#who loves Billy but it has been drilled into him that it’s wrong

[kining-the-evil]

Thinking about the fact that the fandom usually Headcanons Billy as being the one with repressed his homosexuality and has serious homophobic tendencies when Stu’s family is Roman Catholic(they have photos of the pope and religious statues throughout the house). So stu would likely have a lot of religious guilt about his sexuality just because of how he was raised

[norrisainz33]

Cover girl || LS2

☆ summary: logan’s dating a rather famous singer who isn’t your typical wag

☆ pairing: logan sargeant x reader

☆ fc & warnings: billie eilish and suggestive with mild haters. you are responsible for the content you consume

☆ requested: yes!! i’m sorry this has taken so long. thank you for requesting 🫶🏻

ﾟ. ✿ ୨❤︎୧⠀✿ . ﾟ

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ynuser: life’s been real good recently

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user1: LOGAN SPOTTED

user2: mother is mothering so hard

user3: still gutted that she’s dating that man

user4: and i’m gutted he’s dating her 🤢

user3: nah i know you didn’t disrespect her like that

yourbff: give me my hat back!!!!

ynuser: no :) it’s mine now! hope this helps

ynupdates: new music when?!

logansargeant: my baby girl 🤤

ynuser: my baby boy

user4: logan blink twice if you need help

user3: YOU need help user4

user5: i was at that show!! you slayed so hard, i sobbed my eyes out

user6: no it was literally everything i love her. did you see someone who looked like logan dancing around in the vip section or was it just me

user5: NO I SAW HIM TOO BUT I WASNT SURE

user6: ugh i love them

logansargeant has posted to his story

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ynuser: omg what a great story logan!

logansargeant: yea i wonder who posted it 🙄

ynuser: wrong answer

logansargeant: best content i’ve ever posted 😍😍😍 prettiest girl in the whole wide world 🤤🤤🤤🤤

ynuser: better 😘

user99: y/n/n not dressing like a teenage boy challenge failed

lilymhe: y/n!!!!!!!!! 🤍🤍🤍🤍

logansargeant: lilllyyyyyyy!!!!! - y/n/n

ynupdates: our girl 🫶🏻

alex_albon: when u coming to a race fr

logansargeant: the second im allowed to physically fight will**ms - y/n/n

alex_albon: whelp fair enough… guess i’m not seein ya

logansargeant: are you guys not coming to my show in milan anymore?! -y/n

alex_albon: we are im just being dramatic

user20: how logan bagged this baddie…. i will never know

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logansargeant: another race weekend in the books! p.s swipe for a surprise

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user22: solid race weekend logie bear

user2: sargenation loves you so very much logan, i hope you know that

ynuser: he does bb 🫶🏻

user2: ogmgogmogkgogmgbakfg YAY

ynuser: vroom vroom 🤤

logansargeant: let’s ride 😏

user20: charli mentioned 🫨

user43: y/n i’m begging you to make an appearance in the paddock

user34: the paddock could never handle the brilliance of y/n plus i think she’d have words with j****

user43: and i’m absolutely begging her to tell the lot of them off 😭😫

oscarpiastri: solid surprise! thanks for sharing!

logansargeant: 🤔

ynuser: osc are you still mad at me for taking your girl out on a date?

oscarpiastri: 🙄 no

user18: 🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅

user52: so close to loints! we are proud of you logan

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ynuser: surprise! i’m on the cover of vogue and my new album comes out in exactly 1 month from today 🤍

view all 999 comments

user22: i am looking 🫣 respectfully

user54: holy moly i knew she was a baddy but WOW

lilyzneimer: hottest vogue cover i’ve ever seen

ynuser: it’d be hotter if you were on it

user33: i am better than no man

user55: logan sergeant you lucky lucky lucky man

sabrinacarpenter: i think im in love with you

ynuser: 🤭 don’t make me blush

logansargeant: my girl is gorgeous god damn

ynuser: your girl 🤍

logansargeant: i cant wait for everyone to hear your new music baby

ynupdates: this is not a drill !!! i repeat this is not a drill!!! we are getting new music!

user54: and you been hidin allat????

erling.haaland: 😍

user66: now what in the world are you doing here erling

user55: the duality of this woman is insane

logansargeant has posted to their story

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lilymhe: yes

lilyzneimer: yes

yourbff: yes

iamrebeccad: yes

user23: my god yes wtf

user85: yea 😔

alex_albon: MY EYES 😭

logansargeant: stop looking at my girlfriend!!!

alex_albon: mate you were the one who posted it

logansargeant: blah blah blah

user38: damn she is eating this up

ynupdates: i’m not sure if i want to be her or you more but yes i am jealous

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ynuser: award szn with my best friend 🤍

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user77: i feel like im interrupting something with that second pic

user66: that dress is absolutely gorgeous

lilymhe: very demure, very cutesy, very mindful

ynuser: you get me

logansargeant: black looks good on you but i look better 😏

ynuser: you know it 😍

alex_albon: get a room 😭

ynupdates: mother you amaze me. the body is tea

troyesivan: you are my idol

ynuser: stop it bb you’re mine

user55: serving BODY

julianalvarez: hermosa

user88: ok ms girl is in her serving body era i see

user99: i love you both so dearly

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logansargeant: summer break vibes

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user87: mr americana

user66: forever jealous about how logan gets to see a different side of y/n than all of us

kyle_kirkwood: hot boy summer

logansargeant: you know it

alex_albon: why aren’t you texting me back

logansargeant: man i texted you back a couple days ago

user43: logan sargeant the man that you are

user68: loints incoming , mans is well rested and happy

ynuser: my favorite frat boy

logansargeant: 😉

user98: logan being happy is all that i ever wanted

ynupdates: thanks for the y/n content logan!! you will forever be my favorite vroom vroom guy

user46: RAHHHHHH. so excited for you to race again after summer break!!

ynuser has added to their story

view all story replies

user2: thank you for the sign of life y/n

user87: we miss him so much already

user27: where he goes we go

kyle_kirkwood: i hope you both join us in milwaukee this weekend 🫶🏻

alex_albon: i love you both no matter what

user37: i’m glad he’s got you

lilyzneimer: sending lots of love my dear

ynupdates: we love you logan. y/nnation is behind you every step of the way and is riding at dawn to take down will**ms

oscarpiastri: take care of him

user65: sargenation stands by logan no matter what

ﾟ. ✿ ୨❤︎୧⠀✿ . ﾟ

a/n: thanks for reading!! i’ve been struggling with writers block and have lost steam but will do my best to keep getting through the requests!! also i am gutted for logan , i miss him already

ﾟ. ✿ ୨❤︎୧⠀✿ . ﾟ

disclaimer: pictures are not mine and everything i write is fiction

© norrisainz33 || please do not rewrite, translate, or copy any of my works posted here on to any other platform

[storiesofsvu2-0]

l & o thursday

Okay…. Happy Thursday. Y’all know the drill.

Also yay city tv for airing these in the wrong order as per usual… I don’t know how much of a 2 parter svu and oc are but we’re getting oc first here…

Ah. Yes. Okay. They are completely and totally related and im getting part 2 first. Love that. Why is citytv like this?

Are we just jumping into this without addressing the Kathy hallucination or whatever that was? Seriously?

Ah! Okay, here we go. Thank you.

Ugh god. Elliot just get over your manchild bullshit already. im sick of it

Elliot reacting like that over Oscar papa… homeboy clearly doesn’t know about William lewis…

k… I lowkey trust bell talking with the perp but like… her lawyer is there, she’s lawyered up… any ada on svu would be having a field day right now… like… these are two cops. They can’t be making deals. Just cause they say they wont press charges or whatever the da might still have to…

man… I adore Ayanna so fucking much. I also love how little she holds back facial expressions, like… same girl… same…

bruh… if you thought this was a JOKE why would you put down FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS?!

Bobby and his sandwich LOOOLL.

“it’s attempted murder not the express checkout line.” Yup. Bell has the best one liners.

This episode is giving major criminal minds vibes. And then amanda is going to be brought in as a “profiler” like… cmon… (also I don’t even wanna talk about that… like…her being a professor is already ridiculous. But to also be a profiler? Like… sure she’s smart and has a forensics degree but she aint that smart…she would be a terrible profiler…)

They’re STILL making fast and furious movies?! Jfc.

“carisi can’t keep his mouth shut” and ��she left me a message” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Like, those two were BESTIES, and you’re telling me they wouldn’t actually keep in touch?! Esp over something like this? Like noah, billie and jessie had play dates all the time, they hungout together, carisi still works with liv. This is so fucking dumb. Like… yes I get it, if you leave a job you start another one and might not keep up with the people you used to from the previous ones, but the ones who really mean something keep in touch. This is something that drives me INSANE about tv shows cause a cast member will leave and it’s as if the characters will NEVER see each other again. I get it, sometimes the actors can’t come back or don’t want to, but like… a mention here or there, a sense of reality?? It’s no wonder Liv is always alone and mopey over shit. Life is a two way street ma’am, if you keep shutting out people who “leave” you then guess what? You’re not gonna have anyone left! (still don’t condone Elliot’s behaviour but like… we don’t’ care about him here)

Mothership:

“you’re bleeding.” “yeah… bullets’ll do that to you” *proceeds to collapse*

So naturally I was not paying that much attention, but why tf did they only charge him with one count of murder? He should have also been charged with attempted murder of the other girl and attempted murder/assault of a police officer?

Anyway. Now it’s svu time. Bring me my bebes.

Jesus that’s fucking terrifying. Could you imagine coming across that on a run?! Jesus.

Carisi was so friggin cute when he spilt the beans to liv, fucking adorable.

I got distracted making gifs. Oops.

Loving muncy and churlish partnered up, their banter and shit is good, I accept

Liv being all “doesn’t everyone in staten island know each other” and carisi pulling her chain is hilarious

Omg these girls are both like fucking 5 foot nothing and 90lbs and elias is a giant this is not gonna end well…

Thank god churlish kept the gun on him, smart girl.

Okay I think some of this is less intriguing to me because ive already seen OC

Oh god..joe is yelling… im turned on…

They literally put muncy in a plaid shirt that has the bisexual flag colours on it… COME ON.

HOLY SHIT. Christ. I KNEW SOMETHING LIKE THAT WAS COMING. Muncy needs a hug, and probably some therapy…

I absolutely do not want Velasco and muncy together. That being said. I would adore muncy and churlish or Velasco and churlish.. but I cant decide which one I like more…

Welp, that’s it for tonight. Maybe see you next week.

[chronic-boogara]

Freak

lana del ray has blessed me yet again with fic inspo. the way this man lives in my head rent mf free is actually insane at this point. i need medical help<3 and as always reader is the age of consent

billy knows how bad stu wants to see y/n naked and decides the best way to deal with that information is to film a sex tape.

“gimme a big smile baby girl-shit stu is going to lose his mind over this. sick little fuck rag has been beggin to see ya naked”.

y/n grinned up at the phone camera as she stripped out of her sleep clothes and let them fall to the floor. it was odd how comfortable she felt doing something so risqué.

“yeah there you go. good fucking girl”. billy grinned, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “come ere , kneel for me”.

she followed his directions without an ounce of hesitation. being in control always drove him wild

“you know the drill don’t ya sweetheart”?

“yes billy”she reached for his ever hardening cock but he grabbed her wrist

“yes who”?

realizing her mistake she answered quickly. “yes daddy”.

he released her wrist from his iron grip and allowed her to carry on. he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t enjoying this to the fullest extent. showing off his gorgeous step daughter to his best friend. he knew how wrong it was, he was more than aware. she was so young only 20 years of age , but god was she gorgeous.

billy didn’t have much time to think about his actions before he felt y/n’s tongue on the tip of his cock.

“oh ? extra eager today aren’t we”. he said playfully, gazing at her with love in his eyes. “such a good little girl, you’re the best step daughter i ever could have asked for”.

[slashermom]

That childhood friend ask had my heart, so how would it be with the other slashers? Like a friend Michael made at Smith’s Grove, a camper that stood up for Jason before he was thrown in the lake, those are just a couple of ideas. I’d love to see what you could come up with����(just to shorten the list, it’s still kinda long, but they’re soooo cute Billy Loomis and Stu (separate) Brahms, Bubba, Thomas, Jason, Michael, and Norman deserves some love too) thank you so much❤️ I adore your writing btw

You already know the drill. Nothing spooky just big and didn’t wanna clog the feed. Enjoy!

Michael was only a boy when he entered what would become his personal hell.

He wasn’t really allowed too much time with other children in the ward but he did get some supervised recreational time a few times a week.

Which is where your story begins.

You never really told Michael why you were there but he could tell you didn’t want to be there any more than he did.

You typically kept to yourself but seemed kind to anyone who approached you. Even though you were nice enough you were quite reserved, so you can imagine the surprise he got when you came to him.

Michael wasn’t a big talker even back then but you talked enough for the both of you.

Michael wanted nothing to do with you in the beginning. I mean absolutely nothing to do with you but slowly you began to grow on him - a part of his routine.

Every once and a while he would mumble a one-word answer and make your whole day.

But as he grew older those treats grew few and far between. But you didn’t seem to mind.

Dr. Loomis definitely studied your interactions with Michael and tried to use it to figure out more about the young boy.

Michael even began to enjoy tolerate your company. But just as things started to blossom between you two - you pulled away.

“I’m going home Michael.”

You’re what? Did he hear you correctly? No. You couldn’t go home. You couldn’t just leave him here.

“This is my address... Once you get out you’re more than welcome to come visit anytime you like. You always have a place with me, Michael. “

You slid a small piece of paper across the table and then went to go reach out to put a hand over his but he yanked his hand away like he had been shocked.

You begged him not to be mad. But he was livid. How dare you leave just when he was about to let you in? When he did let you in.

Michael didn’t say a word but his eyes spoke volumes and you left feeling sick that you managed to leave and he didn’t.

Quite some time would pass before you two saw each other again.

But bet your ass one of the first things Michael did when he escaped was locate your residence.

He had every intention of watching the life drain out of your eyes and being done with you. Forget you as you forgot him.

But as he watched you, he remembered how much he missed you. Michael didn’t think there was anything to miss but boy was he wrong.

He noticed how you kept some of the routine Smiths Grove lays out for its patients.

You can take the kid out of the sanatorium but you can’t take the sanatorium out of the kid, huh?

These quirks that made you so recognizable in the sea of grey at Smith’s Grove. Things that grew on him like moss and sunk their claws in deep.

He watched you turn on the news and see the report on his escape. You stared a the screen with an unreadable gaze before shaking your head and turning to go to the kitchen.

Not before bumping into the Shape.

Taking in everything that the young boy had become, not that you could really see much with the mask and jumpsuit but he definitely had changed a bit since you had last seen each other.

“Michael.”

He knew what he should do, what he had to do, but he couldn’t seem to make himself move. Michael could only stare at you intensely and catalog your features.

Michael didn’t react when you slowly reached out and looped your fingers into his. Ignoring how the other hand was white-knuckling a kitchen knife that you suspected was taken out of your kitchen.

He only felt your warmth.

“I told you that you always had a place with me.”

And with that his mind was made.

Jason didn’t have any friends. Period.

He wasn’t expecting to find one at a summer camp he really wasn’t interested in being at in the first place.

You two never really played together per se but definitely acknowledged each other’s existence.

Always giving him a wave or a smile in the dining hall or across the field.

You even sat down next to him during downtime between activities and tried to strike up a conversation. He wanted to talk to you, he really did, but it was just a little hard for him.

Jason was working on putting something together for you to show his appreciation and willingness to be your friend.

