends to clawing her way out of the Arena, bloody and exhausted, with blades in her hands and violence kept tucked behind her teeth. It extends further, to a simple ‘Yes, President Snow’ when he coldly, carefully implies her family might meet with an accident if she doesn’t play the good little Victor (and fuck the people who pay the Capitol for her company). It extends to joining the Rebellion, to looking President Coin directly in the eye and agreeing to be a Mockingjay, a symbol for the people to rally around.

- another everdeen kiddo! as the big sister, rowan volunteers for prim, and goes through the Games - she’s a healer and a hunter, and a decent enough actor that she can manage interviews and a camera presence, unlike katniss. rowan also pairs well with a minor au i have, where the reapings are spaced out over a week and official training is a longer, giving the capitol a nice, long buildup to get excited and place bets, etc., and giving the poor, underfed tributes from the outer districts a better chance, which makes for more interesting television and better Games -

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Adrasteia Crane: (The Capitol, age 28) Unlike her big brother, Adrasteia doesn’t want to be a Gamemaker. Instead, she wants to create clothes, artwork, to enrapture the Capitol. She wants to be a Games stylist. After years of design school, of working her way up the ranks, first a PA’s assistant, and then fetching and carrying for Twelve’s prep team, and then eventually on a prep team for the dull tributes from Six, Adrasteia Crane finally has what she wants - the position of stylist for District Three’s male tribute in 74th Hunger Games. 

- tbh adrasteia is only seneca crane’s sister because i couldn’t think of a suitable last name for her lmao. i think i’d actually prefer her to be unattached to any major canon players. however, his death is a good motivation for her to join the rebellion, so we’ll see. she’s got a bit of the capitol fashion thing going too, with soft pink hair and diamond-effect skin on her face and shoulders -

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also bonus hunger games content: another oc, Sarsaparilla Verran, from District Eleven, fifteen and alone when she goes into the Games. An orphan, her siblings lost to the Community Home system years ago, her relatives dead or uncaring. So, Rilla is a wee lonely bab tbh. she did not want this, unlike most of my other hg ocs, and she’s not excited for weeks of murder. she just wants her family back, but since that isn’t possible, she’ll build a new family instead. and uuhhhhh,  spoiler alert, she dies before she can have this ://///

and my hunger games aus - a canon divergence where katniss joins the careers instead of peeta, her desire to go home to her family outweighing her reactive hate for the concept of training/volunteering to kill other teens, and a fem!Haymitch au where she’s a little wiser to the dark side of the capitol before she commits acts of rebellion (she still rebels anyway tho, just smarter).

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Riverdale:

Cat Cooper: (middle child of Alice and Hal Cooper) Cat Cooper (17) is the black sheep of the Cooper family. Her piercings, brightly dyed hair and connections to the Southside Serpents make her the odd one out among her sisters and constantly at odds with Alice Cooper. Cat’s life is occupied with her Serpent friends, work at a local coffee shop, and training - martial arts, supplemented with cross country, gymnastics and swimming. Until her older sister is shipped off to places unknown and her baby sister starts getting caught up in murder investigation with the absent Serpent heir... 

- haven’t decided between Catelyn or Catherine for Cat’s full name lmao. she used to be Kit, actually, but I changed it cos i prefer Kit to solely be my divergent oc (kit serafim). Cat is an ADHD disaster who loves her sisters and her friends and wants to get the hell out of Riverdale on a sports scholarship (she does either boxing or karate mainly, need to figure that bit out) -

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Georgie Andrews: (child of Mary and Fred Andrews)

Georgie likes soft drinks, cheerleading, and hanging out with the Blossom twins and Polly Cooper, their closest friends and a welcome distraction from their own problems. After Polly and Jason vanish, Georgie’s support system is almost gone, and they has to deal with everything they’ve been bottling up, just in time for Fred Andrews to get shot.

- also just angst ngl.  so georgie’s gender is basically ???, they enjoy cheerleading and not much else. they spend half their time dealing with depression, by trying to ignore stressful/hard topics and focus on the good side of everything. this isn’t a great long-term coping mechanism and has the fun side effect of pissing of the people around him when she seems unable to be serious or empathetic to someone else's pain (bcs she’s too busy deflecting for the sake of her own fragile mental health), so it gets fun when fred is shot and archie starts getting in too deep with the lodges -

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Sera Thornstone: (parents ???) Southside Serpent. Going to the Riverdale Community College and running errands for FP Jones. And secretly meeting up with her Ghoulie lover down by the Sweetwater where nobody goes. 

- everything about sera is vague and undecided lmao. but she has a ghoulie gf/bf/nbf? and they’re hiding that they were down by the river on the 4th of july, cos a serpent is an immediate suspect. going to community college to work on getting general credits before saving up for fancy school for law or journalism. the aes isn’t entirely accurate cos sera’s built from the remains of another serpent oc who i scrapped (she does have a baseball bat tho) -

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and honourable mentions to jen johnson and octavia blossom-murphy, my other riverdale ocs who actually have content, plus an in-development unnamed oc who gets adopted from the soqm by the Muggs family and growsup with Ethel. and my riverdale role reversal au, which i will never write but have some nice aesthetics for under the tag wip: bughead role reversal au.

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all my mini-aesthetics here are unsourced images/from pinterest. any similarities to other people or characters, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

alrighty that’s it. now i have to tag this behemoth argh

[smutfornerds]

The Dating Game // Team Flash x Reader

A/N: ahhh babes this was so fun!! this idea came straight from our Wells discord groupchat! The lovely @itsprongs has a sister fic series that you should 20000% go read to get further immersed into the wonderful world of Wells boys fighting for your love. Hope you all enjoy!! ps it’s ‘team flash’ because literally everyone is in this and I didn’t wanna spoil who wins!!!

Also no smut here! Just fluff and funnies!

—

A loud and obnoxious squawking jolted you from a deep slumber. Creaking your eyes open you found that you’d apparently left your window cracked when you fell asleep, and now a less than friendly crow was perched on the telephone poll outside to help you start your day. “Thanks for that..” you muttered sleepily, reluctantly sitting up to slide the pane fully closed. You stretched, a yawn engulfing your face while you heard your phone buzz on your headboard. Reaching up for it you saw three missed calls. A humorless laugh spilled from you and you flopped back onto your bed reading the names of all three iterations of a Mr. Harrison Wells. An hour ago, HR. He left a simple but blabbery voicemail asking how you were doing and if you were coming in today and if you could bring coffee. Twenty minutes later, a call and text from Harry. A short but sweet ‘Rise and shine, we need our seamstress.’ The idea that Barry or Cisco had ripped yet another hole in their suits made your fingers ache. Finally one last missed call from Sherloque, the little eyeglass emoji he’d placed beside his name making you roll your eyes in frustration.

These men were relentless. Every minute of your day at least one of them was begging for your attention, most days being two of them biting each other’s heads off while the third distracted you. It never ended, each day bringing new things for them to bicker about or new ways to try to win your affection. The week before, HR and Sherloque had gotten lost in arguing over who was a better romancer, and while they debated Harry led you off to his lab to where he’d made a Big Belly Burger picnic on the floor. He won that argument. The following day, the detective made you a sample tray of tea while giving you a much needed shoulder rub. To top it off, Friday night had ended with HR twirling you around the training room to flirtatious swing music and half a bottle of rosé in your veins. You were in system overload by the weekend and had holed up in your apartment for the entirety of it, keeping your phone on silent and catching up on housework and reading. It was helpful in clearing your mind of the ongoing battle but of course the tauntingly bright and early Monday morning would thrust you right back into their games, unbeknownst to you quite literally.

Not bothering to respond to any of them, you opted for texting Cisco that you’d be there in an hour. Being a hermit indoors for three days meant you needed a shower and a fresh face of makeup to hide your eye bags. Waiting until you got a ‘good to go!’ in response you hopped into the steaming water to ease the growing tensions about facing the Wells boys again. Each one held a special place in your heart, and when you were alone with them it made it so hard to keep your feelings for the others in check. Rinsing the suds from your hair you finally shut the water off and wrapped yourself in a towel to start getting ready. You’d showered faster than anticipated so you took the time to perfect your hair and outfit. The green sundress you wore let your white bra peak out slightly but the lace was a nice touch to your outfit so you didn’t mind it. Slipping your black sneakers on you reluctantly headed for Star Labs. The last thing you expected was the Cortex to be empty. It was 11 AM on a Monday, usually the entire team was packed into the room discussing one thing or another about one meta or another. Today though it was silent. A notecard was perched curiously on the keyboard at the main desk and you lifted it to read what was written. ‘Let the games begin! Meet us in the lounge.’ It wasn’t signed but you’d seen enough of his love notes to Iris to know that was Barry’s speedy chicken-scratch handwriting. Your eyes narrowed at it trying to decode his words but you sighed defeatedly as you headed downstairs.

Once you exited the elevator you could hear a murmur of voices float down the hallway. As your footsteps approached though they were shushed, rather violently, until you walked in and your mouth fell open. The entire team was gathered on the couches, sans the three lookalike lover boys of yours. Cisco and Ralph stood - in disastrously bright blue and yellow colored suits - on a newly made platform, three cubicle looking squared off areas beside them. Behind the group was a softly buzzing scoreboard, and you read over the words ‘contestant 1, contestant 2, contestant 3’ in a column along the side of it. Your eyes scanned the entire room never faltering from your stunned expression. Quickly Iris fell into a fit if giggling and Barry followed soon after, shushing her softly. “This is not happening..” you muttered and began to turn on your heel to run, but before you could even about-face, the speedster whirred you into the chair on the make-shift stage. In front of you all your friends’ faces shown how amused they were and you glared at all of them equally. “So this was a group effort I take it?” You hollered over to them and they collectively let out laughs and hums of pride. Their smugness caused your shoulders to slump back into the chair.

Beside you Ralph cleared his throat and Cisco posed obnoxiously stoic with his face fixed in a classic gameshow-host grin. The shorter male began their little show. “Welcome, Team Flash to the first, and hopefully only,” he paused and Ralph joined him now. “Wells Dating Game!” Your friends all erupted in clapping and yelling, making your face burn even redder. Finally breaking from their charismatic personas, the boys turned to you with wide smiles. “We’re sorry for the ambush, we just can’t deal with them fighting over you all the time anymore.” Ralph mused. “None of them are getting any work done!” Cisco rattles out, and finally you let out a nervous giggle and nodded. “So this was your idea?” You pointed an accusing look to him and he held his hands up defensively. “Don’t look at me, look at the elongated hopeless romantic.” He side eyed Ralph and your focus went to him. He stammered for a second before giving you as much of an innocent smile as he could pull. With another heavy sigh you held your face in your hands for a moment before taking a deep breath and facing everyone again. “So.. how is this even gonna work?” You asked sheepishly. The vindicated smiles and high fives that lingered through the group made you wonder if this is what they’d been doing all weekend long. (It totally was.)

“Each of the three objects vying for your affection will occupy those lil buddies,” Ralph pointed to your left at the secluded little areas they’d built. “And you won’t be able to tell who’s who.” He beamed proudly but you narrowed your eyes at the pair of pastel dressed bozos before you. “Okay, but... one of them has an accent, and the other two speak in completely different octaves.” Expecting defeated faces you were taken back by Cisco’s excited gesture to his right hand, a small remote in it. “Not a problem! Vocal distortion mics boomed up to them will erase all traces of dialect, tone and any other giveaways of which is which.” He stood proudly with his hands on his hips and you couldn’t help but laugh. “So thorough, I should’ve known.” You quipped and he simply nodded. “You really should’ve. Alright, all we have to do now is choose a voice for them to sound like. It’s preprogrammed with almost everyone here and some celebrities, so I guess take your pick?”

Cisco stepped forward to where you and all the Wells’ could see him and him them. He pointed to one of them as he clicked the remote for the devices. “Say something.” Your head glanced over to the wall next to you and for the first time you desperately wished you had Kara’s X-ray vision. “Hey hi hello.” The voice came out in a low and rumbling tone, you recognized it as Joe’s voice. From the couches Iris scrunched her nose and shook her head. “I don’t need to hear them say what they wanna do to her in my dad’s voice!” She cupped her hands and hollered, causing a general consensus of nods and a shudder from Barry. You chuckled and shook your head at Cisco. “Next.” You stated and he clicked the remote again, now pointing to a different one of the Wells and he spoke up. “Who is it this time?” The smooth and cunning voice rang out and everyone groaned. It’d been a while since you’d heard Leonard Snart’s chilly voice but it wasn’t doing it for you and you shook your head. “Makes me uncomfortable. Try someone that won’t make me feel awkward or intimidated?” Your words hit Cisco’s brain and he nodded enthusiastically knowing just who to switch it to. Finally pointing to the final of the three men he spoke up. “Have we decided then?” The soft and adorable tone of Caitlin’s voice drifting through the room and you nodded once. “Perfect! Not weird, not creepy, just sweet lil’ ol’ Caity cat.” You smiled over at her and she playfully blew you a kiss. “Alrighty then, ladies and gents we have a game to play!” Ralph hollered and the group erupted in cheers again and finally you laughed along with them, letting your nerves shake off with each huff.

