#*!also i feel like i need to rewatch some things before placing any final judgements

[basicbats]

...

[m3lzalz-honeybee-noble]

Random 5x05 thoughts (I know I’m Late to the celebration)

- Regarding Ashy and Tim’s Breakup (Good Riddance)

Ashy breaking up with Tim

My first thoughts were against Ashy breaking it off with Tim, but now I have come to accept that it was her, and I’m not mad at it. It’s finally done. I have seen many different perspectives and all are valid. Just thought I’d offer my take.

Ashy was either really oblivious or so narcissistic that she didn’t see Lucy as a threat. I mean, the signs have blatantly been there since the beginning. Not sure how she missed them. To be fair , we didn’t get enough background on her, in order to confirm or deny Lucy factored into her reasoning for breaking up with Tim. Her actual, displayed reasoning for the breakup was out of left field, and I had the same initial thoughts as some others, why date a cop in the first place, if you couldn’t handle being with one long term. After some thought, I came up with something that I haven’t seen discussed here yet. Now, I am not making any excuses for her, and the cold way she ended things, but I am trying to make sense of the breakup on her end. I think that maybe Tim being hurt and going into emergency surgery, may have triggered repressed, childhood trauma, regarding her dad. Our reactions/ responses to trauma/ reliving trauma, can sometimes be irrational and spontaneous. That trigger may have sent her into a tailspin, hence her talking about retirement, and not allowing time to pass before ending their relationship. She didn’t want to relive those feelings she and her mother went through when she was a child.

Tim Not being the one to break up with Ashy

I am curious and forgive me for maybe missing something, because I only rewatch Chenford scenes, but when did Tim ever reference or say that it would be an end all, be all (Dealbreaker), in his relationship, if his significant other did not want to marry or have kids? I only remember him saying that he thought he’d have kids by now, and he and Isabel talked about it. He did express surprise/ a little disappointment when Ashy revealed she didn’t want that, but I thought it was because most people are shocked/ surprised/ a little disappointed when a woman expresses that sentiment, as if it is taboo. I personally don’t think that was a main factor or reasoning to end his relationship with her, unless it is still what he really wants.

The main factor(s) that should have had him end that relationship, is the emotional and almost physical cheating with Lucy. Also, how Ashy was subtly manipulating him to conform to her wants and needs, instead of allowing him to be himself, with a little compromise. It also seems, to me at least, Tim was still very much of the mindset that he was in the early stages of dating, and they weren’t as exclusive to him, as they were to her. She said she loves him 🤮; he didn’t say it back. On screen canon tells me that he doesn’t love her. He also told Angela he’s dating Ashley in 5x01, even though he’s called her his GF, other times. (When is dating no longer dating? How long have they even been together, a year? Aaron finished his FTO program in that time. Isn’t it 18 months altogether?)

Was it fair for Tim to lead Ashy on? No, but he probably looked at their relationship, as a safety net, and because he didn’t follow through with the physical cheating, he most likely thought he could focus all his energy/efforts in his relationship with her, grow to love her, and get over his burgeoning feelings for Lucy. I don’t think him not ending things with Ashy, means he doesn’t have feelings for/ love Lucy. To him, Lucy has already moved on, with Chrispy. Logically, why forfeit any chance at potentially being happy? A lot of people settle, when they can’t be with the one they truly love. Yes, he is a man of honor, and what he was doing is quite the opposite of being honorable, but sometimes honorable people can have lapses in judgement, and make mistakes, especially when it comes to matters of the heart. That’s an internal struggle he could be dealing with/ trying to rationalize, under the surface. We won’t know, until it is said aloud, if ever.

Side note: Just thinking about why Tim was outlandishly considering retirement, and the only reasoning I can come up with, aside from him humoring Ashy, was that he was also factoring in a potential solution to the superior/senior officer roadblock that is preventing him from being with Lucy. 👀

I loved this episode and have many thoughts, about it. I’ll prob make another post solely about Lucy and Tim❤️. This is too long. Thank you for sticking with me til the end if you made it this far.

[nightcolorz]

Same anon here, hello and sorry. I wanted to phrase earlier ask better but limit restricted me. My intention was to offer other perspective, why some ppl act what happened is permanent, since you wondered about why they feel like that. I did include too much of my personal opinions though & my tone was bad. I'm sorry if it gave pressure, it was attempt to discuss but landed poorly. You don't need to explain your views, feel free to toss that ask in the bin. I wish you well & won't bother more

ofmd finale spoilers keep scrolling followers who haven’t seen it, lol

Omg don’t worry about it 😭 I appreciate the follow up anon sm very sweet of you, but it’s all good. I don’t think you were rude in your original ask, it just (along with other comments on my post) made me realize that I didn’t have a good enough grasp on my opinions and my analysis to be having discussions about them yet. (considering i only saw the episode once before I went to bed, then posted that post like at 6:00 am when I woke up after I scrolled tumblr for a bit, saw some very sad posts that made me sad, and half conscious posted what I was thinking). I was frustrated but mostly sad that I was seeing very little theorizing and interesting analysis and a whole lot of sad posting about how the finale was awful and the show sucks now (I very much enjoyed the finale and very much love this show so I was ??) and I wanted to encourage the type of culture I remember when s1 ended and everyone was sad but excited for more (how I feel currently). The toxicity that’s starting to come about in the fandom (not the sadness, that’s understandable and valid, but the leaps of judgement and hatred and arguing) is really getting to me. I liked the finale a lot and I always trust these writers to ultimately make good decisions. I don’t know what direction they’re going to go in but I know they’re not out to hurt us and have a love for these characters and for this show and this fanbase that is rare to find. Whether it’s permeant or not I believe that 1. This isn’t the end of Izzy, and 2. Its going to be good. I was trying to encourage this type of thought with my post. But again, I’m not as confident as I’d like to be when it comes to writing and posting my opinions, so I took down my post bcus I knew I didn’t have a good enough grasp on the episode to discuss it with ppl yet. I wasn’t expecting all the engagement and I got overwhelmed lol. And the thing is, I don’t necessarily disagree with your perspective and I totally get the sadness and the disappointment, but at the same time I also do feel differently on some level that I couldn’t find the words for. I couldn’t rlly come up with a response, just am not in the place yet for discussion. I generally like to think through my feelings concerning an episode (or any piece of media that affects me strongly emotionally) before I post about it or analyze it, and it was my bad for posting smth that encouraged discussion when I wasn’t in a place for it yet. I’m going to rewatch the episode some time today hopefully, if not today tomorrow, and by then I will be more prepared. There’s no need to feel guilty! I understand the place u were coming from and I wish u well as well (and wouldn’t mind being bothered more if u so wish)

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 20, part two

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff) (Previous Post)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

So much happens in this episode that I couldn’t stop the meta and had to break it in thirds. Part one is here, part three is here. 

Owie Owie Owie

Wen Zhuliu takes exquisitely tender care of Wen Chao, despite presumably disliking him quite a lot. He wipes his tears away, saying that the tears will infect his wounds, which...isn't likely, but ok. 

I will note that he didn't get the "no sting" kind of medicine, however, so maybe there's a limit to his kindness.  Wen Chao screams and yells at him while he puts a tiny amount of medicine on one tiny spot of owie. It's going to be a long night for these fellas. Except it isn't because they're going to die, so at least they won't have to put more medicine on.

The candles blow out and we hear the sound of a flute, which Wen Zhuliu hilariously says is just the wind when Wen Chao starts freaking out. They have two days to go before they get to safety, and Wen Chao is pretty sure he's not going to last two days. And you know...he's right!  

As usual he blames Wen Zhuliu for the situation, but then gets afraid that WZL is going to leave him, and starts making promises of status. WZL says that's not necessary. He is a loyal sonofabitch, I'll give him that. 

The Man Comes Around, Redux

And now Wei Wuxian enters the scene, climbing menacingly up the stairs carrying his own hair fan, just like Lan Wangji did in the previous episode. (Gifset here). Wen Zhuliu doesn't look optimistic. When the boys on the roof see Wei Wuxian they don't look too happy either.

Wei Wuxian stops in front of Wen Zhuliu and proceeds to have a philosophical conversation with him. Wei Wuxian has come to fuck your shit up, but he has also come to pass judgement on your ethics because he is, fundamentally, still himself. 

Wen Zhuliu takes the opportunity to justify his actions, giving a heartfelt statement about what he owes to Wen Ruohan. Wen Zhuliu knows his number is up and that they obviously didn't kill Wei Wuxian hard enough, but he still feels righteous.

(more after the cut)

Here Wei Wuxian asks a question that shows the fundamental difference between himself and Wen Zhuliu. In many ways they are similar: neither of them was born into their clan. Both were appreciated by the clan leader and placed in high positions. Both feel an obligation to those clan leaders. When Wei Wuxian asks "why do other people have to pay for your gratitude?" he's foreshadowing the moment when Jiang Cheng demands the death of the Dafan Wens.  

Wen Zhuliu doesn't hesitate to murder people because his clan leader wants him to. Whereas Wei Wuxian doesn't hesitate to pay a terrible price--his golden core-for his gratitude to Jiang Fengmian. But he won't let the Dafan Wens pay the price of his continued membership in the Jiang clan; he chooses exile while Wen Zhuliu chooses murder.

Wei Wuxian is done talking and very very slowly brings his flute into position and starts to play. Wen Zhuliu doesn't make a move to stop him, but he might be frozen in place...everything happens at weird speeds in this scene.

Lan Wangji is super horrified when he sees what Wei Wuxian is doing with his flute. So horrified, in fact, that by the time they are face to face, he's moved past any other emotion.

Lady in Red

As Wei Wuxian plays the flute, the camera moves around him (or they spin him on a turntable) and the scenery around him shifts to a 360 view of...the burial mounds! That's so fucking cool! 

You can take the boy out of the graveyard but you can't take the graveyard out of the boy. He is carrying it within him now.

He summons up the hottest ghost lady ever, to scratch the shit out of the Wens with her fancy fingernails. She's all in red, not the dark Wen red, but super-saturated bridal red. 

She's not dressed as a bride, but she is very pretty and the color is awesome, particularly when she turns into red smoke. Presumably having actual ghosts attacking people is ok with the censor board as long as they are pretty ladies in nice clothes, since there are two in this episode and this one is absolutely definitely a non-corporeal being when she wants to be.

Camera Operator: What did I ever do to you?

She fights with Wen Zhuliu, who tries to put his core-melting hand on her, unsuccessfully, and then figures out that Wei Wuxian is the better target, so tries to put his core-melting hand on him. 

Wen Zhuliu, you need to have some different moves! Not everybody has a core for you to melt.

Zidian’s Revenge

As soon as Wen Zhuliu targets Wei Wuxian the boys break in from the rooftop, with Jiang Cheng snapping Zidian up over a rafter and down around Wen Zhuliu's neck in a single move, and then hauling him up and hanging him. 

This is a pretty gratifying moment; Jiang Cheng finally gets his vengeance using the weapon his mother gave him before this fucker killed her. He also gets to come back at the guy who melted his core and kill him with a spiritual weapon. All around nice work, Jiang Cheng.

Meanwhile, Lan Wangji initially placed himself between Wen Zhuliu and Wei Wuxian, which is a pretty strong show of devotion, given that his chest was directly in line with Wen Zhuliu's hand. 

He watches intently while Wen Zhuliu dies...Lan Wangji is actually a pretty vengeful guy, isn't he? He's not into torture but he seems to like executing bad people, and he enjoys chopping off arms a whole lot.

Welcome Back

Having disposed of Wen Zhuliu, Team Where The Fuck Have You Been is ready to greet Wei Wuxian. This is Lan Wangji as he prepares to turn around and face him. 

This is not "relieved that my soulmate is ok" or even "feeling betrayed because you didn't even send me a text." This is cold, hard, fury. He's plowed right past relief and joy into full on disgust and vehemence.

Jiang Cheng is also pissed at him, but he's so used to being pissed at him that it's not a remarkable emotion, and it passes quickly. He gives him his sword, calls him a prick, punches him in the shoulder while Lan Wangji looks grumpy Wang Yibo tries very hard not to smile, and fails. 

Then Jiang Cheng gives Wei Wuxian an enormous squishy hug. 

Wei Wuxian, who has probably wanted that hug for the past decade, does not return it, and looks stricken, eventually raising his flute hand behind Jiang Cheng's back.

Lan Wangji glares at him while Jiang Cheng hugs him, and then shifts to glare at the flute.

Let's talk about Lan Wangji's body language here. This scene is often talked about, including by OP, as "Wei Wuxian picks a fight with Lan Wangji in order to push him away." But since their very early days,Lan Wangji's nonverbal communication has been an essential component of his relationship with Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian has been reading his microexpressions from the very start, and he's the only one besides Lan Xichen who does that. 

Lan Wangji's anger and disapproval are written all over his face and posture, so much so that even a casual observer can tell what he's feeling.  For Wei Wuxian, with his extreme awareness and having shared actual literal telepathy with the guy previously, this has got to feel like Lan Wangji is screaming at him.

Lan Wangji is the one picking this fight. Wei Wuxian is trying to defuse it by giving him time to calm down before engaging. For perhaps the first time since meeting him, Wei Wuxian ignores Lan Wangji to focus on Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng asks him a bunch of questions and Wei Wuxian slides out from under most of them, giving half answers, non-answers, and what All The President's Men calls a non-denial denial.

Wei Wuxian, who is adept at sounding like he's speaking truth when he is lying, here sounds like he's lying when he's speaking something very close to the truth. He spins a particularly outrageous-sounding tale of finding a cave and learning an ultimate power there...but that's actually what he actually did, actually.  Xue Yang does this "lie so much that the truth now sounds like a lie" thing by accident, years later in Yi City, but Wei Wuxian is using it as a deliberate tactic to hide the truth from his brother. Which is basically his main occupation at this point.  

He acts offended that Jiang Cheng doesn't believe him, but he does it playfully to cast everything in the conversation as a joke.

Lan Wangji is not as inclined to accept utter codswallop as Jiang Cheng is, and he has already figured out an important underlying layer of the situation--the turn away from the way of the sword--while not seeing the very bottom layer, the "I don't have a golden core" layer.  

Unfortunately, he continues to be judgy and pissed off. He says "Wei Ying" gently enough, but his body is braced for conflict. 

Wei Wuxian looks at him wearily and stands up to have the fight Lan Wangji is asking for.

Maybe you were right But baby I was lonely I don't want to fight I'm tired of being sorry

I'm standing in the street Crying out for you No one sees me But the silver moon

Soundtrack: 1. Sympathy for the Devil, The Rolling Stones 2. Tired of Being Sorry, by Ringside

Writing Prompt: Who is the lady in red and what is her deal?

[saikagerights]

Lay Me Down to Rest - Entry for Day of MirSan 2021

Hello there! And welcome to my first Inuyasha fanfiction, as apart of the @dayofmirsan event. 

I initially was planning to be an observer of the event, but sudden inspiration struck at 1am during my nightly routine of falling asleep to Inuyasha. Rewatching the Monkey Sprite episode is interesting for many reasons. For one, there was an unhealthy amount of filler added into the anime adaptation of this story-line, which gave hit-or-miss comedy. But the most important thing is that Miroku and Sango are mostly unaccounted for in this story-line, which gives shippers like me an opportunity to write some “off-screen development” for them. And though the anime does give us an idea, I’m afraid that Miroku’s indifference and frustrated edge in the scene feels a bit off, so I decided to add a bit of a bit of context. Consider this a bit of a fusion between the anime in manga, though the scene is based off of the anime. Also I was very liberal with my use of English/Japanese dub terminology. I watched the anime in English, but switched over to the manga to replace the Final Act, so it’s a bit inconsistent. 

I’ve been observing this fandom from afar ever since I started getting into Inuyasha back in December, and though I wanted to try and engage with it, it seemed very daunting given this fandom’s age and organization. But I’m very grateful that I was given the chance to participate in this event, and lucky that inspiration struck me at the right time. I’ve really been looking forward to seeing the works that come out of this event, and I hope you enjoy my contribution. 

And thanks for the mods for allowing me to share my work with you fellow fans

InuYasha and it’s properties are owned by creator Rumiko Takahashi and Sunrise 

Read on AO3

Sango tailed the monk as he led their investigation. The villagers they had asked so far had no knowledge of the wicked demon, only of the pestering monkeys that were ravaging their fields. Her companion simply nodded, thanking them for their time and promising that the Inugami would save their village. They soon found themselves at the outskirts of the village on an empty patch of land outside the forest, save for one tall tree. Sango found his behavior during their search to be strange, especially as he now paused at the tree, leaving his Shakujo leaning against its trunk.

Was he just as stumped as she was? Would this reprieve be a chance for them to rethink their approach? 

“Why have we stopped here, Miroku?” She questioned. “Aren’t we supposed to search for Naraku’s whereabouts?”

Her befuddlement heightened as he laid his body to rest in the grass underneath the shade of the tree with a sigh, both hands pillowing his head. His intentions then became clear at the sight of his eyelids slipping shut.

“How might we do that when we have neither Inuyasha’s nose or Kagome’s detection?” His tone reflected his relaxed poise. “I merely said that so that Inuyasha would be more inclined to help those villagers.”

Her head tilted downward towards the monk’s resting face. “I understand wanting to help, but do you honestly think that Inuyasha dealing with those monkeys will get us any closer to finding him?

“Not particularly.” He punctuated the off-handed remark with a yawn, overstating his disinterest. “But enough of that... Why don’t you join me here?”

She stood awestruck at his bold request. He lays there while their friends were helping this poor village and now he asks her to do the same? If Inuyahsa were to find out, he’d surely have more pressing things to worry about than the food security of the village. 

“I don’t think it would be wise, considering your flippant lies.”

The man remained still, no sign of concern disrupting his posture. 

“If you changed back into your battle attire before our return, they’d never suspect a thing.” He ignored her statement, a peaceful smile casually appearing on his face. She instantly recognized this move. He was fully convinced he would get his way, the sleazy crook. “Besides, I’m sure sleep has been as kind to you as it has been to me as of late.”

Although it was usually hard to detect amongst his manner of speaking, the monk’s sarcasm was not missed by the slayer. She knew very well that Naraku’s sudden disappearance had their whole group on edge, including herself. And while sleep had become its own battle, the desperate investigations of their enemy have left her distracted from everything else. Sleep meant the rest needed to fight again, but it also meant time alone with one’s most intimate thoughts. What always plagued her mind nowadays were things she’d rather not willingly engage. Finding Naraku should be her biggest concern now, but she indulged her companion despite what she would consider was her better judgement.

The monk had a particular talent for steering her away from rationality.

“Knowing your pervy ways, I’m sure you’d try and sneak a peek at me”

The monk could’ve never noticed the sneer on her face behind his still-closed eyes. The same smile was plastered on his face as well, despite her accusation. He really did enjoy giving her grief, didn’t he...

“Trust me, my dear. I have no intention of moving from this spot for a while. Or at least until Inuyasha comes for my head.”

 “Then I guess you wouldn’t mind if I left Kilala here to guard this spot until I returned.”

He chuckled at that. “I don’t mind at all. I’m sure she’d love to watch me lie here, right Kilala?”  

Sango looked to the nekomata, who merely chuffed in response. She was wary of Kilala’s strange trust in the monk at times, but she was sure that the demon would keep an eye on him in case he tried something funny. 

Miroku took this as the perfect time to reveal his indigo eyes to her. 

 “Please, my intentions are more honorable than what they seem, believe me.”

There it was, that gentle voice of his used to convince her of his authenticity. The same breathy tones that sent her heart racing and her stomach in somersaults. She knew Miroku was confident in his charms, but she also liked to think that he was fully aware of this game they played. She only came to grips with it recently, but there was something going on. 

They’d fight, they’d talk it through, and just when she thought he would try to make a move, that damn hand of his would find the wrong place to caress. Or it would be when she found herself grieving once more, and he could comfort her with his words alone. How did he always know what to say that made everything clear and could heal every fiber of her being, but also had a hand that never failed to do the exact opposite? He was a truly frustrating man, but he was the only one she ever considered more than just that. 

