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carolmunson · 2 years ago

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girls just wanna have fun

a rockstar!eddie x actress!reader / boxer!steve/librarian!gf crossover extravaganza.

Get ready for the FEELINGS train, it’s rolling in! Today’s lesson is on minding your own business before you get your feelings hurt. The girls have a girls day after being bored at the gym and we learn a little something about everyone here in crossover land. God forbid I ever write a real happy ending and if you didn’t want Boxer!Steve and Actress!Wife to fuck, you might by the end of this crossover. (One day I’ll write Rockstar!Eddie smut, I promise.) To get the full effect, please listen to Madi Davis’s cover of ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ near the middle to the end. It’s what I listened to on a loop while I wrote this. For context, I might recommend reading ‘Not Givin’ It Up’ part one and part two but long story short, Rockstar Eddie and Actress Wife separated for half a year after a lot of promises of Eddie getting clean and always coming up short. He’s semi sober now, just not doing opiates and we are PROUD OF HIM! I’m not a huge Y/N girl, so for all purposes I’ve inserted the name Stella for actress!wife and Libby for librian!GF as approved by @rollergirlworld who also helped me in the creation of this crossover! WORD COUNT: 9k+ WARNINGS: Swearing, controlling behavior, addiction and drug mention, fighting (boxing), blood, sexual innuendo, some sexy shower stuff but no sex. All around sadness but plenty of cuteness – we stan the girls. Lastly, there’s definitely some mistakes in here and I don’t care. Also, if you’re under 18, don’t read my content.

The drive was longer than you’d hoped, traffic was unbearable, you were sweating — and now you had to go sit in a boxing gym and watch two stupid boys work out and box for who knows how many stupid hours. Your only saving grace was getting to spend a couple days at the beach house and getting to see Steve Harrington’s little woman. The sun beat down on the convertible, a dark cherry red ‘71 Jaguar. It was a gift from Eddie on your twenty-fifth birthday, which was only a little funny because you never really got to drive it.

“Was this secretly a gift for you?” you asked, sliding into the passengers seat to head to your birthday party. “What?” he feigned offense, but he knew you were right, “No, of course not, baby. You just look so good in red.” You rolled your eyes at the lie, but still let a laugh sneak out between your teeth. Today, you wished he hadn’t put the top down, it was too humid. It had been a drizzly month and the rain felt trapped in the air even with the sun out. Thick, sticky, and unforgiving even with the wind whipping your faces. Eddie on the other hand loved watching your hair fan out behind you on the high way. He loved your little squint you made before you’d put your sunglasses on. Big, vintage cateye ones he snagged for you at a big flea market somewhere in Massachusetts on an east coast tour. “Said they were from the 60s, surprised how cheap they were,” he said, passing them to you in the case, “They got a lot of weight to them. I liked the little engravings on the inside. Kinda cool, right?” “I love the tortoise print,” you said, folding them over in your hands. He always rambled when he thought you weren’t going to like something – when the gift wasn’t extravagant. When he was nervous you were going to think something was stupid. It couldn’t be further from the truth of course, there wasn’t anything he could get you or find for you that you would think was stupid. The case balancing on your thigh toppled to the ground. Before you could think, he bent down to pick it up. “You were saying in New York you wanted a pair like that, so – I did my best,” he smiled, still squatting and letting his hand rest on your knee. You tried them on and he dramatically put a hand to his chest, toppling over just like the glasses case. “Oh baby, you’re killin’ me,” he said from the floor, “You look so pretty.” That had been a good day until he got arrested for indecent exposure and public intoxication outside of Rainbow bar. You pleaded with the cops to let him go, that he was just too fucked up and you’d take him home – he didn’t mean anything by it. Eddie couldn’t keep his mouth shut though, “Fuckin’ pigs,” pouring out of his lips in a haze while the cuffs got tighter on his wrists. You bailed him out later and he passed out in the back seat of the Chevrolet, liqour on his tongue and coaine residue still on his nose. You used all of your strength training to help carry his dead weight to bed – only making it to the couch in the main first floor sitting room and covering yourselves up with a cashmere blanket. You kept him on his side and stayed up the whole night rubbing his back until he woke up and ran to the bathroom to puke – starting your day with a cocktail of ibuprofen and electrolytes. You were jostled out of your memory when the car pulled into the gym’s parking lot. You noticed the condominiums that Steve and his little woman lived in were merely steps away. Made sense, you guessed, since he had to train so often – even if they were only here for a few months out of the year. “You okay, sweet thing?” Eddie asked, taking the keys out of the ignition. He reached out to rub your shoulder but you pulled out of his grasp, getting out of the car. The vintage white tennis dress you wore suddenly felt suffocating even while the skirt of it flounced at the tops of your thighs. “Hey,” Eddie said, coming around to your side of the car. His tone changed, more worried while he tried to scan your features through your sunglasses, “Baby, you alright?” You took a deep breath through your nose and nodded while taking your sunglasses off. You reached into your purse and put them back in the case, “I’m okay, Ed.” He reached over your seat and pulled his gym bag out from behind it, slinging it over his shoulder. His wife beater riding up showing off the top of his black shorts and his tight stomach – a smattering of hair trailed down past the band. “You upset with me?” he asked, putting his hand back on your shoulder. He could feel how tense you were under his touch. You both had been practicing being more communicative about your feelings after he got clean. He knew he had a long way to go, that you didn’t owe him forgiveness all the time. He’d beg you to tell him what you were thinking about when you got distant so you could talk it through. He wanted to hear you be mad at him, ‘It’s not healthy to hold that in baby, you gotta tell me. It’s okay if it hurts my feelings, I hurt your feelings first.’ “Just thinking about something from before,” you confessed. He put his gym bag on the pavement, touching the edge of his Converse to the edge of your sandals, your perfectly manicured toes looking so different from his beat up sneakers. “You wanna talk about it?” he asked, eyes so gentle on you that you’d tell him the sky was red if he asked. The way he’d throw away everything to hear one word come out of your mouth. “It doesn’t matter, it was in the past,” you shake your head but he doesn’t buy it. He reaches forward to brush some stray hairs out of your face, his calloused fingers grazing your cheek. “It does matter,” his tone gets serious but his touch is soft, “Don’t say that shit to me, Stell. It does matter if it’s making you upset.” “I was thinking about one of those nights outside of Rainbow,” you mumbled, looking down at both of your shoes. Your arms instinctively crossed across your chest, a habit Eddie caught you developing when you talked about something that made you uncomfortable – like you wanted to protect yourself from the memory. “The night I gave you those glasses?” he asked, nodding down to your purse, “I remember.” You laugh a little, “I’m surprised. You were so fucked up.” Eddie laughed back with you, your smile making his chest swell and his breath catch in his throat a little. He could never get over how sometimes it felt like he was talking to you for the first time all over again. “Come here, pretty girl,” his voice was a little gruff while he wrapped his arms around you, squishing your crossed arms against your chest. “It’s okay to still be mad about that,” he ran a hand soothingly on your back, “I’m still mad at me, too.” “It feels stupid,” you said into his chest. “It’s not stupid,” he said, “Whoever is telling you it’s stupid? Is stupid.” You moved back from his grasp and smiled up him, his boyish toothy grin shining down at you, “You’re stupid.” “You’re stupid,” he challenged back before peppering your face in kisses. The way he knew would make you giggle. “You here to box or you here to kiss cheerleaders under the bleachers, Munson?” Big, Steve’s trainer, was at the entrance door, “He’s gonna be pissed that you’re late.” “By two minutes, you serious?” Eddie hoisted his gym bag up over his shoulder again, reaching for your hand for you to follow into the lobby. Low and behold, there’s King Steve, broody as ever refilling his water bottle. It was clear he trained before this with Big, waiting for his chance to train Eddie after – almost like a pre-game to get the rest of his rage out. Sweat glistened on his shoulders and biceps, down his defined chest. You couldn’t help but feel your cheeks burn a little at the sight of him, boorish but so hot. You would’ve had a poster of him if you were still a teenager in Syracuse. Even just shy of an inch shorter, he loomed big and powerful over Eddie when he approached him. He stared at Eddie down the slope of his nose, “You’re here on my time, Munson. If she’s gonna be a distraction, she can go.” Eddie’s arm protectively reaches for you to pull you in. Steve doesn’t even look at you while he says it.You started to understand why Eddie didn’t like him. Never a kind word to spare anyone except – “Wait! Wait, before you go to the locker room!” Ms. Harrington burst out of the gym doors with a book in her hand getting between Eddie and Steve, “Here.” Eddie took the book, smiled, and looked down at Libby who was gasping to catch her breath after running the length of the gym, “Night Things, Michael Talbot – kind of freaky like Labyrinth but scarier.” “Fitting, considering how much you remind me of the babe,” he sing-songed while fishing a different book out of his gym bag. He ignored Steve’s clenched jaw, but you notice his hands ball to fists by his sides. “Preferred The Elementals, but Babylon was okay – 4 stars,” Eddie said, passing the book back to Libby. She cradled the copy of Cold Moon over Babylon to her chest. “Fair review. I totally agree,” she said, now walking back into the gym with Steve following close behind her, “I’ll try to pull something more Tolkien next time.” “If it’s from you hot stuff, I know it’ll be g–OOF!” You watched it happen in slow motion even with how swift it was. Steve sent a hard jab to Eddie’s abs without warning, sending him hunched over. You stifled a laugh even though you did feel bad, that had to hurt. “That was bare knuckle man, that’s not ever fair,” Eddie gasped, holding onto the door frame, “Holy shit, dude.” Steve didn’t respond, just put his arm around Libby and walked her further into the gym. She turned her head around and mouthed, “Sorry!” to you, but she had nothing to apologize for. “You gotta get a hold of yourself, Munson,” you teased, rubbing your hand on his back while he stood back up to full height, “You okay, handsome?” “I’ll be fine,” he said, stretching out a little, putting the new book in his bag. “Plus, I got a real hot nurse to take care of me at home,” he winked, reaching for her hand again, holding it until they got to the locker room. You watched him disappear behind the double doors with a frown. The leather was stiff on the benches by the ring, you and Miss Harrington sat there with a magazine in your hands while the boys sparred. Sharing eye rolls to each other while they argued over whether Eddie could block or if Steve was just taking cheap shots. (If you’re wondering, Steve was just taking cheap shots.) You watched them for a minute, wincing while Eddie got a right hook to the face – not hard enough to break the skin but hard enough to send him into the ropes. “If you don’t keep your hands up…” Steve started, pulling him off the ropes, “You’re gonna get a concussion.” “Ugh, so right, don’t wanna end up like you,” Eddie loved a sassy retort, spitting blood out into the bucket in the corner of the ring. Eddie put his gloves up in time to block the next roll of punches toward his face. “Y’know his right hook is getting really good,” Libby said from behind her magazine, “He’s a natural at jabs.”

“I don’t know what that means,” you frowned, “But his backhand is getting really good, I can tell you that.” Libby’s nervous giggle floats out from behind the glossy pages in front of her. “Do you always just sit here and watch him practice? Don’t you get bored?” you asked. You hoped she’d say yes so you’d feel less guilty about being bored yourself, you’d already counted the flourescent lights over your head four times. “Oh! Um…” Lib looked at you, then back to the ring where Steve looked over at her. “I’m gonna go get my nails done I think, you should come! My treat,” you offer, “You deserve a break.” “Ah..um, okay, yeah,” she agreed, sliding her Keds back on and leaving the magazine on the bench behind her. “HEY!” Steve’s voice boomed across the gym even though you were only twenty feet away at most. Steve looked menacing, breath flaring out of his nostrils like a bull ready to strike, his eyes fixed on his girl. “Sit back down,” he spat, words coated in dominance, “Where d’you think you’re wanderin’ off to, angel?” “I’m taking her to get her nails done,” you stepped in front of Libby, feeling responsible for her safety. The way he looked at her made you feel uneasy, but you’d been around types like him before. “I didn’t ask you,” he barked, “I asked my woman.” “Woah man, don’t talk to my wife like that,” Eddie yelled coming up behind him, only stopped by a quick gloved jab to the chest. “Shut the fuck up Munson,” Steve turned his attention back to Libby, his voice softening, “Sit back down, honey.” “I think I’m gonna go, Stevie. I’ll be back soon!” she squeaked out, grabbing your arm and taking off in a scurry with you out of the gym. You heard Steve’s exasperated sigh, a stern ‘Learn how to fuckin’ block,’ before the squeak of their sneakers disappeared behind the gym doors. “Whew! Y’know, I just stay cause there’s nothing else to do,” she confessed, a little embarrased. “Not a bad view, I guess. Surpised you didn’t just sit back down,” you said with a little shiver, “With that voice? I would’ve.” “Oh his big bad man act? Please,” she scoffed, adjusting her glasses, “He just wants me to be around to give him a kiss when he’s done.” “We’ll get you back in time for that,” you tossed her a wink, Libby blushing the same way she does when Eddie tells her she’s cute. The air outside is still hot and sticky and with a huff to your banfgs you put the top back up on the Jaguar. “Let’s take my car,” you call over while Libby steps over to their Caddilac. “Steve said it’s a death trap,” she’s nervous to let go of the Caddy’s handle, you can tell she’s thinking about all the things he doesn’t want her to do. “He thinks it’s a death trap because Eddie drives it,” you laughed, “It’s my car. He wouldn’t have bought it for me if he thought I’d get hurt in it, Lib.” “He bought you this car?” she asked, her eyes wide like saucers. Her hand fell to her side from her car’s handle. “He can’t stop buying me cars,” you groaned, popping into the drivers seat and leaning over to open her door, “Don’t act surprised. Didn’t Steve buy you a whole house in Indiana?” “I mean yeah, but that’s our house,” she blushed, bouncing into the passengers seat. The white leather sticking to the backs of her thighs, “It’s for our future. Y’know he wants to open a gym over there? For kids?” “Why? So he can grind their bones to make his bread?” you asked, putting a hand behind her head rest to pull out of the lot. “So sorry, it’s like Ed just spoke through me,” you said, feeling guilty at the joke, but Libby laughed all the same. Her eyes lingered on you, like she couldn’t believe that you looked graceful in everything you did. “No, no, don’t be sorry. He wants to help out kids who were like him,” she explained, “He likes rye bread anyway. I don’t think children come in rye flavor.” “You better hope not,” you laugh back with her, quickly hitting the street to find the closest nail salon. – The scent of acetone was comforting, more so than the plastic, sweat, and blood that filled the gym. You had already gotten started, resting your chin on your other hand while the manicurist filed off your acrylics. You watch Libby nervously look over the wall of nail polishes, reaching out to finger a hot pink bottle only to second guess herself. “Why don’t you do the same red as me?” you asked, “We can match. It’s Malaga Wine.”

Libby turned and smiled, “I’d love to but I just don’t think Steve would like it. He’s already upset that I left.” You huffed to yourself: Steve this, Steve that. You’d rather die than let Eddie have that much influence over your day to day life. It’s supposed to be a girls day. “I think I’ll just get a french,” she meekly told the manicurist leading her to her station. “A french will be so pretty,” you encouraged. You could tell she wasn’t used to this, being told to pick for herself. Being out and about without Steve to hover over her. She kept looking over her shoulder, maybe not in fear but in uncertainty that she was never making the right choice. With Steve, she never had to worry about it, he’d make the decision for her. “So what’s it like,” Libby asked, getting seated at the station next to you, “Being with a rockstar? I feel like I’ve never gotten to sit and chat with you about it.” “Um,” you guessed, “Unpredictable.” “He keeps me on my toes,” you went on, “Total nut case cassanova, but stuttered for thirty minutes on our first date because I was ‘so overwhelming’. At least that’s what he told me.” “He loves you, talked about you all the time at the gym,” she said, “Talked to me a lot about how to get you back when you were away. Which like, was totally justified by the way. Totally on your side.” “I think he just wanted to talk to you,” you were being honest, “He thinks you’re too precious.” Libby’s face was as red as the nail polishes on the wall, a small collection of sweat beading up under her tied up, pre-faded, blue Malibu t-shirt which definitely had been Steve’s before she stole it. She swung her legs on the chair, her white Keds with white socks tucked neatly under them dragging against the bright white tile of the salon.

“And you don’t have to take sides, we both made a lot of mistakes,” you said, never wanting to fully blame Eddie. It was a disease, you had to keep reminding yourself of that. It’s not who he is, it’s who the drugs wanted him to be.

“Does Eddie like red on you?” she asked inching away from the subject. “I like red on me,” you said confidently, “If I like it, Ed loves it. I think that’s why we work out so well. Do you like red on you?” “Y-yeah,” she stammered, “But I don’t know, Steve’s always liked it when I’ve gotten a French done. He always says something about my ‘pretty hands’ when I get a manicure like this.” You guessed it was probably when she was giving him handies in hotels. “Get red for me, next time,” you smirked, “Tell Steve to fuck off.” “Okay, okay, next time I’ll get red,” she nodded, “Just for you, Stell.” “How’re you liking Malibu?” you asked, switching hands over. “It’s um, it’s nice? We walk the beach a lot since we’re so close.” “Just the beach?” “I mean, we’ll drive into LA every now and again and he’ll take me shopping but – otherwise we’re not here long enough for us to go do any real exploring outside of the gym.” “Why don’t you meet up with some friends while he’s training? Have them show you around?” “I don’t…” her voice trailed before she could finish her sentence. Her shoes stopped swinging against the tile slowly until they came to a complete stop. “Next time you’re here for a stretch, if I’m not working on something – give us a ring. We’ll show you the ropes,” your voice was warm, doing your best to soothe her through words. You knew the feeling of being in a new place with no one to run to but at least you didn’t have a five foot ten middle weight on your back the whole time. “That’d be nice.” You spent the rest of the appointment talking about each of your favorite hotels around the country, which ones Eddie is banned from, and where you can get the best mimosas. Giggling up a storm and taking shots at the boys every chance you could, you felt a smidge of normalcy you hadn’t felt in a while. Like when you’d go home to upstate New York and have a girls day with your mom and sisters. Libby protested for the entirety of you paying her her manicure, not even noticing the bulky silver chain attatched to the wallet you pulled out. Eddie never let you go anywhere without all of his cards and cash, “What’s mine is yours, sweet thing.” If he thought for a second you’d paid for your nails with your own money he’d fall into a fury that would rival Steve’s. “I got it, I got it,” you hushed her, “Technically Eddie’s got it, but I got it.” You passed her a fifty dollar bill to tip her manicurist and took out another fifty for yours, Ed’s words from your second date ringing in your ears every time you got a tip ready. “I’d lose my shit if someone even left me two bucks when I was bussing at The Hideout, so I’m always tipping everyone a bunch of money. I mean, I have more of it than I can spend so why wouldn’t I give it to everyone I know, y’know? You never know whose going home to a trailer park like me.” Your next stop was a little cafe you’d frequent every time you were staying at the beach house, cozying up across from eachother in a booth away from the main street windows for privacy. Sure, it was normal to be stared at and you knew Libby was used to it, too. But sometimes, you just wanted to eat a croissant without The Sun talking about how much you love carbs. “Can I get a vanilla latte, please?” you asked, “And a chocolate croissant if you have any left over, I know it’s later in the day.” “I think have a few left, I’ll just make sure. Is almond okay if we don’t have any chocolate?” “Almond is great. Actually, can you just pack me up an almond one either way? My husband loves them,” you gushed. “We know. Eddie finds a way to clear us out every time he visits,” the waitress laughed with a knowing look, writing down the order and looking at Libby, “What can I get you, dear?” “Um, just a coffee is fine – decaf,” she said, pressing her glasses up on her face again. You weren’t much older than her, but she had a way about her that made her seem younger. Wide eyed, like the world was so new. “Anything else?” “No, no, just the decaf. Thank you so much,” she beamed. “Don’t like coffee? I’m so sorry, I should’ve asked where you might’ve wanted to go,” you said, your shoulders sulking. “Oh no, no, I do! It’s just, it’s after twelve and Steve doesn’t like when I –” “Enough about Steve. About what Steve likes, about what Steve wants,” you’re surprised by the short fuse of anger on your tongue, but this was getting ridiculous. “Do you ever get to be yourself? Do you ever get to be Libby?” She shuddered out a sigh, her cheeks reddening. Libby toyed with the frayed edge of her Levi cut offs, “We put green tile in the kitchen.” “But you can’t paint your nails red?” you asked, exasperated, “I mean, Christ Lib, you can pick out kitchen tiles but you can’t have more than one glass of champagne at a New Years Eve party?” “It’s not like that,” she said, sweat beading at her hairline. “Then what’s it like? I mean, he’s got you wrapped around his finger I’m – I’m like – I’m sort of worried about you,” you offer your hands to her over the table, she takes them. Warm and soft after her manicure, her French tips glinting in the low light of the cafe with your red ones. “I know this is so cliche, but it’s just…how he is?” she shakes her head trying to come up with a better explaination, “I know it’s because he loves me.” “Love shouldn’t come with so many rules, Libby,” you urged, sounding like an older sister begging her to see the light. “They aren’t, that’s the thing. They’re just suggestions and I…I like following them,” she blushed a little, “He just makes me feel so…safe? When we’re in Hawkins it’s so different y’know? I have all my friends there, I go out and have girls nights, we do all the things we’d do if I was still around. Here I’m just…I’m just Harrington’s ‘little woman’.” You see her deflate at the title, you didn’t ever have to worry about those things. You were never ‘Eddie Munson’s Wife,’ in fact, it was more common for him to be listed as your husband. “You’re Libby to me,” you assured, “You’re my friend.” “I am?” she asked. “Of course you are,” you let go of her hands while the waitress put your coffees in front of you, a chocolate croissant on a plate placed in the center of the table. Another waitress came over with a bag of almond croissants with ‘Eddie Munson Stash’ written on it and you could barely stifle a laugh. “On the house,” they said while you tucked the bag next to you. “No! No, not all these croissants, he’d kill me if I just took them,” your smile was blinding. “He’s been paying in advance all year, trust me, it’s fine,” she said back to you, “Enjoy, please!” The women walked over to their other tables and you made quick work of ripping the croissant in half and holding it in front of Libby, “Here, they’re to die for.” “Also this,” you said, swapping your coffees, “Best vanilla latte on the West Coast, I can’t have you miss out.” Libby hesitates, taking the croissant and eyeing the latte. “C’mon Lib,” you smirked at her again, “Have a little fun.” “Yeah? I should, right?” she said, seeking your reassurance. “Right! Fuck Steve!” you laughed, cheersing your pastry halves. “Fuck Steve!” Libby’s smile was so broad you could’ve sworn it hurt her cheeks, but it was sweeter than the croissant melting on your tongue. You put the top back down when you got in the Jaguar together, making use of the upgraded sound system and not being shy about it. “OH! I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY!” “I WANNA FEEL THE HEAT WITH SOMEBODY!” “WITH SOME BODY WHO LOVES ME!”

