#//-His future getting messed up by Forces feels like a meta joke

[bowsnbots]

"So, like, what is my backstory?" A beat.

"I mean, Sonic 06 didn't happen, right? Kind of? Sort of? But my future's still all messed up, right? What's up with that?"

[pumpkinpaix]

Pleeeeeeease get into the class one at some point because I very much want to understand the class dynamics happening in the story but I have yet to find a meta that dives into it

god anon you want me dead don’t you alsjdfljks

referring to this post

okay, so -- my specific salt about class interpretations in mdzs are very targeted. I can’t pretend to have a deep understanding of how class works in mdzs generally because uhhhhh yeah i don’t think i have that. i’m just not familiar enough with the genre and/or the particulars of chinese class systems. but! i can talk in general terms as to why I feel a certain way about the class dynamics that I do think I understand and how I think they relate to the themes of the novel! i’m gonna talk about wei wuxian, the daozhangs, xue yang, and 3zun with, I’m sure, a bunch of digressions along the way.

the usual disclaimers: i do not think you are a bad person if you hold opinions contrary to my own. i may disagree with you very strongly, but like. this isn’t a moral judgment, fandom is transformative and interpretive etc. etc. and i may change my mind. who knows what the future will bring!

OKAY so let’s begin!

here’s the thing about wei wuxian: he’s not poor. I think because characters use “son of a servant” kind of often when they’re trying to insult him, a lot of people latch onto that and think that it’s a much stronger indication of his societal status than it actually is. iirc, most of the insults that fall along the “son of a servant” line come after wei wuxian starts breaking severely from tradition. it’s a convenient thing to attack him for, but doesn’t actually indicate anything about his wealth. (exception: yu ziyuan, but that’s a personal familial issue) this is in direct contrast to jin guangyao who is constantly mocked for his family line, publicly and privately, no matter what he does.

so this, coupled with all the jokes about wwx never having any money (wei wuqian, sizhui’s “i’ve long since known you had no money” etc.), plus his like, rough years on the street as a child ends up producing this interpretation of wei wuxian, especially in modern aus, as someone who is very class conscious and “eat the rich”. but the fact of the matter is, wei wuxian IS rich. aside from the years in his childhood and the last two years of his life in yiling, like -- wei wuxian had money and status. he is gentry. he is respected as gentry. he is treated as a son by the sect leader of yunmeng jiang -- he does not have the jiang name, but it is so very clear that jiang fengmian favors him. wei wuxian is ranked fourth of all the eligible young masters in the cultivation world -- that is not a ranking he could have attained without being accepted into the upper class.

wei wuxian’s poverty does not affect him in the way that it affects jin guangyao or xue yang. he is of low-ish birth (still the son of jiang fengmian’s right hand man though! ok sure, “son of a servant” but like. >_> whatever anyways), but for most of his life he had money. he, jiang cheng, and their sect brothers go into town and steal lotus pods with the understanding that “jiang-shushu will pay for it”. this is a regular thing! that’s fucking rich kid behavior!!! wei wuxian is careless with money because he doesn’t have to worry about it. he still has almost all the benefits of being upper class: education, food security, respect, recognition etc. I think there may also be a misconception that wei wuxian was always on the verge of being kicked out by yu ziyuan, or that he was constantly walking on eggshells around her for fear of being disowned, but that is just textually untrue. i could provide receipts, but I admittedly don’t really feel like digging them up just now ;;

even in his last years in yiling, he was not the one who was dealing with the acute knowledge of poverty: wen qing is the one managing the money, and as far as we know, wei wuxian did little to no management of daily life during the burial mounds days -- mostly, he’s described as hiding in his cave for days on end, working on his inventions, running around like a force of chaos, frivolously making a mess of things -- it’s very very cute that he buries a’yuan in the dirt, but in classic wei wuxian fashion, he did Not think about the practical consequences of it -- that A’Yuan has no other clean clothes, and now he’s gotten this set dirty and has no intention of washing them. is this a personality thing? yeah, but I think it’s also indicative of his lack of concern over the logistics of everyday survival, re: wealth.

furthermore, i think it is important to remember that wei wuxian, when he is protecting the wen remnants, is not protecting common folk: he is still protecting gentry. fallen gentry, yes! but gentry nonetheless. wen qing was favored by wen ruohan, and wen ning himself says that he has a retinue of people under his command (the remnants, essentially). their branch of the family do not have the experience of living and growing in poverty -- they are impoverished and persecuted in their last years, but that’s a very different thing from being impoverished your whole life. (sidenote: I do not believe wei wuxian’s primary motivation for defending the wen remnants was justice -- i believe he did it because he felt he owed wen ning and wen qing a life debt, and once he was there, he wasn’t going to stand around and let the work camps go on. yes, he is concerned about justice and doing the right thing, but that’s not why he went in the first place. anyways, that’s another meta)

after wei wuxian returns, he then marries back into gentry, and very wealthy gentry at that. lwj provides him all the money he could ever want, he is never worried about going homeless, starving, being denied opportunities based on his class and accompanying disadvantages. who would dare? and neither wei wuxian nor lan wangji seem to have much interest in shaking up the order of things, except in little things like the way they teach the juniors. they live in gusu, under the auspices of the lan, and they live a happy, domestic life.

were his years on the street traumatizing? yes, of course they were, there’s so much delicious character exploration to be done re: wei wuxian’s relationship to food, his relationship to his own needs, and his relationship to the people he loves. it’s all important and good! but I feel very strongly that that experience, while it was formative for him, did not impart any true understanding of poverty and the common person’s everyday struggles, nor do I think he ever really gains that understanding. he is observant and canny and aware of class and blood, certainly, but not in a way that makes it his primary hill to die on (badum-tss).

this is in very stark contrast to characters like jin guangyao and xue yang, and to some extent, xiao xingchen and song lan. I’ll start with the daozhangs, because I think they’re the simplest (??).

I think both xiao xingchen and song lan have class consciousness, but in a very simplified, broad-strokes kind of way (at least, given the information we know about them). we know that the two of them share similar values and want to one day form their own sect that gives no weight to the nobility of your lineage and has no concern with your wealth. we also know that they both disdain intersect politics and are more concerned with ideals and principles rather than status. but, I think because of that, this actually somewhat limits their perception and understanding of how status is used to oppress. as far as we know, neither of them participated on any side in sunshot and they demonstrate much more interest in relating to the commoners. honestly, i hc that they were flitting around trying to help decimated towns, protecting defenseless villages etc. I ALSO think this has a lot of interesting potential in terms of xiao xingchen and wei wuxian’s relationship, if xiao xingchen is ever revived. regardless of whether you’re in CQL or novel verse, xiao xingchen really doesn’t know wei wuxian at all, other than knowing that he’s his shijie’s son. he knows that cangse-sanren met with a tragic end, like yanling-daoren before her, and that he wants to be different. but here is cangse-sanren’s son, laying waste to entire cities, desecrating the dead. I would very much like to get into xiao xingchen’s head during that period of time (and i think, if i do it right, i can write some of it into the songxiao fixit), but that’s neither here nor there, because i’ve wandered off from my point again.

i would posit that song lan is used to an ascetic lifestyle, and xiao xingchen probably is too -- but that’s different from poverty because there’s an element of choice to it. I also think that neither of them is particularly worldly, xiao xingchen especially. he lived on an isolated mountain until he was like, seventeen, and he came down full of ideals and naivete about how the world worked. I think that both of them see inequality, that they are angered by it, and that they want to do something about it -- but their solution is neither to topple the sects, nor is it to reform the system. rather, it seems to be more about withdrawing and creating their own removed world. I think that the daozhangs embody a kind of utopianism that isn’t present in the minds of any of the other characters, not even wangxian. honestly, baoshan-sanren’s mountain is a utopian ideal, but one that is not described. it exists outside of and beyond the world. i have a lot of jumbled, vague thoughts about utopianism generally, mostly informed by china miéville and ursula k. le guin, and I don’t think i have the ability to articulate them here, but i wanted to. hm. say something? there is something about the inherent dystopianism contained within every utopia, that utopias are necessary, but also reflections of the existence of terrible things in their conception. idk. there’s something in there, I know it!! but i suppose what I want to say is -- i do not think the daozhangs understand class and social hierarchy very deeply because they don’t see a need to examine it deeply. for their goals, the details aren’t the point. they’re not looking to reform within the system, they’re looking to build something outside of it. I think they spend a lot of time concerned with alleviating the symptoms of social oppression, and their values reflect the injustices they witness there.

regardless, even if their story ends in tragedy and there is a certain amount of critique re: the utopian approach, i think the text still emphasizes that xiao xingchen left a utopia and that he thought that people mattered enough for him to try, and that was an incredibly honorable, kind, and human thing to do.

YEAH SURE THE DAOZHANGS ARE THE SIMPLEST ok ok RETURNING to class and moving forward: xue yang.

i also don’t think xue yang has class consciousness lol, or not in any way that really matters, but I do think poverty impacted him in a much stronger way than it impacted wei wuxian. wei wuxian spent some years on the street as a child. xue yang grew up on the streets. chang ci’an’s horrific treatment of him was directly due to his class and social standing: chang ci’an is a nobleman and xue yang is not even worth the dirt beneath the wheels of his cart. what I think is the seminal point though, is that this does not make xue yang think particularly deeply about systemic injustice, because xue yang is so self-centered, self-driven, and individualistic. he is not even slightly concerned about how poverty and class might affect other people -- they’re other people. what he takes away from his experience is not an anger at being wrongfully cheated by a system, but an anger at being wrongfully cheated by a specific man.

xue yang is not particularly concerned with the politics of the aristocracy -- he has no obvious ambitions other than, “i want to eat sweets whenever i please”, “i want to hurt anyone who wrongs me”, and “i want to be so strong that no one can hurt me”. like, he just doesn’t care -- it’s not the kind of power he wants. he sneers at people for like, personal reasons, not class reasons -- “you think you’re better than me” re: xiao xingchen and song lan. to him, all people -- poor, wealthy, noble, common -- are essentially equal, and they are all beneath him. after all, what does he care what family someone comes from, how much money they have? everyone bleeds when you cut them. some of them might be harder to get to than others, but xue yang does not fear that sort of thing. it’s just another obstacle he needs to vault on his way to getting revenge and/or a pastry.

ANYWAYS onto jin guangyao (wow this is hm. getting rather long ahaha oh dear): I would argue that the two characters with the most acute understanding of class/societal politics and the injustice of them are jin guangyao and lan xichen. i’ll start with jin guangyao for obvious reasons.

where xue yang took the damaging effects of poverty as personal slights, I think jin guangyao is painfully aware that there is nothing personal about them, which is, in some ways, much worse. why are two sons, born on the same day to the same father, treated so differently? just because.

he watched his mother struggle and starve and work herself to the bone in a profession where she was constantly disrespected and abused for almost nothing in return, while his father could have lifted her out of poverty with the wave of a finger. why didn’t he? because he didn’t like her? no -- because he didn’t care, and the structures of the society they live in protect that kind of blase treatment of the lower class.

“so my mother couldn’t choose her own fate, is that her fault?” jin guangyao demands. he knows that he is unbelievably talented, that he has ambition, that he has potential, and that all of it is beyond his grasp just because his father didn’t want to bother with it. his mother’s life was destroyed, and his own opportunities were crippled with that negligence. it isn’t personal. that’s just the way things are. your individual identity is meaningless, your humanity does not exist. when he’s kicked down the steps of jinlin tai, it’s just more confirmation that no matter how talented or hardworking he is, no one will give him the time of day unless he finds a way to take it himself and become someone who “matters”.

jin guangyao’s cultivation is weak because he had a poor foundation, and he had a poor foundation because he was denied access to a good one. he copies others because that’s all he can do at this point, and he copies so well that he can hold his own against some of the strongest cultivators of his generation. he’s disparaged for copying and “stealing” techniques, but -- he never would have had to if only he had been born/accepted into the upper class. the fact is that i really do think jin guangyao was the most promising cultivator of his generation that we meet, including the twin jades and wei wuxian: he had natural talent, ambition, creativity, determination and cunning in spades. in some ways, I think that’s one of the overlooked tragedies of jin guangyao: the loss of not just the good man he could have been, but the powerful one too. imagine what he could have done.

jin guangyao spends his entire time in the world of the aristocracy feeling unsteady and terrified because he knows exactly how precarious his position is. he knows how easy it is to lose power, especially for someone like him. he’s working against so many disadvantages, and every scrap of honor he gets is a vicious battle. jin guangyao fears, and I think that’s something that’s lacking in xue yang, wei wuxian and the daozhangs’ experiences/understandings of poverty. i think it’s precisely that fear that emphasizes jin guangyao’s understanding of class and blood. jin guangyao exhibits an anxiety that neither wei wuxian nor xue yang do, and it’s because he truly knows how little he is worth in the eyes of society and how little there is he can do to change that. to me, it very much feels related to the anxiety of not knowing if tomorrow you’ll have something to eat, if tomorrow you’ll still have a home, if tomorrow someone will destroy you and never have to answer for it. it’s the anxiety of knowing helplessness intimately.

moreover, jin guangyao is the only person shown to use the wealth and power at his disposal to take concrete steps to actually help the common people typically ignored by the powerful -- the watchtowers. they’re described in chapter 42. it’s a system that is designed to cover remote areas that most cultivators are reluctant to go due to their inconvenience and the lack of means of the people who live there. the watchtowers assign cultivators to different posts, give aid to those previously forgotten, and if the people are too poor to pay what the cultivators demand, the lanling jin sect pays for it. jin guangyao worked on this for five years and burned a lot of bridges over it. people were strongly opposed to it, thinking that it was some kind of ploy for lanling jin’s personal benefit. but the thing is -- it worked. they were effective. people were helped.

i believe CQL frames the watchtowers as an allegory for a surveillance state/centralized control (i think?? it’s been a minute -- that’s the hazy impression i remember, something like a parallel to the wen supervisory offices?), but I personally don’t think that was the intent in the novel. the watchtowers are a public good. lanling jin doesn’t staff them with their own sect members -- they get nearby sects to staff them. it’s a warning network that they fund that’s supposed to benefit everyone, even those that everyone had considered expendable.

(did jin guangyao do terrible things to achieve this goal? yeah lol. it’s not confirmed, but his son sure did die... suspiciously...... at the hands of an outspoken critic of the watchtowers........ whom he then executed....... so like, maybe just a convenient coincidence for jin guangyao, two birds one stone, but. it seems. Unlikely.)

lan xichen is the only member of the gentry that ever shows serious compassion for and nuanced understanding of jin guangyao’s circumstances. lan xichen treats him as his equal regardless of jin guangyao’s current status -- even when he was meng yao, lan xichen treated him as a human being worthy of respect, as someone with great merits, as someone he would choose as a friend, but he did so knowing full well the delicate position meng yao occupied. this is in direct contrast to nie mingjue, who also believed that meng yao was worthy of respect as a human being, but was completely unable to comprehend the complexities of his circumstances and unwilling to grant him any grace. you know, the difference between “i acknowledge that your birth and status have had effects upon you, but I don’t think less of you for it” and “i don’t consider your birth and status at all when i interact with you because i think it is irrelevant” (“i don’t see color” anyone?)

to illustrate, from chapter 48:

大抵是觉得娼妓之子身上说不定也带着什么不干净的东西，这几名修士接过他双手奉上来的茶盏后，并不饮下，而是放到一边，还取出雪白的手巾，很难受似的，有意无意反复擦拭刚才碰过茶盏的手指。聂明玦并非细致之人，未曾注意到这种细节，魏无羡却用眼角余光扫到了这些。孟瑶视若未见，笑容不坠半分，继续奉茶。蓝曦臣接过茶盏之时，抬眸看他一眼，微笑道：“多谢。”

旋即低头饮了一口，这才继续与聂明玦交谈。旁的修士见了，有些不自在起来。

rough tl:

Probably because they believed that the son of a prostitute might also carry some unclean things upon his person, after these few cultivators took the teacups offered from [Meng Yao’s] two hands, they did not drink, but instead put them to one side, and furthermore brought out snow white handkerchiefs. Quite uncomfortably, and whether they were aware of it or not, they repeatedly wiped the fingers they had just used to touch the teacups. Nie Mingjue was not a detail-oriented person and never took note of such particulars, but Wei Wuxian caught these in the corner of his eye. Meng Yao appeared as if he had not seen, his smile unwavering in the slightest, and continued to serve tea. When Lan Xichen took the teacup, he glanced up at him and, smiling, said, “Thank you.”

He immediately dipped his head to take a sip, and only then continued to converse with Nie Mingjue. Seeing this, the nearby cultivators began to feel somewhat uneasy.

all right, since we’re in full cyan-rampaging-through-the-weeds mode at this point, i’m going to talk about how this is one of my favorite 3zun moments in the entire novel for characterization purposes because it really highlights how they all relate to one another, and to what degree each of them is aware of their own position in relation to the others and society as a whole.

1. nie mingjue, who is a forthright and blunt person, sets meng yao to serving tea and is done with it. he notices nothing wrong or inappropriate about the reactions of the people in the room because it’s not the sort of thing he considers important.

2. meng yao, knowing that his only avenue is to take it lying down with a smile, masks perfectly.

3. lan xichen, noticing all this, uses his own reputation to achieve two things at once: pointedly shame the other cultivators in attendance, and show meng yao that regardless of others’ opinions, he considers him an equal and does not endorse such behavior--and he does it while taking care that no fallout will come down on meng yao’s head.

is this yet another installment of cyan’s endless lxc defense thesis? why yes it is! no one is surprised! but this is my whole point: both meng yao and lan xichen understand the respective hierarchy and power dynamics within the room, while nie mingjue very much does not. this is not because nie mingjue is a bad person or because nie mingjue is stupid--it’s a combination of personality and upbringing. nie mingjue is straightforward and has no patience for such games. but then again, he can afford not to play because he was born into such a high position: that’s a privilege.

to break it down: meng yao knows that he is the lowest-ranked person in the room, sees the way people are subtly disrespecting him in full view of his general who is doing nothing about it. in some ways, this is good -- nie mingjue’s style of dealing with conflict is very direct and not at all suited to delicate political maneuvering. after all, the way he promoted meng yao was actually quite dangerous to meng yao: he essentially guaranteed that his men would bear meng yao a grudge and that their disrespect for him would only be compounded by their bitterness at being punished on his behalf. (it’s like, why often getting parents or teachers to intervene ineffectively in bullying can just be an incitement to more bullying -- same concept) meng yao’s reaction during that scene shows that he’s pretty painfully aware of this and is trying to defuse the situation to no avail. nie mingjue gives him a bootstrap speech (rip nie mingjue i love u so much but. sir) and then promotes him, which is pretty much the only saving grace of that entire exchange, for meng yao at least.

lan xichen, on the other hand, understands both that meng yao is the lowest-ranked person in the room and that any direct attempt to chastise the other cultivators in the room will only serve to hurt meng yao in the long run. he knows that if this were brought to nie mingjue’s attention, he would be outraged and not shy about it -- also bad for meng yao. so he uses what he has: his immaculate reputation. by acting contrary to the other cultivators’ behavior, he demonstrates that he finds their actions unacceptable but with the plausible deniability that it wasn’t directed at them, that this is just zewu-jun being his usual generous self. this means that the other cultivators have no one to blame but themselves, nothing to do but question their own actions. there is nowhere to cast off their discomfort. meng yao didn’t do anything. lan xichen didn’t do anything -- he just thanked meng yao and drank his tea, isn’t that what it’s there for? he doesn’t disrupt the peace, he doesn’t attack anyone and put them on the defensive, but he does make his position very clear.

i know this is a really small thing and i’m probably beating it to death, but I really think this shows just how cognizant lan xichen is of politics and emotional cause and effect in such situations. certainly, out of context I think the scene reads kind of cliche, but within the greater narrative of the story and within the arc of these characters specifically, I think it was a really smart scene to include. it also showcases lan xichen’s style of action: that he moves around and with a problematic situation as opposed to moving straight through.

not to be salty on main again, but this is why it’s very frustrating to me when I see people call lan xichen passive when he is anything but. his actions just don’t look like traditional “actions”, especially to an american audience. it’s easy to understand lan wangji and wei wuxian’s style of problem-solving: taking a stand, moving through, staying strong. lan xichen is juggling an inconceivable number of factors in any given situation, weighing his responsibilities in one role against those in another, and then trying to find the path through the thicket that will cause the least harm, both to himself and the thicket. lan wangji and wei wuxian are not particularly good at considering the far-reaching consequences of their actions -- again, not because they are bad people, but because of a combination of personality and upbringing. they’d just hack through the thicket, not thinking about the creatures that live in it. that is not a terrible thing! it isn’t. it’s a different way of approaching a problem, and it has different priorities. that’s okay. there are advantages and disadvantages on both sides, and where you come down is going to depend on your personal values.

okay we’ve spiraled far and away from my original point, but let’s circle back: i was talking about class.