But did he really know? That was a puzzle Sango couldn’t solve. It wasn’t as if anything meaningful resulted from these escapades. Afterwards, they would act as if nothing happened, and he would return to his typical flirtatious ways with any woman that entered his line of sight. So Sango liked to think that Miroku fully knew that he was toying with her feelings. That way it made it easier to lower her expectations and resent them despite Kagome’s not-so-subtle prodding. 

When she became abruptly aware that her eyes had been locked on him for too long, she made her hasty retreat, hoping he didn’t catch her bright red flush in the shade of the tree. 

“This man will be the death of me,” she softly cursed herself as soon as she knew she left his earshot. 

_______________________________________________________________

Upon her return to their little “spot,” she was greeted by an alert Miroku. His body was now fully upright and turned towards her approaching form. 

“You’ve accepted my invitation, I see”

“I thought you were trying to sleep”

“I still am, but I’d figured it would help if I got a quick glimpse of your beauty before-hand.”

She rolled her eyes at his shameless attempt. “You really are troublesome, you know that?”

“You wound me, dear Sango!” He unceremoniously flopped back into his previous position, his left hand patting the spot next to him. “You are free to lie beside me if you wish.” 

Without the need for consideration, she silently opted to sit against Kilala’s curled form, stretching her legs in front of her. He managed to convince her to relax alongside him, but she had no intention of allowing herself to get too comfortable around him in the likely case the monk’s wandering hands wandered once more. He sighed audibly at her decision, but allowed his eyes to close again without any further word. He could act like a child all he wanted, but she would not budge. 

She watched the man for a while, observing his state of rest. She could tell as much that he hadn’t fallen asleep just yet by all of his idle noises and the way he kept trying to steal a glance in her direction. 

“Can’t sleep?”

She hadn’t even tried to close her eyes just yet, as she was still trying to grasp their current situation. Why was he so insistent on sleeping if he was just going to try and stare at her the entire afternoon? Why did he lie to Inuyasha in the first place if this was how they would spend their time? With all these questions moving around in her head, she might as well ask for the most basic of them.

“Miroku? Why do you lie and steal as casually as you do? I always thought that monks were pure-hearted.”

“What a wonderful question!” He exclaimed. With such enthusiasm, she was almost afraid of the answer she would soon receive from him. “I’ve been traveling on my own for so long, and it’s quite difficult to acquire wealth in such unfortunate times. I wish to give aid to those in need, but I also believe that it never hurts to help yourself as well.” He settled for an even tone and let his eyes slip open once more. 

 “And you are right, It is true that holy-people such as myself are meant to be free of sin. But,  I was born tainted by the hole that resides in my hand.” His voice tapered off at his pause, the newfound silence growing thick with each passing moment. His sound returned to him, soft and low, as if it were only meant for his ears alone. 

“It doesn’t matter how much I devote myself to my faith to any idol or deity. My curse is hell-bent on deciding my fate....”

But we are trying to stop Naraku! To free you from the Kazaana. You can always change your path after that! She immediately contested, perhaps a little too loudly, but she didn’t care. How dare he speak so little of himself and avoid her gaze as he did it?! She refused to accept his belittling statements. 

“It is very hard for me to see a future for myself at this time, I’m afraid…” He brought his head up to look at her. A flash of fear ran through his eyes before he looked down once more. “I’m sorry… I shouldn’t speak like that.”

He’s afraid…

And he had every right to be. 

“Please don’t apologize.”

He never showed it in front of their group, but behind that calm and smooth exterior remained a man trembling under the weight of his own mortality. He was a man after all, and men were never to show what made them most vulnerable. But with how much he gives to help others, it feels unfair for him to just allow himself to suffer inside as he did.

 If they understood each other as well as he liked to claim, then she knew he hated the restless feeling they had knowing nothing of where their wicked nemesis resided, surely plotting something to exploit the fears he caused within their hearts. Knowing that her poor brother remained in that demon’s grasp sickened her to her core, and sitting around with no leads made it hard to lay dormant as they did now. 

“I get it. I am just as frustrated as you… About Kohaku-”

“-You don’t need to go any further” He  interrupted her thoughts, I didn’t mean to remind you of your pain like that.”

 “Miroku-” 

 “-Please,” he sharply cut in once more, hoarseness settling into his throat. He must’ve noticed it as well, as he cleared his throat soon after. “let’s just try to find rest while we still can.” 

He squeezed his eyes shut, clearly trying to force unconsciousness upon himself. Sango relented, trying to relax her body, idly stroking Kilala as she watched the man slowly succumb to rest. It was surreal to see him struggle like this when it seemed like meditation was second nature to him. She decided on trying for sleep once his breathing evened out and all the remaining tension left his face. 

________________________________________________________________

Miroku wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep, but he could tell from the shadows before him had grown considerably when his eyes peered open. He turned his head to see Sango now curled up against Kilala, her face all but buried in her demon companion’s fur. He slowly rose to his feet, slightly stretching as he made an intake of his surroundings. It looked as if the sun would soon begin it’s retreat from the sky. The monk knew the rest was necessary, but he definitely didn’t look forward to another predictively sleepless night. 

One more glance at Sango’s sleeping form was enough to convince him to approach her, neglecting his Shakujo to silence his movements. He knew, probably better than anybody, of the threat imposed by the slayer’s attuned senses. He also knew the danger of being caught if she awoke to his gawking. Unfortunately it was a risk he was willing for one small fleeting moment to stare at her.

What an idiot he had been for making her sympathize with his life. Even worse that it reminded her of her own grief. He was happy to indulge her curiosity, but when he looked up at her, he turned cowardly at what he saw. It wasn’t fear, or sadness over his grim fate. It was the very same fire that lit behind her eyes in battle. 

She was prepared to fight for him, it seemed…

He dare not think that she would go any farther for that. He was not worth her death. In fact, nothing was worth her death. The honor of her clan was at stake, and her life was essential in carrying on their legacy. One measly itinerant monk with a fated death should be worthless in her eyes, even if he wanted nothing more than to keep her alive.

Even if he wanted more than anything to see a future with her.

He turned away from her, returning to his spot in a now seated position. The monk had half a mind to wake the woman, but decided against it. Every waking moment for her was its own battle, after all. She needed all the rest she could get. And he’d gladly wait for her until that battle resumed, and fight with her at every step.

And if dying for her now meant he could spend the next life by her side, then he would welcome death with open arms. 

“I hope this woman is the death of me,” he softly wished before all else melted away to his own meditation.

______________________________________________________________

Yeah I realized I took some liberties here with how Miroku and Sango’s relationship was at this point. This episode takes place after the Temptress of the Mist and Demon-Head castle, but far behind Mt. Hakurei, so what was going on with them hadn’t really become a “pattern” just yet. And Miroku had just comforted her in her grieving state for the first time right before that. Sango wasn’t deep enough to say he was her reason for living, so that’s why I kept her on the fence and didn’t have her feel too disappointed, because that’s what came after Mt Hakurei. 

I’m a sucker for long winded perspective changes, especially here with all the parallels I draw between them. Some of my best lines were written here, especially the ending line. My GOD. I swear, I wrote that and everything made sense. I said “yes” over and over again, it was so good.

Also can you tell whose voice I’m talking about when describing Miroku’s? The answer is Koji Tsujitani. I always knew about Tsujitani’s delivery that makes Miroku sound truly “fake” but I noticed rather recently how he would add so much breath, especially in serious scenes. On the other hand, Kirby Morrow played the character down and deep in his throat, which isn’t bad when talking about his overall performance, but I decided to favor Tsujitani’s performance in this instance. 

(I’m a classically trained singer and a music education major, so I’m a nut for analyzing voice acting. I have respect for both of these men may they rest in peace.)

Thanks again for the opportunity, and I hope to write more for this series. 

-Saikage

[nbrook29]

99 🖤🖤

Hello there! You’re officially my last dialogue prompt 🤩 I’m sorry this took so long, anon, I hope you’re gonna like it at least a little 🤓

I don’t take prompts for this challenge anymore. Just wanted to put that out there 😇 There are so many amazing ones on that list, but as of now I have 3 WIPs and one additional one in the works and I’d like to finish them before wtfock ends 😅

Anywho, here you go!

99. “I don’t think I’ve ever played spin the bottle.”

* * *

Robbe is going to kill Moyo. 

In fact, he's going to kill all three of his so-called friends because none of them protested when Moyo, tipsy and on his way to drunk, announced that this party sucked and was in dire need of some spice. 

He wishes he had listened to his past self and stayed home just like he had originally planned. It was supposed to be a quiet night in, editing videos or maybe spent in bed rewatching Romeo and Juliet in peace with no broers around to mock his movie choice while stuffing his face with onion chips and pretending the movie does not make him emotional, no sir. The wetness in his eyes must be sweat, not tears.

Then, after the movie would have ended, his sulking levels high, it would be time for his favorite activity of recent - daydreaming about reality in which he actually had the fucking guts to make a proper move instead of turning red everytime a certain someone was in his close proximity; smiling at him with that perfect sweet lovely smile that turned his already gorgeous features so much more beautiful that Robbe could weep.

And doesn’t that sound like a magnificent evening?

It may sound kinda lame, Robbe is a man enough to admit that, but the prospect of spending the night watching his friends salivating over girls they can’t get being the alternative wouldn't be particularly alluring to anyone, he guesses. Especially since he never partakes in that salivating part himself, instead chugging one beer after another and playing his designated role of a wallflower. 

Story of his life.

The whole thing just plain sucks, because it’s not like his friends aren’t well aware of the fact that Robbe’s interests lie elsewhere and that he’s usually bored out of his mind at those parties. But when there’s at least a semi-attractive girl around them they don’t care about anything else but getting her number and Robbe’s not exactly their priority then. In fact, he could well enough not be there at all and it wouldn’t make much difference. It happens every time they drag him along to those parties and every time he just stands there, rolling his eyes on their embarrassing attempts of flirting. 

Not like he’s the master of flirting himself, but even he’s not capable of stooping as low as they usually do.

This time, he reluctantly agreed to come to this one, against his better judgement, after Jens bugged him about it for their entire biology class, trying to convince him it was going to be more of a small gathering rather than a party. And frankly speaking, he did that just to make him shut up so mrs Jansen stopped glaring at him. Like he was the one running his mouth.

Once Robbe said the magic words “I’ll be there” there was no way of getting out of it. Still, his plan was to come by for an hour or two to get the broers of his back, drink a few beers, talk to Jana maybe, and then quietly leave when everyone would be too drunk and too busy tonguing at each other's tonsils to notice he's gone. 

But to his surprise, the party turned out not to be the typical banger they usually attended. It wasn’t even that bad and he was kinda having fun since he wasn't forced to play the guys' sidekick-gay-friend this time around and instead was dragged by Zoe to the kitchen to drink shots with her, Jana and Luca right after he arrived.

However, parties are not really his scene in general so when it started getting really late he finished his last Buttery Nipple shot composed by Luca (don’t ask) and was just about to make an apologetic face at the girls and say his goodbyes. 

But then Noor and Brit arrived. 

With him.

And Robbe almost swallowed his tongue.

Nobody should have the right to look this good but there he was, laughing with Milan in the hall while taking his signature leather jacket off, running a hand through his smooth like silk hair (Robbe's convinced it's indeed very silky) to ruffle it a little like it ever needed any styling, and in general looking like he had just walked out of Robbe's dream straight into Milan's apartment. 

Sander Driesen.

The reason for Robbe’s cheeks being permanently stained pink as of late.

They met at one of those after school clubs led by Amber several weeks ago that Robbe came to only because he agreed (after pretty much being blackmailed into it) to play Aaron’s wingman in winning Amber’s heart. 

He was gone as soon as those green eyes met his and the boy in front of him, wearing a black Bowie t-shirt and a leather jacket, shook his hand while smiling a little unsurely but still friendly, never breaking their eye contact as he introduced himself in a honey-like voice that penetrated every cell of his body, knees buckling a little, heart stuttering, the whole shebang.

He’s still thanking god he managed to hold back the whimper that was about to get out when he was saying his own name back.

Needless to say, the meeting became much more bearable after that.

Even having to witness Aaron’s cringeworthy attempts of gaining Amber’s attention weren’t that bad anymore. Not when they made Sander chuckle under his breath and catch his eye over Amber’s shoulder, winking at Robbe with a mischief dancing in his eyes as he bit his lip to keep his own laugh at bay. 

And then, Amber came up with some stupid “love excercise” or whatever the fuck she called it and made them all hold hands in a circle. She claimed it released stress and spread positivity or some other bullshit, but Robbe was convinced it was just a ploy she came up with to hold the school’s number one fuckboy Senne’s hand (who, if Robbe had to guess, also wasn’t there out of his own free will). 

Robbe wasn’t a very touchy-feely person, especially with people he had no business of touching in the first place so the whole thing was beyond painful. Thankfully, Jana came to his rescue, snatching his right hand as they exchanged smirks over Amber’s lofty speech about positive energy filling their bodies.

But then someone else gently took his other hand and when he went to inspect who it was, annoyance already starting to creep in, his mouth went dry, eyes going up, up, up the person’s leather-clad arm before stopping on Sander’s face, looking far too entertained.

The boy took an overly deep breath, eyes closed and face feigning seriousness, breathing out loudly.

“Ahh, I can already feel that rush of energy,” Sander leaned in to whisper to him, a teasing tilt to his voice making Robbe giggled at his antics. 

“I guess Amber was right then.”

“No no, I don’t think it’s Amber’s techniques, I just think it’s because of you.”

Robbe just gaped at this shameless flirting, receiving another wink when caught blushing deep pink. Sander seemed unfazed though, totally chill, like saying lame lines and winking at boys was in his everyday repertoire. It definitely wasn’t like that for Robbe, and definitely not from boys as cute as Sander.

He should have probably rolled his eyes at him, called him cocky and full of himself. And yet.

There was something about Sander’s demeanor that screamed it was all a facade, and that underneath there was a huge dork that came out right after that guard was let down. Robbe couldn’t even be annoyed with the smug winking because it was adorned with such a cute smile that it called for a fond eye roll rather than scoffing.

Before he could form at least a half cool response, Amber started shushing all of them with a bossy face, glaring at every person that dared to make a sound. So with a rush of sudden boldness, Robbe just squeezed Sander’s hand and looked at him from under his lashes, biting his lip in an attempt at being coy (and cringing at himself internally) despite his body thrumming with nerves standing this close to Sander, and for some unknown reason it brought the desired effect. 

Sander kept smiling at him surreptitiously throughout the entire meeting, making him laugh with his playful faces at some of Amber’s more ridiculous statements, and it felt like they had an entire conversation even though they didn’t exchange one word during that half an hour.

When they were finally free to go home it was after 21, Robbe realized with a whine. After they all collected their things and were ready to leave, Sander turned around in the doorway, searching for Robbe’s eyes while ignoring the rest of their friends crowding against the door, and when Robbe glanced furtively into his direction his expression turned almost bashful as he said bye, Robin.

And then again with the winking.

Good god this boy.

And how cute it was he couldn’t actually wink? It looked more like a reinforced blinking, but he still looked cute doing it.

Once Robbe came back home that evening, thoughts occupied with bleached hair and the smell of leather jacket, he couldn’t stop himself from searching for Sander’s social media. In just one sitting he gathered a handful of information, finding out Sander was a year older and recently transferred to his school (which would explain how he had missed him in the corridors). He also had a photo with Amber down at the bottom of his profile and from the caption it seemed like they were cousins. 

Robbe’s fingers hovered over the ‘follow’ button, but he didn’t want to seem like a stalker so he just closed the app, throwing his phone on his bed in exasperation feeling sorry for himself and his inexperience in talking to boys.

The universe decided to be graceful for him for once in his life though and put Sander on his path again only 3 days later.

Like every Saturday afternoon Robbe was in the skate park with the broers, taking piss of one another’s skills and trying out new tricks while basking in the October sun that felt more like it was full on spring rather than the beginning of fall. He was in the middle of showing off some of his best tricks to the sounds of his friends hollering when he caught sight of bleached hair in his peripheral, almost falling straight on his ass. But luck was on his side and he avoided making a spectacle out of himself. 

Once he was safely on the ground, skateboard under his foot, he glanced in the direction of white hair one more time to see Sander lowering his vintage camera and whistling, making an impressed face and promptly causing Robbe to downcast his eyes bashfully.

“Hey.”

“Hey, Robin.” 

Robbe sighed. “It’s Robbe.”

“I know, but isn’t that a cute nickname?”

Robbe ducked his head, smiling a little to himself, cursing the heat rising in his cheeks. “Are you always this annoying?”

For a moment, Sander seemed to be taken aback, but then he must have noticed the teasing glint in Robbe’s eyes because he relaxed visibly, confidence back on his face.

Then, easily and offhandedly, he said, “No, just with very certain people.”

If Robbe had any doubts before about Sander taking immense pleasure out of teasing him, he didn’t anymore. He was flashed with another mischievous smile and then Sander nodded at the bowl.

“That was pretty awesome.”

“Thanks.” Robbe scratched at the back of his neck self-conciously, ignoring his friends’ intrigued faces and praying they didn’t say anything stupid. “To be honest, these aren’t even that difficult, anybody could do them...”

“Pff, I tried this skateboarding thing once and let me tell you, I was an absolute disaster so don’t sell yourself short.” Sander nudged at his shoulder with a knowing look, the contact sending a shiver through Robbe’s entire body. 

“So what are you doing here if you suck at it?” He sent him a toothy grin when Sander gaped at his brazen words, faux-scandalized. 

He then lifted his camera swiftly and took a photo of Robbe’s dumbfounded face.

“I’m only around this deadly thing to take artsy pictures of cute boys.”

Looking very proud of himself, Sander laughed at his indignant spluttering, refusing to show Robbe the photo at first, giving in a few seconds later under his killer pout (Sander’s words). 

“So, is this where you spend your afternoons?” he asked casually once they sat down at a nearby bench, Sander scrolling through his camera roll and showing him the photos.

Robbe nodded, watching Aaron from afar attempting the backside ollie and failing miserably. It pulled out a snort from Sander.

“Well, you’re definitely better at it than your friends.”

Elbowing him in the side as a sign of loyalty to his friends, he replied. “Jens is actually better than me.”

Sander sent him a curious look. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“What?! Eww, no! I have way better taste than that.” It’s not like he’d admit he had crushed on his best friend a year ago. So, hopefully, he sounded convincing.

Sander lifted his hands in surrender, laughing at his outburst. “Okay, okay, message received, only the cutest boys for you,” he paused, biting at his lip to hold his smirk. “Makes sense,” he muttered under his breath, but Robbe heard him anyway.

Later that day, he got a instagram notification that informed him that earthlingoddity was following him as of now and damn if that didn’t make Robbe’s heart beat faster.

earthlingoddity sent you a link

S: Considering today’s unfortunate incident, I made you a bowie playlist, need to teach the youngsters like you the real music 😎😏

The first message from Sander made him scoff, but he rolled his eyes at himself anyway when he remembered his conversation with him at the skatepark, asking about the shirt and prompting Sander to quiz him about David Bowie’s songs.

Robbe hid his face in his hands at the mere memory.

Space Cowboy.

How embarrassing. 

Sander tried so hard not to burst out laughing at Robbe’s confusion when his answer was met with a blank stare, bless him.

R: So you're one of those people?

S: What people?

R: Self-righteous hipsters 😜

S: Now now Robin

No need for names 😩

R: It's Robbe

R o b b e

S: Okay Robin ;)

R: 🙄

Unbelievable

S: So 

What's up? 🙃

They kept up at this casual texting for 2 recent weeks, getting to know each other, and Sander confirming that he does, in fact, have a soft side. Robbe also realized he was a much bolder person when no face to face interaction was required when he had more time before responding to Sander. Then there were the occasional “hellos” at school when they crossed paths in the halls, but so far their friendship, if he could even call it that, hadn’t evolved further.

In fact, this party was the first time Robbe had seen him in a week.

Their eyes met for a few short seconds and Robbe waved at him, immediately after wanting to bang his head at the table because who the fuck waves these days? 

Sander didn’t seem to mind this dorky display at all, beaming at him from across the hallway and not paying much attention to Milan who was talking his ear off. A second later, he was out of Robbe’s sight, dragged by Milan and the girls to the living room, leaving him staring longingly after him. 

Before Robbe got his shit together and on shaky legs went there to maybe squeeze out a few words to him, Moyo was already on his way of arranging people into a circle and producing a bottle to spin. 