Did either of you sound like Whitney? Of course not, but all of Malibu was going to hear you both screaming it out of the car and down the freeway to make it back to the gym. You drove too fast and made too quick turns just to watch her squeal and and laugh while clutching the side of the car when your tires skidded to stop. “DON’T YOU WANNA DANCE? WITH ME, BABY.” “DON’T YOU WANNA DANCE? WITH ME, BOY.” “HEY DON’T YOU WANNA DANCE? WITH ME, BABY.” “WITH SOMEBODY WHO LOVES ME!” “Don’t you wanna dance, say you wanna dance, don’t you wanna dance?” you both kept singing after the ignition turned off only to realize you might’ve only sounded good with Whitney’s vocals booming over yours. You both laughed with eachother in the parked car, catching your breath before sliding out of the white leather seats and back onto the pavement. Libby’s hand was still soft in yours when you made it back into the gym, your other hand clutching the bag of almond croissants. The boys perked in the ring, both sitting in opposite corners, shirtless and sweating. “I got the good stuff, baby,” you called, waving it over your head. “Fuuuuck me, yes,” he called from his stool, “You’re so good to me.” “Hi Stevie,” Libby said, letting go of your hand to run to the corner Steve was sat at. He knelt down, putting his head through the ropes to lean down and kiss her. You watched her show him her nails and the knowing look he gave her after he saw them. ‘Pretty hands, angel.’ “You almost done?” you asked, putting a hand on one of the ropes by his calf. Eddie looked down at you and nodded, squatting to meet your eye. “Missed you,” he said, a sweet smile on his face, looking at you through his eye lashes. “I missed you, too, baby,” you cooed, flouncing over to the bench from before. “Gotta be careful in that dress, sweet thing,” he said after you, “You know what you’re doin’ to me.” You turned your head back to him over your shoulder, tossing him a little ‘Who me?’ look. He blushed immediately, but the distraction might’ve been to his detriment – Steve was right, you should’ve stayed home. Before the last round even fully started, Eddie was on the ground with a split above his eyebrow that could’ve given Steve’s a run for his money. “Fuck, FUCK,” Eddie called out, ripping his gloves off, holding his forehead with blood pouring out through his fingers. Steve laughed, “All day Munson, I’ve been beggin’ you to learn how to block head shots. You listenin’? Got a brain under all that hair?” “Fuck off, man, Christ,” he glowered, “Bell didn’t even ring and you went the fuck in.” “Gotta be prepared, Munson,” he shrugged, pulling his own gloves off to reveal taped hands, slinging the gloves over his shoulder. He hops out of the ring and calls Libby over, only she looks a little unnerved. “I don’t think she knows how to fix that,” she says to Steve. “Not our problem,” Steve furrows his brow while guiding her to the locker room but she stops before they get through the door. “Well I was gonna invite them come over for a late lunch but I think we should get him to the house to get him fixed up. I saw how hard you hit him,” Libby was urgent and he couldn’t say no to her. Those sweet saucer eyes, her ache to help others – she really was his better half. Steve ran a hand over his face, “Yeah, yeah, fine.” Libby met eyes with you, “We’ll meet you at the house, I know just how to take care of stuff like that,” she nods toward Steve, “Have a lot of practice.” – The townhouse they have is nice, and clearly recently renovated – in some way still smelling like fresh paint and leather apholstery. “I was gonna make sandwhiches but I really think I gotta take him to the bathroom,” Libby said, looking over at Eddie in the kitchen who was looking particularly white. Back in his regular rockstar get up, shorts and tank back in gym bag hell where they belonged. “I can make sandwhiches, Libby,” you smiled, shoving Eddie lightly towards your little librarian, “Take him.” “Oof, hellllooo nurse!” he said when they were partly down the hall, disappearing into the bathroom. “Keep that door open!” Steve called down the hall, sitting roughly on one of the barstools on the island. His sunglasses pressed hard against his forheaed. “Like a couple of fuckin’ teenagers,” he grumbled to himself.

“Oh, Steve, stop, they’re just playing around,” you said, trying to keep your tone as light as possible. You opened the state of the art fridge to find all the cold cuts and condiments and setting them on the counter. Steve ignores your attempt at friendly conversation, “Breads in the cupboard on the right.” You realize quickly that he’s just going to watch you make sandwhiches. – “Okay, just sit down, I got you,” Libby soothed, wetting a face cloth and wiping all the excess blood away from his forehead. She was gentle while he sat on the edge of the toilet seat cover. “Can you hold that there for second?” she asked, putting his hand over the face cloth. “For you? Anything,” he teased, watching her reaching under the sink and pull out a first aid kit and he clicked his tongue. “Aw c’mon sweet thing, all those bandages?” he asked, his hand motioning toward the gauze and medical tape she was placing by the sink. “What do you mean? What’s wrong with that?” she asked, looking back at him. “Baby, there’s other ways to make a man feel better. That’s all I’m saying,” he shrugged, his cool voice making her shiver, “Shame you gotta do it the right way.” Like clock work she covered her face, making him grin. “I get it though, he’s right down the hall. Don’t want him to hear us,” he egged on, “Maybe next time.” Libby, barely breathing at this point, takes the face cloth out of his hand and tosses it in the hamper at the edge of the sink counter. She holds one hand over his eye leaving the cut exposed, and the other holds an antiseptic spray about two inches away.

“Ah, shit,” Eddie hissed. The sting of the cut cleansing spray hurt more than he hoped. The stingy burn of it pooling from his eyebrow, mixing with blood, and dripping down to his eye. Libby caught it with gauze before it got to his tear duct, so used to this routine after Steve’s fights. “Sorry!” her voice was high and gentle, nerves clear on her tongue, “I’m so sorry.” “It’s okay, sweet thing,” Eddie said, his fingers gently reaching out to graze the side of her thigh in comfort, “You’re jus’ doin’ your job.” “You’re getting good,” she said, trying to bring the conversation to boxing so she could ignore his hand on her thigh. “Your jabs are starting to look like Steve’s,” she enthused, but frowned at the cut over his brow, it hadn’t quite stopped bleeding. Libby turned to grab more gauze, pressing it up against his forehead with a pressure she knew all too well. “Stell said your backhand was getting good, too,” she blushed at her boldness to say something so saucy, but two could play at whatever game he was always playing. He laughed, a soft little ‘too cool for school’ chuckle, pressing the tip of his tongue behind his top teeth. “Did she?” he asked, his voice salacious and syrupy. “Not like, in the face right?” she blurted out, “Oh my God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ask that. I don’t know why that came out.” His chuckle got deeper, smooth and dark like seude, “No, no, never in the face. Just a couple on her ass.” Libby blushed, shaking her head, embarrassed at the information. Eddie rolled with her giddy response, unable to ignore his fondness for her bubbling in his throat. “Only when she’s been a bad girl,” he said, looking up at her, his fingers gently moving hers away from his forehead so he could hold the gauze that was soaked through with blood, “You’d know all about that, huh?” She fell into a peal of nervous giggles when he winked at her with his good eye, causing a booming ‘HEY!’ from Steve to ring down the hall. “Ope! Oops, totally forgot, no smiling. We can’t have any fun at all,” Eddie joked, zipping his lips and tossing the key behind him. “No fun at all,” she whispered back with a smile, reaching back to get more gauze only to see that they were out, “Oh shoot, let me grab a couple of paper towels. I’ll be back in a second!” “Don’t go wanderin’ too far, angel,” Eddie said, mimicking Steve’s gruff cadence. “Stop it,” she said with a laugh, turning back to scold him from the door frame, “I’ll be back. Don’t pass out.” “I’ve had worse,” he he sing songed while she walked down the hall. He had had worse – woken up with cuts and slices from some unknown source, praying he didn’t have tetanus. Concussions from falling down flights of stairs drunk on absinthe. Face planting on the sidewalk after a long night at the strip club putting who knows what up his nose. Dick still works, he’d say to himself when he’d wake up hung over and covered in a litter of bumps and bruises. “Hi!” Libby beamed at you and Steve while bouncing into the kitchen. You saw her flushed face, knowing Eddie was in that bathroom working his charm on her. He could never helpself around a nervous girl with a pretty face, she was so easily flustered. Libby’s face fell when she noticed tension in the room, slowly pulling paper towels off the roll. “Everything okay in here?” she asked, seeing the finished sandwhiches on the counter and you leaning silently up against the counter. “Sure is, angel,” Steve said with a warm smile, nursing a cup off coffee – he hadn’t offered to make her one, “You behavin’ yourself in there?” “Steve,” she said with a blush and an eye roll. He reached out to pull her in by the waist while she walked by, holding her close to him while he sat back on the stool. You watched him lean in to kiss her, his arm protective around her, his hand closing over her waist. He kissed her like he was claiming her, the grip on his coffee cup transferring to cup her cheek. You turned away towards the sink, grabbing yourself a glass of water. Their kiss felt like it was supposed to be private. As if Steve wanted it to make you uncomfortable. You heard them separate and a little yelp come from her mouth when he smacked her ass as she went back into the hallway. Always had to claim what’s his. You rolled your eyes, still staring at the backsplash and sipping your water. You started cleaning up, hearing Libby and Eddie’s giggles from down the hall, trying not to giggle yourself. God he was insatiable. You turned back around, seeing Steve’s clenched jaw and the way he gripped the mug in front of him. “Lighten up, Steve,” you said, not even trying to be nice anymore. He hummed, drumming his fingers on counter. “You don’t let her have any fun, of course she’s gonna find it where she can get it,” you said, crossing your arms, “I think I’m plenty fun,” he said lazily. “You know what I mean,” you said, “No caffeine after twelve while you’re sitting here nursing a double shot espresso? I mean for fuck’s sake she was afraid to get her nails painted. Who makes their girlfriend feel like that?”

“You sayin’ I don’t know how to treat my girl?” he snapped, a hand coming down flat and hard on the white quartz of the island. “You’re her whole life, Steve. Every decision she makes rides on you think it’s the right one. Like – damn, y’know? She can take care of herself, is all I’m saying,” you said, still trying to remain sure in your voice while packaging the cold cuts back up. His harshness made you flinch, cold sweat collected at the back of your neck under your hair.

Steve breathed a small laugh out of his nose, “You would say that.”

“What do you mean?” you said, half way in the fridge, “I would say that?”

“Because you take care of yourself,” he said, “You don’t let Munson take care of you.” His tone was matter of fact, like he knew everything about the both of you from such a short time together.

“He takes care of me just fine,” you huff.

“Don’t think he was doing much of that when you left him for me to clean up.” “I didn’t leave him for you to clean up, I didn’t even know he was gonna call you,” you glared, slamming the fridge closed, “And who the fuck are you anyway? He started boxing to work his shit out. All your shit’s still there and you’re fighting every week.” “Oh, ho, ho, there she is,” Steve breaks out in a bitter smile, the agrumentative side of him revving up for a fight. You’re annoyed at him enoying getting a rise out of you, but you’re never one to let it go until you’ve had the last word, “America’s sweetheart with a mouth like a sailor, color me surprised.” “Oh, shut up,” you rolled your eyes, so used to the same comeback from scuzzy men who’d hear you swear at a bar, “Don’t avoid what I said. You got Libby shaking in her boots every time she’s out and about without you. That’s not okay Steve, she shouldn’t be so scared of making you upset. Like i said, you gotta let her have a little fun or you’re gonna lose her.” Steve didn’t like that, you insinuating that she’d leave him if he didn’t let up. He was done pushing your buttons, now he was gonna just get mean. “You wanna tell my girl to go have fun? She can have all the fun she wants, who am I to stop her? But you, Stell, you? You havin’ fun?” He squared his shoulders towards you, hands talking with him while he spoke. He justs his chin towards you while he asks. “Of course,” you say, but your face and the catch in your throat betray you. “Yeah?” his voice is filled with mock concern and certainty, “You havin’ fun when he comes home late? When you gotta bail ‘im outta jail? Don’t know where he’s been or who he’s been hangin’ out with? Whose ass he’s grabbin’ at the bar after he’s done doin’ lines? You havin’ fun when the budgets not matchin’ up and he’s lookin’ a little thin? When he stays in Malibu to train a little longer than usual?” “Stop…” you start, choking on your words. Steve got up, predator to prey, on a roll now, taking slow steps toward you as your press yourself harder against the counter while he gets in your face. He knows he’s right by the way you’re reacting, and with the day he’s had and the giggles from down the hall, he can’t wait to hit more nails on the head. “And why do you think that is, Stell?” he cocks his head the the side, hair coming with him, “Think it’s cause you kept lettin’ him come back every time he fucked up? Cryin’ on his lap like a kicked puppy, beggin’ him to be better for you? Please. Should’ve cut ‘im off for good – now he thinks he can do whatever he wants. How long you think he’s gonna stay clean this time, hm? What happens when you get that late night call, Stella? And you’ll take him right back, won’t you?” “I…” you were at a loss for words, his voice was tight and hard. He scared you. Even with his sunglasses on you could see the tension in his face while he glared through you. His scent like Christmas time and blood, it filled you, it made it hard to breathe. “Keep letting him get away with murder, and you wonder why you’re not sleepin’? Oh yeah, he told me and Libby all about it. Never sleeping, tense all the time. And he can’t imagine why, right? Cause he’s all better now? I know you know better. So be honest with me, huh Stell?” He reached up to peer down at you from behind his glasses, his amber eyes wicked while they met yours – a cool smirk on his face, the tip of his tongue flicking quickly against the inside flesh of his cheek, “You havin’ fun, angel?” You couldn’t hold it in anymore, breaking down into a wracking sob in front of him – something you hated doing, rarely crying outside of acting. At least not in front of people like Steve. He strolled backed to his stool on the island, putting his sunglasses back over his eyes, the sound of you crying perking up a brewing headache. Eddie came in quickly, knowing the sound of you crying better than a mother to her child, “Oh no, no, baby what’s wrong?” He ran to you, almost tripping on his sneakers on the tile, his embrace tight and safe – the safest you felt all day. “What did you say to her?” Ed was shocked to even find you like this, his voice bleeding confusion, his chest vibrating against your ear, “What the fuck did you say?” Libby came in slowly, starting to recognize that the sounds in the kitchen weren’t people having a good time. She stood in the entry way, eyes flitting from Eddie holding a version of you she never thought she’d see, nand then over to Steve. Her gaze turned to ice on him and he felt it. “What did you do?” she asked, a bitter taste still on her tongue from your chat at the coffee shop. “What did I do?” he asked back, incredulous, “You’re down the hall playing doctor with Eddie fuckin’ Munson and you wanna ask what I’m doin’?” “That’s enough,” Eddie said, putting his hand up, the other still wrapped around you, “You wanna be mad at me? That’s cool man, be mad at me. Don’t be mad at her for putting a fuckin’ band aid on my forehead. You’re in here making my wife upset and that’s where I’m drawing the fuckin’ line. Sorry your girl patched me up and Stella took her out without the okay, but you don’t gotta take that out on her. Take it out in the ring man, isn’t that all you’re good for anyway?” “Get out,” Steve’s voice was low and measured. “No, guys you don’t have to leave, I–” Libby’s voice was desperate, aching for them to ignore Steve, but it was apparent that there wasn’t any fixing what might’ve been said. “We’re heading out anyway,” Eddie interrupted, he got close to your ear, “You got your things, baby? Your purse in the car?” You nodded and before you knew it you were back in the Jaguar, Eddie erratically pulling out of the condo lot and onto the road. “Slow down,” you said through you tears, snot pouring down the back of your throat, “You’re going too fast.” “I’m sorry I’m just…I’m so fuckin’ pissed right now,” he hissed, “The fuckin’ nerve of that asshole. Should’ve kicked his fuckin’ ass.” The sun was starting to set over the horizon, leaving a hazy orange pink in the sky over the highway. It should’ve been the end of a good day, maybe you would pulled over and got dessert or a night cap before going home. It wasn’t long before you were back at the beach house, the sky an bright magenta behind the white stone of the mini mansion. He pulled his gym bag out from the back and went to your side of the car to let you out. “C’mere sweet thing,” he held your hand all the way to the door, stepping into the cool air conditioned front hall. He takes you right to the living room, sitting you on the couch while you cry and gets on his knees. He silently takes your sandals off, rubbing your calves after each one, hoping you’ll start to calm down. He knows better than to press you before you’re ready, but he hadn’t seen you like this since your dad passed away. Eddie’s hair tickled your neck while he sat next to you, one arm around your shoulder while he pulled you in against his chest, “What did he say to you, baby? What’s got you so upset?” “I’m n-not having f-f-fun,” you said like you had just realized it yourself. You wriggled out of his hold, sitting cross legged over his thighs. “Today? You don’t wanna come to the gym with me? That’s okay, baby. It’s boring,” he reassured with a little smile. “No, Ed, I – I’m not having fun anymore,” you said, finally looking at him. “With…with me? You’re not having fun with me anymore?” you could see his heart breaking in front of you. Replaying the day you kicked him out in his head all over again. “I just,” another aching cry rolled through you, “When I wake up in the middle of the night and you’re not there it’s like…it’s like I can’t even breathe. Like you aren’t coming home again. Like you’re dead in a fuckin’ punk house or something. If you’re out at the bar too late, what cities you’re playing in where I know you can get oxy easy. I’m always waiting for the fucking call, Ed. I’m always waiting for the call.”

