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b0amagination · 3 years ago

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Hasan and Declan - 8

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Content warnings: intimate whumper, forced to kneel, caning, mentioned hand whump, recorded whump, broken bone, choking (trigger and mention of waterboarding memories), specific blood warning, discussion of a consensual BDSM relationship (not between whumper and whumpee obviously).

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I had to split up the audio file for this chapter so click here for (RECORDING PART 2)

Previously…

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“Good on you for holding that pose, by the way. Just straighten your spine a bit- that’s it.” The cane came down across his bare back and Declan cried out, collapsing over himself. “Dammit Dec, you’ve ruined that entire setup! Get back up, come on, or I’ll whip it across your face.”

He pushed himself up to his elbows, hesitating.

“You wouldn’t want that pretty face bruised up yet, would you? No, no… too many important things there. Prominent scars to be had, too.”

It was so stupid. So stupid and useless that he was getting back into that exact position, learning along, letting his buttons be pushed, his weaknesses learned.

He braced himself this time, realizing what game they wanted to play. A diagonal strike fell across his upper back, eliciting a stifled gasp. The next was harder, pushing him with its snapping pain. He wobbled, regaining his bearings in time for another.

They fell methodically down one way, none touching the others, only changing when they hit bone, or a particularly sensitive spot. Which was… nearly his entire back, now that he thought about it.

Then one fell in line vertically with his entire spine, and Declan couldn’t even find the breath to scream. His jaw fell open, eyes wide as he hunched over. Hasan quickly rounded him and swept the cane across his cheek with the force of a smack.

“Up. Get up.”

“Why?! You’re just going to hit me again!” Declan whined.

The cane slotted against his nose.

“Because if you won’t learn proper technique, I’ll break your nose. And I’ll keep hitting it, smashing it beyond repair, until you submit.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” Declan pushed up, settling back onto his knees. “You shouldn-nngh!- shouldn’t be this desperate. Don’t you have someone in your life to… help you take care of this?”

“I believe you’re wanting to hear about my boyfriend?”

“There, yeah,” he winced. “Someone to play out your-hhahhhh- fantasies with. You know, it’s- agh!! It’s real fucking hard to have a civil! Conversation like this!!!” Declan panted, trying to recover, but Hasan went on without a word on the matter.

“Well, for one, he’s my dominant. My master, if you will. And a pet does not exercise power over their master.”

Of cooourse. Of course they had to have a set dynamic.

“Then get your own.”

“What do you think you are?” Hasan smirked.

“No- I mean, aagh! Legitimately! Building a relationship and whatnot! Discuss polyamory with your boyfriend!” Declan was essentially begging at this point.

“We already have, thank you very much. And he seems to be quite a fan of you.”

“But-!”

“I know what you’re asking. It’s called teasing, dearest,” they smiled, landing a hit over his shoulder blade. “As it turns out, the thrill of owning a person without their consent is far different than the alternative. And they’re both delightful, but the one was a more exhilarating option.”

“Why couldn’t one side of the- the dynamic have been enough? Why do you, nngh… need both?”

“Well, my boyfriend moved over to Chicago for work, and I haven’t been able to make the transition there yet. Plus, he’s still being considered for transfer back to the Columbus office. So we’re long distance for now.”

“Well, fuck.” Both of them stared at each other for a moment, Hasan grinning slowly.

“Are you telling me to-”

“No! Jesus Christ, that was a phrase of exasperation.” He would’ve believed Hasan was serious at this point if all of their unfortunate interpretations didn’t work out in their favor. “You two can do whatever you want on your own time.”

“Well, he is meaning to visit in a few weeks.”

“Good. So I’ll be gone by then.”

Shit. Shit. He should’ve watched his tongue.

“He’s very interested in meeting you,” Hasan spoke slowly, “and I will let him have his own fun.”

Declan hiked his shoulders to his ears, nodding as his heart raced. The cane smacked hard against both of them, then his lower back, encouraging him to readjust his posture as the beating continued.

“In fact, I think I’ll show him just how you look right now! What a treat that’ll be.”

“What?! No!” His heartbeat picked up again.

Declan glanced back to see Hasan slip their phone out of their pocket.

“Earlier rules still apply. Smile~!” They grinned behind the camera and Declan couldn’t bring himself to so much as twitch his lips.

The shutter sound went off, and something stupid in Declan’s head wondered why they had the sound effects turned on. He turned his eyes downward as Hasan circled, bending this way and that to document his suffering. They even took a picture of the marking in his hair.

Then they circled behind him again, and Declan was sure there couldn’t be any blank space left on his back, but Hasan continued the beating until welts split and bled, dribbling down.

He gasped and screamed. He cried. He choked on his breath at one, and he could practically hear Hasan’s glee.

“Oh my god, I hope the mic picked that up,” they said, and Declan froze.

“You- you’re recording this?” He turned his head to see the phone held steadily, pointed down at him. How did he miss the recording sound?!

“Of course I am! You take the cane so beautifully, I really couldn’t resist.”

Declan struggled to his feet, backing away with his arms wrapped around his chest. Hasan only followed, intrigue in their eyes.

“Where are you going, darling? Or a more appropriate question: where can you go?”

“I- stop! Please, turn that off, I don’t-!” He jumped back, narrowly avoiding the cane.

“Oh come on, why don’t you just say hello?”

“It’s bad enough having you see me like this, let alone literally anyone else,” Declan sneered, but winced as his back came up against something. The door.

His hand flew down to the knob, twisting furiously even when it didn’t open the first time. He felt across the surface for the lock, but only found a keyhole. When he glanced back up at Hasan they already had him blocked in, and they slammed the cane across his neck.

“Don’t you remember what I said yesterday?” they asked with a cocky tilt of the head. Declan hardly noticed, unable to tear his eyes away from the phone camera.

“Turn it off- gkk!” He choked when the cane punched into his windpipe.

“I told you that you’d have to get used to this eventually,” Hasan said, “Because my intentions don’t stop here.”

“The hell does that mean?!” Declan raised his hands to theirs now, pushing and scratching at them. It earned him a knee to the gut, stunning him.

“It means that, if you want the video to stop for now, you’ll get down on your knees for me again.” The pressure against his neck let up enough to allow him that choice.

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“I told you what I want to-”

“-but-”

“-and before you ask again,” Hasan raised their voice, “you may be wise enough to consider the consequences you’ve already inflicted upon yourself.”

“What-? ...oh, no, no, I did it right!” Declan searched their eyes for any mercy. Both the blue and brown one held the same amount of cold composure. “You told me so!”

“Your refusal to kneel is your refusal to learn the technique.”

The cane pulled back and slammed straight into his nose, tip first, and Declan felt a horrible, aching pressure crash down on him. His vision blurred, and he didn’t see the second hit swing from the side, slamming into him with a piercing crack.

He crumpled, falling with the force of the blow, and even through the pain and blurry senses he felt blood flowing freely from both nostrils, dripping down his chin to the floor. A hand roughly tilted his chin up, camera’s gaze following the path of the blood, and let it fall limply again.

“Dec, pet, can you hear me?” they called, and smiled at the flinch that got them. “There. Now kneel and we can be done with this.”

Declan felt along the floor with his hands, cringing at the slick blood that he smeared along, and pushed against his thighs instead. His head swam as he thought back to the guidelines.

Spine straight, obviously... head tilted slightly down, heels supporting his backside, knees… spread a bit. He felt Hasan lean down to take his hands in theirs, give them a squeeze, and put one to his cheek to cup it tenderly.

“Lovely… I put the camera away now, because you did such a nice job. See?” They held out their other hand, fluttering empty fingers, and cupped his other cheek. “Yes. But that doesn’t mean you can slack off. I’ve got to stop that bleeding, after all.”

They stood and fished a lanyard out of their pocket, slipping a key into the doorknob and twisting it open. Hasan closed it behind them, but Declan didn’t hear the telling sound of the lock again.

He stood, black spots smearing his vision and mind as debilitating lightheadedness set in. His weight fell onto the knob and it took all of his focus to twist it open.

What was he even doing? There was no chance that he could escape in his current state. But… the door was unlocked. He could do something, find something useful, prepare himself for later…

He inched around the door, taking longer strides as he adjusted to his current state. The bathroom light was on so Hasan was probably in there and could see him stumbling across the room-

He saw one more door on that wall, the room mostly extending to the right where the couch was. A closed door lined up with the bathroom on the opposite wall, and the space expanded past that. Directly in front of him was a rug, a few shelves, and two chairs, with a door on the right wall in that cubby.

Why the hell did this place have so many doors? And did they really all have to be closed, obstructing his frantic investigation?

Declan rushed ahead to the door on the right of the chairs, but pressure on his hair stopped his momentum.

“You are truly testing my patience, pet.” Hasan emphasized their statement by yanking him back, holding his head how they’d done in the shower.

Blood trickled back down his throat but he couldn’t swallow, shouldn’t swallow, only able to hold it there until he had no other option if he wanted a chance to breathe.

Immediately, coughs wracked his body, tiny gasps doing nothing but encouraging them. Blood sprayed from his lips and he convulsed, a mirror image of the previous day.

“Every time you try this with me, you’re going to end up in immense amounts of discomfort and pain. First the waterboarding, then your nose, and now, well…” They shoved his head forward, letting go and watching Declan collapse over his knees.

Hasan surveyed the trail of blood he left as shaky breaths and sobs made their way up to them.

“Look at that. You’ve gotten my carpet dirty,” they pointed, but Declan was nearly incomprehensible. With a sigh, they dropped to their knees and pulled his head up enough to hold their fingers below the bridge of his nose. He cried out, but they shushed him.

“That h-hurts, you- you broke my nose! Fuck!”

“I know. Because you’re an idiot who doesn’t know how to listen. So hold fucking still while I keep you from passing out, why don’t you?”

“I think I’d- ‘d rather pass out.”

“You have a floor to clean. Stay awake.”

For the most part, he spent the next few minutes breathing heavily through his mouth and feeling his eyes roll into his head before a hand drew back, smacked him upside the head, and returned to his nose.

The bloodstream slowed after upwards of five minutes and Declan laid his head on the ground when Hasan finally let go. His body was so light with false euphoria and so heavy with exhaustion. He felt footsteps pass out of sight, a door open and close, and nothing else for several minutes.

Declan clawed against the carpet, trying to push himself forward, and almost made it to the door he’d aimed for when Hasan appeared behind him, laughing.

“You want to try that door? See what’s behind it?” they smiled, and Declan grimaced. He didn’t know if he even had the strength to reach it.

Any further punishment for trying would be worse than proving his persistence, he decided, and slumped to the floor.

“The first smart thing you’ve done all day, I believe,” Hasan smiled. “You’ve got half an hour. Spend it however you like, but after that, you’re going to get this blood out of the carpet before it stains.”

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Next...

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Tag list: @suspicious-whumping-egg

Ask to be added or removed!

#whump #intimate whumper #forced to kneel #caning #mentioned hand whump #whump writing #my writing #recorded whump #broken bone #broken nose #choking #waterboarding mention #blood #blood tw #i don't have a tag for hasan and their boyfriend so i'm hoping the warning is good for that #if anyone has a tag they want me to use then go for it #escape attempt #hardly but worth mentioning #Hasan Badeaux #Declan Labelle #nonbinary whumper #male whumpee #yk i'm really glad you guys like the banter and relationship between these two because i can't stop writing it #i keep thinking 'yo why am i not just going to become a script writer. that's what my drafts start out as'#but that's beside the point #anyway broken nose exceedingly fun and good. so i give it to declan and he bleeds :)))))#aLSO MMM MODERN SETTING MEANS RECORDED WHUMP AND RECORDED WHUMP MEANS I CAN DO THIS SHIT #MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM #absolute fave moments #aight i gotta go make the second half recording post i'll see you around dude

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jonsa101 · 4 years ago

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Do you think when Max double back and said “we never talked about it” do you think Helen took it as yes finally he’s opening up and that’s why she hug him and laugh that relieved laugh? And then she asked him that question and she realize he still doesn’t get it??

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!! This is a great question and such a hard one to answer as well! I’ve honestly considered a lot of scenarios in my mind about where Helen’s mind was at before and after the hug. I have gone back and forth about it but after analyzing it for awhile these are my final thoughts on it.

In my last ask I got from @abriaashley, I had mentioned that there was a very brief moment in that rooftop scene that reminded of me their rooftop scene in 1.17. Before I answered this ask, I took a couple days to really make sure that I knew what I was talking about but after analyzing it I know without a shadow of doubt this is the exact same expression. To me, this brief moment below is the most important key in understanding everything that happened during and after their hug.

But in order to understand why Helen has this expression on her face, we need to first examine the scene where we saw this expression first. In episode 1.17, Max and Helen are having a conversation within a conversation about their relationship. Everything is subtext but essentially Helen tells Max that she needs to “triage,” she can’t be his “all of the above” and that she’s removing herself as his doctor. Of course Max is upset by this and with his wonderful Freudian slip he reveals his true heart’s desire when he says...

But what if I want you?

After this declaration, we get this expression on her face and then Helen STICKS TO HER RESOLVE!

In the context of this scene, Helen’s expression here tells me two things:

Max telling her “what if I want want you” is exactly what she wants to hear. She clearly has feelings for him and hearing that is supposed to tempt and sway her resolve. But based on their current circumstances the idea of them is simply not possible and it’s heart aching.

She clearly doesn’t want to do what she’s about to do in this moment but she’s BUILDING UP THE WILL POWER to do what she feels she has to do!

This is my interpretation of why Helen has that expression on her face. When I look at episode 3.10 where Helen has that same look before she hugs Max, I think the same reasons apply for this moment as well. As an avid Sharpwin shipper it’s easy to fan girl about these intimate moments and get carried away but when you logically look at their scene and the scene that took place right before, hopefully what I explain will make perfect sense to you.

Before Max and Helen’s moment on the roof, Helen had a GUT-WRENCHING scene with her niece. Mina is still heavily grieving her father and this explains so much of why she’s also had a lot of behavioral issues. She’s suffering emotionally and is desperately trying to find some semblance of peace and healing. Shanthi Sekaran, the writer for this episode, said the inspiration for this scene was Micaheanglo’s Pieta and how fitting it was for this moment between them.

“Pieta” which translates to pity or compassion, shows the the Virgin Mary compassionately holding on to the dead body of Jesus as she sorrowfully contemplates the death of her beloved son.

Like this sculpture, Helen compassionately holds Mina and comforts her as Mina is overcome with her grief and as Helen is trying to empathize with the depths of Mina’s sorrow! It’s just such a beautiful thing to witness and why I’m hoping Mina sticks around for the long haul. There’s so much emotional investment already and in this moment of their lives, they desperately NEED EACH OTHER! So when you look at everything from a wholistic perspective and you look at the chain of events that led Helen to be on that rooftop in the first place, does it LOGICALLY make sense that Helen would be in the headspace to address her relationship with Max or even kiss him? Nooooooooo!!!!