Unfortunately, he never got to give it to you.

He remembers you running towards the end of the dock where he was about to be thrown into the water

“Stop! What are you doing?!”

The other kids laughed and explained they were just gonna dunk him.

“He hasn’t done anything wrong! Just leave him alone! You’re gonna get in trouble if you do this.”

As hard as you tried they still threw him into the water and scattered and as fast as you ran for help Jason still drowned.

You never forgave yourself for it.

Which is how you ended up back at Camp Crystal Lake as an adult.

Feeling guilty and some way responsible for his drowning, you returned to the summer camp in hopes to be the best camp counselor and somehow make up for the past.

It was an accident. You told yourself.

But you could never get the look of Mrs. Voorhees’ face out of your head. Poor woman.

Well, those plans were abruptly put on the back burner when your fellow counselors began being murdered left and right.

You didn’t know who was violently attacking everyone only that he was big, scary, and was wearing a hockey mask. That was more than enough for you to get the hell out of dodge.

Jason had managed to corner you into one of the old bunkhouses when he faltered just for a second.

Wait.

You looked familiar... Where had he seen you before?

“Y/N! Where are you? We need to go now!” The voice of one of your peers called from outside.

Y/N. That Y/N?

He flashed his gaze back down to your form across the hallway and seemed to come to the conclusion that it was, in fact, the same kid who tried to save him.

Each step you took back, he took one forward. You continued this dance until you were practically pushed up against the wall of the cabin.

Frantically looking for an escape or weapon you missed him reaching into his pocket and pulling out a piece of old construction paper.

His large hand held it out to your shaking form and waited for you to take it. Well, if you’re gonna die might as well see what the paper has to say.

It was old, wrinkled, and water damaged but still cared for in a way. You carefully unfolded the paper and felt your heart jump into the throat.

It was covered in colorful leaf rubbings and had flowers and pine needles taped all over surrounding a messy sentence in the middle that read:

‘My name is Jason. Do you want to be my friend?’

Billy was a little prick as a kid.

So not much has changed.

His anger always got the best of him and he had to always be king of the playground.

It wasn’t until you pushed him off the top of the jungle gym for messing with one of your friends that he really acknowledged you.

The rest is history.

You two were always picking on and chasing each other around the town.

That is until Billy formed his love for movies.

Always wanting to show you this new movie he got his hands on and get your opinion. He would watch your reaction and smile, especially if it was a scary movie.

You: That was kinda lame

Billy: Yeah... *flashback to last night when he was hugging his pillow and chewing on his fingernail* Totally!

Billy actually spent a lot of time with you or at your house.

He didn’t like being home.

His folks were always arguing or bossing him around and he wasn’t about that.

Billy would always brush it off when you asked if he was alright but it mattered a lot to him actually.

But he would sooner punch you in the gut before even hinting at the idea that he might be grateful for you.

He began to wish he told you more often than he did when you broke the news that you would be moving.

Billy was angry.

Not at you, he knew it wasn’t your fault.

He was angry at life for taking away what was supposed to be his rock. He didn’t have much and he didn’t need much but without you, what was the point?

But per usual, Billy’s anger got the better of him and he took it out on you. Claiming he didn’t give a damn where you went.

And that’s how things ended.

With Billy angry and you in new town.

Billy hated the way things ended and wished he could apologize but he wouldn’t even know where to find you. That is until he heard a new student had arrived at Woodsboro High.

He heard your name in a few different people's mouths but had failed to actually see you. He was beginning to think there was another person who just shared your name.

But as he came out of third period he just happened to look to his left down the hallway and find just the person he was looking for.

There you were. All grown up and still looking like a hurricane.

A smirk creeping on to his face as you met his gaze. It didn’t take you long to make your way over to him.

“Hey, jackass. You miss me?” It was meant to have more of a punch but he could see the fondness behind your eyes and words.

“You know it.”

Stu has been the class clown his entire life.

Which is actually how you two bumped into each other.

He was always up to some shenanigan or making things as difficult as possible for the poor teacher.

You two officially met each other when you were sent down to the office for something you couldn’t remember even if you tried and he was sitting outside the main office waiting to be called in.

Plopping down next to him and saying how you thought all his little tricks were pretty funny. But you also gave him some tips on how he could improve.

You began trading ideas back and forth, laughing about different things and exchanging stories.

From that day forward you were two peas in a pod.

Raising hell and having fun while doing it. Never a dull moment with you guys in the room.

It got to the point where you had to separated in class.

Which actually ended backfiring on the poor teachers.

Because this meant you guys had to resort to glances from across the room. You were practically able to read each other’s minds with just eye movements and facial expressions.

They basically just helped evolve your friendship to the next level of fuckery.

But you also shared some more tender moments.

Stu used to always confide in you. Expressing his frustrations about always having to act a certain way. It really got under his skin that nobody saw him.

When you told him you understood and that you saw him for who he really was he knew right then and there that you were a keeper.

But life always gets in the way.

Your family had found their dream home in the next town over.

Stu was heartbroken, to say the least.

He even offered to have you live with him. His parents have the money! He can take care of you!

You only laughed and promise that you would come back. You told him he could visit anytime he wanted and he told you the same.

But those sort of plans never work out and you lost contact.

Stu was actually just thinking about old memories he shared with you as he walked into the movie store where Randy worked.

Quickly finding his buddy at the checkout counter helping a customer, he had no problem getting into this person’s space while leaning on the counter to talk to his friend.

But what he didn’t realize was that the person at the counter was no stranger.

“Stu?”

His eyes flicked down to see who called his name and actually jumped when he realized who it was.

Stu took a step back in to get a better look at you and see if it really was you, all the while spreading a goofy grin on his face.

His features fell into a much softer smile as he opened his arms to give you a hug.

The partners in crime of Woodsboro were back in business!

You were actually friends with Emily Cribbs before you were friends Brahms.

Brahms believe it or not only had a few friends.

Emily Cribbs being one of them so it was only natural that you two would end up being friends.

Natural. Everything about his interactions with you seemed natural. Like it was always supposed to be this way, things always seemed right and just when he was around you.

And he felt this way almost immediately about you.

He would often invite you over to play games like hide and seek and listen to music while talking.

Brahms would often read you riddles or give you impossible challenges and you would beat almost all of them and ask him for a new one.

Brahms enjoyed your company more than anyone else’s and couldn’t quite understand why.

Probably because you never patronized or looked at him a certain way.

He found himself wanting to hang out with you more often than not.

But you had other friends. Like Emily Cribbs.

Brahms hated third-wheeling with you and Emily.

It could even be said this is one of the factors that drove Brahms to take his first life.

When you heard about the fire that broke out and snatched the lives of not just one of your friends but two, you were lost.

Even as young as you were you understood you would never see either of them again.

Or so you thought.

Many years had dragged on before you heard the name Heelshire again. After the fire, the couple kept to themselves and rarely went out in public.

You had heard of a nanny position at the Heelshire mansion through a friend of yours named Malcolm and decide to check it out.

Wondering if Mr. and Mrs. Heelshire had another child or adopted after Brahms’ passing.

But of course, it couldn’t be that simple.

You pitied the couple when they showed you the porcelain doll that looked about as close to Brahms as you could get in doll form.

We all cope in different ways you supposed.

The least you can do for your former good friend’s parents is to watch a doll for a few weeks.

But what you didn’t know is that it wasn’t just you and the doll.

The real Brahms had been patiently awaiting your arrival for days.

After his mother announced you would be applying for the nanny position he was ecstatic.

He wondered what you looked like after all these years.

Same smile? Same mischievous ways? Same ability to outsmart him in his own games.

All things he began to wonder even move as his heart hammered in his chest and his eyes moved over your figure from behind the wall.

Oh Y/N, welcome back.

Your father worked at the same slaughterhouse as the Hewitts which is how you and Thomas stumbled into each other.

You first caught a glance at him from a distance while your father was talking to the boss.

His mask is initially what grabbed your attention. Maybe he had it on because of the smell or he didn’t want anything to get on his face.

You didn’t know but you intended to find out.

But this innocent curiosity slowly grew into an interest in the boy and everything he was.

Thomas typically kept to himself and was skittish around anyone who wasn’t his family.

Hell, he was skittish around his family.

So it was some trial and error before you were even able to get a chance to get close to him.

But he did take note of your efforts. Thomas did wonder what it was like to have friends but he would never put himself out there in fear of being rejected.

You were able to catch him by himself hiding out back of the slaughterhouse.

“Hey!”

Thomas whipped his head up to see you jogging over towards him.

Thomas nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw you making your way over. Packing up what he had in his hands and turning to go back into the factory.

“Wait! Please stay! I won’t bite I just want to sit with you.”

Thomas stilled all his movements and waited to see what you were gonna do. You took slow steps over to him like you would a stray dog.

“Whatcha’ working on?” You sat down next to him on an old crate and looked at the piece of leather and needle he held between his fingers.

He didn’t reply. Only opening himself up from his hunched-over position and giving you access to see the piece of leather he was sewing to make a new mask.

“You think you could make me one?”

What would you want with a mask? There’s nothing wrong with you, at least not like Tommy.

He turned to make awkward side-eye contact with you to see if you were serious before giving a shrug. You seemed more than happy with the answer.

You two began to meet each other out back a few times a week where you would talk and Tommy would listen. Or sometimes you would go on walks down the road or through the tall grass.

He found peace in your presence.

No hatred, expectations, or ridicule.

Just peace.

But like most good things for Thomas, it didn’t last.

After your father was injured in an accident at the slaughterhouse you and your family could no longer afford the house you were living in and were forced to move.

There was never a formal goodbye between Thomas and you. Just a ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Hoyt definitely gave him hell for being a bit broken up about you leaving. So he kept all of that buried with the rest of his trauma.

Thomas thought he heard the sound of a car pull up from his hideout in the basement and quickly stomped up the stairs to deal with whatever poor son of a bitch that had wandered in.

Instead of Hoyt and Luda getting ready to nab the visitor, he saw them sitting down at the kitchen table having a conversation with someone he couldn’t see due to just being able to see the back of their head.

“-I’m sorry about what happened to your old man darlin’. He was a good man. Oh! Tommy! Look who it is! Y/N L/N! You remember them right?”

Remember you? How could he forget you?

You turned around in your seat and beamed up at him.

His peace had returned.

[captaincravatthecapricious]

No Way To Get Help

@malevon​

Well... this was supposed to be about Jon, but it's about Tim instead. Under the wreckage of the wax museum, Tim isn't dead.

cw nausea, depression, mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation (canon typical levels for Tim end of season 3), ambiguous mentions of injury, hospitals

Four more fics to go, and only one more prompt to send in, so if you have something in mind, get it in quick! I hope you know the drill by now!  Thanks @celosiaa​ for the wonderful card!

The silence is deafening.  Or would be if Tim wasn’t partially deaf already.  He hadn’t been wearing his hearing aids.  What would have been the point?  He knows the plan.  Daisy and Basira are ….were?  Hardly chatty.  He didn’t?  Doesn’t?  Didn’t?  Want to hear a single word that Jon had to say.  

God.  Tenses.  

Is anyone still alive?  Is it just him?  

He should clarify.  The silence is deafening after the explosion.  After the circus music that was somehow louder, possibly because it was at least partly inside his head.  There is probably the sound of rubble settling, and the groaning of burning building, and rushing emergency vehicles.  But… he can’t hear a goddamn thing.  Just that eternal ringing in his ears.  He has never been sure if that was tinnitus or just what silence sounds like.  Never thought it worth asking after he learned that people with tinnitus have higher rates of suicide.  And… well… if this stupid plan was nothing else, wasn’t it just some grand suicide scheme?  

One that looks to have spectacularly failed.  

Just him… probably alone.  In the dark.  

Then again, if he’s alive, maybe the others are too?  Does he want that?  

If he’s honest, he would rather just be dead.  

Not that that is a revelation.  

Then again, he could be dead in a minute.  

He can’t feel his legs.  Well… he can.  He wishes he couldn’t.  He wishes he couldn’t feel anything.  There is so much pain that it just… it’s too much for him to even register as pain anymore.  He just feels… cold and crushed.  Probably shock because there are actual fires burning around him.  He can smell it.  The burning plaster and plastic and wood and smoldering concrete… if that is even a thing?  Thick air.  He’s coughing.  And that hurts more.  

He can’t hear it, however.  

He can’t hear anything but that goddamn ringing in his ears.  

He thinks he might be crying.  

He can’t hear his own heaving sobs.  

Just that high-pitched whine of utter silence.  

Do you know what that sound is, highness?  Those are the shrieking eels…

That’s it.  

The only words his brain can find, as he grows ever more numb.  He has no doubt that darkness is eating at his vision, or would be if there was anything but darkness around him. 

Not even the words from the book.  Lines from the movie.   Which isn’t a bad thing…  He doesn’t even know his own feelings about his favorite book and his favorite movie.  

(That’s not true.  He was always a fan of the movie, but… he and Danny read the book to each other so often…  He has the work paperback in the pocket of his bomber jacket.  Wanted to die with it.  Ideally buried with it, but it’s not like he left a note.  Aside from that damn tape).  

The whine continues.  He doesn’t know how long it’s been.  

 Do you know what that sound is, highness?  Those are the shrieking eels…

That had been the first thing he had thought of when he first heard the worms.  

He curses the worms to the darkness.  If it hadn’t been for them… he could have lived in blissful ignorance about the darker nature of his job… well to some degree.  Sasha would still be here.  Jon wouldn’t have….  FUCK.  He doesn’t want to think about Jon while he’s willing himself out of existence.  But….

But Jon.  That little fucking moron.  Who he HATES.  Who he wants to hate.  

Does he hate Jon?  

Is Jon even still alive?  

If he’s dead, does he want to keep hating a dead man?  One who …wasn’t any worse than him.  

Which isn’t to say blameless, or not a twat at times….  But.  But not a monster.  And Tim can’t really blame him for not trusting anyone.  

Jon… was in the wrong, but so was Tim.  They have both been utter dicks.  Which has always been Tim’s least favorite plot.  God back in publishing… a Lifetime ago… he always hated books that hinged on characters fighting, not talking things out, not Understanding and that rift causing endless misery.  Has he really become something that he hated… still hates with every fiber of his being.  The number of books that set his teeth on edge from the first misunderstanding.  He actually hates most Rom Coms for that reason.  Which… surprised just about everyone he’s dated.  

He possibly groans.  He isn’t thinking clearly.  

He can’t hear himself groan.  

He really should give it up, and let himself pass out.  He hurts.  He’s tired.  If he wakes up… that’s a problem for later.  If he quietly slips away… well… maybe he’ll see Danny there.  Maybe he’ll see Sasha.  Hell, maybe if he sees Jon there, they can work something out.  If there is an afterlife… they’ll have all the time in the world.  (Or rather all the time in the next world).  And if not… well.  Eternal rest sounds pretty damn good.  

…But.  But Jon.  If Jon is alive down here… He should be close.  

And… Tim can’t let him die alone under this building.  He can’t lose someone else to the Circus while he sits idly by.  And Damn it, maybe he doesn’t want to meet Jon in the afterlife just yet, maybe he wants a break?  (And maybe he just loves him too much to completely give up on him… even though he knows he is far too late.  Too many bridges burned.  “We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”  A line from Jon’s favorite play.)

Tim tries to move his fingertips.  And almost screams.  It hurts.  It hurts.  It hurts.  

He thinks he might scream.  But he can’t hear a sound.  

He braces himself and tries again.  Stretching his arms out as wide as he can.  Moving dust and ash and rubble.  He almost passes out.  Or maybe he does pass out.  Time has no meaning in this place.  