The words just kept pouring out of you, all the fears you’d had since you let him come back, since that night at the beach. “And I just, I’m always scared you’re gonna be in those moods again. Never knowing who you’re gonna be that day. God you were such a fucking asshole when you needed to use. And it’s like, I gotta wake up and be at my call time but you’re in the bathroom for a little too long and I swear I think I hear you doing lines – and I know, I know you’re not. But it’s like I’ll never shake it off, baby. Like I’m always gonna be worrying about it.” Your body aches when you really think about it, and you plead to him with begging eyes, “When am I gonna get to stop worrying about you, Ed? When do I get to have fun?” He’s speechless, looking at you with his full lips slightly parted, his eyes glassy with tears that aren’t ready to fall yet. “I – Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked, his hands were shaking, anxious to hold yours but he could tell you didn’t want him to touch you. “I didn’t want hurt your f-feelings,” you whispered, trying to control the lump in your throat. Wishing your tear ducts would just dry up so you could move on from the conversation. Eddie could never let it go until he knew were feeling better. “Stell, I keep saying to you it’s okay to hurt my feelings about this,” he was frustrated with you, the vein in his neck greeting you with a pulse. You wiped your eyes, the weight of the whole day starting to feel heavy on your body, “Why can’t you hear me when I say that to you?” “Can we maybe just talk about this later? I want to go take a shower and wash this whole day off me,” your groggy voice made his chest ache. He could see exhaustion peeking through under your eyes. Eddie slid his hand back and forth over your thigh and leaned in to press a kiss to your forehead. “Yeah, no problem,” his voice was soft, savoring the lull in your tears. Seeing you upset was hard enough when he was shooting up Persian, it was even worse when he was sober, “I’ll go unpack for us, princess. We can order Thai, have a nice little night in, okay?” You didn’t respond outside of getting off the couch and picking up your sandals to drop off in your closet upstairs before heading into the master bath, already shedding your tennis dress by the bed. Eddie would pick it up anyway. You only turned on the mirror lights, a deep warm yellow that barely lit up the room. You didn’t want any aid in feeling awake at all. Your bare feet padded against the tile while you turned the walk in shower on, rain water head and deatchable head hissing while the water hit the ground. You caught yourself in the mirror while you waited for the water to heat up, mascara tears staining all the way down to your neck. “Shit,” you whispered, padding back over to the sink to wash your face spending enough time on it that the bathroom had already steamed up. The steam was welcome, opening up your clogged, post cry sinuses, soothing your throat from trying to choke back your feelings. With a clean face, you step in the shower, letting the hot water totally envelope you. It stings, but it feels deserved. You run your hands over your hair, breathing through your mouth while the water flows over your lower lip – you feel the tension rinse out of your body and down the drain, too. You stand in the water for ten minutes, knowing it won’t get cold, before you reach for the shampoo bottle on the inlet shelf. You hear the door open but continue pouring the liquid into your hands, rubbing them together when you see him through the fog of the glass wall separating the shower from the bathroom. He flicks the stereo on, turning the sound on low before coming around the entrance to the shower. Eddie doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t have to. He sees the shampoo in your hands and then looks back up at your face, depuffed from your cry from the steam. He’s all muscle and tattoos, a single chain around his neck with a guitar pick dangling above his pecs, hair getting wilder with the humidity. He steps closer to you, the small splatter of his footsteps in the water reverberating off the walls. He can’t keep his hands to himself, reaching immediatley to your wet face hunching over to kiss you with more passion than your wedding day. “You don’t gotta worry about it,” he whispers against your mouth, he weight pressed against you “I’m taking care of all of it, you hear me?” He doesn’t give you a moment to respond, capturing your lips with his, his tongue snaking in past your teeth. You know he doesn’t close his eyes because you haven’t either – looking directly at each other while you kiss. You know he means it, you can feel him mean it. Outside of your heaving breathing, the stereo still plays softly in the background. Steam building in the shower from anything but the heat of the water. ‘When the workin’, when the workin’ day is done. Oh when the workin’ day is done, oh girls. Girls just wanna have fun…They just wanna, they just wanna…’

#rockstar!eddie #rockstar!eddie munson #rockstar!eddie smut #rockstar!eddie munson smut #eddie munson rockstar au #eddie munson fan fiction #EDDIE MUNSON FANFICTION #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #stranger things fan fiction #steve harrington fan fiction #boxer!steve harrington #boxer!steve #steve harrington #eddie munson

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willowbird · 4 years ago

Note

For the prompt thing, could you do 2 for au, 4 for trope and 5 for prompt with andreil?

Hogwarts au, meet messy, "you have the emotional capacity of a brick"

Dearest anon, how did you know that I have been literally aching for an excuse to do something with a hogwarts au?

For context, because idk if I'll be able to explain it in the ficlet, Andrew and Aaron have been raised by their real father, Joseph Minyard, and his wife, Betsy Dobson, since the twins were seven. Andrew instinctively retaliated against an abuser with magic when he was in foster care, bringing him to the attention of whatever the US's ministry of magic is called (I forgot). They found his dad, who is a British wizard, and also discovered Aaron's existence. The twins, upon meeting each other and finding out they were wizards, chose to stay together and go with their dad rather than risk potentially being separated in whatever system the US magic people has for orphaned magic kids.

(look, I've been thinking about this A LOT okay?)

The following scene would take place the summer before the twins' fifth year. They are fifteen, Kevin is sixteen, Neil is fourteen.

Please be aware that all these characters are a lot younger and significantly less traumatized. I mean, shit still happened to them, but they all get rescued from their abusive home lives a lot earlier than in canon.

---

Andrew Minyard had lost a bet.

It was a really shitty bet, and Andrew should have known at the time that he was being fucking set up. But, well - what was it that broody fucker always said? Oh. C'est la vie. Or something. Whatever.

Point being, Andrew made a stupid bet and then he lost and it was really his own damn fault. Now he was stuck going to stupid Kevin Day's stupid house to play stupid broom-ball over summer break when he could have been basking in the wonders of muggle efficiency like television and air conditioning. What made it worse was that his mom had been so damn delighted that he was going over to a friend's house, too, and Andrew didn't usually have it in him to smash her hopes and dreams when she was so genuinely happy for him.

So. Here he was, broom in hand (because if he had to do this he was at least going to suffer with the familiarity of his own fucking broom), staring up at obviously haunted creaky old manor house that Day apparently lived in.

"Great," he grumbled to himself. "Just.. great." Andrew did not like ghosts, did not like them one fucking bit. They always wanted to chat you up and had absolutely no respect for personal space.

The longer he delayed, though, the longer Day was probably going to force him to participate in his bullshit "training camp", so Andrew straightened his shoulders and trudged up the cracked stone staircase that lead up the hill to the front door of the house. The very second Andrew had both feet on the dilapidated front porch, one hand reaching for the knocker, the front door began to swing slowly open. You know, as they were wont to do in creepy old ghost-infested houses owned by wizards.

Without waiting for a welcome (because the door fucking opened for him, that was invitation enough), Andrew strolled inside. He didn't even flinch when the door slammed shut behind him.

(Okay, maybe he jumped a little bit. Just a little.)

No one was waiting for him in the foyer, because of course that would be too easy. At least the inside of the house didn't look as abandoned as the outside did. On the contrary, the foyer was well-lit and free dust and cobwebs. It opened up into a round sitting room that looked lived-in rather than haunted, personal affects strewn about here and there in vaguely organized chaos and family pictures on the mantle above the fireplace.

This, Andrew had learned quickly upon his introduction to the magical world about seven or so years ago now, was fairly common when it came to magical families living in and around muggle neighborhoods. Sure, there were wholly wizarding villages, but not a ton of them. Most of the magical community had to coexist or at least peripherally exist with the muggle one. With the work of a couple of charms and a heavy dose of aesthetic, a magical family could live comfortably without the muggles looking too closely - and even if they did look closely, it was the haunted old house at the end of the street so strange things were bound to happen around it, right?

Homey as it may be on the inside, it was still actually haunted, though. Andrew had a good sense about ghostly lairs and this was definitely one of them.

Heaving a sigh, Andrew moved through the sitting room and ventured deeper into the house. The sooner he found Kevin, the sooner he could leave.

The rest of the house, Andrew swiftly found, was an uncanny combination of the haunted image it presented to outsiders and the cozy haven of the front sitting room. The hall leading off the sitting room was normal when you looked down it heading away from the sitting room, but when Andrew looked back over his shoulder it was like looking into something out of a cheap horror film (of which Andrew had viewed many, much to his father and brother's chagrin, but his mother liked to critique them with him).

Andrew checked each door he came across. Some of them were locked. Some opened into perfectly normal coat closets and bathrooms. At least one of them opened onto an actual cemetery where a bunch of ghosts were playing croquet. Andrew quickly shut that door before any of them tried to talk to him.

It was when he came to the staircase, however, that he finally started to get somewhere. Voices could be heard when he hit the first landing, but they completely vanished when tried to move beyond it - either further up the stairs or out into the hall. Turning to inspect the walls, Andrew realized that one of them wasn't actually a wall at all, but an illusion -- his hand right through!

"This is getting ridiculous," Andrew grumbled to himself as he stepped through the goddamn fucking wall.

He found himself in a wide, clean hallway bathed in the bright sunlight that was streaming in from the skylights placed every few feet. From one of the open doors a bit down the hall, Andrew could finally make out the words of what was obviously an argument.

"How many times do I have to tell you that I'm not going to your bloody school, Day?!"

"You can't just not go to school, Neil! The Ministry will have your wand, and then where will you be?"

"Oh come off it, do you really still buy into all that regulatory shit? They can't track me if I'm not a student unless they have an open warrant out on me. I could turn the corner store into a giant anthropomorphic pig that pisses coffee and they wouldn't know it happened until the story hit the local news, and even then they'd have a hard time tracking me down, considering those lazy twats barely even know how to read let alone track a rogue wizard."

"Galloping Gargoyles, Neil. Where in Merlin's name do you come up with this shit."

"It's called an imagination, Day. I was able to foster one while not being indoctrinated into the sheep-brain miasma that is Ministry-approved wizarding society."

This 'Neil' was getting more worked up as he spoke, spitting out his words like he was crafting a very pointed hex. There was the scuff of footsteps and a shadow fell across the hall as someone stepped toward the hall. "I'll be leaving now, thanks. Have fun being institutionally programed to fit the conservative mediocrity."

A larger shadow blotted out most of Neil's. "You can't just go, Neil!"

There was a scuffle, then a short kid wearing oversized robes stumbled into the hall. "Try and bloody catch me then, you lumbering infant of a Bandersnatch!" And then the kid turned and bolted down the hall -- right toward where Andrew had paused to eavesdrop on their conversation.

Now, Andrew was all ready to step aside. This was none of his business, after all. If this mouthy kid wanted to run away and join the circus or something, more power to him. He, also, thought school was a nightmare. But then Kevin stumbled out into the hall and shouted, "Andrew! Block him!"

And, well. Look. This was all fucking Kevin's fault. Kevin and his stupid cross-House quidditch club and his obsession with running drills. It was also Nicky's fault, for forcing them all to go so they could bond or what the fuck ever the purpose was. But Kevin shouted 'block!' and Andrew had spent two years as a beater and one year as a keeper and, well, reflexes kicked in.

He blocked.

Except, he had spent two years as a beater, and he was holding a broom. So.

His arms moved on their own, and it was a mighty, vicious swing. The next second the kid was flat on his back, gasping to try and catch his breath. Kevin loped over on legs too long, shooting Andrew an appreciative grin that Andrew kind of wanted to punch off of him.

"What.. the.. actual... fuck..." the kid - Neil - wheezed from the floor.

Now that he was officially drawn into this mess, Andrew allowed himself to indulge his curiosity and slung his broom up against one shoulder to approach the fallen boy. He felt a little bad (okay, more than a little), so he figured he'd offer him a hand up at least. Except, when he got to the kid and looked down he was shocked to find just about the prettiest boy in the whole Nimue-cursed universe.

(Andrew's gay awakening had happened when he was twelve years old. The keeper of the Gryffindor quidditch team smiled at him and told him he'd make a pretty good beater. Andrew had tried out for his own House team the very next week, and it had all been downhill from there.)

Andrew cleared his throat and opened his mouth to say something cool and unbothered, because that's what you did when you met someone pretty and wanted to impress them. Instead, like the utter dork that he was, he said, "Red hair and a hand-me-down robe? You must be a Weasley."

"What the fuck is a Weasley?" the sharp, pretty boy on the floor shot back through gritted teeth, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

Kevin's obnoxious shadow fell across the both of him and he sighed, putting his hands on his hips. "Don't mind Andrew, he remembers everything he hears and has a tendency to regurgitate random lines from other things when he feels awkward or anxious."

"Don't mind Kevin," Andrew followed up conversationally, "he's an insufferable know-it-all with a tendency to overshare and force people to play stupid broom-ball when they should be having a perfectly air-conditioned summer break."

"You emotionally wound me."

"You have the emotional capacity of a brick, don't try me Day."

Kevin rolled his eyes. Neil honed in on Andrew with eerie intensity. "You have an air-conditioner?"

Aha! Mission accomplished: cute boy impressed.

Andrew smirked. "Yup." He popped the 'p', feeling quite good about himself, his earlier bumble placed in the back of his head where he could obsess about it later.

Neil's narrowed eyes scanned him up and down, then relaxed, the blue of them bright and intelligent. He looked like he was figuring something out about Andrew but Andrew had no idea what or why. It took some effort, but instead of squirming he met Neil's gaze full-on. After a long moment, Neil seemed to have made a decision. He pushed himself up to his feet and nodded. "Alright then. You play quidditch?" He gestured to Andrew's broom with the jerk of his chin.

He hadn't noticed it earlier because he'd been so fascinated with the argument itself, but now that he could focus on Neil's voice, Andrew realized that there was something of about his accent. It wasn't that it seemed fake but more that it... it reminded him of his own, back when he'd been younger and had only been in England for a couple of years. He remembered being teased for it, and getting into a lot of fights because of that. Well, he remembered getting into fights because Aaron was also teased, and no one picked on his brother but him.

"I thought you were going to run off and join the circus." Andrew arched a brow.

Neil wrinkled his nose. "No. I'm still not going to your stupid castle school." He paused and looked from Andrew to the broom back over to Kevin and sighed. "But... one or two games of quidditch before I go can't hurt."

Kevin looked overjoyed. He grinned at Andrew and Andrew supposed that they really must be friends now, because he felt quite pleased about that.

"Great!" said Kevin. "Let's go! We should be able to get in some warm-up rounds before the others get here!"

"Others?" Andrew and Neil said with identical inflections of disdain. The sound of an echo startled the both of them and the looked at each other. Then, Neil smiled.

Andrew supposed a day without AC playing stupid broom-ball wasn't so bad after all.

Fun little prompt things

#asks #ficlet prompts #aftg #aftg fanfic #andreil #hogwarts au #andrew minyard #neil josten #kevin day #andrew minyard x neil josten #did this turn into more of of a meet-cute?#meet messy #meet cute

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imnotrevealingmyname · 4 years ago

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sylvie gets act more like loki than loki, gets to wear the outfit while loki stuck wearing the tva outfit, Sylvie is like the main character acting bad ass while loki is the comedy side kick once again (with either sylvie or mobius imo pretty much taken thors/odin/frigga's role) but this time even in his own show, his not the main character, we even had characters call her the superior loki and say the story isn't about him etc and reduced to comedy/weak to prop other characters/make them look better. i guess mobius was right when said he exists to make overs better version of themselves.

Sylvie is acting like Sylvie, not Loki. In no movie has Loki ever been all act first think later. Sylvie is all brawn and no brain, even with that "plan" of hers. She goes against everything we've seen of Loki even in the first few movies when Loki was "in context" or whatever you wanna call it (I'm still sticking to the point of view that it's absurd to call him ooc the moment canon doesn't match your headcanon. It's just stupid, sorry.) As for the outfit we've seen Loki wear suits before. Nobody ever lost their minds over that, back then. Sylvie isn't wearing "the costume", either. That is still a cheap replication of Loki's armour. Sylvie is acting like a sulky kid a lot of the time, okay? Loki physically subdued her and also did that with magic, nobody's reducing him to a sidekick. They're working together now, at least for the time being. If anything Sylvie is the sidekick here, most of the episode focuses on Loki's pov and his emotions, not Sylvie's. The characters who called Sylvie the superior Loki hate our Loki. They're trying to get a reaction out of him. That's how bullies work, did you know that? That's the whole point. Loki himself repeatedly says that he's the superior Loki. The TVA's opinion shouldn't matter to you so much if you truly hate them so much. They didn't reduce him to comedy/weak. In case you didn't notice, Sylvie lost her powers in the TVA as well. That happens to everyone, apparently, not just Loki. And also he's actively trying to annoy everyone around him, the moment he's out of their sight he goes back to doing his "typical" brooding thing. This is the first episode in which we see him actually enjoying himself without caring about what others think. He's been through enough. Let him get drunk. No he doesn't exist to make others the best version of themselves. That was propaganda, that was the bullshit the TVA fed him to keep him compliant, and in case you haven't noticed, he called them out on their bs multiple times. It's clearly not the truth. The TVA was canonically called an oppressive fascist organization, nobody's believing their lies anymore and neither should you. The whole point of the show is to show that Loki has multitudes, he even said it in episode 2. So no, not a single word of what you just said makes sense, sorry. I'm not saying that there are 0 flaws in the series, but at this point y'all are ignoring the fact that most of the bs you brought up has already been addressed in the series itself. Stop using the TVA as an excuse to hate on the series. The series itself called the TVA a bunch of assholes, and from what I understand that's your perspective as well, so what's the problem? Please come back when you have some comprehension skills.

#loki #loki meta #loki series spoilers #inrmn.txt #inrmn watches loki series

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schleierkauz · 4 years ago

Text

Q&A Highlights

Ok so bad news first: My questions were ignored. Cornelia did not clarify any of our death-related theories. Maybe next time.

There was A Lot of other stuff, though so... Enjoy!

- The stream starts with everyone wishing us a happy women’s day! Usually women in Erfurt (where the bookstore people are) get flowers but not today because... you know. Cornelia says America is starting to go back to normal, meanwhile Germany... :| Anyway. Don’t look over here.

- Cornelia says she probably won’t get the vaccine anytime soon because she’s just chilling on her farm anyway and people who have to be out in public/are vulnerable should get it first

- Question: When will Cornelia visit Germany again? In response to this, she gives us some exclusive news, not official yet, heard it here first: She’s gonna move to Italy! Apparently she bought an olive farm there which is cheaper, better for the environment (her current farm will be sold to some people who want to turn it into an organic farm) and obviously closer to Germany so she’ll be here more often. :)

- The 4th Reckless book will be released in English at some point this autumn

- There’s no definite release date for TCoR because she’s busy with Dragonrider but she hopes she’ll have finished writing it by the end of this year

- If she’s still alive after all that to work on Reckless 5, it’ll be the last book of the series... probably. She’s also working on a bunch of smaller projects with her artists in residence

- Question: What are Cornelia’s favorite stories by Jane Austen, the Brontë sister and Shakespeare? She’s not a huge fan of Austen or Brontë because she finds all those repressed emotions too exhausting to read about. With Shakespeare on the other hand she struggles to name a favorite because there’s so much greatness to choose from (she does name MacBeth and Romeo and Juliet though)

- The Black Prince’s legacy in the Reckless timeline may play a role in the next Reckless book or it might evolve into a whole other story. Either way, she’s thinking about it 👀

- Someone asks about Reckless characters and Cornelia says that Kami’en and the Dark Fairy felt very familiar to her from the start in that she always knew who they were as people. She’s not sure why that is. She thinks the Dark Fairy represents many aspects of womanhood, like the ancient forgotten Goddess. Same with Fox, who embodies different sides of that.