I think it’s undeniable that class, birthright, fate etc. are some of the driving forces of thematic conflict in mdzs, and the way each character interacts with those forces reveals a lot about themselves and also about the larger themes of fate, chance, and what it means to be righteous and good and how that is and isn’t rewarded. a lot of the tragedy of mdzs (the tragedy that isn’t caused by direct aggression on the part of one group or another) stems from the injustices and slights that people suffered due to their lot in life. it isn’t fair. none of it is fair! we sympathize with jin guangyao because we recognize that what he suffered was unconscionable, even if we don’t excuse him. i sympathize A Lot with xue yang as well for similar reasons, though I understand that’s a harder sell. this is a story focused on the mistakes of an entrenched, aging gentry and the effects that those mistakes had on their children, and a lot of it has to do with prejudice based in class and birth status. whether the prejudice was the true reason or whether it was just a convenient excuse, the fact remains that the systems in place rewarded and protected the people in power who used it to cling to that power. mdzs is also a story of how the circumstances of one’s life can offer you impossible choices that you cannot abstain from, and it asks us to be compassionate to the people who made terrible choices in terrible times. it’s about the inherent complexity in all things! that sometimes, there are no good choices, and i don’t know, i’d like to think that people would show me compassion if I had to make the choices some of these characters did. not just wei wuxian, mind you, every single one of them. except jin guangshan because I Do Hate Him sorry. and i guess wen ruohan. i think that’s it.

good. GOD this is clocking in at //checks notes -- just over 5k. 8′D *stuffs some weeds into my mouth like the clown i am*

(ko-fi? :’D *lies down*)

[pepsi-maxwell]

hi!!! i was wondering if you would maybe discuss what wips you're working on (am v curious but no pressure!)

adjflshsjk yeah absolutely aaaaa!

they're pretty much all cmjf save one cody/mjf fic because i will resurrect that ship if it kills me, and one max² fic because max caster deserves more reading material this is a joke if he ever references any of my work i'm moving to greenland

going to put brief summaries of the most plotted out ones in, under a cut to save the dash because it got looooong 😅

so there's the max² semi meta fic i've posted snippets of previously, max caster starts writing the fic he wants to read, but mjf is reading and critiquing them, until caster gets it just right, mjf gives some begrudging praise, somehow identities are revealed and it turns out they've both been reading fanfic about each other to cope with some fucking weird feelings they're having about each other awww bless them!

and then the cody/mjf borderline sugardaddy fic where max really needs to learn to say what he wants instead of bratting and getting annoyed when cody can't read his mind which i have also posted a snippet of and i'm still working on it dammit!! but my brain is having trouble with the angst required augh

and on the cmjf side...whoo boy *wipes brow*

the bodyguard au where cody hires punk to look after his "business partner" for his protection, but it turns out max is really acting out because he wants cody to stop hiding their relationship, until he catches feels for the idiot with the tattoos who sees through his cutesy doting lover act and actually kinda likes the storm rolling beneath the calm exterior

and then the transmasc mjf fic because the fucking firefighter outfit photo makes him look like he had top surgery and i got ideas that Certain People encouraged lmao sadly he does not have a burberry binder in it but just think about that for a moment!

finally the most complete one is the third part of what we are behind closed doors which kills me because i wrote pretty much all of it last night, barring the main sex scene; includes fairly heavy D/s, cockwarming, facefucking, references to dacryphilia, shame kink, daddy kink, aftercare, max being an obnoxious lil shit post-orgasm, all the good stuff!

it's set in some nebulous future period after max returns and wins the championship off punk, they're still fucking, and they've also actually had the discussion about limits and safewords which is something i'm also going to write up at some point because. why not?! maxwell jacob "i don't need a damn safeword" friedman and cm "you are a fucking idiot, pick a word, why do i still want to fuck you" punk <3

snippet below because I'm too excited to post this one

"You really can't help yourself, can you?" He says, stroking his hair this way and that. Messing it up, but Max doesn't care at this point. "Are you that desperate for it?"

He doesn't know if Punk wants an answer for that, but he nods his head anyway, one of the few gestures Punk has allowed him.

"Use your words. Say, 'I'm a desperate slut for daddy's cock.'" Punk's smirking like he's almost expecting him not to, which only serves to engage that dormant part of his brain that doesn't like to back down from a challenge.

So he chases that icy cold feeling of shame in the pit of his stomach, and says exactly what Punk has told him to say. Forces himself to keep looking at Punk while he does, which means he catches that little indulgent smile that makes it a little bit worth it.

[hauntedbythefanficsofmypast]

The Different Group Chats part 1

{Part 1} [Part 2]

Diamonds:

BlueDiamond- Marinette 

BrownDiamond- Mireille

GreenDiamond- Marc 

Cheng Main Family:

MamaOrso- Sabine

TopChef- Wang

Matriarch- Nuba (Their Grandmother)

Heiress- Lian (Marc’s mother)

Tiāncái- Mei (Mireille’s mother)

Adrinette/Girls GC:

PinkBean- Rose

PurpleBean- Juleka

BossFox-Alya 

TrueBeauty-Lila

WhyAmIHere- Alix 

LoveBug- Mylene

A group chat AU I thought of this will involve only the Miraculous Ladybug show, with very minor mentions of other shows. Some backstory information I feel are important. Marinette, Marc, and Mireille are cousins in this through their mothers; Sabine, Lian, and Mei. Marinette is Chinese, Italian, and French, Marc is Chinese and French, and Mireille is Chinese, Japanese, and French. This is not Adrinette, I decided to give Lukanette some love!

                                                   Diamonds

                                                    10:46 am

BlueDiamond: Do you think I could get away with it?

GreenDiamond:????

GreenDiamond: Mar? Get away with what?

BrownDiamond: Depends. Are you doing it by yourself, with us, or are you going to call Bāchan’s right hand?

GreenDiamond: Mir? Wait why would Mar call Fengge? 

                                                  11:07 am

GreenDiamond: Hey! You two respond already!

BrownDiamond: Calm cousin, calm. Mar is contemplating taking care of Lila Rossi, you know the girl that threatened her in the bathroom.

GreenDiamond: Oh.

GreenDiamond: WAIT!!!1!

GreenDiamond: No fair! She can’t call Fengge I called dibs on ruining Rossi!

BrownDiamond: Mar gets the final decision, after all she is the one being targeted.

BlueDiamond: I am not calling Fengge, I don’t want her dead, I just want to ruin her future. Besides Fengge would call Nonna, and I’d rather not take the chance of us being pulled out of school.

BrownDiamond: Very true, but I doubt Bāchan would pull us out. Lila is only a minor threat and she knows we can definitely handle her. If the snake goes too far however, she will step in.

GreenDiamond: Tru…

BrownDiamond: Stop butchering words or else.

GreenDiamond: Common little cuz be traught.

*BrownDiamond took a Screenshot of chat*

BrownDiamond: I am showing my Kachann.

BlueDiamond: She did warn you.

GreenDiamond: D’: NooOo dont message auntie!!!1!!

BrownDiamond: Already sent.

GreenDiamond: You hate me.

                                                  Cheng Main Family

                                                            11:38 am

Tiàncái: First, return to your lessons. Second, Marc the penthouse at 4 exact. After reading those texts I’ve decided you need a two hour lesson.

BrownDiamond: Yes Kachann.

BlueDiamond: Sorry Auntie.

GreenDiamond:Understood Auntie.

TopChef: How bad was it?

Tiàncái: Worse than you fake butchering other languages to mess with others.

MamaOrso- My Marinette was not a part of it correct?

Tiàncái- No just our nephew sister.

Heiress- Why am I not surprised, at least he is only doing it with his cousins.

Matriarch- My Diamonds know that they are not allowed to butcher languages like their Great Uncle in front of others. I would not worry too much, my darlings. Now all of you return to work. I have a meeting to attend.

MamaOrso- Yes Māmā

Tiàncái- Understood, have a good meeting.

Heiress- I will see you later Māmā.

TopChef-Talk to you all later my girls.

                                                  Diamonds

                                                     1:13 pm

BlueDiamond: Juleka and Rose are sitting with me in the back now.

BrownDiamond: Oh?

BlueDiamond: Yes they came up and apologized to me during lunch. They both asked for a chance to earn my trust again.

GreenDiamond: And your decision Mar?

BlueDiamond: I am giving them a second chance, both apologized and explained why they didn’t choose sides. No information about Lila too, she is making big promises. For instance she told Kitty Section she’d introduce them to Jagged Stone.

BrownDiamond:...Isn’t Juleka Jagged’s daughter?

BlueDiamond: Yes.

BrownDiamond: Oh no.

BlueDiamond: What?

GreenDiamond: This is Miss Mendeleiev both of you return to your lessons and put your phones away.

                                                  1:28 pm

BrownDiamond: Nice job Marc, next time control your laughter.

BlueDiamond: Really?

                                                  2:49 pm

BlueDiamond: Mir go out for ice cream? We can go find André.

BrownDiamond: Well I don’t have to be in the studio today and was only planning to hang out with friends. Can we invite some others?

BlueDiamond: Oh definitely! I’ll ask Rose, Juleka, and Luka!

BrownDiamond: I am just going to invite Aurore and Jean.

BlueDiamond: Hoping to get complimentary cones cousin dearest?

BrownDiamond: Shut up I just like his face.

BlueDiamond: Don’t you lie to me. You have attended every single magical show he has done, and even promoted him once on MAC’s Twitter.

BrownDiamond: Shut up, your one to talk Mar. Who do you have a crush on, Model boy or Guitar boy?

                                                  3:10 pm

BrownDiamond: Mar?

BrownDiamond: Did I upset you?

BrownDiamond: Marinette?

BlueDiamond: Sorry

BlueDiamond: No you did not upset me. Lila pointed out I was texting and Bustier started lecturing me on being a good role model.

BrownDiamond: Sorry, my locker in five?

BlueDiamond: Mhm, see you soon.

GreenDiamond: I got my phone back!

GreenDiamond: Unfair! You guys can’t get ice cream while I’m stuck in lessons!

BlueDiamond: [Image.png]

GreenDiamond: Why’d you send me a picture of you and Mir looking around???

BrownDiamond: Trying to find the fucks we give…

GreenDiamond: ༼ ༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽

BlueDiamond: Ew. Stop.

GreenDiamond:༼ ༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽

BlueDiamond: Ugh.

Private Messaging

Nathaniel and Marc

                                                  3:11 pm

LifePartner: Marc can we talk today? It’s about Marinette.

Rainbow: …

Rainbow: I have a two hour lesson starting at four. Meet me on the Pont Des Arts at 6:30.

LifePartner: I’ll be there Rainbow, see you later.

                                            Diamonds

                                               4:20 pm

BrownDiamond: Not.A.Word.

BlueDiamond: Burnt caramel for his eyes, and cotton candy for his unique tricks~ Blackberry for her beautiful hair, and black walnut for her unusual connections.

BrownDiamond: One, perhaps we should be concerned with what André seems to know about us.

BrownDiamond: Two, Blue moon for his hair and eyes, and super madness for his crazy life, Blackberry for her hair and cherry with chips for her secret.

BlueDiamond: Mmm André is a meta I wouldn’t worry his love is ice cream and bringing soulmates together.

BlueDiamond: Luka has confessed to me though, I told him I wasn’t ready.

BrownDiamond: Still stuck on Adrien?

BlueDiamond: No

BlueDiamond: I thought he’d take my side when he said that we were in it together. The moment he didn’t speak up when I was expelled pretty much made that crush, crash.

BlueDiamond: He is sweet but he has been too sheltered, he is trying to treat Lila like she is a tabloid.

BrownDiamond: You are not wrong. So...Luka?

BlueDiamond: Yea, I’m thinking Luka.

                                           Private Messaging

                                           Jagged and Luka

                                                    4:24 pm

Luka: Dad how did you get Penny to fall in love with you?

Jagged: I ask myself that every single day kiddo. Every single day.

Luka: I’m screwed.

Jagged: Marinette?

Luka: Marinette.

Jagged: Penny says to just be yourself! My rockstar Mari is a smart girl and her crush on the Agreste boy has slowly disappeared...yes it would be very rock an roll to have her as a daughter-in-law. That’s it Luka! You have to win Marinette’s heart over!

Luka: You’re not helping Dad.

                                      Private Messaging 

                                       Penny and Luka

                                               4:47 pm

Penny: Stop asking him Luka.

Penny: Just be yourself, Marinette would never want you to change yourself. Give her a little more time and just be there for her.

Luka: Thanks Penny, how did Dad win you over anyway?

Penny: ...I have a thing for loud sometimes idiotic men.

Luka: Awe, I am never telling him that.

Penny: I’m joking, I’m joking one night he rolled over and was just barely awake. He didn’t know I was awake, he whispered that I was the love of his life and that he wished his mom had a chance to meet me.

Luka: Awe. I’m telling Marinette that.

Penny: Oh, definitely would get you brownie points, she loves sweet love stories.

                                                    Adrinette

                                                     6:39 pm

Group name changed from Adrinette to Girls GC

Lila Rossi added by BossFox

BossFox changed Lila Rossi to TrueBeauty

BossFox: Hey girls I decided to make this the drama free girls group chat.

PurpleBean: Drama free???

PinkBean: Why not create a new group chat than Alya? Also if this is the girls group chat where is Marinette?

BunnxXx changed name to WhyAmIHere

BossFox: Like I said drama free girls

TrueBeauty: Awe Alya! You added me to a group chat where I don’t have to worry about upsetting Marinette!

TrueBeauty: That’s so sweet!!

WhyAmIHere: Alya this is our get Mari with Sunshine boy gc.

TrueBeauty: Alya you haven’t told them yet?

BossFox: Don’t worry Lila I just wanted you to be here when I did!

BossFox: Girls we are canceling Adrinette.

LoveBug: What? Why?

BossFox: I was telling Lila about all our attempts and how ‘in love’ with Adrien Marinette is. Well Lila pointed out that everything she is doing are red flags for a stalker!

LoveBug: What?! But Marinette would never!

PinkBean: Are you serious?

WhyAmIHere: Oh boy.

TureBeauty: No listen please, I’m not lying!

TrueBeauty: Alya told me everything she has done! She has his entire schedule, pictures of him all over her wall, one he doesn’t even know exist! She has stolen his phone before and is constantly trying to get alone time with him! Not to mention she has planned out their life with two kids and a hamster!

TureBeauty: She is stalking Adrien and convinced you guys to help her!

LoveBug: Oh my gosh 

LoveBug: I can’t believe 

LoveBuv: All this time Marinette has been

WhyAmIHere: Alright ya-no I’m so done.

WhyAmIHere: First of Marinette HAD a crush on Adrien. One that you blew out of proportion Alya.

BossFox: What?!

BossFox: I did not!

WhyAmIHere: You were constantly trying to force her into telling Adrien when she clearly wasn’t ready, and always dragging us into helping set up ‘dates’

WhyAmIHere: Two Marinette is a fashion designer. Have you seriously never noticed all the pictures are right above when she works on designs? They are a part of her fashion board Alya.

WhyAmIHere: Also the part with the phone, I’m hello? Marinette has always been like that, she does it when she’s half asleep most of the time. But in the end she always returns the person's phone before the end of the day!

WhyAmIHere: Also we have all seen those photos, if Marinette was seriously stalking him don’t you think the pictures would be inappropriate? They are either from magazines or from class outings.

LoveBug: Alix you have to admit it is a little weird that Marinette has gone this far

LoveBug: Lila is a model too and she knows so many famous people. I have no doubt she knows more about stalking than we do.

WhyAmIHere: srs.

TrueBeauty: Alix you have to listen to me! Marinette is sick and she needs help or else she’ll be a danger to Adrien and us!

WhyAmIHere: No. I’m done. Marinette is just a teenager with a CRUSH and you are just blowing it out of proportion.

Alix Kubdel has left Girls GC.

TrueBeauty: Rose Juleka you believe us right?

TrueBeauty: Please Mari really needs help!

PinkBean: No we don’t…

BossFox: WHAT!?

PurpleBean: We don’t believe you. Besides, Marinette barely has a crush on Adrien anymore. I’d ask if you’ve seen her room but she stopped inviting you up Alya.

PinkBean: And she doesn’t like Lila so Lila has never even seen her room.

BossFox: It isn’t like you guys would actually know anything! Just after school today Marinette threatened Lila to stay away from Adrien! And she got physical!

LoveBug: oh gosh! Lila are you okay?

TrueBeauty: Alya! I didn’t want anyone to know!

BossFox: But they need to know Lila especially since they keep siding with her!

PinkBean: Really?

PinkBean: When after school?

TrueBeauty: She attacked me around 4 today!

PurpleBean: oh rlly?

PinkBean: That doesn’t make sense though because Marinette was with us today at four. We left the school together.

TrueBeauty: This is what I was afraid of! Marinette has twisted you two into lying for her! See Alya this is why I didn’t want anyone to know!

BossFox: Don’t worry I’ll handle this girl.

Juleka Couffaine was removed by BossFox.

PinkBean: Alya?! Really?!

Rose Lavillant was removed by BossFox.

BossFox: Alright girls we have to help keep Adrien safe from his Stalker!

LoveBug: I’ll tell Ivan, I’m sure him and the other boys will be more than happy to help!

TrueBeauty: oh I don’t know what I would do without you girls!

                                                   Diamonds

                                                    8:15 pm

BlueDiamond: Alix just showed up at my house with Calendula Pink Surprise.

GreenDiamond: Oh? Tikki must be in love.

BlueDiamond: She is, hasn't left the plant since I placed it in my room. I’d send a picture but she obviously wouldn’t show up.

BrownDiamond: Pray tell cousin dearest why did she gift you with flowers?

GreenDiamond: Mir is having another Pride and Prejudice movie marathon…

BrownDiamond: It is a gift to the world!

BlueDiamond: Yes yes one of the best books out there we know.

BlueDiamond: She apologized for everything, also, she may know I’m Ladybug.

BrownDiamond: Well duh, Calendula? Ladybugs love those flowers.

BlueDiamond: She told me that she honestly just thought it was a little rivalry between Lila and me. That is until Alya made a group chat purposely excluding me.

GreenDiamond: Really?

BlueDiamond: Mhm, she said it would be their ‘drama free’ group chat. Not the beat part though.

BrownDiamond: Go on, I've got my movie paused.

BlueDiamond: Apparently I am stalking Adrien and they need to protect him from me.

GreenDiamond:...

BrownDiamond:...

BrownDiamond: My god Marc I can hear you from my room, breathe! 

BlueDiamond: I thought the penthouse walls were soundproof?

BrownDiamond: They are.

GreenDiamond: cant breathe

BlueDiamond: I’ve done it.

BlueDiamond: I’ve killed our cousin.

BrownDiamond: Sometimes I wished you’d live here with us Mar.

BlueDiamond: I am thinking about it.

BlueDiamond: Mama and Papa have told me before I can, and it’ll be much easier to avoid Alya.

BrownDiamond: [Image.png]

BlueDiamond: oh my gods breathe

BlueDiamond: is that..

BlueDiamond: Is that Nathaniel’s hoodie?

BrownDiamond: he has rolled over and hid his face in his pillow.

BrownDiamond: Should I tickle the information out of him?

BlueDiamond: hmm permission granted

BrownDiamond: [Video]

BlueDiamond: Awe Marc!!

BrownDiamond: I am outraged he has been dating you for so long and never asked our permission!

BlueDiamond: Mireille give Nathaniel a break, besides not many people know that we are cousins

GreenDiamond: Actually he didn’t know until tonight that we are. Also Mar, expect something from him soon, he knew the truth but didn’t know how to apologize to you.

BrownDiamond: So he is the reason you left the penthouse so quick after your lessons!

GreenDiamond: Shut up Mir!

BlueDiamond: Get some sleep you two, I’ll talk over moving to the penthouse with Mama tomorrow.

BrownDiamond: Goodnight Mar

GreenDiamond: Wait really?!

GreenDiamond: Mar!!

GreenDiamond: You torture me so!

BrownDiamond: Go to sleep Marc.

GreenDiamond: Fine I’ll just ambush her tomorrow.

[mischievouswritingblog]

Meta Essay: Medivh The Bisexual Icon

As of the time of this post, there’s going to be an update coming to World of Warcraft where the once all female ghosts in Karazhan will be changed to include male varieties as well.