It doesn’t make sense!

If anything, her actions in this scene is a reflection of what she did earlier with Cassian when she broke up with him. As she made her niece first priority with Cassian, she is essentially making her niece first priority again with Max, despite being in love with him!

Let’s breakdown 3.10’s rooftop scene so y’all can know where I’m coming from.

Part 1 of this scene is Max and Helen discussing parenting and him emotionally supporting her when she feels like she had a parenting fail. This should have been the first clue for us to understand how this moment between them would play out because this issue with Mina was the main thing that was clearly plaguing her mind!

In part 2 of this scene, Max turns to leave and then after briefly hesitating, he turns around says

“I’m sorry about Cassian.”

As soon as he says this we see this same expression we saw in 1.17. Then Max continues and says.

I don’t know what to...say. I mean, we never talk about it.”

Y’all I said this in my last ask but this is a really big deal! This is Max’s first attempt to bring up the elephant in the room between them and it’s something that he’s never attempted to address before. Helen knows this is a big deal too and she knows where this conversation was headed. Hence why before the conversation could even go anywhere, Helen cut him off with a hug!

Like I said at the beginning of this post, the expression Helen makes before the hug is the key to understanding this scene in it’s entirety! Similar to 1.17 I believe the same reasons apply for her expression in 3.10 but vary slightly.

Once again, what Max is saying is exactly what Helen wants to hear but also what she’s been waiting for him to do! Unlike in season 1, Max and Helen are in completely different circumstances than they were back then. Subconsciously, they had feelings back then but now they are both fully aware that they’re in love with each other. The massive elephant in the room exists between them because they don’t talk about their feelings and they’re to afraid to voice that they’re in love with each other. There is no doubt in my mind that Max finally being able to at least broach the topic is something that she has always wanted Max to do. They seemingly don’t have anything that’s holding them back from being together but based by how I see it, the heart aching look on Helen’s face tells me that in Helen’s mind it’s essential she puts her sole focus into Mina, even if this is something she’s always wanted. (This Is KEY!)

Like 1.17, I think Helen was building up that will power to tell him that she’s happy that their friends even though she’s in love with him. That hug between them was a lot of things. It was deeply loving and heartfelt. It was cathartic with pent-up angst and longing semi-released but most of all, it was desperate and supportive. Despite this, I also believe that this hug was used to avoid a conversation that Helen didn’t want to have. If she allowed that conversation to go any further she would have 100% been swayed and would have probably given into her feelings. But Helen didn’t want to be swayed. She wanted to stick to her resolve that Mina is her first priority! Is this a problematic mindset? Yes! But after that emotionally charged moment with Mina I can see how Helen might think she’s making the right decision.

Also, I’m convinced that if Mina’s breakdown didn’t happen before Max and Helen’s moment on the rooftop, they would have probably had that conversation. But since it did happen, it totally plays a role in what transpires between Helen and Max.

For the moments after they hug this is how I interpret those interactions:

When Helen says to Max “what you said earlier” initially I thought she was referring to something he said earlier in the day. Now that I’ve taken a couple of days to really think about it, I just don’t think that makes sense. Again, after Helen’s moment with Mina, I don’t think she was in the headspace at all to talk about her feelings for him. This scene was more so about Max stepping up and being emotionally supportive of her and I think what’s she’s actually referring to is Max saying “But it helps not to be alone.” In that moment Helen recognized that Max will unequivocally support her and I think that’s something she’s incredibly grateful for. When Max responds with “what did I say?,” I genuinely believe he’s not thinking straight because he so overwhelmed and overjoyed to have Helen in his arms. Also, I think naturally he asks that question because he wants to know for future reference what he needs to keep saying to keep her in his arms 🥰.That look that she gives Max before she tells him that she’s really glad that they’re friends isn’t necessarily a look of disappointment because of Max. After I watched it again, that look to me is more so of a look of “I hate that I’m doing this but I have to do this.” As she is gazing into his eyes, it’s her final push to stick to her resolve! Her mind was already made up and she was going to see that decision through.

Y’all I’m going to wrap this up here because this ask wasn’t supposed to be a meta but ended up that way! Lol! Though these are my opinions on what transpired in 3.10 that doesn’t change my opinion of how I see things unfolding for Sharpwin this season. I just think it’s important to put scenes in proper context. Though Helen might have said that they’re friends, it is so evident that she is clearly in love with him. Like Max, she can’t pretend or neglect her personal wants and needs forever! The great sleeping bear of her desire stirred and is wide awake! Sooner rather than later that bear needs to be fed!

Feel free to reach out to me through my Dms on Tumblr or on Twitter! @oyindaodewale. Also my ask box is always open! 🥰

None of the Gifs in this post are mine!

#new amsterdam #sharpwin #max goodwin #helen sharpe #sharpwin meta #max x helen #new amsterdam meta #jonsa101 ask

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arabian-bloodstream · 6 years ago

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Love and Lust

There has been some thought that the depiction of the sex between Arya and Gendry was just that of Arya wanting to see what it was all about or even just horny lust. While those were both clearly aspects of what happened, I think anyone seeing either of those things as the only interpretation of their love scene—because, yes, it was a love scene—missed out on quite a few key things not only in that scene but in their interaction earlier in the episode.

I also think that all of their interaction in this episode—including the lustier aspect of their lovemaking—made it fairly clear that, no, Gendry is not going to being dying in the upcoming battle. Read on…

The first episode established their attraction to one another with the flirting calling back to their shared history. This episode upped the ante with the attraction by adding a dose of lust, but deepened it by showing both the trust and ease they still share with one another that we know neither would easily share with others due to what’s happened to them in the intervening years.

There was a reminder of their history again (she remembered that he's a smith’s apprentice), he told her about beyond the wall, she called him out on glossing it over and made him tell her the truth. They were completely real with one another.

Arya showed Gendry her skill with a knife and her knowledge of death, making it clear how skilled a fighter she is, not hiding who she really is. Gendry told her that he was Robert Baratheon’s son, what Melisandre had done to him (in so many words) and his sexual history. That’s a lot of private, vulnerable information to share. And yet both did it easily. (Well, OK, Gendry was a bit cutely flustered with his last bit of share.)

There was so much stuff that the episode’s writer Bryan Cogman got in their two scenes... so much about their history, their trust in one another, their feelings, and how much set-up for what's to come to. All of that? Was showing how strong the foundation this relationship has.

I will circle back to some of these points later with regards to Gendry’s future, but first, let me tackle their other scenes. I mentioned at the top that their sex scene was a love scene and not just about horny lust or Arya wanting to try sex. And going into detail about that first scene was part of laying that down. But the second scene before the love scene as well goes into that.

It’s obvious with regards to Gendry that it is not just lust. The boy is completely gone for her. We saw that in the first scene after she threw the dragon glass knives and then said she wanted her weapon again and walked away, Gendry—unlike most sane people—looked completely awestruck and watched her walk away with hearts in his eyes. He’s completely lovestruck.

Also, in this second scene, after Arya made it clear that she wanted to have sex, Gendry’s said her name all soft and breathily. He didn’t pull away, he didn’t resist, he said her name and you could read exactly what he was saying in that exhalation of her name and by the expression on his face. He was saying: ‘Girl, you know I love you, but I'm not sure we should do this because I want to treasure you and treat you right, you know—’ But then she kissed him and he was like 'OK, fuck it, I'm having some SEX with milady! YEAH!'

And another so not just lust for Gendry, although this was more in between the lines. They wouldn’t have all but made the guy pretty much this close to a virgin. I mean… seriously. Honestly, I figured Gendry being practically a virgin would be fanon. I can’t believe that they basically made it canon. The guy was off of the show for three years—looking like that, fine as all hell—and they canonically had him actually say he only had sex with three women?! Bronn was literally with three women at the same time in the previous episode. I mean, yeah. Arya Stark is his fucking OTP. That essentially was the show’s shorthand way of saying so.

Finally, anyone saying that this love scene was just lust was not paying attention to the last five to ten seconds. The final shot of Gendry before she comes down for the kiss he's just looking at her with complete and utter love in his gaze. Joe Dempsie played that like Gendry just completely adores Arya.... total heart eyes there.

So, you know that had to have been the direction, in the script, the plan… not lust… but love. And there is this comparison shot from Jon and Daenerys’ first-time making love where she is looking up at Jon with love and it is LITERALLY the exact same framing. LITERALLY.

From a directing point of view that is really telling. Jon and Daenerys are supposed to be this great love and there you have literally an IDENTICAL shot of Gendry and Arya. What these two shared in this episode was a lusty love scene, not just a sex scene. You can feel lust and love at the same time.

And, yeah, it was love for Arya too. She just didn’t quite realize it. But look at her face as she’s leaning down to kiss him. It’s dark and we don’t get the best angle because it’s a close-up, but there’s a softness there you can see. Which leads us to that final scene. She’s not numb; she’s not dissatisfied. She’s freaking the ever-loving fuck out.

She was feeling all kinds of hot, hot lust for him sure, and then she opened herself up to the feels and suddenly it was hitting her, she might die, *he* might die. And it was gonna hurt. A LOT. She’d already lost him once and it was going to be a helluva lot worse now because she’d re-opened herself up to him a lot more now. And in the past, Gendry hadn’t allowed himself to open himself up to her, but now… this time he had. They were open to each other and now they could very well both lose each other. She was shaken to the core. That was what we saw from her in the final scene.

A few additional thoughts…

- I loved the parallels beginning each of their scenes. Gendry doing his thing and then there was Arya watching him silently in the first scene. In the second, Arya doing her thing, Gendry watching her.

- Speaking of Arya watching Gendry in that first scene, damn, she was all but licking her lips…

- And then that little eyebrow raise she gave him when he first saw her and that smoldering look he sent back her way in return.... SO HOT!

- Joe Dempsie and Maisie Williams have such great chemistry. Damn, that scene was so fucking hot.

- Hah, it was funny. Silly Gendry, he was trying to assert some kind of dominance at one point, reaching out to wrap his hand around Arya’s head while they were kissing.... and boom within like two seconds, she shoved him onto the bags, LMAO. Nope, Gendry, she's the dominant.... always.

- Aww, but she let him take off his own pants. She was in complete command from beginning to end, but still gave him his own agency. She's so sweet. It was definitely mutual all around.

- Speaking of… after Arya said that, the way he was so quickly untying those laces, LMAO.

- I did love that Arya just shoved him down (and, yes, it did remind me of when she did it when he kept calling her “Milady” back in season 02).

OK, circling back to Gendry’s future like I said I would… a lot that happened in this episode between these two actually made me more strongly believe that Gendry will *not* be dying any time soon. Why?

1.) Arya’s commentary about knowing death. 2.) Her knife-throwing kills. 3.) The focus on her scars, and then Gendry focusing on her scars. 4.) Gendry bringing up her wanting him to come to Winterfell. 5.) The fact that despite all of the set-up and the obvious love from Gendry’s side, Arya went into it just wanting his hot body to give her some loving. 6.) Gendry telling her he’s Robert Baratheon’s bastard. 7.) Arya’s realizing that she’s scared out of her ever-loving mind of losing Gendry (because, yeah, I’m sure that’s what the final scene meant).

In other words, there was SO MUCH SET-UP for more of their love story to flourish to come. Not to mention that Gendry still has more weapons to make, the Baratheon line is not going to die out. GRRM had three Baratheon bastards in the books and yet D&D only brought ONE to the show. I highly doubt it was just so that Arya could lose her virginity to him. If it was to have an “emotional impact” on her when he died… she would have been the one all “heart eyes emoji” during the love scene as opposed to Gendry.

Also, Joe Dempsie is wearing a Baratheon-style costume in the behind-the-scenes video for episode 01 while sitting on the set of a sunny climate and I doubt that Michelle Clapton would have created that for funsies.

Ergo, Gendry is not dying.

Thank you for coming to my Gendrya-themed Ted Talk.

#arya x gendry #gendrya #game of thrones #arya stark #gendry

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eamesandbellamyaremyheaven · 5 years ago

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Somewhere, Now and Then Ch3 || Arthur x Sansa (Kalots/GoT Outlander AU)

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword x Game of Thrones Outlander AU (there’s no such thing as canon)

Warnings: Violence, blood

Summary: England, 1945. After serving in the war as a nurse, Sansa Bolton (former Stark) seizes the opportunity of going on vacation with her husband Ramsay to rekindle their relationship. But what happens when Sansa finds herself travelling back in time, to the 6th century, where she meets the King Arthur and his Knights?

A.N.//- Needless to say, this is loosely based on the Outlander premise. The story is told through Guy Ritchie’s interpretation of the Arthurian legend, and for that locations and traditions - and the time itself - had to be adapted to work accordingly. Any questions you have, feel free to ask!

Prologue || Chapter One || Chapter two

Chapter Three - A Merry Group

Sansa leaned over the dark wood table, pushing books and old parchments aside as she gave them a quick look, noticing how the sunlight bathed the weathered paper, magnifying the familiar smell she had always been fond of.

The library was always Sansa’s favorite room from the Eyrie Manor. She had moved in in her aunt Lysa and her husband Petyr at the tender age of eleven, when her parents died, and had spent most of her time at that table, as Petyr recalled the tales and stories of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

The Moon Door, her uncle had named the room, it stood at an impressive height of twenty feet tall, in the least, and had book-filled shelves that covered most of the walls. But its name was due to the large skylight at the center of the room, a massive round glass window bay that was directly above the table, allowing both sun and moon to be as clear as a painting on the ceiling.

“So, what do you think of my discoveries?” Petyr inquired, expectantly, as Sansa examined the page in her hand “This is it, I can feel it”

Sansa looked from the paper to her mentor, arching her brow “Are you sure?”

Petyr walked towards her, holding her shoulders, shaking them lightly.

“Sansa, we found Camelot”

※※※※※

Sansa tried to find a rational explanation for everything she’d been through since she woke by the stones, but the truth was, as much as her skeptical mind tried to reason against it, she knew deep in her heart that she was no longer in the 20th century.

But where - when? - was she then? The historian in her was telling her she knew exactly where she was, and the logical was telling she was behaving like a fool.

It’s impossible she had travelled back in time!

Isn’t it?

Sansa watched as a small group of men followed Bill into the site, just as she had stopped the cut from bleeding. They were taken by surprise by her presence, they all eyed her with curiosity, but none dare to say a thing. Bill instructed them to gather wood and start a fire, and then he walked closer to where Sansa was tending Arthur.

“How’s he?”

Sansa turned her head around to face the man “I stopped the bleeding, but I still need to clean and disinfect the wound before I can dress it”

Bill stood motionless, with a blank expression.

“You know, remove the dirt and apply an agent that discourages germs and promotes the healing?”

Bill scratched the back of his head, oblivious to her meaning “Germs...?”

Sansa sighed “I need clean water, clean bandages and iodine”

He eyed her as she was speaking some foreign language.

“Merthiolate?” she tried again. No response.