Cisco stayed in his place in front of all of you. Ralph took a seat near you with a small switchboard in his hands. With a wide grin, the raven haired meta cleared his throat and fell back into his overzealous persona as he began. “Question number one! Contestants, if you could take our blushing beauty on a date anywhere in the multiverse, where would it be and why?” He paused and waggled his eyebrows gaining laughter from the group. “Contestant number one?” He pointed to the cubicle closest to you and you waited, Caitlin’s voice echoing the words to the air. “Preferably somewhere close to home. Can’t be too far when things.. progress.” The words made you giggle solely because of the voice saying them, but you still felt a hint of pink hit your cheeks knowing one of the Wells’ had truly said it. Cisco playfully fanned himself before continuing. “Contestant number two?” The next male cleared their throat trying to sound deeper but the vocal distortion device made that impossible. “Somewhere tropical. Hawaii maybe, or Barbados. Seduce her on the beach, make love to her in a beach house.” Again the words made your face tint but you couldn’t help but laugh. Caitlin sat in the audience stifling her own giggles hearing her own voice say such raunchy things about you. “So glad that’s not my dad’s voice..” Iris mumbled and the group all chucked slightly. “Alrighty, finally contestant three, where would you take the lady?” For a moment it was silent like he was thinking and finally he spoke up letting the woman’s voice lend him his words. “Wouldn’t really matter I’d just want her with me.” From the couches, Iris and Caitlin both loudly let out an “Aww!” You giggled at their antics but the words stuck with you. Cisco finally strolled over to you and held his hand out as if a microphone were in it, though it was very much empty. “Alright, which Wells gets the point this round?” It didn’t take long for you to give an answer. “Three.” You stated flatly and the group grinned, each one of them knowing who you’d chosen but you none the wiser. Cisco nodded and motioned to Ralph, who hit a single button before him and a slash shown on the board next to ‘contestant 3’.

“Moving on to question 2,” he cleared his throat and sighed. “This one’s not entirely appropriate. But it’s what needs to be asked.. contestants, how would you woo the lady during a night of passion?” Your eyes went wide and you felt your face glow like a neon light. “Oh, my god..” you mumbled and rubbed your temples softly. In the mock-audience, Iris and Barry ‘oooh’-ed playfully. Sighing you looked back to Cisco and motioned for him to get on with it. “Contestant three, we’ll start at your end this time.” He pointed to the end little stall with a grin, and whichever man cleared his throat coming out like a delicate squeal and you couldn’t fight the small burst of laughter as he started. “Take her hands in mine and lead her to bed, kiss every inch of her and tell her how gorgeous she is before.. making love to her.” The last few words were rushed out, and you didn’t know if it was due to nerves or being unnerved by hearing it in your best friend’s voice. Despite the tone it still made a lump form in your throat at the thought. Beside you Ralph cleared his own throat to remind him the voice did not fit the body. With a sharp nod you let Cisco continue. “Oookay.. Contestant two?” There was another pause as the man seated in the middle thought over his words. “Light copious amounts of candles, have slow sensual music playing. Maybe give her a less than innocent massage to lead into the night.” It was still strange to hear Caitlin’s voice but it was getting easier to ignore when you just focused on the words. Your heart fluttered a bit at the scene this man had painted. Cisco turned ever so slightly to face the Wells closest to you. “Finally contestant one?” This round you noticed Cisco didn’t repeat the question and you knew it was because it made his face flush from secondhand embarrassment. “Why would it matter? The moments lends itself to letting things happen without a need for a plan. So I would just live in that moment.” You could see Iris pout at the sentiment and bring a hand to her chest. You laughed softly at the action and just shook your head. All the answers had been good ones, but you could only have one winner each round and the choice made you nibble at your lower lip. “Which Wells wins this round?” Cisco repeated the alliterative phrase and you draw in a slow breath before answering. “Two. I’m a sucker for mood music.” Again your face flushed pink and Cisco chuckled at your response as Ralph clicked a point for ‘contestant 2’.

“Okay folks for the next round, we’re going to let our leading lady ask her own question!” Again Cisco walked over to you with his invisible microphone and you stared up at him sheepishly, giving a small shrug. Your mind was drawing a total blank on anything to ask, being put on the spot definitely didn’t help. Piping up from behind you, Ralph made a suggestion. “Ask if they’re all the same size.” You whipped around to him with your mouth gaping, and he just gave an unbothered expression. “What? Doppelgängers or not we were all thinking it.” You shook your head quickly at Cisco. “No, no no, that is not the question.” You stammered and heard one of the men to your left huff a laugh that sounded like a schoolgirl giggle with their warped voice. “Uhm.. I guess, why do you think I should I choose you?” You spoke just loud enough for them to hear and Cisco stepped back again to point to contestant three first in the end cubicle. “I want to do right by you and for you. You inspire me every day to be better than I have been.” You nodded with a soft smile, before the next man spoke up without even being prompted. “I for one don’t have to change for you to love me fully because I already fully know how to love you.” His words came out in a sweet sing song tone and you giggled at the high pitch. Finally Cisco shot a pointed finger the the square closest to you. “Because in the multiverse, so far you’re the only person that actually truly makes me happy.” Each one’s words struck you differently and you grimaced at your own answer knowing what it meant. “I gotta go with one.” Team Flash all gave their own dramatic gasps as the scoreboard tied up. “Ooooh it’s neck and neck and neck! This tie breaking round will round up the game!” Cisco jumped with genuine excitement but you felt a trillion tiny spiky butterflies erupting inside your stomach.

The male flipped his hair over both shoulders before sighing, eyes floating over all three men and landing on you. While he spoke he kept his eyes in you, each word coming out slowly. “Do you love her?” The question hung in the air and you felt as if you were going to pass out. That was not a conversation you hadn’t planned to have with any of them any time soon let alone in front of all your closest friends. Cisco didn’t ask for a specific contestant however, he just let it linger for a few seconds more. “All of you are going to answer at the same time. On the count of three.” Feeling your stomach do a backflip you covered your face and whined into your hands softly. “One..” This must be what dying feels like. Hot face. Clammy hands. Racing heart. “Two..” Matched with heavy breathing, and your feet impatiently tapping on the floor you gave a deep sigh before Cisco delivered the final, “Three.”

“No.”

“No.”

“Absolutely.”

The words all overlapped each other but the one outlier stuck out like a sore thumb. Your head snapped up and you saw the shocked expressions on everyone else’s as they simply stared at the corner box. Cisco was absolutely beaming. “WITH THAY WE HAVE OUR WINNER FOLKS.” Your heart raced but you stayed planted firmly in your seat, your legs wouldn’t move. “Please remove your voicebox and greet your Misses.” Watching as Cisco motioned the ‘winning’ Wells out of his hiding place you listened as the footsteps clicked toward you until those beautiful blue eyes met you - from behind his two toned glasses. A rare bright and goofy smile was spread across Harry’s face and he had his hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets as he finally stepped towards you and you saw Sherloque poke out from the box beside you, HR shuffling off the stage from the middle cubby. Admittedly you were relieved; he was undoubtedly the smartest of the men and had the best wit about him. And he was always the one to put the most effort into keeping you happy without being over the top. Something had told you he was contestant 3 when he gave the answer about simply wanting you. Harry was a very simple man. And now, your simple man. Without saying a single word you hopped down in front of him and planted a kiss on his triumphant lips. His strong arms glided around your waist like they were meant to be there. Behind you your friends clapped and cheered, Caitlin comforting a sullen looking HR and Sherloque wandering off to bury his feelings in his tea. Once the group had all filed out Harry took your hands in his gently, rubbing the backs of your knuckles with his tough fingertips. “Come on..” he mumbled, beginning to tug you along the hallways. The way he’d answered the second question replayed in your mind and you happily followed close behind him, giving his hands a squeeze as you hurried him to his room just a bit faster.

[buffster]

Five By Five (ATS 1.18)

This is part of my ongoing Buffyverse Project, where I write notes/meta for every episode in an attempt to better understand the characters and themes of the shows. You can find the BTVS list here and the ATS list here. Gifs are not mine.

Waiting for Five by Five is what kept me holding out when I first began Angel (and I’m glad I did). I love the relationship between Angel and Faith and wish we’d gotten to see more of it. 

One thing I find interesting about Faith’s character is that she shows us how thin the line is between our awesome hero (Buffy) and a much darker villain (Faith). We’re able to cheer and laugh when Buffy surprises a predatory guy and slams his face into the steering wheel but cringe when Faith takes another’s money and puts him in the hospital. Buffy uses her powers for good but has the capacity for great evil. 

Five by Five and Sanctuary do a lot of character work for Angel by establishing Wesley’s complete trust in his boss and Angel’s status as a helper to the truly lost. He’s able to reach the unreachable because he’s been there, and we’re reminded of that with some Darla flashbacks to a pivotal turn in Angel’s life: the gypsy curse in Romania, 1898. 

When Angel received his soul he didn’t suddenly become “the dark avenger”. At first he went right to Darla for solace and guidance. She was disgusted by his soul and threatened to stake him. He ran out, haunted by visions of everything he’d done wrong. But it wasn’t easy to just accept being an outcast and try and atone. He tried to go back to his evil ways first and just felt miserable and alone. It’s interesting to get a look at him right when he regained his soul to see just how naive Liam was when he jumped headfirst into vampirism. He had no idea what he was signing up for. Angel knows exactly how Faith feels.

Cordelia: Wesley, you don't change a guy like that. In fact - generally speaking - you don't change a guy. What you see is what you get. Scratch the surface and what do you find? More surface.

So how do his companions feel about all this? Cordelia is more than happy to let Angel handle this one alone, but Wesley is not. He still feels like Faith is his responsibility (he’s upset Giles didn’t call him when she woke up) and doesn’t want to accept that he can’t help her. Unfortunately for him, this plants a target firmly on his back. When Faith sees someone have faith in her (sorry) she wants to push as hard as she can to see if she can break it. She’s proving to herself over and over again that she’s unlovable and unworthy of being saved, and when they finally break and agree it just enrages her further. 

Faith: You think? Because what if you kill me - and you experience that one true moment of pleasure? Oops!  I'd get off on that. Go ahead. Do me. Let's take that hell ride together. Come on, Angel, I'm all yours!  I'm giving you an open invitation. Jeez, you're pathetic! You and your little tortured soul, got to think everything through. Well, think fast, lover. You don’t' do me, you know I'm gonna do you!

Wolfram & Hart decide to hire her to take out Angel, seemingly without knowing their history. They’re surprised when a planned simple exchange--hit the target, collect fifteen grand--becomes a cat and mouse game where Faith ends up torturing an entirely different person. We get a little insight into the company: they’re all cold and drunk on their own power, but some are better at dealing with their position than others. The lawyers have what one might call soft power in the supernatural world--they have money, resources, and quiet influence--but they must employ those with hard power--fighting skills and physical strength. Lee makes the mistake of believing he holds all the cards and ends up in several casts thanks to Faith. Lindsey and Lilah (why do they all have L names?) don’t seem bothered at all by this. There’s no loyalty to be found here. Side note: Angel’s interaction with the random guy in Wolfram & Hart’s lobby was so fun. 

Wesley: I was your Watcher, Faith. - I know the real you - and eve if you kill me, there is just one thing I want you to remember.

Faith: What's that, love?

Wesley: You - are a piece of sh.. 

As bizarre as it is, you can see the brief flare of hope in Faith’s eyes when Wesley starts to speak; that he will still see something in her and care for her after all she’s done. 

Faith: Did you ever wonder if things would have been different - if we'd never met. What if you'd had Buffy - and Giles would have been my Watcher? You think you'd still be here right now? Or would Giles be sitting in that chair? - Or is it just like fate. You know, there is no choice. You were gonna be here no matter what. You think about that stuff? - Fate - and destiny. I don't. Not that any of this is your own fault. Since this may be the last chance we will have to unload on each other, I feel that it is kind of my duty to tell you that if you'd been a better Watcher, I might have been a more positive role model! Face it, Wesley, you really were a jerk. Always walking around as if you had some great big stake rammed up your - English Channel. I think I want to hear you scream.

Faith has a real problem with people who seem in control. It’s another reason she does think about fate and destiny; it’s easier than believing she could have made better choices. 

Ultimately, Angel is the only one who can help her. He’s the only one strong enough to be her punching bag until she burns out. 

Angel: I'm not gonna make it easy for you.

After all the provoking, he still refuses to kill her. It was a risky move, and I don’t think anyone but Angel would have had faith in her after all this. Even I felt a little skeptical--more on this in Sanctuary. Overall, I thought this was a great episode for season one. Many people tuning in to Angel were doing it because they loved Buffy, so sprinkling in some of those characters during the first season was a good trick to get people hooked. 

Character Notes:

Cordelia Chase: She doesn’t think their client will testify because he has so many tattoos (and that’s given her certain ideas about his character). She can tell when Angel is in a good mood (his scowl is slightly less scowly). Phantom Dennis tries to protect her from Faith, which was neat. She says hell will freeze over before she sleeps with Wesley. 

Lilah Morgan: Green is her favorite color, she looks good in diamonds, and she loves riding in limousines. 

Faith Lehane: Her favorite color is black. 

[thefloatingstone]

If we are still on the anime topic, what’s your opinion of slice of life anime?

SLICE OF LIFE ANIME IS MY JAAAAAAAAM!!!!

And I’m gonna have to put this under a cut too because I can never shut up so this ALSO turned out really long.

My friend likes to joke I like watching shows “that are about nothing” and like... SHE’S NOT WRONG???

However, I don’t ONLY like Slice of life anime, which is important I think. because if Slice of life was the ONLY anime I watched, it would get pretty boring pretty fast. However, if I watch a balanced amount of shows, anime or not, having the slice of life anime as an added spice to my media salad that I consume and makes it all the more delicious!!!! (that metaphor came out from nowhere and I’m not 100% sure what it means)

I also find, with slice of life anime, even if there isn’t an overarching plot, I still prefer it when the slice of life story has some kind of thread through it that leads it forward to something.

I’ll use some of my favourites as an example for what I mean. (and I know these are super obvious but just bare with me.)

First, I’m a big fan of Azumanga Daioh! the anime. And Azumanga is masically as slice of life as you get. With no overarching plot whatsoever and even conflicts and situations changing up every few episodes or so as we literally just follow the girls around and the various school-related activities they’re in.

But there IS a through line to the whole show, and despite no major dramatic events happening, there IS character development as the show goes on. Most noticeably in Sakaki (who happens to be my favourite character) who starts off shy, reserved, and embarrassed of her interests and hobbies, and by the end of the show, has not only opened up about the things she enjoys to her friends, but has actually managed to use them to direct her life as she realises what she wants to do after school is to become a vet.