He finds a hand.  Cold.  And limp.  And his heart stops, first for fear that this is another mannequin.  Then for fear that this is all that is left of someone who was… could have been… is?  Something to Tim.  Everything to Tim.  

Tim thinks he might vomit.  

He feels out a little further as his head swims.  He feels the stretched and puckered skin of undoubtedly Jon’s right hand.  Unresponsive.  Possibly dead.  

Tim coughs.  Choking on the soot and heat and fumes in the air.  A massive weight both metaphorical and painfully tangible on all of him.  Aching pain breaking him into little shards, which turn right around and skewer him.  

Tim loses consciousness.  Old and cracked and dry paperback of The Princess Bride in his pocket.  Limp hand of his… friend? In his hand.  

Tim wakes up in hospital.  

His lungs hurt.  And everything feels distant and fuzzy.  Probably being pumped through with a lot of painkillers.  Probably for the best, or he might be more upset for waking up.  He wants to ask after Jon… but he can’t get his mouth to open.  

And suddenly he’s thinking about Westley.  Mostly dead.  Revived.  Head flopping around on his neck.  Danny had lost his shit laughing at that… it always made Tim feel sick after… everything.  The imitation of life… couldn’t quite shake the image of… that night.  Christ if he was on less drugs, he would probably puke.  

He would shake his head if he could move. 

“You just shook your head, that doesn’t make you happy?”

He is also struck by the thought that this is Kill Bill in reverse.  Nearly died getting his revenge, and then ending up in a coma.  (He watched those movies on Bad days.  When he downs enough whiskey to drown a horse.  He can’t say he really remembers much of them, but they were always cathartic.)  

He tries to look at his feet.  But he can’t even lift his head.  

He closes his eyes again.  

When he opens them, he sees Martin.  Worn and tired.  Looking older than ever, more haggard than Jon.  

Shit!  Jon.  Is Jon here?  Is he dead?  

He still can’t move.  

He looks at Martin again.  Martin is… talking?  Tim can’t make out anything.  Just the dull murmur of meaningless sound.  

…But.  

Martin is holding a book.  

A sooty, singed book.  

Martin sitting between two hospital beds, holding Tim’s old copy of The Princess Bride, facing Tim presumably so if Tim were to come around, Tim could read his lips.  

“I said, ‘What do you mean, “Westley dies”?  You mean dies?

My father nodded.  ‘Prince Humperdink kills him.’

‘He’s only faking though, right?’  

My father shook his head, closed the book all the way.

‘Aw shit,’ I said and I started to cry.  

‘I’m sorry,’ my father said.  ‘I’ll leave you alone,’ and he left me.”

Martin is also crying.  Just like Billy in the book.  

“’Who gets Humperdinck?’” Tim whispers.  Painfully aware of how dry his throat is.  It’s no more than a cracked whisper.  

And then he’s coughing.  

He can barely hear himself, but he swears he is coughing out a lung.  

Martin has dropped the book.  Staring in wide-eyed shock for a moment, before yelling something.  Scrambling up.  Probably getting a doctor.  Tim wishes he hadn’t gone.  

He looks are where Martin had been, but ends up getting a good look at the bed next to him.  And sees one, very still and very pale Jonathan Sims.  Very bandaged, and frighteningly still.  Tim can’t see breathing.  

And then he’s being poked and prodded and tested and Martin is talking to him.  And everything hurts.  Until it doesn’t and he’s lying still and Martin is smoothing his hair down and holding his hand and telling him that he’s been unconscious for a month.  That Jon is all but brain dead.  That Elias is in police custody.  

By the time Jon wakes up, five months later, Tim has decided to give him another chance, he and Martin are sharing a flat, there is another room ever hopeful that Jon will want to join then if- no, when he wakes up.  

Also.  Jon’s hair may or may not be dyed green.  

Maybe.  

No, Tim has no idea what everyone is looking at him like that for.  

[fireheartwraith]

WandaVision Episode 6: Reaction

These were my thoughts while watching the sixth episode of WandaVision for the first time. I never watch trailers as to not get spoilers, so the only knowledge I have are the previous episodes and my own speculations.

This will be purely spoilers and questions that no one will answer, the only thing you will learn with this is that I love the twins and the sword trio very much, and that I don't trust Hayward and not-Pietro at all

• So they want us to know this isn't og Pietro

• So now Wanda is using her red glowy powers, not her smoky sitcom ones

• Vis doesn't seem so happy in this opening

• What the hell is Agnes doing in your fridge

• Distorted day huh

• Pietro is in the opening!

• Tommy is getting a lot of attention....

• We're talking to the cam now? The camera is following people now?

• Okay, yeah, this is definitely a different style of sitcom

• Also, let me scream about them playing ddr

• AAHFFZGZJXKKBDGK

• thank you

• Now, let me scream about Billy wearing his wiccan costume

• KFHFPUFOHDHLDLGSLSOGAGAODOHCPHFHPAOAGPHDPHCOHAOHDOHXOGAOGSOH

• Thx

• But, pretend to be someone else and scare people huh.....

• DORKASAURUS REX

• I'm in love with their dynamic already

• Hi Not-Pietro!

• Of course Tommy idolizes not-Pietro

• So Billy is afraid of Peter huh?

• Is vampire a nod to something in the comics? I'll find a way to link this to Mephisto, just give a couple of hours to do some research

• WANDA YOU LOOK SO BEAUTIFUL MARRY ME

• Sokovian fortune teller huh... Like using flowers to TELL THE FUTURE

• Sokovian Halloween does not look fun

• "that's not how I remember it" no shit Sherlock, this brother is from the wrong timeline

• You bet she suppressed a lot of the trauma

• Boys, I love you both SO MUCH!! Tell me more about how your mom has been acting weird

• Oh hoho, the girls are fighting!

• I see your passive aggressiveness Vis, AND I LOVE IT

• "Be good" oof

• Okay, but does that mean that Tommy used his super speed or that he was just pulled along

• AND LOOK AT THEIR COSTUMES!! THE HAIR!!! THE EVERYTHING!!!!

• Oh right, back to the real world

• YOU TELL HIM MONICA

• Why are you saying "super-powered individuals" like a slur mister

• THE NERVE ON THIS MAN

• SOMEONE PUNCH HIM PLEASE

• HE CAN'T DO THAT!!!!

• Fuck, I'm so mad right now

• They are not the ones I wanted to punch BUT IT'S STILL SATISFYING

• I'm sorry I can't get over their costumes I'm 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

• Holy fuck, that's a lot of kids... Where did they even come from????

• Oooh, Wanda is doing the classic shapeshifter test

• Also, new fact about Wanda's pre-Hydra life!!

• I see your deflection, NOT-PIETRO

• Well, at least this proves it wasn't Wanda who pulled him out of the Fox-verse

• So... They're just using their powers in front of everyone now

• Vis' got secret business huh

• "you want something changed?" Very ominous Mr. Herb, sir

• So, things start to glich and freeze the further away we get from Wanda

• We haven't seen Agnes yet: not-Pietro took over her role in sweeping in to help Wanda

• THAT WAS THE CREEPIEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN WHAT THE FUCK

• I was going to say that the "being stuck somewhere without food" was probably her memories of being stuck under all the rubble with the bomb, but things got super creepy super fast. And then the shark tells me it's the snack for survivors? NO SIR NO MISTER

• I've always been scared of stop motion animation and this isn't helping me get over it

• The Incredibles and the parent trap screening? A super-powered dysfunctional family where one of the kids has super speed and the other has weird magic, and a movie where twins pretend to be each other? You're pretty on the nose with that one, Marvel

• Play his part, stir up trouble.... Hmmmmmmm

• Why are we circling back to the accents? Is that important?

• He heard Wanda calling him? So maybe it was an unconscious thing...

• TOMMY HAS SUPER SPEED I REPEAT TOMMY HAS SUPER SPEED!!!!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL THIS IS NOT A DRILL THIS IS NOT A DRILL

• ELLIS AVENUE MUST BE THE BORDER OF WESTVIEW

• Oh, the twin's reactions to Tommy having to take Billy with him are the most sibling-like thing ever

• Is Agnes just playing a part or she's actually a victim?

• What will happen to Vision if he crosses the border?

• Spectrum origin story, hell yeah

• Be careful Darcy!

• How did Woo learn to hot wire cars?

• So now we're just... Acknowledging everything

• Peter is saying she did what she could to keep the townspeople happy but... They don't seem happy

• Not-Pietro over here asking the big questions

• Dead-Pietro still has Not-Pietro's face.....

• So Vision really is dead and can only exist inside Wanda's bubble reality

• Darcy is such a sweetheart... She tried to help even though she knew what was going to happen to her

• BILLY'S POWERS

• Holy fuck, Wanda just vibe checked her brother

• Why could Billy sense what's happening but not Wanda?

• Are we going to get a magical training montage next episode?

• WANDA IS MOVING THE BORDER

• Holy shit Wanda, a few meters would have sufficed

• Bastards! They're just leaving Darcy there!

• Uh, I hate mimes and clowns

• Let me see how Darcy is!

• Did Monica and Woo make it?

• I can't believe Hayward is going to escape, only to use this against Wanda

• What, that was the end???

• Well this sure was a journey

[cockasinthebird]

“I pray you, do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine.” -William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 3 Scene 5

Brown and blue both stare up at the many a love declarations on the underside of the bleachers of Hawkins High. Football practice has begun, along with their ever so faithful cheerleaders, and while Robin was here just for how short those skirts went, Steve was here for both those legs, and the sweaty muscles of the blonde haired quarter back; how he shone like diamonds underneath the ruthless summer sky.

Robin hands him the roach, and he has possibly never felt more at peace than now, in the shade with the occasional breeze. But of course, he thought so every time the two of them decided to get high and lie in the grass.

“Tommy + Carol 4 Ever,�� Steve reads out loud. “Fucking asshole.”

“Aw, does poor Steve still feel abandoned?” Robin pouts falsely and puts both hands behind her head.

“Shithead was my best friend for most of our lives, and now he's off somewhere licking Billy Hargrove's boot.” He frowns whilst pressing the final embers of their joint into the grass.

“You're just jealous,” she laughs mockingly at him and turns her head to peek out through the seats.

And Steve leans up on his elbows to look past her and in the same direction, to where he sees Billy Hargrove tearing off his helmet with a victorious smile, mullet done up in a low bun, bangs clinging wetly to his forehead.

“Fuck no,” he lies.

“Come on, Dingus.” Robin knocks their shoes together. “You know you can't lie to me.”

“I can try,” he huffs a laugh and looks at how she mimics him genuinely.

“You think I got it any better?” her laugh turns to a scoff and points up. “Tammy Thompson loves John Johnson.” And there's a deep silence for a few short seconds as she keeps her finger in the direction of that etching. “Who the fuck names their child John Johnson?”

Steve cannot contain his chortle, and she is right behind with her usual snort; the one that only comes forth when they're this high.

“It would be like-” Steve takes a deep inhale. “If you were named Robin Robinson!”

“Or you Steve Stevenson!”

“Is that a real name?!”

“Y-yes?” Robin fights against the grin that wants to spread all too wide, and looks at him. “Robert Louis Stevenson!”

“Who?” Steve keeps breathing slowly to try and calm down from something that isn't actually that funny, but when you got bloodshot eyes like these, everything is.

“The famous writer? He wrote Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.”

Steve leans up on his elbows again to stare down at her with the most bewildered look this illiterate teen can manage. “Mr Hyde as in... our chemistry teacher?”

“Oh...” Robin's blue blue eyes grow as wide as they can. “My God... Steve... No wonder you're failing literally every class.”

And his expression falls from confused to somewhat offended, but it is the inevitable truth. “It's fine,” he says with nary a worry, “I will get a job at my father's office as... I dunno, coffee guy? Mailman?”

“You really think he'd put you in charge of something as important as their postal service?”

Rather than come up with a sensible reply to that remark, he simply grabs a fistful of grass and throws it at her.

He smiles, she laughs, and the both of them settle down once more with only the loud cheers from the girls in uniform to fill the comfortable silence they find themselves in again, as they continue reading everything that's been carved and written into the far too old wood.

Steve's name can be found numerous times, both in forms of compliments-

“I wish Steve Harrington would notice me.”

“Mrs Harrington is my dream job.”

“Steve Harrington the Keg King.”

All surrounded by hearts.

On one step it reads, “Steve 'The Hair' Harrington” in suspiciously familiar handwriting.

He used to bring girls down here, too, and would have them watch as he reached high above them and wrote his name + theirs.

Steve + Laurie. Crossed out. Steve + Amy. Crossed out. Steve + Becky. Crossed out.

He never got to bring Nancy here. Brought Robin here originally for the same reason as the rest, but she was quick to tell him the truth as he stood too close.

At least they remained friends.

“Is your name up there somewhere?” he asks her, having never actually found it.

“I'm a band dweeb, what do you think?” she sighs but acts like it doesn't bother her.

“Do you want it to be?”

“Nope,” she lies and pops the p.

And of course he doesn't believe her, but he considers himself too nice to press her on any of it.

Silence drags on for what feels like eternity crammed into one minute, and he's got something on his mind, but has absolutely no clue how to work it into conversation all casual like, because it's kinda a big deal, but he doesn't want to seem a fool for thinking so.

So he tries to just flat out say it, “Robin?”

“Steve.”

“You're... smart, right?” He feels himself failing at just saying what he's thinking.

“Smarter than you, although that's not saying much,” she chuckles out and looks to him, but he seems... nervous, and she stops. “What's up, dingus?”

“I... I got a note in my locker today, and I don't really know what it means,” Steve speaks hesitantly and rips small pieces off of a blade of grass.

Robin's brows quirks up. “Oh? And you want me to decipher it for you?”

He sits up far too fast, and even though his body remains still, the world spins for longer than what is possible. “Would you?” There is such a brightness to his tone.

“Sure, what does it say?” She gets up as well and crosses her legs.

Steve fishes out a paper that has become impossibly crumbled up in his front pocket, to a point where the letters written in beautiful cursive is almost unintelligible.

“I love you more than words can wield the matter; dearer than eyesight, space and liberty.”

And while she turns the paper around and re-reads those words, Steve stares unblinkingly so at her.

“So?” he finally asks, bursting with anticipation.

“So, it's a love letter.” She hands it back, and he looks at the paper with such admiration, as if he had forgotten he was worthy of such, just to be reminded of it now. “It's Shakespeare, King Lear. It means that she loves you more than words can describe.”

At that he looks up, beaming with elation as he asks for reassurance, “Seriously?”

“Yup.” She is clearly far less excited, but there's optimism to her tone, to know that he might find what they're both longing for, whether out loud or in secret.

“Someone wrote me a love note...” His smile wide with shocked disbelief.

“Congratulations.” She rolls her eyes although with raised lips, and lies down again.

-

The very next day, shortly after lunch has begun, he finds another in his locker and runs to where Robin would be eating her lunch alone in the unattended library.

Steve slams down the paper in front of her, and she pauses just before biting into her boring ham sandwich.

“Well well well lover boy,” she mocks lightly and places her food back down on the tray. “I assume you're in need of my service once again?”

The chair next to her screeches across the floor as he sits down with a hard bump. “Yes, and it's the same handwriting as last, so that means it's the same girl, right?”

“Hey now, I haven't agreed to anything yet!” She slaps her hand down on top of the paper, and smirks. “I will help you with this, again, if you buy me pizza after school.”

“Yeah, deal, whatever, just-” He gestures wildly to the neatly folded paper. “Tell me what it means!”