“Dilute Carbolic?” she pressed, this time sounding more impatient. And yet, nothing.

“For fucks sake, do you have alcohol!?”

Shit.

She’d yelled this time, her patience long gone. Now everyone was looking at her with shocked expressions, even Bill looked surprised, wide-eyed... Was that a smirk on his face?

“There you go, miss, that we have plenty” A man approached her, pushing a flask of an heavily alcoholic mead towards her, the smell alone was enough to itch her nostrils

“Thank you...”

“Wetstick” he nodded, and then went back to his chores

Quickly they had gathered everything she needed, and Sansa was able clean the wound better, and see the damage properly. It wouldn’t require stitches after all, but there was still something unpleasant she needed to do...

“This will hurt” Sansa looked from the alcohol-drenched cloth to Arthur, who gave her a nod

“Just get on with it, Red”

She pressed the fabric against the open wound, and he flinch for a second, but quickly regained his composure. This is a man that’s used to the pain, she thought, as she dressed up his lower abdomen. She’d seem many, in the three years she spent in France. Soldiers. Fighters.

She noticed the exchange of looks between Arthur and Bill.

“Now that you’ve finished...” Arthur spoke, as he pushed his shirt down, his voice calm but domineering “Why don’t you tell us your name and what you’re doing here, alone, in the woods”

Sansa used the remaining of the water to wash the blood off her hands, while simultaneously thinking of what to say. She was a combat nurse, and any officer knows that the basic rule of withstanding an interrogation is to speak as truly and simple as possible, only leaving out essential details that must stay secret.

“My name is Sansa Stark” she had no idea why’d she gave her maiden name, but now she couldn’t take it back without sounding like she was hiding something “I was traveling from Salisbury with a manservant to visit relatives when we were set upon by highwaymen. I managed to escape but had to leave everything behind...” she paused, as she dried her hands, and since no one objected, she continued “I wandered through the woods for a while until I found myself thrown into your... quarrel with the vikings”

“To where”

“Excuse me?” Sansa turned towards the voice, it was of a man that stood watching from afar, a tall, strong figure of darker skin, who spoke slowly, yet very assertive

“To where were you traveling?”

“London”

“Don’t you mean Londinium?”

Londinium? As in the ancient city? What in the...

“Yes, of course” Why not? Whatever to have them off her back.

They seemed to ponder on her words, trying to find a flaw on her story. She waited, her head held high, trying to look as convincing as her story, but honestly, the events of the day had taken its toll. She was assaulted, beaten, nearly raped, and apparently, now under interrogation.

“We’ll take you back with us to the castle, from there you can easily get to Londinium” Arthur offered as he stood and walked towards the horses

Oh no.

“Thank you, but there’s no need..-” Sansa spoke quickly, feeling herself tensing. London was 90 miles away from the stones.

“It’s a day ride, and you’re on foot” He cut her off, as he walked back to her, pushing the cloak he held on his hands towards her “I insist”

※※※※※

The ride was difficult, to say the least. Since Sansa had no horse, Bill offered to take her with him. They left right after lunch, and rode until the sun started to set. Sansa was an experienced rider, her father used to own horses, but she had never rode so many hours at once. By the time she stepped down her horse, her back hurt like hell and her legs trembled like she had never took a step before in her life.

They set up camp at a clearing, on a small hill. They had supper - wild rabbit, courtesy of Bill - and by then everyone was already fast asleep around the bonfire.

Sansa rose from her spot, holding the cloak tighter. It was a beautiful night, with clear skies and bright stars, but it was also a cold night, the frost was settling in the grass and the autumn breeze chilled her exposed skin.

She zigzagged through the men carefully, hoping no one would hear or sense the movement. Once she was in the clear, she took a last glance towards the men, who stood still in deep slumber. She walked towards the edge of the cliff, that stood over a stream, raising her head towards the sky, as she took a deep breath.

As they ate, Arthur made a point of introducing her properly to the group. Bill was, in fact, Sir William Wilson - as in, Petyr’s ancestor - Wetstick was actually named Sir Tristan, the older man was Sir Bedivere and the two other man are Sir Percival and Sir George.

Sansa had the honour of travelling alongside King Arthur and his group of merry Knights, as he so humorously informed her, to which Bedivere snickered, Bill and Tristan snorted a chuckle, George remained serene and Percival sulked. A merry group, indeed.

Sansa looked towards the horizon, as far as her eyes could see. There should be lights ahead - electric lights, that is. But the night was pitch black, with the exception of the starry sky and the grand full moon.

Somehow, Sansa had managed to travel through the stones, and back in time, into the Arthurian era. She couldn’t deny it anymore. Petyr would be proud of her. Or jealous.

“You’re not considering jumping, are you?”

Sansa yelped, startled, turning around quickly towards the voice. Arthur stood at a short distance from her, but not close enough to make her uncomfortable.

A sly smirk passed through his lips as he crossed his arms in front of his chest “I had to go after you and the water seems bloody freezing”

“And risk you open your wound again? Just sounds like more trouble for me” Sansa added, mimicking his gesture, then nodding her head “Does it hurt?”

“A bit, yes”

“Good” she spoke cheeky, and he laughed, carefree and wholehearted. She’s disarmed by the sound of it, and briefly smiles back at him, but immediately tried to cover it, adjusting her cloak tighter around her shoulders.

Arthur uncrossed his arms, extending one hand towards the camp “You should try to get some rest, tomorrow we’ll ride longer, if we’re to make back to Camelot before the sun sets”

Camelot.

Petyr had been wrong about the whereabouts of the legendary castle, after all. Sansa wanted to believe that one day she might show him the exact location of it, but the further she travelled from the stones, the less she believed she would ever return back, to her family, to Ramsay, to her own time. Back to where she belonged.

Taglist is OPEN! @anonymousme86 @goodqueenkaro @purple-moon123 @elvensansa

#sansa x arthur #sansa stark #arthur pendragon #king arthur legend of the sword #game of thrones #outlander au #time travel au #crossover #sansa stark fanfiction #sansa stark imagine #arthur pendragon imagine #arthur pendragon fanfiction #eabamh masterlist #somewherenowandthen

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insanelycooljk · 4 years ago

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IF UR STILL DOIN THESE can i ask about your roleswap au? oR the evan is a compulsive liar one, whichever! @bandtrees

send me the title of one of my deh wips and I’ll share an excerpt/tell you a bit about it

(you can read my reply about the “maybe evan really IS a compulsive liar” one here)

Oh boy the roleswap au... honestly this is an idea I’ve had for a really long time that I kind of forgot about, but then Kayla’s jared dies! au inspired me to revisit it. In a suprise to absolutely no one lmao, there’s a whole lot of angst. Like, I’d kind of forgotten what the plot was, and when I went back and read over my notes for it the other day I made MYSELF cry. So uhhh, yeah, this one’s gonna hurt

The concept is very simple, and I’m sure has been done before, but basically Evan and Connor (and Jared and Zoe to an extent) swap roles. So Evan dies, and Connor writes a therapy letter which gets mistaken for Evan’s suicide note. On that, obviously trigger warning for suicide.

Alright so this wip still needs a lot of work because I’m still trying to narrow it down to a single cohesive plot and figure out how to keep it in character (for instance I just can’t see Connor forming the equivalent of The Connor Project and dragging out the lie to that extent) But, here’s what I’ve got at the moment!

The first day of school is almost identical to canon, so I won’t get into that, but Evan still had his attempt over the summer and hence has his broken arm. I mean yeah, maybe Evan’s dialogue is a little different because he’s struggling more with his depression, but I don’t see his second attempt as necessarily being planned. It’s more of an impromptu “finish what I started” decision he makes after having an awful first day back at school

The only real change from canon at this point is the letter. It’s a therapy assignment for Connor rather than Evan.

The scene where Evan prints his letter and Connor signs his cast is essentially the same as canon too, except obviously Connor is the one writing the letter. Evan is just in the library to print out some homework or something for school.

After they talk/Connor signs his cast, Evan goes over to the printer to grab his own thing, and sees the page underneath has “Dear Connor Murphy” written at the top. Evan assumes it’s Connor’s, so in an attempt to be nice, grabs it as well.

Aaaaand here’s where the angst really starts. Originally I was going to do a whole kleinphy thing by fully switching Zoe and Jared. But then I had an excellent (aka horrible) idea.

So Connor’s finished letter still follows the same format of Evan’s as [today was NOT an amazing day] [talking about Zoe/Jared] [sad shit].

Except here’s the thing. The morning was essentially the same as canon, which means Jared still made the awful school shooter joke. So sure, Connor mentions Jared in his letter, but he’s got nothing nice to say. As he’s venting about how today wasn’t an amazing day, he writes a few lines about how Jared is a fucking asshole and he can’t believe he ever thought that they could actually be friends.

... Yeah. I’m sure you can already guess how that is going to turn out :(

But the angst doesn’t stop there. Evan clearly isn’t going to see Jared’s name in Connor’s letter and freak out because he thinks Connor has a crush on him. That just... makes zero sense lmao. But you know what Evan might think when he sees Jared’s name? Especially after Jared was a dick to Evan at the start of the day?

That they’re making fun of him.

“D-did Jared put you up to this?”

“… What?”

“He… you’re making fun of me. Both of you.”

Connor can see Evan’s spiralling into some sort of panic attack, knows he probably shouldn’t push but he’s got no clue what the fuck Evan is talking about.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“That’s why you came to apologise and-, and why you signed my cast, you two are making fun of me.”

“What? I wasn’t-��

Evan’s not even listening, he just keeps talking like he can’t hear Connor at all.

“I can’t believe I thought you were being nice to me.” He chokes out a bitter laugh that sounds more like sob. “But no, it’s just one of Jared’s stupid jokes.”

Connor’s speechless. Has no clue what to say because this just makes no fucking sense at all.

Evan’s full-on hyperventilating now, taking these huge shuddering breaths. Connor’s kind of worried Evan might pass out on him if he doesn’t do something

“Evan hey, just breathe.”

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, finally making eye contact. “I-I have to, have to go.”

And then Evan runs out of the room because he’s definitely having a panic attack and he needs to get away.

Connor is just kind of standing there staring at the door, trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. Feels like shit because he was actually enjoying talking to Evan, but no somehow he managed to ruin it.

It takes Connor a minute before he realises Evan still has his letter. He calls out after Evan but he’s long gone.

Then we switch to Heidi’s POV. She gets a phone call while at work from Evan’s therapist’s office saying he never showed up to his appointment after school.

Heidi never forgives herself for this after the fact, but her first reaction is to feel kind of annoyed. She knew Evan didn’t want to go to his session today when she booked it, but she was just trying to do the right thing because she knows Evan always struggles starting back at school. Plus therapy costs money, they don’t exactly give you a refund/cancellation fee for not showing up, and they just can’t afford to be paying for therapy sessions Evan isn’t even attending right now.

She is a little concerned though. It’s not the first time Evan’s skipped an appointment, but he usually only does it if he’s had a particularly bad panic attack that day. But she isn’t worried enough to leave work early, which kills her later. Heidi wonders if she had of gone straight home if she could’ve been there quick enough.

I don’t want to go into this in too much detail, but I’m thinking Evan ODs. The tree thing didn’t work out last time so he figures he better try something else. He feels bad that this definitely couldn’t be interpretted as an accident like his fall was, but he just... doesn’t care anymore.

And god, Heidi finds him when she gets home from work, and somehow her being a nurse makes it so much worse because she knows it’s too late. Of course she still tries everything she can, and she kind of dissociates into work mode so she can put some of her panic aside, but she knows.

But... I don’t really want to write that because it’s too sad even for me lol. So the scene will probably just end with Heidi coming home and getting a bad feeling when she calls out to Evan and he doesn’t reply. It’s not the most out of character thing, because Heidi’s assuming he must have had a really bad panic attack since he ditched therapy, so he’s probably exhausted and having a sleep. But when she goes to Evan’s room to check on him her heart stops.

The next couple of days Connor mirrors Evan in canon. He’s getting antsy that Evan stole his letter and now hasn’t been at school.

I haven’t quite worked out what Zoe’s role will be yet, so I’m not sure if she’ll act as Connor’s sole confidant (like Jared is for Evan) or not. It’d make sense since Jared is kind of taking Zoe’s place, but I just don’t think it will work given the current state of her and Connor’s relationship. Either way, whether he told Zoe or not, Connor is getting really paranoid about Evan/the letter.

It’s been 3 days now since Evan took his letter and he’s still not at school.

Jared’s been away too, but he’s back today and is acting really fucking weird. He’s wearing like... a plain hoodie or something which is very unlike Jared, and he just looks really exhausted and has none of his usual arrogance. Plus he keeps staring at Connor and giving him these weird looks.

Connor’s so stressed about this stupid letter that he’s contemplating asking Jared where the hell Evan is, but he’s seriously freaking Connor out right now.

Before Connor has a chance to make up his mind about whether he should try to talk to Jared, he gets called to the principal’s office. And so the lie begins lmao.

But god... the amount of extra angst of NOT going the kleinphy route and instead having Connor write bad things about Jared in the letter is just... pure evil genius if I do say so myself

Like, imagine Jared’s parents going to see Heidi and do whatever they can to be there for her and make sure she’s ok, and Jared kind of numbly getting ready to go with them, only for his parents to explain that Heidi doesn’t exactly want to see him right now because of what Evan wrote in his note... ouch.

And god that just makes Jared sick to his stomach because what the hell did Evan say about him? And once he gets to actually read the “note” himself he really is sick.

And since his family is obviously very close with Heidi it really puts a strain on Jared’s relationship with his parents too, because they’re clearly extremely disappointed in him for doing whatever it was that made Evan write THAT

Just the whole Kleinman/Hansen dynamic would be so complicated. (but it will be fun to write!)

And oh boy... remember the amount of horrific hate Zoe recieved when Alana posted Evan’s letter online? Connor’s letter outright says something along of the lines of Jared is a fucking asshole/why did I ever think we could possibly be friends/etc. I haven’t worked out the exact wording yet because getting the letter right is just... so critical to the fic lol, but yeah if it gets posted online? yikes.

So anyway, that’s the roleswap au. I’m still working out the more specific plot details of this one, but I think it’s got some alright potential. There’s going to be a lot of tension between Jared and Connor as Jared struggles to decide whether or not he believes Connor, and as Connor finds it increasingly difficult to lie to Jared. Hmm you know on second thought maybe a kleinphy subplot doesn’t sound so bad 🤔 but just more of a slowburn angle which doesn’t start until after Evan dies... much to think about hahaha

I like to think Jared works out the truth on his own eventually, which leads to a gfy-esque fight. And whilst Zoe might take on Jared’s role in a way, Alana will be pretty much the same as she is in canon. Because for her it was always more about the message of the project than the actual person.