Full details on the update can be found here: https://www.wowhead.com/news/female-only-ghosts-in-karazhan-updated-to-include-male-versions-324371

This has caused a lot of fun posts and people to take this as an ‘accidental confirmation’ by Blizzard that the character Medivh is bisexual. Pair this along with how some of his portrayal in Hearthstone was made into Warcraft canon, and in my opinion, it’s an excellent update to his character.

It’s no secret that Blizzard’s had a massive lack in LBGTQ+ representation for the longest time. Often when such subject matter did show up it was treated more as a punchline in some quests or was kept conveniently to the sidelines, with nonconsequential, blink and you miss it text, side characters, moments. It’s insulting, to say the least, and is the source of a growing frustration from the LBGTQ+ members of the audience. What’s more, whenever this frustration gets voiced it’s always talked down to. We are told that to ‘keep politics out of gaming’ and that we are too sensitive, when these are the same people that get bent out of shape when even a single thing changes or is called out in their game. It’s bullshit. LBGTQ+ people exist and the act of existing isn’t a political issue.

But of course, with people even making lighthearted jokes or posts of Medivh being a ‘Bisexual Icon’, there’s folks crawling out of the woodwork with reasons from “But the loooooooore!” (as if the lore isn’t constantly changing and being retconned from one expansion to the next) to “Well A-C-T-U-A-L-L-Y, those male guests were just for the female nobles that visited and attended his parties, Medivh was very straight”. To that, I’m going to say: “Nah, Medivh is a bisexual icon, deal with it”.

In my personal opinion, Medivh is an excellent character to explore queerness  with. He’s a character that’s been around since Warcraft 1 and the effects and ties from his story are still felt throughout World of Warcraft in various ways. Medivh is also a character that’s gone through a large amount of evolution and various portrayals. My personal favorite being the One Night in Karazhan take on him because it’s so different from the usual ‘brooding, grand powerful hermit-mage’ that his type of character usually is. Medivh in One Night in Karazhan is instead, vibrant and is a thriving social butterfly that loves to have and treat people to a good time. His reasonings for being this way make a lot more sense when you really think about what Medivh’s situation was.

Now, I have to mention that I do a much deeper dive and deconstruction of Medivh’s circumstances and just how messed up they were in this self indulgent essay/headcanon dump: ‘My Completely Self-indulgent Medivh Essay’. Feel free to give it a read but here is the basic gist for this essay:

Yes, Medivh was the Guardian, one of the most powerful mages to exist at the time. He was also possessed by Sargeras and was the one that created and opened the Dark Portal that brought the Orcs to Azaroth and changed Azeroth forever. But here’s the thing, Medivh had no choice in any of it.

To be the Guardian means you have to put your life on the line for Azeroth’s sake. This is a role that had to be kept to secrecy, people had to make a lot of sacrifices to be the Guardian. You gain phenomenal powers and it is a great honor but none of this was anything that Medivh ever asked for. He was literally born to become the Guardian, there was no other choice for his own future. 

Then you have Sargeras, he had his plans in play long before Medivh was even a thought. A sliver of Sargeras had entered Aegwynn (Med’s mother and the Guardian before him) from a battle between Aegwynn and his avatar. This influence hid within her and made its move when she decided that she wasn’t going to allow the Council of Tirisfal to choose her heir for her title and powers for her. Ignoring Chronicle’s softening of her, she used Medivh’s father, Neilas Aran, the court magician of Stormwind to sire a child. In TLG she let him know she flat out used him and felt nothing for him then came back later and tossed baby Medivh to him for free childcare. What neither of them knew at the time was that Medivh was possessed by Sargeras while he was in the womb. Sargeras would then screw him over even further by causing his powers to lash out when he was fourteen, causing him to accidentally kill his father and fall into a near 10 year coma, and wake up mentally and emotionally fourteen in a twenty-three-year-old’s body. So from the very beginning Medivh was always set up for failure.

So with this summary out of the way, the point of the matter is that Medivh is a character that had little autonomy for most of his life. His career and his fate were chosen for him from the start. Sargeras was in his head messing with him throughout his life, in TLG Medivh even tells Khadgar that he tried to fight it as much as he could. His story is a tragic one but with his reappearance in Legion there’s potentially a ray of hope.

I think there’s a lot of aspects in Medivh’s story that can tie well with the feelings and experiences of queerness. Not so much the being possessed by discount space Satan, but more so the struggle of trying to have autonomy and hanging onto who you are as a person. Being queer myself and looking at it through that lens, I see Medivh being vibrant and throwing parties as an attempt for him to seize what autonomy he could for himself. To exist, to be seen, and to have an identity of his own that had nothing to do with being the Guardian of Tirisfal. I think that it’s also something that separates Medivh from Sargeras. There were likely times where Sargeras may have forced the lines between them to blur as he gradually poisoned Medivh’s thoughts and twisted his soul throughout the years. Medivh likely had to struggle a lot with separating who he truly was from Sargeras. This being inside him, who wasn’t him but would at times take over his body suppressing Medivh’s true self. It’s a horror story where some elements can really hit close to home.

Medivh I believe surrounded himself with like minded, free spirited people like Barnes and the theater troupe (while there’s the joke Medivh’s only seen three plays, I choose to headcanon he’s a theater kid, given how he has a theater to begin with and his own love for theatrics). Whether you picture Medivh as aro, ace, gay, bi, pan, or trans, with the upcoming changes he clearly accepts many kinds of people into his home.

This also has the interesting effect of changing some of the tones for some events in his lore. One example being the titans sending down the Maiden of Virtue to punish Medivh and make him live a more ‘pure’ life. The Titans are Azeroth’s closest thing to a pantheon of gods. They are beings of order, having taken Azeroth in her rawest form and molding her into something they saw fit. Apparently, Medivh’s parties and behavior was seen as something that required ‘correcting’.

On one hand, it’s really easy to read it simply as Medivh being a selfish, spoiled brat. But with looking at it through a queer lens one can put a more positive spin on the situation. The Maiden of Virtue was sent to shame and punish him into conforming into something the Titans believe someone like Medivh should behave. It clearly didn’t work. Looking at this situation, one can read it as Medivh refusing to relinquish his identity because a ‘higher power’ wanted him to. In the real world there are so many that have to hide their orientation and gender thanks to people using religion and belief as a cudgel. So having a character like Medivh as queer, with the power and willfulness to flat out refuse and shut it down is a refreshing power move.

Medivh’s story and the way he is in general has elements that I believe many people of the LBGTQ+ can relate with. He’s a complicated character that has dealt with abuse and being forced into roles without his consent, he made identity for himself and it was stripped away by an oppressor (Sargeras), and, depending on if Blizzard decides he’s actually resurrected/alive instead of being a ghost, is a survivor.

So to me, I love the idea of Medivh being a queer icon in Warcraft. It hasn’t been officially stated by Blizzard at the time this essay was posted but it has started a fun conversation. There are and will be the haters who will scream and tantrum about the LBGTQ+ touching their precious (when convenient) lore with their filthy paws and tarnishing ‘their game’. But in the meantime, I’m going to continue having a blast with the idea and enjoy working the story potential it gives into fanfics, speculations, and essays.

If you enjoyed this essay, I did a few other bits of meta, headcanons, and speculation for fun: My Completely Self-indulgent Medivh Essay

A Bit About Wizards and Sorcerers

Headcanons: Medivh is Alive and Currently Uses ‘The Guardian’s Study’ as his Home

[a-stitch-in-time-and-space]

In relation to an ask I got about Julian Bashir:

this ask I got has ideas about Julian essentially being forced through gender related surgery in connection with his augmentation.

So for starters, I’m not intersex, so I won’t try to go into details, just noting that this obviously brings to mind bullshit that intersex people have to go through and so that thinking will be laced through the text!

under the cut for length, no details about igm, but obviously if the idea is distressing don’t read - kind of meta that dovetails into a sort-of fic:

I wonder if the show had decided to do something like that, what would have inspired it/would they have realised that this is very much not a scifi concept even by a lot of their “this is the loosest of allegories you could allegory” standards.

The show does have a habit of doing things that makes me go “hey, wait, wha- was that… with awareness?” Ex. Soren in TNG self-identifying as a woman, everything Trill-related in the 90s, or even Quark getting easy reassignment surgery (disclaimer: always am torn on being like “yay, I guess no waiting lists for trans people ever again + the argument of “regret” clearly can’t exist any more + this a world where people… accept???” and… what it actually is. Which is a “women vs men” sexist as hell joke.)

I spoke about gender there, not because I’m equating, just because it’s stuff related to myself as an enby that I clung to. But also because if surgery isn’t a big-deal in the future then perhaps gender isn’t either? Which obviously isn’t true, because Star Trek mirrors the reality of the world it’s actually made in and makes abundantly clear that things’re still inherently gendered (moreso in some places than others).

So we ask why they might want to do something like this:

1. There are still biases against having a girl vs having a boy on an institutional level around the federation

2. They personally just can’t stop messing with Julian, maybe they had their heart set on “a boy” in the same way they wanted him to be “smarter” and “taller” etc. And they just suck (they do)

3. Julian is intersex and this is not an allegory at all even a little bit

Even if it was an allegory, it’d still be a pretty direct one, but just wanted to let you know how my brain is considering all of this, because I’ve never thought about it like that before, as my hcs about Julian were always that he chose any of the surgery he got in relation to his gender as a reclamation of his body (which he might still have made decisions about when he could, but for now gonna try and not tangent too much)

so let’s assume that you can’t just get a any kind of reassignment surgery and it’s just that ds9 is so far on the edge of the federation that general checks and balances in relation to “hey lets turn our friendly neighbourhood Ferengi into a woman” don’t exist out there like they do closer to earth.

And Julian personally is really fucking good at this surgery – why? Maybe because he’s made it part of his goal to know as much as possible about it, since it was done to him without his consent as a child.

Maybe what they did was “sort out” more obvious markers – anything on the outside of his body basically, and they left the womb, because nobody would notice that, which would make Julian saying he had one a slip-up up in that episode with Kira getting the O’Briens baby.

At the time people don’t know he’s an augment, so he probably wouldn’t be wanting to run around and have anyone ask him questions about surgeries that aren’t on his record – luckily nobody does.

In some ways this violation is the one he’s the most traumatised about to the extent that he can’t even speak about it to his parents, barring the one piece of selfhood he’s defiantly demanded: “I’m Julian, goddamit!”

They know why – of course they know. But like so much else they don’t talk about, they somehow seem to assume that not speaking makes it forgivable, invisible, erasable. It’s not.

After he’s been outed, once he has started interacting with the other augments, there’s a lot that he holds back – he’s not like them after all, not really. And to admit kinship is to open doors he’s been so afraid of opening for so long, that fear might as well be his truest expression of self.

It’s not until after the Dominion War, after deaths, imprisonment, torture, being outed and seeing others like him ostracised, mental health issues and a failed relationship with Ezri – not until after all that does he reach out to Sarina again, ask for forgiveness for trying to make her – and by extension himself – “normal.”

It’s not until then he can slowly begin to unpack everything about himself that he’s kept back, for fear it’d prove others right - - how he doesn’t feel entirely like a real person, just a collection of parts that were forced upon him, how he’s scared about what being proud of any bit of himself might be taken as, how he let down Sarina and the others - - and what his parents “threw in” to sweeten the deal.

And Sarina admits to him: she has the same fears, the same self-doubt, the same sadness. She asks Julian about preferred pronouns, about how he thinks of himself, about whether there’s anything he would want to do to own himself more…

For now, just the talking is good. And maybe they can meet up with the others again soon, this time without shame. 

[qrovidcore]

hey what’s up tumblr i’ve now seen hbo’s watchmen all the way through Three Fucking Times and i very well may go for a fourth if given an excuse whoops and apparently i can’t stop thinking about Laurie’s joke in She Was Killed By Space Junk, no i’m not the first person to analyze this and i’m sure i won’t be the last but i sure do have some Thoughts^TM,  so here’s some meta let’s go.

major spoilers ahead for the entire series:

Hey, it’s me again. I’ve got a joke. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. There’s this guy, he’s a bricklayer. He’s really good at it. He’s a real master of his craft. Because he’s precise. Every brick has its place. Anyway this guy has a daughter and he’s gonna teach her to be a bricklayer because after all, all a man has is his legacy. So dad decides to build a barbecue in the backyard. He does the math. He figures out exactly what he needs and he shows the daughter how to do everything. Step by step. And when he finishes, it’s a beauty. It’s a perfect barbecue. Just the way he drew it in blueprints. Only one problem. There’s a brick left over. One single brick. The guy freaks out. He must have done something wrong. He’s gonna have to start all over again. So he picks up his sledgehammer to knock the thing to pieces and his daughter suddenly says ‘daddy wait! I have an idea.’ She picks up the orphan brick and throws it up into the air as high as she can. And then…shit. Messed it up.

Okay forget that joke. Can I tell you another one?

As I said, I’m not the first to break down that Laurie is referring to specific people who have an influence on the story, there’s plenty of meta posts online that’ll say the same thing. I just think this is a Really Clever way to introduce us to her, to the major players in this story, and to the events from the comic that are going to end up being referenced. Anyhow, the bricklayer here is The Comedian. Laurie’s father. I’ll get back to this and how it connects later, but given that one of Watchmen’s major themes is the concept of legacy - who carries it and how, and what happens when that legacy is painful - this is a neat little hook into that idea. Laurie’s dad’s legacy. What she’s done with it, what she’s going to do with it, how she feels about it. Again, coming back to that.

Okay. Forget the brick. New joke. Three heroes die and they all show up at the pearly gates. God’s there and he’s going to decide what their eternal fate shall be: heaven or hell. Our first hero is dressed up like a big owl. God says to him “I gifted you the ability to make fantastic inventions. What did you do with this amazing talent?” Owl guy says “I made this really awesome flying ship and lots of cool outfits and weapons so I could bring peace to the city.” God asks, “So how many people did you kill?” Owl guy seems offended. He says “Zero. I didn’t take a single life.” God frowns. “Sorry owl guy, your heart’s in the right place but you’re just too soft.” God snaps his fingers and the hero goes to hell.

I'm not super into the comic so it took me a while to get that she's referencing Nite Owl. I think this is strange since he doesn't appear in the show himself, whereas everyone else she talks about does, but I suppose it gives a more rounded-out view of the different approaches to heroism, and what exactly constitutes it, and also ties in another one of the original Minutemen. They did cut this over her arrest of Mr. Shadow in the bank, which makes me wonder about his role and why he appeared, and I still find it strange that this part of the joke wasn't about someone who had more of a presence in the show. (Though that being said, DC making fun of Batman, their own big-ticket character? 10/10 thank you for this).

Where was I? The pearly gates await our next hero in line for Almighty judgment. Our hero number two is confident he can game this out because that’s his God-given talent: smarts. Some might even say he’s the smartest man in the world. “So what did you do with that big brain I gave you?” asks God. “As a matter of fact, I saved humanity, ”says Smarty Pants. “Well how’d you do that,” asks God.” “Well I dropped a giant alien squid on New York and everybody was so afraid of it they stopped being afraid of each other.” “OK,” says God. “How many people did you kill?” Smarty Pants smiles. “Three million, give or take. But you can’t make an omelet without breaking a couple of eggs. “Christ,” God says. “You’re a fucking monster.”  “Am not,” says Smarty Pants. God snaps his fingers and our hero goes to hell.

GOD YES PLEASE DRAG OZYMANDIAS. GET THIS FUCKER’S ASS. Though the line that’s sticking out to me here is “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a couple of eggs.” Watchmen’s got an egg motif - and that’s an entire post on its own - and wow this is a place to drop it. I find it interesting that it’s given to Adrien here. Especially since it comes back later, when Will tells Angela that that’s what Jon said in justification of giving his life to stop the 7th K/Cyclops and Trieu. Eggs are used for a lot of things, but this line ties the motif solidly to a value of life here - how Adrien is the way he is because he refuses to value other peoples’, and maybe how Jon is the way he is because, when you can see the future laid out before you and live knowing how you’re going to die, how do you learn to value your own?

Okay. We’re down to the nitty gritty now. One hero left. God cracks his knuckles ready to administer the final reckoning. Now Hero Number 3 is pretty much a god himself. So for the sake of telling them apart, he’s blue and he likes to stroll around with his dick hanging out. He can teleport, he can see into the future, he blows shit up. He’s got actual superpowers. Regular God asks Blue God what have you done with these gifts?” Blue God says “I fell in love with a woman, I walked across the sun, and then I fell in love with another woman. I won the Vietnam War. But mostly I just stopped giving a shit about humanity.” God sighs. “Do I even need to ask how many people you’ve killed?” Blue guy shrugs. “A live body and a dead body have the same number of particles so it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter how I answer your question because I know you’re sending me to hell.” “How do you know that?” asks God. Blue God sounds very sad when he softly says “Because I’m already there.” And so, a mere piston in the inevitable of time and space God does what he did and will do. He snaps his fingers and the hero goes to hell.

And now, we’ve got Jon. Dr. Manhattan. It's a neat moment of insight into his actions, motives, and how those are perceived by others (namely Laurie), and it's a nice thread of introduction to his previous actions to drop for audiences who haven't read the comics (actually, I can make this point about Adrien’s part of the joke too). Especially because most of what we get of Jon in-show is his relationship with Angela, his entire character arc really revolves around her and we don't see him portrayed as the contentious, unfeeling figure the world sees him as. So this sort of contrast between him as a figure and him as a person is very telling, doubly so coming from someone who it's clear knew him. And I really appreciate that there’s just as much stiffness as there is warmth to the Jon we the audience see - he’s kind, he’s loving, but he’s also very matter-of-fact and deterministic, and that bit of characterization really spans the gap between these two versions of him.

And so it’s been a long day at the pearly gates. All the heroes have gone to hell. His work done, God’s packing up to go home and then he notices someone waiting. But it’s not a hero, it’s just a woman. “Where did you come from?” asks God. “Oh I was just standing behind those other guys the whole time, you just didn’t see me.” “Did I give you a talent,” God asks. “No, none to speak of,” says the woman.  God gives her a good long look. “I’m so sorry. I’m embarrassed. Seriously, this almost never happens but I don’t know who you are.” And the woman looks at God and she quietly says “I’m the little girl who threw the brick in the air.” And a sound from above, something falling: the brick. God looks up but it’s too late. He never saw it coming. It hits him so hard, his brains shoot out his nose. Game over. He’s dead. And where does God go when he dies? He goes to hell. 

Into some Thoughts^TM that I haven’t seen anyone theorize yet(?): I think God is meant to be Lady Trieu, and even if Laurie wouldn’t know this yet that’s some brilliant fucking foreshadowing. It's not as exact, but enough parallels are there that I think they're purposeful. It makes Trieu out as the ultimate judge of everyone - and in a way, she is. She sees herself as the most deserving of power of everyone, and it's her who kills Dr. Manhattan - sends him to hell, you could say, and he knows she's going to do it. It also hints at how she's going to die too, crushed by her machine falling from the sky like the brick, because she didn't expect anyone would be capable of stopping her. And where does God go when he dies? He goes to hell. Trieu isn't ultimately above the others, and she's subject to their justice as they are to hers. 

Fitting too that Laurie is involved with the plan to stop Trieu, since, as I said I’d come back to, the girl who threw the brick is Laurie herself. Her depiction of herself in this way is representative, perhaps, of Laure's own feelings on vigilantism and what justice is, and that she's the force that's going to bring down these overblown personalities and their many incorrect uses of their abilities. Given this, it's interesting to think how the "failed" joke at the beginning connects, given that Laurie's dad is the bricklayer, and he's definitely... not a good person, or at least not in this continuity. But I wonder if it's indicative of what Laurie mentions about her parents training her up to do vigilante stuff (especially since she’s based in part(?) on a member of the Minutemen from the comic), and how she feels about her father and his work. If the brick is symbolic of his work as a vigilante, is Laurie throwing the brick in the air, and ultimately taking down the threat at the top, meant to indicate how she sees herself using what she learned from him, or - maybe and - a disrespect for his work based on her justified hatred of him?

Roll on snare drum. Curtains. Good joke. 

[mrsmess]

Faves and fails of SPN (season 15, finally):

Favorite episodes (in chronological order):

15:4 Atomic Monsters - Demon!Sam flashbacks! Dean in a beard! Some old fashioned banter! Meatman! Beaverdale! Love how Sam starts arguing w the parents in the parking lot - Me too, Sam, me too. Loving the self-aware monster. I know Becky is problematique™, but I dig her, so, all kinds of fuck Chuck. He must die, and when he does this is the episode I’ll think about.