Robin shakes her head and slumps back into her seat; slipping down a bit with her legs splayed out all comfortable and taking up far too much space.

“Love is blind, and lovers cannot see, the pretty follies that themselves commit.”

She nods for a moment in thought, fully ignoring the way Steve's eyes could drill holes in her skull.

“I think it's from The Merchant of Venice. It means... something like, how love makes you act different?”

And since she seems satisfied with that, nods more and lets out a little “Yeah,” so is he.

“Okay, so, someone that acts differently around me?”

Robin taps her temple with a blackened nail and continues nodding like it's all he understands. Still, to ensure he gets her point, says, “You got it.”

Now it is his turn to slump into his chair, but far more confused. “How... how am I supposed to know that they act differently around me? Isn't that how I'll always have seen them, then?”

She raises her brows at that and sits up a bit more straight. “How astute!”

As if he knows what that means.

-

Through the weekend he waits on his bed, each note in hand and smiling so wide his cheeks grow sore.

Two love letters in two days? They are meant for him, right? This girl didn't accidentally put it in the wrong locker, right?

Steve catches himself briefly hoping she's beautiful, but pushes that aside by the fact that she's so poetically inclined, so sweet and shy that her looks hardly matters, for her choice of words warms his heart and makes it beat in a way that he has oh so missed.

Another thought is what if it's Robin, but he shakes his head violently at that stupid little thing, because no, she's his best friend and that's all they'll ever be, and he truly is happy with that. But everyone gets wrong and bad ideas from time to time, so he won't fault himself for her name popping up, as he mentally goes through a list of all the girls he knows. Or thinks he knows.

And though he tries to distract himself with TV and swimming in his pool and letting Robin paint his toenails, Monday always feels so far away.

-

It is the first thing he does when he shows up at school; pushes his way through his peers to fling open his locker, and sure enough a little note slips out.

He skims it for just a second before he rushes off to stand by Robin's locker for when she eventually moves to it and shoves him aside.

“Another?” she asks with her head in her locker as she rummages for gum.

“I knew she was gonna leave me another! I could feel it in my body the entire weekend!” his tone pitched high with excitement.

“Ew, gross, I don't need to know that!” she jokes and yanks it from his grasp.

“Come what sorrow can, it cannot countervail the exchange of joy, that one short minute gives me in her sight.”

And Steve folds it, lovingly so, before placing it inside his wallet, and thankfully he doesn't have to wait long for a more modern translation of it.

“Something something about how her pain and misery goes away in your presence; in the presence of a loved one. Romeo and Juliet, which is not a happy love story!” she says ardently and points a stern finger at him for emphasis.

“Okay, but does that mean we have classes together at least then?” Steve shrugs and runs a hand through his shiny hair.

“Probably? Or maybe some extra curricular activity,” Robin's tone careless and she starts down the hall, with Steve right behind.

“But the only other extra whatever I take is basket.”

“So maybe your admirer is a guy.”

He shakes his head with conviction. “Nah, I doubt that completely, I mean you've seen the handwriting! And what guy is into Shakespeare?”

“Anything is possible Steve, don't be so close minded.”

-

For once he is early to first-period history class, and he sits on the desk Robin usually occupies, to which she responds with throwing her bag into his lap, accompanied by a cocked brow and strong stare.

Steve doesn't say a thing, simply lifts up a fourth note, and she snags with from his fingers with an exasperated sigh.

“I would not wish any companion in the world but you.”

She groans out loud now and pushes him off of her table. “Come on dingus, this one is easy! You cannot be this stupid.”

“Just tell me what it is!” he says as he shuffles into the seat in front of hers.

“She only wants you, no one else, Jesus.”

“Oh,” he breathes out, his wide grin that of pure joy, and although this is a tiring thing to be bothered with every day now, she does appreciate his happiness to some extend.

-

Wednesday morning Robin is already by Steve's locker, arms crossed and a friendly smile painted across her face.

“Let's see what your stalker has come up with this time,” she says and leans away so that he can twist the lock in the right order.

And today it is a far shorter note.

“Love hath made thee a tame snake.”

She doesn't bother waiting before saying, “Love will humble and soften even the most hardened individual.” And there's a glint in her eyes, so short and easily missed, revealing that she might have an idea as to which hardened individual this could be. Not that she hadn't thought about him before already.

For she had seen his copy of As You Like It by Shakespeare fall from his bag in English Literature, but it is not her place to out anyone.

“That's a weird one, right?” His brows furrowed as he awaits affirmation. “Hardened individual? What does that even mean?”

“Steve, I-” She rubs her eyes hard and nods. “Yeah, it is a weird one. But it probably means someone who's acting tough, but in truth softens around you.”

He folds it back up and slips it into his wallet together with the other four.

“Tomorrow, then,” Robin says and pats his shoulder a few times before heading to class.

Steve stays still for a moment, looking at how the five notes stretches the leather of his wallet. His thumb runs over their ripped edges, all seemingly from the same piece of paper, thinking about the dainty fingers that must hold the ballpoint pen to write him such loving words.

Cheeks flushed, smile tender, eyes soft, he wanders towards class as well.

-

Months ago when he and Robin became best friends, she took a very slight interest in him and his education, because he very clearly needs help with school, and she's suspicious of the fact that he might be dyslexic, but when asked about it he gets mad.

So instead she demands food and favors from him whenever he starts screwing up in school again, starts falling behind, or shows up late to class. And of course he has slept through his alarm for the first time in weeks on this Thursday, the one day of two where they have first-period together, and now he'll have to pay for dinner at the diner, but he has a good excuse!

Sat up all night with several books written by none other than William Shakespeare that he had checked out at the library.

He's hungry and tired and in a goddamn hurry to get to class ASAP; the hallways empty and silent save for the occasional teacher yelling at an unruly student, but even that he can hardly hear over the beating of his heart, which is just great, because now he'll spend all day with floppy hair and reeking of sweat.

He just has to make a quick stop by his locker to see if there's a new note, the only thing that truly matters and overshadows the importance of getting passing grades or upholding his deal with Robin.

Around the next corner and... and...

And it never dawned on him at any point, even with Robin's constant droning of “Guys can read Shakespeare, too!” that his secret admirer might not be a girl at all. Maybe he was just so stuck in the expected reality of the world, the one he's so used to, before Robin helped him see the light, to help him realize that there's other options than gay or straight.

No he never even bothered thinking that way, till he sees Billy Hargrove slip something into his locker.

[lightsupinthenorth]

Billy is a crier. Steve finds out even before they become friends.

He notices how shiny Billy’s eyes are when he apologizes for hurting him during that fateful night at the Byers’ house.

Despite the darkness of his living-room, he sees the tears rolling down Billy’s cheeks when they watch The Outsiders.

The closer they get, the more often Billy cries around Steve. When he’s had a fight with his shitty father, when he regrets getting angry at Max, or at Steve himself, for no valid reason, when he’s tired, or frustrated, or feeling hopeless.

Billy cries a lot.

And, at first, it’s hard to deal with for Steve, because he’s not used to seeing people cry. He doesn’t now how to handle tears, how to handle such blatant sorrow, because he’s learnt to bury his own feelings early on in life.

But he learns, for Billy. It turns out to be easier than he thought it would be. All Billy wants is a shoulder to cry on, and Steve is more than willing to offer his. And the knots in his stomach, caused by the sight of a distressed Billy, loosen a little once he understands that crying actually makes Billy feel better, that it gives his emotions an outlet.

Steve wishes he could do that to. Express his emotions. He wishes he was a crier. But he couldn’t be farther from it.

Even when he is extremely upset, he doesn’t shed a single tear.

Instead, Steve’s body ‘deals’ with strong negative emotions by shutting down. It just quits on functioning. Thankfully, it’s generally not an instant reaction. When something really bad happens, adrenaline gets Steve going until he gets somewhere quiet, somewhere private, and then he just collapses and stays immobile for hours on end.

When he’s upset about little things, he keeps it bottled in until the bottle is full and ‘shut down’ mode activates itself. It’s hard to predict: Steve can’t always tell when he’s going to reach breaking point, and sometimes the smallest thing can make him wilt.

Some days, he goes back to his empty house thinking he’s alright, and then as soon as the door closes behind him, he slides down it until he reaches the floor and proceeds to stare into space for a small eternity.

It’s as if his body were giving up, but not so much so that it forgets about keeping up with pretenses. God forbids anyone sees Steve in such an undignified state. His parents’ numerous precepts concerning proper behavior have been drilled into Steve to the point of conditioning even his breakdowns, it seems.

Steve can’t keep this to himself anymore once Billy and he move in together, though. Now Steve has nowhere left to go in order to shut down away from view. He still tries though: the first time he shuts down while living with Billy, he goes to the bathroom and locks the door right before it happens. Evidently, it is a terrible idea.

Indeed, after a while, Billy knocks on the door and asks him if he is okay. When Steve doesn’t answer, he justifiably starts freaking out, and warns that he is going to come in, even if he has “to destroy the fucking door with an axe like in The Shining”. They have no axe, but Steve can’t point that out because his vocal cords and mouth are out of order, as the rest of his body is.

Billy doesn’t need an axe, in the end. He just body slams the door like a madman.

“Steve, what the fuck? Are you okay?” He asks, kneeling down on the tiled floor and looming over Steve’s prostrate body.

Steve doesn’t react, he doesn’t even blink, as Billy presses two fingers to the pulse in his neck.

“Fuck, what’s wrong with you? Should I call 911? Steve?” Billy sounds more and more distressed, and then he starts crying.

It seems to be enough for Steve to regain control of his limbs. Steve’s boyfriend breaking the door of their bathroom down wasn’t enough for his body to start functioning again, but this is? It seems a bit illogical, but Steve doesn’t make the rules.

As Billy tries to get up, maybe to indeed call 911, Steve grips his wrist loosely, and mutters he’s fine.

“Damn, you sure didn’t seem fine a second ago.”

Steve has to explain, then. He has no other option. Billy doesn’t interrupt until Steve is done describing how he ‘deals’ with his feelings, and then he just asks.

“When you get like that… would touching you help? Would it make it worse? Do you want me to call someone who knows how to calm you down or? I don’t know, tell me if there is anything I can do.”

Steve blushes.

“Uh… well I don’t exactly know… I’ve only ever went through it on my own so…”

“Oh… Would it be okay if I tried to comfort you, next time?”

Steve considers how he reacted to the tears Billy spilt over him earlier.

“Yeah… I think it might help.”

“Good… Can I hug you… I mean, now?”

Steve nods and suddenly his arms are full of Billy, who starts crying again a few seconds later.

Steve starts caressing his hair, because it’s usually a very efficient way to comfort him.

“I should be the one comforting you right now.” Billy says in between sobs.

“You are.” Steve replies.

And it’s true. Taking care of Billy is comforting, in a way.

“It was some scary shit, Steve.”

“I know… I’m sorry, I should have mentioned that whole thing at some point.”

“I mean… yeah. A warning would have been nice. At least I would have known you were probably not having a stroke.”

Steve winces.

“I forgive you though.”

“How generous.” he quips.

“I know, right? You’re lucky I love you.”

Steve sighs. Billy is lucky Steve loves him, too, the unsufferable bastard.

“I love you too.” He replies.

Steve can’t ever not say “I love you” back to him. He has to say it back, always. It’s some sort of undisclosed obligation.  

Billy hugs him tighter and Steve could swear he’s smiling through his tears.

[bewaretheidesofmarchyall]

Soulmate Shenanigans Part Three: Return Of The Shenanigans

Let’s do this!

At this point, you probably know the drill (and, if not, parts one and two are here and here!)

Basically I found some prompts for September, and now I’m doing them in October just because

Prompt #3

You have an animal that only you and your soulmate can see.

Warnings: Death mentions, brief mentions of drowning (I pinky swear that I’ll stop drowning Janus for the rest of this challenge), brief mentions of house fires (I pinky swear that I’ll stop setting Patton on fire for the rest of this challenge)

World Building

Soulmates had always been an idea bubbling in the back of humanity’s brains. A sort of “hey, this romance thing is complicated, could we just kinda know?”

It was starting to annoy the fates

Do you expect them to do all the work? I mean, what with the spinning, and the looking ominous, and the lack of dental, their job is a hard one, and you want to make it harder by having them weave two people’s stories together?

One day, a fate heard yet another “please, let me meet my soulmate tomorrow” prayer and went nuts

Fine. Fine! You want soulmates? We’ll make soulmates.

The plan was to create two soulmates, make them fall in love

And then kill them.

Just to remind humans where they stood on a cosmic scale. Just to remind them that every story ends tragically, when you get down to the end.

They reviewed a few couples (Some Romeo and Juliet people had promise), but in the end decided. Feuding families? Check. Opposites attracting? Check. Tragedy? Inevitable.

Characters

Patton: Patton grew up inside the hedges.

Hedges were his family’s specialty, so the house was surrounded by them. He rarely got to leave, but he could get lost in the gardens and talk to his imaginary pet, so all in all things were okay. Sure, maybe it was weird to have a blue jay that only he could see, but he was lonely!

See, Patton’s family liked three things

1. Having heirs (but only in theory)

2. Increasingly elaborate hedge mazes

3. Fighting a blood feud the goddamn lawyers

Patton wasn’t really on that list, but he wasn’t on the list of hated things either, so there was that.

List of Hated Things

1. The goddamn lawyers

2. Anyone who associates with the goddamn lawyers

3. Anyone who is descended from the goddamn lawyers

4. Anyone who gets in the way of the blood feud with the goddamn lawyers

5. Dandelions. They’re not serious gardening.

Janus: Janus was, of course, a child of the goddamn lawyers

The lawyers weren’t a clan of blood like the gardeners, but one of merit. And having kids was seen as a conflict of interest, and therefore frowned upon.

Of course, it’s illegal to murder or criminally neglect children, so he was allowed to stick around and have a childhood vaguely reminiscent of John Mulaney’s “one black coffee”, “over on the bench”, and “getting accused of murdering Princess Diana” skits

Most of his childhood was spent accusing his pet blue jay (that couldn’t be seen by anyone else) of crimes and then debating himself about whether or not the bird was guilty, like a normal kid.

However, when it became clear that someone else was stealing his blue jay, he had to find them and give them a piece of his mind, even if they lived behind formidable hedges

The Plot

Patton (about eight at this point) was wandering around the grounds, talking to Sunny (his name for the bird), like every other day, when the strangest kid he’d ever seen in his life appeared through a small gap in the hedges and informed him that the bird was his and he’d be leaving soon

A bird custody battle ensues

Janus uses a lot of legal terminology, which Patton pretends to understand. The debate ends when Patton’s aunt shows up and threatens to chuck Janus over the garden walls if he doesn’t get out immediately.

Janus runs off, but Patton sees him through the hedges later, and he looks kind of sad about the whole thing, so Patton offers to share custody of Sunny. 

Janus perked up at this solution, despite claiming that the bird’s name was really Iago, and a friendship was born.

It was hard for them to chat when both their relatives would love to murder at least one of the kids if they could get away with it, and Patton was separated from him by the hedges, but they managed.

Sunny/Iago was decent at carrying messages, Janus was good at finding secret passages, and Patton had adequate aim when tossing packages over the hedges.

They were best friends for years and years, confidants in their crazy worlds.

At around sixteen, Janus convinced Patton to leave the grounds for an afternoon. The two of them saw the sights (which meant buying/stealing bread) (you can guess who actually bought the bread and who stole it) and had fun

The evening ended with the two of them sitting under a tree, chatting. The dandelions were in that in-between stage where some of them are flowers and some seed-heads, so Patton was able to weave a crown of flowers and make a wish at the same time.