#tw suicide #deh reverse au #the jared connor tension is just so JXIJSIXHSKX #I WISH I had a decent excerpt to share #bc like I know EXACTLY how I want it to be I just... haven’t written it yet lmao #I’ve got a nice alana and jared scene I really like #and a connor and jared scene where they kind of have an uneasy truce for a moment #but idk if that scene will stay in the fic #but other than that I’ve barely written anything for this because its still very much a work in progress #in terms of figuring out the plot #zoe writes #deh #connor murphy #evan hansen #jared kleinman #heidi hansen #deh wips prompt #answered

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scoundrels-in-love · 5 years ago

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thoughts on your favourite song of all time?

Thank you for asking!!Much to surprise of most people, myself included, I actually have one.

Day6 - Colors.

I remember the day I found it not exactly clearly, that’s not how my memory works, but I know it was my vacation of summer 2018. It had been a rough year already, though I had no idea just how cruel it was about to get just in few months. I was laying on couch, just resting with sun shining through the window and someone dear to me resting in the other room. There was a feeling of almost at peace and happiness, a serenity of sorts. I had put on Day6′s entire discography on because I had more seriously started to enjoy them and their music few months prior, but hadn’t sat down to listen to all songs yet as I used to do when I was getting into a new band.

And all that random information on my life has some point now, because I was dozing off and then this song came on and I was instantly awake and captivated. When the chorus kicked in, I got literal chills which I… Just don’t.

Except that feeling has never gone away, I still get chills at that part. And Day6 has been one of my favorite bands since that day. (And I got to see them live in January, performing this song and I will unabashedly admit I cried.)

Now that we have established I am head over heels for this song, we can try to discuss a little as to why.

It’s a little hard to rationalize these things, I think. But I find there are several possible reasons, all piling together. I have grown up with deep love for power-ballad type of sound. It’s slightly reminiscent of older music from my country that I jammed to a lot as a child. It’s powerful, melodious, flowing. I like the lower range that Sungjin uses in the chorus. The smoothness of it all.

But most of all, it makes me feel with just the sound of it.

I’ve actually written at length about what the song embodies for me. Even without lyrics, it sounds like yearning to me. Soft, aching longing that grows in power. It sounds like being on a wave that rides higher and higher until it throws you into burning sunset sky and you fly, and you know you will come back down, but in this moment you’re free as much as you’re bound with longing. It hurts in my chest, it brings me to tears, and it clears me all at once. It’s exhausted and still wanting, still reaching for something, at the same time. The tiredness, the want and also the action that we take by just wanting. And it’s something that I guess I… relate to? It resonates within me.

Not even speaking of the literal lines of “My image on the black and white photoAnd my whole dark spreading worldI am so tired of them bothI’m now sick of it and bored” which are things that I have, in sense, said for years.

Maybe in some ways, it came to me like a prophecy about grief I would learn so very soon.

In more ‘logical’ line of thought, I think it’s very beautifully written, both in line of melody and vocals, as well as the lyrics. I must admit, lyrically it slightly reminds me of the poetry I used to write - or wish I could write - for which it maybe even more strikes that ‘I’ve found a reflection of my feelings in a gorgeous song created by someone else, and this echo reverberates through me, makes me hurt and heal at the same time’ note which essentially is reason why I love the song so much, I imagine.

Here’s a copy of a post about the song last year, under cut, because I really have went on enough. It’s more about the lyrical qualities of the song, my interpretation of them.

It’s an achingly beautiful and sad all at once, yet not without its hope.

The premise of it is essentially someone who is lost and weary and drowning in the loss of hope. And while it is easy to interpret it as love song, I think as many of those that do not use exact words of lover/significant other in some way, it can go for so many types of loves. Familial, platonic friend love, passion for deep interest even. Sometimes there just is someone whose presence makes it easier to see how colors drip down the sky as sunset approaches and then dims away, someone who brightens your day by just being there. Someone that has become tether and link in your mind to all that and losing them feels like it will be end of it all.

And even if you see it as just love song, for a romantic partner, that’s fine, too. These aspects are so deeply personal, you can’t really enforce one true version of it. At some point, that is out of even artist’s control, because everyone is bound to filter it through their hearts and the differences in the views are just as beautiful as many people finding almost exactly same comfort in something.

But back to Colors, it makes sense that even if you’ve never had relationships or that sort of connection, if there are times there is a hole in your chest that doesn’t close up and you ever wish for (romantic) relationship, this does pretty much sum up that sort of longing and put in words - someone out there will show me how to breathe again, take my hand and guide me into place where there are doors and color when the walls are closing in. Save me, I am so lost so deep in myself that I can never find way out, so lost away from everything and everyone else. It is a sad song, in my opinion. A depressed song, even.

And yet, at the same time, I think it is fascinating in the sense that this longing itself, this promise of tether, prompts the narrator to do something about being lost. They reach out their hand. And while the chase after the ‘you’ might be fruitless in that aspect - but how do we know? - it will still make narrator take a step. They stretch out their hand. The ‘you’ might not have been able to reach them, just with their hand, over the distance separating them, but together they might breach it. And taking a step can always start a path much better than slowly sinking in the darkness where no color can reach you.

What’s more, other than just lyrical aspect, I absolutely love how “The color that it’s called you and I see it all over the placeraises me and leads me“ matches the way I feel like the sound of this song really slowly raises you like on a wave and then launches you into a glide through a sunset sky, gradual and powerful all at once. I could write more about the sheer power of vocals and delivery, but I think this is enough.

#ask games answered #I am so so sorry but I cannot speak about this song more concisely #I am neutral on most things #but when I do genuinely feel for something I... talk #A lot #sorry #robotsdance #sent on a cloud

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iuinspires · 6 years ago

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Persona - One Lee Ji Eun, Four Personas

IU is perhaps better known for her identity as a singer-songwriter rather than an actress, but she has mentioned her love for acting on a number of occasions, explaining that it allows her to assume different identities and express emotions in a manner that she may not be able to in reality.

Persona, a four-part anthology on Netflix that marks actress Lee Ji Eun’s first foray into the world of film-making, allows her to do precisely that: take on the challenge of portraying four characters with completely different personas, displaying a wide range of emotions that fans have hitherto not seen from her. Comprising four short films produced by four critically acclaimed Korean directors, each film is greatly different in terms of style and tone, with no apparent connection to each other - but I think they all tackle the theme of love and passion to some extent, manifested in different forms: jealousy and anger (Love Set); deceit and betrayal (Collector); friendship and revenge (Kiss Burn); as well as separation and loss (Walking at Night).

I’ll be completely honest – as these are essentially indie arthouse films with ambiguous plots and cryptic characters, they are an acquired taste which may not appeal to everyone; being no film expert myself, I’m not sure I understood everything that the filmmakers were trying to convey. But I certainly had great fun watching actress Lee Ji Eun take on four very different personas in each story, and also reading the thoughts of my fellow uaenas who have enthusiastically dissected the films. Let me just share my thoughts on each of the films as well.

(WARNING: Spoilers ahead)

Love Set

This was the film which I had been looking forward to most before its release, for the premise seemed so intriguing from the trailers: an angsty and jealous IU locking horns with her prospective stepmother (Bae Doona) in a game of tennis with high stakes, where the loser would “end it all” with the man of their shared affections (IU’s dad and Doona’s lover). I was also excited to see how IU would unleash her character’s unbridled fury that seemed to be the key motif of the story, especially since she had mentioned in interviews how challenging it was for her to portray anger in such a manner that was contrary to her personality.

I must confess that I was slightly disappointed when I first watched the film though, for the story didn’t seem to go beyond what we already knew would happen – IU and Doona engaging in a heated battle on the tennis court. A significant amount of time was devoted to slow motion shots of them whacking the tennis ball, and close-ups of their hot, reddened faces of intense agony that was almost painful to watch. I was also somewhat frustrated by the seeming apathy and emotional detachment of the two male characters (IU’s dad and an unnamed Caucasian friend haplessly dragged in to “seduce” Doona) – both sat silent and almost expressionless with their heads turning back and forth rhythmically like puppets following the movement of the tennis ball – a direct contrast to the fury and fierce energy displayed by the women on the courts. I couldn’t quite fathom why IU’s dad seemed indifferent to his daughter’s angry outbursts or suffering, even calmly saying “Out!” when she missed the ball and fell down – did it signify the fact he cared more for his lover and was rooting for her? Why then did he seem emotionless even though Doona was winning?

I did however enjoy observing the dynamics between the women and their contrasting personalities – Doona, the older and more mature of the two, was clearly at the upper hand throughout, remaining level-headed and taking an almost sadistic pleasure in calmly taunting IU; poor IU, on the other hand, was a loser not just in the tennis game but in her complete failure to rein in her emotions, seeming like a complete wreck with her expletive-laden outbursts. Towards the end, however, Doona handed over the tennis ball to IU with a gentle stroke of the thumb in what seemed like a conciliatory gesture, and told IU that she didn’t intend to marry her father, suggesting that she had never been serious about their bet to begin with – and ending off the movie on an almost anti-climactic note.

One thing which struck me was the sexual innuendoes that was evident throughout the story – the suggestive shrieks and panting with each hit of the tennis ball, the sensuous close-up shots of IU’s lips biting a plum, and of the women’s hot, sweaty bare skin – but I didn’t quite comprehend how it quite fit in with the context of the story. One of my fellow uaenas, however, has offered an intriguing explanation: that IU and Doona were actually in a sexual relationship before, with Doona betraying IU by getting together with her dad – which explained IU’s extreme agitation at the entire situation, and at puzzling moments like Doona’s flirtations with the Caucasian. The sexual innuendoes would then be a deliberate hint of the relationship between the two, with the tennis match signifying a lover’s quarrel, and the caressing of IU’s hand at the end a romantic gesture on Doona’s part. I think that’s a fascinating and plausible interpretation of the story, and could possibly also explain the two men’s indifference and insignificance throughout the show – they are mere spectators on the sidelines, observing the relationship that is key to the story: the secret passion between IU and Doona.

Collector

Prior to watching the film, Collector left the vaguest impression on me for I wasn’t sure what it was about beyond a love story between a man and a woman; as it turns out, this was the most memorable film, and my favourite of the series for its surreal, eerie plot and rich use of metaphors.

Director Im Pil-Sung has explained that in making this film, he was inspired by IU’s song Jam Jam - which is essentially about a non-committal and superficial relationship between a man and woman, with jam serving as a metaphor for the sugar-coating of lies and pretensions binding them together. And indeed, this idea of deceit in a relationship was evident in the film with the character of Eun portrayed by Ji Eun; while she seemed tender and gently seductive at times towards her entranced lover, there was also clear indifference in her attitude, shown from her boredom with his conversation attempts, and her open flirtations with other men. Her lover, however, was not completely innocent himself, for it seemed that he had betrayed his ex-fiancé by breaking off their engagement to be with Eun. This fact was revealed through an abrupt switch of scenes from his conversation with Eun to an empty white room in a surreal, clinical setting that seemed to represent his subconscious mind. In one particularly gruesome scene, the man’s head was sliced off in his subconscious state, suggesting a blow to his ego after finding out that Eun had gone travelling with two male friends. Notably, his head was fixed back to his neck after he had waxed lyrical to Eun about his pompous theory on the superiority of females, probably representing a restoration of his ego from the self-pleasure of his intellectual discourse.

Nothing however, could rival the shock factor from the bizarre twist towards the end of the story, when the man, egged on by Eun, literally dug out his heart of his body and handed it to her. As he sat motionlessly in tears, now a heartless man, Eun carefully placed her prized possession in a jar, and smilingly declared that she would “salt it to prevent it from rotting”. This, I think, was a chilling but clever reference to the following lines in Jam Jam:

“Tell me that you love me

Say the pretty things smeared on your lips

Sticky sticky, I’ll keep it pickled

So it won’t rot, for a long time”

In the final scene, the man opened up a small box which Eun had handed to him as a gift, only to find a miniature version of himself trapped in the empty white room – which I interpreted as symbolising that her parting gift to him was the gift of conscience, a reminder of his heartlessness for betraying his original lover.

The story left me unnerved and shaken with its gory and disturbing elements, but I loved its use of metaphors, and how it brought a whole new meaning to the lyrics of Jam Jam. What I appreciated most, however, was Ji Eun’s portrayal of the callous and mysterious seductress that Eun was; her acting was nuanced and deliberate, with subtle gestures and expressions that brought her character to life. I can never forget the look of rapt eagerness on Eun’s face, for instance, as she watched the man dig out his heart, and how she gently licked her lips at one point, almost like a predator anticipating a bite of its prey. Watching it gave me the chills, and made me forget that the Eun we saw onscreen was the lovable Lee Ji Eun who has inspired all kinds of emotions in me before, except for fear. In short, I think this film was the most effective in allowing her to take her acting skills at a whole new level, and to experiment with a different persona that viewers have never seen from her before.

Kiss Burn

Kiss Burn features Ji Eun as Hanna, a spirited school girl who visits the rural home of her good friend Hye Bok to seek her company, only to find her locked in by her authoritative father. Hye Bok’s hair has been shorn off by her father in a drunken fit, possibly as punishment for returning home with kiss marks after making out with a boy at a beach. Annoyed by his unjust behaviour, Hanna vows to exact revenge, and the two girls embark on a series of hilarious attempts at pulling off pranks to punish him.

Compared to the other films, the story is relatively light-hearted, with many comedic moments. However, it takes a slightly dark turn towards the end: while the girls’ deliberate and carefully thought-out pranks fail to achieve their desired outcome, a careless gesture – a flick of a cigarette butt into the chicken coop – eventually sparks off a fire, ironically turning out to be the biggest punishment for Hye Bok’s father, who works as a forest fire lookout.

Interestingly, the director chose to use chickens as a recurring motif to carry the dark humour of the story: in one of the early scenes, Hanna chomps on large chunks of roast chicken, and towards the end, the girls cheerily comment on smelling the aroma of fried chicken, blissfully unaware of the growing blaze presumably spread by a chicken which had gone astray after its tail caught fire in the coop.

In terms of acting, I think the role of Hanna was less of a ground-breaking one for Ji Eun, because it isn’t the first time we’ve seen her portray lively characters like that before. That doesn’t mean, however, that she didn’t do a good job in delivering her role – Hanna was a character with an endearing mix of rebelliousness and naiveté who found her way to my heart. For all her deviousness in conjuring pranks to seek revenge, Hanna still possessed an innocence about her, as evidenced from her curious probing of Hye Bok’s making out session, her amusing attempt at kissing herself to produce a hickey (after insisting wide-eyed to her friend that she knew how it was created), and her eagerness at visiting the beach (which Hye Bok claimed was a good place to “relieve stress” through making out). It was also a pleasure to watch Ji Eun’s chemistry with actress Shin Dal-gi, who played Hye Bok. Ji Eun had mentioned in interviews that director Jeon Go Won had employed unique techniques prior to the start of filming for the actresses to bond with each other, and that camaraderie was indeed evident onscreen, making the friendship between Hanna and Hye Bok a believable and funnily heartwarming one.