15:6 Golden Time - Badass protection spells. Dean in a robe and a hot dog pyjamas. Cas going by Clarence. Jogging Sam. Eileen! God I ship her and Sam, and I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that I don’t ship him w anyone. Liking this ep a lot, every little side plot. Nice. And Eileen is back and I know it won’t last but like, that was awesome.

15:10 The Heroes’ Journey - Pretty neat intro. Monster on monster violence to the sound of Clair the Lune. Oh, and excellent casting of Garth’s kids. Regular people trouble... Awesome! Brilliant! This is the kind of meta storylines this show should deal in, exclusively. Oh my Garth! Explosives! Why isn’t every episode like this?

15:11 The Gamblers - Oh, is this another lucky coin episode? In that case yes please! More inconsequential bullshit kindly! Loving Sam staying in touch w Eileen. Hey guys, remember when you did the gambling thing w your years? And the rabbit’s foot? Good times. Will this be an equally good time? I hope so. A god! Excellent. ”Lady, I’m Tolstoy.” Yeah ya are, and i’m dead. The guys and Fortuna bashing god. And I'm equally delighted and distraught over the lore that god created man, man imagined gods and god decided to create the other gods to play into man’s ideas, or as a distraction.

15:13 Destiny’s Child - Omg the intro! Savage garden! I’m dead. Jack w the sandwich, why is that so funny? Cas is a gem this episode! ”’Sexually intimate’?” Lol. That’s what you get for trying to speak plainly, Cas! Hunter Corp. I’m dead, again. Keep the different Deans and Sams coming! I’m digging this! Why would they send ‘em to Rio? They could be your buffy-bots!

15:14 Last Holiday - Weird people popping up in the hq is awesome. And Dean’s immediate instinct to yell for Sam reminds me of me calling mr mess for everything! ”Shouldnt you be in the woods? Nymfing?” Monster radar? Oh, oh this is excellent. So mrs Butters is capable of murder when home and family are threatened, good for her. They better not kill her. I can accept them returning her to the wild. Yes! Did I call it or did I call it? Good Supernatural, good boy! And Dean making a cake for Jack! My heart.

Fail episodes (in chronological order):

15:2 Raising Hell - Rowena! Instant win. Ketch. Instant lose. Ketch undressing Rowena with his eyes = rating plummeting. Jeez. A bit dangerous even joking about the GoT finale, don’t you think? Rowena and Ketch full on flirting... this is hell, I'm being punished.

15:3 The Rupture - Don’t call him god! His name is Sucky-Chucky. The shock of Cas! “You’ve been playing us the whole time!” This is how it works Cas, where have you been? They're always solving problems like Jason Mendoza. In-Dean-angry-voice: “Anytime I had a problem and I threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I had a different problem.” Rowena! And Sam! No!

15:5 Proverbs 17:3 - Listen, spn, it’s your last season and if you like just wanna stop writing and casting women completely rn i won't stop you or hold it against you (also why are these ladies identical?). We’ve had a terrible run but lets just let bygones be bygones.

15:8 Our father, who aren’t in heaven - Gosh, having Eileen in the show is painful, I’m just constantly expecting a piano to fall on her head. *Ugh* Sucky-yucky-Chucky. But hey, at least everybody else looks better alongside him. Case and point: I never rly cared that much for Donatello, but it’s great to see him, and Michael’s back, sure is nice to see him too.

15:9 The trap - Ugh. Main plot shit and Sucky-yucky-fucking-Chucky. Fail. Although the flashforward to jan 6th 2021 was a hoot (but probably not meant like one, huh?) Dean’s monologue in purgatory though... gosh. This show would be nothing w/o Jensen Ackles. Omg the kiss! Nice. However, the show at this point has lost the ability to offer any sort of pleasure. Because like Sam, we know which way this will go. They used to have some hedonism working for the characters but now they don’t even have that.

15:20 Carry on - You know what? I’m not gonna make this post longer than it already is talking about the last episode of Supernatural, that has been done better by people w real grievances w the show. The kindest thing you can say about the finale is that it just as well could’ve been jammed into a few extra minutes added to the previous episode.

Mediocre mentions:

Drag me away (from you) - what is this ugly cell interface? The opposite of product placement. Yay! Retro episode! And they got the same actor to play Dean, neato! Dean admitting he had a hard time handling hunting, that always gets me. Woah! That scream effect without reverb was kinda startling. And the camera zooming in on the little porcelain clown even though Sam is nowhere n- oh shit. This was an interesting episode

Inherit the earth - Goooood I hate Chucky. Barefoot Sam is okay though. Digging this soundtrack too. Very un-Supernatural. Nice to meet ya Betty, but I wouldn’t pull up a chair if I were you. Always a fan of the shiteating grin. Jack, stripping god of his power, that’s so hot. And again: kudos to the soundtrack! The Youngbloods and then Jackson freakin’ Browne! And you know, it’s clichéd and kinda vacant, but also kinda nice. I’m cool with the story ending like this. Why did they have to do another one? Supernatural has never known when to quit, and this is the very real backside of this.

Honorable mentions:

I don’t know who this Ardat chick is but killing Ketch puts her instantly in my win column.

Winchester-dumb, new household term.

”Feels like were taking a big, probably stupid risk. Feels good.” That made me feel good too.

I’m vastly enjoying this dark-art hippie couple in Unity and Jack’s interaction w them.

Cas launching straight into his dramatic I-will-not-let-you-end-your-own-life-speech when Sam casually mentions he’d like to talk to death in Unity, that angel has seen some things, and he has learned.

Those are some pretty pretty death effects on Jack in Despair/The Truth.

Obviously Misha Collins

Things that makes you go hmm:

Which of the clowns is this supposed to be in Back and to the Future? Because the one from season 2 was a monster, right? So he would’ve gone to purgatory. You know what? I’m not an expert. I try to not pay too much attention ’cause it makes me funny in the head. But just, y’know, a general objection.

Here’s my deal w death as a looming threat in this show: it holds no weight. And even if it did it has been painted as the ultimate relief, unless you go to hell, these characters know for a fact that there’s a potentially blissful afterlife, so their attitude towards death should be, what? More pragmatic, I think. And it’s partly why Ackles is wasted on this show; That man can deliver a death monologue like it’s nobody’s business, too bad all those words have been rendered meaningless after 15 seasons of this shit!

Summing up:

So, I did not go into or leave this season happy, I knew how it would end and I was sad for everyone the show screwed over (more than it already had). Which really meant that I always had to force myself to watch another episode, knowing what was coming. But I had to see it through. I did, so I’ll give myself a pat on the back and get to work on my own personal selection of episodes that will henceforth represent spn to me. A selection I’ll enjoy all the way through. All in all I think the most frustrating thing about the show is how it insists on taking itself so freakin’ seriously. It has always done horror *and* humor best and this whole heaven and hell aspect has never sat right w me, and in any case they should’ve leaned more on “supernatural” narrative tropes (if you will) getting out of their plot problems, gambled some more and thought a bit more outside genre conventions *especially* in their main arcs, they opened up so many opportunities that they never even used. They could’ve been more like Buffy, or Doctor Who. That said, I’ll always get that spn-itch, and when I do, I’ll be happy to have seen all the episodes so I’ll know which ones to avoid.

[lvnce-mcclain]

Lmao I’m too weak willed to not get pulled further into this AU. Basically at this point all this means is that leading up to Eddie Begins, Buck and Eddie have primed themselves for the Big Transition in their relationship. So instead of the fight club arc, Eddie gets a growth arc not rooted in violence. He has Buck to help him through some of rougher emotions that comes along with unpacking all his trauma, but it helps that they can bond over similar nights out stationed. It helps Buck, too, to process through some of the things he’s been too ashamed to unpack, because he’s always thought of being kicked out of the force as this great failure so it means something too deep for Buck when Eddie tells him the army just taught Buck what kind of person he was destined to be; how he wouldn’t have learned this intrinsic need to be actively saving people if he didn’t “fail” at what the army asked of him. That everything has led him into finding what he’s meant to do, and not to question the road he had to take to get there because every step is already behind him.

How it’s a lesson Eddie learns for himself, while he’s learning to let himself be happier while in the moment. That he comes to accept his marriage to Shannon wasn’t a failure because it gave them Chris and the decade or so between them gave them the ability to work as a team when needed to co-parent their son. It wasn’t a failure, because Eddie learns everything a husband isn’t so he feels comfortable entering a relationship with Buck, knowing full well there’s hope for a happy future in the end since Eddie’s more sure of his ability to be a good partner now.

So imagine these two working so hard to get to a point where they can safely and responsibly move forward with their relationship. Imagine how heated the moments would start getting, the closer they realize they are to taking That Step. Imagine the satisfaction for character growth when we see the lessons Buck learned with Abby actually stick, and what a good throwback it would be to s1 when Buck had tried so hard not to be sexual with Abby so as not to mess things up but in the end couldn’t help but start a relationship—and look at him now, and imagine that sweet gratification from Buck jumping into waiting without hesitation when it comes to Eddie. Knowing without a doubt that even the chance to start something with his best friend would be the best decision of his life, and he’d wait forever if he had to. (But he’s really hoping forever doesn’t last much longer, tbh.)

And then imagine Eddie Begins happens. And tbh, Buck wouldn’t act much differently lbr. Boy acted like his entire world was ripped from him when Eddie disappeared, so. I really don’t think that could get much better reaction wise. But man oh man the aftermath would be so much sweeter.

Just imagine the absolute knee-shattering relief Buck would feel at seeing Eddie again—haggard and worn but alive—and him and Christopher spending the night at Eddie’s bedside since the doctors insist on overnight monitoring. Imagine how Eddie doesn’t even fight Chris this time when he insists on staying with his Buck and his daddy, and Shannon doesn’t even say anything about it when she drops off a late late dinner for them before visitor hours close. Honestly, she almost looked like she was halfway considering asking to stay too, but Eddie is grateful she only looked at the three of them with a watery smile that was way too accepting to be anything other than defeat, and bowed out.

Imagine how full Eddie’s chest would be as he watches Buck hold a sleeping Christopher in the most awkward position Eddie knows can’t be comfortable while they’re both shoved into the crappy hospital recliner instead of the cot. Chris is still facing Eddie—unwilling to take his eyes off his dad the entire time he was fighting sleep—and Buck is gently rocking the chair with one foot propped against the edge of Eddie’s bed. Eddie is fairly certain Buck hasn’t realized Chris is passed out yet, because he’s just still humming some off tune pop song that was on the radio on the way to the station at the start of their shift this morning, one hand sifting through the soft curls at the crown of Chris’ head and the other idly flipping channels on the silent tv in the corner of the room.

Eddie realizes there’s no doubt about how much he loves the man next to him as he watches Buck’s—large, strong, gentle—hands brush down Chris’ hair to his his back, nothing but the picture of love and adoration as he sits next to Eddie at two in the morning in the hospital after Eddie nearly died. Eddie realizes this cramped room still feels like home, because Buck is with him and Chris is safe between them. Eddie realizes that there is no way he can make it without having Buck beside him in life the way he is now, for the rest of his life.

Eddie realizes it doesn’t matter that they haven’t figured out the intimate bits of their relationship; he’s had enough stirred within him the countless times he’s caught himself staring at Buck doing something stupidly endearing to know they’ll definitely figure it out with enough practice. And the practice is something Eddie is really, really looking forward to.

Eddie realizes—in between Buck sighing softly and giving up on the TV, switching the power off and changing tune on his humming, making it lower and harder for Eddie to hear as he scoops his arm under Chris and readjusts so his head is better supported—that Buck already knows how to integrate into Eddie and Christopher’s lives as a stepfather, because he’s already excelled at being such a positive adult influence in Christopher’s life that most of Chris’ teachers already assume Buck and Eddie’s relationship status.

Hell, they even had to sit over the kitchen table with receipts and job records and shit this year when tax season rolled around, because they had so many intertwining finances ever since Buck moved in it was just easier for them to do them together to make sure nothing got left out.

Eddie just realizes he’s always had this picture-perfect image of a family in his head and he’s built something so much better, and they’re crammed into a crappy recliner beside him and there’s nowhere else he’d rather be right now.

So in between one breath and the next, Eddie has asked, “Marry me?” like the words are light as air.

Air which chokes Buck, who freezes and has to check to make sure he hasn’t woken up the sleeping nine year old in his arms. He meets Eddie’s gaze with so much burning heat Eddie wishes there was a way for them to get a jumpstart on that practice. “You’re serious?”

“Would never joke about it, not with you,” Eddie tells him evenly, catching Buck’s eyes and refusing to let them go.

“Then yes. Yes, of course,” Buck grins, and it’s a blinding thing but Eddie just lets himself bask in it.

Anyway yeah that would have been cool for s3. Haven’t put much thought on how it would affect 3x16 and 3x17 but I’m sure there’s more you could explore still having Abby come back.

Either way anyway who has stuck along this weird not-fic ride with me thanks! My inbox is always open if anyone wants to chat meta shit like this with me.

[gyromitra-esculenta]

Even If the Waters Rise 3/5 (*cough*)

Shadowrun inspired Mermay part 3 out of *now* 5 - it’s a monster. In this edition: Drama, drama, and once again, relationship drama.

Also, warnings for the whole planned thing: blood, gore, and violence; cannibalism (human on metahuman); questionable jokes and questionable totem choices; ambiguous relationships; referenced limb loss/cybernetics/etc; mating cycles.

*

Give or take a few days, Jesse turns up three weeks later, lacking fangs or a sun allergy, albeit with a certain pallor to his skin and aversion to the light, but that's easily explainable by the obvious hangover he's sporting, the kind that comes with a days-long drinking binge.

"Broke up already?" Jack pours himself a drink and then slides Jesse the bottle with about half of its contents remaining. He obviously needs it more than Jack.

"Don't want to talk 'bout it."

"Good. Because I'm not interested."

He ends up with all the sordid details, anyway.

It takes over two hours for Jesse to explain that his perpetual stalker vampire ex dumped him two nights past the club incident due to him supposedly smelling like a wet dog that also found and rolled in some prime ripe carrion. Jack's not going to comment on that. To him, Jesse reeks of his cigars first and foremost, and maybe under this odor hides a note of wet canine fur, mangy and full of dust - reminiscent of petrichor but more acidic and scratching the throat if inhaled too deeply or closely. Now, it's also alcohol sweat. But those two hours are enough for Jesse to get himself back into the drunken stupor.

Jack relocates him to the couch and orders take out - settling for some suspicious pizza as the safer option out of the available, even if he has trouble deciphering the ingredients. Someone out there probably knows what exactly 'sea chicken baby' is.

To his morbid astonishment, the 'Chicken of the Sea' turns out to be a sea cucumber, bland as fuck if not for the cheese and the sauce - and he's comfortably sure it would taste better raw than baked. He eats two slices and leaves the rest out on the counter for Jesse - and the state Jesse's in, he would probably be happy with a trashcan left out in some alleyway to pick through.

By the looks of him, that's a fair assumption to make, and not at all mean or undeserved.

But the question of how Jesse tracked him down remains. Their hidey-holes over the whole coastal area number in closer to a hundred than a fifty, so it's either an incredible draw of the luck (including the dang spirit dog) or someone had pointed him in Jack's direction. He brings it up during the check-in with Sombra, sure to vent his general disposition at both Jesse's intrusion, and the required daily contact.

"I think some responsibility would do you good," she brushes him off, "so take care of the puppy instead of moping by yourself for days."

"Maybe, just maybe, I do have a reason to mope," Jack snaps at her, "ever thought about that one?"

Sombra sighs.

"I don't know what had happened between you and Gabe, but..."

"Oh, you could, just load it up."

He immediately regrets going off on her, it's not her fault. Only it is her fault, in an illogical and convoluted way - because right now, he needs someone to blame and that someone will not be him.

"I'd never do that unless you want to show me."

Fuck this shit. He's tired and emotionally drained - he didn't even think it was possible.

"Listen, Jack," Sombra continues after he fails to answer her, "you have no idea what ice I had to get through just to send him a message, and the moment he got it, he just dropped everything and walked out of the meeting."

"Yeah, his asset was malfunctioning."

"Whatever happened, you're taking it hard, and you need something to occupy your time because sitting around is doing you no favors to your state of mind."

"Then find me something to do that doesn't include babysitting the human disaster all broken up over my couch."

"The fleet." Sombra mulls something over and Jack, elbows leaning on the windowsill as he finishes his drink, looks over the almost empty street below. "I'm running into walls and I'll need help with some more traditional intel gathering."

"You need hired muscle."

"The gist of it, yes, I need someone to beat some people up so they cough their contacts up, but I'm still pursuing some other venues right now."

"Tell me when you actually have people to rough up, the downtime's killing me, and this place's a total shithole."

"I know. I'll have tickets for you and the puppy tomorrow, and I need you to keep him on a leash because you're going to Yakuza-land for the foreseeable future." He can feel her smile trying to be reassuring pressed against his thoughts. "And you have a meeting scheduled."

"Yeah, about that, one, the only thing I know is 'shakuhachi shite' and 'arigato'," Sombra laughs muttering 'oh god', "and two, he can send them again through the proxy."

"Listen, you don't really want that. And that wasn't even 'fuck off'. That was dirty talk, Jack."

"Figures. I'm..." Jack sighs, massaging his temples. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. Earlier, I mean."

"I know."

"I'm just, I don't know, angry? Not with you, you did what you had to, but... It's too much, all of it, and I'm sorry."

"I know. You'll work it out. It's okay."

"Fuck. Thanks, I guess. I'm not thanking for dropping the mongrel on my unsuspecting lap, though."

"You're welcome." She signs off and Jack pulls the plug out.

Even the mere prospect of meeting up with Gabriel after the incident gives him what he can describe only as anxiety. At least, that's what Jack decides to peg it as, something jumbled and all tied up in knots, and self-hating, and making him feel useless.

Nibbling on the third slice of the pizza and watching the sun go down, he knows what it really is, but refuses to give it the proper name. Calling it anything else lets him pretend it's nothing important and go about his life like nothing's different, even if it is - threatening to topple over and crush him under.

When Jesse starts moving, Jack forces him under the shower and his clothes into a washing machine. The thing is done with its load before Jesse is, and he dumps the debatably cleaner garments on the couch - the coyote is looking at him with an expression on its snout that's far too intelligent for his liking, half-mocking, and half-challenging. Jack turns the serape the other way. The coyote, apparently, takes a short hike all around the fabric to end up facing him again, and he could probably get into a trial of persistence with it but has a sneaking suspicion he would lose.

Fuck it. It can stare at him through the back of the couch as he undresses.

Jesse, predictably, ambles out to the shower and straight to the counter to assault the leftover pizza with the zeal of a person starving for days.

"Switch your SIN," Jack instructs him after he catches Jesse's attention with a tactical application of a ballistic shoe.

"What? Why?" Jesse mutters between the mouthfuls.

"We're flying to Japan tomorrow, would be best not to have Yakuza waiting on the ground for you when we get off."

"Why the fuck JIS?"

"Yakuza's probably involved with the fleet Som's tracking."

"They are. Fucking racists."

"You know that?"

"If anything has to do with harm to metas in the region, that's a safe bet it's them." Jesse wipes the oil from his mouth with the back of his hand, and the hand on his stomach. Of-fucking-course. "Say, we gonna be anywhere close to Hanamura?"

Jack sits on the bed, taking off his pants.

"Nowhere close. Everyone knows you there, and you're too recognizable." He stares at Jesse with contempt. "You just broke up with your main ex, you're not getting into another mess with another ex of yours. Don't make me tie you down."

"Nah, that about other business." Jesse stretches and walks around the counter in all his naked glory, stopping when Jack points with definite distaste on his face to the couch.

"You're still wet, the bed's mine, and the dog was giving me attitude."

"Whatever you say, pardner."

Jack cannot blame the sleepless night on Jesse, not directly - he doesn't snore, but maybe his presence has something to do with it. Regardless, his ensuing horrid morning disposition makes Jack snap at Jesse more than once, which Jesse completely ignores, or is simply oblivious to.

After he sends Jesse out with the trash and to wait for the car, Jack gives the flat the last once-over, making sure nothing personal is left lying around - unlikely they'll ever use the safehouse again, but good practice is good practice, and it's best not to tempt the fate.

The trip to the airport is relatively short and eventless, he only has to remind Jesse to switch his SIN once before they board. Jack pushes his bag into the overhead compartment and shuts it with a bang, taking his time before he sits and buckles into the seat.