What a bad fucking timing.

This was so not Robbe’s idea of fun so he started to surreptitiously backing off to the hall to slide out the door but Jana, the traitor, grabbed his arm and sat him next to her, seeming very excited about the game.

It’s not like he was the only one reluctant to play though. Sander’s face looked rather bemused too.

“Come oooon, Sander,” Noor groaned at him, pulling at his sleeve relentlessly to make him plop his butt on her left side. “You promised to leave that sulky slash lovesick face at home and have fun. This is fun!”

“I think we have a different definition of fun, darling,” he retorted, his gaze sweeping through the half-drunk faces, stopping at Robbe’s for a millisecond. It was so quick he thought he imagined the apprehensive look on his face, but then Sander did sit down, letting out a long-suffering sigh and promptly avoided his gaze throughout the game. Which was clearly an intentional effort because they sat exactly opposite each other.

To say Robbe was confused would be an understatement.

And that’s how he finds himself here, sitting in a circle amongst his friends and several strangers who keep hollering and shoving tongues in each other’s throats. He had one close call when the bottle spinned by a redhead girl almost pointed at him, making him hold his breath but then stopping on Moyo sitting on his other side, who was way more eager to fill the deed.

When it’s finally Sander’s turn to spin the bottle, Robbe's heart starts beating double time and he twists his fingers nervously. He realizes with dread that there is no good outcome of this situation; if it lands on any of his friends or any of those few people he only vaguely recognizes, he’s going to have to watch Sander play tonsil tennis with them and his stomach turns unpleasantly with something akin to jealousy at the mere thought. 

But if it lands on him?

Oh god.

The bottle is spinning already, Robbe having missed the moment Sander put it in motion, too busy wrangling with his thoughts about what he should do. The fact Sander has been avoiding his eyes ever since they started this stupid game makes him even more nervous about the whole thing. 

Then the bottle stops, pointing at him so accurately that it leaves no room for question.

And Sander’s face positively falls.

Sitting near him Jens and Moyo are giving him subtle thumbs up and not so subtle shit-eating grins with Aaron next to them clearly confused at their behavior all the while Sander looks like he’s in pain.

Eyes glued to the floor, body rigid, looking like he’d want to be anywhere but here.

People are staring at them, waiting for something to happen and Robbe feels nauseous.

And so humiliated. 

How could he misinterpret Sander’s behavior so much? And it’s not even that, not really. Does the idea of kissing him disgusts him that much he can’t even give him one stupid kiss to avoid putting Robbe on the spot?

From the corner of his eye he can see Noor elbowing Sander in the side and there’s an entire conversation happening between them without one word being uttered. 

Then, several things happen at once. The boys let go of any subtlety and start whooping and hollering like they want to force Sander to make some kind of move, there’s a loud whack coming from the kitchen where one of the couples went to continue their PDA so Jana and Zoe get up to check the damage and then Adi, who has been rummaging through the liquor cabinet for the last ten minutes, yells that he found a ten year old whiskey, making the broers scrambling off the floor to get their hands on it.

The rest of the people are still here with them though. Still staring. And Sander still seems to be rooted to the spot.

And Robbe has had enough. 

Ignoring Noor’s soft Robbe, he gets up and with a heavy heart almost runs to the door, putting his jacket on in a haste, frustration and shame cursing through his body as he runs down the stairs two step at a time, wanting to get outside as fast as he can.

The cold air washes over him once he reaches the entrance and he breaths in shakily, feeling his eyes welling up despite his hardest efforts not to cry.

It just hurts. It really hurts. And if he’s being honest with himself, the fact that there have been witnesses to his humiliation is a small part of the reason why he feels this way. It’s about the fact that it was Sander.

Sander. This boy who let him believe there may actually be someone interested in him. In that way. Sander, who flirted with him, complimented him, smiled at him, listened to him and sent him Bowie playlists.

Sander, who he felt more connected to recently than to any of his friends. 

He wipes at his eyes angrily, scoffing at the fact that this asshole was able to make him cry, when he hears rushed steps on the sidewalk behind him.

“Robbe!”

Walking faster, he tries to ignore the sound until there’s a hand on his shoulder stopping him in his tracks. He turns around ready to blow out in Sander’s face but the boy is faster.

“I’m so sorry for that,” he pants, voice tinted with desperation, apologies written across his face as his eyes flit all over Robbe’s like he’s trying to read his mind.

But Robbe only lets out a humorless laugh. “No worries, I understand, you were very clear. Point taken,” he sneers, starting to walk again.

“No, you don’t understand,” Sander pleads with him, taking his hand in his own to keep him from leaving. Robbe wants to pull it back, but the distressed look in Sander’s eyes makes him hesitate. “I didn’t want our first kiss to be a part of some stupid game. Not when I spent weeks trying to come up with a perfect scenario for our first kiss in my head.”

Robbe promptly loses his breath at his confession. 

“You wanted to kiss me before?” 

“Ever since I saw you,” Sander confirms in a small voice. His demeanor lacks the confidence Robbe got acquainted with, ripped of any trace of the usual conckiness. Instead, Sander appears almost shy, biting his lip nervously as if waiting for a blow and heart-breaking rejection.

There won’t be a rejection though. Not tonight. 

Without second-guessing himself, Robbe takes that one step that still separates them and seals their lips together, hands drifting to Sander’s rosy cheeks on their own, like there was a magnet pulling them in. Sander is stunned at first, his lips unresponsive, but it only takes about three seconds for his brain to catch up and then.

Then.

Then there’s Chernobyl in Robbe’s head.

Fuck.

The way this boy kisses.

Phew.

Robbe’s brain shuts off as Sander’s mouth moves over his with intention, sliding together in a rhythm that leaves him breathless. It’s almost impossible to keep all the noises that threaten to escape inside, one small whimper getting out without Robbe’s accord, but it’s okay because it gets swallowed by Sander’s unyielding lips right after it leaves Robbe’s, making Sander pull him even closer.

Eventually, they have to stop, getting dizzy from the lack of air. When their mouths do separate though it’s only for a centimeter and they keep panting in that small space between them, soon breaking out in quiet giggles.

“I've wanted to kiss you ever since I saw you too. Ever since that stupid meeting,” Robbe admits, feeling brave and like he’s floating on air, no confession scary enough right now. Sander looks very pleased with his words, and Robbe can feel the telltales of his regular confident smile coming back to his face under his lips when Sander pecks him softly.

Then, he draws back, regarding Robbe with eyes full of mischief.

“I only joined to meet you.”

That makes Robbe cock his brow in surprise and he searches his face for a lie or at least a joke, but he doesn’t find any. “You saw me before?”

There’s a pause and then Sander’s smile turns softer. “I saw you the first day of school.”

And, wow. He did not expect such a turn of events. 

“You were sitting at a lunch table with your friends, deep in thought, looking so beautiful you took my breath away. It felt like I saw an angel.”

Blood floods Robbe’s cheek and he drops his eyes under Sander’s intense gaze, because he’s not used to such praise, or praise whatsoever. And then there’s Sander, looking at him like he’s something precious, like he hung the moon and stars, touching him so gently and kissing him so passionately and Robbe feels like passing out.

Sander must have sensed he was getting overwhelmed because he chuckles quietly and cradles his cheek in his palm, thumb sweeping under his eye in a soothing motion as he leaves a few small kisses on his other cheek, melting Robbe in a pile of goo right there on the sidewalk, quiet night around them.

Once he pulls himself together, he can’t resist the tugging at the corners of his mouth and a full-blown smile blooms on his face that’s instantly matched by Sander’s own.

“You know, I don’t think I ever played spin the bottle before but I’d give it zero stars on booking.com,” he declares suddenly pulling a laugh out of Robbe. “I was so scared I’m gonna have to watch you kiss somebody else, phew!” He places a hand on his chest comically, turning on the dramatics. “My poor heart wouldn’t take it, Robin!”

And fuck, he’s so cute that Robbe can only laugh at this (his?) dork, fondly rolling eyes at his antics.

“Yeah, I didn’t want anybody to kiss you either. And it’s Robbe,” he adds with a long-suffering sigh, futilely, he’s sure, but it’s still worth it because Sander’s cheek in tongue expression lets him know the boy loves to rile him up and is not going to stop anytime soon.

Still, to wipe off the smug smile for the time being he pulls him back into a kiss by the lapels of his leather jacket and Sander doesn’t exactly protest such. The second kiss is slower, more thorough, but still mind blowing enough for Robbe to feel heat tugging at his stomach.

“Will you go on a date with me? Tomorrow? Or any other time you’re free? Please?” Sander whispers in the small space between them after they finally break apart, foreheads resting against each other and fireworks going on in Robbe’s brain. Despite them standing so close Robbe can see Sander’s face pretty clear, and he can see his hopeful but tentative expression as he waits for him to answer, eyes growing unsure with each second of silence.

Not wanting to keep him in suspense anymore, he gives his parted lips one more lingering kiss, too weak to resist them when they shine so prettily in the street light above them. “Tomorrow sounds perfect.”

[artificialqueens]

Girls Interrupted, Chapter 1: The Institution: 1, Katya: 0 (Vatya) 2/2 - Maeve

A/N: It’s Maeve again! I’m so freaking surprised and overjoyed at the positive reception Girls Interrupted has received. All of you who have such kind things have truly inspired me to keep going on this. I can now say I'm rewatching seasons in the name of research! As always, feedback is welcome. I write because I enjoy it but also so other people can enjoy it, too. So, really, I’d love to hear any feedback or suggestions.

P.S. I’m having so much fun writing the interactions between Katya and the other queens, but I think my favorite part of this chapter is either an especially cheeky Sharon Needles line or the gym teacher/coach that is very loosely based on a straight Santino Rice

This chapter picks up right where the last chapter left off: Violet and Katya’s ice breaker activity…

Fortunately, Violet realized that she would—at the very least—have to cooperate with the menial activity. “Violet,” she supplied cooly.

Katya tried and failed to stifle her laugh. The raven-haired girl looked at her challengingly.

“Tha-that’s a good choice. Very good. I love every color!” Katya stammered as she wrote down Violet’s response. She couldn’t be sure if her partner was filling out her own worksheet, but Katya couldn’t bring herself to care that much. She just wanted this over and done with. Each moment she spent next to the cheerleader made her feel more and more inadequate. Violet was judging her; she felt small enough on her own.

“If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?” Katya continued.

This one Violet was quick to answer, “Literally anywhere but here.”

Her passive face told Katya she wasn’t going to get a better answer. I’ll just put down ‘Everywhere. She loves to travel.’, she resolved. “I think it would be really cool to go to Russia,” Katya offered.

Violet’s eyes left her phone screen. They searched the face of the blonde across the table, traveled down to Katya’s communism-inspired name card, and finally met her partner’s ocean blue eyes. “No?” Her face contorted in mock shock. “Let me guess,” she pandered, “If you could have lunch with any famous person dead or alive, you’d choose Putin.”

“Good guess,” Katya shook her head with amusement, “But it’s actually Maria Bamford.” It was obvious that Violet had no idea who Maria Bamford was. However, a quick glance at the clock told her there wasn’t enough time left in the class for her to go off on another tangent. “What about you, Violet?”

“Dita Von Teese. Next,” she urged.

“What are your favorite TV shows?” Katya continued eagerly, excited that Violet was finally being an active participant.

Violet’s response was almost instant, “Forensic Files and Sex and the City.” Everything about the brunette screamed confidence and certainty—something that came through in everything that she did. Katya wished it were that easy for her.

“I really like Game of Thrones, The Heart She Holler, and Storage Wars: Northern Treasures…..It’s the Canadian version,” Katya trailed off. There was an unspoken ‘and?’ in Violet’s expression, but she couldn’t produce a single reason for why that mattered. But it had mattered. “Anyway…What’s next?” Katya pushed through her embarrassment. “Something I’m good at? Sleeping, I’m good at sleeping. I guess I’m very bendy. Flexible. I can do theater, too…”

“Just put down cheer for me,” Violet ordered without looking up from her own worksheet. The blonde hesitated at the instruction, and Violet let out an impatient huff. “What?”

Katya was quick to apologize, “Sorry, it’s just that I thought you might say something about fashion.” She swallowed thickly. “I’m-I’ve seen you in the halls before, and you look good. Great. Your clothes. You clearly put a lot of effort into your appearance, and I thou—”

“Well, you thought wrong,” Violet spat. “You don’t know anything about me, so don’t pretend like you do.”

The blonde hurriedly scribbled down the word cheer under question five on her page and grabbed both of their papers. “Right. I’ll just go turn these in,” Katya fled the table without a thought. She had clearly angered Violet. Didn’t the popular kids like it when you stroked their egos? Katya wondered. She hadn’t meant to come off as judgemental. It was obvious that they weren’t on the same level, and hopefully Violet would understand that she hadn’t been trying to judge her. She only wanted to get to know the girl better, but she knew know how stupid she’d been to think that possible. No one like Violet would ever waste time on her. Sighing, she placed the two worksheets in a plastic turn-in bin labeled ‘4th’, and made her way back to her desk.

Katya had been disappointed that she had double A Lunch, but the forty minutes were the perfect break before pre-calculus. While it meant she could eat earlier, it also meant that she had no friends to eat with. Ginger and Bianca both had B Lunch. So Katya found herself on the steps of the stairs in the courtyard by the fine arts wing, eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich. There was beauty in the simple things, though, and Katya could appreciate the warmth of the sun and the slight breeze that late morning.

Mrs. Hugh’s room was stuffy. Katya’s funfetti extravaganza was clinging to her yet again, but she couldn’t adjust the fabric too much without disrupting those around her. She wasn’t willing to risk it. Unlike in all her other classes, the blonde always sat front and center in math class. All of the numbers made a mess in her head, and it was easier if she had fewer distractions. No one else felt the same way, though. So when Alaska tumbled in just before the tardy bell, Katya was forced into yet another less than ideal situation.The sunny cheerleader didn’t share that sentiment. Alaska flashed Katya a hundred watt smile and whispered a hello.

Katya didn’t get Alaska. Alaska wasn’t your stereotypical dumb blonde. She struggled in some areas but always kept up with the pack. So she was smarter than she looked? Big deal. What Katya failed to understand was why such a kind, sincere, and smart person would allow herself to be bullied by her peers. The cheer squad clearly didn’t think she had brain cells; Alaska was practically their punching bag from what she’d observed. So why hang around?

Miss Honard, you are an enigma, Katya assessed.

Katya’s continued curiosity over the duration of  Mrs. Hugh’s introductory speech gained her a very important piece of information: if she couldn’t get the lanky blonde out of her head, she was going to have to let her in. And Katya would not be friends with a cheerleader.

Katya praised Marx for the district employee who put Bianca Del Rio in her history class. She and Bianca were unlikely friends—a high school mascot and a theater kid didn’t really run in the same circles—but made an unstoppable duo. Coach A., their teacher seemed to get a kick out of them too.

Bianca was an unexpected constant in Katya’s life. The self-proclaimed bitch was Spartacus, the high school mascot, and the two would never have overlapped if not for their shared love/hate relationship with theater. She was a year younger than Katya but that didn’t stop her from providing Katya with the tough love she needed to keep her head screwed on. Keeping her head on straight was out of the question; Bianca did what she could.

The two girls schlepped over to the far side of the school where the gym was located. Katya, who had made the dumb decision to postpone getting her PE credit for as long, was not looking forward to an entire year of physical activity. Bianca, on the other hand, basically earned herself a double off campus by taking on the role of mascot. And yes, she definitely took pleasure in rubbing the fact in Katya’s face. Sucks to suck.

The other shit thing about a 7th period gym class was that Katya would be in uncomfortably close proximity to the cheerleaders. It felt wrong—almost like she was breaking a nonexistent restraining order. What sick bastard decided the plebs in “team sports” should be forced to observe the pretty girls in peak physical capacity while they drowned in their own sweat? Katya didn’t know the answer, and you certainly couldn’t hold her accountable if they were suddenly beheaded.

One locker and a stack of unisex uniforms later, Katya found herself entertaining the musings of Sharon Needles, resident goth girl.

“‘I look spooky, but I’m really nice,’” Sharon had said when they were assigned lockers next to each other. The witchy teen had a thing for reading people—not that an anxious Katya was hard to see through—and took one look at her and saw a kindred spirit. The funfetti dress and clown shoes didn’t scream normal, either. Katya had been uncharacteristically optimistic about befriending Sharon for all of ten minutes before everything went to shit. Phi Phi O’Hara, Sharon’s mortal enemy, also happened to be in the class.

“I’m surprised you took gym, Party City. Wouldn’t want you to melt in your own sweat.” Phi Phi snarked. The playground bully reclined herself against the row of lockers across from them and examined her nails.

Katya groaned inwardly. Sharon groaned outwardly.

“Fuck off, Phi Phi,” Sharon begged. “Don’t you ever get tired of the sound of your own voice? My ears are bleeding and not in a pleasant way.”

“Eat shit and die, Shar Bear,” Phi Phi called over her shoulder as she skipped off to bother some other poor shmucks.

Phi Phi the schoolyard bully reminded Katya of the villain poodle in one of those Open Season movies. Ironically, that poodle was also named Fifi, which was funny because the poodle was also a boy. Fifi the poodle was groomed like a pretty purse dog and had a little blue bow in his hair. Katya was inclined to take Phi Phi O’Hara—who was not incredibly dissimilar to a trophy pet—just as seriously.

“What crawled up her ass and died?” Katya scrunched up her face.

“If you find out, let me know,” Sharon deadpanned. “I need a smoke.” Katya watched in amusement as the locker room’s resident goth chick removed a pack of Marlboro’s and a lighter from her leather jacket. Sharon caught the blonde’s expression and raised her fist in response. “Fight the system,” she stoically decreed. Katya shrugged as if to say “what can you do?” and gestured for Sharon to walk back to the gym with her.

Their gym class had been banished to the wooden bleachers so the cheerleaders could practice for that Friday’s Back-To-School Pep Rally. The two girls tucked themselves into a far corner on the top row, and Sharon finally lit up.

Coach Rice, who had taken attendance at the beginning of class, had stepped in to assist Coach Calhoun with cheer practice.

Katya and Sharon were fortunate enough to have an unobstructed view of the girls shamelessly throwing themselves at the older man. The majority of the bimbettes were faces she expected: Detox, Roxy, Willam, Courtney, Adore, and Laganja. What she wasn’t expecting, however, was for one Violet Chachki to be the leader of the pack. Stratford’s mean queen never sought out attention, let alone fought for it. Miss Chachki was a one of a kind collectible, and the entire student body knew it. You either wanted her or wanted to be her.

Today, it seemed her flavor of choice was Santino Rice.

Katya udged Sharon with her elbow. “What do you make of that?” She consulted the other girl.

Sharon took a moment to complete her assessment. “I bet a girl that tightly wound is a real screamer in bed,” she answered smoothly. Katya had not been expecting any response of the sort and physically toppled over as she was seized by laughter. Katya’s wheezing drew the attention of those nearby, and Sharon had to hold her cigarette in her mouth so she could flip them off with both hands. They could mind their own fucking business.

Katya was still clinging onto Sharon’s thigh when her fit died down. “You bitch!” She shrieked.

“I’m not wrong,” Sharon defended, taking another long drag from her cigarette. “Ten bucks says she’s hitting on him right now.” In her best Valley Girl impression she crooned, “Oh, Coach Rice, can you help me with my form?”

Katya wasted no time in contributing to the impression. “Can we go to Red Lobster?” The blonde begged in her best Violet-esque bedroom voice.

The absurdity of the request and the thought of Violet, herself, saying those words caused Sharon to half cackle and half choke on her own smoke. Her throaty laugh bounced off of the walls, and this time, it wasn’t just a few pairs of eyes that turned to them.

Uh oh, Katya cringed, busted.

“Sharon Needles, put that shit out and march your ass on over to Assistant Principal Visage’s office!” Coach Rice demanded.

Katya facepalmed hard. What is wrong with you, you stupid whore? She groaned. It’s your fault she’s in deep shit, and she’s never going to speak to you again. The blonde was about to lose herself in an abyss of despair when Sharon’s voice filled the room again.

“Oh no!” Sharon drawled, “Whatever shall I do?” Katya had brought her head up to witness the spectacle and was met with Sharon’s shit-eating grin.