Walking at Night

Walking at Night appears to be a favourite amongst many uaenas, and I can see why: it is a hauntingly sad but beautiful and poetic piece, which would appeal to the sensibilities of those who gravitate towards IU’s sentimental ballads. I love it myself, and would rank it as my second favourite, after Collector.

Shot entirely in black and white, it tells the story of a man who meets his dead girlfriend in his dream, and together they revisit old haunts, reminisce their time together, and muse about love, life and death. Director Kim Jong Kwan had mentioned that he was inspired by the air of loneliness Ji Eun exudes despite her lively public persona, and indeed, the film delves into the theme of loneliness; mid-way through the show, it is revealed that the girl had killed herself because of her desperate sense of loneliness. Anxious, the man asks if he had caused her to be lonely, and she reassures him that he hadn’t:

“No. You were always there for me. There are people who know me and people who don’t. You were one of those who knew me, and there were others besides you. Those people were the ones who made me feel lonely. There were so many people who knew me other than you, but the way they treated me made me feel lonely. You were always there for me, but I just suffered in vain until I died.”

These poignant lines made my heart ache and struck a chord with me; it is so true that not being alone does not equate to not being lonely, for there have been moments in my life when I am surrounded by people, yet feel overwhelmed by an odd sense of loneliness.

Ji Eun’s words in the final scene are just as beautifully sad, a reminder of the ephemeral nature of our existence, and how we are all but transient visitors on this earth:

“Dreams and death lead to nowhere. They will end up nowhere…and eventually be forgotten. We are here, but no one will remember us. Everything is gone, and only the night remains.”

I’m not sure if I imagined it, but as the camera pans out in one of the final scenes to show the couple embracing, there appears to be a silhouette of a man standing in the distance. I recall shuddering involuntarily when I first noticed it, and even now, I feel an odd mix of fear and intrigue as I ponder who that man could be. Is it the protagonist himself, looking on at himself with his lover, as how we are wont to view ourselves from a third party perspective in dreams? Is he desperately trying to cling on to his memories before they fade? Or is it perhaps an onlooker bearing witness to their existence, proving that Ji Eun’s words may not entirely true – for while death leads us to disappear from this earth, we will still leave traces of ourselves behind, in the memories of those we’ve crossed paths with? I guess the beauty of such films is that there’s no right or wrong answer.

Compared to the other films, Walking at Night has the simplest narrative, with no notable climax; but I think its beauty lies in its simplicity, which allows us to focus on the poetic nature of its dialogue, and ruminate on what it means. In the same vein, Ji Eun’s acting is understated and restrained; there is no need for dramatic expressions, for so much of her emotions is conveyed in subtle ways, like a simple gesture, an inflexion in voice, or the expression in her large, soulful eyes.

Conclusion

Ji Eun’s acting career has been a rocky one, and there will always be people who love to hate her acting. Yet slowly but surely, she has been establishing her credentials as an actress over the years; My Ahjusshi was a breakthrough role which gained her recognition for her acting skills, and with Persona, she has proven once again her remarkable versatility as an actress, and added another notable work under her belt. Persona is probably not a show which will have mainstream appeal, but I believe it is the kind of acting project which will fulfil Ji Eun’s desire for more creative freedom, and I hope she’ll continue to take on such projects that will allow her to find joy in doing what she loves.

#persona #IU #lee ji eun #love set #collector #kiss burn #walking at night #netflix

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cornyregans · 6 years ago

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The Six Veronaville Tragedies

WARNING: This essay is centered around death, so please note that many different aspects related to that topic will likely be discussed here, some of which might be triggering to certain people. As such, reader discretion is advised.

Obligatory Warning Word Count: 38 words Essay Word Count: 11,671 words Obligatory Thank You Word Count: 170 words Total Word Count: 11,879 words

As I have mentioned in the past, I find one of the most interesting aspects of Veronaville to be the mystery surrounding the recent deaths of six premade sims. The sims in question on the Capp side are Cordelia Capp, Caliban Capp (né Gale), and Contessa Capp; while the sims in question on the Monty side are Claudio Monty, Olivia Monty (née Dottore), and Hero Monty (née Arlecchino). It is unknown which of these six was the first to die; however, given the memories of their surviving relatives, we know that Cordelia and Claudio were the first to die on their sides, followed by Caliban and Olivia, and finally Contessa and Hero. So, with this in mind, let’s look at some information the game has provided us with before we begin to theorize anything.

Three Biographies

Since we now have some idea regarding the general order of these six deaths, let’s take a closer look at something you might have missed if you never developed a Veronaville obsession. If you have ever played a premade sim in any of the games released before TS4, then you probably know that each premade tends to have a prewritten biography that goes more in-depth regarding their characterization. This fact also rings true for Veronaville, and as luck would have it, half of these dearly departed sims just so happen to have biographies, something very unusual for a deceased sim in any neighborhood. This has not gone unnoticed by the fandom and has led many a simmer to conclude that these three sims were meant to be playable at an earlier point in development. While none of these three sims ended up being alive in the final product, these biographies could shed some light on how each sim could have died.

First, let’s look at Claudio’s biography:

“Claudio's determined to make his parents proud with his lovely wife and wonderful children. But will he be able to reconcile his son's romance with his family's sworn enemy?”

By looking at the biography we are provided with, we are given a hint as to the timing of Claudio’s death. By the time he died, Claudio’s younger son, Romeo, had already become romantically involved with Juliette Capp. This is further supported in the memories of both Romeo and his older brother Mercutio, as Claudio is stated to have died following both brothers’ second “grew up” memory, which would place both boys as teenagers. In addition, Romeo’s memories place the death of his father occurring after his first kiss with Juliette. Taking game mechanics into account, this means the earliest Romeo could have lost his father was during his teen years. While this claim does offer some other problems if we look at Juliette’s memories, which I will go over later, said problems do not conflict with the big picture regarding the ages of the Monty boys at the time of their father’s untimely demise.

With Claudio's biography out of the way, let’s continue by taking a look at his wife Olivia’s:

“While Olivia loves her children and always wanted a big family, will her next birth push her over the edge?”

Unlike the biography of her husband, Olivia’s biography has no mention of the Capp/Monty feud; rather, it concerns a future birth. If you have ever gotten a view of Olivia’s ghost or resurrected her in-game, you would recognize that she is wearing the default maternity outfit, meaning she died before what was supposed to have been the birth of her third child. Given that the Montys recall her death occurring after Claudio’s, it is pretty clear that she also died while both of her sons were teenagers.

The last biography does not belong to a Monty, but rather a Capp. In this case the Capp matriarch, Contessa:

“Contessa is a strong matriarch who can hold a grudge. Will she let go of her anger at the Montys and do her daughter Cordelia's memory justice by allowing Juliette to pursue her true love?”

There is a very good reason as to why I saved Contessa’s biography for last. The reason for this choice is due to the last sentence. First of all, this should clear up any remaining misconceptions that it was possible for Contessa to have predeceased her daughter. Secondly, the final sentence seems to imply that Contessa was aware of Romeo and Juliette’s relationship, though how she found out is a mystery. Finally, this last sentence also provides some questions regarding Cordelia Capp’s role in the Capp/Monty feud. As a daughter of the Capp matriarch, Cordelia would have inevitably found herself playing a role in the bitter family rivalry, whether she wanted to or not.

The Role of Cordelia Capp

While Cordelia does not have her own biography, she does have a mention in her mother’s that is hard to miss once you’ve read it. The question stated above in Contessa’s biography could hold a number of different meanings. Was Cordelia unable to pursue her true love? Was she against the family feud? Despite these questions mostly being rhetorical, there is some little known evidence that could very well answer them both depending on how you interpret it.

Whether she was able to pursue her true love is something we can only theorize, that being said, there is no evidence that she was unhappy with Caliban. In fact, the evidence seems to imply the exact opposite. The first piece we have supporting this claim is a family picture consisting of Cordelia and Caliban, along with their child son Tybalt, as well as toddler daughters Juliette and Hermia, which for all intents and purposes looks rather happy. The second is that when resurrected, Cordelia and Caliban tend to have strong chemistry with one another if Nightlife or any subsequent Expansion Pack is installed. By taking these two factors into account, I think it might be safe to say that the part about “doing Cordelia’s memory justice” by allowing Juliette to pursue Romeo isn’t because Cordelia couldn’t pursue her true love, but because she did.

This leaves us with the other piece of the puzzle regarding her opinion of the Capp/Monty feud. Despite not appearing in the game itself, there is a little picture floating around on the internet that portrays a scene at what looks like the Capp Manor: Consort and Patrizio are engaged in a shoving match in the background, all while Cordelia looks on with a sigh and a thought bubble with the red enemy symbol in the foreground. We can’t say for sure what is going on in this picture, but in my opinion, that face of hers says it all when it comes to whatever opinion Cordelia may have had on the feud.

The Mysterious Case of Hero Monty

Before I go further, I think now would be a good time to take a closer look at the mysterious Hero Monty, who has neither a grave nor a ghost programmed into the game.

While I do plan on going over where Hero’s death fits into the Veronaville narrative, I would highly recommend you go read my essay concerning the potential cause of her death before continuing if you haven’t already. The lack of information regarding Hero’s death is something that, I believe, needed an essay all its own in order to analyze it properly, so I implore you to check it out before going any further here.

Much like how Cordelia Capp was referenced in Contessa’s biography, Hero is mentioned in the biographies of both her husband and her son Benedick.

Her husband Antonio’s biography is as follows:

“Committed to his children, Antonio is determined to get to the bottom of his wife Hero's death. And what will be his role in the family feud that may have cost him his one true love?’'

While her son Benedick’s biography states:

“Benedick is the gentler half of Antonio's twins. "Sensitive and kind, he may some day be essential to solving the question of his mother's death.”

These biographies are rather interesting in that they both allude to the overall mystery of Hero’s death. But looking at them closer, it seems very likely that Hero’s death may have been a result of the feud. In addition, Benedick’s biography is especially interesting in that it states that he may be “essential” when it comes to figuring out how his mother died.

While the biographies do provide some insight, they do not provide any hints regarding the timing of Hero’s death; for that, we are forced to look elsewhere. We know that Mercutio and Romeo were already teenagers by the time Hero passed on due to her death being stated to have occurred following the deaths of Claudio and Olivia. However, to obtain a more concrete timeframe, we have to look at the memories of other members of the Monty family, namely those of her husband and children. According to the memories of Antonio, Beatrice, and Benedick Monty, we can pinpoint that Hero died not long after Beatrice and Benedick aged up into children.

Memory Problems

Now that we briefly looked at the Hero Monty mystery, I want to take a closer look at the Capp couple. While I may have gone over Cordelia earlier, I have left out some other pieces of information I believe are worth mentioning.

First of all, the pieces of information we are given regarding the time of deaths for both Cordelia and Caliban are all kinds of messed up. Their older daughter Juliette and their younger daughter Hermia remember their parents dying while they were a teenager and child respectively. On the other hand, their son Tybalt remembers them dying when he was a toddler, even though he is older than his sisters not only in-game but also in the storytelling image mentioned earlier in this essay. With that discrepancy in mind, the most logical conclusion is that the developers made a mistake regarding the placement of Tybalt’s memory of his parents’ deaths, as both Juliette and Hermia’s memories make sense should we take all of their age bars into account.

Another discrepancy regarding Cordelia, in particular, is that her father Consort remembers her dying before the birth of his grandson Hal, while her sister Goneril remembers her dying before the birth of her daughter Ariel. While her other sister Regan also has a memory of Cordelia dying, the only thing we know from her memories is that Cordelia died after her wedding to Cornwall, which is something we would have already known by looking at Consort’s memories. By comparing Consort and Goneril’s memories, we can ascertain that Goneril’s memory of Cordelia dying before Ariel’s birth seems more likely given the age differences that Hal and Ariel have with Cordelia’s three children at the start of the game. Not to mention, the age groups presented above for Cordelia’s children at the time of her death make more sense if we go by Goneril’s version of events.

While we’re looking at memory discrepancies, let’s take another look at Claudio Monty and Contessa Capp. Despite these two not being a couple, let alone part of the same family, I feel the pair is worth mentioning here due to some conflicting pieces of information that can be tied back to both of them. As mentioned above, looking at the memories of Claudio’s children and Contessa’s grandchildren through Cordelia, we can conclude that both Claudio and Contessa died while their descendants in question were teenagers, that much is backed up on both sides.

The weird part, in particular, lies in the memories of three particular sims: Claudio’s son Romeo, Contessa’s granddaughter Juliette, and Claudio’s sister Bianca. First of all, if you look at the memories of Romeo and Juliette, you will notice that Romeo remembers kissing Juliette before Claudio died, while Juliette remembers kissing Romeo after Contessa died. In addition, you will notice that Juliette has a memory of falling in love with Romeo after the deaths of her parents, yet before the death of her maternal grandmother. However, Claudio’s sister Bianca, for some reason, has a memory of Contessa’s death, and by comparing her memories regarding the deaths of her brother and the Capp matriarch, you will see that Bianca’s memory of the latter’s death was more recent than her memory of the former’s death.

While comparing Juliette and Bianca’s memories, you will probably realize that there are errors on both sides. Should you compare Juliette’s memories to her relationship with Romeo, you will see that she only has a crush on him. While this might have been merely a mistake made by the developers, I believe there could very well be more to the story. Upon first playing the Capp Manor, you will realize that Juliette’s biggest want is to go steady with Romeo, should you grant her wish, she will fall in love with him afterward. Even if you don’t have them go steady, having her interact with him in any way romantically will cause them to fall in love in no time. While this may be completely off-base, a part of me believes that somehow the “first kiss” memories and fall in love memories got mixed up, as the first kiss interaction tends to unlock before two sims fall in love.

As for Bianca, her problem does not lie in the order of her memories, but rather in how they are classified. As someone who had a tendency to comb over every premade’s memories when I was younger, it always stuck out to me that Bianca had a positive memory of her brother Claudio’s death, but a negative memory of Contessa Capp’s. Much like Juliette’s, it is very likely that the developers inadvertently swapped Contessa and Claudio’s places in Bianca’s memories.

Due to the errors present in both Juliette and Bianca’s memories, I think determining who died first between Claudio and Contessa depends more on your personal preference. As with all things The Sims 2, it seems unlikely that EA will revisit this plot point at a later date, meaning this question will likely go unanswered. With that in mind, I personally interpret Claudio as having died before Contessa. While I could give my answer here as to why I see this being the case, I’m going to hold off until we go over the placement of all six deaths later in the essay, as it ties directly into that.

Additional Pieces of the Monty Memory Puzzle

While I may have already touched upon quite a few key pieces of information regarding the memories of the living Veronaville sims, there are some interesting nuggets that I have left out.