- If Cornelia had to date a man from the Mirrorworld, Kami’en would interest her

- Rainer Strecker randomly joins the chat to say hi and everyone is delighted

- Cornelia’s favorite book series is still Lord of the Rings

- Question: Why has the Black Prince never found his true love? Cornelia says she’s not sure that’s true - maybe he did found true love at some point and then lost it again? ‘...and they lived happily ever after’ isn’t a guaranteed outcome after all. Since he’s such a passionate man, she’s pretty sure he’s had at least one big lovestory at this point. She hasn’t asked him about that yet but hopes she’ll find out when she continues writing his story.

- Jumping off that question, Cornelia says she respects her characters’ privacy and lets them keep their secrets until the time comes to ask about them, just as she would with real people.

- Someone asks if Cornelia has ever written herself into a story and she says a part of her is in all her characters. Except the villains because she hates them. She feels closest to Fox because she also always wished she could shapeshift

- The bookstore lady jumps in and asks about Meggie, is she similar to how Cornelia was as a child? Cornelia says yes, especially because she also had a very close relationship with her father and they would bond over books. However, she always envisioned Meggie with dark hair and as a different kind of girl than she was. (Ok sidenote from me on that, I wonder what she means by ‘dark hair’? Because Meggie is explicitly blond, so like... dark blond? Or did we just unlock brunette Meggie in 2021? Cornelia-)

- Continuing the conversation, Cornelia says she doesn’t consider herself the creator of any of the characters in her stories, she feels like she met them and wrote about him but she would never say something like ‘I invented Dustfinger’ because that’s absurd. How would that even work. That’s disrespectful. No.

- Some characters pretty much demand to be written about and are very impatient (like Jacob), others are more shy and elusive and take effort to understand (like Will or Dustfinger)

- There probably won’t be another book like The Labyrinth of the Faun because it was created under such unbelievable circumstances. Cornelia does enjoy writing film scripts, though, like she did for the Wild Chicks recently

- Question: How does Cornelia come up with character names? She has a bunch of encyclopedias and when she knows where a story takes place she checks if there are any artists from there whose names she can steal. She always wants names to have meaning and to paint a picture of whatever character it belongs to. However, she says that sometimes the vibe of a name is a tricky thing: When she wrote The Thief Lord (which takes place in Italy), she thought ‘Mosca’ was the perfect name for a big strong boy. However when the time came to translate the story into Italian, the Italians told her that ‘Mosca’ sounds like the name of a tiny little fly. Oh well.

- Cornelia says a lot of readers have written to her about The Thief Lord because at one point Victor (the detective) calls Mosca (who is black) a “Mohrenkopf”. Context: ‘Mohrenkopf’ is a German slur towards black people and also an outdated name for this goddamn marshmallow cookie:

Fuck this cookie.

- Cornelia says yeah, Victor is being racist in that moment but that doesn’t mean that she, the author, is racist. Similarly, she used the term ‘Indians’ in Reckless and a lot of readers were upset which she did not anticipate. To her it’s a positive word since she admires ‘Indians’ so deeply and finds terms like ‘Native/Indigenous Americans’ very complicated. She wonders how much longer she’ll be allowed to say ‘Black Prince’

- She thinks it’s right to be vigilant about bigotry but simply searching for problematic words is dangerous because context matters

- Bookstore lady brings up Pippi Longstocking and how the N-word has been removed from modern copies (think Pippi’s father). She think’s it’s wrong because the original text is part of the cultural heritage and shouldn’t be hidden from children but instead explained.

- Cornelia says that in America she sees the hurt that’s connected to that word but she doesn’t think it’s right to simply remove the slur and expect everything to be fine. After all, the text in which it was used is still the same so any harmful ideas would still be in there and that needs to be discussed. Simply whitewashing things doesn’t make them any less racist.

- Cornelia brings up a visual example: The Asterix comics. She always liked them but the fact that the only black character is drawn as a racist caricature is harmful and wrong. It’s time to listen when black people express how hurtful depictions like that can be. Many white people never noticed racism growing up because it never affected them and that’s why it’s important to learn

- The ‘from rags to riches’ American dream was usually reserved for white people and Cornelia thinks a lot of (white) people are waking up to that fact. The way black people are still being criminalized and the way prisons use inmates for cheap labor is horrible and like a modern kind of slavery

- The bookstore people try to say something but Cornelia is not done: We Europeans are not off the hook either because the sins and wounds of colonialism are still felt around the world, not to mention the way other countries are still exploited today. Our wealth rests on the shoulders of poorer nations. Many doors are opening and it’s difficult to step through but we have to do it and admit to the things we may have been blind to due to privilege.

- The three of them agree on that and go back to reading questions

- Question: What are Cornelia’s tips for young authors? She advises to never start writing a story on a computer, always get a notebook and collect ideas & pictures for your story. Don’t rush things. If you have more than one story, give each story its own book and feed whichever one is hungry. It’s important to follow the idea where it leads, if you use cliches your readers will recognize them. And then it just takes time and passion. And trust in your own unique voice. She paraphrases a quote by Robert Louis Stevenson who once said no one cares about stories or characters or whatever, people read books to see the world through the goggles the author puts on them. I’m sure he said it prettier, I’m paraphrasing the paraphrase.

- That said, Cornelia thinks authors who say things like “I’m writing to express my innermost turbulences” are kinda dumb. She thinks it’s important to write about the things that happen everywhere else and around yourself and to try to find voices for others, not just yourself. Just like how carpenters build furniture for everyone else, a writer should use words to build things for others, whether it’s a window or door or a hiding place.

- Speaking of notebooks, as most of us probably know Cornelia has a lot of those and occasionally publishes them on her website. She says she’d love to let people look through them in person, maybe at the new farm in Germany (Cornelia sure does love farms)

- Speaking of writing things on paper, all three of them stress that everyone should write more letters because one day they’ll be old letters and curious people will want to read them, just as we like to read old documents now.

- Last question: How come both the Inkworld and the Mirrorworld feature a character called Bastard? Cornelia thinks that’s a good question and she should probably think about that. (Am I stupid? Are they talking about Basta? I’m confused)

...And with that, the livestream ends. They’ll get back together to do this again two months from now, until then: I’m going tf to sleep

#its 4am fuck me this took SO LONG-#cornelia funke #info #reckless #inkheart #man this was a long one #a lot to unpack here #thanks cornelia i have more questions now hdfhkjghd #i googled way more slurs than i had planned for today ngl #i really really hope i managed to accurately translate especially that part of the conversation #honestly i cringed a bit hearing them talk about it #but it is an important discussion i suppose #also @ the people who actually read my tags:#thank you for the good luck wishes for my interview today!! it went really well!#i was vibrating the entire time bc its been so long since i talked to a stranger #but i got the job :) so all is well

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herecomesnaya · 4 years ago

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Oh here I am, I think I'll take a bottle of: Roman’s abusive tactics have worn down Jason 2020, if you don't mind, thank you very much 🤲

yes indeedy! let’s see what I got here...

so, in the beginning, Jason was a lot different than he is now in terms of attitude. snarkier. more willing to fight back. his internal monologue less doubtful and uncertain of himself. able to spit Roman’s cum into his wine glass and walk away without a second thought. says no out loud more often, implies Roman is the crazy one.

but then, slowly, it changes around. it’s (I hope) subtle at first. Roman’s first tactic to start breaking Jason down isn’t to tear him down, but to build him up. he calls him a good boy. praises him for taking it so well. shows the barest modicum of care at some points, which feels like a hell of a lot to Jason, considering 1) it’s Black Mask and 2) Jason doesn’t ever particularly feel like he’s worthy of praise, so it leaves more of an impact when it happens.

starting in chapter 4, Roman begins to change Jason’s line of thinking from what he wants to what Roman wants. it starts off most evidently during sex, so Jason doesn’t realize what’s happening, just thinks of it in the context of it being a play scene. but the reason Roman broke him down until Jason told him to do whatever he wanted to him is because he was trying to prime Jason to carry that belief with him outside of the bedroom.

by chapter 5, he’s managed to convince Jason slowly over the course of the fic that what Roman wants, though, is actually what Jason wants. Jason may not entirely believe it yet, but Roman consistently reinforces this narrative:

“I-I— I'm sorry, okay?” he says, hoping that'll be the end of it. “I was wrong. You were right. Could you stop being weird now?”

“Oh, but I'm only giving you what you want,” Roman says, his voice like silk over ice. “Let's try things your way. What do you say, boys? Hm? Should we give Red Hood's methods a chance?”

the purpose is to make Jason doubt himself. to gaslight him into thinking that he practically asked to be treated like shit. because he comes when they have sex, and Roman treats him like shit while they fuck, so clearly that means Jason’s desires = being treated like shit, right?

chapter 6 is probably Jason’s last big defiant action before he gets, well, not completely complacent, but pretty damn close. fucking Chain is something he’d never have done at the beginning of the fic, but by this point, his psyche has already been re-shaped a bit by Roman’s tactics. sex is at the forefront of his mind where it wouldn’t have been before. sex is a tactic to get what you want from someone: he learned that from Roman.

by the end of the chapter, he’s gone through subspace (not for the first time in the fic, but more on that in my subspace meta), and while he’s still in that state, Roman does one of his little tactics to get Jason to trust him more: he takes off his mask while they’re in bed together, although he doesn’t let Jason see.

in chapter 7, we get more of Roman undermining Jason’s intelligence:

“Oh, Red,” Roman says with a shake of his head. “Still tragically incompetent with words, as always. You're lucky I know you well enough to realize you've got more going in there than you let on.” He accompanies this with a tap to his temple, and Jason at least has the good sense to feel offended.

he constantly reinforces the narrative that Jason has more brawns than brain, and needs someone like Roman to get him to “think clearly.” this is meant to make Jason doubt himself, wonder if he’s really thinking straight when Roman isn’t in his head.

in chapter 7, Jason also asks for one of the things he’s consistently been denied: boundaries. and Roman’s response?

“I admit I was a bit overzealous. I apologize,” Roman says, not sounding very contrite. “But that's exactly what I'm talking about. You need to trust that whatever I do to you, it'll work out in your favor. Do you think you can do that for me?”

Roman asks for obedience, not thought. trust, not mutual understanding. it’s about what he wants, and Jason, more and more, is starting to go along with it.

and what happens when Jason trusts Roman? well, he gets one of the best fucks of his life...

but also, a bunch of people die. whoops?

Jason’s guilt over this incident is so strong, and Dick comes into the story at exactly the perfect time to exacerbate that. in chapter 8, here’s where things really take a turn for the worse.

Jason is put in a position where he has to justify his attraction to Roman, and defend himself against actions that he feels personally responsible for. and what happens when he does that? it reinforces the until now unspoken belief that he really does want Roman to do whatever he wants to him.

because now there’s another party involved. now Dick knows he didn’t fight back like he “could” have, like he “should” have. now Jason, in his mind, has outside confirmation that he’s a willing party in this, and even goes so far as to wish he’s being raped to avoid having any culpability in it.

(the irony here being that Jason is being raped, because Roman consistently pushes past his boundaries when he says a clear “no.” he just doesn’t realize that it still counts as rape even if you come. he’d realize this if it were someone else in his position, but because it’s him, because he’s Jason Todd, because he’s stupid, because he doesn’t know how to admit what he wants, it can’t be rape. it can’t be. right?)

so he ends up leaving the confrontation with Dick feeling more isolated from his family, his only possible support system. feeling on edge, terrified that Dick will tell Bruce, and that he’ll be ousted from the family again, the black sheep that no one likes.

it’s this guilt and doubt and pain and terror that brings him into Roman’s arms, where he does arguably the most extreme session of the fic to that point. and that’s exactly where Roman wants him.

the next day, Roman really ramps things up. he sets up a fake situation where it appears that he’s been worriedly tending to Jason’s wounds all night. author’s note: he hasn’t. he’s full of fucking shit.

this line right here?

“I knew it,” he says a moment later, shoulders sagging under the tailored sleeves of his suit. “I knew you'd wake up as soon as I left.”

this is a little writer’s trick we in the biz like to call “a lie.” Roman can say that line literally whenever he comes into Jason’s room, and it’s like, oops, he only just stepped out for a minute! teehee! when in reality, he’s left Jason alone the entire night. Jason never receives proper aftercare, this is intentional.

but it still works. Roman manages to convince Jason, in his despair, to part with the knowledge that he used to be Robin. Jason is so alone at this point, he just wants someone to know that he’s in pain. and Roman has gotten him into subspace and “taken away the pain” often enough that Jason relies on him for it now. it’s like a drug to him.

and then comes the present. a simple gesture, and an easy one when you’re as rich as Roman Sionis. just a couple books. but to Jason, they mean so much more. they’re a “confirmation” that Roman listened to him speak about more than just business and sex. a “confirmation” that he does care, at least a little bit.

spoilers: he doesn’t. he doesn’t at all. it’s just a cheap way to endear Jason to him further, and Jason is in such an emotionally wrecked state that it actually works.

and then what does Roman do right when Jason has that realization?

he buys a bunch of hookers and spends all night paying attention to one.

give Jason attention, take it away. make him jealous. make it so that Jason is the one who wants Roman’s attention, not the other way around. and it works.

and when Jason gets upset and expresses that to Roman, his feelings are again downplayed and minimized.

“...I already told you what this means. Did you see a collar on her?”

It takes a second for Jason to realize Roman’s let up on his throat enough for him to speak. When he does, it’s hesitant and raspy.

“...No.” Roman lifts him by the neck, smacks his head pointedly back against the concrete. Jason corrects himself. “No, sir.”

Again, his airway gets cut off. “That’s right. Just because I’ve got some bimbo hanging off my arm doesn’t mean I give a damn about her one way or the other. This was supposed to boost morale, after everything that’s happened.”

Jason winces. He wonders if “everything” means his illness, or if it stretches all the way back to the former lieutenants now headless and chained to the bottom of Gotham Harbor. Either way, it’s his fault. That much is clear.

so now, once again, Jason feels responsible for his own anguish, even when it’s Roman’s fault, specifically building him up and tearing him down again. gaslighting him more to make him feel crazy. like he can’t trust his own emotions. like he needs Roman to make sense of them for him.

so Jason gets drunk to deal with the pain. and Roman eventually relents and gives him the attention he wants.

how does Jason respond?

a drunken love confession. Jason is now so broken down that he mistakes Roman’s token affection for love. he wants it to be love. he needs it to be, because that would make everything make sense. the way he feels. the way Roman is acting. everything.

and then, once Jason confesses, we get another sharp slap to the face by Roman: his “punishment” for being driven to drink, being cuckolded by Ms. Li. Roman knows at this point that Jason loves him. he’s using that against him by forcing Jason to watch him with someone else.

but he also throws him a bone: the knowledge that there’s a shipment coming in. he knows Jason wants to know about it. knows why he’s there. he needs to keep Jason tethered to him, keep him feeling like he’s getting what he wants when he’s actually doing exactly what Roman wants.

we can also see Roman continuing to subtly tear down Jason’s confidence in himself:

“Son, please,” Roman sighs, lifting a hand to cut him off. “Quite the contrary. It wasn’t an accident that I let you overhear that last night. That was your reward for complying so well, if anything.”

Immediately, Jason feels like his outburst was overblown. He shrinks back into his seat, looking down at the scraps of food on his plate.

Jason isn’t allowed to question Roman. if he does, it’s only because he’s an overdramatic brat. his feelings are constantly minimized, replaced by whatever feelings Roman deems it appropriate for him to have.

and then we get to the most recent chapter, with Roman manipulating Jason into having a conversation with Batman. Jason is given a week to prepare what he wants to say. and what does Roman do?

he doesn’t give Jason a second alone to think. constantly on him, fucking him, hurting him, giving him pleasure, distracting him. he doesn’t want Jason to be prepared. he wants him to be caught off-guard and thinking only of what Roman wants. then, only then, will he be the perfect little soldier to stand in front of Batman and pledge his allegience to Black Mask properly.

and that’s where we left off! there’s going to be even more delicious, horrible manipulation in the newest chapter, so I hope you guys are excited! can’t wait to publish it!

#ask #fic chatter #Blurry #daddy tag #tw rape #tw abuse #elidebrey

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letapollojusticesayfuck · 4 years ago

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💎⛰️🎢☀️📜✏️⭐📣🔦 for currents & 💡 for the scurvy fic. i need to know.

sparrow that’s. so many. (but you’re asking me to talk about currents and I am always looking for a reason to talk about currents so. Thank You)

(also, obvious spoilers under the cut for undeniable you (the currents pulling me onward so. if you care about that you might want to read the fic first)

💎- What was your favorite part?

I’d probably say...the beginning of chapter 7? Where it’s immediately post-trial and Klavier and Apollo are just so tired and at loose ends and they go and sit on the courthouse steps and talk. I basically wrote the entire fic in order to write the last 4 chapters--the emotional aftermath of the trial, but I had to write the trial first so it would have context.

⛰️- What was the hardest part?

Figuring out the whole Gramarye Siblings situation, for sure. Because--the thing is that canon isn’t entirely cohesive on who did what when. I did a ton of research by perusing the wiki and taking notes on Jove, Thalassa, Magnifi, etc--and then I kind of just decided that if there was no coherent canon timeline, then I didn’t need to stick to it--and made as much of it up as I felt was necessary.

🎢- Were there any scenes you were nervous about? For audience reception or otherwise?

With every single courtroom scene, I was worried that it would be super boring or wouldn’t live up to the games or that all of the arguments I used would be Wrong and Bad? also this isn’t unique to currents but every single time I write a kissing scene I worry that it’s going to be bad

☀️- Was there symbolism/motifs you worked in?

A little? If anything, I was trying to emphasize the symbolism and Themes that I felt the canon games after AA4 didn’t utilize at all--like, I deliberately used Apollo flying across the ocean after hearing about Klavier as a parallel with Edgeworth flying across the ocean when he heard something happened with Phoenix, and obviously the “POV defense attorney defends rival prosecutor” is a deliberate parallel with 1-4. I guess Klavier’s hair might be a bit of a motif but that’s mostly because I think it’s pretty and less of a deliberate choice lmao

📜-Do you want to write something like this again in the future?

Depends! I would maybe write another casefic if I had a really good concept for one, sometime In The Future (because they are So Annoying to plan)--but as for multichaptered fics, I definitely want to write another one sometime. I just need to have a Good Idea and the motivation to stick with it--currents was written mainly out of spite at the dropped plot threads from AA4 and my determination to resolve a bunch of them and also further my Klapollo Agenda.

✏️-Would you go back and change anything if you could?

At the moment, I don’t think I would--but if you asked me again in a year or so, I probably would change things. I still want to write a series of oneshots in the currents universe--stuff focusing on characters we didn’t see enough of, like Trucy and Phoenix; and Kristoph pre-fic; and Phoenix and Miles; and Klavier and Apollo after everything

⭐- What’s a scene/paragraph you’re proud of?

“We can’t dwell too much on that part. But one more thing—if they planted the nail polish back then, and the powder in the mortar and pestle—how could they be sure you wouldn’t...accidentally…”

Apollo trails off, but they both know how that sentence ends. Klavier shudders.

“I almost never use that thing, anyway—it was a housewarming gift, and I’ve only ever been ambitious enough to grind my own spices about twice. Otherwise, it’s just easier to use the stuff in jars. I guess they must have known that, somehow? Either that, or...it didn’t matter if…”

“So, they’re someone who either wanted you to be found guilty for a murder you didn’t commit, or didn’t mind if you were poisoned by accident—and who probably works for that dogsitting company,” Apollo murmurs, pulling out his planner and jotting down a few notes. On the other side of the glass, Klavier sighs, tilting his head so that his fringe obscures his eyes.

“I wonder...if they’d gotten me, accidentally...would they still have killed Kris? Or would they have been satisfied with just me?”

The question is nearly inaudible, but Apollo looks up sharply, staring at Klavier.

“You think they killed him just because...it would hurt you?”

Klavier shifts, meeting Apollo’s eyes. “What would be the point, otherwise? Vengeance? Apollo, who’s left alive that would need to enact revenge on him? He was already on death row—what does this accomplish, besides hurting me?”