The moment the plane rolls down the tarmac before takeoff he has to quash down his instincts screaming at him to get up and run. The lurch of wheels losing the contact with the ground below has Jack hunched and holding his head between his hands. Twitching at every suspect sound and tremor of the hull, he has nothing to distract himself with on the flight as his mind runs circles around images of a fiery inferno.

"Dude, have you tried taking something for it?" Jesse tries to start a conversation.

Jack shoots him down with a muttered 'fuck off' before returning to fighting to keep his stomach where it usually is and not in the vicinity of his throat where it battles for space with his now frantic heart. Two hours stretch into an imperceptible eternity of pure torture. Jesse waits for him to regain control of his shaking hands when the plane lands. They disembark among the last of the passengers.

The airport is a reconstructed dream of a crazy architect who, faced with a substantial lack of land, built it floating on water. Jack navigates them through the terminals to the water tram while keeping one eye out for anyone trying to latch onto their trail, hoping they look both intimidating and luckless enough to not attract the attention of any lookouts. It's not his first time in JIS, and, ironically, their best bet is using public transport. Some three years ago, the situation would be different, with the welcoming committee already waiting to bus him to his destination. Now, those bridges were burnt, and the goodwill was gone.

"What's the first rule?"

Jesse scoffs, sprawled on the seat, taking up two spaces realistically, legs kicked up to rest on the back of the seats in front of him to the distaste of the attendant.

"Not gonna risk Yakuza ink, even I'm not that stupid."

Jack stares at him with doubt.

"Except that one time."

"That one was different."

"I'm at loss for words," Jack rolls his eyes. "The second rule?"

"Don't antagonize the local racist shitbags?"

"Yeah, that. And the third?"

"Don't fuck with Yakuza."

"Good one."

"Nah, dude, not gonna go to Hanamura and fuck around, I need to go north later, check out something," Jesse shrugs. "Find someone to talk about that bear spirit because that shit was bad, man, real awful shit."

"I suspect you'll have time to do that. We can go together."

"Nah, no hard feelings, dude, but bear people don't trust that easy."

"Suit yourself," Jack rolls his eyes and nudges Jesse to get up as the tram lines up with the embankment. The taxi that drives them to the hotel rips them off, counting the normal rate several times over. Being foreigners, they are expected to pay more than locals for the same services, and making a scene would only add to the expenses - there's either some notation in the contract that would render any complaint null and void, or the local arm of the law would dismiss it anyway after they had at least ticketed them for creating a disturbance - if not outright put them under arrest on some bullshit charge. Well, Jack's not going to bother with it, it's not his money.

The hotel is one of those ridiculously posh ones, and he and Jesse draw curious glances as they pick up keycards from the reception area.

"Man, that's what I call life," Jesse announces after opening the alcohol cabinet, the first destination he chooses after walking into their shared room. Jack glances at the clock and just like that his heart is back to hammering against his ribs. He leaves his bag on the table.

"I'll be back tomorrow, do nothing stupid while I’m gone."

"Nah, jus’ gonna get stupid drunk and watch some holos."

Jack shrugs and heads out, leaving Jesse to his own devices, hoping he will stay true to his own words and not wander outside, especially not when drunk.

Gabriel's apartment is several floors up and Jack opts for stairs this time. The flight was enough excitement for the day, and the thought of forcing himself into the elevator fills him with revulsion on the spot. Halfway up, he realizes he’s only delaying the inevitable.

The heavy thing settled in his stomach is dread - and maybe, for the first time in his life, his instincts work as they should - screaming at him to run away, no matter where, just away, as he presses the card against the reader and keys in the code. Little late for that, huh? He pushes the door open, wincing at the breach of protocol: so wrapped earlier in his own thoughts he forgot about sending the text. The pad lies in the bag left with Jesse.

"I'm here," Jack announces to the room. His voice falls flat, even to his own ears. Gabriel looks over his shoulder while the screens in front of him flicker off one by one. Fucking dramatic, as usual.

"I can see it."

"I hate flying," Jack scrambles for an excuse - he doesn't need to, but it feels like he does - shrugs noncommittally, holding Gabriel's gaze. The mounting tension in the room seemingly affects only him - some misplaced power struggle Jack loses before it even began - and he breaks away the eye contact, turning away and stepping deeper into the suite. "There has to be a different method to get around."

"It is the most effective one."

The voice sounds too close, following Jack as he sheds his clothes.

"Maybe one that hits the orbit, I heard weightlessness is somewhat like swimming." He can at least give his honest opinion if they're on the subject.

"If the need arises for one."

Yeah, probably any launch of the type is conspicuous and more likely monitored, from the utilitarian point of view only reasonable if the speed is the key. Fuck that.

Jack loses the rest of his garments with the skin on the nape of his neck prickling under the scrutiny. Whether it's imagined or not doesn't matter, it's wrecking his nerves either way.

It's his turn to look over his shoulder, at Gabriel standing some distance away - shifting finally and coming closer to the bed.

"I wasn't aware flight provokes such high levels of stress for you."

Jack bites back the obvious answer - that unless he's bothered to know there's a lot Gabriel doesn't know about him - and the only time he cares to know is when it interferes with the operations. Won't lie to himself about the malice hidden under the thought.

"Now you know."

"Noted."

With Gabriel's thumb raising his chin up and the red and black eyes boring into his own, Jack falls back into the sheets. The sex is great, amazing even - it always is - but there is a certain measure of detachment that prevents him from losing himself in the act.

There's an invisible wall between him and Gabriel, one that wasn't there before, and the more Jack thinks about it curled up on his side, the more he realizes the fault lies with him, and him alone. Things have changed - he has changed - not Gabriel, and neither the arrangement. It's just a business transaction.

Trying to untangle the jumbled knot inside is like picking at an itching scab, only to discover there's pus underneath and nothing's healing. And it won't heal, not when Jack cannot pretend anymore he doesn't care, no matter how much he wants to. If that's what love is, it's a fucking miserable thing he wouldn't wish on anyone; he wonders if his past self also felt the same and he's merely stuck in following a preset rut. After all, the world is a cycle, isn't it?

Wanting Gabriel gone to let him sleep alone is a new one. So he can wallow in misery and self-pity in peace without the subject of his one-sided affection at his back.

Yeah. Love's an absolute utter bullshit, that's what Jack tells himself, staring at his own reflection in the still surface of the lake, fingers trailing in the water. The weathered wooden planks, blackened with tar, are far from the most pleasant to lie on - but the sun bearing down on his skin feels good and allays the discomfort.

The ripples born from his hand idly moving distort his reflection until Jack cannot recognize it anymore as his. And it isn't his, it's something else looking back at him from below the surface. Before he has time to react clawed fingers wrap around his wrist. The shining scales fading in and out of the skin glitter in the light with each minute shift.

It yanks him down with surprising strength

His skin scrapes on the wood - the water is cold - so cold - his lungs hurt with the lack of oxygen when he frees himself from the grip pulling him down - but the safety is far away - too far - and hungry mouths filled with sharp teeth latch onto his flesh.

He drowns.

The ending is the same, it's the rest of the dream that changes.

Lying cradled against Gabriel's side, with the arm wrapped around his waist and the palm resting on his stomach, Jack remains still, trying to wrest his thundering heart under control. Why he even bothers to remains a mystery because there is no viable way Gabriel isn't aware he's wide awake. What's left for Jack is to enjoy the rare closeness, something he's hard-pressed to; the satisfaction eludes him nonetheless while he watches Gabriel work. The screens close and reappear, once or twice prompted by the hand gesturing at them.

Jack tries to focus on the simple sensations: the warmth of the skin, the smell of the ocean, the lingering touch, but soon, it becomes unbearable, this picking at the open aching wound.

He moves away - the arm around his waist slackens and lets him go - and he sits up, disentangling himself from the sheets. Gabriel's attention remains focused on the screens, and Jack struggles for something to say.

"I'm going to take a shower," he mutters in the end, sliding off the bed.

The oppressive feeling of being observed and considered fades after the bathroom door closes behind him.

Of course, the whole room is done in subdued pink - salmon? - with elaborate cherry motifs running unbroken all around the walls with slight hints of darker colors. It's probably pretty and charming, and not at all tacky and lacking any real character or individual touch. Hotels always were like that.

The bathtub looks inviting, and Jack knows he could stay here for days by himself, but the reasons he's loath to are twofold. Jesse definitely constitutes one, the other one being the place that will make him think about Gabriel, and Gabriel only, the distractions available superficial.

Jack steps into the shower and, standing under the rain of warm water, he presses his forehead to the cold tiles. The voice inside his head provides him with an incessant background chant of 'you broke it' until he can't bear it anymore and punches the wall in frustration. The tiles crack.

He has no idea how long he's been in the bathroom - but Gabriel is gone when he walks out.

The pillbox lies on the pillow almost like an afterthought. Jack puts it in his pocket after gathering all his things.

He opts for the stairs again.

What he's not prepared for is Jesse scrambling to look at him over the back of the chair as he enters their room. Jack raises eyebrows at him.

"Shit! Dude. You're, like, glowing, but look like a kicked dog, but seriously," Jesse blindly reaches back behind himself for the open can of beer sitting on the small table, "you're bending the whole flow around you!"

"The what?" Jack notes the smell of cigars in the air, laced with something else, acrid and heady.

"Mana." Jesse sips from the can. "You got a fuckton of magic on you, like, a lot."

"Great. There's to hoping it won't kill me." Jack throws the jacket on the couch, sits in the other chair next to Jesse, and helps himself to the unopened can standing in the middle of empty ones.

"Don't think so, if it's bad, you'd be, like, dead ten times over, what with the potency. No spirit, for sure."

"Great. I feel nothing."

At least now, he had the explanation for Gabriel's clothes trick. Jack opens the can and downs half of it in one go.

"Offense meant, dude, but you got the sensitivity of a low-flying brick, and that means the only sensitivity you got is in the poor dude you're gonna brain."

"Thanks, I guess." Jack chuckles, toasting Jesse with a flourish. "Tell me," he vaguely points at himself, "if it does something weird."

"Will do. Wanna anything stronger with that?"

"That's what stinks in here?"

Jesse looks at him with his eyes pinched.

"Maybe."

"Pass, don't want to fuck up my lungs any more than they already are."

"Dude. You can breathe water, lil bit of smoke not gonna fuck them up."

"Still a pass." Jack finishes the beer and finds another can. "As long as it's not something you can be busted for, go ahead yourself."

Jesse snorts, apparently amused by his comment.

"It's all natural. Like, herbs and shrooms." To illustrate, he picks up a small baggie containing flaky brown fragments. "I smoke 'em, but go as well on the tongue."

This is a terrible idea. And Jack's tempted.

"No," he answers with a delay. "Especially if that's what gave you the mutt, might be contagious."

"Suit yourself." Jesse pulls out a cigar from his pocket and lights it, puffs on it lightly. Jack leaves it without a comment while flipping through the channels on the holo. They're both left with nothing to do for the foreseeable time. Jesse is more than content to spend the days idling: doing nothing but smoking, drinking, and watching tv, but Jack ventures out twice. He gives up on the whole idea of spending time outside of the hotel room soon.

He had forgotten how bland and hostile the whole of the JIS is to him despite the colors and the flashing lights, the music, and the chatter that never stops, or the cities that never sleep. It's a sea of humans only, maybe one or two occasional elves, almost no other metas, which serves to remind Jack that outside of the metropolis it's even worse.

Finding a place to drink and eat he's let in, not to mention not being faced with outright disdain when it becomes obvious he doesn't speak a speck of the language, is too bothersome.

Being confined to the hotel is not the worst thing in the world, Jack decides, not with his surprisingly stable mood, and the fact he's not fixating on the whole situation with Gabriel - only sometimes - and earthly mundane distractions are forthcoming. The majority of it, he thinks, is easily attributed to whatever Jesse's smoking the copious amounts of, and he himself is probably getting high on the fumes by the virtue of widely understood osmosis. Or ingestion. Call it what you will, it works wonders.

The idyll of the carefree quiescence ends with a dream in equal measure disturbingly different, and uncomfortably concordant. His feet are in the water - the waves wash up to his knees. He can feel every grain of sand on his skin: pressing in, irritating, ignored.

Pleasant warmth spills deep to his core, radiates from the bodies pressed to his sides - there's one hand slung over his chest - another carelessly pushes the elbow into his stomach - Jack shifts to remove the discomfort, and as he does so, he senses everyone else moving too. Like dominoes, every change of position prompts a chain reaction following down the line.

Lulled into half-sleep, this strange place in-between lucidity and unconsciousness, his eyes remain closed even with a familiar weight pressing down into almost the entire length of his body.

Something cold tickles his face and Jack finally looks up, at the silhouette cut starkly in the expanse of the pale blue sky, Gabriel's long wet hair brushing against his nose and cheeks, droplets of cool water splashing on heated skin giving him goosebumps.

Jack lifts his arms up. His fingers lock behind Gabriel's neck as he's spread open on the sand, a strange kind of pride bursting in his chest with each bite that draws blood from his skin. Nothing else exists or bears any importance but this one singular snapshot of time dredged from god knows where.

Jack freezes with his eyes wide open, his fingers almost breaking the surface of the water. The sensations - all so very specific and precise, unlike the vague suggestions of the usual dreamscapes - the sand scratching his arms and legs, and the back, the irritation lingering even now. The synthskin, even the kind slapped on his limbs, is never good enough to allow for the definition of the input and the interpretation on the level of the natural skin.

Dredged up. His own thought.

There's a sinking feeling, a frightening idea, that it's a memory. And it's not his. Jack schools his breathing; the jealousy at the effortless intimacy mixed with the shame of being an unwilling observer of someone else's intimate life swirl under his tongue. Or it's all jealousy. And spite. He grips the edges of the bathtub and pulls himself upright.

At the clinking and shuffling from the side, Jack turns his head to see Jesse tucking himself into his pants and buckling his belt.

"Christ, dude, you scared the piss outta me, like, for real."

Jack shows him the finger.

"How does your skin stay on, anyway?"

"It's just what it does? It's only fingers that do this dehydration thing."

"I don't mean that, and don't do this 'rise from the watery grave' shtick when I'm trying to take a leak," Jesse rolls his eyes, a gesture he's so fond of. "Almost pissed all over the wall."

"That's a 'you' problem, not a 'me' problem," Jack mutters, heaving himself upright and snatching a towel off the rack. He wraps it around himself while stepping out of the bathtub.

"Would be a 'you' problem if I'd turned around when you did the 'I live' routine."

Jack snorts, giving Jesse an appraising look supposed to convey his opinion on the subject matter, and moves to the main room - dripping water everywhere - where he sinks into his usual chair.

"By the way, I got my stuff arranged, so I'll be splitting in the evening later."

Jack acknowledges it with a grunt. With Jesse gone, he will probably be about ready to climb walls with the dearth of things left to do. Or return to drinking alone, which, arguably, is far from anything approximating a healthy coping mechanism.

"And you forgot toes. And the soles."

"Hm?"

"The prune looking thing, the feet do that too." Jesse drops back to the couch and plays with the remote. "That's stuff from the time we were all water monkeys, and so we could grab stuff better in water."

"No bullshit?"

"Nah, real stuff, that's why we like water that much. Some of us, at least, that's, like, where we should be most of the time."

"Cool."

"You're still a freak, though," Jesse salutes before opening a beer he has grabbed earlier from the cooler. "No hard feelings, right?"

"None. But, with the world as it is, isn't the whole evolution argument kind of moot? No-one accounted for the magic, did they?" Jack picks the plate with the remnants of yesterday's late-night snack up from the table and tries to discern if anything on it looks poisonous yet. Fried shrimps appear acceptable, to be honest, though the oil probably is a bit stale, Jack decides.

"Now, here, my dude, my friend, is the heart of the matter all those dudes who say a big man, or a big woman, or whatever in the sky did it don't get they get wrong."

"And that is?"

"And that is that even if that's all a fart of some higher power in the sky, it's still a creation, see? Someone sneezed, stuff crawled outta that sneeze, and the world began, it's still their word, ya know?"

Jack nibbles on the shrimp, deep in thought.

"Let's call that 'the great primordial snot theory' and never mention it again, deal?"

"Deal. Sounded better in my head."

"No," Jack lets out a defeated sigh, "you're onto something, but I'm definitely not going into the ramifications of a sneeze being the breath of life."

"But it has a nice ring to it."

"Yeah." Jack focuses on the shrimps, paying only nominal attention to both the show playing in the background and Jesse's mutterings while he slowly gathers his belongings that spread all over the rooms they've shared so far. Later, Jack escorts Jesse to the cab waiting for him, grips his hand for longer than needed when they shake.

"What's the main rule?"

"Don't get inked. Dude, who do you take me for?" Jesse snorts, trying to look offended and failing.

"A moron."

"Fair. Take care."

"You too."

Jesse ducks into his seat in the back of the cab and Jack shuts the door behind him - staying for a moment to see the car speed away from him before he returns to the hotel and for the first time considers the relative wasteland of devastation the room has become. After he pushes everything from the coffee table into a trash bin, he returns to the chair and checks in with Sombra.

"Feeling maudlin, are we?"

Jack shakes his head.

"What gave you the idea? Anyway, you still in Frisco?"

"Yes. Better access points to JIS networks."

"Right. Didn't cross my mind this might be the reason."

"There's good news too. When you get back from your meeting, I'll have a package waiting for you."

The meeting. He's on the last three doses remaining. Anxiety surges up in a sudden spike at the realization. He's been avoiding dwelling on the matter so well he pushed it almost entirely out of his mind.

"A package?"

"Some additional gear we will need to start digging, how to say it, organically."

"Beat people up, you mean."

"Yes," Sombra trails off slowly, a question in the air.

"Go on," Jack urges her, and after a lengthy pause, she continues.

"You never told me you only have nightmares."

"I have other dreams too." He's pretty sure of it, especially after the last one.

"Jack. Every time you enter the REM phase, you have repetitive patterns of stress. Listen," Sombra sighs, probably reading his silence the wrong way, "I wasn't... keen on sifting through all your data, I don't like infringing on your privacy more than I have to, but Gabe insisted on it, and it could've been avoided if you had talked about having problems."

"They're not really problems, though."

He can almost hear her mentally counting down.

"You consistently downplay your pain levels, you don't dream save for reliving the trauma you'd suffered, and, Jack, I tried simulating your brain activity, I clocked out after three minutes."

"I'm used to it."

"That's the thing, you shouldn't be used to it, it's not normal," Sombra huffs, and Jack's sure she's throwing things right now wherever she's physically at by now. "I'm angry with you, we'll talk tomorrow when you get the package, and I'll be less angry."

She disconnects without prior warning, leaving him alone. But that's the thing about pain, you become numb to some of it, Jack thinks, until it becomes just the background radiation of your life.

He takes a quick shower and finds a clean set of clothes to change into.

This time, Jack remembers about keeping the pad on his person, and sends the text as he climbs the stairs yet again, somewhat amazed at how three whole weeks have passed unnoticeably with Jesse there to keep him occupied - he's not going to lie, he's going to miss the bugger. Not the conversations, per se, but rather, the general awareness of his presence. Even if everyone is living their own separate lives outside of the operations, getting together is not so bad, after all.

Jack stops at the doors to the same suite as before. The code is unchanged. A few calming breaths and he walks in.

That's the thing about the constant pain, it doesn't disappear, it just numbs you down - it's a sort of resigned weary acceptance to his situation that leaves a dull ache in its wake, nothing earth-shattering anymore, but it's still there. The half-smile Jack musters at the sight of Gabriel observing him is surprisingly genuine, even to him himself. He can, and will, deal with it. His problem, not anyone else's.

"Long time no see," Jack quips at the inquisitive rise of Gabriel's eyebrow. "Hi, and all that jazz."

He doesn't expect an answer. There is none, save for Gabriel stepping closer, and Jack throws his hands around his neck while his heart flips in his chest - constricts into a singular point of fear and doubt - the touch on his hip giving him something - anything - to grab onto. Grounding, as is the finger raising his chin.

The red and black eyes regard him with moderate interest - observe and scrutinize - pass the judgment on him; Jack leans in against the instinct telling him for once to run and hide from the apex predator before him. But, has he ever listened to it when it urged him to do anything but fight? Not that he can recall such an incident.

In a small act of defiance, Jack catches Gabriel's lip between his teeth, scrapes the tip of a canine on the fragile skin on the inside, hard enough to draw blood. He waits with the bated breath for the reaction, taken aback by a sparkle of what could be amusement in Gabriel's posture, and the kiss, now tinged with the metallic aftertaste, deepening, becoming more forceful, his body pulled flush against Gabriel's, a hand on the nape of his neck.