Take a wild flying guess who he wished for (hint: they were currently wearing the flower crown and pretending to not like it, but would secretly never take it off. Ever.).

Patton claimed he’d wished for world peace (which, on further reflection, he felt bad for not thinking of first), and Janus claimed he’d wished for solid gold coins, but they were both lying.

Eventually, Patton had to go home.

Sunny-Iago: Sunny-Iago had gone by many names before. As one of the extra-dimensional lords of fate, they’d been called things like, “THE FUCK IS THAT”, “IT HAS SO MANY EYES”, and “Oh, fuck, that raven’s back again”. It made perfect sense for them to have at least two, despite being in the flesh prison of a blue jay this time.

A damn blue jay.

At least ravens have a little class.

Anyway, their job was to guide two sweethearts together and then drive them into a metaphorical (or literal? It could always be literal) brick wall. This was proving harder than expected, since the most important thing was to not get attached to either of them and well

Sunny-Iago had gotten attached to both of them. It was hard to see kids grow up and be fine killing them off, okay!

But they knew the drill. This had to end in some kind of tragedy. 

So, they had a plan. Instead of having them both killed off because of miscommunication, they’d merely never see each other again and pine after what could have been, eventually turning into a bittersweet story they’d tell to....someone younger and more naïve, or something. They were still working it out!

So, they grabbed a quill pen in their beak and wrote a note to Patton’s aunt (it took several tries. Beaks were not meant for holding quill pens). 

The note said something along the lines of “You know the goddamn lawyers? Of course you do. Your nephew fell for one, last chance to fix the situation is at 10:00 at the gate”.

Back To The Plot

Patton and Janus got back to the gardener grounds. Neither wanted to leave the other’s company, so they lingered at the gate, chatting and finding excuses to stay.

After a few minutes, it was obvious that Patton had to leave. Before doing so, he quickly kissed Janus on the cheek, just in time to get caught by his aunt, who came close to stabbing the both of them with a garden trowel.

When Janus came back a few days later, wilted dandelions still in his pocket, Patton was gone, sent far away from lawyers and love. All that was left was the bird. A stupid bird that no one else could see.

Time-lapse! Seven years later!

Janus was working on the most important legal case any lawyer had in a solid three years.

A gardener had murdered one of his relatives (he kept forgetting which one, which was a bit of a problem, since half of his job was to look tearful about them) with a wheelbarrow, and he was attempting to get them arrested for it. 

If it worked, the gardeners would have consequence for committing murder, which would hopefully tone down the blood feud a little.

Half of the jurors had been rigged by both sides, some paid to vote one way and some paid to vote another. There were, however, six undecided jurors out there.

The Jurors

Logan: Logan is the only person on the jury who knows anything whatsoever about law and what can be done in a courtroom. He actually wants the most just and logical thing to happen. 

Weirdo.

Roman: Roman is an actor in a touring production of Much Ado About A Midsummer’s Ham (Cooked As You Like It)

He just wants this trial process to be over so he can get back to rehearsal-wait, nevermind, the guy with the glasses is cute and he’s going to make this court case last as long as possible.

Remus: Remus is here to cause as much legal chaos as possible

He might get arrested for contempt of court.

Virgil: Virgil gives 0 fucks about anything that happens, but knows more about law than Logan, who knows more about law than anyone else in the court.

Remy: Remy heard from people that court cases are full of juicy drama.

Those people are wrong. It’s just a bunch of legal stuff. He’d rather be at Starbucks!

Emile: Emile is psychoanalyzing everyone else on the jurors section. Especially Remus.

Back To The Plot

The case progresses normally

Well, normally for this town anyway, which means that the goddamn lawyers are dying off fast (mostly of poison).

Janus, however, has managed to dodge every assassination attempt. He’s lawyering like Billy Flynn here!

Late in the afternoon, everyone’s a little tired and a lot bored when yet another witness is called. Janus was pulling his hat over his eyes for shade from the sunlight streaming into the court, when he heard the witness’s voice.

After a seven year disappearance, Patton stood in the courtroom.

Remy leaned forward. He saw the look on Janus’s face. At long last, drama had arrived.

After the court got out of session, Janus dashed down the steps of the building to catch up to Patton. He offers to get a coffee with him, but Patton turns him down, insinuating that he only offered to get information on the gardeners. Janus left, dejected.

Over the last seven years, Patton’s was in the far away land where his family started: New Jersey. While in this cursed place, his family attempted to change him from a dandelion to a venus flytrap, and nearly succeeded.

Nearly.

But when, the next day, his aunt poisons Janus’s water glass (gleefully explaining that this poison doesn’t show up on the standard tests and precautions), he just so happens to be clumsy enough to knock it over before Jan drinks it, and ends up volunteering to get coffee to make up for it.

Coffee meet-ups lead to coffee dates lead to rekindling of old romances (all under the utmost secrecy)

Eventually, the court case comes to a head. 

The six pre-decided jurors work quickly, but Logan debates, and Roman stalls because he’ll be missing Logan, and Remus is forcibly removed from the courthouse, and Emile forgot to take notes, and Virgil sleeps through most of it, and Remy couldn’t care less about this, only caring about what happens with Janus and Patton.

They make their decision

Since they saw like 47 murder attempts over the course of the trial, it’s not a stretch to assume that the gardeners did kill that guy with a wheelbarrow.

Janus and the rest of the prosecution celebrate, and in the excitement of the moment, he and Patton end up sharing a kiss.

That’s the moment the gardeners went from Lowkey Trying To Murder Him to Highkey Trying To Murder Him

Both of them walk home with their head in the clouds

When your head is in the clouds, it’s easy to get kidnapped and thrown in the harbor to drown, especially if you happen to be a goddamn lawyer who just won a case.

And when your head is in the clouds, and you overhear your relatives talking about how they threw the person you love the most into the harbor to drown, it’s easy to make rash decisions

Like grabbing a torch and running into the middle of a prized hedge maze, and threaten to burn it all if his aunt didn’t tell him where Janus was. 

When the answer was “dead, obviously”, Patton took the torch to the shrubbery, and the estate burned.

Problem: Janus crawled to shore and survived. 

Secondary problem: Patton’s not trying especially hard to escape the fire.

Janus got to the house, saw it was on fire, and ran into the grounds. He eventually found Patton (who was still alive and in the hedge maze), but....it’s a very intricate hedge maze, and now there’s smoke everywhere, and they can’t find their way out.

At the last second, Sunny-Iago swooped over their heads, pointing to the exit, and they run after them.

They’re almost out of the burning grounds when Sunny-Iago falls to the ground, still, and they find themselves in another place entirely.

The Fates

The Fates had bet on how good old birdie would kill Janus and Patton off

Knife? was the most common bet, followed by Wolves. No one bet on them living in the end.

Except Meghan (alternate name: The Lurking One), and nobody liked Meghan, and nobody liked losing money. 

So, they were going to do the job personally.

Back To The Plot

Janus and Patton find themselves in a tomb where every grave is theirs. A tomb where every grave is theirs is essentially the office space of the fates, who enjoy the atmosphere.

The Fates themselves take a multitude of forms: Animal, vegetable, mineral, eldritch, you name it.

And they all bicker amongst themselves about how to best kill off the couple.

Knife? Wolves? Triscuits? How??

Janus tricks them into debating the subject round and round in circles, but they eventually come to their senses.

As a last ditch hope, Patton says that they’ll pick the method of death for them if they give the couple a chance to plead for their lives.

The fates agree, and the Final Court Case begins.

Janus is quite a lawyer, but there’s literally a saying about how hard it is to argue with Fate, so its a nail biter of a case. Patton manages to give a passionate defense and Janus brings up evidence, but it’s still anyone’s game how the jurors will vote.

Steve votes for death

The Great Rot votes for not death

Spatula votes for not death

Karen votes for death

Meghan votes for not death

A Clump Of Petunias votes for death

Broken Taco Shells And Broken Hearts votes for not death

That One Relative At Family Reunions That You Pretend To Know But Don’t votes for death

Microwavable Lasagna votes for not death

The Ghost Of Richard III votes for death

That Sock That Always Disappears From Dryers chooses not to vote. What a jerk.

At this point, it’s tied 5-5. Enter Remy, who just wants to go to the extra-dimensional Starbucks.

He deliberates. He hems. He haws. He draws out the moment unnecessarily long for drama’s sake.

But, at the end of the day, he was always rooting for these humans.

Remy votes for not death.

Conclusion

Patton and Janus get to live. Time is very short for humans, and eventually they would both die, but right then and there, they got to live.

Dandelions eventually took root where the carefully trimmed hedges had once been.

And Roman noticed, after his performance was done, that a certain nerd was in the audience.

And he could also see Roman’s blue jay.

Hope you enjoyed!!

[funky-boat-zone]

the lighthouse chronicles: part 7/??

boss man

maybe it’s just a botched take, but it sounds like they got the seagull twins’ voices mixed up?

“i remember a time when the tugs all thought bluenose was being bossy” and the award for understatement of the century goes to aurora!

i still maintain that bluenose’s voice doesn’t fit him and they should have gone all-out with the “obnoxious drill sergeant” archetype. it’s not like they thought the subject of the navy was too mature/scary either, since krakatoa is still mentioned to be a naval ship here

that being said, bluenose’s new characterization as an obnoxious rule-stickler who keeps citing the rules to justify bothering the other tugs is kind of funny.

yep, bluenose’s barge hitting the munitions barge was an “accident” here. 

“bluenose, where are you” ffs ten cents he’s literally right next to you, the editors didn’t even bother to fully crop the shot to give the illusion that you’re not next to each other

love the inexplicable close-up shot of big mickey, who doesn’t actually do anything in this episode

as much as i don’t like how this butchered “munitions’’, i can kind of understand why they chose to tone down bluenose for this series. a character who almost kills the main cast (and indirectly kills a non-speaking character) through sheer incompetence probably wouldn’t be appropriate for this show’s target audience. and hey, he’s not the worst offender in terms of poorly-adapted antagonists!

grampus’ banter with him at the end is also kinda funny, for what it’s worth.

sophie, come home

did sunshine get a new va for her singing voice? it’s lower/smoother than her speaking voice. (or maybe her va just couldn’t maintain the same tone used for her normal voice)

as someone with a brother, i’m just gonna repeat what everyone says about media depicting siblings and say that siblings don’t talk to each other like this and generally aren’t each other’s “best friends”

also the dread has finally sunken in: this is going to be a whole episode about sunshine moping to the other characters about how much she misses ten cents. 

warrior hit little ditcher and sent him spinning out of control for the sake of making sunshine laugh. dick move, warrior. i thought you were better than this

glad to see billy’s habit of not being the least bit reassuring has carried over

“tramper”? surely he has a name, i wouldn’t say “i’m going to visit my good buddy human”

also with the context that tramper is nantucket in the original show, i’m just yelling at sunshine to get away from him, he has Diseases

admittedly this is just because i’m not super close to my brother, so correct me if i’m wrong: it really doesn’t seem healthy that sunshine was this upset over ten cents being away from snugboat harbor when he was only gone for a day (granted, i think she’s supposed to be a kid? but it’s not super easy to tell when she’s a talking boat)

who took my crayons?

after i sic osha on snugboat harbor and hopefully put a stop to all these accidents, i am going to outlaw the boats from singing on the job. 

unfortunately i’ve run out of jokes about zip’s voice, and there’s not much else to make fun of because he doesn’t really do much besides hang out and agree with zug. 

conspiracy: zip’s only in the show because they couldn’t fully edit him out and so many of zug’s scenes involve him. he never actually gets an episode like zorran and zb did, and he never gets a full scene to himself without zug somewhere near him. 

this is an adaptation of “pirate”, but sadly sea rogue isn’t in this. 

pretty ironic that ten cents is the one accusing zip and zug of stealing the barge when it was the other way around in the actual episode. 

salty’s lighthouse!zip and zug did nothing wrong 2k21

high spirits

love how the “earthquake” is just the editors shaking the camera.

“but nobody’s hurt” this ain’t sodor

if the building that ten cents is “steadying” has been empty for years and is already weakened from the earthquake, then why try to save it to begin with?

poor little ditcher. ripped from his moorings by strong winds, hit by warrior and sent spinning out of control for the sake of a joke, and now jostled by an earthquake :(

(and yes i know the crane in this episode isn’t little ditcher specifically but still-)

how strong was this earthquake to beach izzy (who is not a small vessel by any means)?

izzy doesn’t talk once during this whole encounter. he’s just sitting there and accepting his fate

captain star praises her tugs for their work, and yet zero doesn’t say a single word (positive or otherwise) to his fleet? damn, that’s cold

[joealwyndaily]

Sometimes the best Christmas presents are the ones we don’t think we need; a new Christmas Carol, for instance. Indeed it may be indicative of a certain unappreciated vacancy around the Christmas tree that in discussing the BBC’s new version of the Dickens classic both its director and leading man refer back to The Muppet Christmas Carol made way back in 1992.

“I was sent the script,” admits Nick Murphy, best known for directing the Rebecca Hall ghost movie The Awakening, “and my first thought was, ‘For God’s sake! The Muppets! They nailed it. What’s the point?’ ”

Joe Alwyn, who plays Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit in the BBC three-parter, has meanwhile posted a trailer on Instagram with the caption: “Hard to fill the shoes once worn by Kermit. But I tried.” The self-deprecation was quickly “hearted” by the singer Taylor Swift, who is the actor’s girlfriend and who will be watching the mini-series with Alwyn and his family in London in the final days before Christmas.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with The Muppet Christmas Carol. It is probably in most people’s top three adaptations of Dickens’s masterpiece (alongside, I would say, Alastair Sim’s 1951 version and Scrooged). Its endurance does suggest, however, that it may be time someone did something a bit more serious, a little darker and a touch more grown-up with a tale that excoriated Victorian neglect and associated Christmas with the relief of poverty for ever more.

And this is exactly what Nick Murphy has achieved with a bracingly fresh script by the Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. Guy Pearce’s Ebenezer Scrooge is still a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner”, but since Pearce is only 52, there is rather less of the old. At the end of the novel, Dickens wrote that “ever afterwards” — that is after Scrooge’s Very Bad Night — “it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well”. That is rather more of an achievement when, as in this version, you may have 40 Christmases, rather than a couple, left to you.

Equally remade is Cratchit, who in Alwyn’s incarnation is far from the bashfully gulping frog thanking his master for granting him Christmas Day off before scampering back to Miss Piggy’s fleshy arms. Although Alwyn grew a rough beard for the part, his is also the best-looking Bob Cratchit you have seen. As the actor and I talk at the Picturehouse Central cinema in London, I find him as mesmerising off screen as on.

“Bob is trapped by Scrooge,” Alwyn says. “He’s abused by him. He’s not treated fairly. He’s there only because he has to be. He’s treated like shit.”

I’d say there’s a definite feeling in their shared scenes that Bob might just snap and hit Ebenezer over the head with a poker. “That was the intention. He’s at breaking point. He’s pushed right to his limits and Scrooge, I think, relishes winding him up. All Bob can do is hold his ground and fight back as much as he can — but he isn’t such a sap in this version.”

Scrooge and Cratchit’s relationship so much resembles an unhappy marriage that the niggling, bitter exchanges invented by Knight, with very little reference to Dickens’s dialogue, resemble Steptoe and Son rewritten by Strindberg. The easy contrast would have been with the Cratchits’ poor but happy marriage, but this too comes under scrutiny. There is an acknowledgment of the challenges a disabled child can bring to a household, and it is somehow emphasised by Tiny Tim being played by Lenny Rush, an extraordinary young actor, aged ten, who has a rare form of dwarfism called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, the same condition as Warwick Davis.

