#// which they see as admirable but deeply misguided

[sanguine-salvation]

how would you be defeated as a villain?

massive explosion

you go down magnificently. dramatic, like you always were. you're fighting the hero, and while you are defeated, you bring them down with you (and everyone and everything else within a mile radius).

tagged by || @lethal--laughter (thank you!!!) tagging || anyone who wants to, you're tagged! tag me back so I can see!

[keerysfreckles]

cookies — luke castellan

pairing: luke castellan x hephaestus fem!reader

summary: in which luke finds y/n, in order to tell her something he's been meaning to for the past two years

warnings: use of y/n and she/her pronouns, i think thats it ??? making out/kissing

a/n: I FINISHED TLT TODAY- idc if luke is evil (if evil why pookie)

꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱

y/n l/n thought her life at camp half-blood would've felt like a fairy tale. two years later, she was deeply misguided.

the camp experience itself wasn't bad. she loved meeting the new campers, and bonding with her cabin mates, and seeing luke from time to time.

but even when she got claimed by her father, hephaestus, y/n still felt like a square trying to fit in a triangle hole. hephaestus was the god of forge. fire. craft. creation.

when y/n first arrived to camp, she met luke. he didn't know why, but out of all the campers in hermes cabin, he felt as though he needed to protect y/n the most.

two and a half weeks after meeting luke, y/n had been claimed by her father. the boy was sad to see her leave, but glad as well, due to her being claimed to a new cabin.

as soon as y/n and chiron entered the doors of hephaestus cabin, the duo was met with seven boys. five of them were around the same age as the girl, and the other two looked no older than ten.

this made y/n feel even more out of place. yes, they all made her feel at home, and they still do. y/n just can't help but feel isolated.

less than a week after y/n was claimed, she unfortunately found out forging wasn't the exact type of creation she was skilled at. she tried pottery, metalwork, jewelry making, and even knitting. the girl was crushed when none of the activies suited her.

until one afternoon, she was in the kitchen after helping bring in dirty dishes from lunch. a few ingredients caught her eye, and she instantly started bringing them together and made something delicious. chiron soon came inside, and was both surprised and pleased y/n had found her activity. cooking.

this leads y/n to where she is right now. the camp kitchen. ever since the fateful day she discovered her gift, she rarely ever left the kitchen. y/n was considered the new cook of camp, and she enjoyed everything about it.

recently, the girl has taken baking into her small circle of talents. which explains why all day y/n has been baking cookies for tomorrow. it was percy's birthday, and annabeth asked her to make blue chocolate chip cookies for him, one of percy's favorite foods. she had to make enough for the whole camp. almost one hundred cookies were already baked and cooled, and she had one hundred more to go.

annabeth kept checking on y/n every so often, to see her progress (and to make sure she took breaks and to not overwork herself). two times the younger girl came in the kitchen, her and y/n talked for a bit. y/n kept teasing annabeth at all the staring she'd been doing towards percy lately. to be fair, it was annabeth's idea to have the cookies for percy's birthday, so y/n knew something had to be going on between the two tweens.

y/n doesn't notice the person who had entered the kitchen. she heard footsteps, so she guessed it was annabeth.

luke stood in the doorway of the kitchen. he took a moment to admire the girl in front of him. y/n stood behind the kitchen island, with a metal bowl, a baking sheet, and other multiple baking utensils layed out over the countertop. luke could smell a batch of cookies in the oven at the right of the kitchen, along with the fresh ones all placed on the counters behind y/n.

luke finally knocks on the door, making y/n look up from rolling balls of cookie dough. a smile was quick to fill her features, "hi luke."

luke walked over towards her, leaning on the island, standing across from her.

"how are percy's birthday cookies coming along?" he asks, seeing the girl still at work.

y/n nods, "they're going," she laughs, "that's for sure."

"i was looking for you earlier," luke admits, as he continues to watch y/n at work.

looking up from her blue stained hands, y/n sees a small blush covering luke's cheeks. "oh yeah?"

it's luke's turn to nod, "yeah, but the hephaestus boys said you'd be in here."

y/n chuckles, before the two sit in a comfortable silence for no less than a minute.

"did you need me for something?" y/n asks, as she takes two baking sheets to the oven. luke only laughs while watching y/n open the oven with her foot, as her hands were full.

"i just wanted to come check on you," luke moves to side of the kitchen island y/n was previously on. "you have made quite the mess in here."

both luke and y/n look at the batches of cookies, the reminants of cookie dough on the counters, empty bowls in both of the sinks, and flour on the kitchen island and floor.

"what's the real reason you wanted to see me luke?" y/n asks the boy, knowing that he had a tell when he was nervous. he always licked his lips before speaking.

"what? i can't just want to see a dear friend of mine?" he jokes.

"oh you can," y/n responds, "except, whenever you visited me you always wanted seconds, or an extra dessert."

luke doesn't repsond right away, knowing y/n had a point.

the boy licks his lips, nervous from what he's about to tell y/n.

"do you ever wonder why i might've been more protective of you over the other campers? when you first joined hermes cabin?" luke asks, catching y/n off guard.

y/n shakes her head, "no, i never really thought about it before."

luke takes a deep breath, "you seemed more special to me."

y/n's eyebrows furrowed, only making luke continue.

"you just seemed so different from the other campers i've met. special. i just had to protect you. i still feel like i have to."

"luke, i don't get what you're trying to say," y/n admits. luke's confession is only making her confused.

"then i don't have to say it," luke's voice is soft.

y/n's confusion returns, but only for mere seconds before she feels luke's lips on hers. she pulls away from the him, out of shock at what he had just done.

his eyes instantly met hers. his filled with worry as if he messed everything up the two had between them.

before luke could start to overthink everything, y/n leaned up to kiss him. his eyes closed, and his hand went to both sides of her face.

y/n's lips tasted like sugar, with a hint of salt. luke guessed it was from tasting her cookies to get them as perfect as she can for percy's birthday.

luke's lips tasted like a campfire. y/n could only assume it was from the smores hermes cabin had after winning capture the flag that day.

y/n's hands were still blue, and in order to not stain luke or his clothing, she opted to wrap her arms around his shoulders. she felt luke's hands on her waist, only pulling her closer to him.

soon enough luke's tongue pushed through y/n's lips, which caused her to giggle. luke loved her reaction.

before anything could get more heated, a timer goes off in the small kitchen. the loud shrill made luke and y/n stop their movements. y/n only looked at luke sheepishly. the girl leaned in once more and pecked the boy's lips, before retrieving the cookies out of the oven.

"do you want any help?" luke asks, watching y/n again as she started rolling out more balls of cookie dough.

she nods, "if you don't mind your hands getting blue."

luke laughs, "i'm willing to take that chance."

[txttletale]

I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how could someone like you, who otherwise has such based opinions, be a fan of Stalin? How do you reckon with his crimes? Especially when Trotskyism is right there for you to follow instead?

i'm not a 'fan' of stalin--i don't consider myself a 'fan' of any historical person. i would not even consider myself a 'fan' of people whom i admire, who have seriously influenced my thinking with their theory (e.g. lenin). and for much the same reason i am not a 'fan' of stalin i feel no need to reckon with 'his' crimes--he was just one person. stalin neither 'perpertrated the purges' nor 'starved ukraine' nor 'industrialized the USSR' nor 'defeated nazism'. he would have had to be a very busy man to execute all those folks and eat all that grain and mine all that coal and kill all those fascists on his own!

i think inasmuch as stalin personally influenced policy in the USSR, he mostly did so for the worse (e.g., encouraging a lot of the social reaction of the 30s in regards to LGBT and women's rights and national minorities, standing by lysenko long after it became clear that his theories were bullshit) -- where he did so for the better, it was usually because he recognised the value of adopting the positions of someone who was a better and more capable theorist. so i don't care for the lionization of the man that goes on in some circles.

however, i'm not interested in condemning him as some cartoonish supervillain either. if you have gotten the impression that i am a 'fan' of stalin, it is likely because i refuse to repeat anticommunist propaganda about how he killed One Gazillion People, because i sharply shut down anybody i see trying to propagate the fascist double genocide myth, because i think that the positive achievements of the USSR in the 1930s and 1940s--improving the lives of millions, performing one of the fastest industrializations in history, defeating German fascism--are impressive and laudable and refusing to learn from them because of a fear of 'stalinism' (something which i don't think meaningfully exists or ever did) is misguided and counterproductive, and because i think that the failures of that period are better understood as the results of the legacy of russian chauvinism and of the strain on soviet political systems caused by the civil war and wwii rather than the liberal conception of history where stalin, god-emperor of russia, unilaterally decided to Be Evil because he was a Sicko

as for why i'm not a trotskyist, i've covered that here. i simply don't think that any of trotsky's critiques were useful to anybody except the US empire, i think most of trotsky's theoretical positions are wrong, and i've had nothing but deeply deeply negative interactions with trotskyist organizations in the real world.

[thetitansocietyorg]

Demystifying the Modern Misconceptions of Magic: Unveiling the Truth of Ancient Sorcery

Demystifying the Modern Misconceptions of Magic: Unveiling the Truth of Ancient Sorcery

You are Admired & Respected

“Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting” - Napoleon Hill.

“Aspect of influence linked to outcomes derived from the practice of magic are deficient as the partitioners are ineffective, fraudulent and stupid in the modern era, they do not position as from ancient but a misguided modern undertaking and practice of clear delusions and ineffective and has work to be detrimental to the truth of magic practice derived from the Titan era which does not exist today as the practitioners were destroyed so was the key aspects of Titan Magic, other than my esteemed partner Andrew Rogers in the present day but he is of the origin of Titan and reincarnates himself, magic practitioners in the modern are fools” – Circe ‘Sorceress, Destroyer’.

The Titan Society – Cronus ‘Titan Leader, Destroyer’, Hecate ‘Witchcraft, Destroyer’ Circe ‘Sorceress, Destroyer’.

Andrew Rogers – Creative Director, Writer, Oracle.

The belief in the power and influence of magic has been deeply ingrained in human civilization for centuries. However, as time progresses and we enter the modern era, the effectiveness of magic practitioners seems to be dwindling. Unlike the ancient sorcerers and magicians of the past, today's practitioners often engage in misguided and ineffective practices that border on clear delusions.

It is unfortunate to see the truth of magic diluted by these ineffective modern undertakings. The magic practice derived from the Titan era, which was once awe-inspiring and potent, is now nothing more than a nostalgic memory. The reality is that the power and influence of magic from that era no longer exist in our current time.

The practice of magic should be approached with reverence and respect for its origins, rather than being reduced to a mere illusion. By acknowledging the limitations of contemporary magical practices, we can strive to uncover the ancient secrets and wisdom that once defined the true essence of magic.

It is crucial for aspiring magicians to understand the history and heritage of magic, and to honor its tradition by pursuing knowledge and skills rooted in authenticity. Only by doing so can we lift the veil of delusion and rediscover the true power and potential that magic holds, transcending the confines of our modern era.

Let us remember the words of Circe, the sorceress and destroyer, and strive to uphold the truth and integrity of magic despite the shortcomings of our time.