The series also has a through-line in that it follows the girls through their 3 years of high school, and so, it has a logical place its working towards, namely, it is working towards Matric graduation at the end of the series. So we are not left feeling as if we are in a static state regarding the Slice of Life nature. We are not trapped in limbo, we are progressing forward towards something. And I feel it’s this detail that stops a slice of life story from being stagnant. Even if there is no plot, there is forward momentum.

The other slice of life I really like a lot is Lucky Star, which is similar in many ways to Azumanga except with even LESS plot to it. As often times entire episodes of Lucky Star are just a random collection of events that sometimes have absolutely no connection to each other at all.

Which I think, is why Lucky Star works, ironically, even though it does not have a clear through line like Azumanga. Because Lucky Star, just like Azumanga, is based on a series of yonkoma manga, or “4 panel manga”. a type of manga much more like Garfield or probably more accurately, Calvin and Hobbes, with singular jokes and punchlines, sometimes with a situation or topic spanning a handful of strips before moving on to the next thing.

This means Lucky Star has no TIME to start feeling stagnant and in limbo because its just moving from joke to joke and situation to situation without any of it to linger for too long.

As a result, it also means Lucky Star can focus on small slice of life details to devote and entire joke to them, which means many situations end up being MUCH MORE RELATEABLE on a real life level than an anime that had to worry about plot or character development.

Things like Konata’s ongoing struggle with sitting down and actually studying for once in her life. Or Miyuki’s problems regarding her love for sweets and candy but her penchant for getting cavities and her crippling fear of the dentist. Or the character Hiyori who is an up and coming Yuri manga artist and who is already making her own comic strips (inspired by her rather problematic “I ship it” personality regarding two of her classmates, however she acknowledges that she is bad for doing this and honestly feels guilty for it. But she channels it into inspiration for her stories with her own characters)

(Please enjoy the most relateable moment in all of anime)

(also it doesn’t hurt that Lucky Star has shockingly good animation for an anime, which further helps the “Real life” situations, even though the characters themselves are hyper stylised. As well as it being clear the animators have a lot of life drawing in their repertoire, especially concerning hand poses)

Also just a side note; Lucky Star is absolutely my sense of humour in a meta sense. I can’t find out who exactly because the internet is garbage, but literally EVERY SINGLE EXTRA in the show is voiced by the same Seiyuu. Who himself was a very famous voice actor at the time. and he voices EVERYONE of the incidental characters. Doesn’t matter if they’re young high school girls. He has to voice them. It’s incredible.

Not to mention the ending credits which is different for EVERY SINGLE EPISODE, starting at first with the main characters singing Kareoke to famous songs from other anime, including Dragon Ball Z and Doraemon, before becoming live action as the crew went out to film the same voice actor who does all the voices for the extras just walking around tourists spots and being a weirdo, to which they then added things in post production to make it even stupider.

Lucky Star was making shitposts before shitposting was even a thing. And they put it into an anime that aired on television.

Also I am sorry I know I’m rambling but please enjoy my favourite outro EVER.

(this is my entire sense of humour in a nutshell right here)

However, I do want to mention an example I had recently of what I felt was an extremely disappointing version of a slice of life manga in this case;

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō

Kaidashi as I’ll call it for short, is a post apocalyptic manga about a robot girl who runs a coffee shop out of her house for any travelers wandering through the area, after an unspecified disaster has caused the earth’s enviornment to drastically change, specifically with oceans slowly rising each year and swallowing what was in the past entire cities.

But the post apocalyptic nature of the setting is not what’s important in the manga. It’s what I’ve heard call a “soft apocalypse”. There are no roaming bandits, or mutant animals or radioactive fallout or none of that. It is merely a world which the ocean is slowly encroaching on the land, and the human population has plummeted in numbers. Meaning the communities that remain are small and close knit, with “larger towns” resembling normal functionality, with us not even being aware that what we see as a middle sized town is in fact in the setting, the largest gathering of humans living in one place.

The manga follows our main character, Alpha (the robot coffee shop owner) and her dealings with about 3 or 4 other characters. Specifically an old man and his grandson. The old man runs a petrol station nearby and has more or less taken Alpha under his wing as she is otherwise on her own, her house sitting on the outside of the small town they live in (which we never really see as a result)

I started out really enjoying this manga, which is why I ended up reading all 100+chapters of it. But as I got near about the last quarter of it, it really fell apart for me.

The manga had set up certain things which would crop up now and then throughout its run. Like where Apha’s owner had gone and why, or who really developed the Alpha series of robots, or why Alpha has a strange quality to her that seems to ground other robots she meets into becoming more human, or why she dreams about fish so often, or who the strange immortal creature who lives by the waterway is. It sets up all these interesting ideas and mysteries as we follow Alpha in her day to day life... and by the end of the manga answers NONE of them. Not even one.

On top of this, whereas the manga started following Alpha with a very clear situation following upon situation, Her getting struck by lightning one evening and needing to be repaired by a local doctor, her reluctance to use her camera to take photos because she only has so much film she can use etc, and suddenly the timeline between events stops being a matter of days or at most a month, and suddenly YEARS are just jumped over. Turning the last quarter of the manga in a disorientating mess where we’re never quite sure WHEN we are, or what’s happened in the YEARS we apparently skipped over. Or where ANY of the characters now are because it’s suddenly 15 years later and somehow now characters are in a completely different place in their lives???

Not to mention the art started degrading rather shockingly by the end of the manga. It had slowly been turning to a more streamlined style as the chapters went on (the manga ran for 12 years) however, near the end there was a very jarring and sudden downgrade in quality. Robbing the manga of all its life and making the characters look flat and bland and unrecogniseable compared to where they use to be.

It just felt, overall, like the mangaka completely lost interest in his own story.

Art for Chapter 5

Art for chapter 139

It really soured my entire perception of the story as a whole. Because although I was reading it as a slice of life story, the story itself had presented situations and characters and questions I did not ASK it to have. But then at the end, it did not follow through on one single thing it set up. Coupled with the degrading art quality, AND the sudden fractured timeline where I had no idea when anything was happening any more, it felt as if every part of this story which had so much care and love put into it, was now just trying its best to get itself over with already. Because it had completely lost interest in itself, and was just trying to get to SOME feeling of conclusion so it could end, without taking time or effort to get there naturally.

I was supremely disappointed by what had started out as a very enjoyable series.

There are 2 OVAs adapted from the manga, one in 1998, and one in 2002. ANd just from looking at screenshots and gifs I can tell which one is the better of the two

And maybe the 90s OVA will do wonders for the story, without having to worry about the ending that I consider to be broken. And I can fully see how the slice of life nature of the show would be wonderfully suited to an anime adaptation, given that it gives the same care and attention to its real life honesty the first 3/4 of the manga did.

Because that’s what a slice of life story boils down to; How accurately it can capture the honesty of real life situations and experiences. Even in post apocalyptic settings. The setting is not important. What’s important is how well a slice of life story can portray actions, emotions and experiences we take for granted in real life. Things we do every day or things we have encountered and didn’t really think about as being anything special.

Slice of life stories’ strength lies in their ability to pump effort and care into bringing the mundane to life through art, and thereby shining a light on these taken for granted experiences, and showing it in a way that turns it into art. Which, in turn, then helps us look at our own realities a little closer, and we gain a deeper appreciation for our own lives and the every day experiences.

Even though his movies all have plots, Miyazaki does this a lot, in his glorification of the everyday mundane. Especially with food. But in other things as well. All the real world details he puts into his films, which is why they seem to breathe with so much life, and why I often find “ex Ghibli animators”, despite perhaps having the technical skill, are still not able to capture the living breathing feeling Myazaki and Takahata movies have to them. They understand what makes a Ghibli story and Ghibli characters, but they don’t understand what makes a Ghibli FILM.

Anyway this is an obscenely long post AGAIN. But that’s I guess “my opinion on Slice of Life anime”

[meshugana1]

Wonder women and bat girl receive a distress signal to investigate an ancient temple that contains magical mind altering items, causing those who uncovered the treasure to become obsessed with their contents. one contains pink frilly dresses, another contains pacifiers, but both contain super thick adult diapers :P.

The invisible plane cut through the clouds without leaving any trace, not even most meta-humans could detect the craft of the amazing amazon. The pilot of the jet was a calm and collected crusader of peace clad in a red and gold bustier complimented by star-spangled bottoms. She wore a golden tiara adorned with a red star that displayed her status as princess and she wore always the silver bracelets of submission. She was Diana of Themyscira, the world knew her as Wonder Woman.

She was not alone in the cockpit of her craft today, she was accompanied by a brilliant young detective named Barbara Gordon, the world knew her as Batgirl. She was a formidable fighter in her own right, being trained by the Batman will do that for you, but her greatest strength was in her intellect. Thankfully she was able to come and help Diana on this assignment. Aside from facing threats to the world with the Justice League Diana also assisted governments with ancient magical problems such as the one that brought them to Germany this afternoon.

The plane touched down with no noise at all and the pair stepped out and met with the A.R.G.U.S. agent in charge of quarantine. He was a familiar face for Diana and she met him with a smile and a warm embrace. “Hello Steve, what’s the situation?”“Hey D, good to see you. It’s the standard spooky cave full of traps and magic looking junk. The people upstairs just feel better when you guys check these places out.” Steve Trevor said. He smiled as he saw her, somehow Diana’s presence only brought to mind the best memories of her.“Awesome, It’ll be just like Indiana Jones. Well, what are we waiting for?” Barbara said diving into the cavern from its opening in the field.“Well, she’s enthusiastic at least.” Steve said.“We’ll be back with a report soon Steve, I’ll let you know if we find any monsters down there.” Diana said floating over the opening and descending quickly into the cavern.“Just like mom used to say.”

The shaft of light went deep into the earth and illuminated the base of the structure. It looked like a temple but was built much sturdier than most she had seen. She must have descended at least three hundred before she spotted Batgirl examining the architecture of the statues in what looked like a courtyard. “What do you see Barbara?”“It’s certainly different looking, the main building was built directly into the natural rock face of this cave. Its design definitely looks pre-roman, I’d say somewhere around 500 B.C.E., and its got a helluva big door. Looks more like a vault than a temple, or even a prison.” Barbara said. Diana was genuinely impressed with the young crimefighters abilities, she could hardly believe she could’ve done better.

“That sounds about right to me. Do you think we should open it?” Diana said.“Why not? I tend to like solving problems before they start, the longer we sit on this the more likely the usual suspects will catch wind and make a move. Besides I always peak at my Christmas presents, why should this be any different?” Barbara said with a sly smile.“All very good points. I agree we don’t want leave problems for others.” Diana said as she flew up to the gigantic sealed door. She moved to what appeared to be a crease in the door but before she could the doors came alive and opened on their own. The pulled horizontally into groves that held them so flush you could hardly tell there was ever a seal to the building.

“Doors opening by themselves? Not always a great sign.” Barbara said.“No need for nerves Barbara, let's see what was so worth protecting.” Diana said. Barbara followed closely behind brandishing a flashlight.  Barbara was right the architecture was definitely from the greek dark ages but that was all it was telling the pair as they walked the large structure. The inside looked far more intact than Diana had anticipated like it hadn’t been opened since its construction, the paint on the walls still held its pigment and its foundations still held firm.

The corridor continued for fifty feet until Diana found another door blocking their path. This one refused to open however without a little assistance from Diana’s super-strength. The room they were in was far more spartan than what must’ve been the entry hall they came through. There were no pillars, no markings on the walls, only a single small chest on a pedestal in the center of the room.

“That’s it? Was one chest worth this whole vault? Something important must be inside.” Barbara said.“That or something dangerous, this may be more of a prison or a containment facility than a vault.” Diana said. Even as Diana said this something about the chest just seemed to beckon her forward. Barbara felt the same compulsion as they moved towards it almost hypnotically.“We should still open it…to make sure it’s safe for anyone else.” Barbara said.“Yeah…Stand behind me in case something comes out or attacks.” Diana said though Barbara didn’t move from her side as she slowly opened t the entrancing container.

When she did a dust cloud and a musky odor was released that assaulted the pairs eyes and nostrils. After coughing and rubbing the irritation away they looked into the box but saw only blackness, even Barbaras flashlight couldn’t pierce it. Diana thought that she saw something in the chest and reached in to grab it, she was confused as it felt like hard plastic. She pulled it out and saw that it was a pink pacifier, but larger than one meant for a child. Barbara was confused and just slightly fascinated by the object but before the pair could examine it further it changed from pink to a grey, then to black and it just seemed to crumble and fade away.

This was confusing, why would a modern invention be in an ancient chest in an underground vault? Barbara thought. She looked into the chest herself and thought she saw a flash of color, she reached in and pulled out a pink party dress with puffy sleeves and ruffles everywhere. Barbara had tons of dresses like this when she was little and she forgot just how cute they were. Diana looked at the dress with silent fascination, she has never seen a dress like it. They didn’t have clothing like this on Themyscira, but it was so very pretty. Diana reached for it but like the pacifier, it turned black and crumbled into dust. Neither one would admit it but they were sad to see the beautiful dress go.

“What is this box?” Diana said.“Yeah, and where’s this stuff coming from?” It couldn’t have been here before.” Barbara said.“Wait, I think there’s something else in here.” Diana said reaching inside one more time. Her fingers brushed across something soft but made of plastic, she grabbed the object and pulled it out to find herself holding a large diaper. There was nothing in particular strange about it but Diana still felt something deep within herself when she held it, Barbara felt similar pangs herself when she saw it but the feelings were foreign to her. Like the other objects from the chest, the diaper too faded and disintegrated in the princesses hands.

“Why in the world was there a diaper in an ancient buried structure in Germany?” Barbara said to no one in particular.“I have no idea but—” Diana started but they were interrupted when a tremor shook the earth. Diana looked and saw cracks forming on the walls and pillars starting to give way. “We have to get out of here!” Barbara said. She waited for no confirmation and dashed through the door into the entry hall. Diana followed but cast a last glance toward the mysterious chest. She looked just in time to see a piece of the ceiling fall and crush the chest along with Diana’s hopes of finding out what was going on with this temple. She flew out of the treasure room and grabbed Barbara, ascending to the opening while the temple collapsed on itself.