As much as Apollo tries, he can’t come up with an answer.

I don’t know if I can think of too many specific scenes I’m proud of--but I really do like this one, because I think it shows Apollo’s pragmatic side--trying to solve the murder mystery, pushing his emotions aside when he can--while illustrating Klavier’s attitude of “usually I would brush this off but we both know this premise is a little wonky and this isn’t adding up.”

...that might not have made sense, I’m not always the best at analyzing my own writing. I just throw words at the page and what happens, happens.

📣-What was the best piece of encouragement you got?

It’s cheesy, but everyone who commented on each chapter was an invaluable source of encouragement? like, the absolute best feeling in the world was posting a new chapter and then seeing all the comment notifications come in, and spending the rest of the day replying. I’d written 6 chapters before I posted the prologue, but having people give me their reactions to each chapter really was the most important thing that made me keep going <3

🔦-Did you learn anything while writing it? About yourself? Writing?

I learned a lot about How To Write A Murder-Mystery--first and foremost, that it involves so much planning. And I maybe had to spoil the ending of AA6 entirely for myself--fun fact, I still haven’t finished the game, I’m stuck on Trial Day 1 of the Maya case (because I’m Tired, okay?). About writing and myself--I learned that I definitely need a deadline, and that using external “word count goal” tools is pretty essential for me if I want to write anything longer than a oneshot.

For The Scurvy Fic:

💡-What was the motivation behind the story?

okay SO. There was a conversation going on in a Klapollo discord server. Somehow we ended up talking about Klavier and/or Apollo being cheapskates. I think I mentioned something about Klavier surviving entirely on ramen noodles because they’re cheap? and then it devolved into a conversation about how they’d totally get scurvy if they did that. And I started thinking about how Klavier and Apollo are inherently pretty competitive, and how they’d totally just get into a stupid bet and be so stubborn that they wouldn’t back down, because they have to Prove A Point, even if they get scurvy from their awful diet of Whatever’s The Cheapest. And then...Scurvy Fic Happened. (along with the Other scurvy fics, because there’s Three of them!! I was just the only person who went with the obvious title).

Thank you for the ask!! Hope this was...enlightening??

#ask #asks #thank you!!#ask game #aa currents #exitcorners

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years ago

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Michael in the Mainstream: Artemis Fowl

Since the early 2000s, Artemis Fowl has been languishing in development hell, and it really is a mystery as to why. The series has everything you could possibly want for a blockbuster young adult franchise: it’s a charming blend of science and fantasy with rich worldbuilding and mythology, it has enjoyable and even complex characters who go through great character arcs over the course of the series, it has an enjoyable major antagonist, an insufferable smug villain protagonist who goes through a stellar redemption arc over the course of the series, and tons of crazy heists that combine scheming and fairy magic. There was no reason this couldn’t have existed as a competitor to the Harry Potter series, but alas, it was not to be. The young adult fantasy franchise languished for decades in development hell, until finally Disney pulled it out and put Kenneth Branagh at the helm. Finally, we were going to get the Artemis Fowl adaptation we deserved!

Except we didn’t.

Artemis Fowl is legitimately one of the worst adaptations of any work of fiction ever. It has been held up alongside The Last Airbender and The Lightning Thief as part of the Unholy Trinity of terrible adaptations, and I’m not even going to try and pretend that this “Honor” isn’t well and truly earned. This film is an utterly abominable bastardization of the beloved franchise, to the point where this feels like an entirely different story that had familiar names slapped on it at the last second. If you want to know what horrific extents this film has butchered the story and characters, read onward, but there’s no way I’m going to pretend this film isn’t awful right off the bat.

There is literally nothing in this film that works. Nothing at all. Starting from the opening scene, the establishing shots, you can tell things are wrong – there are news people around Fowl Manor? Mulch is being interrogated? What is going on? The film from the word go is simply making one thing absolutely and abundantly clear: this is not the Artemis Fowl you know. The film goes out of its way to do the opposite of the franchise, merely using names and vague concepts in an attempt to sucker fans into watching it. Butler’s first name, an emotional reveal from the third book, is common knowledge; Opal Koboi, a cunning and threatening major villain who was the antagonist for almost every novel starting with the second, is here reduced to basically a personification of the voice on the phone from Scream; Root, once a short-tempered man who was hard on Holly as a method of tough love to push her to be the very best LEP had to offer to prove women belonged on the force, is here a woman who, while just as angry as ever, robs Holly of a major part of her arc and reduces her to plucky female sidekick. And even outside of that, as its own thing, the movie is just utterly incomprehensible. The story is rushed and confusing, with lots of exposition and action but with no context or cohesion. Things happen and things go from scene to scene, but none of it makes any sort of sense. A character will switch allegiances within a few minutes, characters will somehow find a way to survive deadly attacks offscreen… the worst offender is a character death they try to push off as emotional, despite there being no reason to care for this character, and when all hope seems lost, a deus ex machina saves the day! My wife, who is unfamiliar with the series, and I, a huge fan, both struggled to figure out what was going on at any given point; the movie is really that bad at communicating what is happening, which is even more baffling because the film is a pathetic hour and a half in length, a distressingly short amount of time to establish a new science-fantasy franchise of this scale.

The characters are almost all terrible. Artemis is the standout with how awful he is; no longer the cunning criminal masterminds of the book, Artemis here is more of a somewhat smug little brat who is overly emotional and, worst of all, NICE. He’s so nice in fact that by the end of the film he has managed to speedrun his character development and arcs with Mulch and Holly, who consider him their close friend and ally. Butler is pretty bad here as well, mostly because he is given almost nothing to do and is seemingly only there because he was in the book. In fact, his crowning moment – when he took on the troll – is instead given to Artemis and even Holly, with Butler ending up severely injured. It’s a bit nasty that they changed Butler to be black and then had his (white) master steal his greatest moment; it’s giving me flashbacks to Kazaam. Opal is hit pretty bad as well; being made the big bad of this loose adaptation of the first book’s plot – which is amusingly one of the few books she had absolutely no role in – wouldn’t be so rough if she was more of a presence and not just some vague, hooded figure who threatens Artemis over the phone and generally does nothing to warrant being an adaptation of the baddest bitch in the series. She’s rather ineffectual and they even try and give her a sort of sympathetic motivation, one where she resents humans for pushing her kind underground. It really is a disgusting waste of a character who could easily rival heavy hitters like Voldemort in the awesome and theatrically evil department.

Holly is almost okay, but her entire arc and a big chunk of her narrative purpose is robbed by making Commander Root a woman. Root, played by Judi Dench, is honestly one of the better characters since Dench has Root dropping lines like “Top o’ the morning to ya” with gravelly deadpan seriousness which makes the character unintentionally hilarious, but the cheap laughs don’t really make up for butchering the story of one of fiction’s finest ladies. As a side note, they have made Holly 100% white despite her skin being described as nut brown rather frequently in the book, and the now white Holly together with Artemis steal away Butler’s biggest moment. And that’s not even getting into how they neutered Juliet, who has also been race lifted but was turned into a child who barely appeared in the film. I’m not usually one to toss about racism accusations, but there’s a lot of red flags here that Branagh’s usual colorblind casting just doesn’t excuse.

The most consistently enjoyable performance is Josh Gad’s as Mulch. From the moment he was cast, I knew he’d do a good job and capture the spirit of the character, and he does! ...sort of. The decision to have Mulch be a giant dwarf and narrate the story in a crappy Batman impression while also violating literally the most important law of fairy culture (don’t tell the humans anything about us) by spilling the beans to M16 is unbearably stupid, and a lot of his jokes are just relentlessly unfunny. But I think that Gad does leak a bit of that Mulch charm at a few points, and it’s apparent he at least somewhat gets his character, which is not something that can be said for anyone else in this film. Sadly, much like his standout performance as Lefou in the live action Beauty and the Beast, he can’t possibly save the trainwreck of a film he’s in.

I guess I’m not entirely surprised by this film. I mean, a lot of quality young adult literature from the past two decades has been horrifically mangled in the wake of Harry Potter – Inkheart, The Golden Compass, The Lightning Thief, Ender’s Game, and Eragon – so this movie really isn’t an anomaly. But it is the culmination of a horrible trend. This is the zenith of horrible young adult adaptations, or perhaps I should say the nadir of adaptations as a whole? For all the flak I could give those other adaptations, on some fundamental level they still understood something about the source material. Ender’s Game still understood it could not erase the ending where children are revealed to be being conscripted to perform the ethnic cleansing of an alien race. Eragon couldn’t completely ruin Saphira, try as it might. The Lightning Thief… well, I mean, I guess the Medusa scene was mostly faithful. But Artemis Fowl? Artemis Fowl goes out of its way to be the opposite of its literary counterpart that there is no way to justify even saying it is based on the book by Eoin Colfer; it would be like having a movie about kids hanging out at the mall and doing mundane stuff, except they’re all named Jesus and Peter and Paul and then saying it’s based on the Bible. Just using names doesn’t mean anything, you actually have to use the themes and characterizations too, and this movie does none of that.

This movie is most comparable to The Emoji Movie. Neither of these works really deserve to be called a “Film” since they are basically whatever it is they’re trying so desperately to be stripped down to the bare essentials. The Emoji Movie is the most basic, by-the-numbers animated adventure film with a “be yourself” message you could ever hope to see, with a story so absolutely basic that just watching the trailer will allow you to predict the every motion of the plot. Artemis Fowl on the other hand is the most cliche-ridden fantasy epic franchise-starter you could imagine, and that’s if you’re able to penetrate the ridiculously dense and cluttered story and are able to make sense of what’s going on. I can think of absolutely no one this film could ever appeal to. There’s not a single redeeming thing about it. The movie is flashy, trashy junk that should never have been released, and Disney honestly did the right thing by releasing this on their streaming service because it would be outright disgusting to charge movie ticket prices for this tripe. The fact Disney has more faith in the eternally-delayed New Mutants theatrically speaks volumes about the quality of this film.

I can’t in good conscious say that this is the worst film of all time. F4ntastic is probably a much worse butchering of characters than this film; Disaster Movie is much more horrendously offensive and unfunny than this; hell, Chicken Little is probably a worse Disney movie because as awful as everyone in this film is, at least they aren’t Buck Cluck! But I don’t think there’s a single movie I hate more than this one. Lucy can finally move over and sleep easy knowing that the fact it’s not based on a pre-existing work has finally saved it from the #1 spot on my worst list; Artemis Fowl is now the reigning champ. Kenneth Branagh should be ashamed of himself for making and releasing this (and doubly ashamed for having the gall to unironically compare his slaughtering of Artemis Fowl’s character to Michael Corleone), Disney should be shamed for putting more money into this film than they did into BLM charities, and I hope that Eoin Colfer finds whatever he was paid worth it to see his greatest creation butchered and disrespected like this.

#Michael in the Mainstream #Review #movie review #Artemis Fowl #Kenneth Branagh #Eoin Colfer #fantasy film #fantasy #science-fantasy #Josh Gad #Judi Dench #Disney #Disney+#disney movie

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heroes-fading · 5 years ago

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Why Veronica Mars Won’t Have a Season 5

My introduction to Veronica Mars came in the midst of my father’s death. I watched episodes in hospital waiting rooms before it happened, and holed up in my room afterwards. I found a lot of comfort in the strength that the characters provided. The scene of Logan at his mother’s funeral - maniac and trying to find the humor in it - is exactly what I felt at my father’s. I, like Logan, made jokes and tried shrugging it off. I was certain that this was some sort of cosmic joke, and I was on the receiving end. Veronica’s personality shaped most of who I was in high school - my dad passed away two weeks before I started. Her snark, intelligence, and resilience inspired me so much then. I found a wonderful community with fans of the show, and to this day as a semi-adult I love and adore so many people I met through the show.

When the movie was announced, I was ecstatic. I remember rushing to a bathroom stall at my high school so I could eloquently keyboard-smash about it with my friends, donating to the Kickstarter, wearing my t-shirt, going to the theater with my friend to watch it and livestreaming it the night of its release with my online friends. In a sea of horrible feelings and helplessness, Veronica Mars helped me feel empowered and supported.

That’s partly why all of this stings so badly and feels so much like a betrayal.

Logan Echolls fits into a lot of tropes I’ve grown to hate as a self-identified feminist who has zero time for bad boys. Men who “atone for their sins” to get with a leading heroine are ones I often find boring - so often they’re executed poorly and their past mistakes would be absolutely unforgivable in a real context. Chuck Bass, Damon Salvatore, Spike, et. all are characters I’m tired of seeing in fiction. Logan Echolls organized a bum fight, took out Veronica’s headlights, burned down a community pool, made a series of racist comments to Weevil, and generally had moments of being the absolute worst. But for some weird reason, I have a massive soft spot for Logan and he’s become one of my favorite fictional characters.

Maybe it’s because we’ve seen him go through much, change so much over the course of the show. Maybe it’s because the show actually held him accountable (as well as Veronica) so the redemption didn’t feel cheap or unearned. Or maybe it’s because I’m just a weak heterosexual hypnotized by Jason Dohring’s abs and my feminism only goes so far as who I think is hot. I hope it’s not the last one, but I’m sure some would argue it is! The point is -- healthy, going-to-therapy Logan feels earned after the deaths of his parents, his abusive dad killing his girlfriend, numerous beatings, and too many near death experiences to count. Logan went from being an obligatory psychotic jackass to a fairly well-adjusted boyfriend in a way that made narrative sense.

His offscreen death right after getting married to the love of his life? Not so much.

The thing that stings about Veronica Mars’ final episode is not just Logan’s death - it’s what it means for the show going forward, especially its titular character. What made Veronica lovable was not her toughness as Logan’s final voicemail details. As season 3 Logan reminds us, Veronica isn’t invincible and she isn’t always right. What made her such a compelling character was what was underneath that toughness, and the people around her that highlighted that warmth buried underneath layers of trauma. In other words, what made her a marshmallow. Burnt on the outside, but gooey on the inside, as Wallace describes her in the pilot.

When we meet Veronica in the pilot, she’s been through a litany of traumas: her best friend’s death, a breakup, sexual assault and drugging, social ostracization, her mother’s addiction and swift exit from her life, a swift drop in socioeconomic status, and routine humiliation at the hands of her peers. But in spite of all of that, she’s still the girl that cuts Wallace down from the flag because it’s the right thing to do. She’s still the girl that worries about her father, has sympathy for Logan after his mother’s death despite all of his cruelty, defends and comforts Meg Manning after she endures the same bullying Veronica did, cares (often, initially unwillingly) about the people whose cases she takes, and bakes cookies for her friend after his basketball game just because. Even as recently as the books, Veronica bakes a cake for her terrible, abandoning mother on her birthday in spite of her replacing her and Keith with another family. She looks after her half-brother Hunter, even if he’s a painful reminder of her mother’s foibles. Veronica isn’t nearly as tough as she pretends to be, and that’s a good thing. That’s what makes her interesting and stops her from being like every other cynical hardboiled detective trope.

The people around Veronica - who support her, evolve with her, and serve as contrasts to her - are what help make her story so compelling. People who can tell her when she’s wrong (Logan, Keith, Weevil, et. all), who remind her of her soft side (Keith, Wallace, Mac, Logan), who can stop her from turning into a noir stereotype and cement her as Veronica Mars. People aren’t tuning in just to see Veronica snark at random side characters. Her personal journey in moving past her trauma and her relationships with other characters are what really makes the character who she is.

Her journey, from the pilot episode to the movie, is realizing that she can’t just shove down and run away from her trauma. Over the course of her show, we see her form bonds with people in spite of her attempts not to - Wallace, Mac, Logan, and a variety of others. They help her, support her, and challenge her in ways that only serve to make her story more interesting. In the movie, we see Veronica realize she can’t keep running and she doesn’t want a cushy life as a New York lawyer with a boyfriend who doesn’t understand why she cares so much about what happens in her hometown. Neptune, as corrupt and corroded as it is, is her hometown.

That’s why it’s such a spectacular slap in the face for the end of season 4 to offer the exact opposite. Veronica loses her husband (after finally evolving from the Veronica in the pilot who swore she was never getting married because she was so cynical about relationships) immediately after marriage. She leaves behind Keith, Wallace, and everyone else to chase unknown cases with unknown people in unknown places. As Rob has said, he saw this as the only way for Veronica to continue to be interesting - roaming the world solo as if she’s Sherlock Holmes.

This is not character progression. This is not driving the plot forward. This is regressing to a character to a point even before the pilot episode - a hardened Veronica who pretends she doesn’t care, who uses her trauma as an armour, and keeps people away from her. It undermines the central message of the movie - that Neptune is her home and in spite of her problems, she’s willing to fight for it. By killing Logan, Rob wanted to kill Veronica’s ties to Neptune. This isn’t an evolution - it’s a devolution.

Rob Thomas has offered this option before - a Veronica exit vehicle sans everyone else, including only Kristen Bell snarking at a camera - in the form of the last-ditch FBI pilot. It was not well received by fans nor networks, and unsurprisingly not picked up or seen anywhere other than a reposting on YouTube. I think if he sincerely expects any other result from a similar future attempt, he’s lying to himself.

If Rob Thomas wanted the male character-centric P.I. noir he initially planned on writing rather than Veronica Mars, he should have written that rather than allowed it to take over the Veronica Mars universe. Writing a woman with the same elements of toxic masculinity as male characters (a complete disregard for their own feelings, ripping themselves away from personal connections, framing “toughness” as superior and emotional development as a waste of time) is not feminism - it’s just lazy. “Strong female characters” don’t have to be made strong by undergoing trauma after trauma and shutting down until they’re a shadow of their former selves. Their male counterparts aren’t expected to have to deal with rape, death, ostracization, and every other possible form of trauma - women sure as hell shouldn’t.

Furthermore, the way that Rob Thomas has framed his fanbase is shameful. Veronica Mars fans aren’t just deranged fangirls too obsessed with Jason Dohring’s abs to care about the health of the story. This isn’t “not what we wanted, but what we needed” - we’re not an audience too stupid to know what’s good for us. We’re an intelligent audience when we’re giving the showrunners money, but when we’re disagreeing with the writing choices we’re just too invested in romance to “get it”. Predictably, these fans (who make up most of Veronica Mars’ fanbase that the showrunners claim to adore so much) are women. For decades, women have been stereotyped as media-consumers that only care about romance and thus can’t care about depth as if the two are mutually exclusive. This stereotype is incredibly sexist, especially given what this fanbase in particular has done for this franchise, and the continued insistence that these fans just don’t know what’s good for them or the show is incredibly condescending and transparent.

This fanbase poured $6 million dollars into a Kickstarter for a money, maintained energy for a revival and actively lobbied streaming services and networks for a continuation, and kept the fandom twelve years after the finale episode of its original incarnation aired. As much as some may resent how fan energy encouraged writers to see Logan evolve, or Logan and Veronica to sort out their issues, or anything else - these were choices the writers made and stood by for years. A sudden U-Turn in storytelling to go from “the fans were right, this dynamic is wonderful and we’re going to base our advertising around it!” to “well, it was never supposed to be about that” is a kick to the teeth to a fanbase that (literally!) gave so much.

It’s not as if this is the first time the fanbase has been disappointed by a writing decision. Speaking for myself, I was heavily disappointed by the way sexual assault was handled on the original incarnation of the show. Veronica’s rape was handled by at first not framing it as a sexual assault at all in “A Trip to the Dentist” - Duncan Kane (her ex-boyfriend/potential half-brother at some point in time) having sex with her while she was unconcious was framed as just “feelings and nature taking over” because he was under the influence. In season 3, the writers decided that framing women protesting sexual assault on campus as deranged feminists who sexually assault men by inserting them with Easter eggs was a good choice. That Easter egg part was played for laughs by the show, writers, and leading cast member.