All images, text, design, and art license owner Andrew Rogers©.

[shadowvalkyrie]

Oh, and of course the delightful insanity of chapters 35 through 37, which makes my little tinhatter heart sing, because it gives me so much (probably deeply misguided) hope for a happy threeway ending.

Not even sure what my favourite part was.

When Fanny accidentally overhears Jamie and Claire's fight and immediately brings up m/f/m threesomes (because she has no way of knowing that the one in the middle of the triangle was originally Jamie, before everything went so terribly pear-shaped)?

Claire's confession to Bree -- which would have deserved so much more follow-up than it actually got! Like, that conversation alone should have had 20 pages. Heart issues aside, I cannot believe she didn't have a million follow-up questions once those passed?

Or Jamie finally opening up about what he has been semi-consciously chewing on for the last year or so, and it amounts to essentially:

- being unable to think of Claire sleeping with John without immediately wanting to jump Claire's bones

- being absolutely terrified that he might accidentally think of John while he fucks her

(While it is something that was already strongly hinted at in Heart's Blood, I think this is the first explicit indication that Jamie's problem with the John/Claire incident is less actual jealousy and more a deep unease about hot he finds it, and how much harder it makes for him to repress his attraction to John, which he normally goes to great and mentally convoluted lengths not to admit to himself in any way, which makes sense in light of his trauma. It's definitely no accident that we got the conversation between Jamie and Roger earlier in the book, as a reminder of his backstory with Jack Randall. This is something he is still struggling with.)

Also love that Claire, while definitely unhappy, does not even seem all that surprised about that, but on the other hand, she did spend a good decade or so hissing and spitting with jealousy before she and John ended up in bed together, so chances are she did indeed see it coming.

Oh, and of course they immediately have sex about it. Which... not beating the allegations.

Gotta admire the ambiguity. Got what out of your system? The fight? John? Because I think there's still some level of disconnect there, and I CANNOT WAIT for it to become relevant again.

Been on a random Outlander fic bender lately, and it reminded me that I needed to reread Book 9 / Bees, because I was dealing with post-Covid exhaustion when it came out and barely have any recollection of reading it at all.

There's still so much meta I wanted to write about it, because it really solidified my OT3 canon endgame hopes, for all that the three of them basically have zero direct interaction?

But rereading it now, I do remember why it frustrated me so much on first read. There are all these juicy shippy bits, but they're immediately buried under a sprawling mess of plot that just isn't interesting enough to warrant this order of priorities.

It doesn't help that a lot of that plot is only tangentially related to the main characters or major historical events, and my investment in everyone's extended families' marital woes is limited at best.

[rougebangtan]

── WANNA BE YOURS

shoto todoroki x f!reader

⚠ will contain smut and yandere themes ⚠

･｡ʚ masterlist ɞ ｡･ next

── 001. saoko, papi:

You never paid much attention to Shoto during school.

Granted, you hadn’t seen much of him either. There were many conditioning reasons as to why that happened. The first of them was the age difference: when you entered UA, you had been the youngest freshman to have ever enrolled and the former 1-A class was on their third and last year. The second, you weren’t training to become a hero – you knew you weren’t cut for it. The final reason was simply because it didn’t interest you to come up and strike a conversation.

Your classmates’ inclination to hush-hush and gossip severely impacted your will to interact with them, and it ended spilling to other people as well. You used to find General Studies class a bunch of starstruck idiots who only wanted to lick the almost pro-heroes’ boots, so you steered clear from interactions with said heroes mostly because of the repercussions of getting pined as a drooling fan, along with everyone else in your class.

What made you change your perception, and reconsider how uptight you had been, was meeting Izuku Midoriya. The couple of times the two of you talked, his deeply-ingrained enthusiasm and keen observation skills showed how genuine he was to become a hero, and in turn, how your classmates’ admiration wasn’t misguided after all. Now that you were in your twenties, a lot of things made much more sense, and you realized the fifteen-old version of you was childish and borderline pathetic.

It wasn’t too long ago you were fifteen, so these memories were still fresh. It stung being reminded of a future you were so close to achieving and was ripped away from you. After you graduated, the only family you had left, your grandmother, passed away. You and your siblings had grown up with your parents out of the picture, but when you were left to your own devices, you never managed to find work in any hero agency causing you to abandon that dream altogether.

Seeing Shoto Todoroki again was bittersweet. Not only because of what he represented for you, but also because never had a pro-hero stepped into your workplace for the five years you worked there. He looked like a dream; a beautiful boy who had aged up into a well-seasoned hero. There was a nonchalance, a distance, ever-present even in the short glimpses you’d catch of him during school, which seemed to school his features into place.

Expect for him, the patrons on your floor were sparse, you knew that soon more of them would arrive. This made Shoto’s presence even odder. Most clients were regular dudes that didn’t want to bother with dating, others were old, some just had an insanely hectic work schedule, and there were those who’d fall in between.

You stood by the bar with the bartender, and your friend, Mina as your eyes wouldn’t bulge from the man.

“He’s even prettier on the flash, isn’t he?” Mina asked, noticing your behavior.

Blinking, you sigh and turn back to her. “Yeah… sorry, I zoned out. Just trying to rack my brain as to why would a pro-hero even step into this place.”

“Hey, that’s mean!” she scoffs. “We’re not inferior to pro-heroes, you know…”

“Oh,” you pause before frantically shaking your head. “That’s not what I meant, at all. Sorry if I made it sound like that.”

The truth is you found it suspicious, but you bite your tongue, and don’t voice those concerns. You’d keep to yourself, and solve the situation as you saw fit.

“Oh no, Rina is making her way to him.” Mina says.

“What?!” and there you see it.

Rina is a beautiful girl. With sleek long black hair, and hypnotizing eyes, she’s the type of girl you drool for. When she approaches Shoto, you think he might leave with her. However, what you see is quite the opposite of your expectations. The interaction seems to go south and Rina leaves. Her body language gives away the frustration.

“Weird,” you think, but it’s actually Mina who externalizes the thought.

You observe the man for a little longer. Even though, he keeps his body relaxed and facial expressions blank, it’s hard to miss the way he subtly surveys the place. Eyes fleeting around with quiet purpose.

Taking a deep breath, you start moving towards him. Mina hisses at you. “Pssst, what do you think you’re doing?”

You ignore her, and decidedly place yourself in front of Shoto.

“Well, well, look who we got here,” you send him a derisive smile. “Number-two pro-hero Shoto Todoroki.”

He seems to crack a little under your scrutinization, looking somewhat bashful as his hand instinctively wipes away at his nape. “Listen, if you’re gonna offer to spend the night with me, I already told your friend… this is not what I’m here for.”

Your smile widens at his words. He’s straightforward yet polite, and makes you want to rip that impassiveness off of him.

“Why not, hero? You wanna talk to the boss? Because if you do, I’m afraid you lost the trip. They’re not coming tonight.”

When he remains silent, you continue. “Give your phone.”

“Wha- why?” he asks, shell-shocked.

“So, I can put my number in it, and let you know when the boss comes.”

“Shouldn’t you be the one passing me your phone, then?”

You shrug at that. “I don’t have it on me right now.”

“Fine,” he sighs, searching for his phone and unlocks it once he has it. “Here.”

Grabbing the device, you try to activate your quirk without stalling. Expect the 5 seconds that it takes to type your phone number don’t allow you to extract a scrap of information.

He takes it back from your hands, and lifts it between your bodies. “You better let me know when they come, huh.”

“Will do.”

Shoto starts walking backwards, but stops in his tracks before fully leaving. “I didn’t catch your name.”

You hesitate before coming up with a name. “Saeko.”

“Saeko?” He quirks an eyebrow. “Well, I’ll keep in touch. Bye.”

“Bye,” you wave meekly.

Once he’s out of sight, you groan. You messed up.

It’s late when you get home. The house is shrouded in silence and the clock marks 3am on the dot. After Shoto’s sudden appearance at the club, you had to communicate it to your boss who didn’t react the way you hoped she would. She dismissed it as if it had been nothing which, in turn, caused you to grow even more suspicious of the whole ordeal. However, you hadn’t had time to dwell on it since the number of clients picked up with a hitch right after.

Checking your phone as you sit down on the couch, you see a couple of missed messages from your siblings, asking at what time would you make it back home. Your heart sinks a little as you realize how absent you’ve become in their lives, but there was nothing you could do if you wanted to keep providing for them.

Another message grabs your attention.

[unknown] (12:23am)

hope you got home alright

you (03:12am)

shoto? yeah, i got home just fine.

you?

You cringe when it dawns on you what you typed, but before you can correct yourself, your phone vibrates.

[unknown] (03:12am)

hah same here

you work late…

don’t forget to lmk when your boss shows up

have a good night’s rest, saeko

you (03:13am)

you, too. and dw, i won’t forget.

You think before hitting ‘send’ but eventually give up.

you (03:14am)

good night, shoto

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

the problem is you, peter.

i waited until i watched spiderman: no way home for the second time to write this, and i’m happy to say that a second viewing only reaffirmed for me why i loved every second of every minute of this film. 

mcu!spiderman has always felt the weight of multiple legacies--not just of the already-established mega-heroes of the mcu, but also of the spidermen that came before him, both in movie and comic form. he’s somebody that’s already firmly entrenched in the collective cultural consciousness for the better part of the last several decades, which means we can look at every subsequent peter parker swinging on to screen in two ways: as a deeply cynical attempt by multiple mega-corporations to squeeze every last penny from this highly popular piece of intellectual property; and as an interrogation of a pop culture icon, a rare kind of indulgent character study that’s played out in front of the world over the last twenty years. no way home tries in its way to reckon with all of this, and--incredibly--manages to give us something coherent, emotional, and genuinely fun.

SPOILERS AHEAD for the whole movie. i’m going to place a Read More here and have tagged this with as many spoiler tags as i can think of but in case the text still shows up, please scroll past to the next post as fast as you can (or just press ‘j’ on your keyboard) if you want to avoid being spoiled for the whole thing.

1. i’ve talked about this before, but it really feels like the home trilogy is this peter’s origin story--the first hour or so of a standard spider-man movie--stretched out over three films (and in cameos in other films). everything’s been working towards that one glorious, crowning moment right at the end of the film: where peter-as-spiderman swings out over new york city, ready for his next adventure.

1.5. peter’s transformation into spiderman across all of his different origin stories is shaped by terrible tragedy--but usually set off by relatively mundane, and even perfectly understandable, desires. tobey’s and andrew’s spider-men revelled in their abilities initially for the unexpected power that it gave them, then sharpened that power towards getting revenge. peter-the-nobody can now out-bully his bullies. he can throw men thrice his size across a cage without breaking a sweat (and indulging in a fair bit of unfortunate homophobia). he can hunt down his enemies and make them pay.

but what would a peter parker who’s starting out in a world with already-established superheroes want? what does it mean to wake up with spider-powers in a post-avengers universe, where it’s common place to see men in robot suits, supersoldiers and demigods fight against aliens? he wants to be one of them. peter can’t help but admire videos of him online saving civilians. he doesn’t have many--if any at all--questions when tony stark carts him off to germany to fight captain america in service of an agenda he has only the foggiest idea about. he is so desperate to be everything at once but he can’t quite grapple with what it means to be every one of those roles. he’s the friendly neighbourhood spiderman, sure, stopping burglaries and helping out little old ladies, but he’s also an avenger, fighting aliens on distant planets with the stakes so huge that they’re incomprehensible. he’s a poor kid from queens desperate to use his smarts to make something of himself but he’s also the benefactor of tony stark’s often misguided mentoring, receiving the gift of his technology but then having to deal with cleaning up tony’s planet-sized messes. he’s peter, ned’s best friend and mj’s boyfriend, but he’s also peter parker, the brains and heart and soul who decides which crisis spiderman will handle next. 