Two weeks had passed since Barbara had gone to Germany with Wonder Woman and explored the ruin, excavation efforts were underway but they were most likely not going to find anything of much value. Barbara, however, couldn’t get the chest, and especially its contents, out of her mind. In quiet moments she found herself imagining that party dress and how pretty it was, how soft it felt in her hands and if she was being honest how much she’d like to wear a dress like that again. A few days passed and the feeling didn’t go away, it was a constant companion while she was out with the Batman on patrols and even in her home life. She actually looked in her parent's attic for her old dresses in hopes that one may actually still fit, but it was nothing more than wishful thinking as they had all been given away years ago.

Diana was pacing in her apartment as she waited and debated her choice. Ever since the temple, Diana couldn’t get those things out of her mind. Just then she heard the doorbell ring. There was no turning back now, she thought as she opened the door and saw the tattoo-clad delivery girl with her packages.“Hello Ms., I’m here to deliver your order from Playdate. I just need a signature here.” The young girl said. She normally didn’t pry but something was so familiar about this woman.“Thank you, I’ll just take those—”“Oh my god, I have seen you before! You’re Wonder Woman!” The girl said in a restrained voice. Diana blushed profusely at having been found out while purchasing these things.“Yes I am Wonder Woman, I really hope I can count on your discretion here.”“Oh yeah, we’ve got tons of clients and we are totally discrete, I can’t believe Wonder Woman is into this.” She said.“Well, I’m not absolutely certain that I am. You could say I’m just…testing the water so to speak.”“Sure, most people buy a years supply of diapers and a dozen dresses with matching pacifiers because they’re ‘testing the water’, happens all the time. I best be off, call me if you ever need a babysitter.”

Barbara found herself wandering into a store that had opened up a few years ago and never saw much walk-in business. It was called Playdate and it catered exclusively to the fetish community. And as much as she didn’t like it, Barbara was now a part of that community. She tried to fight her feelings as best she could but they just wouldn’t go away and now she found herself here. Barbara walked in wearing a nondescript sweater and blue jeans, she had almost amassed enough will to leave but then she came across the section she was looking for. The party dress section was small but it had everything Barbara wanted, her eyes fell on one dress which was pink and covered in ruffles and it struck a chord within her and she knew she had to have it.

She felt the gentle fabric and it reminded her of so many fond memories of childhood that her eyes watered just slightly. She removed it from the rack and held it against her body, it fit her perfectly but it was fetish wear so it stopped very high and would easily show off the training diaper she was wearing. That she couldn’t do in person, she was extremely nervous about purchasing them and wearing them the first time was a frightening experience but it was so worth it to feel the trainers being pulled up her thighs and the padding made her feel more cared for and protected than her kevlar bat suit that Bruce had made her. She also giggled every time she thought of the design she found, she wondered what Bruce would think if he knew she was wearing training diapers with Batman on them.

Barbara was still admiring the dress when she felt the familiar pangs of her bladder. She moved to set the dress down and ask for a restroom key but then stopped, an idea crept into her mind that she couldn't believe she was thinking. Her heartbeat quickened and her face felt flushed, was she really considering doing this? She was wearing trainers, it was what they were for. The pressure continued to mount in her bladder and she was sweating bullets with indecision. She cautiously looked around her, no one was in the aisle with her and the only other person in the store was the clerk and she was three aisles away. She parted her feet just a bit and did her best to relax but she was far too nervous, she tried bending her knees and squatting but her toilet training was too well ingrained. Finally, she stood up straight and did her best to meditate into a state of relaxation, like Bruce had shown her.

She was very relaxed and the pangs of her bladder went away and a moment later she felt the pleasant release of urine and a tremendous warmth from her diaper. The feeling was in no way sexual for Barbara, but it was so comfortable and the warmth that entered her trainers and stayed with her made her feel so…taken care of. She just reveled in the feelings for nearly five minutes until her trainers were pushing their limit and had begun to cool. Still red in the face she grabbed her dress and headed to the counter, feeling the squelch of her trainers between her thighs as she walked.

The girl at the counter was young, covered in tattoos and busied herself reading a magazine. She was almost surprised when she saw a live person in her store, almost a hundred percent of her sales were from the internet. “Hi, are you ready to check out?” She asked.“Yeah.” Barbara said avoiding eye contact with the girl. She released another stream of urine into her trainers and blushed more. The young sales girl dutifully rang the girl up but stopped when she handed over the receipt. “Um…Miss, I think you’re leaking.” She said. Barbara turned white and looked down to see a small wet patch on the front of her jeans. She turned and was about to run out of the store crying when the clerk grabbed her arm and said, “Wait, let me help you with that.”

Diana stood naked before a mirror in her apartment holding a white diaper decorated with pink ballerinas and kittens. She was paralyzed by fear as she stood there, her mind telling her this was sick and wrong but her heart begging her to try. Looking down at the garment Diana couldn’t help but wonder where this obsession had come from, the past few days she could think of little more than the trove she purchased for herself a few days ago. She hadn’t touched it since that girl had recognized her, too ashamed that someone knew of her new predilection. But it still wouldn’t go away and curiosity eventually won out. She felt the soft plastic of the thick diaper in her hand and wondered what it was going to feel like around her bottom.

She laid the diaper out on the floor and double checked that her blinds were draws and her door locked. She walked over and took one last deep breath, then laid her bottom down on the padding. Her floor was cold hardwood but the diapers padding was soft and had a slight warmth to it, she remained there for a time just enjoying the contrasting feelings on her thighs. It was a little awkward at first, she had never applied a diaper to anyone before especially not herself. She managed to attach the garment correctly after a few minutes, and at last she was diapered. She felt nothing she would call magical but she felt…contentment and relief, like a drink of water after crossing a desert.

She wriggled her padded rear into the floor and she giggled at the crinkling sound she made and experimented with crawling around on all fours. She crawled over to her other boxes and pulled out one of her pacifiers and placed it into her mouth, gave a few experimental sucks and found that she loved having the object in her mouth, it seemed to actually have the effect of calming some of her nerves. She crawled over toward her pile of clothes and selected the dress she had been dying to wear since she saw it online. It was a pink ruffled party dress that had the most adorable puffed sleeves and petticoats that would show off her diaper in its new ruffled diaper cover. She also bought herself a pair of Mary Jane shoes that other customers seemed to purchase along with the dress.

Once she was dressed she closed her eyes and walked to the mirror, wanting the finished product to be a surprise. After a few sucks of her paci to calm her nerves she opened her eyes and squealed with glee at her visage. Her dress fit her perfectly and the petticoats hung in such a way that you could just see her diaper poking out from the bottom. Her legs were clad in white stockings and her feet fit well in her black leather Mary Jane’s and gave her a satisfying click-clack as she walked. Diana felt something was still missing, She walked over to her dresser or rather waddled due to the thickness of her diaper, and pulled out two hair ties and tied her hair into pigtails.

When she returned to the mirror the picture was complete. She turned around, bent over and displayed her diapered bottom to the mirror and fell in love with her ruffled panties. She spent her entire day like that, doing her paperwork for the justice league and just enjoying her day off. She even tuned in her television to shows for toddlers and found them to be quite enjoyable if not overly engaging. A few hours in however a not unforeseen problem occurred and Diana needed the restroom. She had prepared for this possibility but being prepared to do something and doing it are never equal tasks.

It was unusual for Diana’s courage to waver but she recomposed herself and braced for this new experience. It was funny a bit to the diapered amazon warrior that as she stood she wasn’t quite certain how to urinate without a toilet, no not toilet. Potty, Diana needed to potty. She tried squatting and pushing as hard as she could but her efforts only produced a load braping fart. Diana blushed and tried to bend slightly over and relax, she thought that had worked but it was all in her mind. After thirty minutes of trying she sighed and waddled over to the potty and sat down. This proved all too easy and as soon as her diapered bottom hit the rim she felt release and warmth flow from her. It was exhilarating and alien to feel her urine remain pressed against her sex and collect around her bottom. She stood and the warmth remained close to her and it gave her such a feeling that she didn’t have words for it, it was as though she was being naughty, cared for, erotic, content and relieved all at once. Her cheeks were rosy as she returned to her living room and plopped down on her wet bottom, the warmth pressing into her sex and making her feel so naughty as she lightly bounced up and down.

She then hit upon another idea and waddled over to her closet. She never thought about these as manufacturers always sent over prototypes and first editions but now she was excited as she pulled out her chest and opened it, revealing dozens of dolls. There were dolls of her and her justice league allies and even a few of her enemies like Circe and Cheetah, she grabbed the whole thing and brought it out to the living room and played with them all. She held tea parties and recreated battles and had a fake wedding with her and cheetah, Circe was her maid of honor and she had the most fun she’s had in decades. She was like this for hours and before she knew it another need had reared its head as she felt a burbling in her tummy.

She knew what it was immediately and as she sucked away on her pacifier she debated whether or not to go through with it. She was already diapered and wet, it was only now that she noticed just how cold and uncomfortable her diaper had become. It was a short debate but talking to her dollies helped her through it and she sat on her calfs and tried to relax as best she could. Somehow this was far and away easier than going pee pee and her mess released into her waiting diaper with little effort, it was still warm but the sensation was so different as Diana could feel both her mess leaving her and it collecting on her bottom. After half a minute it was over and Diana had officially become a stinky pants. The diaper was thick enough that she wasn’t assaulted by the odor but she could fell the entire mass of the mess press against her pristine bottom. It was warm and redoubled the feelings wetting had given her and she was once again staging a party with her dolly friends and bouncing excitedly on her stinky butt.

Barbara had no clue what she was doing. It was one thing to indulge her little kink but now she was sitting on a changing mat in the backroom of a fetish shop waiting for a girl to come back with supplies to change her, this was going too far yet Barbara made no move to leave or even to object. It might’ve been that she was extremely wet and really needed a change and the young girl seemed eager, and this might be her only chance to receive a diaper change from someone else. Her time to ponder this was cut short as the girl returned and the butterflies in her tummy intensified.

“Okay, are you ready for your diaper change?”“…um…I…yes.”“What? I didn’t hear you.”“…yes…”“I’m sorry honey, one more time?”“Yes…I’m ready for a change.”“Ok, let's get started then.” The young girl said as she pulled the red-headed crimefighters wet pants down her ankles, revealing her batman trainers totally soaked. “Oh wow, you really did a number on batman there. Is he your favorite superhero?”“Um…yeah. He’s pretty cool…”“Well, I won’t tell him that you had an accident ok?” The young girl said with a smile and a wink.“Yeah…thanks.” Barbara said with a smile in reply.“All right, before I un-tape you are you sure you’re all done?”“Um, well now that you mention it…”“It’s ok sweetie, just go ahead and let it all out. It wouldn’t do to have two changes one after the other.”“I…I have to go number two?”“That’s fine, just let it all out, sweetie.” Barbara was conflicted on the one hand she needed to go and wanted to get out of this training diaper, on the other messing herself just seemed like a big step. But Barbara wanted this right now so he tried grunting and pushing but it wasn’t easy overcoming years of perfect toilet training. The young girl grabbed Barbara's ankles and pushed her legs over her head. “Here, this will help. Now just relax and push.”

Barbara did just that and after a minute she felt the seat of her diaper expand as the mess left her. The young girl watched as the seat of the redheads' trainers ballooned outwards with quite an impressive mess, she didn’t normally do this but maybe this girl would spread the word and she might get some more walk-in traffic. Barbara felt the warmth spread all over her bottom as a few days worth of mess evacuated her, the feeling was very unlike it normally was when she went to the toilet and she felt so content and relieved that someone was there to help and take care of her. She felt some embarrassment when the girl undid the tapes of her overloaded trainers and exposed her shaven pussy but Barbara reminded herself that it was just a change, as though it were a routine occurrence. The girl noticed Barbara’s discomfort though and reached behind her, the next moment Barbara was sucking contentedly on a pacifier that she had intended to buy. She was surprised by how much the simple act calmed her down as the girl used the trainer to scoop up the majority of the mess and dispose of it.

Barbara even allowed herself to enjoy the motions of the damp wipe the girl trailed all over her bottom and on her pussy. But another moment of hesitation arose and Barbara quickened her soothing as she saw not a trainer the girl held but a full thick diaper. “I know it's a little bit different than what you wore in but we don’t stock trainers in the store, and honestly you seem like a pretty heavy wetter.” Barbara blushed but couldn’t deny the girls logic, she said nothing and continued to soothe herself as the girl unfolded the diaper and lifted Barbara’s legs as she slid it under her. The then felt a sharp cold feeling as the girl applied baby lotion to her bottom and stifled a moan as she applied it to her pussy. Then she smelled the sweet scent of baby powder being sprinkled over her crotch and felt the warm, secure feelings return as the diaper was tightly taped to her body. She sat up and giggled when she saw the image of her crimefighting mentor on the front of her diaper.

“I thought you might like that, we’ve got tons of printed diapers for sale.”“Thank you for this.” Barbara said still blushing profusely.“It’s no problem at all. In fact, take my card. A cutie like you should always have a babysitter on call.” The girl said with a wink. Barbara looked at her and knew that she would probably take the girl up on her offer from time to time. Barbara had no choice but to put her wet pants back on, luckily they fit over her thick diaper and she waddled back to the counter and paid for two packages of her new diapers and two dresses. She wanted to buy the pacifier she was still sucking on but the girl said it was a present. The items were rather expensive but this was well worth it to Barbara and she left the store with a new confidence in herself and her new hobby. She couldn't wait to get home and try on her dresses. She was so excited that she could feel a small spurt of pee enter her thirsty diaper.