Katya raised her fist in solidarity, referencing Sharon’s anti-establishment words in the locker room. Her spooky new friend shot her a cheeky wink before saluting her corporate whistleblower and unhurriedly leaving the building.

Katya’s eyes left Sharon’s retreating form just in time to catch Violet glaring at her.

The blonde did her best not to worry. It wasn’t like Violet could have known they were talking about her, right?

The bell rang at 3:00, and Katya still hadn’t managed to put the captain of the cheer squad out of her mind. She spent her entire 8th period dodging Bianca’s questions and pleading for some all-knowing entity to tell her just where in life she had gone wrong. Definitely new year, same bullshit. Katya had attempted to begin her junior year with a more optimistic attitude, but after a first day for the history books, she was ready to call it quits.

You win, Stratford, you win. I am but a shell of a man. Woe is the poor soul who dare enter thee, Katya scowled.

The rest of Katya’s will to live vanished when she finally reached her trusty blue Beetle in the junior lot.

“Mother, I am want to commit death,” she muttered.

The cherry red convertible parked next to Katya’s car belonged to none other than Violet Chachki. The bright red exterior was blinding under the afternoon sun, and Katya had to squint to make out faces. A swarm of girls in uniform short skirts and halter tops formed a green and white sea around her only means of escape. Not wanting to engage with Violet for a third time that day, the blonde chose to turn on her heels and pop a squat on the curb.

It was going to be a long year.

[princess-cordelias-writingblog]

So Far Away -Five. (Nolan xReader)

A/N: This is the second time i try to post this things eye- 

Anyway, in case you couldn’t tell I messed up the timeline and let’s just pretend Nolan found out about Liam’s ability in a different way okay? k’, you’ll know what I’m talking about when u see it lmaoo also, I won’t follown the plot of the show exactly as it went partly cause I don’t remember well and I don’t have the time to rewatch it all, still I hope you like it tho! 

P.S. Also, what do you guys think about doing blurb nights? or drabbles? I just want to interact with you more ^-^ they’d be about all the fandoms I have on my bio obvsly, not only teen wolf lol let me know what you think! :D -Danny

Words: 1,745

Warnings: bad writing my dudes. Also a bit of blood.

Pt.4

missing you is a slow burn Every time the earth turns I'm reminded that night is only half the time

The next week went by slowly, from one class to another Y/N was forced to stand there and have nothing but a glance from Nolan every time he walked past. He wasn’t his old self anymore, dry and rough he was nothing but a shadow that followed those boys around. 

One day she decided to pay him a visit, he said they weren’t dating anymore but he never mentioned anything about not being friends and the girl was holding onto that little gap, hoping it wasn’t a bad moment Y/N knocked on his door but no one answered. She knocked a few more times still with no reply. Disappointed she turned around and walked towards the street when a noise on the second floor caught her attention.

Nolan was there, looking directly to Y/N. He wasn’t exactly intimidating, but what scared her was that she couldn’t read his expression.

“What’s wrong, Y/N?” He asked without moving.

“I-I just wanted to talk,” She rubbed her hands to get away from the cold, it was almost night time and she’d brought nothing but a thin blouse and a pair of jeans, naively trusting he’d let her in, “Can I come in?”

“I’m... I have homework,” He replied, and just then Y/N saw something close to worry.

“Me too,” She smiled shyly, “maybe we can finish all faster together?”

“I don’t think is a good idea Y/N, I don’t wanna get distracted but... t-thanks, see you,” Without waiting for a reply, Nolan stepped back and closed his window, Y/N didn’t even get the chance to wish him a good night.

Walking back to her car it felt like a bizarre walk of shame, and Y/N wasn’t exactly the type to give up to things she cared about just like that; in her mind a plan was already forming, she had nothing to lose at that point, and her friends could say she was overreacting and that she should let him go and move on. If it had been any other guy, maybe she’d have agreed with them, but this was Nolan, the same boy she convinced to join the lacrosse team. The same team that helped him beat up innocent kids like Liam and she had to do something about it.

She drove through the streets still distracted by her own thoughts, the town was quiet that night and it was lacking the usual traffic, not that she minded, all she wanted after her disappointing evening was a warm shower and her bed. Maybe snacks. And binge-watch romantic movies so she could finally sink in the miserable feeling around her chest.Y/N drove in silence until Muse ave came into view, a few cars were parked in the middle in the street and people stood around curiously. Assuming it was a car accident, Y/N slowed down, from her side she was the only car, so she could see the scene in front of her. What she saw would change her life forever.

Two bodies covered in blood were laying on the ground, standing in front of them, there was a person. Or at least it looked like one for the most part, it had to legs and two arms, though those arms ended in big, ugly hands with massive claws, and the face was covered in thick hair and his eyes had a golden, savage glow. Not to mention the gigantic fangs coming out of the mouth. 

She had to be dreaming. She was totally dreaming, right? There’s no way that was actually happening, there in front of her. A... a big dog-person growling in the middle of the street.

Then the person turned around and he recognized him. Liam.

“Oh my god,” She gasped, her voice muffled by the hand that went up to cover her mouth in shock.

Nolan’s voice came back to her, almost as if he knew what she was looking at right on that moment.

“You have no idea of what he is, what he is capable of!”

She sees it now, in all his scary glory she sees what Liam is and she wants to lock herself in the nuthouse just for thinking about it. Liam’s a werewolf.

The thing is, even now that she sees his true form, for her Liam still looks... like a scared boy. She can see it on his body language, the way he’s ready to attack but not because he wants to, it’s because he’ll do it if he feels like he needs to.

And what about the bodies? They aren’t mangled, their clothes are okay and the blood is coming from their heads, like someone hit them hard. 

Like a car just ran them over.

She finds it quickly, the blood all over the front of the car of that man. And he’s fine, he doesn’t look scared, in his eyes, Y/N sees a sickening warmth, like he’s pleased with his actions.

Hidden in the boy’s chest she sees it: the girl’s hand. Although is not a normal hand, it has claws. What did they do to be killed in such a cold manner? They were kids. Couldn’t be older than her and Nolan. And still this man decided to finish them off simply cause they were different. 

Granted, it was a terrifying look, a scary kind of different. But she had talked to Liam before, she saw him getting beaten up for the exact reason this man killed his friends and Liam never tried to fight back, for all she knew, they were the real victims.

It was then that even against her better judgement and all that scary movies ever taught her about monsters that she made a decision. 

“Liam!” Almost as if things weren’t weird enough, Scott McCall appeared followed by a girl she remembered as Malia from school. She didn’t know from where did they come from but it didn’t matter, apparently, they knew about Liam’s condition cause they walked straight towards him and surrounded him so no one could see his face. Unfortunately, they were now trapped inside the circle of curious people, and Scott looked around, they had nowhere to go. Or so they thought.

“Scott,” Y/N got out of her car and spoke loud enough to get the young man’s attention, “hey, McCall!”

He found her in the middle of the mess and his eyes went wide, surely thinking she was about to freak out and attack them. “Y/N, I’m sorry-”

“Get in the car,” she cut him out, very aware of the looks people were giving her.

“You’re not gonna let them get inside your car with that... thing, going with you, right?” A woman asked from her left.

“I’m sorry, but last time I checked that ‘thing’ was a human being and the people with him were too”

“They’re monsters!” The man in front of her, the same that had killed the other two spoke up, “they’ll kill us at the first chance”

“You’re crazy,” Y/n replied in disgust, “can’t you see what you did? You killed them! They were kids!”

“Monsters!” Repeated the stranger, and the crowd joined, screaming threats to Liam, who was still covered by Scott’s body.

“Scott, I won’t repeat myself” She insisted harshly, opening the back door of her car and stepping aside so Scott could put him in.

“Thank you,” He sighed, and the three of them quickly got into the car and shared no words while Y/N heard a woman next to her calling an ambulance for the other kids that laid inert on the ground.

Y/N went back to the car and turned on the engine once more. She didn’t look back until she left the busy street, and even then a few minutes went by before she realized she had no idea where she was going.

“D-do you want me to drop you all off at your place?” She asked Scott, her voice now a lot shakier than before.

“No, take us to Liam’s”

“Alright,” She replied, still shaking, “Can someone tell me where’s that?”

Scott proceeded to give her directions until the house came into view, she parked right outside the house and watched as Liam and Malia got out of the back.

Liam glanced at her with fear, and she wanted to let him know that it was okay, that she didn’t judge him or that she wasn’t afraid. But it was a blatant lie. She was scared shitless and she had no words for what was going on. Y/N was in for big, big trouble.

“You can go home now,” Scott told her once his friends were away, waiting for him at the doorstep.

“You don’t need a ride home?” She inquired, trying to sound as calm as possible, “I mean, a bunch of people just saw you walking out next to... him, you could be in danger”

“Believe me, I’m used to it by now,” He gave her a sad smile.

“I insist”

“Why?” Scott eyed her up and down, a frown now appearing on his face, “you saw what happened there, right? How come you’re not screaming and running for your life”

“Because, like you said, I saw what happened. And they didn’t have the fault. Liam isn’t dangerous”

Scott nodded, She saw his train of thoughts going for a few seconds before he spoke up again.

“Fine, give us five minutes and you can drop us at my place”

“Okay,” Y/N sighed, finally letting go of the steering wheel, not even conscious that she was holding to it like her life depended on it. “I’ll be here”

“And Y/N?” He added once he was out, bending a little so he could see her through the window, “thank you for helping”

“Scott?” She didn’t want to ask the next question, but she had to, if she wanted to save Nolan, she had to know everything, “the reason why Nolan and those guys were beating Liam up that other day... was it because they knew what he was?”

He hesitated for a moment but after sharing one look, he couldn’t lie.

“We think so,” And with that he walked towards Liam and Malia, leaving Y/N with a pit in her chest.

If she didn’t stop him before things went too far, Nolan was going to make some huge mistakes.

_______________________________________

Taglist: @all-alone-he-turns-to-stone @im-planning-something-look

[elizabethrobertajones]

you ever think about how they hired twins to play the triplets that dean and crowley have sex with. I feel like that right there is proof that they're not queerbaiting, because no one could possibly be baited by that because 99 percent of everyone didn't even notice it. They just put it in there cause dean's bi and they write him as bi.

It’s funny, for whatever reason I was thinking last night about how my own personal definition of the way the show may or may not queerbait has changed over the seasons, and it’s not just to do with personal growth but the way the show is written and the way they are handling things. 

My impression of how it all felt in the start of season 10 was utter disbelief that they were so on the nose about Dean and Crowley, and I know not everyone wants to/does think that they hooked up, but there’s some stuff the show pushed there that in some ways it would have no other excuse to do and I went cold on Drowley several times after feeling like the handling was sweeping it under the rug, writing it off as villainous queerness or other ways to distance Dean from it like suggesting he wasn’t in control or roofied by being a demon, that thankfully at least was not how Crowley died on the show, with 12x15 giving us the last example of how that dynamic had matured, and it WAS matured, and at least in terms of respecting that Dean n Crowley had once eloped, was about as good as it could get. And I think owning that the dynamic wasn’t a sense of that time being abusive was important given how much Dean and Crowley interacted and behaved towards each other AFTER, as well as exactly how we were supposed to read whether Dean should feel violated or smug or nostalgic about it all (and he did flash between them depending on the season or episode in the time after). But at the start of season 10 this whole journey was really only just beginning. 

Obviously people had written about the queercoding and Crowley’s seduction before then, but in very careful metaphorical terms, and as much as it was suggestive in season 9, the fact is that without season 10 it could easily remain a metaphorical ~seduction to evil~ where this was written in terms of romantic seduction - except for where it was fatherly or brotherly - but 10x01 smashed that and made it really really clear that you could read that Dean and Crowley had been hooking up, even independent of the twins/triplets subtext. Specifically when Crowley is annoyed Dean and Ann-Marie hooked up in his bed, and Ann-Marie tells him and Dean to get a room, and he’s like, we had one. Of course you can pretend that not everything Crowley says is innuendo (and room = specifically the bed), but that exchange had a lot of jealousy and a lot about his and Dean’s *personal* relationship, as much as the other stuff was about the more wild stuff they shared with others while howling at the moon. Which was part of the longer term emotional game Crowley was playing about their business relationship and Dean being his scary consort and them sort of going exclusive >.> 

And in that context, Crowley mentions they’d done some memorable stuff to triplets together, and on rewatching you catch they’re hanging out with twins in the bar before that, but the wider context was this absolute explosion of queer subtext and borderline text and a dynamic that needed concentrated work to not come to the conclusion they’d been fucking all summer, with and without buddies of whatever gender with them. Focusing on the male twins in the background as a hint that Dean had had sex with men is ignoring where Crowley directly implies they’d been hooking up and now he wanted to go exclusive with Dean as the hugest neon sign that, yes, Dean has been having sex with at least one man, regardless of the gender of the triplets. Like, I know people were like hurr blurr the triplets could have been women, #no homo, sometimes men sleep with triplets together like bros. Which traps us into hyperfocusing on what the triplets were and using them as the definitive proof, when in fact the reason triplets were being banged in the first place was because Dean and Crowley were banging all the time everywhere up and down seedy bars in America, and Dean didn’t want the good times to end, while Crowley wanted the d all for himself now pls. 

And considering that’s the thing under the paper thin surface that you can remotely pretend that Dean only slept with women and he and Crowley were just hanging out the entire time, regardless of no matter how much more subtext the show piled on later, less close to the surface but with more confidence that everyone knew Dean had banged Crowley and the only way any of this worked any more was that that had happened, even just when we only had 10x01 to work with, the whole Dean n Crowley thing was so enormous that you can’t just speculate on what the twins were to approach to what degree was this queerbaiting or not. The twins are a detail that you can pick up on and speculate on if you look deeper, as they know we sometimes do. I’m not saying they’re NOT an aspect of this, but they’re a relatively buried easter egg of subtext compared to, say, Crowley sobbing over his flickr albums in the next episode :P

To what degree Drowley was queerbaiting is the real question, and since Crowley is now consigned to the show’s history books, we have the full story in a way. In the context of what we have now, I don’t think overall, all comments included, the show ever pretended, even when distancing Dean from it, even when painting it as abusive or Dean having diminished responsibility, that Dean and Crowley did *not* bang. I think there are multiple comments which as long as you are permissive that Dean would have could have probably did, that in seasons 11 and 12 pretty clearly indicate a memory of having slept together one point or another, especially 11x23 and 12x15 with overt references to sexual things from Crowley to Dean, or 11x07 and the implication that over a year later Dean still has Crowley’s answerphone messages from howling at the moon, and knows and remembers details of his personal life fondly. (I don’t think that’s the only time Bobo wrote them like that but that’s the one that springs to mind :P)

Buuut they never showed them on screen in such a way that could be seen from the moon as them together, like actually showing them IN a sexual relationship while Dean was a demon, or having Dean confirm Crowley’s innuendo with more than the usual reactions where he gets plausible deniability to any gay stuff going on. And SOME of that I think MAY be to do with the problems with the villainous queerness slant, and the way it was at times framed as abusive/Dean lacking control. Because they would not commit to exploring the aftermath of that relationship SERIOUSLY, i.e. making it clear they had slept together when Dean was a demon, and him on-screen dealing with how that made him feel and how he felt about Crowley, and even, god forbid, his own sexuality, the best they could do to resolve it was to establish eventually a sort of civil exes dynamic, both aware of their history, but not harping on it, even if Crowley remained somewhat to entirely besotted by Dean for the rest of his time on the show. The lack of handling it seriously means it stays as a somewhat jokey subtext later on, and they can play it off as no harm no foul by the end of season 11 and through season 12. 

I think in that vein it also eventually contributed to Crowley being sidelined and eventual downfall, because he was trapped in the subtext of being Dean’s ex and all the enormous complications that made between them and for his personal life, again without being able to explore it or leave a lasting, openly discussed impact on him. He no longer directly antagonised them, but he couldn’t cross any lines which made him human or part of the team for more than passing moments because the longer he was around Dean the more awkward it got and the more it would beg them to explore what, exactly, were Dean and Crowley now, and the obvious issues that would have/could have arisen if we discussed this like adults and we were allowed to just textually state in a frank and open way that Dean had been seduced by Crowley that one time. 

And I think in terms of where that puts us, it means that Drowley was very much a stifled relationship, officially over and no chance of getting it back, which in some ways is as large as or larger then Destiel in the weight it puts on the show when it comes to answering queerbaiting charges, because it could never be addressed openly while Crowley was alive, still ISN’T acknowledged, and Dean is as closeted as he was before, despite in his actual living human memory, knowing what it’s like to bang Crowley on the side for 3 months of his life with no direct personal growth (that is: now banging Cas, happily, or even banging other random guys, no angst, just for fun hook ups, equivalent to the textual times he picks up women) to show for this wild college experimentation metaphor phase of his life. 

At this point you really can only change the final judgement on it by making Dean canonically bi and then giving him the character growth, acknowledging the role Crowley had played in it, and allowing him to live what had just been subtext as a textual part of his character. In all other respects, I think the fact that Dean subtextually has hooked up with Crowley, and presumably other men probably other than the male implied triplets we saw on screen as well, but it’s relegated to this one particular part of his story and locked up in the subtext box, is going to look absolutely like one of the show’s worst sins of queerbaiting if we get to the end and that box is never opened again. And not to say it all looks rosy while we wait until the hypothetical what if of textualising Dean’s bisexuality and trying to live a positive life of hoping that will happen. As it stands, the handling in the text is depressing, and speaks of how far the show will currently allow any queer relationship for Dean to go. Meaning a worst case scenario is that his borderline subtextual marriage to Cas may never move beyond a similar point if this remains the high water mark of the show’s willingness to show Dean in a genuine, sexual relationship with a man. And that’s something you have to at least think about, in terms of how it looks now, and how it might look one day, no matter how positive you are about the endgame of the show, when it comes to being realistic about the show’s queerbaiting, or at least perceived queerbaiting if you don’t believe they are. That’s what other people are seeing, both with Drowley and Destiel. 

I mean, that deleted scene in 10x14 says it best: Cas and Crowley trapped together, frustrated and living in angry despair in their competition over Dean, where he is busy not picking either of them, while they vie for his attention and consider each other his boyfriend in all but name, and yet he will not commit to either of them in the way they desire. And this is the same frustrated wall that Cas is still stuck bouncing up against, even when his romantic rival is *utterly* vanquished and removed from the narrative, and hadn’t even really been competing for Dean for like 2 seasons before that.

[aggievoices]

The Joy Fergoda Library: Bringing the Margins to the Center

Emma Hoppough

Photos by Rafael Velasco

When I was in high school, my mom would wave me out of the car on rainy mornings with a reminder: “Please just go to the library before class!” Instead, I would roll my eyes and meet my friends in the stuffy gym locker room—a place where we could theoretically goof off, but where we usually just complained about the weather before trudging to first period. I can’t explain my past aversion to the library—I always loved books, and English was my favorite class—but something about it, about the eagle-eyed librarians and the textbook-focused collection, never drew me in.

Fast-forward to 2017, when I stepped timidly into the Joy Fergoda Library in the UC Davis Women’s Resources and Research Center (WRRC): immediately, I spotted cushioned chairs, tea and coffee, and studious-looking undergrads dotting the cozy space. Looking more closely, I realized that it was not a typical library at all. The shelves were filled with books written by women authors, and with topics ranging ranging from ecofeminism to Native American mythology. The counter held pamphlets on self-care, and the hallway outside displayed a poster about gender-neutral pronouns. This was a library I felt comfortable in.

Although the library occupies just one room in North Hall, it feature an increasingly large collection and an impressive history. Named for the WRRC’s first full-time librarian, the Joy Fergoda library opened in the 1970s with only 150 books on the shelves. Nearly 50 years later, that collection has grown to hold over 12,000 books, films and more; meanwhile, its mission has similarly expanded to focus on student self-care, intersectional feminism and judgement-free learning. But how can such a small space meet these ambitious goals?

To learn more about the library, I spoke with three people who know it best: Mary Rasooli, the first-ever student library coordinator and a recent UC Davis graduate; Lulu Zhang, the library’s Volunteer of the Year and a graduating US History major; and Jessica Castellon, the assistant director of education for the WRRC. Our conversations showed me that the Joy Fergoda Library’s small-scale collection does not limit its impact, but instead enables it to address large-scale issues one Dewey Decimal number at a time.