1.75. it’s a lot to draw upon. for peter, his new life might as well have been created in one of tony’s fabricators, the pieces tweaked and rearranged and brought to life in perfect harmony, but he’s spent the last several years realising that he can never make it so. he is still consumed by self-doubt. spiderman still feels like Something Else to him, the part of his life that’s apparently given him everything that he’s wanted but is also threatening to take it all away the next moment.

there’s a moment in this film (when he’s talking to one of the villains? i don’t remember exactly) where somebody’s taunting him about mj loving him or spiderman and peter says that he doesn’t really know; that he hopes that she would love him even if he wasn’t. the moment passes quickly, but it’s an insight into spiderman-as-a-construct, and how little control peter has had a lot of the time over how that construct fits over him as a person.

2. this slots neatly into my feelings for how meta this film is. there’s a sense of a spiderman universe trying to define itself without being sucked into a broader creative engine and succeeding for the most part. that iron man would be the hero to introduce spidey, or that iron man would have such an outsized influence on the world that holland’s spidey lives in are things out of this trilogy��s control. outside of the home trilogy there’s very little honest interrogation of what it means that tony stark is peter’s mentor, or the fact that he recruited this kid out of nowhere and outfitted him with potentially planet-destroying technology. but the home movies do have to reckon with that--in ways that are honestly quite interesting, by making peter’s biggest nemeses products of the very same person he considers his mentor, and of the superhero team he looks up to and aspires to join.

2.25. and so when it comes down to it, when peter is facing his biggest crisis and is spiralling from well-meaning but ill-considered decisions, it’s the so-called mcu mentor who (in a well-meaning way) fails him. when he’s flailing for a moral reference point, it’s aunt may who gives him one, and then people who have literally been him in different lives reinforce that with what they’ve learned the hard way. 

i mean, sure, tobey/andy/green goblin/”i’m something of a scientist myself”/”great power, great responsibilty” nostalgia cashgrab yada yada, but it’s worth not losing sight of the fact that this doylist framework was used to tell a very quintessential peter parker story.

2.5. and while we’re still meta, don’t think i didn’t notice the digs at all the criticisms of holland’s spiderman: that he’s “iron man jr”, that he didn’t “make it on his own”--he ends the film firmly cut off from the mcu and any billionaire benefactors, sewing his own decidedly tech-light costume and swinging out into the city to do what’s right. 

2.75. and what a glorious way to address all of the endless “which spiderman is the best” debates on the internet! the three spidermen coming together and revelling in each other’s presence, genuinely happy to see and work with and help each other. andrew’s peter in particular was an absolute delight to watch, and a reminder how terribly his movies had failed him. 

3. there are a couple of narrative choices that both took me by surprise and delighted me: one was the decision to “cure” the villains that came through the multiverse, and the other was the bittersweet way the whole trilogy ended, with peter sticking to his sacrifice, letting go of what he wants to be able to do right by everybody else. these two unexpected beats seem to me to reflect in a way how the superhero narrative has “grown up” lately, now that there is seemingly endless demand for more stories with the same characters. 

the home trilogy took its sweet time letting peter come into his own, and the future is so pregnant with possibilities that i can hardly contain myself.

this is such an incredible tipping point for holland’s peter parker: he can make a clean break from the mcu if he wanted to here (and honestly i kinda wish he does--i have watched no mcu that doesn’t have spiderman in it since endgame.) the multiverse is now a thing that Exists, and he can tap into it if he wanted to. everything he does now is weighed by delicious sense of tragedy, of things he coveted and gave up, and the sacrifice that it took for him to be where he is.

gosh, i mean--i really really can’t believe i watched all of that with my own two eyes. incredible!

[bakerolivias-archived]

honestly i think one of the major reasons im not a huge klaroline stan is because i dont think without caroline over all rejecting him he never would have come to terms with how sensitive he really is how to be vulnerable aka some of the things that make klamille amazing

okay my answer for this ask has actually been deleted three times now and unfortunately they were very long meta answers because tumblr’s a real piece of work.

anyways; tldr: so true bestie! caroline was, more or less, really important to helping klaus come to the self-realization that he can be hurt, and what it meant to build a real, mature, and stable relationship. klamille and klaroline were both significant in terms of klaus’s development, klaus cared for them both so intensely, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, even though fandom likes to perceive it as such and generalize klamille/cami as a “copy” of klaroline/caroline (which is an incredibly misogynistic and poorly constructed take, but ya know.)

it’s clear klaus has a type: brilliant, headstrong blond women (maybe because of his mommy/sister issues but of course klaus probs doesn’t see it that way LOL). that’s pretty much where the similarities end because cami and caroline are both incredibly three dimensional and unique characters (and klaus has very good taste.) there was a huge difference in the way both dynamics were approached, even if they may have started out in relatively the same way. klaus was intrigued by caroline, admired her tenacity and the way she shamelessly refused to hold back her opinion, and appreciated how she did not hesitate to call him out and reprimand him for attempting to flirt using expensive gifts and showing her dramatic art pieces, instead of establishing a “connection” as klaus defined it, based on mutual understanding. he “enjoys” the strength of character she’s displayed, the way she pushes him to be real and transparent instead of only show a polished version of himself - which would be pointless anyways since she already knows the terrible things he’s capable of. because she’s so blatant and honest, something klaus deeply appreciates, klaus finds himself able to confide in her, and caroline reciprocates, maybe a bit out of boredom, but also because she finds him interesting and she has her own grief/troubles she’d like to communicate. she’s also incredibly perceptive and intelligent, despite what others (namely d.amon and perhaps matt at one point) would think, which klaus is more than aware of and likes about her. caroline understands that klaus doesn’t want to be lonely, that he wants to be loved, listened to, and understood. that’s truly all that anyone wants. but she also calls him out for what he can’t seem to grasp: he is the cause of his own loneliness, pushing loved ones away out of anger and paranoia, and she’s able to see this after only a few conversations.

where KC went wrong was that they had very different interpretations of love, and how it was expressed. while caroline was endeared by and supportive of klaus’s personal growth that he’d shown on TOs5, not out of some misguided attempt to convince her he’s changed but simply out of genuine selflessness, he acted, and thought, very differently when it came to what acts of love and kindness looked like: for example, “haven’t you experienced the attraction that comes when a person capable of terrible things, for some reason, only seems to care about you?” or, “kindness, mercy... i’ve shown it all for you.” caroline is attracted to people that are good, who do good deeds, and tells klaus that, in her opinion, terrible people are just terrible people, which means klaus doesn’t have to be the person that he is and can choose differently. she’s not going to be the singular person klaus is supposedly “good” for, the sole person responsible for making klaus a better person, because she deserves better than to be a moral compass, or forced into that role unwillingly, unless klaus showed some potential for better behavior. what she wanted for klaus, as she said in TOs5, was for him to be able to do that himself, for himself, and not as some kind of appeasement to a love interest, but klaus couldn’t understand what he was doing wrong. to hear caroline basically call him a terrible person hurt him, even if he is self aware of his own actions. klaus didn’t have the patience to attempt to process what caroline was trying to tell him, and neither of them were in the right place to pursue a deeper romantic relationship.

enter klamille. cami’s a literal therapist: she has a psych degree and is supposed to “analyze” and help people like klaus, for a living. while i think she should have had more of a narrative beyond the klamille dynamic, camille and klaus had an infinitely more functional relationship (although i suppose that could be because the writers were never intending to have KC end up together in the first place). since klaus was staying in NOLA long term, he and cami were in the right proximity, and places in their life because cami had already graduated college while caroline still needed to find the direction her life would go in, to work through the different stages of their relationship and get to know each other. because of cami’s occupation as a therapist, klaus is allowed to be understood in a way i don’t think he ever has been, and when cami tells him uncomfortable truths, klaus is far more receptive and willing to listen. he’s also much more comfortable being vulnerable and working through his issues in a semi-healthy and semi-professional environment. while therapist-patient relationships aren’t necessarily healthy in the real world, klaus and cami make it work because they’re both mutually invested in their romantic relationship and there’s always a sense of respect, autonomy, and friendship in their dynamic. klaus could have seen him and cami building a life together, side by side, because they make each other better: she helps him fulfill his capability to be good, and allows him to feel human, and he gets under her skin in ways few people have (which is also true vise versa). cami’s essence and humanity and her connection to klaus, despite her vampirism and then eventual death, was immortalized by the way he remembered her, the way she “saved” his soul (as caroline worded it in that one ep i haven’t gotten to yet - anyone capable of love is capable of being saved, which establishes how much klaus cares for other people and also, in a way, foreshadows what klamille would mean to him).

in some ways, klaroline certainly laid the groundwork for the klamille dynamic and allowing klaus to accept his humanity, as well as his human needs.

[cosmicjoke]

The Danger for Yashiro and Doumeki

One thing that’s got me a little nervous after chapter 44 of Saezuru is the dynamic between Yashiro and Doumeki, and what Doumeki is thinking in terms of moving forward with Yashiro.  He’s clearly had a shift in attitude toward how best to approach Yashiro, and I think this is directly related to his epiphany at the end of volume 6, before the time skip.  

Doumeki, after speaking with Nanahara, seems to have finally come to understand one of the reasons why Yashiro tried so hard to push him away, seemed to realize at last that it was his tenderness towards Yashiro, his kindness and gentility, that frightened him and pained him, and ultimately, drove him away.  Not that Doumeki was his subordinate, but that Yashiro couldn’t handle Doumeki’s regarding him with respect and admiration, with reverence even.  Doumeki at last understands that Yashiro’s masochism is, in reality, a defense mechanism,  the thing he relies on to maintain his own sanity, his own ability to cope with his trauma.  That Yashiro’s masochism is, in fact, a tool he relies on to continue operating at all, and that Doumeki’s kindness towards him was threatening his ability to retain his hold on that tool, threatening his ability to hold onto the facade he so desperately clings to in order to keep going.  That he likes pain, that he can’t enjoy sex without pain, that the trauma of his childhood abuse doesn’t impact him at all.

Doumeki realizes at last what it is he’s done to Yashiro in terms of breaking down his defenses, what breaking those defenses down actually means for Yashiro, how it robs him of his ability to continue believing he’s an unlovable creature, and forces him to face the reality that he’s a human being worthy of love, which in turn forces him to face the reality that what he went through as a child and an adult, was wrong, and actually mattered.  