Even the inclusion of Dick Casablancas for laughs - whose GHB was intended for his girlfriend and ended up in Veronica’s cup - doesn’t feel right. Ryan Hansen’s charm explains a lot of it, but the show seems to place a lot more blame on Madison for Veronica’s rape despite the fact she narrowly escaped the same fate at Dick’s hands. I was disappointed then, and I’m still disappointed with it now - far away from any romantic concerns of the show.

And my biggest problem with the ending of season 4 isn’t just that Logan is dead. I’m incredibly crushed and disappointed to see all of that character development be met with an offscreen car-bomb, but it doesn’t bode well for Veronica’s characterization and ultimate arc either. I fell in love with Veronica’s character first, and I don’t even recognize her anymore.

If the movie was a thank you to the marshmallows (both the fans and Veronica’s inner softness), the ending of the show was a middle finger to both. If the lesson from the series and the film is that you fight for things because they’re worth it and not because they come easily (whether they be relationships or towns), then the lesson from the revival is that the best thing to do is leave and take your bags. So much of the narrative was set up around Veronica accepting who she was and where she’s from - and the revival’s Veronica has finally been traumatized so much she’s packing her bags and giving up. That’s not toughness. That’s not strength. That’s certainly not saving the show or the character.

That’s selling a grim story because you think it’s edgy. That’s trying to be subversive and failing, too focused on shock value to care about the characters. There’s a reason shows like Game of Thrones, Dexter, and How I Met Your Mother got such backlash -- they just don’t make narrative sense and the endings are far from satisfying. Making the fans happy isn’t a mark of bad storytelling, especially when the survival of your franchise has been so contingent on it. Sometimes, they actually do know what they’re talking about! And if you want a season five, maybe don’t alienate your fans to a point they don’t recognize the show anymore. Rob mentioned, “...I will have made a really bad bet if, en masse, the fans turn on the show. That would certainly be a tough lesson to learn.” -- I think he accomplished that!

I wish the Veronica Mars that got me through the toughest parts of my life was still around. But I’d rather say goodbye to her forever than be faced with a cheap imitation.

#veronica mars #veronica mars spoilers #vm spoilers #logan echolls #logan x veronica #veronica mars season 4 #tv: veronica mars

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haec-est-fides · 5 years ago

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Gaius Caligula and Commodus being defeated at the end of Tyrant’s Tomb was high key bullshit and I think we all know it. Disregarding the fact that it’s a “happy ending” and instead looking at the plot? No. It was impossible.

First off, Frank should have died. I love him, and his character arc was fantastic - up until he miraculously showed up in his cape and underwear. The idea of him freeing himself from his curse is nice and all, but made zero sense in context. If burning his kindling didn’t kill him, a tunnel full of Greek fire would. So would being stabbed in the gut. So would the sheer amount of wounds he was suffering from before he challenged the emperors if he didn’t get healed quickly. He was in a bad place, and there was no way he could walk back to Camp in his condition to get medical attention even if we allow him to survive the Caldecott fire, somehow. The way he survives without any kind of plausible explanation also cheapens Gaius’ death. Frank burnt up his life force by sheer strength of will to kill Gaius. But y’know he’s fine or whatever. No biggie.

If anyone should have survived the fire, it was Gaius and Commodus. Theoretically, they shouldn’t be able to die at all, though of course they must for the story. To be fair, I do love how Frank called Gaius out. That’s a stunning moment:

“We are gods.”

“And I’m the son of Mars, praetor of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata. I’m not afraid to die. Are you?”

But Gaius is right, he and Commodus are gods. Key trait being immortality. Rick is notoriously bad about continuity in his own books, but the only entities we’ve ever seen truly “die” are faded gods, like Pan and Harpocrates. All of which, if my memory serves, actually faded willingly. The next closest thing would be what happened to Kronos: scattered to the wind like an evil Humpty Dumpty, but not truly dead. The way Rick writes Gaius’ death, that isn’t what happens. I may be wrong, but by the established origins of the Triumvirate and their power, they can’t die because they won’t. As Nero frankly iconically states, “I am immortal on Wikipedia!”

Secondly, Lavinia could not have sabotaged Gaius’ fleet like she did. It was an admirable mission, but let’s look at the facts:

Right off the bat, Kahale, an experienced centurion, and his team of elite commandos (who were most likely a smaller group than Lavinia and the nature spirits / fauns) were caught and killed.

Let’s say that Lavinia’s mission was timed better, missing the bulk of the army. She does say that the ships were running a skeleton crew. (Side note: how cheap of a move to make sure that the protagonists aren't killing a bunch of people. Weak.) However, even with a “skeleton crew” I find it ridiculous to believe that one girl and some nature spirits - with the help of nereids or not - could sneak onto fifty giant cruise ships, locate the artillery, “sabotage” it, escape, and have that artillery be fired in such a way that it takes out every ship with no saboteur casualties.

This irks me, because it just shows that Rick sucks at artillery. I have a bone to pick with Octavian’s death, because onagers just don’t work like that, but I digress. Here, the problem is even worse. How stupid are the Pandai? The only way to “sabotage” the artillery and have it destroy the ships as it did is for the guns to be aimed straight up. Assuming miraculously that none of the guards on any of the ships noticed the saboteurs, there would be pre-fire adjustments and checks regardless. There is no reasonable way to expect that anyone would fire an artillery piece straight up and only then realize that something was wrong. Speaking realistically, it’s also likely that at least one member of the skeleton crew on each ship would be a descendant of Apollo and a projectile weapons expert. Gaius isn’t stupid.

The ONLY way that Lavinia could have succeeded is if she and her friends pulled a Beckendorf and sacrificed themselves to fire the artillery and destroy the ships. Which they didn’t. (I’m sensing a theme here.)

Lastly, the emperors’ army would not have run like that. I- I don’t even know what to say at this point. They had fifty yachts full of soldiers, mostly Germani but also various monsters, demigods, and even human mercenaries, yes? Speaking just for the Germani, they’re a loyal, fearless bunch. If the yachts were really so empty, would they care about the sabotage? Wouldn’t the deaths of their leadership just piss them off? Frank was gone at that point, and there were less than a dozen legionnaires left. No offense to Apollo, but he is not that scary. Actually, full offense. Honestly, Triumvirate Holdings is still a triumvirate even if it’s broken into competing households. The army could (should) have taken the city and contacted Nero. Hell, I’m sure one of the demigods in Gaius’ or Commodus’ household would take charge. This just opens an entire can of worms that will get its own post soon.

This got very long, and I’m sure it’s pretty controversial? Feel free to yell at me. The TL;DR is that the only way the ending could have worked was for Frank and Lavinia & Co. to sacrifice themselves. Even then, we’re left with hundreds of heavily armed troops and a functional leadership structure, whereas New Rome was effectively in ruins and full of zombies.

#rant #rick riordan #tyrants tomb #ttt #trials of apollo #toa #gaius caligula #commodus #frank zhang #lavinia #triumvirate holdings #spoilers #filodox!

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princesssarcastia · 5 years ago

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The Rise of Skywalker Review

Well, I actually went to see it! I wasn’t sure that I would, but I’m honestly glad, because now i’ve got thoughts.

The first twenty minutes or so seemed really slapdash and disjointed, like they wanted to set up things for later but didn’t want to take the time to set them up well. Everything was really rushed and shallow for that period.

But! This movie had a lot of poe-rey-finn interactions which I enjoyed deeply. Rey and Poe sniping at each other, Finn and Rey being adorably close and caring, Finn and Poe being adorably close and caring. They feel like they’ve actually spent time together! Excellent.

Leia’s scenes felt a little weird, like they were shoehorned in, but i still miss her so I’m kinda glad for her presence anyway. Having her train Rey, pick up where Luke left off and push her to the finish line, makes me delighted. Yes, Leia is force sensitive!! She trained with her brother!! She knows how to pass on what she learned!!! She built a lightsaber!!!!!! excellent. (sidenote her lightsaber was sick. i loved it. i want one)

I also liked how we got to see some diverse planets and terrain. did they do their best on that front? no. would have loved to see some more weird-ass alien planets, or even weird-ass terrain that actually exists in the real world, but they’re deathly afraid of being like the prequels, soooo.

The whole thing with the “sith dagger” and C-3P0′s memory was a shit storyline. Here’s a magic item that will do everything we need! Give you the location of your navigator thing!! Magically fit against the skyline of the wreck of the deathstar, even though it’s an ancient artifact and the deathstar is constantly battered by incredibly powerful waves on an alien planet! ugh. dumb.

If that droid from the old shipwreck was gonna have that knwoeldge the whole time,,,,,,, why not just let Rey befriend the droid,,,,,,,,instead of doing a “psych! gotcha!” with C-3P0′s memory.

JJ Abrams being afraid to give real consequences to the new trio’s actions was shit. Let them kill Chewie! Let them essentially kill C-3P0! Or leave it out of the equation entirely!!! These fake-outs cheapen emotional responses and motivations of the heroes of our story.

and hey, speaking of cheapening shit, why the ever-loving FUCK did they bring Palpatine back. why. I hate that. I hated that SO MUCH IT WAS SO DUMB. SO. DUMB. so darth vader redeemed and sacrificed himself over nothing, huh?? Anakin Skywalker, dumb bitch to the end, couldn’t even die right, because palpatine was fucking alive the whole time. fuccking hell. any hey, guess what?? Jedi can force-heal people, too! ha ha ha hahahahaha ha h h a stupid anakin for believing palpatine had unique force powers and turning to the dark side, when really, it was a light-side power all along!!! (kill me)

(side note: healing being a power of the light and not the dark is thematically better, but uh. see petty retconning below)

Making Rey his granddaughter is inarguably worse than having her be a true nobody, which was my number one pick. I might even have been fine with it if she discovered it on her own!! But noooo, we need to have Kylo Ren and Luke tell her who she is. Oh yeah, they knew who she was the whole time, lol! Isn’t that cute, stupid women having to be told who they are and what their legacy is.

Which also makes her previous conversation with Kylo in TLJ cheap too! Look, I get it, we all hated TLJ, and Rian Johnson’s choices. But...having Kylo tell Rey who she is twice, in two separate movies, and tell her two separate things each time, and have it be played straight both times, is just. so. dumb. petty retconning of other people’s work is kind of disgusting.

That being said, in this movie I didn’t feel like Rey’s storyline was about anyone but her. I mean, palpatine elements for sure, but except for being told whose granddaughter she was, she was basically in control of her own destiny. I liked that a lot.

Rey’s fight with Kylo on the wreck of the death star? *chef’s kiss*. Amazing. Incredible. Lightsaber duels have gotten so much better and I love them. somewhere inside me my five-year old self is screaming for joy and picking up her toy lighsabers. Ridley and Driver have, unfortunately, very good chemistry in their scenes together, and the tension while they fought was so good.

Poe as a former drug dealer makes me tired. Poe Dameron, who idolizes Leia and had rebellion pilots for parents, was a drug dealer?? You kidding me?? ugh.

Also, if i’m being petty, I hated the way force ghosts could interact with reality.

Lando Calrissian!! Lando I love you. I love you so much. The idea of all those people coming to the Resistance’s aid is pretty cool tbh, and I liked it. I liked Lando playing ambassador and politician for the resistance.

I absolutely hated the ““planet-killing-cannon”“ palpatine’s fleet had. These fucking, fan-pandering morons just cannot let the idea of a planet-killer go, can they? It’s not like a shit ton of ships, the biggest fleet in the galaxy, able to blockade hyper-space lanes and entire planets, would be a good enough threat, oh no. audiences aren’t smart enough to respond to something that complicated, so we need to make it SUPER OBVIOUS, just like in TLJ. “the death star but bigger/portable” is dumb.

Finn finding other defectors was so fucking cool, I love that for him. Also, like, Im pretty sure they were all force-sensitive like he is, which I think is amazing. Confirming Finn’s force sensitivity was the best decision they made in this movie, tbh.

The driving problem of this movie was, in my opinion, the exec and creative teams being unable to stick to their guns with Kylo Ren as the big villian. Twice, people reached out to him for redemption: his father in TFA, and rey in TLJ. Twice, he rejected that offer, and ascended to Supreme Leader.

But instead of letting him do that, they instead turned him back to the light for little to no discernible reason. What, his mother dying finally pushed him over the edge?? You kidding me???? He LITERALLY murdered his father in cold blood. i call bullshit.

And because they couldn’t let kylo be the main villian, they also had to bring back palpatine. Look man, Adam Driver abso-fuckin-lutely has the chops to be a big bad. He’s really good at his job, actually, and I believe he could carry the weight of being the scary leader and face of the dark side. But no, y’all are chicken.

I mean, even though I hated him turning back, driver-as-ben-solo was fucking lit. He was so good for those, what two minutes?? The tension during his rush to Rey??? Him fucking with the KNights of Ren?? His switcheroo with Rey, the way he nods and bows a little when the Knights all step back, knowing they’re about to get their asses kicked?? Oh my god! It was so fun to watch. You could tell, even from that much, he’s a cocky little shit, and would have been so fun to watch for three movies instead of three minutes.

Their kiss at the end when he dies?? boo, hiss, no thank you. Not a fan. I’ll concede their chemistry as actors, but that was not romantic chemistry between their characters. nuh-uh no way no how. gross.

Overall, like a 5/10. Wildly inconsistent. I really liked some parts, and enjoyed other parts out of context, and really hated other parts.

ps— me, watching the ot3 hug Like That™: NOW KISS.

#the rise of skywalker #tros #star wars #rey #kylo ren #ben solo #adam driver #poe dameron #finn #lando calrissian #LANDO YESSSSSSS #cheap choices #jj abrams should be barred from sci-fi/fantasy movies #palpatine #now i get why my dad was so pissed about darth maul coming back every .5 seconds #force sensitive finn #movie review

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bewareofchris · 5 years ago

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"Anything where a character dies for motivation, or ratings, or a dirty attempt to upset someone." I've heard this many times and it kind of makes me nervous to kill characters. I'm sorry if this is a stupid question but what's a good enough reason to kill a character? How do you make it so it doesn't seem cheap?

Well, any discussion of tropes should be prefaced with acknowledging that even the most overused, ridiculous, least liked trope can be well done. Also that you can’t learn how to use something if you don’t jump in and try it out for yourself.

Have I killed characters for the drama? I have.

Have I killed characters to provide motivation for my hero/villain? Yes I have.

(Have I killed characters because they annoyed me and I wanted them to die? Yes.)

And also, I love discussing writing. There are no stupid questions. All writing advice that isn’t strictly a discussion of accepted grammar usage is opinion anyway.

But a couple of things to ask yourself when you’re about to kill a character and/or create a murdered relative.

Does anyone care about this person? The first example that comes to mind is Assassin’s Creed games. I’ll go with the first one because it’s example is best. In the very beginning of the game you meet Kadar, who gets like 4 lines and then gets killed because of the ridiculous actions of the eventual Hero. Kadar gets killed as a cheap attempt to give you the idea of the cost of the Hero’s arrogance that you can easily identify with. And his surviving brother’s anger toward the Hero therefore makes sense and can guide your emotional journey toward the Hero’s eventual redemption. But it’s bullshit because I don’t care about Kadar. I met him for a half a breath. More importantly, NONE OF THE CHARACTERS in the entire game actually, actively care about this character. He’s just something they bring up occasionally to let you know that now is the time to have a feeling. If you must kill a character, and you want this to have an emotional impact on the story, you need to convey that there was someone that loved this person. That there has been a loss. That the loss isn’t a one episode event but a constant process of acceptance. Readers will care about someone’s death if your characters do.

Am I only doing this to move the plot forward? I mean, you see this in movies and TV shows all the time. I was just recently watching Bones (the TV show) and I stg you could set your watch to when they were about to kill someone off. “things are getting a little too predictable, my friends, time to shoot someone in the heart and upset the whole crew for half an episode.” Please don’t. Unless you’re writing a crime drama where deaths lead to a resolution and/or something else where more deaths are expected and the goal is stopping them.

Am I only doing this to provide motivation to the hero/villain? This is the one that annoys me the most. Think like every Disney princess, all the comic books heros, everyone ever. This is the one that’s been done to pieces. That’s not to say it can’t be done well. But tread carefully. And if possible, consider a different motivation.

Have I prepared the audience for this death or am I doing it for shock value? Personally, I’m against shock value. That doesn’t mean you need to tell your readers someone’s going to die. But foreshadowing and context clues and just the general idea that it is possible in the tone of your story will make it easier to handle and make it seem less jarring and out of place.

Does this death fit with the tone of my story? Look if a serial killer showed up on My Little Pony, I don’t know that I’d be surprised and I’d definitely kick Pinkie Pie into his path, but also it wouldn’t make sense if they couldn’t defeat him with Friendship.

How will my (surviving) characters react to this death? This is the IMPORTANT thing to think about. Look, if some rugged, world-weary, mysterious Hero Man was drinking liquor in a cleverly lit setting and just randomly started telling me about how he found his dismembered mother laying in the kitchen one day and that’s why he became a cop... THIS WOULD NOT MAKE ME TRUST HIM. I would probably be like: this bitch got issues. Why are we giving him a gun? Why are we just letting him do this thing? Why has nobody else taken a step back and thought to themselves, maybe it’s not a good idea to hang out with this guy anymore??? But also, you cannot control your audience’s reaction so you should not try. You can guide them if you have given them a character they have a connection with that is noticeably and convincingly affected by someone’s death.

Will replacing this death with another Tragic or Unexpected or even Traumatizing event work just as well? I’m just saying my Mom used to tell me that I couldn’t sing so often that to this day, I won’t even try singing in the shower. Now that’s a bit of an overreaction on my part but these things happen and maybe your super-villain had an older brother he really idolized who got accepted to a college across the country, and suddenly all that sense of safety he had that his tiny pre-teen world wouldn’t change was destroyed at the exact moment he started going through puberty and his Mother who loved him but thought he was a little Over The Top told him to stop complaining and whining about his brother leaving because that’s just how the world works, and Super Villain to be was just looking for an outlet that made him feel better about being lonely and left behind. So he ends up making friends with wild dogs and discovers a new feeling of belonging but then, as these things often go, his Mom won’t let him bring them home so they get taken to the pound and adopted to other families so your Super Villain’s life of crime starts with hacking into the pound’s database to find his best friends, and breaking and entering to kidnap dogs, and maybe he ends up in Juvie because of it, and there he meets other Tough Kids and they start a gang that becomes a Super Gang that become Super Villains when all your Super Villain needed was therapy. I’m just saying, life happens. People get angry and stay angry about a lot of things. People want to be cops for a lot of reasons. People would be heroes for a lot of reasons. I sincerely doubt that every firefighter in the world is out there fighting fires because his grandma spontaneously combusted in front of his/her eyes and he couldn’t put her out in time because all he had was the gold fish water.

But also, do what you want. Kill off those characters if you want to. You’ll either figure out how to do it in a way that feels real and meaningful to you or you’ll figure out that it’s not something that you like. Either way it ends up, it’s good practice.

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beardycarrot · 4 years ago

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Alright! Now that I’ve finished Aliens Ate My Homework (kids’ books really are just a couple hour read for an adult, huh?), I have in mind some things that I think are important for the movie adaptation to stick to.

The look of the characters should be the easiest thing to nail... their outfits probably won’t match what’s described in the book (movies always feel the need to change that in some capacity), but I don’t really care about that. What I’m more interested in is how they portray the less humanoid characters. Pong, Grakker, and Snout can all be played by actors in costumes, but Tar Gibbons is described as having a lemon-shaped body with four legs, a long neck, and a turtle-like head with bulging bug eyes; that’s gonna be a fully CG character.

The other is Phil, a potted plant. Basically a big stalk covered in leaves and vines, with a flower where a head would be, who moves around with thrusters on his pot. He has a symbiotic relationship with creature called Plink, described as kind of a blue cat-monkey. I really like how this illustration portrays it; even if it looks more like some kind of cartoonie bug, I would be perfectly happy if this is the design the movie goes for. These two are also going to be fully CG, so unless they base it entirely on the description provided for Plink, base its design on an illustration from another artist, or just do their own thing with it, I can’t imagine them finding a way to mess these designs up... but who knows.