Q: IN YOUR OWN WORDS, WHAT IS THE GOAL OF THE JOY FERGODA LIBRARY?

Mary: I think this is a different type of library...Here you can find so much on queer theory, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity—all these things that affect all of us, that we don't necessarily have access to or that we might not be comfortable going in spaces [to request information about].

Lulu: While students are spending their time here, they get to learn more about gender equity. Even in the restrooms—we have two gender-inclusive restrooms to expose students to the idea that you can challenge the gender binary norms. On the back of the door on each stall, right now, there are two statements: “You are valid,” and “I love you.”

Q: BUT WHY SEPARATE THIS COLLECTION FROM THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY? HOW DOES THE SPACE—THE WRRC—AFFECT HOW STUDENTS INTERACT WITH THESE BOOKS?

Jessica: When it’s a larger collection, it’s easier to get lost. We have some autonomy and agency to pick what goes in our library...For example, we have zines, comic books, poetry books. Sometimes these things aren’t seen as scholarly, but we feel like they are scholarly because it’s knowledge, so we’re bringing the margins to the center.

Mary: We look at what [artists, writers or poets] have released and published recently, and pick and choose what fits for our center. For us, it’s really anything; we want to be able to represent an array of subjects. For the most part a lot of the books we have here, Shields [the university library] doesn’t have. It’s just really new stuff.

Q: GIVEN THAT THE LIBRARY IS PART OF A “RESOURCES AND RESEARCH” CENTER, WHAT RESOURCES DOES IT PROVIDE FOR STUDENTS?

Jessica: We have multiple material resources in the library: coffee and tea, printing services, a charging station, blue books for finals and midterms, a GRE loan program for folks to check out study materials and a reserve library for classes.

Lulu: There are lots of flyers, pamphlets and resources for people of different needs. We don’t just provide people with information on birth control, we also provide them with [information on] how to help yourself and your friends during a crisis: how to fight depression, accidental pregnancy, stalking behavior and more...It’s pretty radical, now that I’m telling you about it.

Q: ARE THERE LIBRARY-SPECIFIC PROGRAMS AS WELL?

Mary: We run the Feminist Dialogues speaker series [a collaboration with the Feminist Research Institute]. We want folks to have access to these individuals who have gotten through academia or maybe aren’t doing stuff in academia but are impacting the way we produce knowledge in some other way...We had someone [participate in the series] who had their PhD in different forms of parenting and mothering, so she gave us a really cool talk about her research. It was a way for people to meet someone who had graduated but was also still doing work in academia—and really cool radical work.

Lulu: The library also has a program called STEM Cafe. It provides free tutoring for people—especially women—in STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics]. Twice a month we have a set date and location; you just come in with your questions.

Q: SO WHO CAN USE THE LIBRARY? WHO CAN COME INTO THE WRRC?

Jessica: So many people use our library. There are particular folks who feel safe in the space—I think queer and trans, femme folks do feel safe in this space to come in, eat their lunch, have dialogue. A lot of our volunteers for STEM cafe are men—but I think they come with the understanding that we’re doing this with a feminist perspective

Lulu: Some male students told me that because it’s called the “women’s” center they thought it was for women exclusively, which is not right...Anyone can come, no matter your identities.

Q: ARE YOU HOPING TO SEE ANY CHANGES IN THE NEXT YEAR?

Mary: I want to see more engagement with students in the library. Students come here for our tea, our coffee, our quiet spaces and printing resources, but I would like to see us do more long-term programming, like ways to engage people with the amazing literature that we have and all the cool stuff we’ve been ordering for the library.

Q: LASTLY, DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE BOOK FROM THE COLLECTION?

Mary: I like Salt, by Nayyirah Waheed. Her poetry is incredible. It’s pretty new, and she’s just someone we wanted to support because she’s amazing.

Jessica: I love the children’s books; I think what’s unique about our library is that we have children’s books that focus on race and class and gender. I love the one called [Morris Micklewhite and] the Tangerine Dress: it’s about a child, assigned “boy” at birth, who plays with gender identity. People, especially first-time parents, are trying to teach their kids these concepts.

Lulu: 100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century—it’s a brief overview of influential women...I remember reading about a Chinese revolutionary woman who I didn’t read much about before I came here. It’s kind of like, if you have a four-year college degree, you should know these women; otherwise, how could you claim that you went through college?

You can find the Joy Fergoda Library, part of the Women’s Resources and Research Center, in the first floor of North Hall at UC Davis. To learn more about the library and the WRRC, check out these links:

Joy Fergoda Library database

WRRC website

WRRC Facebook page (for events & scholarship news)

Emma Hoppough is a recent UC Davis alumna. When she’s not writing or painting, she’s probably planning a picnic or rewatching episodes of The Office. 

[avatarmerida]

Bug of the Ball

Summary: Paris is throwing a gala and everyone who’s anyone is set to attend. Rumor is both Chat Noir and Adrien Agreste will be there, but isn’t it weird how they’re never in the same place at the same time? Alya sneaks in and makes an unexpected friend. And why is Ladybug acting so weird? 

 Chapter 2 (Previous chapter) 

“So if the bakery girl made you a mask then why am I here?” groaned a rather annoyed Plagg. “You don’t have to be transformed at this fancy smancy thing.”

“You never know when an akuma might strike,” replied Adrien, straightening his bow tie in the mirror. “Besides, you’re gonna love it. There’s always a huge buffet at these events and as long as you stay out of sight, you can eat as much as you want.”

The little kwami perked up. “Will there be camembert?”

“More camembert than even you can eat.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Whatever you say,” he chuckled, stepping back to view himself fully in the bathroom mirror. “Now how do I look?”

“Mhm I don’t know the same I guess?” replied Plagg, utterly uninterested.

“Come On Plagg, seriously! This a big night and I want to make sure-.”

“Adrien?” came a voice outside the door, gently knocking.

“Natalie!” exclaimed Adrien, quickly removing his mask and ears, lest she try and walk in. “Um... wh-what’s up?”

“I just wanted to make sure you were on schedule,” she replied. “I dry cleaned the suit your father designed for you and laid it out on your bed. The stylist should be by to do your hair in a few minutes, did you want to ride in the limo with your father or have the driver drop you off after?”

“Um actually Natalie, I’m not feeling too well,” he fake groaned, adding a cough for emphasis. “I think it’d be better if I stayed home.”

“Oh, absolutely not,” she said without a hint of sympathy. “This a huge night in fashion so it is a huge night for you. If you’re not there your father will have my head.”

“But-.”

“No more discussion. I’ll send the driver to pharmacy for medicine to get you through the evening. You need to be photographed a minimum of 60 times in the suit to help launch your father’s fall designs. I’ll see you downstairs.”

“Hmm.” chuckled Plagg. “Looks like both Adrien and Chat Noir are expected at the gala tonight. What’s the plan then, Mr. Smooth?

Adrien sighed, having completely forgotten that he was supposed to go tonight as, well, himself. “Just smile for the cameras Plagg, as always.”

“Oh where is that darn cat?” Marinette grumbled, glaring at the clock atop City Hall. It wasn’t like him to be late for something like this and she couldn’t stay hidden from the press much longer. “I swear, if he doesn’t get here soon I’ll-”

“Smother him with affection?” offered a suave voice as Chat snuck up behind her. “Sorry to keep you waiting, my lady. But I put the ‘fashionably’ in fashionably late, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Well I suppose I can’t argue with you there,” she replied smugly. “But the suit is doing most of the work there.”

“Well, Marinette is very talented,” he declared, standing extra tall to show it off. “But I must admit, I am truly to be outshone tonight bugaboo. You are a vision in crimson.”

She blushed in spite of herself, her face matching her dress. “Well, like you said she is very talented. You don’t think it’s too much?”

He offered her his arm which she gladly accepted. “Not in the slightest. I dare say, Paris had no right to be called ‘the city of lights’ until this very moment.”

She offered him a gentle laugh as they made their way to the entrance. “None of your little jokes tonight, Chaton. This is a very important night and since we look our best we must also be on our best behavior.”

“Of course, anything for you my lady. But, you know, these events often have dancing, and I thought maybe.”

“Oh, kitty,” she sighed. “I’m afraid i’m not really much of a dancer. Besides, we won’t have anytime. There’s so many people to meet, interviews to give, not to mention the photo ops. And what if there’s an akuma?”

“Alright, alright fair enough. How about just one dance then? Save the last dance for me, maybe?”

Something about the way his eyes widened got the best of her. Surely the evening would be so hectic he’d agree there was no time. And if there was, one dance couldn’t hurt, right? “Fine. I’ll save the last dance for you. I promise.”

“It’ll be the highlight of my evening,” assured Chat as they reached the doors where countless press armed with cameras and tape recorders awaited. “Shall we?”

Before she could answer, they were spotted and were immediately swarmed by a hoard of flashing cameras and questions. Ladybug tightened her grip on Chat’s arm and gave the mob a wide smile. “Yes, yes hello everyone! We’re so excited to be here and we’d be happy to answer any questions inside.” She hastily lead a waving  Chat Noir away and into the safety of City Hall where more press awaited. 

“Chat Noir! Ladybug! Who are you wearing?”

“These are Marinette Dupain-Cheng originals, the next big designer in Paris!” swooned Chat Noir before his partner finally managed to pull him all the way inside. She felt her face begin to flush again and was glad to be away from the cameras, lest the image grace every magazine cover the next morning.

“Yes! Got it!” exclaimed Alya victoriously, having been the one who asked the question. “Marinette is gonna freak out! That girl owes me an interview. A LadyBlog exclusive with the hero’s personal fashion designer.  No way that won’t blow up!”  

She rewatched her captured masterpiece as she entered the line with the rest of the press waiting to enter. But to her surprise, just as she was about to enter she was blocked by a very large security guard. “Do you have an invitation?”

“Invitation?” she repeated, offended. “Um, I run the LadyBlog, maybe you’ve heard of it?”

“The only thing I use the internet for are fondue recipes and online shopping. Either you have an invitation or you’re not getting in.”

“Okay, clearly there’s been some misunderstanding,” she tried again. “Look, I’m the biggest Ladybug and Chat Noir blog there is, I have over 100,000 loyal followers all over the world. I’ve been on television, do you watch television?”

“I like shows with talking dogs.”

“Anyway,” she continued. “This is a big night for Chat Noir and Ladybug, ergo it’s a big night for me. By not letting me in there, you’re letting down over 100,000 people big guy. How does that make you feel?”

“Next to nothing.”

“Okay,” she sighed, heavily. “Just let me speak with Ladybug, she’ll sort this all out. She knows me, that’s better than an invitation, right?”

“Yeah. But I need an invitation, not a letter of recommendation.”

“Grr! Okay look pal! My best friend designed the dress Ladybug is wearing! I have all the connections to be at this event. I need to get in there.”

“What you need, little miss, is an invitation.”

Frustrated, Alya stomped her foot and stormed back into the crowd waiting to enter. Phone in hand, she dialed Marinette’s number, hoping maybe she had received an invite in exchange for her designs. Her call went straight to voicemail, much to her dismay. She tried Adrien, knowing he was also set to make an appearance, but the result was the same. Frustrated, she racked her brain for another way to gain access. 

Making sure she wasn’t seen, she quickly made her way to the alley until she found the door to the kitchen. She ducked next to the dumpster, awaiting just the right moment to sneak in through the door. She worried little about being turned away once inside, she just needed to find a fan willing to help her. But just when she thought she found the perfect opportunity to make her entrance, the trash can beside her began to rattle.

She covered her mouth to muffle her scream, and swiftly rose to her feet. Against her better judgement, she decided to try and catch a glimpse of what had startled her. In this desperate time, this could serve as the perfect distraction to help her gain access inside. Slowly, she reached for the can’s lid and prepared to lift it, making note of which direction to run should the creature be larger than expected. 

She took a deep breath and quickly removed the lid, leaping backwards dramatically. Shockingly, nothing happened. Alya bit her lip and moved closer, using the lid as a makeshift shield if need be and gave the can a forceful kick, knocking it over. 

 “Ow!” came a small voice amongst the can’s contents. “What’s a guy gotta do to enjoy some camembert in peace?”

[may-shepard]

surviving (and maybe even thriving) in the sherlock fandom after s4

...OR, maybe even kind of sort of learning how to enjoy oneself again while being a johnlocker.

This is a post for people who are on the fence / still turned off by s4 / still struggling with how to frame it for themselves. 

In light of the upcoming fic writers’ retreat, in anticipation of (I hope) having a conversation or two about this very topic, and in partial response to comments that my good fandom friends have dropped recently about their struggles with feeling like they don’t want to engage with the show or the fandom after s4, I’ve been thinking about how to continue on as a johnlocker, and why I feel more motivated than ever to find a way to have a relationship with the show (albeit a substantially altered one than before), and what fandom engagement means to me. 

It probably doesn’t look like it, because I’ve participated full throttle in all kinds of conversations about the show since s4, but I do get why s4 was entirely offputting for a lot of people. While I strongly suspect that mofftiss are doing something interesting and unusual with s4, that whatever-it-is came at a heavy price: a series that looks like a hot fucking mess and actively does things that one should never do (i.e., constantly throwing into question the reality status of the story one is telling) if one wants to avoid frustrating the shit out of one’s audience. 

What’s worse, the series was promoted with a promise of FINALLY answering the question of who Sherlock loves, without delivering on that promise in a way that was in any way definitive (John? Molly? Irene? Chips?) or satisfying (JOHN???). We got a scene that was really close to the kind of thing we’ve always wanted to see, at the end of The Lying Detective, an episode that also brought us an interaction between John and Sherlock that was so awful, it singlehandedly ruined the show for a lot of people. 

Even though I love the shit out of talking about the puzzle of s4, I love it because I love how smart everyone in the fandom is, and how much I’ve learned about Doyle, and the many many intertexts the show engages with. I love how stunningly great people here are with teasing complex arguments out of this hot mess. 

I don’t love that we got this weird thing to figure out instead of actual story. I don’t love that for some reason a major plot point was John and Sherlock detonating their relationship even more profoundly than they had before. I still think that the more skillful thing to do would have been to make a puzzle for viewers to figure out, but make it actually enjoyable to watch. (Personally, I did enjoy TLD, but I’m a sucker for Nick Hurran’s direction, I thought Ben and Martin performed incredibly, and I have a high tolerance for creepy shit and violence, so.)

SO: WHAT TO DO?

I’ve been thinking about a few of the strategies I’ve put in place / fallen back on for approaching all of this. I don’t know if any of this is helpful but here it is, for what it’s worth.

Acknowledge that the showrunners are human people and human people make good choices and bad choices and questionable choices

Before s4 aired, I wrote about the fact that mofftiss had set up a highwire act with extraordinarily high stakes, as of the end of s3. This meant they could pull off an astounding feat of storytelling, or they could fall. Instead they sort of burned down the circus tent and re-encoded all the elephants...not what any of us were expecting. I mean, surprises in storytelling can be great, but this was like hey everyone, suddenly the show is going to be performed in Esperanto instead of English, have fun with that.

Questionable at best.

To sum up: good choices resulted in the following:

Ben and Martin in s1 and 2 creating this beautiful dynamic together, eyesex and all the subtext and a tragic love story with mistakes and denial and pining and hope. s3, which bumped up the subtext to the point of ridiculousness. And TAB, which doubled down on that subtext EVEN HARDER. The purple shirt of sex and the swishy coat of alone protects me and a stalwart and broken John who is finally strong enough to partner his Sherlock and enough sexual and romantic tension to drown the population of the earth planet and a Mary Morstan who is actually Moran and there’s always two of us and hey did I mention romance yet?

We got all that, and then we got--this s4 thing.

Let me tell you about writers (speaking as one). They shit the bed all the time. They make weird choices. They have strange ideas. They fail to stick the landing. When that happens, it’s their tragedy. It doesn’t have to be yours. 

Maybe this story isn’t done yet. I don’t think it is. I’m willing and able to reserve judgement, but this post is for those of you who aren’t, or can’t. 

You can still like the parts of the show that you liked before. You weren’t wrong for liking what worked for you before. You would not be wrong now, for still liking those bits. All the shitty choices the showrunners could make, did make, and might still make, do not make you wrong for liking the bits you liked.

You can still like the parts of the show that you liked before. 

Need permission for that? Here it is: BECAUSE MAY SHEPARD SAYS SO. I’ll make you a certificate if you want. 

Need more specific help? Here’s another idea:

Get selfish. Get really, really selfish.

Remember that you are here for you. You came here, probably, because thinking about John and Sherlock together is something you enjoyed. Back immediately after s4 aired, and I was still stuck firmly in the wtf zone, I had to have a talk with myself about this. 

I asked myself what I liked about the show. Why John and Sherlock, together, were so crunchy and beautiful to me. It came down to one thing: the fact that I read the show as a love story. 

I’m here for my own entertainment. This is my happy place. This is where I come when my regular writing is stuck or I want to try to hack out a new part of my skill set. I get a lot out of thinking about John and Sherlock, as characters.

I still read the show as a love story, and I will continue to do so.

That means, in light of s4, doing a lot more reading in to the little moments than I used to have to. It means cherry picking a lot harder. It means ignoring vast swaths of what we actually saw onscreen. (The fact that this is the current state of meta too helps a whole heck of a lot.) 

Playing the what if game a lot harder than I have previously has become the rule of the day. 

What if John and Sherlock are in love? They are. For me, they are, and they always will be. Will they be in canon? Get yourself to a place where this question doesn’t matter, where your personal happiness doesn’t hang on this. We’re several months on after s4. It’s time to give your head a shake and remember that John and Sherlock love each other and will always find their way back to each other, because we say so. 

If you don’t believe this, try because May Shepard says so. I’ll say it until you believe it, too: John and Sherlock are in love. The show is a love story.

I will read the show as a love story, regardless of whether it wants me to. Hey show, get ready for some sweet sweet interpretation. I hope you’re in the mood.

Still not convinced? Try this thought experiment:

Put Some Distance Between You and S4

So a few nights back I was chatting with @laughing-at-the-darkness​ (who is the best, go follow her immediately), and I jokingly said that what we need in this fandom is a reset, like the kind of perspective you can only get ten years after a television show has finished airing. 

Try this on for size:

The year is 2027. You’re looking for some good content to watch. You remember hearing, dimly, about the fact that, a while back, BBC made a Sherlock Holmes adaptation with some pretty famous actors. 

You read about it a bit first. Ah yes: the adaptation that everyone was raving about, but that did a weird thing in its fourth series. Bearing this in mind, you decide to watch. 

You’re charmed by series 1-3, and the one-off Victorian special. You decide to watch s4, bearing in mind what you know about it, that it seemed to go off the rails relative to everything that had come before. You watch, prepared to laugh along at Mary’s bullet tango and the way she just won’t seem to go away and Sherlock has a sister who is also an X-Man? What???? 

You watch it. You shrug. You carry on thinking that s1-3 and TAB are great, like you were prepared to do. 

We know what we know now: that s4 is a difficult part of canon, a stumbling block for a lot of us. If you can accept that, then you can move forward, liking the parts you like, and leaving the parts you don’t.

Moving On

I still personally have some questions about how to deal with s4 as a fic writer. There are so many potential interpretations--how does one go about sorting through the detritus? A lot of people don’t want to / can’t bring themselves to rewatch, so how much can I assume they do and don’t remember about the episodes? But these are mostly logistical issues, and solvable with some rational decision making. (I did start a fic a while back based on TST, but I wasn’t ready to finish it, and I don’t think people wanted that type of fix it in that particular moment.) s4 changed the stakes for a lot of people, so writing fic now is all about writing to a different emotional register, I think. I’m personally having fun with that, while sorting through the implications for the wips I started before s4 aired. I’m hoping we can talk about some of these issues, as writers, and as fans, but that’s a post for another day.

In any case, I’m here, John and Sherlock are in love, and I hope this is helpful in some way. I don’t want anyone to lose the thing that used to give them enjoyment, nor (on a more selfish note) do I want to see people still leaving the fandom if they don’t have to. 