This epiphany for Doumeki is important, of course, because he finally is able to understand that Yashiro’s rejection of him is linked directly to Doumeki’s kindness, and Yashiro’s inability to handle that kindness, to process it or accept it for himself.  Doumeki understands now that Yashiro fears what will happen to him if that facade he clings to is taken away from him, that he believes he can’t let it go without losing himself totally, without losing the one thing that has managed to help him cope with and manage the pain and suffering he’s gone through in his life.  Doumeki realizes, I think, that Yashiro believes he’ll be destroyed without that coping mechanism, that he won’t any longer be able to function.

What worries me about Doumeki’s realization is that, in understanding that it was his kindness towards Yashiro that drove the wedge between them, that he’ll believe now that, the only way to win Yashiro back, is to start treating him abusively.  I don’t think it’s IN Doumeki to be abusive, not really.  He loves Yashiro deeply, and doesn’t want to hurt him at all.  But if he believes that the only way for Yashiro to cope with his love it to be violent with him, to hurt him, etc... then he might force himself to do it.  And that, I think, would be catastrophic for Yashiro and any chance he has of recovering and healing and beginning to process his trauma.  Because it would only reinforce Yashiro’s belief that he’s unlovable, and that he deserves to be abused, etc...  If the one person who’s actually returned Yashiro’s feelings, his love, suddenly becomes violent with him, I think it will just drive Yashiro deeper into his unhealthy coping mechanisms, and his untrue perception of himself.  It’s a tenuous situation, of course, because Doumeki might be thinking that the tenderness and kindness he showed Yashiro before ended up HURTING Yashiro, because, well, it DID.  And it would be logical then for Doumeki to conclude that it would hurt Yashiro less, be better for him, to simply be violent with him, to treat him the way he’s so used to being treated, the way he expects to be treated, because it’s so much easier and more comfortable for Yashiro that way.  If Doumeki became violent with Yashiro, it would be because he genuinely believed it was for the best.  But of course, it wouldn’t be.

I think one of the saddest moments in Saezuru, are those which show Yashiro early on, before he officially became a Yakuza, particularly, the scenes in which we see him being smacked around and beaten up, and Yashiro’s reaction to that treatment.  I’m specifically thinking of two scenes from volume 2, the first being when Yashiro tries to go back to his apartment to find the contact lenses he’d stolen from Kageyama, and Hirata punches him in the face, just out of nowhere, before his underlings proceed to beat Yashiro even worse.  The other scene is after Yashiro gets one of Hirata’s men thrown out of the group, and his roomate at the time hits him while he’s eating some noodles, knocking him to the floor and stepping on his head.  It’s Yashiro’s reaction to this abuse which is so upsetting, because he’s just so PASSIVE about it, his expression flat and painfully resigned.  You can tell from his reactions here that this is just what he’s used to, what he expects and fully believes he even deserves.  He doesn’t fight back, doesn’t defend himself, or even protest.  He just lays there and takes it, without complaint, or even a hint of it bothering him.  This is what he is, what he’s meant to be.  Other people’s punching bag.  We see that too in how he lets Hirata nearly kill him, WOULD have let Hirata kill him, if Doumeki hadn’t shown up and gotten shot.  It’s Yashiro’s own disregard for his own life, his inability to see value in his own life or well being, that makes the situation with Doumeki very scary to me.  Because if Doumeki makes the mistake of starting to hurt Yashiro while under the belief that it’s better for Yashiro than his gentleness, it’s only going to intensify Yashiro’s feelings of low self-esteem and self-loathing.

I hope my fears are misguided, and that Doumeki doesn’t start being violent with Yahsiro.  As painful as Doumeki’s kindness is for Yashiro, as frightening and confusing as it is for him, I think he absolutely needs it if he has any hope of ever healing from the pain his past, and the abuse he’s endured his entire life.

[coffeeandritalin]

Thoughts on The Song of Achilles

I just read The Song of Achilles, and while I have book club tomorrow to gush over this book, I think the level of deep I'm digging to will probably be too much for my club-mates. So I've decided to use Tumblr to offload instead.

This is the first book I actively annotated in since... probably high school (aka, it's been more than a hot second). This was probably the best and worst book to use to start annotations again. Best because it is so beautifully written. Worst because, of course, I no longer have a heart as it has been hollowed out to relieve me of the intense pain I suffered after reading it.

In the final chapter, Patroclus calls Thetis out, "You said that Chiron ruined him. You are a goddess, and cold, and know nothing. You are the one who ruined him." I definitely agree with Patroclus here. However, in today's TED talk, I will rant about how Patroclus' is also responsible for Achilles' ruin.

To start, I have to praise Miller for how masterfully she molds each character. In just four chapters, we have a complex understanding of who Patroclus is as a person and why he ticks the way he ticks. Patroclus' defining characteristic, confidence (or lack thereof), is first hinted at on the first page, "Quickly, I became a disappointment." This is the core trait Miller starts out with to flesh out the character. The low opinion Patroclus has of himself, heavily shaped by his father, becomes the source and shaper of all his other traits.

Patroclus' low self-opinion is his greatest gift and flaw. His entire life, he has been told he is worth nothing. He is emotionally abused, depressed, and hurting. Tragically, out of this comes his humility and humbleness. In a world that is hard and cruel, Patroclus chose to be soft and kind - the key to what makes the people around him love him so deeply. There is a whole separate soap box waiting to be stepped on for this topic alone. Today, we are focusing on how Patroclus' lack of confidence becomes his fatal flaw. Just as his gentleness is borne from his low confidence, so too is his self-contempt, and this is his ultimate undoing.

From the very first moment he lays eyes on him, Patroclus has always seen himself as second to Achilles. It originates from a place of envy but eventually comes from a place of love and admiration. Patroclus, believing himself only worthy of disdain, allows this to define him. Rather, he uses it to define himself - what value could he possibly have without Achilles at his side?

It is not just Thetis' misguided, motherly love and prideful scorn for mortals that fills Achilles' mind with the whispers of gods instead of the cries of his peers. It is not just the adulation of the masses and the glorification of war that lures Achilles into hubris and a madness that even Patroclus falls prey to. It is also Patroclus' self-contempt and core belief that he has no value beyond Achilles that fuels and enables Achilles' arrogance.

There was only one person Achilles was ever willing to put on a pedestal above himself. He believes Patroclus is worth extending the Trojan War and keeping thousands of families apart for ten years (a separate discourse on this). He holds Patroclus in the absolute highest regard. On multiple occasions, although Patroclus only consciously acknowledges two, Achilles defers to what Patroclus' wants. Despite his godliness, which he is fully aware of, Achilles is willing to submit himself to Patroclus.

Patroclus is always in awe of Achilles and in disbelief that he managed to land such a hot piece of a**. Through the first two thirds of the book, Achilles also repeatedly mentions how equally in awe he is of Patroclus and repeatedly tries to get Patroclus to stand by his side as an equal. However, Patroclus' self-contempt will not allow him to see himself as Achilles' equal. Achilles makes many attempts to put Patroclus' needs first, but Patroclus consistently rebuffs these efforts and insists his needs be second to Achilles'. Over time, Patroclus trains Achilles to see his (Achilles') needs above his own (Patroclus'). Due to a highly privileged upbringing, Achilles knows no better than to gradually accept this as fact and ends up taking it for granted.

The only person who could have taught Achilles to know better and to understand reason is Patroclus himself (and probably Chiron, but Chiron isn't the one who is constantly and seductively whispering in Achilles' ears for 20 odd years). Patroclus was everything that tethered Achilles to his gentleness and humanity. However, Patroclus dotes on and spoils Achilles far too much. He makes himself, and is grateful to be, the rug that Achilles wipes his shoes on (despite Achilles equal insistence to clean off Patroclus' shoes).

With all this pre-established cognitive wiring, can we blame Achilles for being the densest of all walnuts when it comes to Patroclus' feelings and needs? (The answer is yes, and I place equal blame on Achilles as I do Patroclus for all of this.) Until the last third of the book, Patroclus is the only person who could possibly force their will on Achilles. He loved and respected both his parents, but he was defiant even against them. Of course, Patroclus has neither parent's pride and does not ever seek to force his will on Achilles or anyone else (something which he is definitely loved for). He loves Achilles and genuinely wants everything that would make Achilles happy.

Most crucial to this whole rant thought, Patroclus also refuses to acknowledge (read: zero self-confidence) that he has the power to stay Achilles' hand. Patroclus forgets he has a voice. He forgets his opinions and feelings are worth of acknowledgement. He forgets to be selfish and fight for what he wants (outside of Achilles' survival).

In true Patroclus fashion (forever putting others before himself), he finally stands up against Achilles for Briseis' sake. Although he has secured Briseis' temporary safety, he is far too late and Achilles has already been swimming in the deep end for a good thirty minutes. Achilles is entrenched in the belief that he and Patroclus are of the same mind, that his wants must also be Patroclus' wants. While he is wounded by the betrayal, Achilles cannot and does not stay mad at Patroclus because he knows his immortal glory is also what Patroclus is trying to build and preserve.

This is as deep as Achilles' understanding goes though. Achilles' belief system has been shaped too perfectly. His cause is Patroclus' cause, any ancillary motivation is but an afterthought. The blinders are up and Achilles only has eyes for his immortal glory. He is blind to how much pain was necessary to provoke Patroclus into mutiny against him. He is unaware of the searing grief it caused Patroclus (in contrast, Briseis immediately understands how severely this betrayal affects Patroclus). Worse, Achilles is completely ignorant of Patroclus' true reasoning and displays blatant lack of concern to Patroclus' emotional wellbeing by immediately launching into how he and Thetis have concocted a plan to let thousands of more Greeks suffer for the sake of his honor. Patroclus is fighting (albeit too late) to bring Achilles back to his humanity and spare innocent people from needless brutality. He has literally and physically spilt blood to right the wrongs he finally opened his eyes to, and Achilles undoes it all in one, idle stroke.

Patroclus was the only person who could keep Achilles grounded, but his infinite love only made him wish to see Achilles fly free. Patroclus was the only person who could scold Achilles into seeing the wrong in his actions and beliefs, but his dotage stayed his tongue and he instead chose to maintain Achilles naivete. Patroclus was the only person who could raise Achilles to his best self and also utterly break him, but his self-contempt did not allow him to acknowledge that he had the power, and thus responsibility, to guide Achilles. Patroclus failed to take meaningful action earlier because he had little faith that his actions and words would matter (despite Achilles, Briseis, and Chiron repeatedly trying to convince him otherwise). He eventually builds up the confidence to believe he is at least worthy of dying for someone he loves, thus cursing grief upon those who love him.

[allsassnoclass]

i present to you a snippet of a Firefly au that i’ll never write!

for those who know the show, this takes place after Shindig.

For those who don’t know the show, Ashton is the captain of a space ship that regularly engages in illegal activities such as smuggling.  Luke is a prostitute/escort who rents out a shuttle on the ship.