“It really mattered to me that nobody was photo-fit,” Murphy says from a studio where he is dubbing the last episode. “Bob Cratchit is always a winsome, put-upon nice guy and the Cratchits themselves represent this idea of an ideal, working-class, lovely family. So we looked into their relationship on the page and there seems a genuine tension between Bob and his wife. Things are hard. It isn’t easy to have no money and a disabled child, and they lean on each other and they’re not straight with each other and there is a genuine antagonism between them.”

Knight has written into the narrative a family secret that connects the Cratchits to Scrooge. The secret belongs to Mrs Cratchit, played by Vinette Robinson, whose part is greatly expanded; indeed, the novella does not even grant her a first name, although the Muppets, and other adaptors, opted for Emily.

“Inevitably the secret begins to surface and cracks appear in the family,” Alwyn says. “Something has to happen. I think what Steven has done is take the story and drill deeper. He hasn’t taken too much liberty. It’s not bending the truth too much from what Dickens would have wanted. Or I hope not.”

Murphy insists that worthwhile adaptations of classic texts should be “edgy” and have “a good bite to them”. “If you absolutely don’t want any variation from the book then I strongly suggest you sit in a corner at Christmas and read it again. But if you want to see it used as a prism through which we can see a broader and slightly different subject explored, then this one’s for you.”

Alwyn’s performance is part of the iconoclasm. “Joe’s instinct as an actor is always to push away from the obvious and into ambiguity,” Murphy says. “He’s very quietly spoken. He’s not brash at all. He’s a gentle, intelligent guy, but he just simply wasn’t interested in fitting a Dickensian cliché.”

“I’ll take that,” Alwyn says when I pass on the compliment, having not considered his technique in such terms. He is 28 and would probably accept that he is best known for two facts: the first is that he is Taylor Swift’s boyfriend; the second that, aged 25 and with no professional acting experience, he won the title role in an Ang Lee movie.

He is from north London, the middle of three sons. Their father is the television documentary-maker Richard Alwyn, renowned for making The Shrine about the public reaction to Princess Diana’s death.

“He was away a bit,” Alwyn says. “He made quite a lot of films in Africa when I was growing up. He was often in Uganda, Rwanda at one point, South Sudan. So he’d come back with stories and artefacts from all over the place. He made a great documentary in Liverpool during the World Cup about two kids on an estate growing up there.”

His mother, Elizabeth, is a psychotherapist. So, I say, although his family were comfortably off and he was sent to the fee-paying City of London School, he knew something of other people’s lives?

“All different kinds of people, all different kinds of stories,” he says. “Obviously, she couldn’t share them with me in the same way that Dad could, but both their jobs take an interest in other people and are about how to empathise, understand, and listen to stories and tell stories. I suppose it’s not a million miles away from an actor’s job; listening to other people, understanding them, trying to tell stories.”

I ask about the contemporary political resonances of A Christmas Carol. I cite the wealth of certain members of his profession and of Swift’s. Only the other day I have read that she has a private jet so she can visit Alwyn on a whim. He promises me that 99.9 per cent of what the press write about them is false, and this is an example.

I ask if he finds it embarrassing.

“Find what embarrassing?”

The disparity between the amount some people earn and the wages of workers in, say, Amazon fulfilment centres.

“I saw something in The Guardian the other day, I think, saying that the top six richest people in the UK accumulate the same amount of wealth as the poorest 13 million. I think that was the figure,” he says.

And politics today?

“It’s bigger than Scrooge, but it’s the same thing amplified; not being able to see beyond yourself, building walls, cutting yourself off from other countries. If there was ever a story to counter that, featuring someone who epitomises that and then who remembers who he is as a human being, it is A Christmas Carol.”

Unlike the young Dickens, Alwyn was not a boy to stand on a table and sing and dance. As a child he auditioned to play Liam Neeson’s son in the Richard Curtis film Love Actually, but didn’t get it. He harboured ambitions to act, but pursued them only later at the University of Bristol, where he took plays up to the Edinburgh Fringe. One night he acted before an audience of one: the writer’s mother. Undeterred, he went on to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, joining the scramble at the end to find an agent. Weeks later, his new agent rang to say that Ang Lee was working on a new film, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and wanted to see an audition tape.

“I got some mates to film me in a lunch break and then my dad filmed another scene, and we got a call that night saying, ‘He wants to meet you this weekend. He’s saying, we’re going to put you on a plane and take you out of school. Come for the weekend. Learn these scenes.’ ”

As Billy, a young US Marine fêted for killing an enemy assailant in Iraq, Alwyn was painfully believable; a virgin solider returning home to be exploited for an act that had devastated him. The film did not do well, mainly because it was shot at a hyper-reality frame rate that few cinemas had the technology to show, but Alwyn was on his way.

“Things only evolve by change and people taking risks,” he says. “And Ang Lee is someone who I admire for that. None of his films are the same. Maybe thematically they draw on the same things, but he’s always pushing the boundaries.”

The same can be said for A Christmas Carol and, even more, about Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite, in which Alwyn appeared alongside Emma Stone and Olivia Colman. It applies less so to his other recent films, Mary Queen of Scots, Boy Erased and now Harriet, a faithful biopic about the slave liberator Harriet Tubman in which he played a slave owner’s son. What he has managed to do consistently is work and learn from some seriously good actresses — Colman, Stone, Saoirse Ronan and Cynthia Erivo. “I know. I am targeting them,” he jokes.

I tell him my daughters have insisted I ask if he minds Swift writing songs about him (whole albums, actually, but check out London Boy if you are in search of a little cringe). “No, not at all. No. It’s flattering.”

Does it matter to him that the press — it’s a bit metatextual this, I admit, for I’m probably doing the same thing — make it obvious that they are as interested in his girlfriend as they are in him? “I just don’t pay attention to what I don’t want to pay attention to,” he explains tolerantly. “I turn everything else down on a dial. I don’t have any interest in tabloids. I know what I want to do, and that’s this, and that’s what I am doing.”

The boyf, described only the other day as “mysterious” in one of those tabloids, is no mystery at all. He knows what he wants for Christmas, and it is the career he is already forging.

A Christmas Carol begins on BBC One at 9pm on Sunday

[valyrfia]

Stranger Things 3 First Reactions

I’ve literally just finished Stranger Things 3, let’s discuss:

Definitely this was the biggest season in terms of action. It did feel like a huge summer blockbuster and while it was amazing, there is always the argument that some of the more quiet emotional moments were overlooked in favour of action

The ending...it didn’t go the way I wanted it to go, but I was actually satisfied

Of course I cried buckets BUCKETS when Hopper died, but I figured he would die when he went down to the basement and we knew if one was standing on the floor next to the drill they’d vaporise. Joyce has really bad luck with love interests

Billy was expected, and don’t get me wrong I absolutely hated the guy at the beginning of this season, but they did an okay job of humanising him. Sure I didn’t love him, but his sacrifice was somewhat touching. Hope we see his dad get his comeuppance at some point

And for Eleven to lose her father figure on top of all the other shit she’s gone through...oof. That shit hurts.

I love LOVE that Eleven was adopted by Joyce. I totally thought we were in for a lab abduction, especially with Hopper, her legal guardian, being gone, so I was so glad to be proven wrong.

We’ll finally get Will and El being siblings next season! We’ve been fighting for this from season 1! I for one am absolutely PUMPED. 

I feel like they could end Stranger Things here and I would be totally satisfied. Arc-wise, all the characters are resolved more or less, El has her family and her powers are gone, Will had to come to terms with his lost childhood, the Byers are finally moving away from the town that’s terrorised them since s1, Steve has had his full redemption, Nancy and Jonathan are going to go off to college. It feels like a really good place to end the series. Of course I am DYING for another season (I’ll put my predictions for s4 at the end of this post) but I want to end on a high, and this is quite a high. 

I assume they have a gate open in Siberia then? Or one that we don’t know about? Also Erica is so damn smart knowing full well that those cages were for demogorgans

‘The American’? Do you reckon they have Kali or one of the other numbers? Interesting. 

That being said, I’m not a huge fan that they just decided to go with the usual cliché ‘Russians are the true enemy!’ trope. Are we just going to forget about all the bad shit the American scientists did in the first place?

I feel like they really underused Will this season, Noah Schnapp is a terrific actor, probably one of the best of the kids and while he has some amazing scenes, most of the time he’s just standing at the back of the party being a Mindflayer radar. We saw what he could do in s2 and I really expected the Duffers to take advantage of that. Maybe next season.

Destroying Castle Byers absolutely killed me, it was the one scene that had me full-out sobbing. However that being said, it was a big emotional moment at the end of ep 3 and then wasn’t really mentioned again except in passing. 

Robin was brilliant, an amazing addition to the cast and her chemistry with Steve and Dustin was incredible

I loved the touching scene in the bathroom between her and Steve, I ALSO love how they used ‘The First I Love You’, the same soundtrack that was used for Mike and Eleven’s confession and the parallel to Nancy and Jonathan’s first kiss. Even though the relationship isn’t romantic, they care deeply DEEPLY about each other and Steve being an absolute ally and telling Robin she could do way better was just so heartwarming and actually made me tear up

Max was also incredible. I hadn’t quite warmed to her last season but she’s so fiery and loving and definitely is one of my favourite characters now. 

Max and El’s friendship made me smile so so much. It definitely felt realistic, despite what the reviews said. True some things were a little cliché, like them gushing over boys in magazines and trying on a million clothes at The Gap but the scene where they were spying on random people through psychic tv and where they were cooped up talking in a bathroom felt real. I absolutely loved their dynamic this season, it’s really refreshing to see a female friendship on screen again (considering the last one was Nancy and Barb?)

Tonally, this season felt all over the place. It was definitely more messy (both in terms of what was on screen AND in terms of plot) than the previous two seasons. The stakes didn’t feel quite as high as usual and the tonal shift dampened some of the really emotional scenes. 

Take the whole ‘Suzie Do You Copy?’ scene, the stakes were way high at that point and then we get a full minute and a half of a musical rendition of Neverending Story, it just felt a bit jarring and out of place. 

Also, we learnt about Russian involvement but we still know nothing more about the Upside Down, the Mindflayer or the original Hawkins Lab experiments.

I criticize, but it was still an absolute joy to watch. 

My least favourite out of all the seasons so far perhaps, but it’s still my favourite tv show

SEASON 4 PREDICTIONS

Considering Mike explicitly mentioned Thanksgiving/Christmas I’m expecting season 4 late 2020. Probably Christmas, I could see them releasing it around Christmas time. That’s also about the correct length of time it’ll take to make season 4. Also the Duffers are really big on framing the seasons around holidays. December 2020 calling it now.

We’ll see the gang reunite in Hawkins, obviously. 

The gang would have just started high school and I reckon we’ll see them start to drift apart. 

Mike will be struggling, out of everyone the two people he was closest with were Will and El. Not to mention Nancy will be gone off to college as well. 

We’ll definitely get some Will/El duo scenes and I am beyond hyped. Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp are such good friends off-screen it’ll undoubtedly carry over to their on-screen chemistry. 

It’s the duo we deserve. 

I want to see El FLOURISH. Hopefully we find out that El has actually gone to school, that she has friends...loads of friends who just think she’s a normal 15 year old girl. I want to see this. 

I hate to be THAT person...but I really hope they address Will’s sexuality. Again, as with past seasons all we got was very explicit subtext. This season is the last they can really dance around the subject. Will will be 15 or near 15 next season, you know who you’re attracted to at that point.

Not to mention that they have Robin in the mix now, someone who’s maybe not publicly comfortable with her sexuality, but has come to terms with it. A mentor figure, if you will. 

Speaking of Will in the plot sense, I do wonder whether they are going to go down the route of him having powers or not. There’s loads of clues and easter eggs about it/parallels with him and El. I was quite surprised they didn’t go down that route this season and didn’t delve any deeper into his connection to the Upside Down/Mindflayer

It would be super powerful and impactful to parallel him having to keep a secret about any potential ‘powers’ from his friends and family with another ‘secret’. In that situation, I can totally see El becoming Will’s confidante for both. But I digress.

The Russians are up to no good. Again.

We’ll definitely see Kali in some shape or form, and maybe other test subjects

There’s that American after all, I do strongly suspect that’s another Hawkins Lab subject, or past employee. 

I do hope they switch up the formula a bit for the big monster in s4, there’s only so many times you can close the gate after all. 

Either way, I want s4 now, not in seventeen months. 

TO ROUND-UP: It’s still got its charm, it’s still got its magic, it’s still got its nostalgia. Stranger Things 3, it’s been a pleasure. Bring on December 2020

[shirtlesssammy]

15x07: Last Call

Then:

In case you forgot, Dean and Cas are  f i g h t i n g. 

Now:

Texhoma, Texas

It’s bar time at a lonely little dive bar and two friends are stumbling to their car. Well, one is helping the other. Sally needs to vomit and runs to the bushes. Her friend, Angela, gets in the car instead of holding her hair back. I’m side eyeing your level of friendship here, ladies. Sally turns around from her puke-athon to find Angela and car gone. 

Cut to Angela tied to a chair in a basement. There’s a line slowly draining blood from her arm --and a monster feeding on it behind a door!

At the bunker, Dean continues his nihilistic spiral by drinking all the beer in his room and surfing the internet for cases. He finds one!

Cut to Dean wandering into the kitchen where a very cozy Sam and Eileen are making all the breakfasts. 

Dean knows when he’s a third wheel and decides to check out the case on his own. Sam and Eileen are living their best lives. He doesn’t want to get in the way.

Dean arrives at the Texhoma sheriff’s office and meets Sheriff Dillon. He asks about the disappearance of Angela. The sheriff isn’t convinced she’s gone. Her car went with her. He suggests that maybe she ran away to LA. Kids do that. They usually return within the week. He boasts that he stayed for a month. 

Ok, I can’t recap this with a straight (*wink*) face anymore. WHAT THE WHAT was happening here? There is SO much staring and awkwardness. I loved it but also wanted to hide under a rock. 

In any event, the sheriff admits that Angela’s friend has issues that usually keeps her at Swayze’s Bar 24/7. Before Dean can head out though, the sheriff tells Dean that he could go to LA and look for Angela. He could give showbiz a try himself. Cue camera zoom and, “You’ve got the look.” 

Dean    is    confused. 

That night Dean arrives at Swayze’s Bar. Dancing, drinking, and live music greet him. Also, a flirty waitress asks for his phone. This is a No Phones Allowed bar (guns are ok #AmericaYouAreTheWorst  -and what’s even worse? As an American, I didn’t think twice about this line until international fans vomited on Twitter. Sigh.) Dean, who’s currently on a case, just drops it in the basket. I guess he won’t be calling Sam if he needs anything. He asks about the friend, Sally. The waitress, Lorna, hasn’t seen her yet. She does slap Dean’s ass as she walks away though. Sigh. <Insert discourse on all the times Dean’s been sexually assaulted and harassed throughout the years.> He turns around to watch the waitress walk away when he notices the lead singer of the band. 

“Lee Webb.”

They’re old friends and ecstatic to see each other. Lee owns the bar. I wonder if they watched Swayze movies together in their youth?

Back at the bunker, things are snoozeville in Research Land. Eileen suggests they stop to do something fun. ooooOOOOOooooo. Sultry looks and awkward glances ensue. Sam takes her hand, she looks expectantly towards him, he leans forward, and...CAS INTERRUPTS! Bless the angel and his timing. Sam deserves it after 12 years of doing it to Cas and Dean. Cas and Eileen meet. Yay! 