Although I have already mentioned Claudio Monty in the last section, I feel it is important to look at the deaths of both him and his wife Olivia through the eyes of some more of their relatives. I have already touched upon the memories of their two sons, but there is more that can be deduced if we look at the memories of Claudio’s parents and brother. The reason for me saving these memories for this section rather than the section above is because there were not really any sort of discrepancies present in narrowing down any specific place in time that the pair died.

If you take a look at the memories of Claudio’s parents, Patrizio and Isabella Monty, they place the deaths of Claudio and Olivia occurring after the birth of Antonio and Hero’s twins, Beatrice and Benedick. However, a look at Antonio’s memories provides some more concrete information, as his memories place their deaths occurring after Beatrice and Benedick reached childhood. Given where their deaths fit into the Monty family timeline, one can easily assume that Antonio’s wife, Hero, did not outlive Claudio and Olivia by much.

Additionally, take a look at the specific wording I used when it came to Antonio’s memories. Take note that I said “their” deaths, rather than just Claudio’s death. Among the Veronaville sims of Antonio’s generation, this is a unique case. None of Cordelia’s siblings, nor Bianca Monty, acknowledge the passing of their deceased in-laws. Heck, Kent Capp doesn’t even have a memory of Cordelia’s death and he’s her brother. With that in mind, perhaps it is not unusual to assume that Antonio was present when Olivia died.

What can their Shakespeare counterparts tell us?

Like all the living sims in Veronaville, all six of these deceased sims have ties to characters found in the works of William Shakespeare; whether it be by their names or their roles in both narratives. With this in mind, it could be entirely possible that their unfortunate fates may very well tie into those of their original Shakespearean counterparts.

Let’s begin by looking at Cordelia Capp. Shakespeare’s Cordelia is the dutiful youngest daughter of the titular King Lear. While she begins the play as her father’s favorite, her refusal to kiss his butt causes the king to disinherit her. Later in the play, she leads the army of her adopted homeland into battle once she hears that the father who disinherited her had been rendered powerless by her cruel older sisters. Unfortunately for Lear and Cordelia, the rebellion fails and both are sentenced to death for treason. While Lear is able to escape his sentence by killing the executioner, the pardon that would have saved Cordelia arrives too late to stop her death by hanging.

Unlike Goneril and Regan Capp, both of whom retain their husbands from King Lear, Cordelia’s husband in The Sims 2 is not a counterpart for the King of France. Instead, Caliban Capp shares his first name with a character from The Tempest. This is especially strange because, unlike the benevolent France in King Lear, the original Caliban was something of an antagonist. Shakespeare’s Caliban is the half human, half monster son of the witch Sycorax, and a slave of Prospero. While Prospero states that he initially tried to befriend Caliban, a native of the island he has been stranded on for more than a decade, both characters seem to confirm that any goodwill between the two ended due to an incident that occurred prior to the beginning of the play. As a result of that incident, Prospero ended up enslaving Caliban and would punish his disobedience by using harmful magic against him. Eventually, Caliban gets fed up and takes a servant named Stephano as his new master, at least until he learns that Stephano is not Prospero’s equal. In the end, Caliban returns to Prospero and is pardoned after obeying one final order to prepare his former master’s cell, though it is not made clear whether Caliban remained on the island or left with the other members of the cast.

Olivia Monty shares a first name with a character from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Countess Olivia, having lost her father and brother prior to the play, plans to spend the next seven years in deep mourning. As a result, she has no interest in any male company; because of this, Cesario (really a woman named Viola in disguise) has to settle for working under Duke Orsino instead. That being said, Orsino himself is interested in Olivia and sends Viola/Cesario to court Olivia for him. While Olivia initially wants nothing to do with Viola/Cesario, she eventually falls in love with him due to his personality, though she is unaware he is actually a she. Aside from Orsino, Olivia is also courted by her servant Malvolio, while her uncle would like to match her up with Andrew Aguecheek. In the end, Olivia meets Viola’s half-identical twin brother Sebastian, and the two of them end up together.

As mentioned in my essay regarding her cause of death, Hero Monty shares a name with a character from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. In Much Ado About Nothing, Hero, the daughter of Leonato, is loved by a lord named Claudio. Claudio announces his intention to court her to Benedick, who in turn informs Don Pedro about Claudio’s plans. As a result, Pedro resolves to court Hero for Claudio without the latter’s knowledge and puts this plan into action at a celebratory masquerade ball. Don John (Pedro’s illegitimate brother) is also attempting to court Hero at the ball and uses Claudio’s ignorance to Pedro’s intentions to make Claudio think Pedro is trying to take Hero for himself. This leads Claudio to confront Pedro in a rage, but in the end, Claudio ends up winning Hero’s hand, and the misunderstanding is cleared up. Later in the play, Don John and his follower Borachio resolve to stop the marriage by lying to Pedro and Claudio that Hero is unfaithful; as a result, Claudio promises to publicly humiliate Hero, and does so on their wedding day, causing Leonato to wish for his daughter’s death. On the advice of a friar who is rightly convinced of her virtue, Hero fakes her death in order to not only expose the truth but for Claudio to express regret for his actions. In the end, Don John’s treachery is exposed and Hero is revealed to be alive at her second wedding to Claudio, who has expressed remorse for his actions.

Unlike most of these sims, who share a name with only one Shakespeare character, Claudio shares his with two. The first of these characters is the Lord of Florence in Much Ado About Nothing. While I went over most of Claudio’s role in Much Ado About Nothing in the previous paragraph, I neglected to mention what happened to him during the fallout following Hero’s faked death. After Hero supposedly dies, an enraged Beatrice implores that her new lover, Benedick, slay Claudio for slandering her cousin as a way to prove his devotion to her. Though Benedick denies her request at first, he ends up challenging Claudio to a duel after Leonato and Antonio do the same. After learning of Hero’s innocence, Claudio demands the hand of Antonio's daughter so he can marry someone who resembles his lost love, and while Antonio accepts, it is revealed at the wedding that Hero is not only alive but also the one behind the veil.

The second Shakespeare character who shares a name with Claudio Monty is a Viennese gentleman in Measure for Measure. In Measure for Measure, Claudio is the brother of Isabella and the fiancé of Juliet, the latter of whom he ended up impregnating before they could be married. As a result, he is sentenced to death by the corrupt Angelo despite his willingness to put a ring on it. Luckily for Claudio, his sister Isabella is willing to go to bat for him, and announces her intention to plead his case to Angelo; Angelo agrees, on the condition that Isabella sleeps with him. Despite Claudio’s pleas for her to take Angelo up on his offer, Isabella refuses, citing that there is no way anybody would believe her if she told the truth. Fortunately for Claudio, Duke Vincentio comes to his aid and stages a bed trick wherein Angelo falsely believes that he is fornicating with Isabella, this causes a panicked Angelo to order Claudio’s execution out of fear of being exposed for the crime he condemned Claudio for in the first place. Claudio is spared once again thanks to Vincentio sending Angelo the head of a pirate in his place. In the end, Vincentio resumes his role of the Duke of Vienna, Angelo’s treachery is exposed when he makes the fatal mistake of unwittingly accusing Vincentio of his crimes, and Claudio and Juliet reunite.

Contessa is likely the biggest anomaly of the bunch because she does not share a first name with any Shakespeare character. Despite this fact, she actually has numerous Shakespeare and historical counterparts when it comes to both her role in the feud and her place in the Capp family tree. While I do intend to look into all of these parallels at some point, I will only be looking at two Shakespeare characters for this essay.

The first of these characters would obviously be Lady Capulet from Romeo & Juliet due to the similarities in their surnames. While not quite as involved in the feud as her husband, a throwaway scene shows us that Lady Capulet can hold a grudge much like Contessa, specifically when she states she will poison Romeo as revenge for the death of Tybalt; however, this never comes to pass as Romeo poisons himself before she gets the chance.

Unlike Contessa, Lady Capulet ends up surviving the play while Lady Montague is the one who ends up dying of grief following Romeo’s banishment. As a result, while Lady Capulet may very well have been Contessa’s most obvious inspiration, her being the one to die is more akin to Lady Montague instead. With this in mind, perhaps Isabella Monty would have made more sense as being the deceased Veronaville matriarch in order to draw a clearer parallel to Shakespeare’s play? That being said, I believe that there is more to Contessa being the one who dies in this adaptation rather than Isabella, and in my opinion, it is the second of Contessa’s aforementioned counterparts that really allows us to make sense as to why she was the one who died.

In my opinion, Contessa’s other Shakespearean counterpart in regard to her death is not a woman, but a man, the man in question being the titular King Lear. While I have seen people say Consort is the one who was inspired by Lear, I believe that Contessa actually has more in common with him when taking Capp family dynamics and neighborhood events into account. If you look at the Capp family tree, you would see that the Capps are matrilineal, meaning it was Contessa, not Consort, who was the head of the Capp family prior to her death. With this in mind, it would make sense that, due to her three daughters sharing names with Lear’s daughters, Contessa herself may have been created with the intention of being a gender-flipped version of Shakespeare’s Lear.

Much like Contessa Capp, who died before the events of The Sims 2, Lear does not survive Shakespeare’s play (though there was a rewrite where he did that was portrayed on stage for a century-and-a-half, it was not written by Shakespeare himself). In the final scene, Lear enters the stage carrying the body of the now deceased Cordelia in his arms. After all that occurred throughout the play, it is losing his beloved daughter that does him in, and he dies of despair while trying to convince himself that she is still alive.

How did they die in TS2?

With all the biographies and memory dissecting out of the way, let’s look at the known causes of death. From the information provided by their ghosts, we are able to conclude without any doubt the cause of death for five of the six sims in question. The Capp couple died in a fire, the Monty couple due to starvation, and Contessa Capp due to old age. The only outlier in the group of six is Hero Monty who, as mentioned above, does not have a grave anywhere in the game, and therefore has no ghost for us to confirm any cause of death. However, it is not impossible to draw some semblance of a conclusion by looking at outside information.

Developing Death Through Pictures

While this section may not be entirely relevant to the topic at hand, it does provide some interesting points that could very well play a role in any theory you might have. This is something I found while looking for more information on Veronaville, and it could definitely tell us something regarding the circumstances of some of these deaths. That being said, this information is purely theoretical and may have nothing to do with any of these deaths at all, but it is interesting nonetheless.

As mentioned earlier in this essay, the fact that Claudio, Olivia, and Contessa all have biographies despite being deceased at the start of the game has led many a simmer to conclude that all three were meant to be playable at some point during development. This notion is further fueled by a screenshot taken at some point during development of Olivia Monty talking to what appears to be an earlier version of Juliette Capp while Mercutio looks on from the second story. Whatever the case may be, it is likely that this picture was taken either before the developers decided to make Olivia pregnant or during her first trimester, as she does not appear to be showing at all in this particular picture.

Another interesting aspect of that picture is the location where it was shot. This picture was not shot at the Monty Ranch, the lot where Romeo and Mercutio reside when you first play Veronaville, but rather at what looks to be 111 Stratford Street. This is quite similar to the storytelling image I mentioned in a previous paragraph containing Cordelia Capp and her family. The layout of that room, as well as some of its aesthetics, are completely different from those in the Capp Manor. That being said, unlike 111 Stratford Street, I cannot say for certain which lot is meant to be portrayed in the Capp storytelling image; however, the placement and design of the windows leads me to believe that the likely location may have been 95 Bard Boulevard. With this in mind, given the deaths of Cordelia and Caliban, perhaps the general ambiguity regarding this picture’s setting is meant to be intentional? Could it be due to the fire? Could it be because of something else entirely? Could my guess be right and their original residence was 95 Bard Boulevard? Regardless of what may have been intended, it’s interesting to think about all the possibilities.

Given the obvious design differences, these images most likely mean one of two things: either these homes were the original Monty Ranch and Capp Manor, or these were Claudio and Cordelia’s homes, and their children were moved in with their grandparents following the deaths of their parents. It is unlikely we will be finding out the answer any time soon, as the only other piece of evidence related to the 111 Stratford Street image is an earlier version of Veronaville. In this image, the Monty Ranch is located in a different place on the map, and there are no plumbobs to denote any sort of residence. But, as stated above, it is certainly interesting to think about, especially in regard to how it may relate to some of these deaths.

Reviewing What We Already Know

Now that we’ve gotten the known causes of death out of the way, it’s time we review what we already know about all six of these sims once more in order to find any additional information that may have slipped through the cracks.

Cordelia and Caliban

Timeline: From the memories of their surviving relatives we can ascertain a few things regarding the deaths of this Capp couple. First of all, given the memories of their daughters and their son’s established age, we know that Cordelia and Caliban died while Tybalt and Juliette were both already teenagers, and Hermia was about to become a teenager herself. In addition to that, we also know from both Juliette’s memories and Contessa Capp’s biography that Juliette had already become involved with Romeo before both of her parents died. Also, given the memories of Cordelia’s sister Goneril, we are able to deduce that the deaths of Cordelia and Caliban most likely occurred before the birth of Goneril’s youngest daughter Ariel (who is a toddler at the start of the game with four days to go until childhood), but after the birth of Goneril’s middle daughter Desdemona (who is a child at the start of the game with six days to go before she reaches her teen years).

Cause of Death (Shakespeare): In King Lear, Cordelia is hanged before she could be pardoned. Caliban does not die in The Tempest, rather he is pardoned by Prospero after preparing his cell, though it is ambiguous whether he left the island with the rest of the cast.

Cause of Death (Sims): Both Cordelia and Caliban died due to a fire.

Other Information: We can safely assume that Cordelia Capp was likely against the Capp/Monty feud due to the image where she appears saddened by the quarreling patriarchs. Also, for some reason, Kent Capp does not seem to possess any memory of his sister dying.

What is significant about their shared cause of death?

The cause of death for both Cordelia and Caliban being fire is significant for quite a few reasons. First of all, this further debunks Tybalt’s memory problem, as there is no way for any toddler to leave their home lot in The Sims 2, and he has no relationship with any of the neighborhood nannies. Next, given the cause of death, and the fact that their deaths were so close to each other in the memories of some of their relatives, it is likely that the two died in the same fire. This means that while Caliban may have outlived Cordelia in all the relevant memories, it would not have been by much.

Since none of their children have any memory of there being any sort of fire, it is safe to assume, should the fire in question have occurred on their home lot, that Tybalt, Juliette, and Hermia were not present for their parents’ deaths, placing the most likely time the two died to be after 8 am at the earliest, and before 1 pm at the latest on a weekday when both Cordelia and Caliban had no other obligations. That is unless their deaths were meant to have occurred outside of their home, which opens up many new possible time frames when their deaths could have occurred.

What can we draw from their Shakespeare counterparts?

Unlike her Shakespeare counterpart, Cordelia Capp died in a fire rather than by hanging, so we can’t really make any connections through the method of death. That being said, we should keep in mind the circumstances, namely that in King Lear, a pardon was ordered to prevent Cordelia’s execution. With this in mind, it is possible that Cordelia died before a firefighter could have saved her. Not only that, but the charge of treason was brought upon against Shakespeare’s Cordelia because she tried to assist her father in taking back the English throne. If we take that information into account, it could very well be possible that Cordelia may have tried to save someone from the fire, only for her to die instead.