This was going to be the most difficult thing Diana had ever done. She was filled with nerves and was so tense that she couldn’t stop sucking her paci even if she wanted to. It had comforted her to wear her pretty pink dress, white stockings, her Mary Jane’s and of course her ballerina diaper with her ruffly diaper cover. She sat in the cockpit of the invisible jet on a landing in her mothers' place on Themyscria. There was a company of guards waiting to escort her to the Queen but Diana was having second, third, and fourth thoughts about doing this. She had come to learn new things about herself recently and she held no secrets with her mother, but preparing to do something and doing it require vastly different amounts of courage. It had been long enough since her first session in a diaper that using one had become much simpler and as she sat in the cockpit the urge to go potty came and went as she wet her diaper, the warm feelings helped to calm her and she thought of the unconditional love that her mother had given her over the years and steeled herself with a warriors breathing and exited the jet to confront her mother with her new truth.

The End. I hope y’all like it.

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 4, Number 5

Hot Snakes

It’s time for another edition of Dust, our semi-regular short form exploration of music we might not otherwise get to.  This time Bill Meyer, Jonathan Shaw, Marc Medwin, Justin Cober-Lake,  Jennifer Kelly and Michael Rosenstein ponder basement jazz and large ensemble improvisation, French horror movie synths, Charlottesville-inspired protest and one much loved garage punk band returning to the fray after 14 years.  Enjoy.

Aalberg / Kullhammar / Zetterberg / Santos—Basement Sessions Vol. 4 (The Bali Sessions) (Clean Feed)

This combo may have started out in a basement, but at this point the recording circumstances are a matter of have governmental support. Saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar, bassist Torbjörn Zetterberg and drummer/composer Espen Aalberg first convened to play their version of traditional jazz, which is to say music rooted in the examples of Sonny Rollins in the late 1950s and John Coltrane in the early 1960s. Those elements are still evident; “Pontiac,” for example, is built around a bass line that Jimmy Garrison could have fed Coltrane at the Village Vanguard in 1962. But it seems that Aalberg’s looking farther afield for inspiration these days. On that same tune, Kullhammar and guest trumpeter Susana Santos Silva play harmonies that have more to do with 1970s-vintage Ethiopian jazz. And the session took place not in a Scandinavian basement, but in an Indonesian garden, with full access to a Balian gamelan. Those resonant, metallic sonorities give the music a shimmering quality, as though you’re hearing it through a humid heat haze.

Bill Meyer

 Carpenter Brut — Leather Teeth (No Quarter)

LEATHER TEETH by Carpenter Brut

French dark synth act Carpenter Brut announces a key influence in its name: the minimalist, evocative, synthesizer-driven soundtracks that John Carpenter scored for many of his films, including Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, Escape from New York and They Live. As the “Brut” bit suggests, Franck Hueso, the creative force behind the project, amps up the volume and the pace of that source material. He endows the music with an intensity that reflects the affect and the themes of the films — a perverse joy in aestheticized violence, the gut-plunge one can feel when watching highly manipulated filmic experiences. And this digital LP further collapses the distinctions between media: Leather Teeth is offered as the soundtrack to an imaginary horror film, complete with plot synopsis, promo poster and the oddly spectral suggestion of the seamy, grainy, VHS-quality vibe of 1980s horror cinema. You can just about feel the voluptuous joy of the bright orange fake blood and the fluorescent glow of the final girl’s wardrobe, especially in the title track and in “Inferno Galore.” It’s a sort of feat, making music this processed and slick feel raw and dirty.

Jonathan Shaw

  Thanos Chrysakis/Chris Cundy/Peer Schlechta/Ove Volquartz — Music for Two Organs and Two Bass Clarinets (Aural Terrains)

This is one for headphone listening. Organists Thanos Chrysakis and Peer Schlechta, in collaboration with clarinetists Chris Cundy and Ove Volquartz, have created an album of morphing space and shifting textural planes. The album’s opening and closing moments are magical, as a landscape haunted by nearly recognizable shades unfolds in reverb-drenched murk. The opening of the fifth section dwells in similar half-light; organ and clarinet tones almost match, floating around each other in rhythms too wet to grasp. The recording itself is a study in contrast pitting a dead-center clarinet against one off to the side, living in a semi-spectral world where pitch relations are as fluid as pulse and meter. Each instrument has a shadow self that headphone listening renders apparent. If the motivic material itself is slightly lacking in contrast, volume, register and timbre make up for that. Chamber organ and clarinet both add layers of percussion against the lines interwoven by the other two instruments. The music justifies the label’s name.

Marc Medwin

 Elephant9 — Greatest Show on Earth (Rune Grammofon)

When your hired-gun psychedelic jazz guitarist goes missing, what do you do? In Elephant9’s case, the answer is — go maximal. There may be one fewer musicians and the tunes may be shorter, but there are a lot of notes packed into each of Greatest Show on Earth’s 36 minutes. There’s also a lot of chutzpah; what else can you call it when an organ-bass-drums trio cops an Emerson, Lake & Palmer line for the name of its record? Fortunately, they subscribe to a heavier but less bombastic lineage. If you plotted this record on graph paper, one axis would be Tony Williams’ Lifetime and the other would be late 1960s Soft Machine. The organ seethes, the mellotron freezes, the bass sprints and feints and the drums pummel hard but elaborate on themes that, if you excised the solos and added some brass, would be more than serviceable cop show tunes for the age of leaded gasoline.

Bill Meyer

 Hot Snakes — Jericho Sirens (Sub Pop)

It’s been 14 years since the last Hot Snakes album, Audit in Progress, and eight since the convergence of two post-break-up outfits, Obits and Night Marches, spawned a one-song reunion at San Diego’s Casbah. Much has shifted since the early aughts rock revival that Hot Snakes always sat at the louder, rougher, closer-to-hardcore end of, and neither Obits nor Night Marchers, for all their positive attributes matched the fire-spitting intensity of their predecessor. You might, then, look askance on this latter day revival, coming conveniently just as Sub Pop reissues the entire Hot Snakes catalogue, and yet you could only do that before you hear the songs, which are just as raw, just as spittle flecked, just as full-throttle enraged as ever. The disc’s starts in flames, with the Wipers-slashing guitar attack of “Call the Doctor,” Rick Froberg’s yowl rising in rage over a hailstorm of crashing rock propulsion. Short, manic “Why Don’t It Sink In?” bangs the hardest at Hot Snakes’ hardcore punk beginnings, while “Six Wave Hold Down,” brings in an expansive So. Cal. surfiness into the mix. “Death Camp Fantasy” ramps up a whiplash punk garage assault, with a ragged group chorus to carry it home, while “Death of a Sportsman,” finishes things off in windmilling, power-chording style. Holds barred?  I’d say none. Score one for the old(er) guys.

Jennifer Kelly

  Joy Ike — Bigger Than Your Box (self-released)

The title Bigger Than Your Box makes a statement about pianist/singer Joy Ike's personality as well as her art. The artistic angle is clear: Ike hits that sweet spot between soul, jazz and pop, and if she doesn't fit cleanly into a genre, she's fine with that. These tracks — full of bouncy piano, a few lush arrangements, and a startling amount of verve — are also about self-definition. Ike refuses to be put into any box, and her music encourages listeners to step out of their own boxes, to “stand up and walk” as she says on “You Betta'.” Across these 11 tracks, Ike rallies anyone in need of rallying. The radio-ready anthem “Hold On” reiterates that “your hope is coming.” Ike walks close to the edge of cheese; when she sings, “You will find your song” or “You are not your fear,” it could tip into eye-rolling territory, but Ike's drive carries the sentiment. She knows there are people who need this sort of song right now, and she's going to make sure they get it. The tunes are infectious, but it's Ike's heart that resonates.

Justin Cober-Lake

 Insub Meta Orchestra — Choices & Melodies (Insub)

Choices & Melodies by Insub Meta Orchestra

It’s impressive to keep a large ensemble with 50 permanent members going for eight years and running. It is particularly impressive when that ensemble focusses on the collective intersection of composition, improvisation and electro-acoustic practice. Founded by Swiss musicians Cyril Bondi and d’incise on the ideas the two describe as “experimentation, of immoderation, of exploring and pushing the limits,” somehow this group of international collaborators has not only managed to keep this project a going concern, they have managed to get together on a regular basis to perform and record. Choices & Melodies is their fifth release, recorded at the same session as their Another Timbre CD from last year (reviewed here by Justin Cober-Lake) and like that one, this LP/digital download is comprised of two pieces credited as “direction and compositions by Cyril Bondi and d'incise.” This iteration of the group is 32-strong, with eight woodwinds, five string players, three guitarists, six utilizing electronics, laptops, and synths, three percussionists, four vocalists, along with hurdy gurdy, viola da gamba and harmonium, forming a rich timbral depth.  

First up is “two choices” using the simple instructions of producing two noises per person and the possibility of a change every five seconds. What transpires over the course of the 16-and-a-half-minute piece is a beguiling, dynamic mix of subtly shifting hiss, abrasions, quavers, crackles and low-end rumbles. Eschewing any sense of tonality, the immersive layers of frictive textures engulf the listener, with constantly evolving fields of subtle nuanced vacillations and densities. One gets the sense of listening in the midst of a giant engine or the groaning hull of a ship and the recording does a great job of capturing the spatial distribution of sounds across the ensemble. The second piece, “autonomous melodies,” takes a quite different tack, utilizing kernels of three or four note free melodies which are distributed across the orchestra. Over the course of 16 minutes, it relies on a relatively loud volume to let the various threads accrue in to mercurially morphing chords and drones. Here, the music benefits from the intrinsic underpinnings of woodwinds, strings, electronics, percussion and elusive scrims of vocalizations which commingle and fragment into changeable pulses and currents. In both pieces, the collective, considered intensity of the full ensemble comes through with gripping results.  

Michael Rosenstein

  Daniel Levin/Chris Pitsiokos/Brandon Seabrook — Stomiidae (Dark Tree)

Stomiidae by Stomiidae (Daniel Levin • Chris Pitsiokos • Brandon Seabrook)

Stomiidae is a family of deep-sea fish, and each of the CD’s seven tracks is named for a genus of that family. Perhaps cellist Daniel Levin, alto saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos and guitarist Brandon Seabrook want to assert that they go deep without being too obvious about it? With their needle teeth and trailing whiskers, Stomiidae look pretty terrifying in photographs, but since they’re usually about six inches long and they prefer to live half a mile under the surface, they pose no threat. But they can handle pressure, and there are moments when this music feels like it is busting out at the seams under the influence of some great internal force. Levin is his usual adroit self, and his confident, quicksilver responsiveness exerts a powerful influence on two other musicians whom I associate more with the delivery of knockout punches than the execution of gravity-defying footwork. But the toughness of their instrumental personalities is nonetheless boiled into their playing, as each note and flinty phrase exerts the persuasiveness of a winning argument.

Bill Meyer

   Mien—Mien (Rocket Recordings)

MIEN by MIEN

Mien draws talent from an inter-continental assortment of garage psych players—Black Angels frontman Alex Maas, The Horrors’ keyboardist Tom Furse, Elephant Stone’s raga rock experimenter Rishi Dhir and The Earlies’ John-Mark Lapham — and this self-titled debut is similarly all over the map. “Earth Moon” starts with a drone-y reverie in Dhir’s sitar with sitar-psych droning (there’s more sitar on “Ropes” if that’s your thing), then picks up the kind of ramshackle propulsion and Velvet-y psych whisper that Primal Scream used to conjure. “You Dreamt” runs noisier and more electronic, layering metallic ping and clicks and rattles over abstract washes of hiss and static. “Odessey,” spelled the way the Zombies spelled it, is the sort of slanting, driving, dark-wave garage psych that you turn to Black Angels for, though leavened, a bit, by a come hither chorus. All these songs are drenched in about three coats of reverb, kludged with noise and generally smeared and obscured, so you know you’ve got a winner when “Tired of the Western Shouting” bursts through and makes a mark. Techno-ethnic Brian Jones Massacre may not sound like exactly what you were looking for, but you’d be surprised, once you get into it.

Jennifer Kelly

 Keith Morris & the Crooked Numbers — Psychopaths & Sycophants: A Message from Charlottesville (self-released)

After the 2016 US presidential election, too much of the immediate response was, “At least we'll get some good protest music out of this.” That may be small consolation to much of the population, but Charlottesville Americana musician Keith Morris turned related feelings into protest album Psychopaths & Sycophants: A Message from Charlottesville, largely guided by the work of Leonard Cohen (covers of “The Future” and “In My Secret Life” book-end the album). The title track is a reworked version of a song from a few years ago, and the changes epitomize the album. Morris's gospel and country-rock influences still come through, but he pulls the rock sound back. For the most part, Morris gives speak-sing performances that harken back to Dylan. His rage comes through regardless of tone, though. On “67%” Morris and guest vocalist Devon Sproule mix that control with rowdier backing. Some of the tracks are a little on the nose to have legs — this is protest music after all — but the album captures a certain mood from “this shattered town” quite well. With a little Randy Newman in the mix, Morris and his band make emphatic points and offer useful catharsis.

Justin Cober-Lake

 Mike Uva—Lights Coming Up (Collectible Escalator)

Everybody I knew at an online music publication that professed to “review everything” had a handful of favorites that emerged from the slush pile, artists so good and so consistently overlooked that it made made it worth while to wade, once again, into the bins of self-releases. (All the new writers complained vociferously about the taking-all-comers policy until they hit one of these; we called it the conversion experience.)  One of mine was Mike Uva, a Cleveland-based songwriter, whose 2004 album Where Have You Been sits right alongside certain GBV, The Folk Implosion and the Capstan Shafts records for smart, tuneful, lo-fi pop excellence. That was a long time ago, but every so often I get a new recording from Uva, and it’s always unassumingly excellent, and this new one Lights Coming Up[JK1]  is no exception. The clear highlight is “Waco,” a driving, slanting, amber-lit time-capsule that connects Uva’s late college years, the FBI stand-off and an acquaintance who disappeared off the grid forever (though whether to join a Waco-ish cult or farm organic vegetables is never clear). Like all of Uva’s best work, the song has an off-handed grace, as if it rhymes and scans by accident, as if he just happens to be telling you a story that fits the chords he’s playing. But of course, there’s a lot of skill behind that kind of nonchalance, a skill that shows up again in the sinuously ear-worm “Waiting to Return,” in the dreamily unhurried “Even the Highways.”  Lights Coming Up is more indie-pop and less country than Lady, Tell Me Straight, the last Mike Uva album, which came out five years ago, but just as effortless. Here’s to the guys (and girls) who do it for love, and do it well and keep at it and get better anyway, even if no one is paying much attention.