Looking out of his window at the star-studded sky with Persephone long behind them, Ashton finally feels like he can breathe.  He’s not meant for places like that planet: he’s made of celestial rock and nebula gas, and when he has to put his feet on land he prefers it to be dust and desert rather than the sparkling luxury of a place like Persephone.  Metal shouldn’t sparkle like that.  Humans weren’t meant to put their feet down for long enough to build skyscrapers and mine all of the gold in their outer villages.  The entire time at the shindig, Ashton felt like he stood out worse than a sore thumb, even though he was doing okay at blending in until he started throwing punches.

Luke belongs there, though.  Luke can fit in seamlessly with everyone in any context, from working with Michael in the engine room to sweet-talking clients up, down, and sideways, but he looked right at the party.  Ashton has seen him dressed up before--he almost always sees Luke dressed up, unless he’s wiping grease off his forehead in the engine room--but rarely does he get to see Luke pull out all of his jewelry and makeup, and never up close like he did those few moments they danced together.  The sparkling chandelier overhead highlighted both the glitter dusting Luke’s cheeks and the differences between them: Ashton with dirt under his fingernails and Luke with his straight white teeth.

In the end, Luke came back to the ship.  Ashton knows that staying with Antherton would’ve been the wrong decision, but he doesn’t know if staying on Serenity was Luke’s best choice either.  He wants it to be, but he can’t forget the way Luke positively glowed at that party, smile naturally stretching wide the entire time.

A noise behind him shakes him out of his thoughts.  Luke himself stands in the doorway.  He has his silk robe on, tied loosely around his waist, but he has soft cotton sleep-clothes on, too, fraying at the edges and with a hole in the collar.  It’s a mix between the Luke that the rest of the world gets to see and the Luke that Ashton sometimes catches glimpses of around the ship.

“Hi,” Luke says, stepping onto the bridge.  Ashton watches him approach and take a seat on the floor next to his chair.

“Hi,” he says.

“How are you feeling?” Luke asks.  “Shouldn’t you be resting?”

“I’m okay.”

Luke levels him with an unimpressed look.

“You got stabbed today.”

“I did get stabbed today.  Want to see?”  He begins to lift his shirt, wincing at the way it makes his side stretch, but Luke grabs his hand to stop him.

“I don’t need to see.  I was there.”

Ashton hums and looks back out the window.  His mind flashes back to their last private conversation under the cover of a dark sky.  He hears the way his voice cracked embarrassingly when he asked Luke not to take Antherton’s offer.  He feels the way Luke had looked at him after.

Luke takes a breath.

“For what it’s worth,” he begins, “I did appreciate your attempt to defend my honor, as misguided as it was.  I haven’t thanked you yet.”

“Of course,” Ashton says.  “It was the thing to do.”

He looks down at his hands.  One of his knuckles is busted from where he punched Antherton the second time, the one that let him put a sword to his chest and win.

“I don’t understand you,” Luke says.  He’s got an uncharacteristic edge to his voice, like he’s gearing up for a fight rather than the calm poise he always maintains otherwise.  “You call me a whore to my face all the time, but the moment someone else implies it, it’s an issue.  It’s so much of an issue that you stayed up all night learning how to use a sword rather than run when I gave you the opportunity.  You only ever seek out fights that you know you can win, but you provoked a society man at a public party and put the job at risk.  None of it makes sense.”

“He insulted you.”

“Ashton,” Luke says.

“Look.  I might not respect your profession, but he didn’t respect you.  That’s the difference.  He was parading you around like paying for you to fuck him and make him look good meant he owned you.  He didn’t see you as a person.  That’s where the line is.”

“And you do?”

“What?”

“You respect me?” Luke asks.  “I chose my job, Ashton.  I’m good at it.  I enjoy it.  If you can’t respect what I do when it’s something of my own free will, how can you say that you respect me?”

Ashton looks back out the window, something ugly and rising up in his chest, clawing at his lungs.  He doesn’t want to look that emotion in the face, but he wants to look Luke in the face even less.  He doesn’t know how to explain that the thought of other people touching Luke like that makes his skin crawl without sounding like a biggoted jerk, which is probably the issue.

He would pay anything to be with Luke except for the money he goes for.  He’ll challenge a scumbag to a duel and get a sword in his side for his troubles, but he knows that he’s just the latest in a long line of admirers, except he’s worse than all of them because he’ll never belong on a central planet and hates everything they stand for.  Luke’s life is sanctioned by the Alliance; he and Ashton have never been compatible.

There’s a reason that Luke is the only person on this ship with a legitimate job.  Sure, it comes in use, but it twists his guts up every time they have to use Luke to make it seem like they’re in league with the Alliance.

“I’m sorry,” he says.  “I respect you, Luke.”

There’s nothing else to say.  He’s not about to justify his pigtail-pulling to Luke when he doesn’t even want to do it to himself.

Luke doesn’t say anything, but he lets out a breath and pulls a knee to his chest.  Ashton thinks he might understand a little bit, anyway.  He’s always been perceptive when it comes to Ashton and the people on his ship.

They watch the sky in silence for a moment, the only sound the gentle hum of Serenity’s life-support keeping them afloat in the black.

“I wasn’t going to stay with him,” Luke says eventually.  “I had decided that even before you asked me not to.”

Ashton chances a glance at him.  With the lights of the bridge off the shadows play deeply into his face, only a few patches of skin illuminated like the stars outside want to mirror themselves on him.  A few of his curls have fallen in his eyes, and Ashton wants so badly to brush them away.

“Why not?” he asks.

Antherton offered Luke everything Ashton can’t: stability, luxury, safety, comfort, a hot shower consistently.  Luke doesn’t have any of the Alliance hangups that Ashton does, and he certainly didn’t seem to mind being at that party right up until Ashton baited his date and started swinging.  He would have that all the time if he had stayed.

Luke turns to look at him finally, wearing that small smile that he only ever pulls out on the ship, the one that makes him look young and open.

“Why would I ever leave Serenity?”

Ashton doesn’t have a response, but he knows Luke isn’t looking for one.  There isn’t one, for a question like that.  Not for Serenity.  The people who love her are always all in.

Something inside Ashton settles, gentle like the hum of the engine and Luke’s smile.

They don’t speak for the rest of the night, just sit quietly with each other, watching the stars pass by their home as they travel further and further into the black.

[ancharan]

madara leaving the village because he wanted to spare hashirama having to make the choice to sacrifice him just as he wanted to spare the world from having to make that same choice over and over and over again - severing the karmic cycle of the world he doesn’t blame hashirama for killing him! he knew it would come down to it eventually, and he forced the issue by attacking konoha in order to get hashirama’s cells. he knew hashirama would choose the village, like, there’s not even a choice to be made there, it’s obvious which one he would pick. tobirama or me? madara’s quotes to obito - the world is suffering, for there to be victors there must also be losers. who won at the valley of the end? was it hashirama, for killing his best friend? was it madara, for surviving? madara acknowledges the sacrifice hashirama made - he willingly classifies himself as a sacrifice, one that hashirama makes for the sake of the village. he admires hashirama’s resolve, at this point, but doesn’t agree with his direction - the quote you’re mistaking the means for the end. ive gone over all this before - the village being meant to bring about peace, village for village’s sake is a self-destructive spiral, blah blah. madara knows what hashirama feels, he knows how he thinks (i’d like to think i know you pretty well) so he doesn’t blame him for killing him. it’s not a matter of broken trust because madara knew hashirama was going to kill him from the minute he forced the issue! madara (accurately) knows that his relationship with hashirama wouldn’t stand in the way of hashirama’s resolve to protect the lives of innocents - that’s part of why he loves him! when i say madara positioned himself as a sacrifice in the valley of the end, i mean it as in he put a loaded gun in hashirama’s hand, pointed hashirama’s arm towards him, and then forced hashirama to pull the trigger. 

 madara’s reinforcing his own determination through hashirama’s - hashirama was willing to throw everything away for the sake of the village (”even my own child”) and madara knows that he can’t go back now. he still admires hashirama! he’s steeled himself to his goal. he’s taken hashirama’s flesh and now we know he’s taken his words, too, because he repeats them verbatim to tobirama. we even see him talk about an aspect of this in his speech to obito - when he’s talking about winners and losers, he’s talking about the fact that hashirama was forced to kill madara by this hell world and the circumstances that they found themselves in! if they lived in a perfect world both of their goals could have coexisted - but of course, they live in hell, so hashirama had to kill madara. i think madara admires hashirama’s RESOLVE at this point; madara thinks hashirama’s just deeply misguided (thinking the village will lead to peace; the village will lead to dark ess, etc.) i don’t think madara saw hashirama clinging to the village as abandoning their plan just bc madara never fucking TELLS him his plan lmao. this guy absolutely refuses to fucking communicate at ALL - and i think part of that is that he knows what he’s going to do is stupid and probably won’t work, and he knows it’ll ruin his life trying to achieve it. i think he’s sheltering hashirama from it deliberately. if he makes hashirama betray him, if he makes sure hashirama stays in konoha and stays focused on the village, that leaves madara to be the sacrificial pig that will go achieve eternal tsukyomi for the both of them. madara definitely considers his work an extension of hashirama’s, so i think i’m solid with this analysis, lmao.

 so why is he quoting the speech to tobirama? bc i think madara, even though he was understanding about why he died, was still not happy that it happened. i think he holds a lot of resentment towards tobirama, for a lot of reasons - none of which are super important to madara anymore by the time the shinobi war rolls around, but that old resentment is still there nonetheless. he obviously hates him for killing izuna. i think it wouldn’t be farfetched to say that he probably resents tobirama for even being hashirama’s brother - he is the “correct choice” that hashirama can make, after all. he gets to live in the village, at hashirama’s side, he gets to become hokage and watch his students prosper in this town that madara and hashirama bled for. obviously, madara could never have had what hashirama and tobirama had, just because the relationship between hashirama and madara was never sheer brotherly love, and because madara simply isn’t hashirama’s brother. but resentment doesn’t really follow logic all the time. not to mention, i don’t think it’d be too far from canon to say that tobirama probably feels the exact same way, in reverse - even though he gets to live in the village and watch his students grow into shinobi, and even though he “wins” by enacting all the policies he wants, and even though hashirama chose him and the village over madara when it came down to it - there’s probably still that little spark of doubt. because what if madara hadn’t forced the issue? what if he had let things simmer on their own? there would be a conflict, definitely - if we’re going off of the way things were in canon, madara’s presence in the village would have sparked some kind of fight sooner or later. there would have been contention over the role of hokage, or the role of the uchiha in the village, or madara’s presence in the uchiha clan itself - any number of these things. at that point, who’s to say whose side hashirama would take? if madara hadn’t straight up attacked with the kyuubi, if madara was “playing along” with the village project... i don’t know! i feel like there’s about an equal chance of him going either way. and i think the thought of that would stick around in tobirama’s mind, even when he’s wrist-deep in an autopsy on madara’s corpse.but back to why madara’s saying this to tobirama - i think tobirama is a much easier vessel for madara to pour all his blame into. he can channel any sense of betrayal he felt over his death (understanding why something happens doesn’t always make it easy to swallow) at hashirama’s hands into his hatred of tobirama, because tobirama is, more or less, responsible for the village turning out the way it did, for good or evil. tobirama was one of the founders! he had just as much influence on the destiny of the village as hashirama, and since madara can’t bring himself to actually resent hashirama for killing him (see above), he unloads on tobirama as a hashirama stand-in that he can actually hate. 