[bitchfromtheseventhhell]

oh boy ok oh boy

a year late with starbucks, here i am with book-and-show sansa #discourse.  because i finally watched her stuff in s6 and while i don’t think i have anything #new to all y’all who watched her stuff in s6 as it was airing, i needed to process my thoughts about the entire seasons 5-6 conundrum so here they are.

some structural elements before i dive in:

i recently rewatched the entire series with my roommate who loves the show.  she keeps me honest about my thoughts regarding the show because she demands an internal cohesion of me that i tend to be more fluid with online.  in that spirit, i’m going to be looking at the characters equally.  book!sansa is book!sansa; show!sansa is show!sansa; neither will be written below as sansa.  the only instances where there won’t be a show!- or a book!- before any characters name is when that character does not exist in one of the two canons and thus i expect you to know which canon i’m talking about.

i will be discussing--specifically--the information that would cover affc-twow and beyond in book!verse, and the second half of s4-s6 in show!verse.  the emphasis will be predominantly on the show, though, with supplementary information from the books where it makes sense for what i’m talking about.  while there are still differences between both sansas in earlier books/seasons, i am considering that out of the scope of my thoughts for the sake of keeping my thoughts from going all over the fucking place which--you guessed it--they already are.

my reasons for this are also linked with narrative structure.  if you are assuming a structure for both media where you have an a-b-c structure, where a is the first chunk (agot-asos; s1-s4); b is the intermediary getting from a to c, and c is the #final countdown, you must look at b as a complete entity.  for a song of ice and fire--and specifically sansa’s case--it’s easy: she doesn’t appear in half of the b section (affc-adwd; though when twow comes out we may have to adjust this assumption of the b section, i think it’s a fair assumption to make now) since she does not have a pov chapter in adwd.  for game of thrones, it requires looking at s5 & s6 in tandem.  i honestly do not think it’s fair (in either direction) to judge s5 without looking at s6, and i do not think it’s fair to judge s6 without looking at s5.  they comprise the same narrative chunk.

i wear my biases on my sleeve: i think that s5 was a revelation in terms of the showrunners really being complete fools when it comes to confronting major adaptational challenges that they were facing.  while i do not--and honestly have never--expected perfection from them in terms of a perfect page-to-screen adaptation, this season to me was a sign to me that they were not equal to the task facing them. this is not to say that martin is: the jury will be out until we have twow and possibly ados in hand.

to me (and this does not mean you have to share this opinion), a good adaptation is not whether or not characters’ lines are reflective of the book, it’s whether the grander theme of the adaptation matches the original’s.  it’s a metric i use for all book-to-film adaptations, be it the lord of the rings, the handmaid’s tale, harry potter, american gods, the various pride and prejudice adaptations, and whatever else the film industry throws at us next.  this is an unfortunate metric for game of thrones, however, because the showrunners hamstrung themselves fast on that front, and it’s something that they even admitted to when saying “Themes are for eighth-grade book reports.” [source]

thinking something is a (not-)well-done adaptation and thinking something is a (not-)well-done show are two completely different things in my mind.  i don’t necessarily think that the harry potter movies are good adaptations; i think they’re decent movies--and the later ones are even full-on good.  in the case of show!sansa and the storyline constructed for her, and looking at them not as an adaptation but as a creation, here is what i will be considering

does the character make internally consistent choices?

are the choices the character makes substantiated by their experience?

how does the character fit in with the larger story?

lastly, this is a critique of seasons 4-5-6 of game of thrones.  i understand completely that there are folks out there who prefer game of thrones to a song of ice and fire; i know there are folks who prefer a song of ice and fire to game of thrones (i am one of this latter crew).  this is not meant to be a value-judgement on what you find enjoyable.  you do you.  i’ll continue to do me, and i do have major criticisms of various narrative arcs and setups in the books, though, due to the differences between the two media, they tend to be of a different variety.  if you don’t feel like reading through a long critique of this arc (because god knows there have been enough of them at this point since i’m a year late with starbucks) by all means skip this one.  i am processing for my own sake, and wanted to share what i think in case it’s constructive for others who haven’t had it already with the books-vs-show discourse on this particular arc.

a point that doesn’t easily go anywhere: a major difficulty when encountering books-vs-show, with really any of the characters but in this specific case definitely so: age.  book!sansa is 13 going on 14.  show!sansa is at least 18 if not older.  the difference between how a 13 year old would behave and process and how an 18+ year old does behave is vitally important and rarely discussed.  for all my frustrations with benioff & weiss’ adaptation with the series, i wonder to what extent (and i mean i literally wonder--i can see it going many ways) a lot of the deviations from between book!- and show!sansa comes from their respective ages.

show!sansa & rape

show!sansa was raped.  

she was raped on her wedding night to show!ramsay, and was raped repeatedly and psychologically and physically abused afterwards.  at the time that the episode aired, there were many comments flying around, but especially you have the following comment from brian cogman, one of the lead writers on the show:

“This isn’t a timid little girl walking into a wedding night with Joffrey. This is a hardened woman making a choice and she sees this as the way to get back her homeland. Sansa has a wedding night in the sense she never thought she would with one of the monsters of the show. It’s pretty intense and awful and the character will have to deal with it.” [source]

there are two things i want to unpack from this quote; i’ll get to the second of them in a different section.  the first part i will fixate on is one that frequently gets fixated in on in discussions of season five--specifically that show!sansa’s wedding night is one of “a hardened woman making a choice.”  

the problem we have here is that we don’t see her “making a choice.”  there are many discussions to be had about the nature of agency within westeros--both in the books and in the show, and involving characters beyond either book!- or show!sansa--but it is fairly certain from the beginning that show!sansa does not have a choice in the matter.  from the moment that show!petyr brings her away from the vale (not even telling her where she is going) and then surprises her with the view of the north at moat cailin, it is clear that he is not interested in her “choice.”  the “choice” that show!sansa has to make is what to do with her newfound situation--which she had no hand in choosing.

one of the seminal issues with season 5 is the way that benioff and weiss ended season 4 for show!sansa--specifically they had her looking at show!petyr and saying “I know what you want,” and then had her descending the staircase in the vale in a dress of her own making, hair freshly dyed, and seemingly liberated after three seasons of captivity in king’s landing.  this makes the transition into season 5, where you have a show!sansa who is distraught in episode 3 at the concept of going north to the boltons, who is blindsided that show!petyr would have masterminded this for her--inconsistent with the end writing of season 4, and with the commentary on the show from the episode where show!sansa did say “I know what you want,” 

“Up to now, Sansa has been a piece that other people have moved about the board to achieve their own goals, using her, discarding her, using her for a different purpose, you know, ‘You’re gonna marry Joffrey.’ ‘No, you’re gonna marry Loras.’ ‘You’re gonna marry Tyrion.’ She is beginning to at least try to understand how she can play the game of thrones and be, not a piece, but a player with her own goals and moving other pieces around. And she’s not a warrior like Robb, Jon Snow. She’s not even a wild child like Arya. She can’t fight with swords, axes. She can’t raise armies. But she has her wits, the same as Littlefinger has.” [source]

perhaps, instead, it was arrogance; alternatively, it is hubris that she assumed she knew what show!petyr wanted; or perhaps she is not in fact a player (to use terminology that is based in book!sansa’s arc), but still a piece, and a piece whose player has misread the board--show!petyr telling her “Better to gamble on the man you know than the strangers you don’t.  And you think you know me?” could well be mocking of both her and her strategy for he himself is about to gamble on strangers he doesn’t know--and drastically so.  that’s a valid interpretation of the beginning of season 5 in my view, but it stands at odds with her trajectory in the second half of season 4, while being consistent with her trajectory in season 6--where you can argue that show!sansa does begin to emancipate from piece-dom to player-dom.  this is something even sophie turner made note of while discussing season 5:

When I got the script, I was shocked to my core. Because I was just like, is this really going to happen for her again? It’s really quite devastating. It is “Game of Thrones,” but when you had the moment at the end of Season 4 you think, “Oh her life is going to get better. She’s going to take matters into her own hands and she’s gonna be this powerful woman and liberate people and manipulate people.” And then it was just kind of like, “Oh.” [source]

regardless--this makes the setup to this entire arc a rocky one because even the actor involved feels as though it’s a major step back for the character.  it makes the characterization inconsistent since it doesn’t seem to follow naturally from the end of season 4 and thus how the viewer comes to see show!sansa in the a section of the narrative.  it makes the justifications for the need to have her fill the role of show!ramsay’s wife and rape victim seem all the more nonsensical.

benioff’s commentary is revelatory on the matter:

“Sansa started as such a naive innocent...She’s been traumatized by what she’s seen and she spent almost a couple years in shell shock. At a certain point she’s either going to die or survive and become stronger. She’s chosen the latter option and she’s learned from an incredibly devious teacher in Littlefinger. The interesting thing about Littlefinger is he seems to have no almost no weaknesses aside from his affection for Sansa. He’s been obsessed with her since that early episode at the joust.” [source]

the tricky thing about this comment is that it has two theses: the first is that show!sansa’s only options are “to die or survive and become stronger.”  this comment in and of itself is not one that is necessarily untrue: book!sansa, after all, definitely spends the course of several books trying to figure out how to survive the situations she has found herself in, noting even that “one slip and [she is] dead,” even after she has left king’s landing.  it is certainly true of show!sansa, who during her time in king’s landing definitely was playing a game of survival and one the likes of which she in season 1 would not have imagined. 

what is frustrating is that the idea that this version of “survive and become stronger” was not something that they had already set up at the end of season 4, that show!sansa has thrown herself in with show!petyr and is prepared to outflank everyone for show!petyr has “almost no weaknesses aside from his affection for Sansa.”  she exited season 4 with that “survive and become stronger” mentality, only to have it torn to shreds in season 5.  the idea, then, that show!petyr’s affection for show!sansa would blind him into sending her to this specific marriage reflects that he does--in fact--have a weakness (his own hubris) and that, furthermore, show!sansa’s strength (which, quite apart from “shell shock,” was what carried her through seasons 2 and 3) came not from her trying to take advantage of her situation as she was at the end of season 4, but rather from her being raped instead.  independently about what that means for the character, it says rather a lot of misogynistic things about the showrunners.

i stand firmly believing that the showrunners mishandled show!sansa’s rape.  i do not particularly think they handled the episodes immediately following her rape in a consciencous way, though i think they do manage to capture show!sansa’s nihilistic desperation at her situation which leads her to insult show!ramsay to his face and to leap off the walls of winterfell with show!theon, both actions that display a brash bravery that she is rarely credited with (either because insulting show!ramsay to his face is deemed “stupid” and “dangerous” because he will abuse her further, or because it stands at odds with the idea of show!sansa as one who waits, and thinks, and uses her wits before acting--a trait that is frequently talked about in commentary of the show).  to stand up for oneself against a rapist, abuser, and--beyond her relationship with him--torturing murderer and to declare that this is an unacceptable situation to exist in is an act of profound backbone.  

the simple fact of show!sansa unflinchingly and unapologetically overseeing the death of her rapist and the man who murdered her brother is the only way to have ended that subplot.  it was a good ending to a storyline that was shoddily structured in both its preparation and in its early execution.

show!sansa & the north

“This isn’t a timid little girl walking into a wedding night with Joffrey. This is a hardened woman making a choice and she sees this as the way to get back her homeland. Sansa has a wedding night in the sense she never thought she would with one of the monsters of the show. It’s pretty intense and awful and the character will have to deal with it.” [source]

i mentioned above that i would have a second thought about that quote.  here it is.  the point of show!sansa going north to marry show!ramsay was to get her north.  her “choice” was to try and reclaim her homeland, however she could, after having been separated from it and her family for so long while held in captivity, and after having mourned and longed for it during that brief period in the vale of arryn.

both sansas are characters who want to go home, who long for paths to bring them home, who miss their family.  book!sansa assumes that the vast majority of her family is dead (it is a shock for book!sansa to remember that book!jon is alive--the sole family member from her nuclear family still remaining to her; she has an uncle and a great uncle in the riverlands, but those don’t cross her mind particularly, possibly because they are tullys and not starks) and is completely unaware of what the reader knows is going on in winterfell (which book!petyr is involved with by virtue of jeyne poole’s presence there).  meanwhile, show!sansa knows that arya lives, learns from show!theon that her younger brothers are alive as well before physically reuniting with show!jon early on in season 6.  

i completely understand the need to change the way that martin has been writing his story in order to fit the constraints of television, and the story that the showrunners have been working on since the first season.  i understand, furthermore, that while martin has the luxury of being able to miss every deadline set before him for whatever reason he sees fit--that’s not something that benioff and weiss are able to do in order to write a season of game of thrones.  

if it were simply a matter of show!sansa working to reclaim the north, i would have many fewer quibbles with the execution of this storyline.  the problem is that that the emphasis of season 5 (and thus something that they had to fix in season 6) was not the north; it was the rape.

The showrunners first thought about putting Sansa and Ramsay together back when they were writing season 2. “We really wanted Sansa to play a major part this season,” Benioff said. “If we were going to stay absolutely faithful to the book, it was going to be very hard to do that. There was as subplot we loved from the books, but it used a character that’s not in the show.”

Writer-producer Bryan Cogman had some insight, as well. “The seeds were planted early on in our minds,” Cogman said.  [source]

there are many elements to the subplot that they chose to adapt that were not present in season 5.  the major elements of the subplot that were present involved the marriage of show!/book!ramsay and the horrificly abusive marriage that that becomes, the psychological grapplings of show!/book!theon, and show!/book!stannis’ march from the wall to winterfell (though there are major differences in the adaptation of this march; i won’t be discussing them here).  the problem is that while all of those are vitally important to the book plot, the reason that they are all there in the books to begin with is the power vaccuum of the north following book!robb’s death--and none of them would be present without the political pressure of what is going to happen in the north, and that is the vital backdrop of everything.  it is startlingly absent in season 5 and has major ramifications in the writing of season 6, especially for show!sansa, though also for show!jon.

in the book iteration, you have the northern lords who have gathered in winterfell for the marriage of book!ramsay with jeyne poole.  the marriage is a way to legitimize bolton rule, since one of the “stark daughters” will be married to book!ramsay before all of the north, making it that much more difficult for them to rally against the boltons and say that their rule is illegitimate. one of the many points of the subplot (and certainly one of the most important) is that it happens where everyone can see it, and yet book!theon is the only one who knows all the details.  

the northern lords--for the most part--are disgusted with the entire situation.  they are livid with book!theon for having (supposedly) murdered book!bran and book!rickon, they hate the boltons for being turncloaks who participated in the red wedding, where many of their brethren were slaughtered (not to mention the starks who died there), but they are also fully aware that many of them still have living family members who are held hostage beneath the twins and so they must make nice with their new lords, lest something bad happen to their family members.  it is in this subplot that we have some insight into seeds laid in book!davos’ storyline--that wyman manderly is working to undermine the boltons and the freys, that there is someone in winterfell who is murdering turncloaks (though that person is unknown), and that “the north remembers” what happened to the starks, to their own families, and that they hate the boltons for it. furthermore, they are flatly disgusted with book!ramsay’s treatment of jeyne, whom they believe to be book!arya. 

“Not me,” the Lady of Barrowton confessed, “but the rest, yes. Old Whoresbane is only here because the Freys hold the Greatjon captive. And do you imagine the Hornwood men have forgotten the Bastard's last marriage, and how his lady wife was left to starve, chewing her own fingers? What do you think passes through their heads when they hear the new bride weeping? Valiant Ned's precious little girl.” [source]

the show’s adaptation of this scenario does not include the northern lords.  it mentions--briefly--ramsay terrorizing the old lord cerwyn and replacing him with a new one in the first episode of season 5, but after that we have literally nothing for an entire season.  the only sign that “the north remembers” comes from a little old man and a little old woman who ally themselves with show!brienne and show!sansa.  indeed, this brave woman ends up being murdered and flayed by show!ramsay after he discovers her plans to help show!sansa escape and that, it seems, is that.  “the north remember[ing]” seems to be a flimsy, hopeless thing, and not enough to help show!sansa at all in her current situation, for it cannot connect her with show!brienne (present and earnestly hoping to help show!sansa, if unaware of the explicit details of her situation).  

stepping away from the issues that arise from adaptation here and looking at game of thrones without a song of ice and fire to compare it to--in order to be sure that show!sansa was isolated enough for show!ramsay not to worry about having to rein himself in, the showrunners left several major worldbuilding plotholes and really shot themselves in the foot for the next season and the character development they could have had for show!sansa.  for all they say that the “choice” that motivated show!sansa’s actions was an attempt to reclaim her homeland, their focus in this arc for an entire season was her abuse, and then her desperate need to escape from it, not her political aims.  rather than giving show!sansa scenes where she was interacting with lords and ladies she would have to convince in season 6 to join her cause, scenes where northern lords might see how show!ramsay truly was treating their beloved show!ned’s daughter, or where they might be appalled that show!sansa would agree to marry him, or whatever could be written to add in conflict later, they gave show!ramsay pointless scenes with his girlfriend, a poorly contrived plot involving being able to see a candle in a tower window, and an isolation that made no political sense given that the whole reason that show!sansa married show!ramsay from the bolton perspective was to legitimize bolton power in the north.  they did not care to focus even a little bit on the rest of the north and showed literally no perspective on the match from any northern characters.  it was only show!sansa and the boltons.

the trouble is--the rest of the north does exist, and show!sansa (and show!ramsay) has to confront that in season 6, since it was not done in season 5.

the first thing to bring up before diving into that, though, is the red wedding.  the red wedding--in both books and show--was an event orchestrated by the rooses bolton, the walders frey, and the tywins lannister.  in both cases, you have an event where the robbs and catelyns stark were slaughtered--but also where members of other northern houses were slaughtered and/or taken captive.  this is vital to the frustration of the northern lords in the book as described above.  they blame the boltons far more than book!robb for the red wedding, not least because many of them still have family members held hostage at the twins, pending their allegiance to house bolton’s regime in the north.  they recognize book!roose as a traitor, and that book!ramsay is his son and heir and thus as vile a kingslayer and traitor as they could find, on top of being the fiend who married lady hornwood and then left her to starve to death and eat her fingers so that he could claim her lands through marriage as his own.  it is not simply a matter of being frustrated with book!robb’s choice to marry jeyne westerling (though there is definitely frustration there)--they know that the destruction of--not just their king but their autonomy rests on bolton shoulders.

the northern lords in the show, far from blaming the boltons, seem to blame the starks for it.  they blame show!robb’s marrying talisa and shirking his commitment to marry one of show!walder frey’s daughters.  and while i think, given what happened at the red wedding, it is justifiable from their end to see their king as having not taken his oath seriously, the leap from “show!robb did a bad thing” to “the kinslayer of the kingslayer of show!robb now sits in winterfell and should sit in winterfell” makes legitimately no sense as a baseline for why northerners would side with show!ramsay and it is the baseline.  

there are, of course, logical explanations to why many of the northern lords chose to absent themselves from season 5, and to help substantiate the decision season 6 in aligning with the boltons (even the ones who want to “stay out of it” have chosen house bolton over house stark).  the problem remains that none of those explanations happen in the show canon until season 6, making it impossible to deny that season 5 wasn’t about the north it was about rape.  there is no dialogue to explain it, and there aren’t any of benioff & weiss’ much beloved monologues to explain it and, given how frequently they use monologue to provide political backstory/understanding to their viewers, the lack of it in this plotline which is supposed to be about show!sansa “see[ing] this as a way to get back her homeland” is really noticeable.  there are explanations for the choices, but those explanations must come from the viewers, not from the show itself, which makes it no more or less canon than the questions demanding to know why the north did or did not remember in this way.  

it means that the northern plotline has to play catch-up with itself in season 6 and that show!sansa shows an understanding of the north and its politics that were denied her by the showrunners not sending any northern lords to winterfell in season 5 in the first place.  her understanding of the north was that brave woman’s assertion that “the north remembers,” and it gets flung in her face repeatedly when she brings it up.  and while it would make sense for her to have some instinct for politics after her time in king’s landing and her time with show!petyr, and for her to understand show!ramsay better than show!jon and show!davos in anticipation of the battle of the bastards, it doesn’t make sense that she would have a better sense for northern politics as a genre than show!jon, who has been much closer at hand to the north than she has since the beginning of the show by never having left it and who has had to deal with a northern political backdrop given his stance about the wildlings since season 2. 