Unlike Cordelia, Caliban’s counterpart survives The Tempest. While it is known that Caliban does survive until the play’s conclusion, the audience is never informed whether he ended up escaping the island of his birth. In The Sims 2, we know that Caliban did not escape the fire that ultimately killed him, but he may have at first, only to go back once he realized Cordelia was still inside. This matches up quite well with Caliban from The Tempest going back to Prospero after leaving him for Stephano, especially given that it is Cordelia, rather than Caliban himself, who carries the illustrious Capp name.

Claudio and Olivia

Timeline: From the memories of their surviving relatives we are able to ascertain quite a few things regarding the deaths of the Monty couple. First of all, we know that, given Romeo and Mercutio’s memories, both Claudio and Olivia died while both sons were already teenagers. We also know that Romeo and Juliette had already become involved with one another prior to the deaths of their parents, a claim further backed up by Claudio’s biography. We also know from Patrizio and Isabella Monty’s memories that both Claudio and Olivia died after the birth of Beatrice and Benedick Monty; though, Antonio Monty’s memories provide a clearer picture by placing their deaths as having occurred after his twins reached childhood. As a result, it is likely we can ascertain that Hero Monty likely died not long after Claudio and Olivia.

Cause of Death (Shakespeare): While Claudio does not die in either Much Ado About Nothing or Measure for Measure, he is challenged to three different duels by three different men in the former and marked for execution in the latter. Olivia does not die in Twelfth Night, rather she ends the play married to Sebastian.

Cause of Death (Sims): Both Claudia and Olivia starved to death

Other Information: Antonio Monty has a memory of Olivia’s death despite being her brother-in-law, meaning it is highly likely he was present when she died.

What is significant about their shared cause of death?

While the significance behind the cause of death for both Claudio and Olivia isn’t as easy to figure out as their Capp counterparts, there is still quite a bit of information we can pick out of it. Unlike the fire that killed Cordelia and Caliban, Claudio and Olivia both dying of hunger means that there is a larger timeframe that we can work with. With that in mind, I believe that some of the answers we seek could easily be found in their biographies, Olivia’s in particular.

We know that Olivia Monty was pregnant when she died, meaning her hunger meter would have decayed faster than normal. There was also a question regarding whether the upcoming birth would push her “over the edge.” Why? Well, I believe a good place to start in answering this question lies in the timeline we have already established. By looking at the memories of Mercutio and Romeo Monty, we have already deduced that both were already teenagers by the time Olivia died. With that in mind, there is a possibility that Olivia’s pregnancy could have been an accident.

As for Claudio, his biography states that he “wants to make his parents proud,” and then we are presented with a question asking whether he can “reconcile his son’s romance with the enemy.” While this can’t really provide a clear answer as to why Claudio starved to death, I suggest the best we can do is keep the timeframe, as well as what might have been going on in his life at that particular moment, in mind.

What can we draw from their Shakespeare counterparts?

While none of Claudio and Olivia’s Shakespeare counterparts died in their original works, there are some scenes that could very well draw some parallels. While Claudio didn’t die in either Much Ado About Nothing or Measure for Measure, he definitely came close in both. In the former, he was challenged to three duels: two by Hero’s kinsmen, as well as one by Benedick, the lover of one of Hero’s kinswomen, after he humiliated Hero on their wedding day. In Measure for Measure, Claudio was sentenced to death for engaging in premarital sex with his fiancée. By looking at both of these instances, it is possible that Claudio’s death in The Sims 2 could be tied to both wronging someone and/or his wife’s pregnancy.

Unlike Claudio’s counterparts, Olivia’s counterpart is never in any danger of dying in Shakespeare’s original play. Despite this, she does end up closing herself off emotionally due to the deaths of her father and brother. With this in mind, it is possible that her death in The Sims 2 could very well have been brought upon in part by grief.

Contessa

Timeline: We know from the memories of her husband, one of her two living daughters, and the memories of her grandchildren through her deceased daughter, that Contessa died after her daughter and son-in-law. This is further evidenced as Consort and Goneril both recall her dying after the birth of Ariel, Goneril’s youngest child who begins the game on her first day of toddlerhood. Also, for some odd reason, Bianca Monty has a memory of Contessa’s death despite not being related to her. In this particular memory, she is listed as having died after Claudio.

Cause of Death (Shakespeare): Lady Capulet does not die in Romeo & Juliet. King Lear dies of despair following the death of Cordelia.

Cause of Death (Sims): Old Age

Other Information: Bianca Monty’s memory means she could have very well been present at the time of Contessa’s death. In addition, Goneril is the only one of Contessa’s living children to possess a memory of her death.

What is significant about her cause of death?

Out of all the deceased sims that I have talked about in this essay, Contessa Capp’s death is quite unique. Not only is she the only one of the six to have died from old age, but she is also the only one of the six who could have possibly died of old age due to being the only elder in the bunch.

While this might seem like a problem solved, that is not necessarily the case. While looking at Contessa’s data in SimPE, you would be able to see that she was two days younger than her husband at the time of her death. This means she would have just entered the elder stage when she died, as Consort is three days into the elder stage himself by the time you first play the Capp Manor. This hidden fact offers quite a bit of wiggle room as there is no way she would have died of old age had the game been played normally, meaning it is possible to interpret other factors being involved.

What can we draw from her Shakespeare counterparts?

By looking at Contessa in relation to her husband and the name of her granddaughter, it is obvious that Contessa is meant to be a stand-in for Lady Capulet. In Romeo & Juliet, Lady Capulet survives to see the end of the play, while Lady Montague does not, having died from grief after Romeo was banished from Verona. The Sims 2 takes Ladies Capulet and Montague and exchanges their fates, with Lady Montague’s counterpart being alive at the start of the game, and Lady Capulet’s counterpart dying before her lot is played. This may very well be because Lady Capulet is only one of Contessa’s several Shakespeare counterparts.

If one looks at the names of Contessa’s children, particularly her three daughters, it is easy to see Contessa Capp as a gender-flipped King Lear. Much like how Contessa does not survive to the beginning of The Sims 2, King Lear does not survive the play bearing his name, rather he dies of despair after the death of his favorite daughter.

Hero

Timeline: By looking at the memories of her relatives, we know that Hero died after Claudio and Olivia Monty. The memories of her husband and children, in particular, point out that she died after the twins reached childhood. Given that Claudio and Olivia also died following the twins’ birthday, it is likely that Hero might not have lived much longer after her in-laws died.

Cause of Death (Shakespeare): While Hero does not die in Much Ado About Nothing, she does fake her death until she is cleared of the charges of adultery against her.

Cause of Death (Sims): Unknown, but, as stated in my previous essay, I do believe it may have been by drowning due to the fate suffered by the mythological Hero.

Other Information: Antonio’s biography mentions that he is determined to get to the bottom of her death, which may have been a result of the Capp/Monty feud, while Benedick’s biography states that he may be the one to solve the mystery of her death. Also, Romeo and Mercutio have memories of Hero dying, an anomaly among their generation in Veronaville, meaning it is likely they were present at the time of her death.

What can we draw from her Shakespeare counterpart?

Hero is definitely an interesting case among this bunch, as she is the only one of the six who does not have a specific cause of death in-game. In Much Ado About Nothing, Hero does not die, but she does fake her death. Could it be possible that she did the same thing in The Sims 2? If this is the case, it would likely not have been for the same reason. In Much Ado About Nothing, Hero faked her death after Claudio accuses her of being unfaithful at their wedding. In The Sims 2, Hero is described as being Antonio Monty’s “one true love” in the latter’s biography, as a result, it is unlikely that she could have faked her death due to such an accusation. However, Antonio’s biography offers an alternative reason she may have done so, namely the Capp/Monty feud.

However, as mentioned in my previous essay regarding her death, I believe it is unlikely that this incarnation of Hero is alive somewhere for three reasons:

Unlike Hero from Much Ado About Nothing, there is no evidence that anyone in Veronaville had any knowledge should Hero Monty have planned to fake her death, rather everyone seems to treat her as being dead.

Most of the Montys possess a memory of her death, and those who do not remember her dying have absolutely no relationship with her in any of their relationship panels.

Unlike Bella Goth, who is clearly shown to be alive on the Goth family tree despite not being visible in Pleasantview, Hero’s portrait in the Monty family tree is clearly greyed out a la other deceased sims. In addition, Bella Goth can be added to a household by using the boolprop cheat, whereas Hero cannot unless you recreate her from scratch, or use something like SimPE (a third party program).

Timeline

From looking at the information we gathered so far, we can try to put together a complete timeline of deaths.

As stated above, we know the order of deaths for the separate families, but here, I will try to assemble a timeline that I feel fits the closest with both the information that has been provided and my personal Veronaville narrative. Keep in mind that much of this timeline reflects my theory about these deaths, so while I will offer some explanation as to why I believe certain deaths fit into certain slots, I will also provide further reasoning later in the next section for elements that are not directly related to my placements here.

The majority of the information listed below is not canon to the original game, so keep that in mind and read this with a grain of salt.

Death #1: Cordelia Capp

While the first to go is rather ambiguous, I personally believe that Cordelia being the first of the six to die fits the best for my theory. We know that she died in a fire alongside her husband Caliban, but we do not have any real proof from the game that she and her husband outlived their Monty counterparts, especially given the myriad of ways one can play a neighborhood. That being said, given the fact that she died in between the births of two of her nieces, as well as before her daughter Hermia became a teenager, it is likely more logical to assume that she and Caliban were meant to die before their Monty counterparts in the Veronaville timeline.

Death #2: Caliban Capp

Since we know that Cordelia died before Caliban in what was likely the same fire, it is safe to assume that Caliban just barely outlived his wife.

Death #3: Claudio Monty

As stated in his biography, it seems like Claudio had a lot on his plate before he died. According to his biography, he always wanted to make his parents happy, yet he had to deal with the fact that his son has become involved with a member of the enemy family. On top of that, should we assume Olivia’s pregnancy was unplanned, he likely found himself having more to deal with than he would otherwise. But what could have been the coup de grâce that ended up causing him to neglect his most important need? From what I have posted up above, I believe it just might have been the deaths of Cordelia Capp and her husband.

When a feud lasts as long as the Capp/Monty feud, odds are the entire town knows about it. If something shady happens to one family, you can probably assume that the townsfolk will immediately suspect the other family of any wrongdoing. If this is the case, not only did Claudio Monty feel the need to make his parents proud, he also had to deal with the reality of his son’s first romance, his wife’s pregnancy, and on top of all that, potentially being accused of a crime that he may-or-may-not have committed. With all four of these facets playing out in his life, he may have found himself too busy and/or stressed out to eat, which ended up taking his life.

Death #4: Olivia Monty

Personally, I believe Olivia and Claudio’s deaths were more spread apart than their Capp counterparts. I don’t think Olivia died immediately after Claudio, but I don’t think she lasted much longer.

Olivia’s biography does not contain any reference to the Capp/Monty feud, but that being said, I believe it tied directly into Claudio’s death. As stated above, I believe Claudio had a lot on his plate by the time he inevitably died, and one of those things was Olivia’s pregnancy, which may have been unplanned depending on your interpretation. I believe part of the reason that Olivia was able to avoid being pushed over the edge may very well have been because Claudio was around and his presence might have been reassuring to her.

However, once Claudio died, Olivia would lose that secure safety net, and as a result, she could have stopped eating. Olivia not eating, combined with her accelerating need decay due to pregnancy, could have very well caused her to die much sooner than she otherwise would have.

Death #5: Hero Monty

I have seen arguments stating that Hero was likely the last of the six to die, and while that is certainly possible, I personally have a different interpretation.

By looking at the general timeline assembled from the memories provided, we know for sure that, much like Claudio and Olivia, she died after her twins became children. Given that Beatrice and Benedick are both halfway through the child life stage when you first play Antonio’s family, odds are her death likely occurred not long after both Claudio’s and Olivia’s depending on your personal play style.

Final Death: Contessa Capp

Given the memories provided by members of the Capp family, we know that Contessa Capp at least outlived her daughter and son-in-law. As stated above when discussing the errors found in both Juliette and Bianca’s memories, the errors present in both cases don’t really give any sort of definitive answer as to whether she died before or after the Montys, so her placement, along with those of the Monty family, is basically left up to interpretation.

As for me, I tend to look at this conundrum from more of a narrative angle, specifically which death of the four would be more impactful to the neighborhood as a whole. Would it be the death of the Monty patriarch’s son, one of his daughters-in-law or the death of the Capp matriarch herself?

While all three of the Montys who died all have their importance to Veronaville, the fact of the matter is that none of their deaths would alter both the neighborhood and familial dynamics to the same degree as the death of Contessa Capp. While Claudio may have been the son of a patrilineal family’s patriarch, the possible impact his death could have caused cannot even come close to Contessa’s, as she was the matriarch, the center, of a matrilineal family.

Putting Together my Theory

My theory may be a bit of a stretch given the way the game was programmed, however, I do find it interesting and I thought it would be fun to share. Like I already mentioned, please take this with a grain of salt, none of what I am about to say is endorsed by the powers that be, rather it is just the ramblings of a simmer with way too much time on her hands and a lot of Veronaville feelings.

One thing I found rather interesting is, despite the Montys being a well off family of chefs, there is absolutely no evidence of any Monty-owned establishment in Veronaville. This is likely in part because restaurants were not introduced until the Nightlife expansion pack, and the opportunity for your sims to own a community lot was not available until Open for Business. However, this theory takes the lack of a Monty owned restaurant into account, even if there is no such thing in Veronaville when you load the game, that doesn’t mean it was never there in the first place.

With that little preface out of the way, this is my theory:

Cordelia Capp was never a fan of the generation-spanning feud between the Capps and the Montys. She never could understand why her father and Patrizio Monty always needed something to fight about, nor did she want to. The final straw, however, was that her daughter might not be afforded the same luxury she had of being able to marry for love, all because of the bad blood between the two families. As a result, her brother, who was also anti-feud, ended up connecting her with his good friend Bianca Monty, and the two eventually planned to meet at the Monty family restaurant in order to discuss ideas on how to end the feud once and for all.

On the day of the meeting, Cordelia, along with her husband Caliban, arrived at the restaurant. Not long before they arrived, the restaurant’s sous chef, Claudio Monty, received a call from his wife, causing him to leave work early. Before he left, however, he placed prep cook Hero Monty in charge. Unfortunately, Claudio’s decision to return home to his wife would have deadly consequences, as Hero received a call from a local society dame to cater for her daughter’s wedding. Wanting to get her name out there and prove to her husband’s family that she has what it takes to be a sous chef, Hero jumped at the opportunity and went home to prepare a bowl of Italian Wedding soup, not realizing that she left one of the burners on in the restaurant.