*Classic SPN Dialog Alert*

Cas: I thought your were…

Eileen: Dead? Yeah, I got...better. 

Then Cas asks the important question in life: “Where’s Dean?” Lol, you two are divorced, remember? Anyway, Cas comes with ideas. He thinks that Sam and God are connected through their wound. 

At the bar, Dean tells Lee that John died 13 years ago. Damn, when you put it like that, it’s overwhelming to think about how much of their lives we’ve watched. Lee’s sorry to hear it. They toast to his memory. They talk about the last time they saw each other. (A cult thing in Arizona.) Lee did one more case and hung up his hunter spurs. Dean asks if he regrets walking away. Nope. 

At the bunker, Cas is going to probe Sam. Well, his wound really. Cas does his angel magic and that leads to Sam getting tossed against the wall. Ooops. 

Cas calls and leaves a message with Dean (on all his many, many phones it seems.) Cas growling directly into the phone is all kinds of wonderful. 

Dean’s busy reminiscing about orgies Lee and him had with triples. Yeah, they split triplets up “fair and square.” Um? <Insert lady doing complicated math gif here>

Cut to Sergei. Remember him? He sold Cas “archangel” grace back in the day. Cas needs his help. Cas goes all BAMF on him and we collectively swoon. Cas also makes another phone call. 

For Hand Porn Science:

At the bar, Dean tells Lee all about Ghost Sickness (ah, that very funny episode, until it wasn’t. Andrew Dabb’s first episode. Lilith makes an appearance.) Lee asks about his current case. Dean shows him a picture of Angela. Lorna sees it and is surprised Lee doesn’t recognize her. She’s in the bar all the time. WHERPS. Someone’s a lying liar. Anyway, the conversation moves on and Lee tells Dean he could have this life. (*crying Rocky’s Bar noise*) Dean wants to know who’ll kill the bad guys? “You deserve a break, bro.” Ok, fair. 

Lee then gets the band to play “Good Ol’ Boys” AND convinces Dean to join him on stage. Dean takes another shot and joins his friend. Dean’s on stage, but HE IS FREAKED OUT. Poor boy. He starts singing though. 

And he can sing?? Ok. I will accept. Because I have to. Why would he pretend to not be able to sing for all these years? I mean, I guess, why does Dean pretend to be something he’s not is the main question we have about this poor soul in general. 

A fight breaks out in the back - Blondie’s getting harassed. “Road house rules?” Dean asks, invoking our lord and savior, Swayze. Hell yeah. Dean and Lee make quick work of the bullies and Dean discovers that Blondie’s actually Sally Anderson, the best friend of the girl who disappeared. 

Cas lets Sergei into the bunker. Sergei is positively ENAMORED by the bunker and all the delightful treasures within. Cool your jets, man! “You’re here for a reason,” Cas growls. 

“Aren’t we all?” Sergei replies, and my eyebrows go WAY UP high in the air because that is some straight up authorial intent nonsense. They head in to the infirmary and Sergei uses a crystal to scan Sam like it’s a medical tricorder. Sam’s dying, according to Sergei. 

Sally spills the details, including the disappearance of the car. “You can’t rapture a car,” Lee protests. 

“It was a good car,” Sally tells him and I am definitely not now thinking about the Impala getting sucked up to her eternal rest in Heaven. Nope. Not thinking about that at all. 

Instead of Heaven, Lee suggests that the car may have gotten dumped in the lake. Lorna, who is probably a TRUE CRIME enthusiast, suggests the scrapyard, though. Dean marks that as his first stop. 

Sergei delivers some truth about Sam’s wound. It’s a soul-deep wound and connects his soul to something that wanders the world. When Castiel probed it, Sam’s soul was squeezed out of his body. Please be like me, and envision Sam’s soul as the toothpaste in a half used toothpaste tube squeezed by Castiel’s fist. If Sam’s soul wanders too far, he dies. Or, as in my analogy, the toothpaste tube of the soul explodes. Soul toothpaste everywhere!

In the junkyard, Dean discovers the victim’s car and more appallingly, her body hidden in the trunk. A gun is cocked behind him. It’s Lee! He knocks Dean out cold. 

Sergei smears a potion on Sam’s wound. Sam begins to thrash violently while Sergei chortles to Cas about deliberately hastening his death with his “cure.” Wherps. Shockingly, trusting the villain who cheerfully harmed Jack has backfired! Sam flashes on Chuck’s conversation with Amara - particularly on all the bits where they discuss Chuck’s current weakened state. While Sam flashes, Eileen drives Sergei into the wall and chokes off his airway. FANS SELF. 

Sergei demands the “Key to Death” in exchange for saving Sam’s life. It’s a key with a skeleton handle which can open the door to Death’s library. OKAY GUYS THIS IS NOT A DRILL I am very excited! First: a trip to the library! Second: it’s a SKELETON key, pardon me while I savor this pun with all I’m worth. Please, please can we visit Billie with a magic key? PLEASE????

Um. Anyway. Castiel isn’t taking any of Sergei’s bullshit. He pulls out his phone and shows a photo of Sergei’s niece, under surveillance by Bobby. At Castiel’s order, Bobby will kill her. This takes all the wind out of Sergei’s sails. 

Cut to Sergei chanting over Sam just before Sam wakes up, mostly intact. “We good?” Sergei asks. Sure! BFFs. 

Dean wakes up tied to a chair in a basement with an IV in his arm. “You awake, Buddy?” Lee asks, and isn’t that just an improper endearment to use at this time? Lee heads downstairs to deliver his villain monologue to Dean’s face. No sense in killing him while Dean was knocked out, right?!

Lee reveals that he had a very bad hunt that caused him to despair ever winning against the evil in the world. When he did his last hunt in this town, he found the monster who is now locked up in the cage in the bar’s basement. “As long as you feed it, it gives you money. It gives you health. It gives you anything you dreamed of.” Lee feels that the world owes him for his many monster kills from his younger days. The world isn’t divided into good or bad, nor does it care for anybody’s moral high ground. “But I do,” Dean says, and it’s like a rallying cry for our poor hot-dog-pantsed hero.

Lee releases the blood and it begins to travel up towards the monster’s cage. “Dean Winchester, the righter of wrongs. You’re gonna keep digging. You’re gonna figure me out.” Lee pats him on the shoulder one more time, bro-like, and heads up the stairs again. 

Dean sizes up the situation, rocks the chair and shatters it on the floor like he’s made out of granite, and pulls out the needle. It’s monster fightin’ time! 

Upstairs, Lee hears the commotion. It’s basically a lot of loud snarling and banging. Just a typical Friday night for Dean Winchester, amirite? Footsteps climb the stairs…and the monster’s head is thrown through the doorway.

They engage in a good ol’ fashioned shootout before confronting each other face-to-face. “I am you,” Lee tells Dean. But he’s a version that realized the world was broken and bought into it. 

“Then you fix it,” Dean insists. “You don’t walk away. You fight for it.” And, as it turns out, they fight for justice, I guess. They fight and Dean skewers Lee with a broken pool cue. 

“I’m glad it was you,” Lee says about his death which is twenty flavors of fucked up. Look, I know there’s all this meta about how this is Dean’s unrealistic fantasy and it shows him his true calling isn’t tending bar. That is all ABSOLUTELY accurate. But GUYS this also reads like another lesson from Chuck to poke Dean back into hunting and eventual fratricide again. Hot dog pants don’t kill people (EVEN THOUGH they straight up murdered fandom a few weeks ago). What parts of these episodes are meant to be Chuck and what are meant to be “free will”? I have no idea and I’ve never been more in love with this show!

!!!

Um. Anyway. 

Dean returns to the bunker. Castiel, just striding innocently through the war room, is ASSAULTED by Dean’s surprise presence. “Dean,” he says, so very softly. GAAAAAH. 

Dean asks after Sam. Castiel delivers the good news and can NOT maintain eye contact. WHEN WILL MY SUFFERING END? Castiel strides away and Dean follows him to check on Sam. 

Sam, bless this poor clueless bean, is ecstatic with his new knowledge from his near-death visions. He realizes he saw Chuck’s memories, and knows he is weak now. Sam’s ready to take the Team Free Will monster truck and just rollllll it right over Chuck. Easy peasy! 

________________________________

Gimme a Bro-Quote, Bro:

Duke? Like put up your dukes?!

I need a break and so do you. Why don’t we do something fun?

Livin’ the dream!

Can’t just keep lip syncing Eye of the Tiger while no one’s watching

You can’t rapture a car

Best friends don’t just leave without saying goodbye

I like this you, Castiel. It’s very…Russian

Good or bad. The world doesn’t care. No one cares, Dean.

________________________________

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[c-ptsdrecovery]

Fanny Price and Emotional Abuse

colubrina replied to your post “Emotional Neglect in Austen”

I would actually love to read your analysis of Fanny Price if you ever had time and inclination to write it out.

Oh my goodness, where do I start?

Fanny Price is abused and neglected from start to finish of that novel. She suffers direct emotional/verbal abuse from Mrs. Norris, bullying from Maria and Julia, excessive criticism from those three AND Sir Thomas, and emotional neglect from Lady Bertram and Tom. She also suffers PHYSICAL abuse and neglect, mostly from Mrs. Norris, who does not allow her to have any heat in her room in the winter and forces her to work beyond her strength in the summer even though Mrs. Norris KNOWS she’s chronically ill (and it’s no wonder, considering the amount of emotional strain Fanny’s under, that she should be chronically ill!). 

The only person in that house who even notices that she’s utterly miserable from the trauma of being torn from her family is Edmund: he’s the only one who treats her like a person and is kind to her. It’s no WONDER she falls in love with him: he’s the only person in the entire family who doesn’t treat her like SHIT. But while Edmund recognizes Mrs. Norris’ behavior toward Fanny to be beyond the pale, he generally does not seem to notice that his more immediate family also treats her horribly. Lady Bertram treats Fanny as a servant, putting her own (Lady Bertram’s) needs and wants before Fanny’s (”You don’t want to go to the party, do you? You want to stay home with me because I get bored if you don’t!”). Sir Thomas is generally so critical and cold that when he greets Fanny kindly on his return from Antigua she is “nearly overcome” by his kindness. Even Edmund himself begins to both emotionally and physically neglect Fanny the moment he gets interested in Mary--leaving Fanny for ages on the bench alone, keeping her waiting too long for her horse when she needs to exercise, etc. Fanny only gets noticed and included as a member of the family when Maria and Julia are both gone and the family is apparently bored without them--the same reason Henry decides to flirt with her.

The result is that Fanny has almost no self-esteem. She has completely internalized Mrs. Norris’s lesson that “Wherever you are, you must be the lowest and last.” At one point she parrots the lessons she’s been taught by the treatment of the entire family:

“I can never be important to any one.” “What is to prevent you?” “Everything. My situation, my foolishness and awkwardness.” “As to your foolishness and awkwardness, my dear Fanny, believe me, you never have a shadow of either.”

She believes she’s foolish and awkward because the family harped on her lack of education and “refinement” when she first came to them, and they have drilled into her, not only that she is not important to them, but that she can never BE important to ANYONE. Classic result of emotional neglect. And Fanny NEVER actually gets over it, throughout the entire book.

She’s nearly silent through much of the book too, mostly because she’s too terrorized to talk. As someone who was similarly brainwashed by emotionally abusive parents, I can tell you that taking any attention under some circumstances feels excruciating and guilt-inducing, because you’ve been conditioned so hard to believe that “being the center of attention” is somehow morally WRONG. Fanny suffers from precisely that false belief (note her distress when she is required, by the social rules of the day, to start the dancing at her own ball--Sir Thomas basically has to SCOLD her into it!).

That said, it’s amazing to note the one way in which she DOES have self-esteem: she believes in her own moral judgment. This is the only basis on which she is able to think and act independently of others. When Edmund treats her badly, she gets seriously annoyed. When she notices Henry’s bad behavior toward Maria, she is indignant. She secretly judges Mary Crawford the whole way through the book. I would attribute this trust in her moral judgment to be the result of the kind of long walks and talks she has with Edmund in the text and has had her entire life: he has molded her to think of things with the same moral judgment he uses and to think herself capable of being superior to others in that moral judgment. Of course, since she has absorbed the moral tone of Edmund, learned from Sir Thomas, she is pretty judgy sometimes, since Sir Thomas clearly feels himself and his moral code to be superior rather than conservative. She certainly feels superior to her birth family (with some reason, honestly lol), because in this one thing she has been taught that the family she grew up in was superior to others. She has imbibed this superiority and acts it out when at Plymouth.

Let me give you an example of Sir Thomas’s conservative moral code. You might think, from reading Mansfield Park, that Jane Austen disapproved of private theatricals, and that they were generally considered too naughty by the Better Sort of Person. It turns out that this isn’t true at all. Not only were private theatricals popular, but Jane Austen enjoyed performing in them and even WROTE some plays for that purpose! One of them involves a gentleman sitting on a lady’s lap!! It turns out that the strait-laced tone of the novel is not so much a reflection of the author’s standards of conduct, but of Sir Thomas’s, imbibed by Edmund and then Fanny. Edmund, Fanny, and Sir Thomas’s dislike of private theatricals would have been a bit PRUDISH at the time, not the obvious standard of Good Breeding.

Another thing the novel has imbibed from Sir Thomas is its insularity. The modern criticism of Mansfield Park talks a lot about the family’s isolation. Now, I don’t hold with the criticism that makes a big deal out of Fanny marrying her cousin and implying that that’s incestuous, because in the 19th century, cousin marriage was not only acceptable but a norm. Marrying your cousin was often considered desirable because it strengthened family ties and kept money in the family. BUT, I completely agree with the observation that the Mansfield Park family seems to shun the outside world. 

One thing that I don’t know if the criticism has commented on is that dysfunctional families often function like cults. Offspring of dysfunctional families tend either to rebel and “run away” (Maria elopes, Julia elopes, Tom rebels) or to fail to establish autonomy (Edmund takes a living in Sir Thomas’s gift and later the house right down the road; Fanny never gets out of the family at all because she marries Edmund). Dysfunctional families also teach their members not to trust those outside the family circle. They don’t tend to socially interact much with others. I can say from personal experience that my parents have VERY few friends that they see outside of work or church, and only one couple that they invite to the house regularly. As a child, I rarely got to have birthday parties with my friends: my parents would instead invite my extended family. I was taught not to establish strong bonds outside the family, to trust the family only to be generous or to help and support me. I find it difficult to establish strong ties of friendship outside the family or to trust those friends to support me the way my family might.

The Bertrams are the same way. Maria and Julia go to local balls, but that happens offscreen, and we never meet any of their acquaintances except Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth (who become family). The family disapproves strongly of Tom’s having such an active social life away from home, and disapproves when he brings home a friend (Mr. Yates) to stay. Even when Sir Thomas holds a ball for Fanny in the house itself, we never actually meet any of the guests except the ones we already know! And the “last straw” that causes Edmund to agree to join the theatricals is when they start asking people “outside their circle” of Mansfield and the parsonage to participate. He also deplores that they might invite in an audience of these personae non gratae. Frankly, it’s amazing that the Bertrams were willing to open their family circle enough to let in, not only the Grants, but the Crawfords.

I’ve gone on for quite awhile, but I’ll close like this. When I first read Mansfield Park, I hated it and I hated Fanny, because she had no backbone and cried all the time. Then I watched the 2007 adaptation with Billie Piper, and realized that although Fanny was so shy and retiring and weepy, she had an iron backbone in that nobody could make her do what she thought was wrong. Mansfield became one of my favorite Austen novels.