BKR, the evil alien, should be interesting. He’s described as having blue skin, pale orange spikes covering his head (I was picturing maybe a dozen four-inch-long spikes, but the spike density could also be interpreted as covering his head like hair), and... otherwise, looking like Shirley Temple? That’s gonna be interesting, but this is also the character I expect them to take the most liberties with. I can’t say why... maybe just from experience with this kind of adaptation.

There are a few major plot points that I think they have to adhere to. First, that the good aliens’ ship is malfunctioning (the illustrations portray the ship as a traditional flying saucer, but I don’t think the design matters much) and they’re stuck shrunken to two inches tall until the end. That’s... basically the only reason for Rod, the protagonist, to be involved. The aliens need to repair their ship, so Rod has to carry them around to investigate BKR.

Secondly, they need to eat his homework. It doesn’t have to be the papier mache volcano and math assignment portrayed in the book, but, I mean, it IS the title of the movie.

Grakker and Snout have an unspecified relationship... Snout is very, VERY clearly based on Spock from Star Trek (in fact, I think the third book in this series is called The Search for Snout, a play on the third Star Trek movie, The Search for Spock), so it might just be a close friendship, but they share a room on the ship while everyone else has their own, so who knows. At one point it’s mentioned that they’re “bonded”. Potentially Gayliens. I don’t remember what their relationship is like in later books.

Next, Rod is incapable of lying. There definitely won’t be a flashback to the traumatizing-to-a-toddler reason for it, but that’s Rod’s defining characteristic: he doesn’t, and can’t, tell lies. Who knows whether that will be included.

Finally, Rod’s dad having been missing for quite a while isn’t a huge part of the story, but it does play an important role. Him lying to Rod’s mom strengthened Rod’s inability to lie (you’re not told what the lie was, but it’s implied that this was the night he left), and towards the end of the story BKR claims to know where he went, and implies that he’s no longer on Earth. I don’t remember if this is a plot point in future books, but Bruce Coville did something pretty similar in My Teacher Flunked The Planet, so it could be. This is the kind of thing that adaptations will just arbitrarily change, though, so who knows.

So! With all that out of the way, it’s time to watch the movie!

...Okay, first thing’s first, the opening credits of the movie are set to shots of a model solar system, so I’m assuming that’s the replacement for the volcano. I’ll allow it. Also, William Shatner is in this movie? What? As who?? The only adult male character in the story is an android of a man in his thirties, and he’s only there for what would amount to two minutes of screen time at the end. Rod’s grandfather is mentioned, but only once, in the context of “this is my grandfather’s farmland”.

Alright, definitely a modern setting. I guess the model isn’t for a science fair, instead being something Rod’s filming on his smartphone with his mom, twin siblings, and... his dad. Now, this looked like is was going to be an adaptation fail, but it turns out this was a flashback to the night he went missing. Clever!

Less clever is this abysmal color grading meant to represent a dark and stormy night, and the fact that they live in a cul-de-sac instead of being out in the middle of some farmland... but that’s not that significant of a change.

For some reason the story now takes place in the winter instead of mid-May, making me wonder where BKR (in the guise of Billy Becker) is getting the bugs to smash against Rod’s head. More importantly, as revealed at the end of the book, most intelligent life in the universe is about three feet tall, which is why BKR is pretending to be a kid while hiding on Earth. Instead of being a foot shorter than Rod, however, he’s now taller. Weird. Rod also now has his cousin Elspeth staying with his family for winter break, for... literally no reason that I can think of. Elspeth is a character from the second book in the series, but she wasn’t even mentioned in the first.

Grakker isn’t quite book-accurate, but not entirely inaccurate either... except for the color of his skin. He’s supposed to be green. What the hell. They whitewashed an alien. On the upside, the dialog in this scene is all pretty book-accurate. Unfortunately, they lose a lot of points with Madame Pong, who is supposed to be a very calm, understanding, zen character... but comes across as a little condescending. Also, this:

What? What?? Why did they keep this book dialog, when the house is VERY CLEARLY part of some kind of housing development area? I legitimately have no idea what they were thinking.

I also have no idea what’s going on here. Elspeth is... I guess looking through family photos on a computer? Ignore the subtitles, that’s from a weather report on tv. What I’m curious about is what exactly is going on in the photo. That’s clearly Rod’s dad, from three years ago... but recent pictures of the twins? Did Rod’s mom, who apparently runs a pet photography business, Photoshop a family ski trip that never happened? Is that what’s being implied here??

We’re then introduced to the rest of the aliens, and... wow, I can’t describe my disappointment. Remember how I said Tar Gibbons and Phil would be fully CG characters? Yeah, that, uhh... that didn’t happen. I was hoping they would do as much of this movie with practical effects as possible, but I meant that in the “get good SFX people” way, not the “do everything as cheaply as possible” way. They’re literally both just guys in suits.

Yeah sure eye stalks and a thick neck are absolutely the same thing as bulging eyes and a long neck. More importantly, look at that clearly human body with extra legs just kinda hanging off the hips. Phil is just as bad. You can’t really tell from still frames, but yeah, he has two vines with leaves coming off of his human-body-proportioned stalk at shoulder level and moves like a guy in a suit... and for some reason, his flower is split into halves so that it can be puppeteered to move like a mouth. Despite the fact that in the book his flower doesn’t even play a part in communication. They could’ve easily just installed a light inside the flower and explained that he communicates through pod burps, and would’ve been perfectly book-accurate. Why make this specific change. Also, if you’ve read this far, you’re probably wondering where Snout is. Yeah, uh. Me too.

Anyway, they appear to have combined the characters of BKR and Arnie into one person to simplify things (but then why introduce Elspeth??), and for no readily apparent reason, changed BKR, which is pronounced how you would expect, into B’KR, pronounced... b’car. For no reason.

Good GOD is this movie cheap. I appreciate the set they created for the top of Rod’s desk, with the giant pencil and such, and obviously they’re going to use a green screen for scenes like this... but it looks SO bad in motion. Like, see how the shot ends at his knees? That’s because he’s very obviously running in place, in front of a green screen. Also, why are sixth graders learning about the Drake Equation, which concerns the statistics relevant to intelligent alien life in the universe, in math class? I guess it’s technically a math topic, but not the kind of thing you’d learn in pre-algebra...and for comparison, Rod’s math homework consisted of single-digit multiplication tables, the kind of thing you do in like, second grade.

I’m also not fond of the degree to which Grakker is a comic relief character. Like... throughout the book, he’s completely strict and serious, and most of the comedy comes from Phil, Gibbons, and Rod. The first time you see genuine emotion from him is when Rod accidentally injures Snout, causing Grakker to hold him tenderly and shed a tear (again, potential Gayliens).

This is supposed to be the inside of a thick black canvas backpack. Am I crazy? Did I not see the Universal Studios logo at the start of this movie? Why does it look like the cheapest of cheap made-for-tv movies? Anyway. They appear to have given Snout’s ability to slow time to Madame Pong, which is worrying. Did they just... remove Snout, one of most important characters in the entire book series? To what end? To fit in all the stupid pointless Elspeth stuff? If they were hoping to make sequels to this movie, well... bad news, because again, the third book in the series is called The Search for Snout. Okay, I gotta know, is he actually cut from the movie or just a surprise reveal for later?

Alright, I am now officially dragging this movie. Also, I guess we now know where William Shatner fits in... I hadn’t even noticed it was him. Also Also, is that furry pink lump with one eye supposed to be Plink? Why all the arbitrary changes? Did they just decide that since they couldn’t fit a person inside of it, they would give it no limbs at all? Why is it pink??

Eyyy. Roll credits! Yeah, I wish... I’m only halfway through this thing.

They made Rod’s best friend Mickey Asian, which is fine, he’s a very minor character and never really described in the book... but unfortunately, they also decided to make him Data from The Goonies. He’s an inventor. Because he’s Asian. Coooool character, movie. So far it’s lead to an unfunny Coke and Mentos gag and an unfunny Pop Rocks and soda gag (which resulted in projectile vomiting). They cut Snout out of the movie to make room for this stuff, mind you. I’m sure this is building up to some kind of payoff, but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to enjoy it.

Speaking of payoffs, there seems to be an implication that there’s some kind of paranormal activity at Seldom Seen, the hidden field on Rod’s grandfather’s property, and at Rod’s school. I can understand the field, in this version Rod’s dad definitely seems to be involved with aliens in some capacity, and that’s probably where he was keeping a ship or something... but the school is kinda inexplicable. Like, it’s covered in snow... and it’s the only place in town that’s seeing snow. I can only assume it’s BKR’s... sorry, B’KR’s doing, but I’m not sure why. Did they decide that being blue means he’s from a cold planet, and requires it to be cold wherever he is?

No idea what’s up with some of these changes. Instead of BKR’s house being like an unlived-in model home, it’s... a complete sty. The exact opposite of the book. Why. Also, that coffee table is completely covered in video game consoles... GameCube, Dreamcast, PS2, N64... but Rod says he’s got “all the latest video games”. Does he? Does he really? Was that line in the script, so the crew just bought whatever they could find? As for BKR himself...

I mean, I don’t see Shirley Temple, but it’s not bad! Rod wasn’t trapped inside a pocket dimension inside a CRT tv when he took his mask off, but they wouldn’t have been able to manage that scene with this budget anyway. So far, this is the only alien design I fully endorse. There WAS a point to him having a cherubic face in the book, but it’s never addressed, only implied, and I get why they would make him look more menacing.

In the book, BKR didn’t really have any goals. He just enjoyed being cruel for the sake of being cruel, and was hiding out on Earth because it was unlikely they’d find him there. In the movie, B’KR intends to destroy Earth by opening a wormhole (which is what’s causing the snow), and the good guys have about an hour to save the planet.

They kept another of Snout’s abilities, the Vulcan Mind Mel-- er, knowledge transferal, but gave it to Tar Gibbons. This is literally the only thing he’s done in the entire movie. For the record, this was originally the scene where Snout connects their minds, but Rod is startled by it and pulls back, causing Snout severe psychic harm and prompting the aforementioned emotional response from Grakker.

...They just had to get William Shatner to say Klingon, didn’t they. The climax of the movie is all him flying around spouting (sprouting?) plant puns, then Rod throws a banana cream pie (which was, apparently, part of someone’s science project) at BKR’s face... and finishes him off with foam shot from his papier mache volcano. I guess the shrunken spaceship expanding inside of a house, causing the roof to collapse and knock BKR unconscious, was too expensive violent for the movie... but why is getting him messy a solution to anything? Ah well.

Bruce Coville himself has a cameo as the judge for the science fair, which is nice. I think he might be the principal of the school... I didn’t really notice in the scene featuring the principal earlier, since that happened to be the projectile vomiting scene. I can only imagine he was honored to have his work recognized in this capacity... he’s a good dude, I’m sure he wouldn’t be as horrified as I am with the writing and quality of it.

Also the movie ends with the reveal of the actual size of the aliens... which is, uhh. About the size of adult humans. Hrm. Guess they just straight up decided not to get anything right, huh? Oh, and they reveal that Rod’s father actually is a member of the Galactic Patrol. So, that’s a thing.

Please don’t say that. God, was this movie bad. I would understand if they were passionate about bringing the story to more people and just didn’t have much of a budget, or if they made changes to better suit a visual medium, but that... is not what they did. I’m not the kind of person that demands an adaptation remains 100% faithful; if you want the experience of the book, you can just read the book. This, however, changes so many things. Like, in the book, BKR’s crime is cruelty. That’s the message of the book... that in truly civilized societies, kindness is the norm, and needless cruelty is a criminal act.

The characters in the book all either have depth to them or are interesting as sci-fi concepts, but the movie... Gakker is Mr. Slapstick, Madame Pong is Cool Collected Female, Tar Gibbons is... I dunno, wisdom obscured by things that just don’t translate into English and saying Warrior Science a lot (honestly the closest to his book counterpart, though HE was more interesting and actually did stuff), and Phil... yeah, just William Shatner saying plant puns. Bleagh.

Well, despite that end screen, it’s good to know that we won’t be getting any sequels. I mean, like I’ve already mentioned, Snout going missing is a major plot point in the second book, and the third is literally called The Search For Snout. What are they going to do, just skip to the fourth book?

...Oh hey, George Takei.

#aliens ate my homework #bruce coville #long post

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tlbodine · 5 years ago

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Twisty Turns and Horror

“Every story ever told can be broken down into three parts. The beginning. The middle. And the twist.” — Jack Black as RL Stine in Goosebumps

I want to talk about twists.

Specifically, I want to talk about two primary types of twists in the horror genre, and how and when each can be employed -- and the pitfalls of both.

But first, a caveat: What do I mean when I say “twist”?

A plot twist occurs when the audience’s expectations are subverted.

Based on the existing information in a storyline, a reader or viewer expects a certain outcome. A twist occurs when something unexpected happens instead. But a twist is not a mystery. A mystery presents a question -- who did it? how? what happened? -- and then challenges the audience to figure it out before the characters involved. A good mystery requires you to lay down foreshadowing and set up all of the clues, providing red herrings as necessary to distract the audience, before tying it all up at the end with a neat bow.

A twist, on the other hand, does not necessarily require such setup and foreshadowing. And, indeed, some of the very best twists in the genre do away with such things entirely.

So with that out of the way, let’s talk about the two types of horror twists -- what I’ll refer to as The Hitchcock Twist and The Shyamalan Twist.

By nature of the subject matter, this will be spoiler-heavy, so follow under the cut!

Alfred Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamlan are two directors who made their careers from creating movies with a twist. Although plenty of other horror directors employ the same techniques, the careers of Hitchcock and Shyamalan are defined by twists in a way others are not.

But -- however much he may try to emulate him with his signature on-screen cameos -- Shyamalan trades in a very different type of twist than Hitchcock. Taken at a plot level, the two approaches to storytelling are actually completely opposite.

A Shyamalan Twist Occurs at the End, Reinterpreting Everything That Came Before

Let’s briefly review Shyamalan’s twists to see what they have in common, shall we?

The most famous -- in The Sixth Sense, we discover at the end that the character played by Bruce Willis has actually been dead the entire time, and that he is just another of the ghosts the little boy can see.

In The Village, we learn that what appears to be a rural pioneer settlement is in fact a modern commune that’s been lost to history for a couple generations, and the monsters are manufactured as a way to keep the inhabitants in line (and from escaping).

In Unbreakable, we discover that the story isn’t just the hero origin story for Bruce Willis’s character, but the origin story for the villain Mr. Glass -- who was responsible for the accident that set the hero on his journey in the first place.

In The Visit, we find out that the kids haven’t been staying with their grandparents at all, but rather with a pair of escaped and murderous mental patients.

What do all of these have in common? The twist is revealed at the climax of the film, and it acts to completely reinterpret the events that came before it. You’re left leaving the theater to think about everything that came before the twist, and try to find a way to piece it all together. All of your expectations up to the climax have been subverted, and you’re left to do the work of figuring out how to make sense of what you’ve seen (or not, of course - perhaps you leave the theater without ever thinking about it again).

Done well, this twist can be incredibly powerful because it invites interaction from the audience even after the story is finished. The twist introduces new questions that it doesn’t answer, and conversation can spring up around finding solutions for it -- either within the text itself, or contemplating it in a larger context. Done well, a Shyamalan twist can lead the audience toward introspection and create a haunting effect.

Done poorly, of course, it can feel cheap, cheesy, unearned, or just downright stupid. That’s the greatest risk of the Shyamalan twist -- it can leave the audience thinking, “Who cares?”

Of course, Shyamalan didn’t invent this sort of twist -- it’s just what he’s best known for -- and there are tons of other examples out in the wild. Here are a few to consider:

The Twilight Zone -- When I’ve delivered this talk before (if you can call “rambling about movies to my coworker” a talk), it’s been pointed out that this twist was really codified first by The Twilight Zone, and I should really call it a Serling twist. Well, I’m not doing that for two reasons. One, because Serling never tried to draw a direct parallel between himself and Hitchcock, so Shyamalan is really inviting himself to this discussion. Two, because The Twilight Zone uses the formula a little bit differently.

First, not every Twilight Zone episode had a twist ending (although the most famous ones did, probably for the reason I mention above -- people like to talk about surprise endings, and they stick in the memory). But more importantly, the twists were the story. The sci-fi/horror shorts were structured like jokes where the twist was the punchline, often crafted to deliver a particular message or parable. Most of the episode existed to set up the twist, with little time spent on extraneous plot and character development. Thus, Twilight Zone stories are more clever than shocking. Still, they are a treasure trove of storytelling to study, and they make for a wonderful compare/contrast with Shyamalan’s films.

Other notable Shyamalan-style twists:

Fight Club, where we learn that Tyler Durden is not real, but rather the alter-ego of the seemingly meek and unnamed narrator.

Memento, where we learn that the film’s core mystery has been solved numerous times, only to be forgotten -- and that the main character is being manipulated every step of the way.

Orphan, where we learn that the titular orphan with homicidal tendencies is in fact a grown woman with a peculiar form of dwarfism who is manipulating the families who adopt her. (the movie is better than that plot synopsis makes it sound, I promise)

In Hide and Seek, we learn that the little girl’s evil imaginary friend (at times implied to be a ghost) is in fact her father’s alternate personality.

There are, of course, lots more. There are also some near-misses. For example, despite its bleak “gotcha”, the ending of The Mist -- where the main character mercifully kills his fellow survivors before running out of bullets to use on himself, only to find that help was just around the corner -- doesn’t quite count. It’s a shocking and heart-wrenching twist, but it doesn’t fully redefine the film that came before it.

Pros to the Shyamalan Twist:

Gives your audience something to think about long after they walk away, generating discussion and hopefully that haunted “I need a minute” feeling to process the story.

Invites a second watch/read in order to pick up the clues and pieces and see how the story unfolds differently after you know the ending.

Cons to the Shyamalan Twist:

Can feel cheap or un-earned if the twist makes the events of the film no longer seem to matter (eg, “it was all a dream!”)

Often ends up relying on ableist mental health tropes (split personality, escaped lunatic, etc etc.), so please do something new with it

Can completely fall apart if the ending is spoiled ahead of time, making it difficult to succeed in a post-internet environment.

All in all, the Shyamalan Twist can be a powerful storytelling tool, but it can also fall flat on its face. The thing that will make it succeed is if the other elements of the story, especially the characters, are compelling enough on their own to make the reader want to know more.

A Hitchcock Twist occurs early in the film and changes the rules of what you’re watching

A primary characteristic of the Hitchcock twist is that it happens early in the story -- about 1/3rd to 1/2 of the of the way through. It sets up a premise, invites you to get invested in the characters and their situation, and then pulls the rug out from under you by dramatically changing the movie into a different type of story altogether.

For example:

In Psycho, the first 47 minutes of the 109-minute movie are all about Marion Crane, a woman who steals money from her job and skips town before ending up at a seedy roadside motel. These 47 minutes spend a lot of time building Marion’s character and setting up what could be a crime thriller...until she is abruptly and violently murdered, and the narrative shifts over to the killer.

In The Birds, a socialite and a lawyer spend almost half the movie developing a relationship, from their meet-cute to the ensuing quasi-romantic stalking, the weekend getaway, meeting the locals, befriending the family, attending a party. It honestly feels like a romance (with a few creepy details) right up until a flock of birds starts attacking party-goers.

In Vertigo, the main character is a retired police officer turned private investigator who is hired to spy on a man’s wife, only to fall in love with her, a situation made complicated by her apparent madness and/or possession by a dead ancestor. This madness drives her to commit suicide. Except then the movie keeps going, and we discover that everything up to that point (2/3rds of the film) was actually a complex setup to disguise a murder...a revelation that honestly takes a backseat to Scottie’s newfangled, creepy obsession with the not-actually-dead girl of his dreams, which then ends in a new murder. It’s a convoluted story that’s much easier to watch than to explain, but it’s a wild ride from beginning to end.