Jennifer Kelly

[juushika]

I try to do this every year: here's the best media that I encountered, but which was probably not released, in 2017. It’s long!! oops!!

Books

I read 176 books in 2017. My primary reading goal was to prioritize authors of color, ideally making them half of my reading material. This fell apart somewhat in the face of various and intense life stresses, but in the end 40% of the books I read this year were by PoC, up from 10%* from last year, and I'm proud of that. It's something I will continue to prioritize.

* a metric which may be somewhat out of date, as I discovered neato things while looking into Jewish authors!! but I'm too lazy for recalculations, so let's let it stand

Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller. I love this book so much that it took me five months to write a review. Miller wrote it with precise, peculiar inspirations--the identity of a mysterious artist; sessions with a ouija board--and while I traditionally resist the idea that the author is a conduit rather than a creator (yes to authorial responsibility! boo on authorial intent!) I think there can be moments when an author reaches above and beyond themselves. I believe Beagle did this in The Last Unicorn:

A lot of things appeal to people out of their own histories in that story. I feel sometimes like Schmendrick, when the first time he actually casts real magic summoning up the shades of Robin Hood, Maid Marian and the Merry Men...people who never existed, really they’re myths, and yet there they are. And at that point he falls on his face, picks himself up, and thinks: "I wonder what I did...I did something..." Which is very much the way I feel about The Last Unicorn. Finally, fifty years later. (source)

And I believe that Miller does it here. This is an exceptional novel; its purpose and joy and energy is remarkable, and it may be safe to call it my favorite book of the year.

Graceling series by Kristin Cashore. The books stand alone and are all perfectly good; but it's Bitterblue that won me, and I think it benefits from reading the entire series. This uses a speculative concept to explore trauma and abuse in ways that are simultaneously metaphorical, literal, and unique to the worldbuilding. I admire a narrative that's able to capitalize on the potential of its genre in that way, and there's interesting narrative-in-absentia techniques at play here, and, crucially, it's thoughtful and compassionate.

Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. I adore the companion animal trope, and am dubious of dragons; I did not expect that this would be so thorough an exploration of the former as to totally negate the later. It engages almost every question that surrounds this trope, especially re: sapience, personhood, power dynamics; the long-form adventure allows for a diverse and evolving culture. And it's tropey in every way it needs to be to give its premise emotional weight. Multiple books in this series won a 5-star rating, and as many made me cry. It's as in love and as engaged with this trope as I am. Simon Vance's audio narration makes these an especial delight.

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr. I read this in the same year as my first Joanna Russ book (The Female Man)--and neither are perfect, but both are invaluable, and the combined effect has stayed with me. But nothing lingered moreso than this Tiptree collection: so exhaustive, so exhausting; the tension between her profound bitterness and daydreaming, between her (presumed, implicit, assumed) male PoV and persistent feminist themes, elevates this collection beyond the limitations of individual stories.

The Devourers by Indra Das. It would be insincere to say that this is what I wish every werewolf novel would be--I love them all uniquely--but this is what I wish every werewolf novel would be: this visceral, this vivid, this inhuman, this engaged with the concept of the Other.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf. The only real goal in life is to love or be loved as Virginia Woolf loved Vita Sackville-West; the energy that emanates from this, passionate and playful and irreverent, is incandescent. I always expect historical books about sex and gender to be restrained or dated, and for good reason, but this has aged so well; it's fluid and complicated, but too quick to become heavy. In every page, a delight.

Honorable mentions in books

Ursula K. Le Guin. I read a handful of her books this year; I didn't love them all equally (The Beginning Place is hardly her most famous but it's my favorite so far) but I'm consistently impressed, no matter how minor the work. She's profoundly skilled; she integrates and expands her central theses in ways that capitalize on the speculative genres she writes in, to great effect.

Octavia E. Butler by Gerry Canavan. I hesitate to say that I loved this biography more than Butler's novels themselves, but that reflects how it felt to read this: it summarized, contextualized, and celebrated Butler's cumulative effort and impact in a way that made me appreciate her anew.

When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore. I read a lot of YA I bounce off of, a lot of magical realism I don't think works; but this I loved, for its specific images, for the way that the fluidity of its style suits its issues of gender, for its beauty and love.

The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson. The energy in this is infectious, and needs to be, as it's as much about a love affair with a speculative premise and a place as with a person--and all those elements are accessible, distinctive, alive.

Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner. Fairyland which feels truly transporting and fantastic, truly fae, is hard to capture. This is such a quiet book, unassuming in structure and frame, but its depiction of fairyland is one of the most convincing that I've ever seen.

Games

Nier: Automata. I watched this played on release, and called it then, in March: game of the year. I was not mistaken. There's more this could do, further it could go; but what it does, with its androids and tropes, its meta elements and narrative structure and soundtrack, is phenomenal. One of the most remarkable things that a game can do is be profoundly wedded to its interactive medium, because few other platforms have the opportunity to interact with the consumer so directly--and Automata achieves that, to great effect.

Kirby series. I have no particular love of platforms, Nintendo, or nostalgia; but these looked cute, and: they are. Kirby is shaped like friendship, and the softness and colors of level design, the creative gameplay of Kirby's transformations, the sincerely impressive interaction with level elements in games like Epic Yarn, are a complete package. These brought me unmitigated joy; that's not something I often find.

Honorable mentions in video games

Dishonored 2. The plot and setting hasn't stuck with me as much as the first game. But to internalize criticism and then go on to make a more diverse game is fantastic (and it pays off, in Meagan Foster especially), and the small, almost-domestic moments and ongoing lore/religion in the worldbuilding are very much my thing.

Dark Souls III DLC. The base game was on my list last year, so this entry feels like cheating--but these were substantial additions, big worlds and significant narrative and so many new monster designs, all of which compliment the base game. It's an impressive product, and I wish more DLC resembled it.

Closure. A little indie puzzle platformed that exceeds expectations for that genre because the way that its core game mechanic interacts with player, art design, atmosphere, and narrative is so successful. (It even makes up for sometimes-finicky physics.)

Visual Media

Car Boys. I'm disappointed that Nick Robinson proved not to be the person we wanted him to be, but that doesn't change the profound impact that this series had on me. Not only is it a fantastic example of emergent narrative, it simultaneously embraces my fear of existential horror and my profound longing for a greater meaning. This served a similar function for me as did Critical Role last year, despite dissimilarities in tone and content.

Dark Matter season 3. The boy and I have been watching this together, and with few misstep we've been consistently satisfied with the way this series combines found family tropes and genre mainstays. But season 3 is a cut above. It's still all those things, but the ongoing, consistent character development, particularly of the female characters, most especially of the Android, is phenomenal. There were episodes that made me cry, that I would call legitimately perfect.

Blame! I've enjoyed everything I've seen by Polygon Pictures, including Knights of Sidonia, but this is the best they could be: tropes I love, a perfect setting for their visual style and capabilities; great pacing, writing that does interesting things with its subgenre. Without competition, the best film I saw this year; it looks great and it’s just so engaging to watch.

Person of Interest. Found family/AI feels is in essence all I've ever wanted from a narrative, and this delivers, delivers in droves: it has the crime serial format I love but, like Fringe, deviates from format to great effect. But it's the particular combination of themes that sold me: using AI as a launchpad to explore all varieties of personhood and socialization.

Honorable mentions in visual media

Yuri!!! on Ice. There is a need in the world for stories like this; queer love stories, stories about what it means to become one's best self, stories which are funny and sweet and profoundly empathetic. This year started poorly (and just kept on keepin' on, but:) and there was a sense of karmic balance that this existed post-election. It's escapism without being hollow; it's how I want the world to be.

Polygon. Monster Factory goes here. So does Awful Squad. But the boy and I have been branching out and watching almost anything that pops up on this channel; the balance between inoffensive good humor and video game nerdom is really likable.

[c4ptur-3dd-blog]

For my first test print I was unsure what time would work best so used a broad interval of 3 seconds from 3 - 12. The resulting image was in my opinion quite beautiful, I love the stark contrast between different exposures but I still did want just one single exposure time. I found over 6 seconds to be too dark so did another test at 0.5 second intervals from 3 - 5.5 and decided I liked the tone and contrast best at 5 seconds.

I suppose I sort of cheated a bit with this image, by creating the ‘interesting shape’ myself, to make the photograph but even so it is one of my favourite images I’ve made. The soft, granular texture of the sand is not as plain as say, a sky, offering a less harsh background with a gentle gradient, contrasting with the stark, rigid shaped and almost block colour of the various shells. The connotations of this image a ones of tranquillity and order, there is nothing chaotic or out of place in the image which has a very calming effect of the mind. It also transports one back to childhood, collecting shells while playing at the beach, these sorts of happy memories also have a quieting effect on the mind. The soft, out of focus background also has connotations to memory, especially distant ones which are starting to fade.

It’s difficult to see clearly the sections of varying exposure in the test as the image has a lot of lines and variation in shadow itself but I knew I had used six different exposure times so was able to judge where the change in tone was. /for this I used 1 second intervals from 2 - 7, I prefered the contrast just right of the center a which would be 4 or 5 so I decided to split the difference and go with 4.5 seconds for my final image.

I would have prefered to have more contrast in this image to give more clarity to the edges of objects and really highlight the different layers of gates and fences. The image itself is very contrasting to my previous print, it has a very industrial look with all the meta fencing, concrete and chains. The connotation of this image is of confinement, restraint and being caged in, which I would relate to oppression. However with there being a lock in the image it also has opposing connotations, as a lock symbolises security and safety. The impression I get from this image is of ordered chaos, which makes the viewer feel almost anxious in their thoughts. I say this because there is so much going on in the image it makes it hard for your eye to focus on any specific area, instead just taking in the whole image as more of a pattern before picking out individual objects. However because most of the shapes are linear or uniformly repeated it stops the image from being overly strenuous on the eyes.

I made my first test sheet in 3 second intervals, from 3 - 12. I found most of these to be too dark so I made another test print at 0.5 to be more precise, going from 2 to 4.5 seconds and decided on 4.5 seconds for my final print.

It might sound strange that my favourite thing about this image is the large empty space, this is because it allows or rather forces you to focus on the subject of photograph. This is only possible because of the angle I used, for example if I had taken the picture looking forward towards the clock then the image would include the road, buildings and people all distracting from the main focus point. The second thing I would notice about this image it sharp, distinct contrast of the decoration around the clock which draws the eye around to the ornate detail at the top. The clock in this image brings to mind connotations of waiting, time passing and combined with the angle portrays for me the idea of something looming in the future, something dark and probably unwanted, as if the seconds are being counted just to draw it out longer. I say this because of the grey murky sky and victorian/gothic style building which gives a darker, more sinister edge to the image. Although because this is a photograph it could also be seen as time being frozen still and with it being a black and white film photo, lends itself well to this idea.

For my last print I was assuming it would take a similar time to the others, so I made a test print at 0.5 second intervals from 1.5 - 4 seconds and as you can see it barely showed up at all. This was because I had taken the image in quite low light on a cloudy day so the negative was quite dark, therefore needing a longer exposure. So on my next test a used 1 second intervals from 4 - 9 seconds which came out much better. But in the interest of making the subject (the building) look its best I made one final test just of the building in 7 8 and 9 second exposures. I was unsure between 7 and 8 so I went for 7.5 seconds for the final print.

The slight off centre composition of this image makes it look slightly awkward which I think fits quite well with the overall image. Given that the building is rather innocent and quaint looking with its pale palette and wooden roofing, then having this sign speaking of danger, seems rather out of place. Further adding to the off balance feeling of this image is the fact the one of the blocks is missing from the top of the tower. The more you look however the sign starts to make more sense as you notice the boarded windows, peeling paint and fencing. The connotations I get from this image are quite personal for me as I have lived 5 minutes from this pier for the past 10 years, and when I moved here you could still go on the boardwalk, although it was closed shortly after. Looking at this image makes me think of crumbling memories, abandonment and change. I see in this image the decay of hope, the hope that one day this important piece of history and source of happy memories for so many, would be restored but alas was just left to fall apart and is soon to be demolished. I find it to be rather fitting that when I went to photograph this for probably the last time is was a dim, cloudy day, appropriately symbolising my feelings towards this image.

[orionsangel86]

12x19 - Episode Review - Intimacy, Love, Faith and mixtapes

What can I even say about this episode? Since my first watch I have been going around with a goofy grin on my face while thinking of nothing but mixtapes and intimate touches between two people who love each other so dearly that even the most stringent heteronormative people must be side eyeing the show thinking “that’s kinda gay”. When I try to think about the actual plot of the episode though and what will come of this in the finale? Well, I am a bit lost… though I do have some ideas. I can’t say I am entirely thrilled by the plot structure this season. Hence my long tumblr absences as well as limited thoughts and meta since 12x12. There is too much going on, too many stories which don’t seem to have any real connection. Also Lucifer really pisses me off as a character now and every time he is on screen I roll my eyes.

This episode wasn’t up there with the likes of 12x10 and 12x12 for quality. Then again as soon as the story turns back to Kelly and her unborn Satan spawn I do find it hard to stay switched on, but the destiel this episode was glorious and gave me a lot of hope for where Dabb intends to take this. Am I still annoyed that we are lacking Cas so much this half season? Yes. Very. The fact that he doesn’t return until the finale pisses me off to no end, I will most likely disappear again after writing this review and not comment on the episodes leading up to the finale unless Dean suddenly decides to jump out of the closet and hit on handsome bisexual Max next week as a rebound for all the rejection he suffered in 12x19. (honestly I am praying to the TV Gods that Max takes a liking to Dean and we get a good helping of Gay to get us through our Cas withdrawal symptoms).

Without any further rambling however here is my review of 12x19.