the first instances of northern lords being present in winterfell are a karstark and an umber.  the karstark’s justification for supporting ramsay makes sense, even if it’s belated: there’s a great deal of bitterness for show!robb’s beheading of show!rickard karstark in season 3.  it’s a clunky scene but it follows from what came before.  this is not even a little bit the case with the umber who brings show!osha and show!rickon into show!ramsay’s hands.  the scene in which this umber is showing that he supports show!ramsay follows literally no logic.  the reason for support is that show!ramsay slew his “cunt” of a father.  what made show!roose a “cunt” is hard to say--it’s never explained.  perhaps, it’s that he slew his king in cold blood; if that’s the case, one wonders why a man who kills his king is worse, somehow, than a man who kills his father in plain view of his vassals.  but that is speculation.  there is no mention of the red wedding (where presumably show!greatjon was...but who knows because he hasn’t appeared since season 1), of the betrayal of the starks and the umbers’ fellow northern lords by the boltons, and no real understanding of why show!rickon and show!osha, who presumably have been in last hearth since the end of s3 when they said that was where they were headed, would go from being people who deserved protection to prisoners of the house who slew show!robb and show!catelyn.  

the only conclusion that can be drawn, given the lack of setup for it, is that benioff and weiss were ramroding their plot into place, just as they did by sending show!sansa north to begin with, and are trying to convince the viewer to “just go with it” in order for the rest of the season to make sense and to have the military setup they so desire for the battle of the bastards in episode 9.  in focusing only on show!sansa’s rape the season before and none of the northern politics, we then are left questioning why the everloving fuck the karstarks and umbers think the manderlys would throw in with show!ramsay when benioff and weiss were so proud of having a manderly at the red wedding (presumably to die or be captured) to when season 3 aired.  it does not follow logically or politically--it only follows if you stop assuming that this house, and other northern houses, has any memory, agency, goals, familial relationships, and has miraculously lost the sense of honor that led its members to crown show!robb following show!ned’s beheading and that they only exist as a function of show!ramsay’s power in the north...and the whole point of show!ramsay’s marrying show!sansa was that the power he held in the north was unstable to begin with.

ironically, the lord glover that show!sansa and show!jon have to try and convince to join their side gives a better justification for it than either of these two more powerful houses--in pointing out that show!ramsay helped retake his keep from the ironborn, and that show!ramsay helped him rebuild his home (which....he didn’t need to marry show!sansa for, and which is a very different tune from show!roose’s warning to show!ramsay in season 5 that “We can't hold the north with terror alone”).  his refusal to help show!jon given that it is an army of wildlings show!jon’s asking him to join also makes sense, but it is so belated and following so contrived a setup that it feels like an afterthought for the baseline above, rather than the primary motivation of mistrusting show!jon’s choices.  but at the same time, this lord glover does address the fact that it was the boltons who perpetrated the red wedding which destroyed the lives of so many including his brother, pinning the blame on show!robb and his choices instead.  it perpetuates--rather than the boltons being hated for turning their cloaks--the idea that they might, in fact, be liked for it which is so mindboggling when you also have this mentality that “the north remembers.”  treason and kingslaying are suddenly oddly forgivable in a region that prides itself on having an ancient honor.

the viewer has been given the sense since the very first scenes of the show that the northerners care intensely about the old way, about righteousness and justice.  but what we see from the northern lords--or rather, from the lack of the northern lords in season 5--stands at odds with the starks and the northern “old way” of making justice with their own hand.  show!sansa and show!jon alone seem to remember it, seem to care about the boltons and justice for the red wedding.  the rest are unwilling to help, and the reasons that they give do not align with what the viewer has been led to believe about the north in the a section of game of thrones.  if it does remember, it remembers the wrong things and is better to think that, in fact, it might not.

and--to make the whole mess even more frustrating--in the scene in which show!jon is crowned the king in the north, the northern lords speak of how he avenged the red wedding, which they had seemed to forget or not care about in joining the boltons or rejecting show!jon’s and show!sansa’s call for aid.  little show!lyanna mormont declares that “the north remembers” to murmured assent and that’s true: she did.  the others--they made it quite clear that they didn’t remember the red wedding or the horrors that show!ramsay was capable of throughout the entire season.

show!sansa & herself

now is where i’m going to shed commentary from the showrunners for a section.  the reason being that in order to look at show!sansa as her own character--no matter what my frustrations are with the crafting of her arc--it is a waste of energy to compare what the showrunners intended for her versus what was actually depicted on the screen.  it means that book!sansa in the vale, grappling with the web of lies she’s found herself in, must cease to exist for a time, and that benioff, weiss, cogman, and martin do not get to say a word.  only show!sansa does.

show!sansa begins calmly confident in her choices, since the end of season 4 ended with “i know what you want,” the dyeing of hair, and a confident stroll that implies that show!sansa is ready to take control of the situation.  that calm confidence slips away very quickly when she finds that she has been sold into marriage as she was by show!petyr and finding herself in the wolf’s den with those who slaughter wolves.

it results in an understandable, natural irascibility.  show!sansa in her newfound freedom is infuriated by the presence of the boltons in her home.  she speaks and acts boldly.  she seems to have forgotten everything she learned in king’s landing, that the viewer spent several seasons watching her navigate with enough capacity for her to have made it out alive--with show!petyr’s help.  show!sansa knows the boltons to be terrible for they murdered her mother and brother; show!sansa knows that they have the capacity for craftiness, for their betrayal was not discovered before it was too late.  and show!sansa behaves almost as show!ned did in season 1: speaking her mind and damn the consequences.  perhaps she is trusting in the fact that show!petyr, her ally, made the match for her; perhaps she is trusting in her name and status as a legitimization of show!ramsay’s position to serve as a protector for her.  perhaps, still, she is determined that in this place, in her home, in winterfell, she will not be the sansa stark who had to hide everything about herself in order to escape abuse at show!joffrey’s hand.  she is determined to retain a part of herself no matter what.  as she tells show!theon in the last episode of season 5 “If I’m going to die, let it happen while there’s some of me left.”  she is not there yet, of course, but i think this line is vital to understanding her earlier behavior in the season, especially when considering her history in the a section of the narrative as an abuse victim who was never allowed to be herself and who routinely had to denounce her father, brother, and mother as traitors, and tell everyone who would listen that she had the traitor’s blood also.  

show!sansa is allowing herself to be “herself” as best she can, which is jarring for a character who has existed to be different versions of herself depending on those around her and what they need from her.  this version of herself is an impulsive one ( “You can’t!”) and one who digs into her abuser where she can (“Or maybe he’ll give me yours”).  the viewer knows more than show!sansa does: we know what show!ramsay did to show!theon, we know that show!ramsay has literally hunted like game a woman who no longer pleased him and set his dogs loose on her to kill her, we know that he is a different breed of cruel from show!joffrey.  but show!sansa does not yet.  she will learn all this--she will see hints of it when she finds show!theon in the kennels--thinking that he deserves his state, given that he supposedly murdered her little brothers--but she will not learn for true until after she is married.  

she marries show!ramsay, is repeatedly raped and beaten and abused psychologically by him, and she tries twice to convey to show!brienne that she needs her help, that she needs to get out.  both are failures that result in the death of others: in one case, the old woman who told her that “the north remembers,” the second in show!myranda, whom show!theon kills before he and show!sansa leap to their freedom and potential death from the walls of winterfell.  the progression of season five, for me, is a smash repeat of seasons 1-2 for show!sansa, only this time for an older woman with an older abuser.  she thinks things will be fine, they are not fine, she is sexually and psychologically abused.  there is even the hope that show!stannis will kill her captor for her which happens on neither count.  the difference is capacity for agency: show!sansa in seasons 1-2 was thirteen-fourteen years old and is being watched very closely at all times in a place she doesn’t know very well.  in season 5, she is a stark of winterfell in winterfell and is able to slip out of the room in which she is being held and sneak her way to try and transmit her plea for help.  and, when she is unsuccessful, she chooses to leap from the walls with show!theon, rather than choosing to stay in a space of abuse.  in king’s landing, there remains some hope for her--that show!robb will live and come to find her--in season 5, whether or not there is hope for her safekeeping doesn’t matter to her.  she’d sooner try all she can to get free.

there are inklings of show!sansa’s pride throughout season 5.  i should note: pride here is not intended as a value judgement for show!sansa, though frequently it is used against her.  i think she is entitled by her experience to have her pride.  people have tried to strip it from her throughout the seasons.  her holding onto it, even when it causes conflict, i think is a sign of her tenacity in light of abuse.  she is proud when she arrives in winterfell, head held high to face show!robb’s and show!catelyn’s murderer and his son, she is proud before the wedding while dining with the boltons, refusing to be brought low, she is proud in interactions with show!theon before she is married, and she is proud enough to say that she’d rather die while there is still some of her left than to return to her chamber  and face whatever show!ramsay has in store for her.  that pride takes on a different shade in season 6 when she finds show!jon at castle black.

there, her pride becomes more mixed.  it flares at random moments.  sometimes she is proud in a way that includes show!jon--making him a cloak like their father’s, for example--and other times she is proud in a way that doesn’t include him.  show!sansa’s pride, to me, helps explains why she doesn’t tell show!jon about her contact with show!petyr when he first comes to molestown to see her, and then returns to the knights of the vale at moat cailin.  she doesn’t want to admit to any contact with him, because it is both painful and humiliating to acknowledge that show!petyr has anything valuable to convey to her after what he was responsible for in season 5.  it is pride as well that means she doesn’t tell show!jon that she is sending for the knights of the vale after house after house after house has closed their doors to the starks’ plea.  show!sansa has been told that “the north remembers” by the brave old woman.  there were no other northern lords in winterfell to prove otherwise while she was there as well.  she clung to it as hope in her most nihilistic moments and now that hope has been turned on its head and it is something she refuses to accept because she’d rather die than go back to ramsay--so she calls upon show!petyr.  it can only be pride that keeps her from telling show!jon, fear that he will call the move stupid, that he will call her stupid for trusting show!petyr in an hour of need.

and, of course, it is pride that leads her to reconnect with show!petyr wordlessly when show!jon is crowned: if show!jon gave her credit privately, no one gave her credit for helping to retake winterfell during that meeting--not even her half-brother--no one except show!petyr and her pride is wounded and he is planning to prey upon it once again.

show!sansa & the larger story

while drafting this, i reread the post that i wrote in the immediate aftermath of unbowed, unbent, unbroken.  it, like this, was a processing post, though of a very different variety, and it, more than this, was expecting a tighter adaptation to the books.  one of the major points that i was making was that, in sending show!sansa north to fill the role in this subplot, there was a major ripple effect in the larger story--beyond just what happened in the north.  this ripple effect struck out as far as dorne, for that was where show!jaime found himself in season 5, rather than in the riverlands where his book counterpart was.  book!jaime would be lured away by book!brienne on lady stoneheart’s orders while book!brienne is still on her thus-far fruitless quest to find book!sansa. because of the adaptation of show!sansa’s storyline, you can’t send show!jaime to the riverlands just yet (this will happen in season 6) so instead he goes to dorne, which changes the dynamic of his and show!cersei’s relationship, which changes the moves that show!cersei makes, which changes the moves the faith makes.  you also have show!petyr who inexplicably tells show!cersei precisely where show!sansa is and why and somehow doesn’t end up dead but instead gets show!cersei to agree to name him warden of the north at the end of everything (an additional interesting layer to his shared glance with show!sansa at the end of season 6).

the trouble i find here is simple--and to me much shorter than any of the points i’ve made above--the decision to send show!sansa north in season 5 is directly connected in my view to the dorne subplot was poorly conceived on every possible count (“i’m going to honor my dead lover by....killing his entire family....” + badly shot fight sequences).  and while i think that the king’s landing plotline in seasons 5 and 6 was better upon a rewatch than i was anticipating it being, i also think that there are major gaps in it and in how the north is being treated by a show!cersei who is doing what she can to consolidate her power, especially a show!cersei who has just lost the second of her three children and who believes that one of those responsible for the first’s death is in the north.

i think that more broadly, the writing and worldbuilding in season 5 went downhill; i can’t parse out if i think that’s because of the northern plot, or if it’s simply a correlation.  it’s hard to know since it’s the first season where they depart so thoroughly from the books, which makes it hard to know until the winds of winter has been released and until game of thrones is finished as a television series.  in terms of the show independently from the books, however, i think it’s undeniable that season 5 is a weak point and that the victories of season 6 are still built on a bad foundation which makes them harder to see as full-on victories.  you can’t leave out season 5 (unless you’re talking about show!bran since he--mercifully?--wasn’t in season 5) in terms of talking about narrative because it’s the linchpin and it’s a bad linchpin. it’s how you get from a strong start to a--hopefully--relatively strong finish.

final thoughts

looking at show!sansa in a vacuum (ie pretending for a second that book!sansa does not exist), i feel just plain bad for what the writing of her was.  it was hamfisted, unsubtle, poorly conceived, and poorly executed.  it frustrates me that a narrative arc with all of those traits has a ripple effect on the narratives in the rest of the series, but that’s how it goes i suppose.

i’m proud of some of her choices: i will never not be thrilled by the way she #ended show!ramsay, and i’m curious about what show!bran’s return to winterfell will mean for her.  i’m frustrated with some of her characterization, but lbr here are there major characters on game of thrones whose characterizations i adore?  because for the most part the characters i am at my happiest watching are the minor ones these days because most of the major ones are inconsistent in a way that personally is very frustrating.

i don’t really know what else i think.

i also don’t think i have to.  i don’t know if i will until the show is over.  and i imagine that my thoughts will continue to grow and change as time goes on because that’s what thoughts do.  i literally could not have foreseen writing some of what i’ve written in here two years ago when season 5 was airing.

but i suppose all this is where i am right now.

[bartsugsy]

Have you recovered from Thursday's episodes yet? I have mentally binned the one from Friday from my memory as best I can. I wish Sharon hadn't included the scene where Robert pulled Rebecca up off her chair, what the hell was that. Surely there was another way for her to trigger a reaction so that Chrissie could blurt out Rebecca was still pregnant ugh. Maxine is subtle in her script writing and then it feels like these other writers come along and bulldozer over everything

Hey anon!

I honestly didn’t mind Friday’s episode. Ok…

this became…. obscenely long…….

The pub reveal felt sort of clunky in a ‘suddenly everyone relevant is here at the pub to learn of this news!’ sort of way, but it’s a soap, so…. you know. It was like… CAR CRASH HORRIFYING AND AWKWARD TO WATCH AND I GET LIKE… SECOND HAND HORROR IS THAT A THING i just fuckdigndnf scream like it hits A LOT OF MY WEIRD SECOND HAND EMBARRASSMENT BUTTONS AND I CANT i’m literally rewatching now and cringing at robert and aaron having to both suddenly deal with this realisation in full view of a packed pub i’m !!!!!!!!!!

It feels like the point was to sort of… make Robert extra terrible to Rebecca (not hard, he’s usually pretty terrible to her these days lmao) and have Aaron find out about the baby all at once, so that it hits him like a slap in the face, that this isn’t going to be as easy as he thought it was when it was just him and Robert alone in a room together. It’s so often been so much easier for the two of them, when it’s just them in a room. 

The one thing that I wasn’t a fan of was Victoria’s non-reaction. Because. Really? idk why are these reveals never as juicy as I want them to be smh. Also I still don’t get Chrissie being so gung ho about the baby given it’s Robert’s and given her relationship with Rebecca and so I’m assuming it must be for a specific plotty reason (bc the state of the white sisters’ relationship is always reliant on what the plot needs) and I’m really wondering what that is??? i’m 100% suspicious. 

lawrence on the other hand was 110% #relateable

ALSO aaron’s reaction to finding out about the baby was as relateable as chas’ reaction to finding out about the Incident - i.e. i felt my soul laid bare on screen that day

Ryan and Danny were both amazing and that bathroom scene was a work of art and I will cherish it til I die like THEIR PERFORMANCES IN THAT SCENE??????? LITERALLY STUNNING?????????????????? OH MY GOD?????????????? WHEN YOU THINK RYAN AND DANNY CAN’T DO ANY BETTER THAN THURSDAY AND THEN THEY DO THAT??????? bye. also i’m literally both of them. it’s like me talking to myself about this storyline. we are all one.

anyway that scene was perfect and NEEDED for this episode and so i really can’t trash it all that much because damn

The Aaron and Rebecca scene is…. the funniest most absurd thing I’ve ever laid my own two eyes upon………. she just…. how…. does anyone think she has a leg to stand on?????

Ok. Here’s my thing. It is 1000% Rebecca’s right to have this baby if she wants. That’s fine. She’s gotta do what’s right for her. However, awful as Robert treats her and much as she now rightfully seems to hate him, she has to understand that this decision to have this baby affects Aaron’s life as well. She shouldn’t let her choice be influenced by that at all but, given that this is someone she professes to “like”, she… she slept with his husband and she’s having his baby. She took an active part in helping to destroy his marraige. Unintended consequence or not, that’s still the absolute reality of what happened and as much as, again, I don’t think she should change her mind or her stance on anything Robert related, I still think she should at least be able to recognise her part in Aaron’s pain? I just…. you would think she would be even slightly sympathetic to that? But that last scene sort of came off as her trying to make him see the light - “look how similar we are, we’re in the same boat, it’s us against him”. The show literally couldn’t make it clearer that Aaron and Rebecca don’t have the same relationships with Robert if they had Rob make a flipping shrine to Aaron in his basement next to a burning effegy of Rebecca at this point (….just look at this entire episode), but Rebecca thinks it’s the same thing. And yes, she seems to think she’s doing right by Aaron but.. idk, how fucking patronising can you be? How unsympathetic can you be? 

Again - I really do think the point was to really have Aaron question whether he can really forgive Robert and put that seed of doubt in his mind but

sigh

Rebecca.

Also idk if it’s because we know what Aaron’s agression looks like and it wasn’t that heartbroken yell at Rebecca, and Rebecca does not know what it looks like, but her cowering and making him feel bad about yelling at her…. like….

she slept with his husband??????????????????????????????????????

I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO TREAT THIS AS A SHITTY THING TO DO BC IF MY MATE DID THAT TO ME I WOULD SURE AS HELL SHOUT AT THEM, PREGNANT OR NOT WHAT THE FUCK but as im a lesbian i doubt they’d be pregnant tbh but still WHY CAN’T HE YELL AT HER? SHE STILL ULTIMATELY CHOSE HER FEELINGS FOR ROBERT OVER WHATEVER VERY MINIMAL REGARD SHE MIGHT HAVE HAD FOR AARON’S (AARON HER FRIEND AARON WHO SHE LIKES) MARRIAGE and it’s….. it’s really annoying 

and rebecca acting like that shout is…. robert’s fault….. when….. even if aaron was acting agressive…. aaron’s agression issues go back far far before robert even came into the picture….. and robert isn’t responsible for the way aaron reacts to things much in the way aaron isn’t responsible for robert’s reactions we literally just had a massive double bill discussing these exact faults. like, it just hammers home how much she really doesn’t know him. 

and like. robert and rebecca were both there. they were both responsible and they both had relationships with aaron. robert has more to apologise for but that doesn’t mean rebecca should be treated like an innocent god damn petal (regardless of whether she genuinely belived rob and aaron had broken up four hours before they did it or whatever… i mean…….. honestly…………)

and potentially all just a way to make sure aaron doesn’t shout at her again? or just to foreshadow whatever the fuck is happening next week. who knows. 

Anyway.

What I’m saying is, I think the whole point of this episode was to show that Aaron and Robert’s problems aren’t magically fixed because they spent a day finally talking about their problems. Growing and changing has never been that easy - they’ve taken the first step and admitted to it, recognised their issues but… I think this is just a signal that they still have a lot of work to do and they aren’t going to be in a good place for a while. They’re both going to be trying to work through it for some time. Which is good. 

Like. That whole first scene, with them being cheerful but kind of awkward and stilted was just them trying to move past things a little - but this episode was a big neon sign that it’s never gonna be that easy. Long standing problems like theirs don’t just disappear.

ALSO ALSO final note on Maxine (and Sharon I guess, who wrote this ep - and I really wasn’t a massive fan of the writing because it did feel like a mess and it took me a few watches to sort of understand what was happening, but whatever) - because I just… I don’t think every episode that Maxine doesn’t write is doomed to be bad lmao. And I don’t think Friday trampled over them either. 