Jack stumbles over his own feet while being led to the bedroom, lost in the kiss until the backs of his shins hit the edge of the bed, and with a gasp of surprise he lies on the covers - almost falling but also held and lowered - peeled out of his garments, and out of control. Having Gabriel's attention focused on him - and only him - makes Jack's head spin each and every time, regardless of the circumstances; a near-religious experience if he ever had to put a name to it, not unlike the moment the drifting dragon gazed at him - and through him.

He wanders back to the dream - the memory - of the beach, of the coarse sand biting into his skin; Gabriel's locks that have slipped from the low ponytail tickle his cheeks and nose as his fingers dig into Gabriel's shoulders, trying to find a way to bring him even closer. Maybe even to leave a mark - a sign of permanence - something that cannot be denied sunk beneath Gabriel's skin in a desperate attempt to put his claim on him before Jack dissolves in the smell and the taste of the ocean rushing over him, the whirling current pulling him down.

But this is what Jack knows: he is not willing to give this up, this bittersweet torture. It doesn't come as a sudden realization, more like a long-standing knowledge now unburied and close to the surface, driven home with the weight of the moisture hanging on his eyelashes. He reaches out and finds Gabriel's palm, twines their fingers together - always amazed at the contrast and the faint dark red lines following intricate patterns melting into the color of Gabriel's skin - pulls it close to his chest, its back pressing against his heart. Covers both their palms with his other hand and curls around it.

No matter how much it hurts, no matter how much it will hurt, he's not going to give this up because the alternative is far worse, it's being abandoned and empty, and lost, and having nothing but that deep-seated ache.

Like this, he can at least pretend, Jack muses, slowly drifting off.

The first time he wakes up, it is to the darkness of the night and fingers combing slowly through his hair, Gabriel's hand still held close.

The next time he opens his eyes, it's morning, and he's alone in the suite – the pillbox waits on the pillow.

[vibefrost]

Killervibe Week - Day 3: Time Travel

So this is basically an AU of the last episode in season 4, where instead of Barry and Iris’s daughter coming back from the future, it’s Cisco and Caitlin’s daughter instead, which of course freaks everyone out (especially Caitlin and Cisco) :)

The girl appeared seemingly out of nowhere, yet it was as though she’d been there all along. Cisco tried to keep up with the conversation around him, listening as people pointed out where they’d seen this strange girl before, and speculating on who she really was. Yet Cisco found himself caught off guard by her appearance. She just looked so familiar, with her slender build, bronze skin and chocolate brown hair. Her eyes reminded him of the color of caramel, and the way she smiled, albeit nervously, struck him as oddly recognizable.

“Who are you?” someone, probably Barry, asked, and then the strange girl locked eyes with him.

Have I seen her in a vibe? Cisco asked himself, but this familiarity came from his gut, not his mind. She almost looks like she could be—

“My name is Angelina Ramon,” she announced, her voice steady despite her apprehensive expression. “I’m your guy’s daughter, from the future.”

Cisco realized she had shifted her gaze away from him and onto someone else, and the realization hit Cisco harder than Barry’s super-sonic speed punch.

The smile, the eyes, the behavior. That’s why it all seemed so familiar, because it reminded him of his best friend.

It reminded him of—

“Wait, me?” Caitlin gasped, the glass in her hand falling to the living room rug. “You’re my—our—” she gave Cisco a fleeting glance before turning back to the young woman, “daughter?”

Angelina Ramon nodded, twisting her fingers together nervously. “I came because…I’m in trouble, and I’m afraid I’ve made a really big mistake.”

                                                            **

It had been three days since Angelina Ramon showed up and completely turned Cisco’s world upside down. He had always wanted to have a family with kids, but he never even dreamed he’d be meeting them before they were even conceived.

Or that Caitlin would be the mother of his children.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing though, Cisco reminded himself as he watched Caitlin run a DNA test on Angelina, just to be sure. I mean, Caitlin is beautiful and smart, and a great person overall. She’s probably a terrific mother.

It was just the fact that he had never once found himself having romantic feelings towards Caitlin that made the whole situation seem so much more bizarre. Would there be a sudden change in their relationship coming up soon? Were they married in the future? Did they have other children too? Cisco wanted to know all the facts, but Angelina would hardly reveal anything about their personal lives, except that she was their child.

He watched as Caitlin walked over to him after the test had been conducted, and sat down by his desk, staring at the tablet screen in her hands.

“Well?” he asked. “What’s the consensus?” He already knew she was without a doubt their daughter, but wanted to hear Caitlin acknowledge it for herself.

“She is extremely healthy, has perfectly working organs and strong bones, plus…a perfect mix of both of our DNA.” Caitlin finally looked up at him, her expression unreadable.

“So…” Cisco started, watching as Angelina enthusiastically interacted with Barry and Iris. “We have a daughter.”

“I suppose we do,” Caitlin replied.

Their eyes met, and despite the strangeness of the situation, Cisco couldn’t help but smile.

                                                            **

It was soon discovered that some twenty odd years in the future, metas were being hunted. Angelina explained to them all that there was a man, simply called “The Hunter,” that had the ability to drain metas of their power, and that Team Flash was in a desperate need of help.

“The majority of our team had lost their powers, leaving only me and Nora,” Angelina told everyone, as they all gathered in Star Labs to hear her story.

“Wait, who’s Nora?” Barry immediately interrupted, his expression inquisitive.

“Oh, um, your daughter. She’s a speedster too,” Angelina revealed, and then quickly resumed her story. “Anyway, I was supposed to go back in time to get you, but I kept stalling because I was sure there was another way around the problem without messing up the timeline.” She grimaced before continuing. “But because I delayed so long, The Hunter found us and ended up breaking into our facility and took my powers right after I opened a time-breach, but Nora didn’t know he took my powers so she pushed me through, and now I’m stuck here with no way to get back and she has no idea.”

Everyone was silent as they took in what she said.

“So what are your powers again?” Caitlin eventually asked.

Angelina smiled at her and Cisco before responding. “I can vibe. And I also can freeze things. Back home I’m called Crystal Vibe.”

“You inherited both of their meta powers?” Iris asked incredulously. “I didn’t know that was even possible.”

“Wait, you said you opened a time-breach,” Cisco pointed out. “And…what is that?”

Angelina blinked in surprise, and then softy laughed. “Right, sorry, you haven’t invented them yet. It’s a breach that lets you travel through different timelines, including the one you’re in.”

Cisco held up his hands. “Hold up—I invent time travel?”

Angelina laughed again, a sound that Cisco was coming accustomed to. “Uncle Barry kinda did it first, but you invented a version of it.”

When everyone had finished their questioning, Angelina left to catch up on some sleep, and Cisco found himself drawn to wherever Caitlin was.

“She is pretty cool, you have to admit,” Cisco said as he watched Caitlin clean her instruments in the med lab.

“Of course she is—she has us as parents,” Caitlin replied with a smile.

Cisco found himself wanting to make her smile more and more. He never noticed how happy it made him until now.

“Y’know,” Caitlin continued as she rinsed off her scalpel. “I never mentioned it earlier, but out of everyone I could’ve had a daughter with, I’m…I’m glad it was you. I know I can trust you with anything.”

Cisco wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or if she was actually blushing, but his heart leapt at her words.

Maybe the notion of him and Caitlin eventually hooking up wasn’t so absurd after all.

                                                            **

The real trouble started when The Hunter found a way to come to present-time Central City.

It was a complete surprise to all of them, and unfortunately caught them off guard. The Hunter burst into Star Labs, ominously moving through the corridors as he sought out more meta power to consume. Immediately, Iris ordered Cisco, Ralph, and Barry to flee the premises.

“You’re our three metas with powers, and we’ve got to keep you safe,” she commanded, disregarding all of their protests. “At least just hide until the Hunter has left, and then we’ll come up with a plan.”

Cisco hated it, but knew she was right. He breached Barry and Ralph out of Star Labs to the other side of the city, where they brainstormed ways to defeat The Hunter while awaiting Iris’s “all-clear” signal. Yet when they got the message and returned to Star Labs, they were met with an unpleasant sight.

Almost half of Star Labs had been demolished, or at least severely damaged. Apparently when The Hunter realized there were no metas there, he went into a rage and started destroying everything in his wake.

Cisco was annoyed, of course, but then he felt his heart stop in fear when Iris told them Caitlin had been injured in the attack, and wasn’t waking up. He rushed as quickly as he could to the Med Lab (or what was left of it) and saw Caitlin lying eerily still on the white bed, her face scratched and bruised. For two whole days he stayed by her side, trying everything her could to help her heal faster and wake her up, but as the hours stretched on so did his anxious thoughts.

He had known Caitlin for so long, and for so long they had been best friends, always laughing with each other and spending time together, whether it be at work or at their apartments, watching cheesy Netflix shows and giving a running commentary while gorging themselves on snacks. He didn’t think he could picture his life without her. He didn’t want to picture his life without her. He wanted to always have her by his side, to see her smile at his jokes and help comfort him when times grew tough. He wanted to be there and support her through all of her troubles and be there to celebrate her triumphs. He just wanted to be around her, whether they were saving the city or just going to the grocery store, he just wanted her, and that was when he realized that maybe, just maybe, he was in love.

It took another few days before Caitlin awoke form her coma, and Cisco had never felt more relieved when she did. He hadn’t been able to function properly without knowing if she was going to be okay, and he shared his worries with her once she was fully awake and oriented.

“Don’t be silly,” Caitlin chided fondly. “I couldn’t die. We have to have our daughter first, remember?”

All Cisco could do in response was grip her hand tightly and try not to cry.

                                                            **

Throughout the next few weeks the Star Labs team worked nonstop, trying to come up with a solution. They knew that The Hunter was somehow harboring all of the meta powers he’d stolen inside him, so they couldn’t just kill him or else all the powers would be lost. They needed to find a way to siphon the powers away from him so they could return them to their respective owners in the future, plus also find a way to get to the future.

“The speed force only goes to the past, so Barry can’t do it,” Angelina told them. “It has to be you, dad.” She had looked at Cisco with so much confidence, as though she knew he could find a way to time-breach, but Cisco was completely clueless. He had listened to his daughter try and coach him through how to do it, but no matter how hard he tried his efforts were useless.

“It’s impossible,” he groaned to Caitlin after Angelina suggested they take a break. “A time-breach is beyond anything I’ve ever tried before. It’s literally vibing apart the time continuum and jumping into the future!”

“I’m sure it just takes time,” Caitlin reassured him, squeezing his hand comfortingly. “But if anyone can do it, I know you can.”

Caitlin’s encouragement meant more to him than she probably knew. The following days he trained harder than ever before, willing himself to go beyond his limits to try and save the future. And every day, after his long training sessions were finally over, Caitlin was always there to give his shoulder a comforting squeeze, hold his weary hands, or even gently kiss his throbbing forehead. Their physical contact was becoming more and more common now than ever before, yet neither of them really noticed. It just seemed so natural to the both of them, as though it was always meant to be this way.

Eventually all of Cisco’s hard work paid off, and he finally discovered how to open a time-breach. Everyone congratulated him and was encouraged by his positive success, but the proud smile Caitlin gave him and the way she gently kissed his cheek was all the reward Cisco needed.

                                                           **

They team now had a way to get to the future, and soon they discovered a way to reverse the powers of The Hunter and take the meta powers back. All they needed was to lure The Hunter into walking through a time-breach to take him back to the future.

Together they all devised a plan where Barry would lure The Hunter to Star Labs again, only this time Cisco would be ready with a time-breach that Iris, Caitlin, and Angelina would knock him through. Then Barry, Cisco, and Angelina would follow The Hunter through the portal and use their siphoning ray to take his powers, and then distribute them to all the powerless metas. Then The Hunter would be locked up in Iron Heights, and Barry and Cisco would go home.

The plan seemed fairly stable, but Cisco was slightly apprehensive about all the unknown variables they didn’t account for. What happened if The Hunter didn’t take Barry as bait? What if The Hunter somehow stole Cisco’s powers before he could open the breach? Questions raced through his head, but he shook them off for the time being, focusing on the plan and what they did know instead.

“I guess this means I have to say goodbye to Angelina,” Caitlin said to him softly, after Iris told everyone to get into their places.

Cisco squeezed her hand. “We’ll see her again someday.” Caitlin nodded at his words.

Both of them had completely accepted the fact that they were going to have a child at some point in the future by now, and Cisco found himself looking forward to the time when they would actually start a family.

“Just be careful, all right?” Caitlin told him, reaching up to tuck a loose strand of his hair behind his ear. “The future can be a scary place.” She smirked as he rolled his eyes.

“I’ll be fine,” he promised, and then drew her into a hug. He was about to pull away when Caitlin caught him by the arm, her deep brown eyes boring into his. Then without any sort of warning or preamble, she leaned forward and pressed her lips against his own.

It was a short and sweet kiss, but it left Cisco breathless all the same. When she drew back she gave him a shy smile. “For luck,” she clarified, and then turned to go and bid goodbye to their future daughter.

Barry walked over a few minutes later, checking to make sure he was ready when he frowned, giving Cisco a wary look. “You looked dazed. Are you feeling alright?”

“I’m feeling great,” Cisco assured, thinking about how that kiss was just the beginning of several more to come.

                                                             **

The plan went off without a hitch. The Hunter took the bait as planned, and Cisco was successfully able to transport everyone to the future. There Angelina used the gun on The Hunter and released all the stolen meta power, which was quickly returned to their rightful owners, and everything had been restored.

“Thank you so much,” Angelina told Cisco once everything was over, giving Barry time to talk to his future daughter Nora for a bit. “We never could’ve done this without you.”

“No problem,” Cisco said, and then cleared his throat before continuing. “And, uh, thank you as well. If you hadn’t come, I don’t think you would’ve ever been born.”

To his surprise, she shook her head with a laugh. “I don’t think that’s completely true. You and mom have always shared a special connection, even before I showed up. You would’ve found your way to each other eventually.”

Her words initially shocked him, but after a moment he began to see how she could be right. “You really think so?”

Angelina nodded confidently. “You’ve always been in love with her, I just helped you come to the conclusion a little faster.” She glanced around behind her. “Speaking of parents, I should find them. Well, I mean my current-time parents.” She giggled as her eyes lit up, so similar to Caitlin’s when she got excited. “Your future self is gonna freak when I tell him I met you and mom.”

Cisco smiled. “Freak him out good for me.” He then gave her a quick hug, and she was gone.

Once Barry had finished talking to Nora, he came back to Cisco, smiling widely. “I can’t wait to meet her in our timeline,” he said excitedly, and then the two of them jumped through Cisco’s time-breach back into Star Labs.

“You made it!” Iris exclaimed, racing over to Barry and embracing him. Cisco hardly took notice of them though, for his eyes were focused on Caitlin, and how she gave him a warm smile before coming over to embrace him as well.

Later that night, with their hands intertwined, Cisco and Caitlin sat on the roof of Star Labs, watching as the sun set and painted the sky with pinks and yellows.

“So…” Caitlin began, shooting him a playful smirk.

“So,” Cisco parroted, turning his head to face her.

“You think we should skip all the dating and stuff and just get busy on creating Angelina Ramon?”

Cisco nearly choked on his own breath at her words, but then saw a large grin split her face as she began laughing hard, tears sparkling in her eyes.

“Your face, Cisco, was priceless,” she managed to say while still laughing.

Cisco couldn’t help but laugh along with her, and once they had eventually calmed down he turned to her, his demeanor more serious. “I do want to start a family with you,” he admitted, rubbing his thumb gently across her knuckles. “But I want to start out properly.” He glanced up at Caitlin, noting the affection in her eyes as she stared at him. “So, how does a date sound?”

“It sounds perfect,” Caitlin responded softly, almost glowing due to the sun shining on her hair.

This time Cisco leaned forward and captured her mouth with his own, and enjoyed the feeling of her soft lips and the sweet smell of her caramel hair. He soon became lost in the kiss, thinking of nothing but Caitlin and how he was the luckiest man in the multiverse.

The future looked bright for them, and for the moment, that was all he needed to know.

[wits-writing]

Deadpool 2 (Movie Review)

It was close to a miracle that the first Deadpool even came out, but thanks to positive online reaction to some leaked test footage and the passion leading man Ryan Reynolds has for the character it pulled through and became a surprise hit. Deadpool 2, directed by David Leitch with a screenplay by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Reynolds himself, carries on the irreverence of the first within the framework about the toxicity the cycle of revenge can breed within people and whether they can redeem themselves.

That idea gets put into focus by the conflict between Deadpool, aka Wade Wilson, and Cable (Josh Brolin), where the Merc with the Mouth tries to stop the time travelling soldier from killing the young, angry, pyrokinetic mutant Russell Collins (Julian Dennison.) Everything manages to mainly hold together within that framework, while other parts start to show the seams.

[Full Review Under the Cut]

There’s a strong core with the potential to elevate the rest of the film thanks to Deadpool’s connection with Russell, seeing past the kids anger into the reasons it’s there in the first place. The movie starts to dip its toe into the more tragic side of Deadpool as a character, especially when there are moments like Wade instantly recognizing that the orphanage Russell is in has been abusing him leading to him killing an orderly. Russell’s ever-increasing anger as the movie goes on reflects how Wade has forced himself to disconnect from the world around him after taking a huge personal loss early in the movie. The idea that he’s looking for a family and a home in whatever ragtag bunch of misfits he can put together, here taking the form of X-Force, centers his motive for every action he takes on his journey to stopping Cable’s mission. Wade’s character going in this direction is as good an evolution from where we left him off in the first movie as possible while still essentially keeping him the same old Merc with the Mouth by the end, which means this part of the story doesn’t get the chance to elevate everything around it like it could.

The same can’t quite be said for some of the other returning players. Colossus (Stefan Kapičić) is still trying to bring the best out of Wade at first, but quickly realizes that there’s parts of him that will never change, leaving him to the consequences of his bas decisions. Circumstances eventually bring him to embrace a little bit of Wade’s irreverent attitude to deal with the way the situation has escalated. Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) is still a fun presence in the movie and her new relationship with her girlfriend Yukio (Shiori Kutsuna) is a sweet little detail, but little is all it remains since they barely get any screen time.

Deadpool 2 is at its best uses the elements that are new to this installment, namely the additions to the supporting cast. Cable’s role in the movie shifts from antagonist to begrudging ally as the movie goes on with him pushing through on his mission to kill Russell. Brolin’s playing the straight man to Deadpool’s off-the-wall goofball and he pulls it off while selling the character’s pathos. The physical presence he has during the action scenes sells his determination as he unleashes the capabilities of his massive multipurpose gun on anyone in his way. He’s not the only one making a major show during the action beats, since Domino (Zazie Beetz) gets to be the center of some of the movie’s best visual sequences. She’s naturally laid back due to how her powers manipulate probability in her favor wherever she goes. Events around Domino falling into place like her namesake makes for one of the stronger gags in the movie as Deadpool keeps insisting that she doesn’t have a “real power.”

Between the action and the jokes there are plenty of high points in Deadpool 2, but something about it kept me from fully getting into it. Part of it may be that I was never as high on the first one as a lot of other people were when it first came out, even though I did like it. There’s the occasional joke that goes on too long and cause the movie to drag. For everything done well here, it feels like there’s one thing missing that could’ve brought it from good to great. However, it feels like some punches are getting pulled in terms of the humor and storytelling at some points while others feel bolder than anything from the first movie. The whole thing is left feeling unbalanced at certain points. How that occasional lack of balance leaves certain scenes falling flat get exemplified in everything surrounding X-Force. While Wade is recruiting the team there’s a line about how they need people “able to carry the roles for 10-12 years”, which tilts the hand of the framing towards how this is a send up of spinoff and universe expanding in recent blockbusters. That framing doesn’t carry through on that gag for too long, since the rest of the recruitment montage feels like it wouldn’t be out of place in any other action comedy without the meta-level and how the gag pays off doesn’t entirely work.

What does work is something that does separate Deadpool 2 from other movies in the genre, no one in this movie is the capital-‘V’ Villain. Obviously, there are still plenty of bad people and characters playing antagonistic roles against Wade and other characters, including Cable for the first half of the movie, the man in charge of the “Mutant Rehabilitation Center” Russell was kept/abused in, and one character I don’t want to spoil. Characters like this are antagonistic, but the conflict doesn’t center around how to bring them down the way most actions movies do. Everything works around an idea that’s introduced early in the movie, that people don’t have to let their worst traits damage the future. After going through some rough times at the beginning, Deadpool turns into a self-pitying mess desperate to die in a body that refuses him that relief. Getting caught up in the parallel revenge stories of Russell trying to destroy the orphanage and Cable coming back in time to kill Russell puts Deadpool in a place where he needs to prove to the two of them and himself that there’s always a chance to be a better person, if not necessarily a heroic one.