What do all of these Hitchcock films have in common? They set up one storyline, spending lots of time developing the characters and progressing the plot, only to take an extremely sharp turn. Some might argue that Hitchcock thrillers are just very slow burn, taking their time to luxuriously build up to a crescendo, but I think it goes deeper than that -- some of these movies abruptly change genre.

In no instance is this as self-evident as in The Birds. The effect of watching it is akin to what might happen if you made a Lifetime movie and then halfway through the zombie apocalypse just happened to take place. It’s brilliant, and it replicates the feeling of real life horror -- where bad things happen suddenly and unexpectedly to ruin your everyday life -- better than any other storytelling device.

Hitchcock is the master of this type of plot, but there are other stories that employ a similar technique:

Gone Girl introduces us to a man whose wife has gone missing, and spends a lot of time building up their relationship history and casting doubt on him, so that we begin to suspect that he’s a murderer...only to learn, quite abruptly, that not only is his wife still alive, but she’s the one who set this whole thing up. It’s masterfully done, and the twist occurs about halfway through, giving us plenty of opportunity to see the marriage turn into a real cat-and-mouse game between two equally awful people.

You’re Next sets up a pretty standard home invasion premise, but it goes sideways when one of the guests begins to fight back. Brilliantly, this is a twist not just for us but for the people in the film -- it’s a turn of events that ruins the evil scheme, where the whole invasion was a setup and many fewer people were meant to die.

Hereditary lays down all the foundation for the little girl to be supernaturally creepy, the driver of whatever badness the film has in store...right up to the moment of her death. (The film then double-helixes with a Shyamalan twist ending, just for good measure)

Million Dollar Baby seems at the outset to be an underdog sports film, right up to the point where it actually becomes a treatise on assisted suicide (among other things).

Interestingly, the Hitchcock Twist finds a home in dramas as much or perhaps more often than in mainstream horror. The reason for this is probably because the twist demands strong characterization, and that sort of lengthy, nuanced character study isn’t as common in genre fiction. This, by extension, means that genre stories that do successfully deliver this kind of twist are often better received by mainstream critics.

For example, look at Game of Thrones. Ned Stark’s death is absolutely a Hitchcock Twist. At the outset, an audience has certain expectations for how an epic fantasy is supposed to play out -- and brutally killing the main character and ripping apart his family as a “reward” for acting noble is definitely not it. This subversion of expectations is one of many reasons the story resonates so far beyond the usual bounds of fantasy fandom.

Pros to the Hitchcock Twist:

Done well, it can make your story feel more literary and/or transgressive, providing cross-genre appeal for audiences who might not normally see or respect your type of work.

It keeps the audience on their toes by subverting their most crucial expectations; once you pull the rug out from under them, anything can happen!

Cons to the Hitchcock Twist:

It can lose the trust of your audience, who may not want to follow you around the bend and might feel betrayed or confused by the sudden shift in expectations.

It’s tough to market because there is almost nothing you can say about the story that will appeal to the target audience without also giving away the twist.

It requires a lot of skill with characterization to make up for the slower pace of the plot.

If there’s one thing that both Hitchcock and Shyamalan twists have in common -- and one take-away I want you to keep -- it’s that successful twists rely on strong characterization. You absolutely must write good, believable, compelling characters first and foremost, or the audience isn’t going to care what happens to them, no matter how twisty those events may be.

And one final caveat: You can really only afford a couple of major twists per story. You can double up, offering both a Hitchcock and a Shyamalan twist in a single story (see above re: Hereditary), but it’s extremely tough to pull off and can make your audience confused and even downright angry if you fail.

What are your favorite movie twists? Reblog and tell me all about them!

And if you enjoy this content, please consider leaving a tip in my tip jar: Ko-fi.com/A57355UN

#writing advice #horror #horror movies #how to write horror #m night shyamalan #alfred hitchcock #long post #please reblog this #I spent like 3 hours writing it

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bigskydreaming · 5 years ago

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@dargeon-lissa I saw your note on that post, but I’m afraid I don’t have the time or energy to dive down that particular rabbit hole this week, lol. I generally avoid getting into the ‘who stole what from whom’ arguments in the first place, just because I really do love all the Batkids when fandom isn’t getting in the way, and I firmly believe there’s no need to treat characteristics or even plots as though they can only belong to one character.

So like, I happily butt in when someone says something like “YJ Dick’s hacking is stolen from Tim” because like, its not like its a knock against Tim to point out that “no, Dick’s been portrayed as an expert hacker since before Tim was created, they can both be great hackers, stop being dumb.”

And like I was saying just the other day where I think its stupid and juvenile to emphasize some idea that Dick never reads for pleasure or educates himself for the joy of learning, because some people seem to think that takes something away from Jason, if they’re also writing him with an emphasis on those characteristics.

That sort of thing.

The rest of the time though, I think it really just comes down to intent, otherwise its just a moot point.

Like, I’m not a fan of Court of Owls fics that center around Tim and basically transplant him with all of Dick’s canon connections to it....but that’s because its like...what’s your point with that fic? If its just because you like the Court of Owls and Talon plotlines but you don’t like Dick, so you’re just cut and pasting one swapped out for the other, then you’ve lost me, not because you’ve ‘stolen’ from Dick, but because you’re not doing anything NEW with the material you’ve applied to a new, different character...while disregarding its source connections.

*Shrugs* I don’t think that’s about being possessive of Dick’s storylines, its about being like....this is boring. If someone wrote a fic about Tim and the Court of Owls but doesn’t just use him in place of Dick, and still acknowledges their connection to Dick instead of trying to pretend like it or he doesn’t exist...in and of itself, I don’t have a problem with that, it just comes down to whether or not I like what they do with that. Much in the same way that I’d read fic about Dick going up against Ra’s in some specific plot, but if its set after a point in the comics where Tim’s stories started intertwining with Ra’s a lot, I would still want to see that acknowledged.

Because I do think its disingenuous to pretend that Tim’s stories don’t use Ra’s a lot more regularly than Dick’s canon stories do, even though Dick has prior interactions and stories with Ra’s that go way back before Tim existed. But like....these things don’t need to come into conflict. I can imagine a story that’s Dick vs Ra’s and that doesn’t take away from the respect (or his creepy version of it) that Ra’s has shown Tim as well. He’s allowed to regard more than one of Bruce’s kids as a worthy adversary, and it makes sense that he would. It doesn’t threaten Dick’s central role in a story like that, or his competence, to allow for the fact that Ra’s has a preoccupation with Tim as well, even if that’s not his focus in this particular plot.

And by the same token, if I were to write a story that springs out of the events of Robin: Year One, for instance, where Dick gets tangled up with Ra’s and Talia and the League because of Vengeance Academy or Boone, something like that.....and I don’t even mention Tim, because its years before Tim would have come into the picture....that’s not me stealing anything from Tim, because those prior connections existed, why shouldn’t anyone make use of them?

Oh fuck it. I clearly went down the rabbit hole anyway. Whatever, more under the cut. Why am I like this.

It goes both ways too. Yeah, sure, I think its dumb when Jason stans act like focusing on Dick’s death takes something away from the typical focus on Jason’s, like he’s less special now or this is Dick ‘stealing Jason’s thing.’ Its comic books. More characters have died and come back then haven’t. Few have their death and return be as central to their character as Jason’s is, like, the Death of Superman is an iconic story but even with that, Clark’s death and resurrection isn’t like....regarded as a fundamental part of his stories....but that doesn’t mean no one’s allowed to write stories that focus on the deaths and returns of other characters, for whatever reason.

That’s not taking anything away from Jason’s stories, its not copying him, and neither is the way Dick was believed dead for a year like, a rip off of when Steph’s story went the same way prior to that. Characters believed to be dead being revealed as alive is an equally long-running comic book trope. It applies to far more than just the two of them, and no one has proprietary claim over it, its about what you DO with it.

Now, stories that focus on Dick’s death and how he was believed dead and revealed otherwise.....that involve the rest of the Batfamily and make a point not to mention any parallels with Jason or Steph’s stories, act like nothing similar ever happened with them....then I’d be equally wary of that story because I’d be like...why? What’s the point in pretending there are no parallels, acting like Dick is the only one this has ever happened to? He doesn’t need to be, in order for it to have impact, so enough with this Highlander “There can only be one” philosophy.

Like, Dick’s one of the most iconic DC characters and has been around for 80 years. He was going to die and be brought back at some point. Deal with it. It was always inevitable, just like its pretty inevitable that its going to happen to Tim for real at some point too. It just hasn’t yet.

All that said....there have been a number of stories over the years that have posited Dick being killed by the Joker and coming back as Renegade or Red Hood. Similarly, I have no interest in reading those, not because I’m opposed to a Renegade storyline or an exploration of a darker version of Dick, but because they’re usually just a blatant cut and paste job. *Shrugs* I’ve already read that story with Jason and UTRH. I liked that story, with Jason and UTRH. Why do I need to read the same story, just with Dick now instead of Jason? I’d rather read something brand new.

Then we get to ‘stealing characters.’ Like Jason stealing Kory and Roy, and Dick stealing Kon in YJ, etc. I have the same philosophy here as I do about characteristics....its weird and not cool to me to treat characters as having ‘claim’ to any other characters...but that doesn’t mean I always like when this happens either. But its not because they’re taking what belongs to another character, its about why, and what they do with it.

Like, when its a cheap grab of established characters being now associated with a different character to give them a supporting cast with minimal effort, as opposed to building them their own supporting cast with time and care and putting thought into it...THAT’S my problem with that. I don’t typically like Jason being besties with Kory and Roy, either in canon or in fanfics....but that’s not actually because they’re Dick’s friends and can’t be Jason’s too, its because I don’t like the stories that result from that, and I don’t think they make a case or put any effort into convincing me that this needs to be a trio....the way the comics have decades worth of stories establishing a connection between Dick and Roy and Kori and Dick, and with that being why they’re so associated with him.

I don’t like Jason, Roy and Kory in canon because I just don’t like the New 52 versions of Roy and Kory period, lol. I hate what they’ve done with them, they feel watered down and tweaked in ways that add nothing to their characters, and their association with Jason irritates me not because it exists, but because of how rarely it allows their association with Dick to exist, and acts like mentioning him in their stories threatens the validity of them being with Jason. You wanna write them being Jason’s friends, DO THAT. But put some EFFORT into it. JUSTIFY it. And....don’t erase their connections to Jason’s brother because they’re not allowed to have connections with two brothers at the same time or whatever. Like, even without all their pre-Flashpoint history, New 52 Roy and Kory SHOULD show way more of a connection to Dick than their stories with Jason ever allow for, and that’s the bigger issue to me. Not that Jason ‘stole’ them, but that writers act like he can’t have stories with them without pretending their stories with Dick don’t exist.

Even in New 52, like, the Rebirth version of Titans was crap, lol, but it still existed, and like....there’s hardly any acknowledgment of Dick and Roy being long time teammates even AFTER the Titans got their memories of each other back in Rebirth. Even if they’re not the best of friends in New 52 the way they were in Flashpoint, they still had way more history in even current canon than Jason’s comicbook writers or fic writers seem willing to allow mentions of. Similarly, we barely know anything about Dick and Kory’s relationship in the New 52....but we do know they HAD one, and fucking amnesia was involved there too, lol, but like. It exists. You want to write her mostly hanging out with Jason now, fine! But like....there’s no reason her past with Dick can’t still exist, and that it would never come up.

Instead, I read way too many fics about Jason, Kory and Roy where the latter two just fucking full on hate Dick, because the writer does. Or just act like he’s a total stranger to them and their loyalty is solidly with Jason and always has been and always will be. And that’s cheap and lazy writing to me, and makes no sense and wouldn’t appeal to me even if it wasn’t Dick that was being bashed and it was a different character in a similar context.

So its not like they CAN’T be good friends with Jason, because they were such good friends with Dick first. Its just...factor that in, at least, you know? But admittedly, even were writers to do this more, it still wouldn’t be ideal IMO, with these particular characters....because I’m always gonna wonder WHY. Why them? Why these two in particular, when giving Jason more friends? Like, especially if you’re still incorporating large amounts of pre-reboot history into your characters, Jason and his dynamics with Dick and the Batfamily in particular.....its always going to be a little weird to me to have Jason of all people become besties with one of his big brother’s most iconic and longterm friends, and his big brother’s ex-fiancee and mother of his child in other timelines.

Like....its just a matter of....you couldn’t come up with anyone else? That’s why when I headcanon giving Jason more friends and teammates of his own - BECAUSE HE TOTALLY DESERVES THEM AND I WANT HIM TO HAVE THEM, I AGREE, LOL - like, I focus on characters who have no strong connections to Dick or Tim or anyone else in the Batfamily already. And its not because I don’t want to steal what ‘belongs’ to anyone else already, but because....Jason should get to build and have strong connections with characters on his own. I’d rather look through DC’s vast library of characters and find ones that I think FIT him best, have the most potential to play off his character and add to his storylines....then try and take a shortcut by seeing who’s been popular with his big brother but isn’t currently being used in big brother’s storylines, and thus can become besties with Jason without needing to put too much effort into writing that happening.

And that’s why I don’t have a ton of interest in writing Jason with Kory and Roy....because I still prefer their dynamics and history with Dick and don’t really feel they make a ton of sense to go live with his younger brother instead, so I’m happy to just have them friendly with Jason, maybe even the friends of Dick’s he’s closest too and they’ve occasionally teamed up on their own....but for Jason himself, I’d rather build him connections with Tomcat, Damage, Ray, Jade and Obsidian, Anima, maybe the aged up version of Chris Kent....characters he has a blank slate with, no prior strong associations with his older brother that innately make any connection Jason has with them at least somewhat complicated....people I feel he could play off of well and they could add a lot to each others’ characterizations and storylines, and I can easily and without conflict write them being fully in Jason’s corner in ANY kind of disagreement with even Dick or the other Titans....without there always being this weird edge where its like, are Kory and Roy on Jason’s side here just solely for his sake, or is it also because they’re pissed at Dick or the other Titans for their own reasons, or what’s going on here?

Now jump back to where I brought up how YJ Dick has been accused of stealing Kon from Tim. Like, this I think is fully dumb, and again, people can think its because I’m a Dick stan and think he should have everything lol, but its exactly what I’ve been saying all along. Its about what you do with the characters. And its about that none of them belong to any other character in the first place.

Like, can I just say I hate the whole ‘so and so needs their own super, their own speedster, their own archer’ mindset? They’re not collector’s items. They don’t go up in value once you have a complete set. If you’re trying to configure a team and make sure you have certain different archetypes and powersets because of what that allows for narratively? I’m all on board. But once you start going well Kon is Tim’s super and Jon is Damian’s....then I’m like. LOL. No. Kon is Tim’s FRIEND. Jon is Tim’s FRIEND.

And also because...that’s all Connor actually is, in Young Justice? He’s Dick’s FRIEND. And teammate. He’s not “Dick’s super” because tbh, I don’t see how he’s any more closely associated with Dick in YJ than any of the other original core cast. He’s got the exact same degree of closeness and familiarity with Dick in YJ as he does with say, Artemis. Did Artemis steal Kon too? Or are they just all friends by virtue of the YJ showrunners deciding to make Connor one of their age group, because they wanted their team to have a character with connections to Superman and Lex, not because they wanted Dick to have his own Super.

*Shrugs* And if you don’t like moving Connor to a different age group and generation of heroes in and of itself, that’s a valid complaint! But it doesn’t need to be about Dick stealing something from Tim. I hate that Raven and Beast Boy were aged down in the New 52 and the more recent animated movies and are more in Damian’s age group than Dick’s.....but that’s because I love the classic 80′s Teen Titans lineup and miss Raven and Gar’s dynamics with ALL the older Titans characters. Not because Damian stole them from Dick. I also hate Vic on the Justice League because it was nominally supposed to be to boost his profile but I think its only resulted in a regression in his stories as while a Titan, he had a LOT more narrative focus and a lot more character connections than he’s ever been given since being made an original Leaguer in the New 52′s version of the Justice League. And I don’t hate the JL for stealing Vic from the Titans, I hate the DC editorial staff for making dumb, flimsy creative choices in the name of headlines and hashtags instead of solid character choices and strong narratives.

Like, I went off for a bit there, admittedly, but god. I just hate this whole ‘so and so stole this and that from so and so’ in fandom, because its so pointless, IMO. And people take it so faaaaaar.

LOL, you know how I talk a lot about shipping Dick/Kyle? I’ve had people accuse me of ‘stealing’ Kyle from Jason....because enough people ship Jason/Kyle on the basis of the one comic they were in together and had tension in, that he’s now apparently ‘Jason’s’ and the only reason anyone could possibly have for shipping him with Dick is because Jason’s not allowed to have nice things.

I can’t even express how dumb that sounds to someone who’s been shipping Dick and Kyle ever since there like, two interactions in the Obsidian Age JLA arc that came out years before Jason was even brought back in the comics, let alone starred in a comic with Kyle. Where absolutely, yeah, he had far more interactions with Kyle than Dick and Kyle have ever had! But like, there’s not a fucking quota for non canon ships, lmao. Its not like whoever has the most interactions with someone gets to call dibs.

There’s a whole laundry list of reasons I ship Dick and Kyle together, based on their core characterizations and their storylines, and various parallels I’ve seen in both over the years. And any story I wrote with the two of them as a couple would absolutely reference Kyle’s previous history with Jason and Donna in Countdown, and have him have his own interactions and dynamics with the two of them, separate and distinct from what he had with Dick. And none of that has anything to do with wanting to ship him with Dick because he’s usually shipped with Jason and I’m jealous and want him with my fave instead, lol. I actually do ship Jason and Kyle as well at times, in other story ideas, and that actually has very little to do with their Countdown interactions as well. If anything, the reason I ship Kyle with both Jason and Dick in different scenarios is because I’ve always seen Dick and Jason as very similar in a lot of regards....and thus they both share a lot of the characterizations and story points that I parallel with Kyle’s, and are what makes me think he’s a viable love interest for either of them.

To wrap this up, I can FEEL the inevitability of someone out there saying “Big talk, but what about you insisting that Jason STOLE Robin from Dick?”

Like, I can just FEEL that on the tip of someone’s tongue, lmao.

And to that I would have to answer....uh....I’ve never ever ever even once said or suggested that Jason stole Robin. I’ve always maintained that the fault there was Bruce and Bruce’s alone, and its Bruce who has something to account for there. From an IN STORY perspective. Because of the CHARACTER reasons for Dick feeling protective and possessive of the mantle, not for any meta reason about it being his and his alone.

Because I do like all of the Robins. I’m glad all of them were Robin. My repeated insistence on stressing the importance of the name for Dick, and hating how little that’s acknowledged...is literally just that. I can like all of the Robins and still think that as the creator of the mantle, and having created it to honor the legacy of his first family, the Flying Graysons, NOT to be an extension of the Batman, I just happen to think that even with all of the Robins sharing in the legacy at this point and adding their own bits to the mantle and what it means and represents, Dick’s motivations for becoming Robin in the first place and the fact that he was not the one given the choice of turning it into a legacy is something that deserves to be upheld as the most important factor in narratives about passing on the mantle and conflict over the mantle.

Not because Dick’s the best Robin or the most important or anything that requires or suggests RANKING the Robins according to some completely arbitrary set of parameters....

but simply because Dick’s creation of the mantle and his reasons for doing it and what it meant to him from the start and to this day....are the most RELEVANT to stories about the passing on of the mantle or conflict about the mantle.

Because simply in terms of causation....without Dick’s motivations...the mantle they all fight over would not even exist. Voila. That makes them innately relevant to any discussion of the mantle in a way that say, Tim’s motivations for becoming Robin aren’t necessarily relevant to a conversation about the mantle between Dick and Jason, or Jason and Damian, or any other variation not involving Tim. Dick’s motivations are the only ones that always bear relevancy in anything pertaining to the Robin mantle, because he’s the singular commonality for it, no matter who holds it and how they got it....because he’s the one who created it.

That’s all. Its got nothing to do with best or favorite, its about....just wanting fandom to stop treating his feelings about Robin as the most irrelevant, when he’s the only single common denominator wherever Robin is concerned....and thus the most relevant.

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