Personally, the reason I love Maxine like she was my own daughter is because she is the exact opposite of subtle. She doesn’t do subtle at all, she spells out everything in black and white and you don’t have to work for it - which I appreciate a lot, to be honest, because who wants to work this hard for a soap???? LOOK AT HOW LONG THIS POST IS???? WHY??? lmaoooo, maybe that’s just me. idk, i just appreciate her blunt approach to writing dialogue and her big love of parallels and callbacks bc it satisfies my inner theorist. plenty of other writers have their strengths when they write robron and plenty of other writers have written beautiful stuff for them, but i like that they give maxine the big stuff if only because i know that she’s gonna try and cram as much shit into there as possible lmaooooo. she makes the most of it.

and by that i mean…. i’m never really left thinking “am i reading too much into this or is this just an accident of the writing that i’m picking up on?” with maxine, like i do for a lot of other writers. like friday’s episode - am i meant to see the rebecca/aaron conversation as firm proof that rebecca doesn’t know aaron but has made a lot of judgements on him and assumes he has as little agency as she does when it comes to robert, based on her terrible terrible relationship with and treatment by robert? or is that just something that i can see from the episode, knowing the characters like i do, that was never intended to be there and won’t be a plot point. with rebecca, especially, it’s hard to know what we should be purposefully pick up on and what is just bad and sloppy writing by literally every single person involved. 

I just never feel like I have to write mountains of essays about character motivation and storytelling when Maxine is at the helm of an episode. 

i do think she’s one of the most consistent at writing them (though idk whether that’s because she gets the good episodes or it’s just her clear love for them as a couple that leads her to being extra careful with them, it might be very chicken and egg haha) and she handles episodes that could fall apart in some writers hands very very well (my main example for that is always the lachlan trial episode, which i just think should have been an utter trainwreck but ended up being one of my favourites. it’s just incredible to me that she made it work that well, during a time when robert is actively lying and the show itself was SO BAD ON ALL COUNTS???? her ep was like the turning point into ‘not horribleness’ again and i don’t know how she did it. the entire plot was ABSURD. she just made it work.)

(plus it seems like she writes loads of casual affection into episodes and that makes me happy)

idk. I guess I’m saying that there’s a reason I genuinely look forward to Maxine’s episodes, but also… all is not lost and i don’t think she’s the only one who is gonna save us here. we’ve got other people who will help us along the way lmao. 

(i’m getting serious de ja vu with this whole sentiment did i write this back in november as well or is that my brain playing tricks on me?)

[okay-lets-not-panic]

I am writing this in an attempt to make sense of, or rationalise if you like, the mess that the Kings have made of Diane and Kurt. I spent the better part of a year filled with rage about the way the end of The Good Wife left the characters but when The Good Fight was announced I decided to withhold my judgement, for the most part, and see what the writers were going to do. Well, I’ve now seen the first season and had a few weeks to think about it and I can’t say I’m entirely happy. That’s not to say there weren’t things that I loved, because it’s Diane and Kurt we’re talking about; even with horrendous and unfathomable writing decisions the characters and relationship are still evocative. (Basically, if the end of TGW didn’t destroy them for me, then I think they’re probably untouchable.) However, since I believe that they deserve better than what’s been written for them thus far on TGF I felt I had to write something, a rant perhaps, whatever ‘this’ is, to try and understand exactly what the problems I’m having with the relationship are. I can see though, that for some people the events of TGF could have been a balm to the serious wounding McHart shippers suffered in 2016, and so if anyone wants to avoid reading this because the ship is in a relatively good place right now and they don’t want to think about negative stuff anymore, I completely sympathise and understand. (Although I do talk about the good things too!)

I want to make clear though, that regardless of how things have played out on TGW or will in the future on TGF, I’m actually really grateful for this ship. They are so lovely to watch and I adore both characters intensely. So while I will have a bunch of negative things to say, I want to make sure that anyone who reads through this overlong and aimless post realises that whatever I end up saying, I really love Diane and Kurt and am grateful to the Kings for creating them.

Now to preface my (already) obvious bias upfront: before the last episode of TGW, I really thought Diane and Kurt were perfect. Just something about their contrasting personalities really clicked and felt right; his intensity and her poise; his stoicism and her mannered speech; country versus city; rustic versus elegant, Kurt’s willingness to throw his lot in with Diane relatively early on in their relationship while she was far less committal, and, oh yeah, liberal versus conservative. I almost forgot that last one, seriously. There’s just so much to point to and go ‘look how different they are’ but it never felt like these things would or could ever be a problem. That’s how right for each other they are. The political differences were like the sweet glace cherry on top of a gorgeous sundae: a grown up relationship for a grown up world. The inclusion of McHart was also one of the more feminist decisions in a show that was often touted for its feminist credentials. Gosh, it seems silly that this should be so but the fact of a mature woman at the top of her profession having a stable, drama-free but undeniably hot marriage is really fucking rare in fiction. I would love to have other examples pointed out to me but I really can’t think of many comparable fictional relationships.

The passionate certainty (which seems an odd phrase but it’s the best I can come up with) at the heart of their relationship, even from the earliest days, was one of the many things that made me fall so hard for them. So many ships I gravitate towards tend to be angsty couples with huge personal obstacles to overcome before the relationship can work, if it ever can; so McHart was a welcome change of pace. I had no doubts about them. Even from season one it was very hard for me to envision Diane with anyone else. Rewatching ‘Bang’ now makes me laugh because during their initial meeting they are so completely made for each other and it’s so obvious in retrospect, once the viewer is more familiar with the characters and how they interact, the way they act at this point is incredibly telling; Diane is hilariously unprofessional and off-kilter and Kurt not only puts up with it but he actually seems to enjoy this behaviour in a sort of bemused fashion even though despite his usual unflappability it clearly gets under his skin. Let’s not even mention the Sarah Palin picture in a frame thing and Kurt’s little ‘on the phone’ performance later in the episode because does anyone really think this falls anywhere on the spectrum of typical behaviour for him? Anyway, suffice to say – you can totally see them meeting ‘the one’. I know that the writers probably never intended any of this and the relationship actually grew organically from episode to episode but… I don’t know, maybe it’s just Christine and Gary’s impeccable chemistry at work but the longevity of McHart seems almost inevitable now. When they introduced Jack in season three I was genuinely confused because what was the point? Despite the fact that Kurt was hardly ever in the show, I couldn’t fathom the prospect that perhaps McHart wouldn’t be endgame. Diane and Kurt would assuredly end up together; this fact was never in doubt, even if Diane hadn’t quite worked it out at that point.

Sadly, it was this faith in the relationship that caused me to be so blindsided at the end of TGW. I have spent years stressing over other will they/won’t they ships on other shows but I barely had a moment of anxiety about McHart, because how could it ever end badly? Especially once they were married. After that point it made no logical sense from a character or overall plot point of view to break Diane and Kurt up. Once they’d finally, finally, got to the place where they were both emotionally ready to commit fully to one another, it would be totally unsatisfying to mess about with their relationship considering the kind of people they had always been depicted to be. Well boy, was I wrong! And it’s not even that I had any particular trust in the Kings as writers for that matter. I’ve been screwed over by the majority of shows I’ve watched at some point. Hell, I’m a Buffy fan. And I know that many people in the wake of TGW finale made comments about how the Kings are incapable of keeping an untarnished good and solid relationship on their shows, and looking back at TGW in retrospect, this is true, but you see because I wasn’t overly interested in the other relationships on the show I was never particularly affected when they got gutted, it was just unconnected passing drama to me and not part of a disturbing pattern. I obviously underestimated the writers desire to push cheap drama at the expense of well-drawn characters.

However, the cold truth is, the writers wrote the ending that they did and so now I have to make sense of canon and make it fit with my understanding of the McHart relationship. But I find that I just CAN’T! (Even with the added information from TGF.)

Now I realise that it is quite possible to point out various issues Diane and Kurt could have that they never properly dealt with. Obviously. But I don’t see how those issues translate into random infidelity. Of course, we can extrapolate that Kurt was unhappy that they didn’t spend more time together and maybe even that Diane had a tendency to prioritise work, especially after they were married. There’s more than enough textual evidence to make an informed guess about this. But couldn’t the writers have done something else with that idea? Okay, I get that it had been decided that Diane desperately needed to be left with nothing at the beginning of TGF (even though wrecking Diane’s personal life ended up being basically irrelevant to the setup of TGF in the end. I don’t see why she couldn’t be broke and jobless but with a support system at home; that would still be devastating for her? Anyway, I digress…) but even if they were dead set on splitting McHart up couldn’t they have used a more organic reason? Perhaps the fact that Diane’s ambition or professional life was driving a wedge between them; hell, they basically did that in season 7 anyway when she asked Kurt to compromise himself on the stand for her. They could have gone further with that, at least it would have been in character. Or they could have written about how difficult it is for two people as different and as set in their ways as Diane and Kurt to change their lives enough to accommodate another person on a full time basis. I mean, hesitation to commit because of other priorities was a factor throughout their entire first five years of knowing each other. It would make total sense that the issue didn’t just magically go away once they were married. Honestly, almost anything would have been better than the plot the writers went with. I would even have preferred Diane to have the affair (if the writers were so convinced one needed to happen) not because I think the idea is any more palatable or likely but because Kurt’s constancy was such an important part of his character. He made his feelings clear to Diane pretty early on in the show, he sort of asked her to marry him in ‘Silver Bullet’ for God’s sake, and when she shows up on his doorstep after a year in ‘Gloves Come Off’ he is… pretty happy about it I’d say, if taken aback. By that point he’s fully realised any relationship he has with Diane is going to be on her terms but he’s totally willing to go along with it because y’know… he loves her. And that feeling ain’t going away.

Of course, since it’s not like the writers spent much time developing his character maybe it was just presumptuous of me to draw these conclusions? And this is the crux of the problem for me; it’s not just that a relationship I liked got ruined by some leftfield infidelity (although that’s bad enough), it’s the fact that they had to basically assassinate Kurt’s character, as the audience understood him, to do it. For example, a decent part of the humour and tension in Diane and Kurt’s relationship came from Kurt’s friendships with his students and what Diane perceived this to mean. Which is all well and good when the truth is that the whole thing is totally innocent, because then the plot serves to highlight Diane’s insecurities even though we, and she, know that she should be above feeling like that and has no reason to anyway, and it also serves as an interesting character point for Kurt. Why are all his friends young women? It doesn’t have to be a negative thing. And I think it’s this that sticks in my craw most of all; it’s not only that they used his student relationships in the most lowbrow and predictable way possible (one of the few facts we actually knew about him keep in mind) but also simultaneously forced the older guy cheats on his wife with a younger woman story on us. It’s such a fucking cliché I could choke. I would hate that they did this to Kurt’s character enough on its own but honestly they did this to Diane too and just… WHY? On the most shallow level Diane is hot as fuck and smart as hell and basically WHAT? OMG I’m never going to stop being angry about this am I? Their story went from being really quite progressive to incredibly regressive in the span of one episode. One. I can still feel the emotional whiplash.

From the moment Kurt was introduced to us we were battered over the head with the fact that integrity is his defining feature. He will only testify on behalf of people he believes to be innocent. Whenever one of Kurt’s current or former students was brought up, the resolution was always that there was nothing dodgy going on. Diane directly asked him if he had slept with any of his students (or, at least, the ones she met in the bar) and he said no. He doesn’t lie or prevaricate on the stand, not even to protect himself. He agreed to help Alicia with a case because it was the right thing to do for the client despite the fact that Diane was unhappy about it. The only times we have ever seen him compromise himself then Diane was always the deciding factor; showing her the demonstration in ‘Running’ because of his feelings for her, and then later on, in season seven, agreeing to testify the way Diane wanted him to. (Interestingly enough, both of these incidents backfired on him spectacularly.)

Now, Kurt may only have been a supporting character of a supporting character on TGW but it still amounts to seven years worth of consistent characterisation down the drain for the writers to then say ‘oh actually he was a total hypocrite all along’. Because where does it end? If he lied once, then it’s feasible he lied a million times. And not only does this go for the affair itself but why did he not tell Diane about it immediately after it happened? Expecting me to believe that Kurt slept with Holly is almost beyond my comprehension but to then take it further and expect me to buy that he kept it a secret is just… madness. Keeping quiet about it is both completely out of character and really, really stupid; he knows Diane is whip-smart, it’s one of the reasons he fell for her after all, so why wouldn’t she be able to work it out? If we in hindsight say that Kurt was willing to lie on the stand when she asked because he was feeling guilty about the affair, then wouldn’t this be relatively apparent to his wife, if not at that moment then at some later point? He would realise this. He’s not an idiot. And not only was she bound to find out about it, considering the world in which these characters live and Diane’s position in it, there was always a strong possibility that it would happen in a really public horrific way. (Another reason I hate the writers btw is because Diane and Kurt had so many cute moments in court during their relationship and now that’s all tainted. And it also plays like a kind of nasty bizarro symmetry, considering the fact that Diane and Kurt’s relationship was initially outed in court when Kurt was testifying. I can’t even imagine deciding to write something that on the nose and crass.) I’m not saying that Kurt should have been expected to know that Alicia would be able to make the assumption of an affair having occurred and then stoop low enough to use that hunch in court, but I never got the impression that Kurt liked or trusted Alicia AT ALL. So again, I ask, why wouldn’t he consider this as a possibility? The only conclusions I am able to draw from this is that he’s either stupid (which we know he’s not) or callous, which is ridiculous because we know that he loves Diane. So… what am I supposed to think? Don’t the Kings realise what they’ve done? The affair plot completely undermines the entirety of Diane and Kurt’s relationship and by extension Diane herself somewhat. And considering they were planning a spinoff featuring Diane at the same point when they were writing the end of TGW, it seems insane that they would want to damage her character like this. Why did she marry him? Was she just wilfully blind to what he was really like? Did she not see it? Or was the affair supposed to be a random moment of weakness in reaction to a kind of emotional neglect and therefore more understandable (if still utterly ridiculous)? Wasn’t their attraction to each other based on the fact that despite their many ideological differences they each found many admirable qualities in the other person; Kurt’s Tea Party Republican schtick didn’t matter to Diane in the face of what a good and honourable man he was. Right? But if he doesn’t have his integrity then… what is the relationship based on? Sexual attraction? I don’t know. I genuinely can’t understand why the writers would want to throw it all away in the manner that they did. Was it really because of TGF? Or was it because by late season seven of TGW Diane and Kurt’s marriage was the only healthy and beautiful thing the show had left in it with any depth, and the Kings had run out of things to burn? If it’s the former, then it’s annoying, because as I’ve already pointed out, Diane’s situation in the TGF didn’t really require the sacrifice of her marriage. If it was the latter then I don’t know what to say other than TGW was ending and there was more than enough drama that could have been created around Alicia, who was the star of the show, without involving Diane. It’s not like the writers devoted that much time and energy to her in the last couple of seasons anyway and I think it was incredibly disrespectful to mess with Diane’s character just so the weird slap framework could play out. I genuinely believe that Diane would have been above all that shit anyway. I also think that if the writers had bothered to spend more time developing Diane’s character, and by extension Kurt, then maybe they would never have had to resort to such a poorly planned storyline in the first place. But obviously this was never going to happen on The Alicia Show.

Now, talk of character development leads me to the state of McHart in TGF. Look, part of me is just grateful they wrote Kurt into it, I was half-convinced that they were going to give Diane a clean romance slate for the new show. But now that they have actually allowed a situation where we could, and should, get some resolution to the affair storyline, they’ve basically done the exact opposite. Having said that, yes, I admit it: I loved seeing them together in ‘Inauguration’. I was ready for it but I wasn’t ready for it. Seeing him waiting outside her house, being almost unbearably Kurt-like, filled me with joy. (It’s a weird phenomenon but when I think about McHart in my general life, post TGW, it really stresses me out because of what was done to them, but then when I see them onscreen I can barely remember what bothered me so much; the way he looks at her, so intently, like he’s constantly trying to figure her out and the way Diane changes in Kurt’s presence, the way she emotionally opens up like a flower - they are just meant to be.) And while I knew the conversation they were about to have wouldn’t be particularly pleasant, in a lot of ways it felt okay, he was there for her, she kind of allowed him to be, she let herself be vulnerable with him despite everything. It was definitely better than many of the scenarios I had envisioned during the hiatus. The fact that she wanted Kurt to be the one to initiate divorce proceedings was a positive sign, clearly she wasn’t ready to let go of their marriage entirely despite her insistence that the relationship was over. I was interested in Kurt’s assertion that in his view he’d never left Diane and also his reaction when Diane pointed out that he had because of the affair with Holly. He actually seemed kind of… annoyed? I don’t know? Was he tired of having it thrown in his face? Does he think it’s an unreasonable thing for her to say at this juncture? Weird, because it’s really not, even if it did happen a year ago. Diane just seemed resigned and tired, and this could indicate that they’ve talked about the affair endlessly with constantly diminishing returns, but it’s more likely that it was a reaction to all the other bad things that had happened to her already that episode. We’re not told how often they’ve seen each other since the end of TGW, if they have at all, although the nature of their interactions in this episode suggests that they have at least spoken from time to time. It’s hard to tell though, they’ve always been able to fall seamlessly back into casual intimacy after a long time apart. Nor do we have any idea as to what the confrontation that they must have had after the scene in court back in TGW was like. Did she ask him why he did it? What did he say? Did he give her an explanation for anything? We don’t know because the writers chose to tell us exactly nothing. Kurt wasn’t exactly remorseful, but again, it’s been a year, he can’t make his whole life about a mistake he made. The problem is, since we haven’t seen these characters since ‘End’, the affair is fresh in the audience’s memory and it seems like we’re only getting half a story. I mean, if McHart is going to carry on being Diane’s primary romantic relationship in TGF then these are pretty important problems to be glossing over.

After this Diane and Kurt seemed to fall back into their old pattern; he reaches out to her, she gets swept up in it, and then she pulls back. Of course, it’s different now, she has an actual concrete reason to be hesitant with him. But they didn’t discuss it, of course! I’m not even saying this is out of character behaviour, but it is frustrating to watch.

Which leads me to ‘Chaos’, and this is where my problem actually lies. I know, I know, they reconciled; and it was lovely, and Diane was adorable in the hospital, and Kurt told her he loved her, and ‘Wild World’ played but… I’m sorry, the set up for the reconciliation irritated me. Juxtaposing Kurt’s ‘everyday heroism’ with Diane being morally compromised because of her job is pretty dreadful, especially if this incident is what leads to Diane deciding that she can now be with him again, in whatever capacity. For starters, I don’t see how Kurt rescuing a baby gets him off the hook for the affair; one has nothing to do with the other. We already know Kurt’s generally a decent guy (or at least we thought we did), this is not some shocking revelation. Or is the carjacking supposed to prove to us/Diane that Kurt really is a cowboy after all? Secondly, of course Diane has to make compromises as a lawyer, she’s been doing the job a long time, and therefore has probably come to terms with and found a way to compartmentalise most moral qualms she may have; I don’t see why Kurt putting himself in danger selflessly would make her feel bad about what she does. And thirdly, I can totally see why Kurt having to go to hospital and Diane not knowing the extent of his injuries would lead her to put the feelings she had for him in perspective; he may have betrayed her but she doesn’t want to lose him forever, obviously. However, was it necessary for the writers to artificially rush their reconciliation with this? They haven’t worked through anything as far as we know; Diane clearly still seems incredibly hesitant about moving forward with their relationship, she tells him he hurt her and he says ‘it won’t happen again’. Umm… okay? Is that it? Why won’t it happen again? I mean really why should we trust this statement? It would help if I knew why the affair happened in the first place, and what Kurt feels about it. But since I don’t and the show doesn’t seem inclined to tell me, the only thing I know is that Kurt had an affair and then lied by omission about it for an unspecified period of time. I want to trust him and I want Diane to be able to trust him again, but the writers have to give us something to go on other than his previous good character and unrelated acts of heroism.

Interestingly, writing this has made me feel better about McHart than I have for a year, it’s still much harder to ship them now though. If anyone has anything to add to what I’ve said or wants to take issue with something I’ve written then please feel free to say your piece.