It gets long down there under the cut…

Take this mixtape for my heart… complete with kisses and songs about you

The best part about this episode? Destiel. Oh boy the destiel. It was so gloriously gay. I can’t even imagine how the antis and non-shippers are feeling about this! I am so very full of joy and glee about this!

We know from the opening sequence that Dean has been pining for Cas and worrying about Cas for a while now, but the glorious moment when Cas walks into the Bunker and Dean looks up at him is just…

Oh how very dramatic. The might as well have put him in soft focus and had a swell of romantic music as his lover returned home from war… seriously. But then all the DeanCas shots in this episode are framed so romantically/intimately. Kudos to Amanda Tapping for just getting it. (then again she was present during the most heartbreaking DeanCas scene of all time the crypt scene and therefore I have no doubt that she is very much aware of Destiel and its importance.

Once again this shot escalates into an argument between Dean and Cas that Sam is stuck in the middle of. I seriously love how this has continued throughout season 12. Sam is the poor third wheel stuck in the middle whilst his brother and brother in law have a lovers tiff.  

We get another classic confused kinda bitch face from Sam when Dean snaps at him because he dares to be nice to Cas…

Seriously we have now built up a nice collection of Sam bitchfaces and knowing looks when he is stuck having to deal with these two once again. Poor Sam. Let him save the day and get a dog and marry Eileen so he can finally get some PEACE! :P

“Not only were you ditching us you were ignoring us”.

“What the hells wrong with you man?”

We have a LOT of call backs to previous seasons in this episode. I mean A LOT of call backs. This one particularly was quite interesting as it threw us right back into Purgatory:

“I prayed to you Cas, every night”

“I know.”

“You know and you didn’t… What the hell’s wrong with you?”

So what does this mean? Already we have a call back to the start of season 8, which then lead to a whole story arc where Cas was brainwashed by the angels and ended with Dean managed to break through that brainwashing with the power of… platonic friendship pfft.

Doesn’t bode well for the end of this episode though does it?

Now we need to talk about the mixtape. Yes I know this has probably already been meta’d to death on tumblr. Yes I am sure some of you are sick of it (though be honest.. you aren’t really sick of it now are you? I know how long the “I love you” conversations lasted for after 12x12 aired so shut it and enjoy my meta thoughts too. :P )

Cas follows Dean back to his room (for the privacy of course – also note that he doesn’t feel he needs to explain himself to SAM) under the pretense of returning a mixtape that Dean gave him. My first though before we even GET to the subject of Dean giving Cas a mixtape in the first place, is why Cas is using the return of this very romantic gesture at all. Even with his knowledge of pop culture, I don’t think Cas realises the importance of giving someone a mixtape, hence him thinking he needed to return it in the first place. It was in no way a rejection from Cas (like he could reject Dean pfft). But Dean clarified that it was a gift anyway. Oh but can we just pause again and store this to fandom memory forever and ever?

DEAN WINCHESTER GAVE CASTIEL A MIXTAPE

And isn’t that the most beautiful, innocent, loving gesture that for these two macho manly gruff heros its almost too much to bare! Dean Winchester is such a fucking teddybear deep down I can’t quite stand it. Argh I love him so much for this moment!

So lets talk about this mixtape some more because I can’t get enough:

“Dean’s top 13 Zepp Traxx”

Except that’s not exactly what it says. Why two Xs rather than the correct spelling? Why the slight spacing between the “TRA” and the “XX”? Why, if you are spelling “Tracks” the ‘cool’ way would you not shorten it to “Trax” why two Xs unless those Xs also had a separate meaning loosly hidden in the spelling?

Basically those Xs are also ‘kisses’ and no one can tell me otherwise.

Isn’t that just a perfect mini metaphor for destiel itself though? The main text reading is that Dean has spelt the word the slang way, using the Xs as a fun way to spell the word only. Nothing suspicious here, totally platonic.

And yet everyone knows that Xs also mean kisses. Everyone.

The romantic message is hidden in the label. It isn’t totally obvious at first, but it is once you put it together with the general meaning of a mixtape.

Speaking of, for all you kiddies out there who haven’t lived in the age before CDs, ipods and MP3s, giving someone a mixtape has a HUGE meaning to it. It is also, without a doubt, always romantic.

I am sure that by the time I post this, the mixtape will have been meta’d to death on tumblr and you will all be flailing about it anyway… I know I was as soon as I first watched the episode. This is a big moment. No. Seriously. Friends don’t give friends mixtapes. People who love people and people who have major crushes on people give people mixed tapes. It is always always romantic in its meaning.

If we try to look for a platonic reading to this, perhaps Dean didn’t make this tape for Cas, perhaps its one he had lying around already (though the Xs kinda throw that reading out). Even so, it is still a mixtape that Dean made at some point and then gave to Cas. This is the canon. I just wish we could have seen the moment Dean gave it to him (probably shoved it at him with a gruff “here, you need to listen to some real music” whilst desperately trying and failing to stop himself blushing. I LOVE this and I wanna read that fanfiction.

To make this whole thing even more romantic. Dean confirms it himself. There is no denying it. “It’s a gift. You keep those” this wasn’t just something that Dean had lying around that Cas picked up and asked to borrow, it wasn’t something Dean just shoved at him and said “You need to listen to some decent music, take this” and didn’t think about it any more. Dean put thought into it because it was a gift specifically for Cas.

If only Cas had actually realised that fact. Though I will talk more about Cas’s continued unknowing rejection of Dean this episode a bit later… first this shot:

Its beautiful, and you all know me and my hand obsession in SPN. Hands have meaning. They are important. They leave a print. There is always intimacy in moments like this. The way Dean and Cas exchange touches throughout this season always brings me joy. This moment is no different.

I have decided to make a separate post about hands in this episode because I am a nerd who got super excited about all these beautiful close up hand shots that have such a massive significance. Anyway, back to the mixtape…

Ultimately, there was no plot related reason for the mixtape scene. Other than to give Cas an excuse to come find Dean… which he had anyway? To apologise and try to clear the air (and also to find the Colt) so… why the mixtape? Why even bring it into the show if not to emphasise Dean and Cas’s relationship and the romantic nature of it that is now more than heavily implied. After a previous one sided love confession how is ANYONE supposed to read their relationship as anything other than inherintly romantic?

Cas’s quiet “Oh” just infuriates me because REALLY CAS? You didn’t KNOW what that meant? Urgh. I mean, yeah okay so he never has been very good with the whole social conventions and stuff like that but still. Then Dean just goes and does something which makes me love him even more. He starts a conversation. Oh boy how he has grown. Communication is key and Dean FINALLY seems to be understanding this.

“Cas, you can’t… with everything that’s going on you can’t just go dark like that”

Interesting. Dark like Superman going darkside yeah? We are back to 6x20. We are seriously getting flashbacks to Destiel’s greatest hits in the space of a few minutes here. Also, this whole conversation is just so freaking intimate in the way it is shot, the dark moody lighting, the way both actors are speaking relatively softly compared to their usual gruff tones and just the sheer weight of emotion in Dean’s face.

Its forcing the viewer to get up close and personal with Dean’s feelings here. Forcing them to really consider how much he is hurting and therefore forcing them to ask the question WHY. Why does this make me, as a viewer, feel like I am intruding? Is this a common shot composition for friendly conversations between platonic friends?!? Um. Nope. Hence this ENTIRE SCENE SCREAMS ROMANCE. And also, sadly, betrayal.

At least we get an explanation from Cas. The thing is, we see Dean’s POV most of the time, therefore we don’t really get to understand Cas’s reasons for doing things, but this episode he does get a chance to justify his actions, and as expected, it all comes back to Dean…

“I needed to come back here with a win for you… for myself”

Because Cas has failed so much, is still suffering from depression (though it hasn’t been brought back into maintext for a while now) and is so conflicted on where he is supposed to be going nowadays. He has lost his mission, he has no riteous path, and no faith… and this episode is all about faith when you get down to it… faith and fate, destiny and hope for the future… though not from the right place (and we are now back even further – in season 5.) and Dean is desperate to get him back on track but still doesn��t really say the right things.

“We will find a better way”

“You mean we?” *gestures to the both of them

“Yes, dumbass, we.”

Dean is still having to clarify for Cas that he is part of their family and that they want him around. Cas still doesn’t get it, because even if Dean thinks he is being clear, he really isn’t. Not to someone who has struggled with their self worth, struggled with depression and feelings of total worthlessness. It will take far more than some words about the three of them to get Cas to realise just how much Dean cares. Remember folks, from Cas’s perspective, he has confessed his love and hasn’t heard it back. He didn’t a get a “I love you too” or even a “we love you too”. Just a “we ain’t leaving you behind”. Which is easy to explain away as the Winchesters not wanting people to die on their watch. The Winchesters always try to save people, meaning Cas isn’t any more special than any other random civilian who the Winchesters wouldn’t leave to die… when you think about it from Cas’s perspective, its still a bit of a kick in the teeth.  

“You, me… and Sam. We’re just better together” Again, Dean isn’t quite giving Cas what he needs? The pause, then the added “and Sam” just takes us right back to the beer run in 11x23 and Cas’s dissapointment, It becomes easy to understand Cas’s motivations when you look at it from a destiel perspective and consider that he has been rejected and continuously referred to as a third wheel to the brother dynamic. In Cas’s mind, Dean doesn’t return his feelings, and by not understanding the implications of a mixtape as a gift, nor the extent to which Dean would go to forgive him, Cas continues down his path of destruction and takes the Colt. They may be communication, but they aren’t really communicating. Its such a classic romance trope and I’m pulling my hair out STILL over these two.

“Lets go Team Free Will”. Could the callbacks to previous seasons be any more obvious? Now we really are in season 5 and in the past 5 minutes have travelled back through the greatest hits of destiel. From Purgatory guilt, Season 6 betrayal and now season 5 loss of faith. These are the major themes of 12x19. Cas is stuck in a cycle of self destruction. Where will this end for him?  

The next scene with Dean and Sam discussing Sam’s theories and the grace extraction as a potential solution just proves how far they have come. Its no longer “how do we kill the thing” but “how do we stop the thing from being evil without resorting to violence?” I call this the “Amara Effect” and I am very happy about this. Anyway, what I really wanna talk about here is just how happy Dean was to finally have a solution and how his FIRST THOUGHT was “I’ll get Cas”. Like he just wanted Cas to be there to work with them on this together. He really did mean what he said to Cas in his room. My heart breaks for him when he realises Cas is gone.

However can we please just take a moment to be so fucking thankful that FINALLY IT IS CANON THAT CAS HAS A ROOM IN THE BUNKER!!

This is CAS’s ROOM! CASTIEL HAS A ROOM AT THE BUNKER. Number 15 to be exact. 3 doors down from Dean. (yes I know this was also the number of the room used by Mary apparantly earlier on in this season but clearly Cas stays there because why else would Dean have gone to this random room to look for him and not the kitchen or the archives hmm?)

LOOK AT THE HEARTBREAK ON HIS FACE WHEN HE REALISES CAS IS GONE AGAIN

Oh Dean. It is such a common trope though. Just when he thinks he has the person he loves back by his side again, they are gone. We really are back to season 8 here with Cas being the one rejecting Dean. (please lets not forget that the extent of the rejection for the past three seasons has been on Dean with Cas holding the torch for destiel and it is only now that we are finally experiencing the brunt of the shift back to Dean.) This episode is by FAR the most romantic we have had so far in terms of destiel in the past FOUR seasons. The only episodes that really surpass it are 6x20 and 8x17 (though 12x10 is a close contender). This is being written, and shot as a romance and my gosh I love it. Poor Dean.

THEN we get further justification for Cas’s actions. I know that this episode hasn’t really done him any favours for painting him as a bit of a villain and I know that the Cas haters will have a field day with his treatment of the Winchesters, but we are getting solid explanations for his actions here, and they all point back to Cas’s love for the Winchesters, his love for Dean…

“I am doing this for the Winchesters. I stole the Colt to keep them out of this mission”

“I will kill this girl, so that Sam and Dean won’t have to.”

Because that really is love, Cas would do the dirty work to spare Sam and Dean the pain of having to do something that could traumatise them further. Cas is doing this so that they won’t have to suffer that. He is doing it to protect them, because he loves them. I swear to god if I see a single post from a cas hater trying to paint him as a villain who doesn’t care I will be all over it. They have NOTHING to back up their arguments.

It is of course, the same tune that Cas is singing again and again. This is the reason behind ALL of his motivations. Its always about the Winchesters. Its not about his reputation, glory, praise, its not even about saving the world. Its about sparing Sam and Dean from doing something horrible. He just wants them to have the peace and freedom they taught him was so important back in freaking season FOUR. I won’t be holding his decisions in this episode against him, because I think Dabb has a very clear idea of where Cas is going with his story arc, and its all about emphasising what is truly important to him, what Cas basically lives for now. Yeah, he needed the win. He needs to put a stop to something that could potentially destroy the world, but his true reasons for doing it are spelt out in this episode.

Coming back to Sam and Dean, the conversation about the Colt:

“How did Cas even get the Colt out of the safe in the first place?”

“…”

“Dean, you put the colt back in the safe right? Dean?”

“… it was under my pillow… I like to keep it close.”

“He came into my room and he played me.”

“He played us both.”

What I love about this exchange, is that until this moment we don’t know where Cas got the Colt from. He could have just broken into the safe, or he could have got it from where Dean previously kept it under the table in the library. But they chose to have him steal it from under Dean’s pillow. Once again there is added intimacy to a scene where really, the intimacy is unecessary for the plot. When you start to put together all the choices that the writer and director made for this episode, it becomes really difficult to see it from a persective that doesn’t involve Destiel.