Deadpool 2 mainly keeps on level with its predecessor, so it’s not a disappointment in the way of some other sequels. The places it excels beyond the first make it worth recommending, even if it doesn’t always come together into a cohesive whole, and between this movie and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Julian Dennison keeps showing a lot of promise for his future as an actor. Deadpool’s malaise at the start almost feels like a reflection of the filmmakers on this not knowing at first where to go with a sequel and the movie manages to pick up around the same point where Wade starts figuring things out. This series has managed to keep pace during its sophomore effort, even if neither movie feels quite like the complete skewering of the superhero genre that some people claim.

[surrogateself]

Star Wars The Last Jedi: How Movie Magic Dies

0.5 out 4 stars

This is a bad movie. There are barely any redeeming qualities, and it manages to take a huge dump on everything that came before it and everything that will come after it. If the first movie was about a “new hope”, then The Last Jedi is about “no hope at all”. And I say this not just as a fan of Star Wars, but as a fan of cinema in general, including the previous films from director Rian Johnson. Make no mistake, I am not alone on this, many feel the same way about this movie, but for the sake of this piece I will write solely on how this movie affected me personally, and to do that we have to go back to the beginning.

It was the fall of 1986 or maybe it was 1987, I don’t quite remember, but I think I was 7 years old. At this point I had a pretty good idea of what movies were, I had already seen both E.T. and Back to the Future. This time, however, the local tv network was announcing a Star Wars television event, all three original films were going to play continuously starting on a Sunday afternoon. The movies I’ve been hearing about from older people were going to be accessible to me. My cousin, who is 5 years older had a really cool collection of Star Wars toys, the original ones created by Kenner. I loved playing with them.

Watching the original trilogy at the age of 7 has become one of those memories that has never faded. I can’t tell you exactly how I felt in each particular scene, but I do remember where I was and I remember acting out some of the scenes between commercial breaks. Now, stop and think about that for a second. For a 7-year-old boy to be that engaged and excited it's almost magical. This is why Star Wars has transcended cinema and has become an iconic piece of pop culture. And at the center of this phenomenon stands one of the greatest hero archetypes ever created, Luke Skywalker.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Fast forward to 2017, and Luke Skywalker has been replaced by a weird parody version of himself. He’s an old hermit, who’s constantly angry, doesn’t give a fuck about the force, doesn’t give a fuck about his friends or family, and above all, is a complete coward. What happened? How did it come to this? Well, rather than dive into the complexity of these questions, writer/director Rian Johnson creates a half-baked excuse for his exile and concludes that he simply left everything to go die in some planet that contains the oldest Jedi temple. And thus we are exposed to this mess of a film.

But this isn’t how the movie opens, even though The Force Awakens ended in that very epic shot of Luke receiving his father’s lightsaber. The movie opens with some crap jokes and a battle in space that doesn’t really make a lot of sense, the ships are slow and they drop bombs in space…WTF? Ok, I get it, this is Star Wars and its meant to be fantasy, so let's have bombs that drop with no gravity and a remote detonator that also falls in space when the ship’s hatch is open. I accepted it, even the slow motion was welcomed. The problem is that literally 10 minutes later they blow the bridge of general Leia’s ship and she’s floating in space. So which one is it?… how does space work here?

I could end my review right there because everything that follows is these weird random moments that contradict or neglects what was said or happened a few scenes before. I’ll try to continue. So, after the space battle the rebels jump to light speed and vanish, but 5 minutes later the first order arrives and begins an assault that has Kylo Ren considering if he should kill his mom, and thus we get the scene I described before, followed by some force voodoo shit that Leia pulls off. Yes, we know the force is strong in her family but again, they never alluded to this kind of ability in any of the other films. So Leia is literally a god who cannot die in space, don’t question it, its meant to be meta… bro.

The rebels are stuck in this poor excuse for a plot, they have enough fuel for one jump but they can’t because they'll be tracked, so for the next few hours/days (there’s really no sense of time in this movie) they’ll fly with the big bad ship chasing them. Even though a few scenes before, the first order unleashed an assault that almost killed them, why isn’t the first order keep doing this until they’re wiped out? Well… maybe because they’re a bunch of morons, for example, General Hux is portrayed like a buffoon in this movie, while in the force awakens he was menacing and almost had this Nazi behavior about him. But in The Last Jedi, he’s become a character from Space Balls and that only ruins the movie because he ceases to be a threat.

After Finn wakes up from his coma, in what looks like a giant leaking condom, he notices the situation that they’re in, and rather than join the fight, he once again decides to make a run for it. However, his character arc already demonstrated that in the previous movie, he was a trooper than ran because he was scared but developed courage to go up against Kylo Ren and The First Order. Now he’s reverted back to being a coward?… I don’t know why they did this, perhaps it was to build the scene where he meets Rose Tico or what has become the most pointless character in cinema. The entire scene when she meets Finn is awkward and written horribly. But she’s there and she knows what’s causing the first order to track them and suddenly Finn knows too. Then, they communicate this to Poe who then decides to call Maz Kanata, and she tells them to go to the nearby planet where they’ll find a codebreaker that will help them infiltrate the enemy ship to deactivate the light speed tracker. FUCK… I’m pretty sure that’s a run on sentence. This movie is so frustrating that writing a review for it is painful, and that’s how watching the movie feels. I won’t get into this part of the movie because it really doesn’t amount to anything.

So... Luke Skywalker, lol. While all this non-sense with Finn and Rose is happening we get cuts back and forth between Rey and Luke on the island. There’s no training but rather 1 and a half lesson that Rey gets from Luke. She then begins to telepathically connect with Kylo via the force, so at this point, I’m thinking they’re siblings since Luke and Leia did that in Empire, but I’m not sure that’s the case. To be frank, at this point I don’t care. We are now two movies into a new trilogy that follows another trilogy where the heroes won and defeated evil. Yet we have no information about how the first order started or where Snoke appeared from. And to give Luke “fucking” Skywalker this role is just a fuck you to everyone that has enjoyed these films. The man barely knew anything about his evil father and he was ready to die to save him. He gets a quick glimpse of his nephew’s dark side and has a thought of killing him??? Sorry, I don’t buy it. That’s not Luke and even if it was, the reasons for his exile would have to be much more dramatic than that.

This decision in the writing is bad, just as bad as giving Batman a gun or making Harry Potter a rapist. It simply doesn’t make sense with the behavior of the character. Mark Hamill said it himself, and a good director should’ve listened. As for Snoke getting killed and the matter of Rey’s parents, sure it was a wasted opportunity and no, it wasn’t mind-blowing. I wasn’t one of those people that started to theorize, I just wanted a solid movie. Also, to all those defenders out there that are claiming that this movie was feminist and it was about women power, you’re all wrong. Let me break it down for you, Leia, Holdo, and Rose were all written in such a forced matter that you can feel their propaganda behind their actions. Yes, its good to be feminist, but do it with respect, make it part of an engaging story. For example Rey, during the Force Awakens, she was introduced as an independent strong young woman, who happens to fall into this larger than life adventure. But in the Last Jedi she was written off as the girl from Twilight, suddenly she has to help the boy, and suddenly she finds him attractive because of his nipples. I’m sorry but this is the opposite direction of feminism.

The Last Jedi is the mutant child of Empire and Return of the Jedi. Nothing in this movie works, even at its very last few minutes when I said to myself “if they pull off a great battle between Kylo and Luke I may forgive everything that happened before”. But that was once again a let down, Luke pulls off some Matrix moves and its revealed that he is actually not there but still stuck on the island from Lost, then he looks at the two suns on the horizon, much like in A New Hope and then he vanishes, I guess becoming one with the Force. The scene felt rushed and out of place; I wonder if Mark Hamill even knew that it was going to go down this way. But fuck it, that’s it for me. The last Star Wars movie I watched was Revenge of the Sith. For all the shit the prequels get, I still enjoy watching them, sure they’re flawed, but never to the degree of this garbage. If you had asked me back in November I would have said The Force Awakens is the last Star Wars movie I watched. But The Last Jedi is so bad that it ruined the movie that came before it.

[rebelsofshield]

I'm in the animated fandom, and I thought TLJ was a pile of garbage. While I loved the creatures, and they are definitely Filoni-esque, I was not satisfied with many of the story decisions in the movie, along with many of the 'jokes' in it. Everyone's going to tell me that "Luke wasn't the same guy he was when he was young" but I can't imagine Luke entertaining the idea of killing his nephew. I didn't like the "Reylo" stuff, or the fact Kylo chooses to become a one dimensional evil tyrant. (tbc)

I’m going to consolidate both into a single post so I can respond to them all at once:

I hated that Hux was reduced to comic relief even though he was a threatening, cunning villain in TFA and in the books. I was so excited about Finn’s arc, and Rose, but that ended up feeling pointless and with no payoff. Rose really came off as boring, they should’ve tied her into the story more than her just being Finn’s sidekick. Oh, and Snoke was pointless. I don’t care if he gets a book or whatever in the future, it still felt like a waste in the film. Also the movie draaaagged. Just a mess.            

First off, I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t enjoy the movie. I don’t think it was perfect, but I think The Last Jedi is a genuinely good film that does a lot really well. I’m going to respond to your individual critiques, but I want to stress that I don’t want you to feel that I am attempting to criticize you or change your mind about the movie. If you didn’t enjoy it, that’s totally fine. I can’t change that about you and you’re unlikely to change my opinion of it. Regardless, here are my thoughts.I’ll address the small stuff first.I never really cared for Snoke. Snoke was always a character that was more interesting in terms of what he was rather than who he was. He’s a big scary evil man that tempted Ben Solo into being Kylo Ren, but he doesn’t really serve much else of a narrative function in both The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi outside of this. I think fan’s latched onto him as a concept and started theorizing about him because JJ crafted him as a deliberately vague character. At the end of the day he is an uber powerful Dark Sider that is not very different from the dozens of ones we have seen in the past both in canon (film, comics, television, novels) or the Legends continuity. Kylo Ren as an extension is a newer form of villain and, in my opinion, significantly more interesting. I really enjoyed how The Last Jedi doubled down on Kylo’s varying aspects of instability both in his volatile emotions but also in his unpredictability. He’s a tortured man who is haunted by a legacy more powerful than he is. That’s a more interesting villain to me than another Force Big Bad who seems to demand some complicated origin story. Snoke’s death also doesn’t prevent him from being discussed in future movies. Kylo could just as easily have a line of “An ancient Dark Side prophet from the outer rim discovered me as a child and crafted me into his apprentice,” or something along those lines and it would cover the majority of the needed background.I also never really got the impression that Hux was really anything but a sniveling “Yes, Man.” His biggest moment in The Force Awakens is when he cries delivering a speech regarding the destruction of a Republic government. I also am pretty caught up on the novels and comics and if I remember correctly, he really isn’t featured much. In general, I enjoy the sort of allegory of the First Order being a well-funded fascist organization that is more or less lead by impetuous man-children (Hux, Kylo Ren)  and opportunists (Phasma) who are more concerned with the legacy of a past dictatorial government than in any actual real world politics. Sounds a little familiar right?

The Finn and Rose stuff I do have to agree with you on. I didn’t dislike Rose as a character, but she really failed to make much of an impression on me after my first viewing. I did like Kelly Marie Tran’s performance though and am open to seeing more of the character.

Finn was a disappointment and I totally get why if he was your favorite character in The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi would have been a let down. Personally, I left The Force Awakens with Finn being one of my favorites in the ensemble in that film due to his complicated narrative arc and John Boyega’s incredible energy and charisma. While this remains here, it doesn’t help matters that the narrative Rian Johnson crafts for Finn and Rose just feels like a distraction from the two other narratives occurring which are more emotional involving and more exciting as a narrative. When both characters are playing off the Resistance I think it works rather well, but their sojourn to Canto Bight is by far the film’s low point. That being said, I really dig the fight scene between Finn and Captain Phasma or most of their narrative on the Supremacy.On a surface level, I do understand the frustration with Luke’s portrayal. However, I honestly think it’s my favorite narrative arc for the movie both for who it means for Luke as a character and for the larger meta-narrative of the sequel trilogy. The Last Jedi continues an appropriate reality set up by The Force Awakens where Luke Skywalker is a legend and something approaching a mythological figure: the last of an ancient order of a magical beings that stood at the forefront or a movement that defeated a galaxy-wide totalitarian government. It works because it makes sense in-universe and in our own world because that’s what Luke Skywalker has become for us as viewers. Just as Darth Vader is a paragon of evil, Luke is that light hearted spirit of adventure that ages into adulthood that made the original trilogy so special. He has ceased to become just a person but a larger than life figure, even one that may have something akin to biblical or mythological importance.

However, Luke has always been defined by a push and pull to the Dark Side, even in his redemption for his father there are moments where he hesitates. When he goes to see Ben Solo in his tent it isn’t to kill him but to confront him, but in that moment he is tempted as many Jedi are. He knows that Ben Solo has the ability in him to cause great pain and suffering and to plunge the galaxy into war and further genocide and instability. One of Luke’s defining personality traits has also always been his eagerness and impatience. It’s what Yoda had the biggest difficulty in training him to do. He even has to beg him not to rush off to attack Vader in The Empire Strikes Back before he is better trained because he fears what a conflict such as this would do to him. He is tempted by the Dark Side because of its relative ease and here killing Ben Solo is the quick act that is easiest to solving what he sees as a potential disaster. It’s important here that Luke checks himself though. He feels the pull to the Dark and pulls it back because he realizes that what he is doing is fundamentally wrong. If Luke had gone through with this and tried to actually murder his nephew, than yes, I would be on your side regarding the a potential assassination of Luke’s character, but having that temptation there is important to both him as a character and of the Saga. You can argue that it is maybe a tad too convenient that Ben would wake up to see this and I would be inclined to agree, but hey that’s how stories work.From here I think is where we get into the really meaty stuff with how Johnson and Mark Hamill have characterized Luke here. Luke realizes in this moment that he has failed dramatically. Not only did he let down his nephew, but his sister, his brother-in-law and best friend, and perhaps most damningly this perception that he is some infallible legendary figure. It’s a crushing moment and one that does realistically stick with him for years. What The Last Jedi does that’s really beautiful with Luke’s character is stress just how important these emotional and symbolic heroes can be to those who need them. This is a narrative of Luke coming to understand that he is greater than his failings, but also that the galaxy at large needs heroes like him and that he can still do a great thing for the world and galaxy at larger. So he saves his sister. He saves Rey. He confronts Kylo and he inspires a galaxy. This is what the shot of the little boy at the end of The Last Jedi is meant to symbolize. He’s a young Force sensitive child who carries on through slavery and oppression because of the inspirational symbol of rebellion and of heroes such as Luke. It’s here that The Last Jedi realligns what we know of Luke with what we have come to expect of him. In times like the one’s we are living in now, heroes matter and coming to respond to that and accept that is really beautiful and one of my favorite parts of the film.

[impossibleleaf]

Why there HAS to be a 4th episode or A quick reminder of everything that is fucky

I know that lately it has become difficult to keep believing in the existence of a fourth episode, one the fandom has decided to call the Lost Special. So this post has nothing but the goal to lay down the hard facts that prove not only the existence of that episode but also the necessity of it.

This is a collection of reasons why we believe in a Lost Special, all at the same place. No Arg, no speculations, no hard meta, just the irrefutable evidence we’ve gathered that shows how something is terribly wrong at the moment within the show itself. If someone starts doubting, this is supposed to remind them why we’re still in the expectative.

Tighten your belt, we’re going deep inside the show. It’s going to be long, and frankly not everything will make sense but that’s the point: nothing make sense otherwise.

So many unfired Chekov’s gun, so many loose threads

We were told to read Chekov. The problem is, we have no time if we need to address every Chekov’s guns they haven’t fired. It is very telling that I’m certain the list I’m going to make is very incomplete but here we go:

1. You should put that on a T-Shirt

What was the point of it? We knew by that point that CAM and Mary were connected. Giving both characters the same line implies an intimacy that was never shown, a connection that goes beyond blackmail. This is either a Chekov’s gun or very lazy writing. Can’t Moffat imagine a better line to show CAM’s contempt? We still need to see the depth of these two’s relationship, we need to see how Mary could have heard that line. The little joke Mary has said in the intimacy of their bedroom is outright contempt in CAM’s and was most certainly meant to be one from the beginning.

2. How is your wound, Sherlock?

This is a recurring theme even if it’s not obvious. When Sherlock thinks about Mary, he grimaces and touches his wound. This happened already in TAB where he literally fell in pain right after mentioning Mary to Watson.

Mary’s past is going to come back to haunt her? Why in that line does Sherlock need to touch his wound then? I thought all was nice and forgiven? No hard feeling?

3. Romantic entanglement, while fulfilling for other people would complete Sherlock as a human being

Seriously, what was the point of this? This is firing the canon and realizing after the fact there is nothing inside. When it comes to Sherlock and John’s romantic arc, it’s the hot potato game.

“Do you have a girlfriend? Not my area. Boyfriend? No.” “I’m sure you’d be very happy together. Sorry, what?” “Did he ever have, I don’t know, girlfriend, boyfriend a romantic relationship?” “You’re a great boyfriend, and Sherlock Holmes is a very lucky man.”

I’m not going to finish this one or even develop it. That would take dozens of pages. The point is, TLD finally addressed the elephant in the room. It did for no apparent reason but that was this episode’s advertising point: the whole episode was marketed as Sherlock being in love, John broke down and showed how terribly human he is, Sherlock proved how far he’d go for him. The elephant isn’t in the room anymore, it’s grown so much there is no house left. But TFP? Never. Talks. About. This. If like they’re pretending, they want to end the show there, they never will. This is a black hole inside the show, it sucks everything out of it.

4. So what was inside that letter?

Nobody knows, nobody ever will. The same way, we don’t know what Sherlock’s recurring dream is.

5. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to The Final Problem of horrors

Within the same episode, many Chekov’s gun where loaded, none got fired, a rifle being of one them.

The bloodied wall? Pointless. Molly’s confession? Like I said, romantic arcs are hot potatoes and this one got dropped with the Garridebs.

Ah, the Three Garridebs. That one moment in Sherlock Holmes everyone agrees is vital. It explains Holmes and Watson’s relationship and it was worth a wound to finally have the confirmation Holmes cares. This is that one moment Moffat swore he adores and yet has reduced to nothing. This is the biggest warning we need. A true fan wouldn’t just do that if that wasn’t part of a plan.

I’m going to stop there. I don’t have the patience to search further but, I think I’ve proved my point anyway.

So many words unsaid. So many plots unsolved. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera

1. So, what was the point of S4 again?

Each season has an arc: S1 is Sherlock and John finding their footing, the discovery of Moriarty, S2 is the relative peace of the show that hides Moriarty’s “Final Problem”, S3 is about Mary and CAM.

S4? This is a season that needs to be seen with the three episodes at the same time but, and that’s where it hurts, the Eurus revelation destroys whatever deduction you could have made. That’s like when you play rock-paper-scissor and someone screams ‘Bomb! I win!’ What’s the point of the game if you rewrite the rules at the last second?

2. Who was the villain of S4 in the end? Eurus who? Oh, you mean that harpie! Nope, not a worthy final boss for the show

What was the point of TFP? This is an episode long mystery. Eurus can survive being a villain among another but she doesn’t have Moriarty’s presence. We’re told she’s the cleverest person in the universe and yes, she’s barmy, but Jim by far is more chilling. He is the spider in the middle of the web, Magnussen is the blackmailer, the white collar villain who will pee in your fireplace as a power play. Mary is the unknown card, the enemy inside the house and who can serve you a poisoned tea with a sweet smile.

Eurus? She’s grotesque, a joke and while she’s dangerous she can’t compare to these two. Culverton Smith froze my heart and made me throw up but her? Nothing. We’re missing a villain.

The abandon of Sherlock’s main arc:   Your life is not your own, keep your hands off it! Off! It!

One of the show’s main theme is that Sherlock and John are suicidal before meeting each other. Their meeting literally saved them. Life is a constant theme inside the show, it is addressed among every episode to varying degrees.

Season 1? John and Sherlock start being suicidal but manage to survive their depression. The bullet John saved for his suicide is used to save Sherlock’s life. they keep saving each other but even then the series ends with both of them seemingly about to kill themselves in order to stop Moriarty. They are better but their lives still have little value.

Season 2 is easy: Ultimately, he fakes his death, he is clever enough to avoid genuinely committing suicide even though we get the feeling he would have, had Moriarty’s plan worked.