[sillyandquiteawkward]

little father and bayley fic under the cut bc i forgot my ao3 password and im lazy. hope you enjoy

Food supplements and leafy greens sat on Doctor Bayley's plate, which he picked at distastefully. The Director of the Institute, Father, sat across from him, making decent headway with his own meal.

"I don't think I can ever learn to enjoy the food supplements. This flavor isn’t palatable either," Bayley curtly complained with a heavy sigh. He felt Father's lingering judgement upon him for refusing most of his meal again, without even having to look up. He poked at the slab of supplement with the tines of his fork. Even the various flavors the Institute boasted of supplements couldn't save Bayley from the pastes, powders, and bars turning his stomach. He was trying his best to find a flavor he could stand, but to Bayley, even mirelurk was easier to eat. At least the fresh vegetables were decent, if not simply boiled or baked if cooked at all. "I'd kill for some real meat on your menu."

"Come now, Doctor, we have little need to slaughter irradiated animals for food in this day and age. BioScience has developed the perfect meal dozens of times over, consisting of the exact amount of daily nutrients a man like yourself needs," Father replies coolly. Bayley glared at the older man. Of course he'd like them -- he grew up on the damn things. Well, Bayley grew up on real food!

"Designed a food that doesn't even fill your stomach," he mumbled behind his mug as he took a sip. Now to their credit, this was something Bayley actually liked. The coffee wasn't stale 200 year old beans and grounds. My god, they perfected the damn synthetic coffee and Bayley couldn't imagine going back.

Father confidently smirked, passing smoothly over Bayley's remark with a gentle shake of his head. "You poor surface dwellers, eating any and all the food you can scrounge to stave off hunger. I'm glad we were able to save you from that life. Give it time, Doctor. Your stomach will re-adjust to your new diet."

Bayley scoffed dismissively and set his fork down to keep nursing his coffee. Father took his own sip of tea. The pair fell into a dip of silence, accompanied by the gentle clink of silverware against plate as Father continued to finish off his lunch. Behind them a few tables over, there was a slight chatter from another pair of scientists in the cafeteria. Licking a crumb of food supplement left on the edge of his mug with a grimace, Bayley listened to their distant hushed conversation. Sounded like gossip about another scientist’s love affair... Hard to believe that even the “perfect” Institute could be filled with, what was ultimately, humans.

Father spoke up after a minute of Bayley straining to eavesdrop, "Why don't you tell me about yourself, Doctor?"

"...Why?" Bayley eyed Father suspiciously. "Don't you already know all about me? Isn't that why I'm here?"

Father took a warm sip of his mug before continuing. "I know about your reputation, or lack thereof." Bayley all but growled at the dig. "And I know you care deeply for the progress of humanity, as do I, albeit a tad misguided. You’re a highly intelligent man, Doctor, but I'm afraid I don't know about you, personally. I'd like to remedy that."

What could Bayley tell Father about? Why should he? Oh, but he loved to talk about himself... Bayley leaned back in his chair with folded hands in his lap, food left forgotten on his plate. "What is there to say? I'm a man married to his work, who likes breathing fresh air. On the surface."

“What got you into studying radiation?” Bayley noticed Father missed his complaint, or at least was ignoring it. “Surely you didn’t set out from the start on such a dangerous fascination.” Father had a look of curiosity on his face that seemed genuine to Bayley, although he still had suspicions this had ulterior motives.

“It was almost from the beginning actually. As I studied medicine in my youth, traveling along the Wasteland, I have to admit,” Bayley paused to consider his wording. “I had a distinct admiration of the ghoul’s ability to utilize radiation to build themself anew. The destructive power of radiation makes using it dangerous and even deadly, true, but I imagined a world where we could manipulate the human body to replicate how a ghoul’s body uses the gamma particles destructive properties to heal themselves, sans the ghoulification process of course.” Okay, so maybe he planned to be cagey, but Father just had to ask him about the thing he’s devoted his entire life to. Sorry, he’s gonna get excited. “I’d seen first hand ghouls reattach long lost limbs to themselves and remain functional, ferals even being brought back to life by glowing ones’ radiation bursts, and the stories of people growing functional limbs from radiation exposure caught my particular attention at a young age.”

“Fascinating things ghouls are, although their rotten brains and appearance are less than desirable. If anything their longevity is what catches my attention. Living over hundreds of years...” Father drifts off, looking past Bayley. “Imagine what one could achieve with that extra time.”

“Living forever doesn’t matter if you aren’t healthy,” Bayley corrected. “What’s the point of living if you are just suffering every day. I’m focusing myself to helping people in this day and age, instead of chasing functional immortality.”

“Maybe that’s the difference between us,” Father sighs. “Everything I do is for tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow. Humanity's future lies in our successor’s hands. It’s a shame we cannot directly work with our future generations to combine our knowledge. All we can do is help prepare them for when we are gone.”

“Eventually people in charge need to step down and let the fresh ideas in, otherwise we’ll collectively stagnate. We are stubborn creatures who hate change, snuffing out ideas that contradict our own. If someone like you lived forever, he’d never give up the reins.”

“I suppose you’d do the same,” Father states blandly, eyes half-lidded. “As you said, we are stubborn creatures.”

Bayley sputters, sitting back up in his chair. “No, I am the innovator in this scenario! I’ve been ostracized for my ideas, kicked out and shunned. No one sees my potential to change the world!”

“And in your age, have you begun to prepare an heir to your scientific knowledge, Doctor? Or do you think you can finish this chronicle yourself, with the few years left in your life?”

“I-I have to prove myself first! No one trusts my work because they don’t see the proof -- which I was working on when you so kindly stole me away from my clinic and subjects!” Bayley hissed, gripping the edge of the table.

Unphased, Father folded his hands on the table. “I trust your work, Doctor Bayley. I’ve seen your studies, seen what you can do when you are truly devoted to a cause. This is why I wanted you with us at the Institute. I want you to share your knowledge to us, so that we may pass it to the future with us. Let us help you ensure your legacy. We have the same goals, and we even have similar methods if you can believe it. Imagine what we can do together when we combine our knowledge, for humanity’s sake.”

Bayley raised an eyebrow at that. “Similar goals perhaps, but I wont be a part of the kidnapping and killing of Commonwealth citizens. You Institute folk are outrageously barbaric for all your self-righteousness.”

“We simply know how to weigh the importance of breaking a few eggs for the omelette. You too understand this principle closely, don’t you?”

Bayley grimaced flatly. “You truly know how to charm a man to your side.” This conversation was over if Bayley had anything to say about it, which he did. He gulped from his mug, keeping it up to his mouth as he turned physically away from Father. He’ll finish this and go back to his room. Trapped in the Institute with these madmen, forced to go along with things else suffer the same fate as the hundreds of others taken to the Institute. And Father had the gall to act like they were the same, that Bayley could excuse innocents murdered for “science.” He slammed the mug back onto the table.

“I hope you’ll understand one day soon, Doctor. I really do.” Father sighed, closing his eyes in defeat as Bayley stood up.

“I don’t want to understand,” Bayley said as he stormed past Father back to the concourse.

It was too much to think about, if Bayley was being honest with himself. He grit his teeth climbing the stairs, tense. A scientist descending the stairs stood to the side as Bayley passed, clearly wanting to give the angry man some space and avoid any conflict. Good. If he was to stay here, people should give way for him. Now if only Father was like that. He passed a pair of expressionless generation two synth guards eyeing their laser weapons as he ascended the next flight.

God, he was annoyed. Of course Father had to go ruin another meal together talking nonsense of Bayley hurting others. He tried his best not to hurt his subjects -- everyone was willing and importantly, no one had died under his care! Sick perhaps in the early days... but it wasn’t death! Bayley couldn’t stand the idea his great idea could possibly kill others when it was supposed to be helping them. If he was ever responsible for someone’s death...

Bayley slid open the automatic door to his small, barren room. It was just a simple bed and desk, which was plenty for Bayley, but he wished he had his trinkets and such if he was going to be living here until the day he dies. He collapsed onto the stiff bed, face pressing against the cool pillow. He missed his couch. He missed his clinic. Bayley even considered he missed being annoyed by Jonathan and Jay’s antics. Jay would try his best to cheer him out of this spiraling train of thought, and Jon would know plenty of things to distract him with.

If he was ever responsible for their deaths, Bayley considered he’d quit on the spot. He’d probably become deeply depressed until he really did just curl up and die, however fast it came after. All his life’s work to save humanity, and he’d killed the only people who trusted him most to do so.

But the truly terrible part of him hidden away deep in his heart wondered that if someone was to die as a result of his work, perhaps even if he wasn’t working willingly with the Institute, that he'd simply wouldn’t care.

[demetriandelibinaryboyfriends]

HOLD ON bc everyone is talking abt imagining Hawk and Daniel bonding and getting close with each other (which i love it’s such a cute concept!)

But can we just imagine Demetri AND Johnny finally growing on each other! like imagine Demetri apologizes for the yelp review to Johnny and then Johnny laughs about it and proceeds to apologize back abt all the shitty things his students did to Demetri and they just bond bc Demetri opens up to Johnny about Hawk and the way he feels preferably that he had a literal dying love for him. It would be amazing to see Johnny and Demetri get close especially since Demetri practically hated the man in s1 and 2! Both Daniel and Johnny feel like dads with their two gay karate boys and they love them very much! Can you please elaborate on this imagine because I don’t even know where to start!

YES YES YES watching these two finally come around to each other would be pretty amusing, but also very gratifying, to watch and I am LIVING FOR IT.

I think I touched on it in one of my other ask posts (maybe the general headcanon one?), but the way I see Demetri finally warming up to Johnny is when he sees how surprisingly sympathetic Johnny is to Hawk’s abuse and manipulation at Kreese’s hands--because Johnny went through the same thing. Like Demetri is fully expecting Johnny to be dismissive and kind of mean about it and give Hawk a hard time for following Kreese like an adoring puppy for so long, but as soon as Johnny sees Hawk having a panic attack or something similar because something in their dojo training triggered memories of his time in Cobra Kai with Kreese, his demeanor completely changes. He just kind of hurries Hawk away from the other students and Demetri overhears him saying kind of quietly and urgently “You take a breather whenever the hell you need it, you hear me, kid? I know what it’s like to get your mind fucked around by that bastard. He screwed me up, too. No one here’s going to think less of you if you need to take a break.” And Demetri is like HOLY SHIT...maybe I was very wrong about this guy??? He CLEARLY doesn’t want other kids to have to go through what he did, and Demetri’s got nothing but respect for that. And he’s really grateful that there’s someone there who can help Hawk through his Cobra Kai trauma in a way even Demetri can’t. And overall, I imagine the longer Demetri spends in the combined dojo, the more he can see that Johnny genuinely cares for Hawk, and admittedly develops a very grudging respect for him for giving Eli confidence in a way Demetri never knew how to.