Yes, we know in the previous scene that Dean left Cas alone in his room, but the way Dean acts when he owns up to Sam that it was stolen from under his pillow makes it sound like it WASN’T innocent. “Cas came into my room and distracted me and manipulated me enough to find and steal the colt from under my pillow.” It just stinks of sexual subtext and it makes the betrayal that much worse. As I said before, this is 6x20 all over again. But this time its even MORE personal BECAUSE of everything they have been through since then and just how much they have admitted to each other including a bloody love confession and a mixtape. The theft from under the pillow of all places only adds a sexual layer to that heap of intimate subtext. Am I saying they had sex? No. I am not saying this. What I am saying is that having Cas steal the Colt from under Dean’s pillow rather than from a safe or from another safe place adds a layer of intimacy that was not previously necessary. It makes the theft a bigger violation of Dean’s trust than stealing it from the safe, it makes the betrayal a lovers betrayal rather than the betrayal of a friend in the subtext. (I’m not sure if I’m explaining this well, but hopefully you all get the general idea).

Basically, it is another point to add to the list of things in this episode that show that Dean and Cas’s relationship is romantic rather than platonic at this stage (even if textually it isn’t… its how they both act and feel around each other and emphasises how their feelings for each other are NOT PLATONIC.)

As always, at this stage, if you are still struggling to see a destiel reading, consider the same scene but with Sam rather than Dean. Would it work the same way? Have the same impact? How about instead, just considering WHY this never happens to Sam? Why Dean gets the emotional close up with the sweeping string music whilst staring longlingly into Castiel’s empty bedroom and not Sam. Why its Dean that runs off to get Cas, why its Dean’s pillow that Cas stole the Colt from under, why its Dean that gave him the mixtape, and not Sam.

Then we get shots like THIS:

Which lets be honest, are oozing with sexual tension. I was discussing with @godshipsit about how when I first watched this scene, my heart kinda skipped a beat and I was stunned for a second into thinking “this is how they will go canon” (not in this exact scene in this episode of course, but it will be like this when it finally happens. Because I can picture this shot, I can picture the frustration between them and Dean just deciding enough is enough and taking that final step forward and just kissing his dumbass angel so that he finally gets it) The framing of the shot again is beautifully done, the circle around them, framing them and also making the viewer feel like once again they are spying on them. Yes Dean is angry, but Cas is letting him manhandle him up against a wall. Remember he is an angel, he could easily stand his ground, but he doesn’t. He lets Dean get out his frustration here. Lets Dean be threatening. Notice how Sam doesn’t ever react in such a way. Because its not really how friends react is it?

Okay so Dean and Cas have a volatile relationship, that sometimes leads to moments like this which could be viewed as violent or even dare I say ‘abusive’ and gosh wouldn’t the anti’s have a field day with that. But think about romantic tropes for a second, the old hollywood types. Its never friends that get angry and have moments like this that are shot in such a way, but lovers? Having lovers tiffs? Yeah, this is common. The fighting, the pinning against a wall, the staring into each others eyes trying to stand their ground? Its classic sexual tension. Dean doesn’t hurt Cas in this scene remember. Cas doesn’t hurt Dean either. Not physically. The only reason that Cas hurts Dean emotionally is because he doesn’t realise how much Dean cares about him. He knows he is betraying his friends, he knows he is doing wrong in terms of a friendship but views his actions as justified to keep them safe. From a romantic perspective Cas has not yet grasped just how much he is emotionally hurting Dean at this point – because Dean hasn’t yet given him reason to believe he is hurting him this much – though he makes it pretty obvious from the audiences perspective.

Then if we hadn’t already had it spelled out to us again Cas once again gives us his reasons:

“I wanted to keep you out of this, I was trying to keep you safe”

“this is my responsibility”

The writers are constantly trying to remind the audience that Cas’s reasons are always about the Winchesters. There isn’t a selfish bone in his body. He may be jepardising his relationship with them, but to him the end justifies the means. Cas wants the Winchesters kept safe, so his betrayal makes sense to him. Like I have said before. It is season 6 all over again. I just hope it ends differently.

I have to give Dean major kudos here though for being the most understanding boyfriend on the planet, because even after Kelly and Cas steal his beloved Impala he STILL is able to stick up for Cas

“He’s so desperate for a win now he can’t even see straight”

In case the viewers weren’t aware already that Cas is SO NOT THE BAD GUY HERE, Dean spells it out for us in his own words. Yeah, he’s pissed, but he is still able to see Cas’s POV, he gets it, he still cares, still wants to be there for him. I am sure there is some awesome symbolic meaning behind him fixing Cas’s truck up for him as well. If the way Dean fixing up the Impala is supposed to symbolise him healing his own soul, fixing up Cas’s truck has got to also symbolise him fixing Cas. Dean will be there for Cas when he comes back, like he always does.

Dean has come so far this season. His development, his ability to see other peoples POV, his distaste for lies and his slow deconstruction of his ‘performing Dean’ mask. I just adore how far Dean has come, and I can’t wait to see more of this. Dean is being forgiving, he is understanding, he is communicating and I think it is wonderful, really. Not just for destiel, but for his own health and state of mind, and for all the other characters he interacts with.

Moving past the epic finale with baby lucifer taking control of Cas to destroy Dagon, I need to talk about this scene:

Because yeah, something is wrong with Cas, but he was still himself enough to show this level of care and consideration to Dean. The gentle “you’re hurt” and this gorgeous and intimate (again the intimacy in the shots this episode has me majorly fangirling at Amanda Tappin’s excellent direction) caress as he heals him. Dean doesn’t get a standard tap on the forehead or glowy hand hovering a few inches above an injury. Nope. Dean gets gentle, intimate caresses as he is healed. Because Dean is and always will be special to Cas.

Dean won’t let Cas leave, even after everything Cas has done this episode, he still worries about him and argues to stay with him

“Whatever that thing did to you we’re not just gonna let you walk away” Dean knows that Cas isn’t right, he knows that he can’t leave him now. Dean has been down this road before, and that whole speech about faith and the baby well, it just brought back major 8x17 feels to be honest. It sounded like Cas talking about the angel tablet all over again. That was after the brainwashing was broken remember? More on that in a bit.

Basically, this episode was full of destiel moment and I am a big heap of emotional mess thanks to it. Nevertheless, there is more to talk about than just the glorious destieliciousness of this episode (yes that is totally a word).

Therefore, let’s consider what we learned about:

Lucifer’s Baby, Faith and the Future

The fact that this episode started out so darkly, immediately screamed to me that it was not going to end well either, or that any of this was going to end well. Kelly was so very lost to the point that she killed herself. A striking visual for the viewer, and one that is all too common in TV and film nowadays. Kelly couldn’t cope with what her baby would become, and so resorted to taking her own life and the life of the baby instead.

Honestly this is the first episode that I have actually liked Kelly’s character. It feels like the first time she has had any real depth and personality (which is fitting since its also the first time she has been written by a writer other than the terrible duo).

The baby saves her though of course, since it is half angel and therefore has the power of grace to heal her. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who understands angels but Kelly treats it as a miracle. She has a change of heart and suddenly we are on the “faith” path.

I think that Cas was probably always going to bond with Kelly after this scene. It may still only be buried in the subtext, but we have had enough call backs to season 8 this episode to make us remember that very heart breaking moment in 8x08 when Cas admitted to Dean that he might kill himself. Cas has been suicidal in the past. With everything he has been through, it’s no wonder he couldn’t go through with killing Kelly.

Whilst I don’t think that the baby will be quite the great evil that Dagon thinks it will be, I have no doubt in my mind that it has Lucifer-like tendencies to manipulate and that at this point its main concern is its own survival. I don’t think it is inherently evil, but still:

“Every sad weak human, every tight ass angel, every snivelling demon, they’ll all be consumed.”

Doesn’t this all seem very Amara-like to you? Because honestly the use of the word ‘consumed’ kinda throws big Amara signs my way. But surely not because we did this story last season. (see this is why the Lucifer baby story annoys me). Anyway, the stories are really similar. The Angels all want this baby dead, so they go to great lengths to kill it, only Cas can’t do it because hes’ Cas and he may talk a big game but killing innocents hasn’t been his thing since well… Jesse… and that is yet another time they basically did this freaking story.

As I mentioned though, Kelly gets through to Cas because of their similar experiences with desiring suicide and feeling hopeless. They are both mirrored this episode as feeling lost and hopeless and therefore vulnerable and easy to manipulate. Isn’t that always the way the devil gets to you? Isn’t that exactly what Lucifer did to Cas last year?

The whole conversation about faith and destiny is very season 5 and is very intentional in an episode that has already used the phrase “team free will” to refer to Sam, Dean and Cas. Other things in this episode that seem kinda pointless on the surface but must have some deeper meaning include the death of Joshua. Why bring him back for all of one episode only to kill him like that? Unless of course he was simply there to remind the viewer of something? Just like the mentioning of “team free will” even though honestly why Dean would say such a thing to Cas who was unconscious the first time he said it? This isn’t just fanservice. This is to take the viewer right back to season 5 and the BIG theme of that season. Free Will, Freedom and Choice are far more important than destiny and fate, and that faith can come from all kinds of different sources.

The last episode where we met Joshua was Dark Side of the Moon. The episode where Castiel lost his faith. Since then, Castiel has had only one real source of faith: the Winchesters. Yes he has been lost and low and broken over the years but he has always had one overall believe, and that is the Winchesters and what they do. In the same episode where we see a massive increase in Destiel subtext and Pining!Dean we  also see the return of Joshua for all of two seconds and Dean trying so hard to get through to Cas, to convince him that the three of them work best together, but Cas still doesn’t get it, doesn’t see it, because Dean hasn’t given him the real reasons, hasn’t spelled it out for him the way Cas did to Dean in 12x12. There has been no obvious love confession from Dean. So Cas is still lost, still wondering, still without a guiding light to bring him home.

Hence he is an easy target for the creepy baby to come and take him as its personal protector. By the end of the episode, Castiel is not our Cas. Not the Cas that chooses the Winchesters anyway. Not the Cas that chooses love over all else. This is a Cas who is reminiscent of Cas when he held the angel tablet and it spoke to his angel coding and told him to keep it safe at all costs. This isn’t brainwashing as such, not the way Naomi brainwashed him, or Rowena cast a spell on him, or Lucifer possessed him. This is a Cas that is vulnerable and in desperate need of a mission to keep him preoccupied to stop him from feeling utterly worthless because he couldn’t bring Dean a “win”. That baby latched on to those feelings, and convinced Cas that he was the best chance of a better future.

The fact that both Kelly and Cas had these yellow eyes is clear proof that this is NOT GOOD. Okay so they still have their pupils in tact unlike the Princes of Hell, but it is still yellow and it still came with that unsettling sound effect that was always associated with Azazel (and then brought back for Ramiel). The baby may not be “evil” in the literal sense, but it is not a good thing. It will not be born and be the “savior”.

Castiel and faith do not go together. When you give Castiel faith in anything that isn’t a Winchester, well, its just not done. This won’t be good. Especially when the words “The Future” were heard over this shot:

Isn’t that ominous. Castiel may have come back to his senses enough to gently heal Dean’s injury (proving that our real Cas is still in there somewhere – always thinking of Dean when he is hurt) but real Cas would NOT just leave Dean and Sam lying on the ground vulnerable outside the ENTRANCE TO HEAVEN AND ALL THOSE ANGELS THAT HATE THEM. WHAT THE FUCK? Yeah so not good basically.

Whatever the future that the baby showed Cas was, it seemed to please him. Now, since it showed Kelly the real future that we saw in this episode then it must have been somewhat real, it also had to be something that was enough motivation to give Cas his faith back… but what could that possibly be? A world without SPN creatures? A world in which Sam and Dean have the peace they deserve? Safety? A life outside of hunting? What else could possibly motivate Cas to go along with this babies ‘plan’ if not something to help the Winchesters?

I’m still unconvinced that this will be anything but bad and that Castiel has been shown a lie. Either that, or this is how they tie the whole thing into the BMOL plot where they want to get rid of all spn creatures as well… even though Sam and Dean are also against them (or will be once they realise the extent of their crazy fascism).

All I can hope is that Dabb knows where he is going with this. The emotional plot seems to be far stronger than the actual story line this year. Which is great in one way, but I still feel we are lacking structure, and I cannot see how this is gonna end. I kinda want to believe that Dabb has decided to let Cas get sort of brainwashed again just so he can have another go at the Crypt Scene (and get it RIGHT this time) because really what else is gonna break Cas out of this weird kind of semi-controlled state? Other than Dean’s love? Why else would they ramp up the subtext to 11 in the same episode that Cas loses his own free will if not to prove to us that Dean will yet again be the key to his freedom?

Overall

The Destiel was great, the plot kinda meh, I have no idea where this baby plot is going and if we get a repeat of season 11s baby Amara plot I’ll be pissed. If Lucifer doesn’t die in the finale I’ll be pissed (I want Cas to hold him down whilst Sam kills him). Fingers crossed for a Crypt Scene but with a canon confession of love from Dean far greater than 8x17s “I need you”. After all, he has been shedding so much of his performance mask, trying so hard to be honest, to accept other people into his life… he is opening himself to vulnerability and accepting that it is okay to do – even when those people hurt him… Dean is learning to be emotionally healthy and really, this route can only end in him doing the one thing he has always struggled to do. The return of his mother this season has only emphasised this. Bearing in mind she is the only person he has ever said the words to before. Could we be on track to getting a confession of love from Dean to Cas? Isn’t it about time? After this episode, I actually think it’s a possibility.

I hate that Cas is not himself again. It breaks my heart. I imagine a lot of people see this as a regression, and I am trying not to. He needs to learn that there are other ways. The difference is that now Dean knows the reasons why Cas is like this. Cas did use his words to explain his reasons quite clearly, so Dean understood. Dean just needs to figure out the key to getting Cas to see things from his POV.

This episode had many great points in it. Obviously the destiel was glorious. The camera work and framing and composition and direction were also fantastic. I hope Amanda comes back and directs again. The one word I will use to describe this episode is “intimate”. Because half the time I felt like I was watching very private moments between characters and I don’t usually feel that way. It was really well put together. I do hope it all comes together by season end, though I am still not too sure. Either way, I liked this episode, even with the baby plot and Lucifer turning up in the middle there. It was satisfying. I’ll give it a 8/10 for how it made me feel after my first watch.