Introducing the start of my unnecessary long coming-of-age fic I’m writing about Jinx that will span from right after the explosion at the cannery until after the end of the show’s canon timeline. It’s just for funsies, but I’m really happy with how it showing so far! Feel free to check it out :)
(Unless you are my sister. Don’t even.)
Following the death of her family in an accident she caused, Jinx is alone, for the first time in her life. The loneliness was always the worst part- missing her sister even as she resents her abandonment, longing for Ekko even as she becomes something he hates, and the one person left to look out for her seems to be pushing her further into the darkness.
After years of descending further into her life as Jinx and the loneliness that comes with it, after a night with her childhood best friend turned enemy, she finds that she'll never be alone again.
Jude and Cardan leave their daughter Liora with her Aunt Vi and Heather in the mortal world for one day. It was supposed to be relaxing. Instead, there are squirrels in crowns, cursed coffee machines, and one very traumatized Target manager.
꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷
“You’re absolutely sure about this?” Heather asked, voice already tinged with dread as she watched Liora stalk a butterfly with the focus of a seasoned predator.
Vi, lounging on a picnic blanket in her backyard, waved lazily. “We’ve got this. I’ve raised my sisters. I’ve wrangled Jude after a wine tasting when she was younger. What’s one tiny fae slash mortal kid for a day?”
“She’s not just a kid,” Heather whispered. “She’s Jude and Cardan’s kid.”
Across the lawn, seven-year-old Liora Greenbriar—crown of braided flowers askew, mossy cape fluttering, and eyes glinting gold with inherited menace—held up a worm like it was an offering to the gods.
“I shall name him Earl.”
Cardan, standing with Jude on the patio, clapped. “My legacy is secure.”
Jude squinted. “Just don’t let her enchant anyone, bring back a feral animal, or claim territory.”
Vi raised an eyebrow. “That happened once.”
Heather, very quietly: “It was three times.”
Liora marched up, placed the worm gently on Heather’s shoulder, and declared, “You are now blessed by the Earth and its wrigglers.”
Heather screamed.
✦•┈๑⋅⋯⋯⋅๑┈•✦
Hour One:
Vi thought things were going okay until Liora asked why all the neighborhood houses looked the same.
“I shall liberate them,” she said.
“No, you shall not,” Vi said.
“But they’re… beige. This is oppression.”
Heather sighed from the kitchen. “She’s not wrong.”
✦•┈๑⋅⋯⋯⋅๑┈•✦
Hour Three:
The neighbor’s kid, a ten-year-old named Brandon with a Nerf arsenal and unchecked confidence, challenged Liora to a “laser tag war.”
Liora, offended, declared a duel of honor.
Five minutes later, Brandon’s Nerf gun was mysteriously jammed with glitter and his shoelaces had tied themselves into knots.
“I didn’t technically enchant him,” Liora said.
Vi, impressed, whispered to Heather, “That was Roach-level sabotage.”
Heather whispered back, “We need holy water.”
✦•┈๑⋅⋯⋯⋅๑┈•✦
Hour Four:
They took her to Target to burn off some energy.
Huge mistake.
Liora climbed onto the cart like it was a battle chariot, grabbed a fairy wand from the toy aisle, and declared herself Queen of Aisle Seven.
By the time Vi returned from grabbing oat milk, Heather was being dragged toward the checkout by security while Liora loudly proclaimed, “LET MY SUBJECT GO, YOU BEIGE-BADGED PEASANTS!”
They were gently escorted out.
Vi was banned. From Target.
✦•┈๑⋅⋯⋯⋅๑┈•✦
Hour Six:
Heather tried to make cookies. Liora insisted on adding “glamour sprinkles.” The oven started glowing.
When they opened it, a puff of cinnamon-scented magic turned Vi’s eyebrows silver.
Liora gasped. “You look like a battle queen!”
Vi blinked. “Actually… I do.”
Heather: “I’m going to lie down. Forever.”
✦•┈๑⋅⋯⋯⋅๑┈•✦
Hour Nine:
Jude and Cardan finally returned, looking entirely too relaxed.
“How was it?” Jude asked.
Vi, covered in frosting, wearing silver brows and a unicorn sticker on her cheek, shrugged. “Surprisingly educational.”
Heather emerged from behind a couch cushion. “She tried to unionize the neighborhood cats.”
Cardan looked at his daughter, who was seated on the kitchen table surrounded by cats and sticky notes.
Liora raised a goblet of chocolate milk. “We’ve formed a collective. All naps are now sacred.”
Cardan beamed. “My sweet little revolutionary.”
Jude pinched the bridge of her nose. “We were gone for one day.”
Heather handed Jude a cursed cookie shaped like a flaming sword. “Take your child. And your royal agenda.”
Vi waved. “Come back anytime! I’m teaching her how to throw knives next time.”
Heather groaned. “That’s not a joke, is it?”
“It’s never a joke,” Jude and Vi said in perfect sync.
Watching the Equalizer and seeing Robyn and Miles fight for custody over Dee just to have Aunt Vi swoop in to say, "bold of you to assume either if you have custody over MY child". Like, a village is raising this baby but you are not leading the village.
An infrequent but potent joy in my life is when you find one character portrayed by a performer that would absolutely HATE another one of their characters.
Example: Lorraine Toussaint's Aunt Vi in The Equalizer would 100% fight Shadow Weaver in an Etherian parking lot.
Queen Sugar is bringing the heat this season! The first episode was good but the second?! Having them all learn about what's actually in Nova's novel and all of their reactions? Artistry.
(via 'Queen Sugar' Season 3 Uses Pies To Make a Statement - The Atlantic)
The Revolutionary Power of Pies in Queen Sugar
Season 3 has offered a compelling portrait of a middle-aged, African American woman chasing her dreams of entrepreneurship. The result is the kind of story that exists nowhere else on TV.
“I’m almost 60 years old,” Violet Bordelon tells her much younger beau, Hollywood, in a pivotal episode of own’s Queen Sugar. “And I will not be sidelined, sidetracked, or sidestepped, or put in a damn corner and told to wait my turn, not another day. It’s my time.” Violet (played by Tina Lifford) makes this bold declaration—all because of pies. Namely because of her own brand of “Vi’s Prized Pies,” which a white grocery-store owner named Jarrett Rawlings agreed to display prominently in his market. Instead, Violet and her family visit the store only to find her products stacked in a corner. An emotional Violet begins swapping her baked goods with the Ding Dongs and Suzy Q’s on the center table as her relatives assist. They understand why the placement of the pies matters so much to their Aunt Vi: The woman who has spent most of her life caring for them is finally allowing herself to dream big, even though dreaming can be a daunting and vulnerable act.
It is this key scene from early in Queen Sugar’s third season that sets up the Vi’s Prized Pies storyline, in which Violet pursues her ambition of turning her baking prowess into a business. Yet her arc isn’t just about flaky crusts and sweet fillings. Queen Sugar, which debuted in 2016, is known for a lot of things: for being the first major TV project from Ava DuVernay, for the fact that every episode is directed by a woman, for featuring an all-black main cast. It’s also drawn praise for the way it uses everyday culture to tackle salient social issues, including anti-black violence and the rise of the carceral state. In the show’s phenomenal Season 3, which ends Wednesday, Queen Sugar’s writers use the pies to smartly explore the dangers of the trope of black exceptionalism, to critique the exploitation of black women’s labor, and to argue that communities win when black women are given space to dream.