Also yes, Johnny would probably LOSE HIS SHIT laughing if Demetri fessed up and apologized for the bad review, he’d be like “Kid, if a shitty Yelp review is the worst thing that ever happens to my dojo, I think it’s doing pretty well.” And Johnny Lawrence doesn’t fucking get how the internet works, anyway--no way in hell does he think a bad Yelp review can be THAT bad for business. I mean, what cool, badass person would use this “Yelp” bullshit anyways?! I also think that Johnny probably finds Demetri’s brutal honesty and snarky comments pretty amusing, even if he IS a nuisance at times. Like he probably has some degree of respect for Demetri for just...saying exactly what he thinks at all times, and having 0 filter whatsoever. Because hey, Johnny can relate to that far more than he cares to admit XD

I can also see Demetri going up to Johnny after karate practice, being uncharacteristically timid, and awkwardly thanking Johnny for helping Eli with his Kreese trauma, maybe admitting that he himself isn’t sure how to help Eli recover from everything that happened in Kreese’s Cobra Kai. And Johnny kind of sees Demetri in a new light--because this annoying kid, for all his mouthiness, really does care SO deeply about Hawk and wants him to be all right, even if that means swallowing his pride and saying thank you to the very ex-Cobra Kai sensei he always disliked for turning Eli into an “alpha jerk.” And he remembers just how much Demetri cared about Eli from Day 1, boldly defending his friend’s lip to Johnny when even Miguel wouldn’t. And Johnny’s like damn, Demetri may be a pain in the ass, but he’s loyal as all hell...and fuck, I can respect that.

And then maybe Demetri reluctantly asks Johnny for some advice on how he can better help Hawk with his trauma without patronizing him, or making him feel like he was getting a pity party. Demetri knows he can be a bit condescending and dismissive, even unintentionally, and he really wants to help Eli in the most respectful way he can without accidentally belittling him or putting him down or making him feel weak and pitiful. And he and Johnny end up bonding over how fond they both are of that mohawk kid, and how much they admire how strong he is to have endured everything he has and how very far he’s come since he let himself get bullied mercilessly without fighting back. Of course, Johnny Lawrence isn’t one to pick up on subtleties, so of course he remains completely oblivious to the fact that Demetri is gay as hell for Hawk until explicitly told so by someone XD In any case, Johnny tries to help Demetri help Eli the best that he can, and probably gives a healthy mix of actually good and very misguided advice XD And you dun best believe Eli is utterly touched when he later finds out about this--Demetri braved talking to Johnny Lawrence alone, the man who freaked him out so much that he quit after one day of Cobra Kai...to help Eli??? Color Eli surprised. And thrilled. Must’ve taken some serious balls for Demetri to risk the wrath of Sensei Lawrence for his sake. He’s...lowkey swooning.

ANYWAYS YES DEMETRI AND JOHNNY FINALLY COMING AROUND TO EACH OTHER AND BONDING OVER HOW MUCH THEY CARE ABOUT HAWK PLEASE AND THANK YOU

[alilyamongroses]

Isn’t she just delightful?

Catherine of Aragon has one of the more fascinating media legacies of anyone in the Tudor period, not in terms of how her image has fluctuated over the years, but because of how notably it hasn’t. Other hardcore Catholics of the Henrician court are inevitably vilified in stories from Protestant perspectives - Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey, Jane Seymour and above all else Mary I, to name a few. “Protestant perspectives” doesn’t just refer to reformation texts, it includes books from the perspective of Protestant figures; usually Anne Boleyn or Elizabeth I, and more recently Thomas Cromwell with Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall books. Despite her unwavering faith in both the Catholic Church and her own position, Catherine’s reputation has, up until the past twenty years or so, remained close to stellar; her marriage into the English monarchy at a young age did well to divorce her from her parent’s religious persecutions, and her death some fifteen years or so before her daughter took the throne kept her from being tarnished by association to Mary’s resurrection of medieval heresy laws.

As a Tudor queen, Catherine has largely gone down in history for her irreproachable conduct, even after that history began to tilt towards the side of a religion she opposed - she is known for her charity, her piety, and her belief in her husband’s good nature no matter how vile his behavior grew to be, even at the expense of her own self image. According to Chapuys (who in this case there is no reason to disbelieve) she went to her grave questioning wether Henry’s actions after their divorce was her fault, wondering wether, if she had given him what he wanted, he may not have felt the need to break from Rome, mistreat their daughter and execute two men - one a long term friend and one his own grandmother’s religious advisor. Catherine is a noble figure, she is a tragic figure, she is most of all a dignified figure, and in Tudor media she is always given at least a sympathetic nod if not a complex or three dimensional portrayal. 

The key phrase there, though, is as a Tudor queen. Whatever else she was, Catherine was decidedly not a modern woman, just like all of her female peers living five hundred years ago were decidedly not modern women; her unflinching religious beliefs, her many attempts at producing a male heir and her devotion to her marriage are admirable traits of a female noble of the sixteenth century, less so of a twenty first century wife or businesswoman. She was a product of her time, and modernized or semi modernized Tudor media’s attempts to portray her - specifically the brand of modern Tudor media that sets out to depict Anne and Henry’s relationship as one of Sexy High Romance - always end up turning Catherine into a misogynistic caricature of herself, historical legacy be damned. The blog anneboleynnovels describes it best:

“Catherine’s greatest hurdle has been not Protestant novels, but modernized ones. These are the one subgenre in which her character at best is severely degraded and at worst is completely unrecognizable. It’s not surprising that it should be like this — finding modern corollaries to Anne and Henry, whether in an office, a Hollywood mansion, or a high school, is doable. As for most of the people who surrounded them, while some some people are harder to wrench into modern poses than others, it’s relatively easy to cut and alter those characters to make them work better in a modern setting. Catherine, however, is completely lost here. She needs to exist, or else the central conflict disappears — but she simply doesn’t have a real modern equivalent, at least not in the kinds of societies that modernizers write about; her determination that God had put her in her position and that she had to safeguard her daughter’s legitimacy, and thus her inheritance, is impossible to convey fully, especially since Henry’s historical behavior — taking a presumed inheritance from Mary, forcibly separating the two women, and confining them in residences of his choosing — can’t be precisely replicated in a modern novel without making him at best a creep and at worst a criminal. In neither case would that Henry be an appealing love object for a modern Anne, so his behavior is inevitably made more standard — he’s simply a wealthy man divorcing his wife of twenty years, and instead of taking her settlement and moving on, his wife just refuses to let go.”

As the post on Catherine’s fictionalized history points out, attempts to judge her through a modern lens, particularly in stories that center around that grand, not-at-all-murderous love affair of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn inevitably fail to produce a balanced assesment. Susan Bordo’s highly modernized study the Creation of Anne Boleyn treats her like a footnote at best and a self righteous fool at worst, while the Catherine of Suzannah Dunn’s The Queen of Subtleties is disgustingly nicknamed “Fat Cath” (stupid cow, how could she let herself go like that after six pregnancies?) and features its leading lady, another ahead-of-her-time portrayal of Anne Boleyn, going out of her way to condescendingly paint Catherine to the reader as vengeful and delusional. Anne of Hollywood and Anne and Henry present the worst portrayals, one a hideous, deliberately unsympathetic drug addict and the other a teenage psychotic forced on Henry by his father, leading her poor, brow beaten boyfriend by the hand.

That’s not to say it would be impossible to write a well rounded modern Catherine of Aragon, but most modernized Tudor novels simply don’t care to try and make her well rounded; she exists solely to be the convenient road block to Anne and a whitewashed Henry’s happiness, a flat example of the Hysterical Woman trope rather than a Queen, a mother, or a politician. It isn’t Anne Boleyn’s fault that this happens (she can’t exactly object) but this version of Catherine never fails to rear its ugly head in Tudor media that aims to portray Anne, literally or figuratively, as a “woman of the future.” Since that reading of Anne has gained momentum over the years, this Catherine inevitably does so too.

What makes the Spanish Princess so unbearable is how blatantly Emma Frost is trying, and egregiously failing, to flip the script on this. Whatever her personal dislike of Anne Boleyn, she is very obviously trying to take this fictitious version of Anne Boleyn that has sprung up over the past few decades - that of the rebellious, sexy, pseudo feminist Modern Woman™ - and apply it to Catherine of Aragon, who was neither rebellious, a feminist or, after six pregnancies, five infant deaths and a battle with heart cancer, all that sexy. The intimacy and very real affection she and Henry shared in the early years of their marriage is stilted and unemotional, replaced by an absurd number of sex scenes and a very out of place “warrior kween” nickname. It isn’t enough for Catherine to organize a massive military campaign and give a speech to an assembly of soldiers while heavily pregnant, real life accomplishments of hers which have gone largely unacknowledged - no, the Catherine of the Spanish Princess needs to literally fight in battle, pregnant belly armor and all, subtly implying that her many miscarriages were the result of her own behavior, never mind the fact that Henry’s later wives had miscarriages as well. The deeply devoted friends Catherine actually had, one of whom served her for decades and risked royal punishment to be with her on her deathbed, are either erased entirely or put into invented conflicts with her. Her relationship with the only one of her children that survived infancy is perverted into a cold, uncaring motherhood, marked by disappointment and a refusal to even hold her daughter, let alone personally teach her Latin, commission scholars to write books for her, and request those same scholars take charge of her education.

In place of all these details, the things that make the historically minded audience love Catherine in the first place, several sordid aspects of Anne Boleyn’s fictional representations are assigned to Frost’s Catherine of The Upside Down: the ~unnatural~ blowjobs and poorly designed French hoods, the general air of cattiness, the excessive nudity, the hatred of her daughter, the inability to sexually please her husband, and the weird sense of anger at all the women in her life all stand out as hallmarks of Anne Boleyn’s less flattering portrayals, but so too do the clear attempts to pander to a feminist audience and sell itself as new age and progressive.

The fouler examples of Catherine as a modern woman aren’t yet the prevalent perception of her; a gaggle of misguided twenty first century books isn’t enough to erase the near spotless reputation she’s maintained for half a millennium. But the Spanish Princess fails to depict a more positive modernization of Catherine because it’s lazy in the attempt - it sees the habit of trying to turn sixteenth century queens into anything but sixteenth century queens and tries to replicate it by taking a handful of theatrical trends and having their protagonist perform them. Those trends have been apart of Anne Boleyn’s portrayal in the media for so long it wouldn’t be that strange to see her acting that way on screen, no matter how historically inaccurate they may be, but to assign them to someone with such a vastly different public history as Catherine is just jarring. She wasn’t like that, nobody thinks she was like that, Tudor media has always known her as being not like that, and the result is something that’s confusing at best and outright offensive at worst. It’s not fun to watch, but it’s interesting to examine, broader context in mind.

(Also credit to @queenmarytudor for that image of Meg and Mary, and seriously, check out anneboleynnovels. They’re great.)

[sunsetofdoom]

Nan/Quinn + jawline kisses? 👀

(this does have references to When You Can’t Say No, But You Can’t Say Yes; if you haven’t read that, you may want to, though I’m trying to keep this self-explanatory)

When Quinn left the party for a moment for a semblance of fresh night air, he found that someone else was just as desperate to escape the smug Alderaan nobles and Imperial Army loudmouths.