Season 3? Sherlock is a mess but this time he fights. HLV’s greatest moment is when Sherlock while flat lining is told how much he’s going to enjoy being dead. And yet, the second he knows John is in danger, he makes the conscious choice of living. He punches the ground and forces his heart to start again. He would enjoy death but he won’t let himself, not as long as John is in danger.

The end of TLD is Sherlock finally realizing he doesn’t want to die. He says that life has a value, it is a currency he doesn’t know how to pay back but he’s not going to risk his life anymore.

So, of course, Sherlock attempts to shoot himself in TFP. There is some logic I won’t explain there but! When will Sherlock enjoy living? When will John stop thinking his death is justifiable? When Mycroft explains why John must die, he’s in. There are still in that mind set at the end of TFP!

So far, we’ve got: I want to die, let’s pretend I’m dead, I can’t die, not yet, you’re not allowed to die and I don’t want to die. Fire that gun and finally say it! Say how this arc must necessarily end: I want to live.

You want to pretend Johnlock is never happening? Fine, let’s play that game. You’re not going to convince me that one arc was always going to end the way it did. You want to try another approach to justify a fourth episode? Use this, the love and the life arcs are intimately connected: sherlocklives means Johnwatsonlives, they’re the reason they’re still alive. You can’t resolve one without the other. By cutting short johnlock, you’re also refusing to let them enjoy life.

The Abominable Bride, a colossal waste of time?

We know the story: a league of furies has decided to fight the statu quo of Vitorian’s values. They fight for the best of causes, they’re being ignored, disregarded even though they are right. They tend to our homes and are vital, we mustn’t take them for granted or abuse their love. Rather that the villains, they’re the victims who’ve decided to fight back. This isn’t the story of a murderous rampage, this was a suicide mission necessary to raise the army needed.

They are the heroes. Watson, the two Holmes, they are the obstacles to overcome. They all agree to this: the fight must go on and they must lose to the conspiracy.

Along the way Sherlock also learns vital lessons: you cannot use women on your whims. Janine, Molly, they are important, they have sentiments and you mustn’t play with them. Stop being a misogynist asshole and ask for their help. They’re not the enemy. At the same time, in the deepest part of his Victorian madness, he goes back to the source: they’re always two of them. John and Sherlock, they’re a set. Alone, he is powerless. Together? They can win and get their happy ending. Why would he need a list? He says as he tears it. He’s got the real thing now.

We even see a passing the torch moment. Mycroft asks for John to look after his brother, the same way one would ask his future brother-in-law to take good care of his baby sibling.

This is a heart-warming message. Sherlock shows such growth in what ultimately was a couple seconds in-universe.

Now read this again: Sherlock has just done the complete opposite all thorough S4.

John and Sherlock, the two of them against the rest of the world? It’s even a miracle when these two are TALKING.

Women fighting for their agency? Molly has been humiliated, even Moffat refuses to give her any depth even though her character development has always lead her to move on from her love for Sherlock. The only woman who raises the standard is Mrs Hudson, one who doesn’t officially belong to the conspiracy and even then she does this despite Sherlock.

Sherlock swearing off drugs? His flat has become a living meth lab.

John looking after Sherlock? He refuses to listen to Mycroft’s plea and Sherlock almost didn’t survive TLD.

As it stands, TAB aka the conspiracy’s decoder ring is useless. Nothing was achieved, no character development for Sherlock, he even makes a point in doing the exact same mistakes TAB calls him out.

This isn’t just a weak episode among a season. This was supposed to be the crowning jewel of this show, the link between the past and the present. The irrefutable proof that modern times are better because Sherlock always was a man out of his time.

As it is? This is a waste of money and time for the actors: nothing was achieved. It is a hindrance, the show is even better if we ignore it. Sherlock was out of his time? TAB is out of this series if S4 stands. TAB and S4 cannot coexist. Why did Mofftiss even bother linking it to the series? It would have been better if that had been an episode with no relevance to the plot. They made a 1h30 long episode outside a series for nothing.

If this is the end, why are they still so tight-lipped?

We have survived enough hiatus to know that’s not their modus operandi. Normally, this is the point they tell us how hard it was to keep the secret, how much they enjoyed watching us dance and lying to our face.

Except they aren’t. They’re still dismissive of us, they’re still acting as if our theories are ridiculous and that’s not how they act after a season, that’s how they are during it while they’re trying not to reveal too much. Even when you look at them during Sherlock events, you notice they’re still stressed. Why? I thought you wanted to end the series? It’s over, right?

Let’s take Gatiss for example. The same man who wrote to a journal dismissive of TST refuses to communicate with his fans and automatically blocks them.

You look at the actor’s face and you see they can’t sell what’s they’re saying. Martin explains that John and Mary loved each other very much? He looks dead, as if even uttering these words is killing him. Rather than a fun recap of the series, this seems like a weak defence no one believes in. Mary loves the boys so much she is rather protective of them? She shot Sherlock in a heartbeat and threatened to do it again. Each explanation they give sounds like excuses, very weak excuses.

Actors are complaining about the hell they’re living but Benedict and Martin are not in the Sherlock event, Benedict told us that love is going to conquer all, each actor revealed a part of the show we didn’t see. Everything they know will be tested? We are in hell, true, but if we take Season 4 at face value? There’s nothing that warranted this warning.

I remember seeing a post where Arwel explained that their travel to the Niagara falls was for Sherlock but? There’s nothing? They wasted so much money for nothing? And he can’t tell us anything? Why? Isn’t the season over?

The attitude of the BBC in front of our complaints are dismissive, even to those who weren’t talking about TJLC. The advertising was plainly terrible: it teased a relationship that never appeared and now that we call on their bullshit they act as if they’re the victims? They’re the ones pouring fire on this mess! They had many chances to end this but took none.

And finally, the mentions they make about The Lost Special. They are the ones that started them by making that joke. The Lost Special, the Accidental Special, they use the same vocabulary each time it is mentioned. They joke, they laugh but so did they when they said Moriarty couldn’t have faked his death, when they lied and lied to our faces so many times when we were always absolutely right but they couldn’t afford us to know. They have lied to our face so many times, every time saying they weren’t, not this time. Moffat and Gatiss are compulsive liars. Why on earth would that change today?

The game is not over. Not yet.

[old-long-john]

(1/2)Ok so I was reading this Silver meta that covers his entire character arc (less episode ten because I think it was written before it aired) that made some very good and interesting points. However, one thing that stuck out to me was his lost leg was kind of glossed over, and one of the assessments regarding his character, while true of many of his actions, contradicts that particular one.

(2/2) It got me thinking. What are your thoughts on it? I came late to the fandom so this has probably been discussed before, but it’s one of the defining points of Silver’s story, and I want to know everyone’s thoughts.

Ok, so this answer got truly excessive. It’s ridiculous. I thought I was barely scratching the surface of things there were to say about the significance of the loss of Silver’s leg to his character arc, but then it got longer than most of the undergrad essays I ever wrote (final word count 3110…). Yikes. I don’t know if I went overboard, or whether there really is just that much to point out, but this became a literal essay with quotes and everything. Suffice it to say, I think my one line tl;dr is: ‘if you write about Silver’s character arc without talking about the loss of his leg then you’re really missing a lot, because it ties into everything’. Either that or I’m reaching and rambling and I need to not do that.

A longer tl;dr: The loss of his leg opened up a whole world of new experiences for Silver. It forced him to feel and do and be things he had spent a long time carefully shutting out, and in doing so it didn’t just turn him into a new person, but a person who was at odds with all of the things he had built his previous life upon.

I’ll put the rest under a cut, because otherwise I’d be a dash-clogging monster.

So this is one of those questions that feels quite difficult to know where to start with, because it’s a huge and nebulous thing, but I’m aware that I actually have a lot of thoughts about it (some only half-formed, and over a year old) floating around in the recesses of my brain. Hopefully I’ll be able to answer in a way that ends up vaguely coherent, but we’ll see. I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on it too (and I know that there are at least two people in the fandom who have similar disabilities and would probably have very insightful and perhaps different thoughts on the whole thing).

It is surprising to me that the profound importance of the loss of Silver’s leg could be glossed over at this point. Perhaps it’s because we haven’t seen him suffer with it quite so viscerally in season 4 as in season 3, but I still think acknowledging all the facets of that loss are critical to understanding his character arc right to the very end. And given the things we learned for certain about him in 4x09, I think it’s kind of incredible how much fascinating context those things give to a plotline that was always in some form set in stone thanks to the novel that shall not be named.

Oddly, I’d somehow managed to forget that one of Long John Silver’s defining characteristics was the missing leg and the crutch (I don’t think I ever read or watched TI as a kid), and so when it happened it was a complete shock to me. I’m strangely glad of that, because it meant I wasn’t waiting for it to happen and it didn’t colour my views of any of the storylines that preceded it. I kind of feel like that particular ‘holy shit’ moment was my plot twist, since I knew about James/Thomas before I watched 2x05. I think perhaps it also meant that I was even more fascinated than I might have been by his actions and reactions regarding it (though I know I’m not at all alone in that), because to me it hadn’t been an inevitability (‘Nothing is inevitable here’…). Also, Luke Arnold is a goddamn majestical actor and his micro-expressions have been murdering me for a long time now. You can tell he’s been acting opposite Toby ‘one facial twitch and you’re crying’ Stephens.

Right from the first moment we met him, we’ve known John Silver was a chancer, and a chameleon, and someone who had very deliberately chosen not to be a joiner. He didn’t need anyone, and he only allowed himself to be needed insofar as it was beneficial to him. I adore Luke Arnold’s line about how Silver’s ‘a guy who’s always had one leg out the door, and then they cut it off’. It’s funny, but it’s also amazingly accurate on multiple levels. When he lost his leg, he didn’t just lose a limb, and his mobility, and a life free of pain (which are awful enough), he lost access to most of the ways in which he had always known how to survive: the ability to be a chancer, and a chameleon, and the option not to be a joiner. It trapped him. The man who had seemingly spent his life demonstrating that ‘there’s always a way’ out of any situation, had it proved definitively that that wasn’t the case. He couldn’t talk his way out of what happened to him, and the futures it left open to him were a much narrower range of options than anyone would feel comfortable with, let alone a man like him. He never wanted to be a pirate, but suddenly making a life on that crew where he mattered looked like the only choice he had.

The one moment I’ve always found most interesting, and I’m not sure whether I’ve seen it discussed before, is the look on Silver’s face at the end of 2x10 when Flint’s being outrageously soft and gentle with his brand new baby quartermaster. Flint’s been talking about transitions and men who can be relied upon, while Silver’s hand hovers over the edge of the blanket, almost but not quite able to lift it and look at the consequences of his decisions, and only half listening to what Flint’s saying. And Flint tells Silver he’s been voted quartermaster, the other huge consequence of his decisions, and then says, ‘It’s a funny thing. The more those men need you, the more you need them, and it drives us to do the most unexpected things.’ And then Silver looks down at his leg again and he pulls this face:

(gif by sorenkingsley)

He looks so angry and disgusted, and I think it’s aimed at himself. It breaks my heart more than a little that one of the biggest lessons Silver learnt over the four seasons was a thing he already knew at the beginning: if you get close to people you will get hurt. The very first time he chose to do something truly selfless, because the crew liked him and called him a brother, he was punished for it by being mutilated. That’s truly fucking awful. In a story full of undeserved cruelties, it’s up there with the worst of them.

Silver said in 4x09 that the only meaning that could be divined from some of the events in his life was that ‘the world is a place of unending horrors’, and that he’d ‘come to peace with the knowledge that there is no storyteller imposing any coherence, nor sense, nor grace, upon those events’. I’d imagine that having it confirmed that no good deed goes unpunished, in a most violent way, only solidified that certainty. And to add insult to injury (literally), it was an event and subsequent state of being that came to define him, as he never wanted to be defined by the horrors of his past.

I find season 3 to be a really interesting time for Silver in a lot of ways. He really does undergo a huge metamorphosis. As much as we’ve joked about how season 3 Silver consistently fails the Flint Bechdel Test (he’s either talking to Flint or about Flint for a huge majority of the time), the other thing that is consistently unavoidable in his season 3 scenes is the impact of his disability on his life, and the ways in which he’s trying (and failing) to cope with it. Right from the outset we have the scene with Howell (RIP lovely sawbones 3) where we see exactly where we are in terms of Silver’s suffering, his struggling, and his refusal to appear weak or compromised in front of anyone. The boy’s a mess, pretending to be ok, and it sets up so much of what we see from him for the whole season. It’s all such a contrast to how he was we first met him. From ‘are you a coward?’, ‘yeah, you too?’ to ‘I cannot look weak. I cannot feel weak. I cannot be weak’. It’s fine to be a coward when you can actually run away. He’s having to hold his world together with both hands, because he doesn’t have both feet.

Weakness and a perceived lack of usefulness are a running theme throughout season 3 (and beyond). Silver has never had to rely on anybody else before, but has ingratiated himself with people by making them rely on him. In the scene where Howell explains that he has to take off the leg or else Silver will die, he is obviously panicking and terrified, but the moment when Muldoon says ‘the crew’ll look after you, don’t worry about that’ is the one where a look of wide-eyed horror settles on his face and he seems to realise all the things that are suddenly inevitable (and once again, ‘nothing is inevitable here’ and ‘there’s always a way’). When he wakes up and tells Flint the ‘truth’ about the gold, he says he’s telling him about ‘what we’ll likely face [in Nassau]’. He already knows he’s irrevocably bound to Flint’s crew now, and I think he knew it for certain the moment Muldoon said it, if not earlier when he called the crew ‘my men’. I love that even though they explicitly revisited and explained that moment with Muldoon later on, Silver’s horror at those words in particular was there for all to see right from the beginning.

When he and Muldoon spoke about it in 3x02, Silver said that he was ‘useless to them up top’ and that he had to ‘do [his] part somehow’, and Muldoon had to explain to him that the security of his place on the crew wasn’t based on utilitarianism and that, even if it was, it wouldn’t work like that for Silver. Basically, they didn’t need to need him, because they liked him. That’s a hell of a long way from the method by which Silver wormed his way back into their fold a season earlier: ‘They can hate me, they just need to need me.’ Losing his leg left Silver living in opposite land, where being a crafty, two-faced, snake in the grass was not going to do him any favours, and he suddenly needed people’s love for him to be genuine and unconditional. And these were men he had been lying to and betraying so recently. I wonder how far their love and respect for what he did in Charles Town would go towards forgiving him if they found out he stole the $5 million out from under them all?

Then, right after having that conversation about being being afraid of being reliant on others and being unable to contribute enough to make it an even and controllable relationship, Silver found himself completely powerless to save Muldoon from drowning. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been able to save him even if he had two legs, but you just know Silver would always wonder whether that was a situation that proved that his being ‘an invalid’ made him both useless and powerless. No wonder the darkness became so attractive to him at the end of the season; the power it gave him, and the feelings of control over his own fate that it restored, must have been such a welcome relief.

I really think losing his leg was a very specific catalyst for a lot of the best and worst things Silver grew into. They were undoubtedly in there all along, and they came out in the forms that they did partly because of all his other baggage and his personality, but the leg was the thing that pushed them into being. He gave a shit about the crew beforehand, certainly - it’s what got him into that whole mess - but the things we saw afterwards, like his angry defence of the men in the doldrums, and the way he held Muldoon’s hand as he died, were the actions of a man who had been forced by circumstance into truly caring about his men as individuals, and who was also terrified of losing their support and love, because it’s all that he had. Not only did losing his leg make Silver a quartermaster, it made him a good quartermaster. At least, up until he and Flint started opening doors for each other and he figured out he could beat the shit out of those men or send them to their deaths and still have their respect. Damn, son.  

The flip side of the caring induced by his loss was the hate, both for himself and for others. He was so unsure of himself with Flint undermining him at every turn. ‘I told you, I just don’t see a way,’ is what he said to Billy. His world had been upturned and he didn’t know what his place in it was any more. If there wasn’t always a way, then what the hell was a chameleon trickster supposed to do about his newfound lot in life? Be honest, as it turns out. He was feeling honest feelings, so he started saying honest words. There’s so much to be gleaned from his shark date conversation with Flint, and the most fundamental thing is that he’s being horribly, painfully honest for the first time. Not just about the gold and the lying, but about himself. He lays all his cards on the table and acknowledges something that Flint used against him months before: where else would he wake up in the morning and matter? ‘Without those men, all I am is an invalid.’

That self-hatred or insecurity was something we saw more than once. Even much later in the season when he had somewhat found his feet again (no pun intended) and was on decent terms with Flint. When Billy suggested he go to the tavern to announce Flint’s return, Silver said ‘who’ll be able to take their eyes off the one-legged creature?’. It seemed as though he was already learning to use it to his advantage, and perhaps that wasn’t such an example of him hating this new facet of himself, but then Dufresne tried to use it against him. His plan had been to use his words to persuade, as he always had, and I think he probably would have continued with that method for longer if Dufresne hadn’t stuck a knife in that one wound that was still festering and painful: you are less than whole, an invalid, a creature, and unworthy of the position you occupy.

For basically all of the first two seasons Silver barely cared about anyone or anything, because he was still that drifter who just happened to be clinging onto this ride for the time being. He didn’t care about anyone but himself and so he didn’t really hate anyone either, because to hate requires you to care. He also didn’t have much pride. We know he had killed for personal gain (the cook), but what happened with Dufresne was something else entirely. I don’t know how much of that violence was in response to Dufresne hitting a seriously sore spot, and how much it was because it happened in front of a room full of people and wounded his newly awoken pride as well (likely it was a perfect storm of the two), but it was an absolute red mist moment. It was his ‘good sense escapes you’ moment. It was his Singleton moment. Deliberately detached Silver was a thing of the distant past. This Silver found himself capable of such blinding rage that he could stove a man’s head in just for insulting him and then turn it into a piece of pirate theatre for his own benefit. He’d spent however long before 2x10 carving little niches for himself in the fabric of the world, wherever there was a space for him to exploit, and all of a sudden he found that he could do it again. This time, though, his act of insinuating himself into a role wasn’t a snaking, insidious thing, allowed to happen because he made himself look innocent and unthreatening, but a brazen and violent statement that he was someone to watch and fear, after being judged to be unthreatening against his will. He took his weakness, real and perceived, and made it a new strength, learning how to use it to bend the world to his will again. 

I suppose, in short, Silver’s disability, the situations it trapped him in, and the path it set him on were instrumental in forcing him to actually feel things, good and bad. But not only that, the loss itself was a fundamental reason behind why he found himself desperately trying to fill a hole that hadn’t been there before. It was becoming truly powerless that awoke his appetite for power to its fullest extent. It was being forced to feel vulnerable and unthreatening, whether he wanted it or not, that caused him to find those things so revolting and unbearable. It was needing to be loved and supported that made him open up to the realisation that the journey into the light felt just as good as the journey into the dark, and as dangerous as it might be in the long run, getting close to people was a comfort he couldn’t go back to denying himself once he’d had it.

Then season 4 happened. I think season 4 really solidified the fact that Silver had some serious self-worth issues going on, deep down and well hidden, before we even met him, and that the amputation and everything that followed only exacerbated them. His ‘would I be enough for you?’ and ‘can that be enough and there still be trust between us?’ take his season 3 insecurities and plunge them down to newly personal and upsetting levels. This wasn’t just a man who felt as though he was robbed of wholeness by one horror he had suffered, this was a man who had been running from horrors his whole life, avoiding being defined by them, and was now defined almost entirely by this one-legged persona that was completely divorced from any other versions of himself outside of the context of the war that he might once have known how to be. He found himself trapped in the body and story of Long John Silver, a fiction who mattered more than he did. Chronologically, his conversation with Flint came first, and Flint declined to answer whether Silver’s true friendship and loyalty could be enough for him. Then Madi declined to answer whether his love and the bare bones of who he was as a person could be enough for her. None of the good things he learned to feel and give through his loss made him enough for anyone, but it was too late to close that door and unlearn how to feel them. And so he panicked, and spiralled, and fell back on old tricks, like lying, and new ones, like hating.

The loss of his leg opened up a whole world of new experiences for Silver. It forced him to feel and do and be things he had spent a long time carefully shutting out, and in doing so it didn’t just turn him into a new person, but a person who was at odds with all of the things he had built his previous life upon. I think it’s incredibly fascinating how his past, present, and future were all woven together by this one event. And I didn’t even touch on the physical suffering of it and how it proved categorically that he was neither a coward nor unable to endure pain. He said in 2x01, ‘I am happy to find some other place to survive’. Perhaps it was learning what clinging on for mere survival really looked like that made him want to live a life that was something more.