At the moment, I don’t feel like I can reread MP. I’m dealing so much with my own history of emotional abuse and neglect that MP strikes just waaaay too close to home (also the reason I can’t rewatch Tangled right now). I’m not sure how much I like MP anymore, frankly. Austen did a fantastic job of accurately portraying a victim of emotional abuse. And she gave Fanny what she wanted at the end, which was Edmund. But I can’t help wondering if Austen herself wished she could have ended the novel differently. She comes right out and says, authoritatively, that if Edmund had married Mary, and Crawford hadn’t run off with Maria, that Fanny would have married Crawford and been happy. She could have escaped from her abusive family, with someone who really sees their abuse: “And they will now see their cousin treated as she ought to be, and I wish they may be heartily ashamed of their own abominable neglect and unkindness.” If Crawford and Maria hadn’t run off together, the ending of Mansfield Park might have been entirely different--and it MIGHT have been better.   

[blerbdrops]

New Kid (Billy Hargrove X F!Reader) Part 2

Thanks for sticking with me! Here is part two of New Kid. It is kinda wordy and descriptive. I hope you all enjoy it!

Summary: You’re new in Hawkins, hailing from the big city on the east coast.As a city kid, you think you’ve been stuck here to suffer in a small town, but there’s a certain someone who shakes it all up. 

Warnings: Mentions of smoking, swearing

Taglist: @salemlysi @asheseiler

You locked up your car, looking at it one last time and sighing happily. You loved your family, the family you had left. You made a mental note to remind yourself to call your uncle when you got home and tell him how appreciative you are for your new ride. 

Walking down the lot, you heard loud laughter and felt eyes on you. Like someone was staring through you, not at you. You heard footsteps trailing not too far off from you. Minding your business, you kept it pushing to the front doors of your school to the main office before class started.

“Hi, uh, I’m new here. My name is (y/n) (y/l/n). I was told to come pick up my schedule here.” The secretary looked up over her wire-frame glasses. 

“Hello! Let me grab that for you. Wouldn’t want you to walk into the wrong class now!” She pulls open a file cabinet organized by last name and flips through all the files before getting yours out. 

“Ah! Here you are (y/n). There’s your schedule for your first semester here. As a senior, you are expected to set a good example for the juniors and the rest of the student body here at Hawkins High…”

You half-heartedly listened to the spiel she had started. It’s not like you hadn’t heard it before. Based off of first impressions alone, you thought Hawkins High to be.. quaint. It was just another run-of-the mill high school. You took a quick glance and met the gaze of some random blond dude with a mop of curls atop his head. He gave you a quick wave and a wink and kept walking. You gave him a half smile and directed your attention back on the secretary, who was almost done talking. 

“...Now, before I let you off to go on your own, do you have any questions for me?” 

“No, everything was pretty straight forward. Thank you! I appreciate it.” 

She raised her eyebrows shocked, like nobody had ever appreciated her. She smiled kindly at you. “Thank you, (y/n). Enjoy the rest of your day!”

“You too, miss!” You walked out of the office, looking down to find your first class. The bell had just rang. “Shit, am I late?”

“Hey! You look new. And lost. Who are you?” A boy with sculpted brown hair and a kind face asked you. 

“Oh. Hey! Yeah I’m new. Name’s (y/n). Nice to meet you.” You extended your hand towards him. He reached out and shook your hand. 

“I’m Steve! Nice to meet you too. Let me see your schedule, we probably have some classes together..” He took your schedule from your hands and looked it over. 

“Oh, sweet! We have english, math and chem together. I can walk you to english, even though we’re gonna be a little late.” He shrugs.

“I’d appreciate that a lot, actually. I have no clue where anything is. Except the main office.” You continued. “Plus, you can blame being late on me. I’m new, and you’re being real kind.”

“Alright, sounds good to me. To english we go! Bit of a heads up, Mr. Kowalski is kind of a dick.” 

You laughed. “Yeah, so am I. Him and I can have a dick-measuring contest.” 

Moments later, you and Steve arrived to Mr. Kowalski’s class. Mr. Kowalski didn’t seem too pleased to have not one, but two late students to his class. 

“Mister Harrington. You’re late. No surprise to me, you’re always late.” Mr. Kowalski sneered to him. Steve didn’t really seem to care, he just let it roll right off of him. 

“I could’ve skipped, you know. But I apologize for being late, I uh, was helping the new girl find her way here.” He gestures over to you, and you give a small wave to the balding man in front of the blackboard. His face lit up. 

“Apology accepted, Mister Harrington! Have a seat now.” Steve went to an empty desk in the back row of the class, leaving you by yourself. Not wanting to seem rude, you introduce yourself to the teacher. 

“Uh, hi Mr. Kowalski. I’m (y/n) (y/l/n). Nice to meet you.” You extended your hand, to which he shook warmly. 

“Hello Miss (y/l/n)! Very nice to meet you! Why don’t you take the desk next to Mister Hargrove?” He gestures to the only open seat. You look and it’s the same guy you saw in the office. You walk over to the seat and sit down, taking out a notebook and pencil to jot down some notes. 

As Mr. Kowalski drones on about Othello, you jot down notes in between daydreams. You had already read and studied Othello at your old school junior year, the notes just kept you awake. You gave your friends your address, hoping they’d write you letters or something.  

“Pssst. Hey. New kid.” You hear a whisper from the left of you. It was the blond kid from earlier. 

“Yes?” You turned your head towards him, mid-sentence. This is the most you’ve seen of him, and you gave him a quick once-over. He had bright blue eyes, long eyelashes, full brows. He had a scar through his left brow, which gave his face some character. Full pink lips that hid a killer Colgate smile, and sculpted curls. You realized he had a mullet. You had never seen one so well executed before. He was easy on the eyes. 

“Do you have an extra pencil I could borrow?” 

“Yeah sure.” You go into your pencil case and pull out a yellow #2 pencil and handed it to him. “Here, keep it. I have extras.”

“Thanks, doll.” He smirked at you.

“I have a name. It’s (y/n). Use it next time, doll.” You retorted.

He raised his eyebrows at you, impressed by your smart remark. You turned away and continued taking notes until class was over. Mr. Kowalski assigned the class to read some of Othello and answer questions in a study guide. 

You raised your hand. “Uh, Mr. Kowalski? I don’t have the book. Or the homework.” 

“Ah, I see. Here you are. Catch up with the rest of the class, we are halfway through the book.” He walks to your desk and hands you your assignment. You place it in your folder, which goes into your backpack. 

“Alright, class dismissed! And there will be a quiz tomorrow. Study for it. That includes you, Miss (y/l/n).” 

You nodded, packed up for class and left, finding Steve in the hallway.

“Hey, he isn’t as much of a dick like you said he was. He was kinda nice!”

“Pft. It’s only because you’re new and you’re a girl. He’s a dick to the boys.” He continued though. 

You and Steve were on your way to chemistry class when that blond kid, whose name you still have yet to catch, stops dead in Steve’s tracks. 

“Hey. Harrington.” 

“What, Billy? You don’t see me walking (y/n) to class?” Steve retorts back. You watch them size each other up. It feels like you’re in a game of monkey in the middle, except the ball is a time bomb.

“Since when did you care about going to class, or other people for that matter?” 

“I’ve always cared, jackass. Screw off.” He continues. “Plus, shes new and we have a few classes together.”

You interject, “Do you take chemistry second period, uh, Billy?” 

“Yeah, I do.” 

“Cool great see you two there.” You simply state and walk off, not trying to be late or caught up in between whatever those two were going to get into.

After finding your way to chemistry class, Steve and Billy beat you there. You got in right as the bell went off. 

“You must be (y/n), the new student! Welcome to chemistry. There’s an available seat at the lab table in the back. Go sit! We’re starting a new lab today.”

You look in the back, and the empty seat is next to Billy, and two other kids you didn’t know. They all looked like trouble. You walked back and sat on the stool, Billy directly across from you. The girl next to you glared at you, chewing her gum like a cow. It was really off-putting, and quite distracting. 

“Hey, could you not chew your gum like that? It’s kinda distracting.” You say politely. She rolled her eyes at you and kept at it, if not chewing louder. 

“Carol that’s gross. Stop it, for real.” The boy across from her says. She scoffs and stops. You give him a silent thank you and he just nods in your direction. The teacher, Ms. McCarthy is about to give out instructions when the fire alarm goes off. 

“Alright, this is a fire drill. You know what to do.” She says nonchalantly. You grabbed your stuff and slung it over your shoulder and filed out to the parking lot with the rest of the class

Once reaching the parking lot, you beelined it to your car and sat on top of the trunk, setting your backpack down next to you. You pulled out a cigarette and stuck it in between your lips, bringing your lighter up to it and inhaling. 

“Can I bum one off you?” The gruff voice asked. It was Billy. You rolled your eyes, reluctant to give up one of your precious smokes. 

“You never have any of your own shit, kid? Seriously, nobody likes a moocher.” You took a drag off your cig and blew the smoke away from him. 

He looks at you, eyebrows furrowed. “Kid? We’re probably the same age. Are you gonna give me one or not?” 

You smile at him and chuckle. “Of course I’m not! Not with that attitude. Ask again.” You continue to enjoy your cigarette. 

“Are you serious?” You raise an eyebrow at him. He sighs, “May I please have a cigarette?”

“You may. See? Being nice gets you the things you want.” You hand him a smoke and watch him place it between his lips, watching the orange filter sit on them lazily. He has really nice lips, you think to yourself. The snap of his lighter snapped you out of your daze. He smirks at you. “Like something you see, doll?”

“Hmm.. nah.” He’s floored with your response. He wasn’t expecting that kind of response, not with the way you had been looking at him. 

“Hm. Could’ve had me fooled.” He says, a bit coldly. You disregarded him and watched as the Hawkins Fire Department came out of the school and gave the all-clear. The students and faculty filed back in. You dropped your cigarette on the ground and stomped it out. You walked back to the main entrance, Billy right next to you.

It was quiet for a bit. You preferred it that way, you hated small talk. Until Billy opened his mouth. “Hey. Thanks for the uh, pencil earlier and the cigarette.” He says, keeping his gaze forward. 

“Yeah sure. Bring your own shit next time, moocher.” You ended your sentence with a chuckle. 

He laughed along with you. He was starting to understand the way your humor worked, if that was what you could call it. 

“Nice ride by the way. Bit of a mans car though, wouldn’t you say?” He asked.

“Mans car? The hell does that mean?” You go on to continue, a bit annoyed. “Mans car, womans car, it don’t matter. At the end of the day, its my car, right?”

Billy put his hands up defensively. “Hey, you got a point there sweetheart.”

“I know.” The lunch bell had rung and you slipped into the masses, leaving Billy by himself.

----

Finding a seat in the classroom was one thing. The cafeteria was a nightmare. Your dad had packed you lunch today. He packed you the perfect ham and cheese sandwich, some chips, and a bottle of apple juice. You looked around the cafeteria only to hear a familiar voice call for you.

“Hey! Hey (y/n)! Come over here, sit with me!” Steve waved you over to his table and you sat across from him. “Hey Steve! How’s it going?” 

“It’s a regular day for me, man. School, then basketball practice after.” He takes a bite out of the hamburger. “Enough about me, what’s going on with you new kid?” He laughs.

“You’re gross! Don’t talk with your mouth full.” You pause to grab your lunch out of your bag and set it out on the table. Emptying the contents out, you continue your conversation with Steve. “My day is fine, I mean I have a shitload of work to do but that’s okay. It’s all easy. I already know about Othello, I read it my junior year of high school.” You take a bite out of your sandwich, chew and swallow. “Ha. Nerd.” Steve laughs, drinking out of his milk carton. 

“Steve I have something to tell you.” He stops mid-chew and raises his eyebrow. 

“I’m listening?” 

You look around the cafeteria, and lean in closer to Steve. In a hushed voice you say, “What is with that Billy kid? He’s been on my back all day, Steve. I don’t like it. I just got here.”

Steve nods his head, understanding. “Billy Hargrove. He was a new kid too, he’s from California. He isn’t anything but trouble. He��s a player, too. He’s no good, and you should stay away from him. Like, seriously. That guy? He’s bad news!”

You motioned for Steve to stop talking, but he doesn’t take the hint. “I mean, like this guy beat me up. Like beat the shit out of me and-”

“And I’ll do it again, Harrington.” You sigh heavily, finishing your lunch and giving the chips to Steve. Billy made you lose your appetite.

“Is that why you were telling me to stop?” You nodded. Steve gets up, and stands in front of Billy. Some of the students started to look on.

“Look, Harrington, I don’t know what your problem is.” Billy says coolly. “But badmouthing me to the new kid? That’s real low.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Yeah dude whatever. I don’t want her to get caught up in all.. this.” He points, moving his finger up and down. 

Billy steps closer, trying to shake Steve. Steve doesn’t move. 

“What are you gonna do, huh Billy? Beat my ass?” 

Before Billy gets a chance to react, you slide out of the cafeteria bench and walk up behind Billy, squeezing the pressure point right in between the crook of his neck and shoulder, causing him to buckle.

“You listen to me, Hargrove.” Your voice ran cold. “Leave Steve alone. So far, all you’ve done is mooch off of me and prove Steve’s point. Don’t mess with him again. Or else.”

“Or else what? You gonna tell on me to the princi- ah fuck!” You tightened your grip on him. The students turned around to see the new girl have big bad Billy Hargrove yelping in pain. Steve was just watching, wide-eyed. 

“Steve’s my friend. Don’t go looking for trouble when there ain’t none, kid.” You let him go roughly. “Get out of my sight, Hargrove.”

He rubs his neck, casting a glare at Steve and a look at you. You tried to decipher what emotion was behind his eyes. Anger? Hurt? Fear? You couldn’t tell. He walked away and sat back at his table, the cafeteria still looking at you and Steve. 

“Can I help any of you?” You barked. They quickly averted their eyes and went about minding their business.

You and Steve sat back down. “You know (y/n), you didn’t have to do that.” Steve says to you, looking down at his folded thumbs. 

“Yes I did. I don’t let my friends get pushed around by some punk and let them get away with it. Not while I’m around.” You finished the rest of your apple juice, letting out a raunchy burp. Steve’s nose crinkled in disgust. “Dude! That was so gross!” Steve laughed. “It felt nice though! Excuse me.” You laughed. 

The rest of your classes passed, and you were essentially playing catch up in every class except math, where they were starting a new unit. You had study hall last period, so you decided to start your english work. Whatever you didn't finish, you’d just do it at home. Your chemistry teacher gave you a packet of catch up work to get familiar with what was going on, despite your class getting cut short because of the fire drill. You expressed gratitude to your chem teacher and she smiled, offering her classroom as open doors should you need any help.

Once the bell rang, you packed up and left the building. You walked out of the front doors and looked at your car. She was shining bright and blue. You strolled to your car, enjoying the nice weather while it was still around. There were kids ogling your car, mumbling amongst themselves. Saying excuse me politely wasn’t working. You cleared your throat and announced, “Excuse me! I’d like to get to my vehicle, please!” That causes the crowd to disperse, and you were glad it did. You opened up the back seat and threw your bag in there. You shut the door, and before you could even hop into the drivers seat, you hear the same, gruff voice that asked you for a cigarette earlier. 

“Hey, (y/l/n). I wanna talk to you.”

----

A/N: This part is super wordy and long, but it was a lot of fun to write. I write with a lot of detail because I write the way I think! I hope you enjoyed this part, part three will be out soon :)