Lord Kris, newly-appointed, had shed her suit jacket and was leaning her elbows on the metal railing of the balcony, the dark lines of her tattoos disappearing up her rolled white sleeves. In one hand, drooping as though it were half-forgotten, smoldered a cigar with a rich, foul smell that had become quite familiar to Malavai over the last few months; she smoked them after victories and the smell stained all her clothes, from lounging pyjamas to Sith robes to her current formal-wear, braces and a bow-tie of deep blue.

With no civilian clothes to his name at the moment, Malavai was in his notoriously-uncomfortable dress uniform. He shifted as he crossed the balcony, tracing his gloved fingers against the rough inner cuffs of the sleeves. He’d re-lined the cuffs of his field coat so that it fit him like a second skin, but he hadn’t worn a dress uniform in almost fifteen years- hadn’t even had one in his possessions. This one had been requisitioned at the last possible moment from the Alderaan field office, his Captain’s bars carefully transferred from his daily wear.

“Evenin’, sweetheart,” Lord Kris drawled as he approached, a cat’s grin creasing her tattooed face. She wasn’t looking at him, which irritated Quinn for some reason- possibly it was her smug self-assurance, or just discomfort with the uncanny Force powers that told her who he was without seeing his face.

“My lord,” he greeted with a respectful nod, his voice proper. “I have asked you not to call me that, haven’t I?”

“Many times,” Nan agreed.

“Right,” he sighed, stopping shy of the railing that she leaned on. 

There was an urge to mirror her and settle his elbows on the rail, but he hated the possibility of dirtying the pure white dress uniform. Instead, he relaxed into his intimately familiar parade-rest posture, a position he could hold for days if he had to. When he stood straight, and Her Lordship was leaned over the railing as she was, they could almost be the same height- though she would always be broader at the shoulders, not to mention her hips and strong thighs, where her masculine attire highlighted the strangeness of her immense, well-muscled body.

She laughed, the noise a soft chuff in the darkness. Far off in the distance, he could hear insects in the tree line, the soft noises of wilderness happening somewhere out of reach. It was comforting- like listening to the distant rainforest on Dromund Kaas. Quinn took a deep breath, grateful for temperate air that wasn’t dry or caustic. Marching in and out of war zones was the life he’d chosen for himself, but at least here he could breathe.

Behind them, the party seemed even more distant than the forest. The music, the chatter- they sounded very far away. Quinn had found himself getting more and more irritated by his own superiors recently, a problem he had assumed would stop once he was off of Balmorra but was instead only growing worse. 

His youthful admiration of Broysc and men like him had been misguided, but he almost missed the childish feeling. When the Army generals in attendance tried to lecture anyone who would listen on their deeply flawed strategies for taking Alderaan, Malavai found it difficult to curb his tongue. Possibly he’d become too used to his verbal sparring with Vette; when the words it’s astonishing that you actually think that would work appeared on the tip of his tongue and he’d needed to wash them back with a very deep drink, he had realized all at once that he needed to either leave the ballroom or risk embarrassing himself. 

Air. All he needed was fresh air, a change of scenery. This resentment in his gut would go away if he just...

“Luvvy,” Her Lordship’s dark contralto voice rumbled, “that don’t look comfortable.”

“I’m fine,” Quinn snapped, jolted out of his thoughts. “Ah- my lord,” he added hastily, trying to soften his tone.

She laughed, deep and low. In the half-year they’d been working together, she had never once insisted on his respect- in fact, the few times he forgot himself and showed even slight rudeness, she applauded him. The tattoos around her eyes crinkled up with her dangerous smile, and she tapped the ash off the end of her cigar as she straightened where she stood.

Reaching out with one big, clawed hand, Her Lordship spread her discarded suit jacket over the railing in front of him.

“There,” she said, tapping her fingertips against the cloth. “No dirt on your nice clothes, mm?”

Malavai flushed at her unexpected gallantry, and a little bit at his fussiness being found out. The anxiety tickling at his gut manifested as a soft, nervous laugh, and he ducked his head. “I... Thank you, my lord.”

She was always doing this. A distressing amount of the time, Lord Kris- Nan- was a brutish, snarling madwoman, a Zabrak barbarian lifted straight out of propaganda films he’d watched as a child. And then, just when he had dismissed her as a stupid animal, she gentled with some show of lordly grace that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Sith opera.

Stepping delicately forward, Quinn leaned down and rested his forearms on the jacket, warm even through the fabric of his dress uniform. It smelled like her cigars, and her skin. The awkward silence eased, and when Nan’s hand appeared in his vision, holding her cigar out to him, his lips twitched as he took it between his fingers.

“Can’t bloody stand it in there,” Nan offered as she withdrew her hand and leaned against the railing again. “Pompous bastards.”

Humming with grateful, guilty agreement, Quinn drew on the cigar, letting the taste roll through him. It wasn’t as bad as it had been; he was starting to become used to the smell already, and the smoke filling his lungs was warm and rich. He still coughed for a moment as he breathed out, not quite accustomed to the feeling. When he smoked, it was typically small cigarillos, easy enough to get a hold of through the Imperial contraband system; Her Lordship’s thick cigars were a rather alien taste to him.

“Could handle their bleating,” she continued, talking into the silence like a peace offering, “if they’d just stop talkin’ about my species so much. I know I got horns, you know I got horns, that don’t mean you got to bring it up every moment. How does a woman such as yourself,” she quoted, dropping her natural drawl for a strict Dromund Kaas accent, “a woman such as yourself get to where you are today? Well, sweetheart, first off, talk at my face instead of my horns or get out of my bloody way.”

Feeling a little giddy from the smoke and the forbidden mockery, Malavai laughed, the sound bubbling out of him awkwardly. The cigar was in his right hand; he had to turn so far to hand it back to her that he simply shifted, leaning his back against the railing and settling himself where he could look at Her Lordship’s jawline, the tattoos streaking her neck and disappearing under her starched white collar. Her fingers brushed against his as she took the cigar back, and he relaxed for the first time in months, elbows resting on the railing behind him.

If anyone asked, he thought muzzily, he could always blame the free drinks for his lack of decorum. Smiling uncertainly, he eyed the side of her face, the horns arching high over her forehead like a crown. “I understand, my lord,” he said, trying to infuse his tone with some sympathy. “When we first met, I admit that I- I disliked you purely for your species.”

The tattoos on her brow jumped, and Her Lordship’s gold eyes narrowed to gleaming slits in the darkness as she looked at him with curiosity at his familiar tone.

“It was only as I spent time in your company,” Quinn continued with a wry twist to his lips, astonished at his own daring, “that I found so many better reasons to dislike you.”

There was a moment of astounded silence as they both stood there, shocked that he had said something quite so forward. Then, slamming her palm on the railing so hard that he felt it vibrate against his back, Nan leaned her head back and laughed. It shook her whole broad chest from the belly up, and the sound seemed to rattle the far-away trees. 

Staring straight ahead, looking into the hall where the lights of the party shone at a distance, Malavai smiled to himself as the pride and the bourbon warmed him inside. He’d discovered a unique pleasure in making Vette or Her Lordship laugh- he had never been considered funny or sociable by his peers, but if he concentrated, he could affect these strange alien women just by voicing his thoughts. Taking them by surprise in such a way felt like a success, after long years of nothing but failure.

Her hand landed on his shoulder hard enough to knock the breath from him, and squeezed down tight. She jostled him back and forth for just a moment, her hand burning hot through the thick jacket, and then let him go with a rush of cold air.

“Eh, little one,” she sighed, still laughing, “you’re too clever by half, you are.”

Closing his eyes, Quinn savored the glow of camaraderie and acceptance. The smell of her cigar filled the air again, and he could hear the shivers in her breathing as her laughter trailed off with the smoke.

“I do like it, y’know,” she said. “The back-talk, it’s good for me. Good for you, too, I think. Reminds us both that you’re a man, not just a soldier.”

“A man in the Dathomir sense?” Quinn asked, dry irony coloring his voice. Something like embarrassment warmed his belly. Her Lordship’s birth planet treated men like property due to a distorted birth rate; never before in his life had he felt his gender to be anything but a vague accident of birth, but Nan- well. To her, being a man made him something delicate and exotic.

She shifted. He felt her body heat then, the thick muscle of her arm suddenly very close to his own.

“Aye,” she rumbled. “If you wanted that, kitten.”

The back of her hand brushed against his upper arm. Malavai swallowed, the tipsy giddiness disappearing and leaving him thick-tongued and stupid.

He was under orders. This was an opportunity.

She was so warm.

As he stood frozen, her strong hand slid around his arm, just above his elbow where it rested on the rail. Her claws were long, and he could feel them raking against his jacket sleeve.

Baras had ordered him to find his way into her bed, to invest her attention in him. Until now, Malavai had found ways to keep himself out of her gaze in such a way, a difficult prospect when she kept making casual comments about his backside.

It was supposed to have been easy. He was supposed to have avoided her attentions, placed on him simply because he was male and close to her. He was meant to be scandalized by the prospect of being traded to a Zabrak barbarian like a war bride, and simply reported to Darth Baras that his apprentice had shown no interest. Nan ought to have moved on to other conquests by now, healthy, safe affairs that weren’t artfully placed traps.

So why- why was he shivering down to his bones as she leaned her head close to his, as she pressed her lips to the corner of his jaw? Why was he shaking as her hot breath ghosted across his unshaven cheek? 

A laugh huffed against his jawline, and she nipped her teeth against the skin there. He moaned aloud, helpless, held up only by her hand on his arm, and she laughed again as she closed her lips over the thin skin, leaving a hot wet mark that consumed him.

Groping for something to hold onto, he half-turned, reaching blindly until his left hand closed on her sleeve, the railing keeping him upright in the tangle of an embrace. The smoldering ember of the cigar dropped off the balcony, into the darkness.

He couldn’t do this. He could not do this; not only could he not follow this order in good conscience, he could not willingly walk into this- this entanglement fully aware that he was assigned to act against her. Malavai Quinn was a better soldier than that, a better man.

Her other hand curled around the back of his neck, her claws scratching pleasantly into the feather-soft hair there. The touch melted him, warmth cascading down his back in primal satisfaction. Her mouth moved perhaps half an inch down his jawline, the heat of her leading a trail towards his mouth where he would collapse, where his will would crumble and his honor would be lost.

His knees gave out. It saved him. Nan reached for him, trying to catch him and haul him upright, but Malavai caught his own weight and stumbled away, two or three steps backwards into cold night air as he panted and trembled.

Lord Kris, her eyes wide, stood with her hands spread, honest disbelief on her broad face. She gestured out, reaching for him, and he shook his head.

“I- I’m- I can’t,” Malavai stammered. One word from her, as her warm, patterned lips opened in shock, would destroy his resolve. “I’m sorry, I- I can’t.”

Legs shaking, he fled the bewildered Sith, leaving her there in the shadows of the balcony. He needed the light of the ballroom, the half-insults of the Army generals, the reassuring annoyance of Vette; anything was better than Lord Kris’ touch, and the final surrender of what little honor he had left.