Bianca Monty had still not arrived by the time the fire went off, though Contessa Capp, her husband, and their two other daughters caught a glimpse of the blaze outside while shopping nearby. Contessa, already aware of Cordelia’s intentions to meet with Bianca Monty beforehand, rushed over to the burning building as fast as she could. While most of the patrons left the restaurant in a panic, Cordelia, always the kind of person to help others, instead ran off to the kitchen to make sure the staff was okay.

By the time Caliban got outside, he realized his wife was nowhere to be found, and rather than secure his safety, he ran back into the burning restaurant to look for her, despite pleas from Goneril and Regan to wait for help to arrive. After not seeing her in either the dining room or the bathroom, Caliban knew there was only one place he had yet to check, the kitchen. Upon walking into the kitchen, however, he found Cordelia on the floor not too far from the fiery inferno that emerged from the stove. When he saw death’s visage looming above her, his worst fears were realized, and it wasn’t much longer until he too died of smoke inhalation. The firefighters arrived at the restaurant too late, but they were able to obtain what was left of both Cordelia and Caliban and deliver their remains to an inconsolable Contessa Capp.

Bianca arrived at the restaurant shortly after the firefighters arrived on the scene. She was informed that, while most of the patrons and the entirety of the staff made it out alive, the fire ended up claiming two victims. Claudio, having been confronted by the police a few hours after he arrived home, was already made aware of the deaths of Cordelia Capp and her husband. Once Bianca revealed her intention of meeting with Cordelia at the restaurant, Claudio snapped at her, realizing that not only did she bring a Capp into their family restaurant, but that in doing so, she could very well have ruined his reputation in one fell swoop. This was the last time either of them spoke to one another, and by the time Claudio died, their relationship had still not been patched up. While Bianca would continue to visit Claudio’s home, it was never by his invitation, rather she would tag along with her parents in order to visit her nephews.

The deadly events that occurred at the Monty family’s restaurant were on the front page of every newspaper, magazine, and the top story on every Veronaville news program. As more information came out, many of the townspeople, as well as the Capp family themselves, began to point fingers at the Monty family, particularly Claudio Monty, who was supposed to be in charge of the kitchen on the day of the fire. The exceptions to this were the neutral Summerdreams, who saw the whole thing for what it truly was, a horrible accident.

The deaths of Caliban, and especially Cordelia, at the Monty establishment, enraged Consort and Contessa Capp, as well as their two surviving daughters, Goneril and Regan. Tybalt Capp, the oldest child and only son of Cordelia and Caliban, became much more aggressive towards the Monty boys. Upon learning the circumstances of his parents’ deaths, he attacked Mercutio Monty at the Veronaville Marketplace before they were separated by police intervention. Cordelia and Caliban’s older daughter, Juliette, found comfort in Romeo Monty and did not blame him for what happened as there was no way he could have had anything to do with the tragedy. That being said, she did blame his father Claudio for not being there to prevent the fire, as well as his aunt Bianca for being the one who invited her mother to lunch in the first place. Younger daughter Hermia was not so lucky and fell into a deep depression that lasted into adolescence. The children of Goneril and Albany Capp did not really react to the deaths of their aunt and uncle, it was almost like they never knew what happened. Their daughter Miranda was old enough to grasp the concept of death, but she didn’t seem to notice because she was too busy acting out as a result of her parents having yet another baby. Their younger two children, Hal and Desdemona, were both too young to understand. Kent Capp, who had known about the meeting beforehand, was unable to accept the loss of his favorite sister and coped by denying it ever occurred in the first place.

At the time of the fire, Claudio had not been sleeping much at night. He always worried whether he would be able to make his parents proud of both his hard work and his beautiful family, but ever since his son Romeo became closer to Juliette Capp, Claudio became more and more doubtful that he could live up to their standard. If that wasn’t hard enough, he and Olivia got a little too frisky one night, and Olivia ended up pregnant. While this was something they would have been ecstatic about a few years ago, they were both at a point where they weren’t looking to have any more children, especially since Claudio had started taking more responsibilities at the family restaurant, and their sons had started working part-time as well. While the unplanned pregnancy was hard on Claudio due to the horrible timing, it was even worse on Olivia. On the day of the fire, Olivia had called Claudio in a panic after she had accidentally eaten some spoiled food, and Claudio had gone home because he wasn’t having much luck calming her down over the phone.

When word got back to Patrizio and Isabella Monty that Claudio had abandoned his post, they expressed their disappointment. They understood and appreciated his dedication to his family, but they told him that he should have contacted them to make sure Olivia was okay and kept working instead. After this, Claudio buried himself in his work in order to drown out the gossip. When he was home, he found himself spending most of his time taking care of his wife and making sure his sons kept out of trouble to such a degree that he ended up neglecting his own needs. It wasn’t long until one night, he collapsed upon arriving home from work and died on the front lawn. Despite his mother rushing outside to plead for her son’s life, she did not make it out before the Grim Reaper took out his phone.

At the time of her husband’s death, Olivia had been cared for by Claudio’s parents and siblings whenever he was away. Upon hearing of her husband’s passing, she fainted in shock. While Bianca, Patrizio, and Isabella had left before morning to get Claudio’s affairs in order, Antonio remained behind to help his nephews take care of their mother. Despite all three of them attending to Olivia, she refused to eat anything and died less than twenty-four hours later, taking her unborn child with her.

The deaths of Claudio and Olivia Monty were the catalysts that set Hero’s death into motion. Following Claudio’s death, one of the waiters at the Monty family restaurant had revealed to some friends that Hero had been left in charge by her brother-in-law on the day of the fire. Since Veronaville was fairly small, news spread fast and word eventually made its way to the Capp family. After receiving numerous phone calls from the Capp Manor after Claudio and Olivia were laid to rest, Hero ended up drowning. The first person to find her body was her son Benedick. Not long afterward, the rest of the household piled in, along with Patrizio, Isabella, Mercutio, and Romeo Monty, all of whom were at Antonio’s home when Hero’s body was discovered. Antonio later discovered the Capp Manor’s phone number on his phone’s history, but he could not track down any messages that the Capps might have left.

Shortly after Bianca Monty moved out of the Monty Ranch to make room for her orphaned nephews, she received a call from Contessa Capp. After exchanging a few calls, the two of them agreed to meet at the Capp Manor on a day when Contessa’s husband and orphaned grandchildren, who were taken in by Contessa and Consort following Cordelia and Caliban’s death, would have been out of the house, with Kent acting as a third party. They also agreed that their meeting should end before Contessa’s grandchildren arrived home from school due to Tybalt’s aggressive behavior. In between the time that Contessa first made contact and Bianca visited the Capp Manor, the two secretly kept in contact with Kent acting as their messenger.

During Bianca’s visit, Contessa told her that Cordelia had grown tired of seeing the two families go after one another, which is something her daughter made no effort to hide from her. She told Bianca that once Juliette told Cordelia about her feelings for Romeo, Cordelia was not only supportive but decided that she would do whatever it took to end the feud once and for all, so her daughter could pursue a relationship with him without fear of repercussion from either side. The day before her death, Cordelia had confided in Contessa about her meeting with Bianca at the Monty family restaurant, and that, despite Contessa’s protests that Bianca could have been luring her into a trap, Cordelia had already made up her mind to go ahead with the meeting.

Contessa then expressed to Bianca that, upon first hearing of Cordelia’s death, she believed that her daughter was indeed tricked. However, upon speaking privately with Kent, she learned otherwise. That being said, she still expressed that while she wanted her granddaughter to be happy, she thought it would be for the best to separate her from the Montys as much as possible due to the rising tensions. After she finished telling Bianca her story, Contessa went to the kitchen to make some tea, and not long after stepping foot into the dining room, she collapsed with a loud thud. Bianca and Kent then carried the old woman into her room, and once inside, Contessa, her voice faint, asked the younger woman and her son to place her on the couch next to her daughter’s remains. After calling an ambulance, Kent returned to the master bedroom, where he and Bianca resolved to wait with the Capp matriarch until help arrived. They tried to make conversation with her for a few minutes before Contessa looked towards the corner of the room and called out the name of her deceased daughter. After that, she closed her eyes for the final time.

After Contessa died, Bianca realized that it was almost one o’clock in the afternoon, the time when Contessa’s grandchildren were expected to arrive home from school. She managed to flee mostly unseen, however, her escape was spotted out of the corner of Juliette’s eye.

Unlike the deaths of Cordelia and Caliban Capp, Contessa’s death was much quieter due to there being no obvious links to the feud. Contessa’s widower, Consort, was absolutely beside himself. According to him, Contessa had never been the same after Cordelia died, and no matter how much he tried to console her, she would always talk about wanting to be with her daughter again. Though he knew Contessa was deeply saddened by their daughter’s death, he never in his worst nightmares imagined that the resulting despair would end up claiming her life. He ended up telling Goneril Capp of Contessa’s death, but couldn’t bring himself to inform Regan due to his struggle to process what happened. Regan later learned of her mother’s fate from her husband, who was informed by Goneril via a phone call. While he was present for his mother’s death, Kent reacted to it the same way he reacted to Cordelia’s passing, by denying it ever occurred in the first place in order to cope with the loss. Tybalt, Juliette, and Hermia Capp were all saddened by their grandmother’s passing as well. Tybalt once again became more aggressive, while Hermia, who had just come out of her previous depression, fell into another one. Juliette, well, she continued to seek comfort in Romeo.

Recapping my Theory

My theory doesn’t really follow in-game logic as much as I would like, but I think it matches up pretty well with the information provided by the game, as well as taking inspiration from parts of the relevant Shakespeare works. While I did try to implement all the information I mentioned previously into my theory, I also added some references to information that I did not touch upon, but could easily see being tied back to these six deaths.

For example, if one looks at Juliette Capp’s relationship panel when you first play the Capp Manor, you would see that she considers Bianca Monty an enemy. In my theory, I tried to hint as to why I think she might feel that way.

To sum it up: here’s a quick recap on how I consider each of these six sims to have met their ends:

Cordelia—Died of smoke inhalation in a restaurant fire after checking to see if the staff was okay.

Caliban—Died of smoke inhalation after going back into the burning restaurant and finding his dead wife in the kitchen.

Claudio—Starved to death due to great stress brought upon by maintaining family standards, parenting woes, his wife’s pregnancy, trying to ignore the aftermath of the fire, and ultimately overworking himself.

Olivia—Starved to death less than a day after her husband died due to the stress of her pregnancy and the fear of being all alone with three children.

Hero—Drowned after receiving countless calls from the Capp Manor.

Contessa—Died of premature old age brought upon by intense grief following the death of her daughter in the aforementioned restaurant fire.

Final Thoughts

While Veronaville is my favorite of the premade neighborhoods in The Sims 2, I will be the first to admit that the neighborhood is an unfinished mess in many regards (conflicting memories, conflicting ages, borked sims, etc.). That is why I think it is important to take a closer look at each of these things that are often overlooked by many members of The Sims 2 fandom. A lot of people seem to gravitate more towards Pleasantview and Strangetown, which is understandable, both of those neighborhoods are a lot of fun and offer interesting narratives. That being said, as someone who enjoys Shakespeare, and has since middle school, I think it’s quite a shame that Veronaville isn’t talked about more among members of the fanbase.

It is because of these facts that I wanted to write about Veronaville both in regard to the information provided by the game, and in the context of Shakespeare’s original plays. There are a lot of interesting parallels to be found in many respects if you look closely at both, and that especially rings true for the deaths of these six sims (though my take on Hero’s takes more from classical mythology than Shakespeare canon). While some of these instances are contradictory, there are others that match up quite well, and I hope I was able to convey that here for all of you.

Thank you so much for reading this essay. This was actually the essay that started the Veronaville Vault in the first place, and I am happy to finally share it with all of you. It was through this essay that I decided to look beyond what can be found in-game, and look to Shakespeare and other relevant sources for information.

As some of you might have guessed, this is the larger essay that was mentioned in my entry regarding Hero Monty’s death. Much of what was found in that essay was originally in this one, but I ended up adding that information to that one because this essay was already hella long.

Once again, thank you so much for reading. If you enjoyed, feel free to like and reblog this post. Also, feel free to talk to me about this topic, as well as other aspects of Veronaville, whenever you feel like it. As someone with way too many feelings about this neighborhood, I'm always up for a discussion.

#veronaville #sims 2 #sims #capp family #monty family #cordelia capp #caliban capp #contessa capp #claudio monty #olivia monty #hero monty #veronaville vault

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kingofthewilderwest · 6 years ago

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it kinda bugs me how they cant make httyd3 longer just so they can emphasize the story in a deeper meaning, like your post abt it being disproportionate. httyd3 had a LOT more plot than httyd2 and we can already see how it has to cramp so much and why that makes D2's pace felt pretty fast. the structure of the story is actually well planned.. perfect, to be exact! but the execution like putting pauses, necessary humor, longer dialogue, is whats needed to make it um, understandable? im not sure..

this isnt meant to judge the movie as bad though! but its a question ive been asking why they cant do it longer, for that sake. is it the budget? was Dean really certain the script is okay? or is it meant to be like this so people can interpret the movie their way? (oof that one is confusing).. i dont know, i want to ask about your thoughts on that >

From this.

It’s an interesting conversation for sure! I believe that THW doesn’t have to be longer to be extremely successful in the ideas it needs to convey! The core ideas being:

Toothless cannot be a wild dragon and strong alpha leader with humans. Other dragons probably deserve the respect of needing wild dragon needs, too.

Humans like Grimmel are extremely dangerous to dragons and will continue to arise, so dragons need to go to an area separate from humans to live in optimal peace.

Hiccup and Toothless’ powerful friendship will separate (insofar as physical location) due to the first two points

I know you’re not the only person I’ve talked to who wanted a longer time because you feel like certain elements were cramped, needed more breathing room, or that dangerous plot points didn’t get enough sense of weight. More time would presumably give that flow and sense of scale and danger. Now, it’s true that more time would give us more content to develop these things. That said, I believe solutions aren’t always “add more.” Creating good art isn’t about adding new things; it’s about knowing when to take away or alter, and how to make every second of your creation count optimally.

I remember when I was doing my music composition degree, my instructors hammered into me what would make a good final piece: the editing process of deleting measures - even measures that were really good! - because they didn’t fit what the final product needed. It’s painful to delete, but ultimately, it’s freeing; instead of making a music piece more cluttered to put all possible good ideas in, I can make it less cluttered, more manageable, more beautiful, more meaningful, and more effective to audiences. A better overall piece isn’t putting in every good idea I have; it’s leaving the piece with the beautiful ideas it needs.

I suggest The Hidden World doesn’t need added materials so much as it needs refining what’s already there.

Budget, production green lighting, and carefulness to the script all seem to have been done. HTTYD 3 was given a longer production time than originally planned. They pushed back the date exactly so they could make their best product. Interviews with people like DeBlois and Spielberg (who read several definitions of the script) talk about how much the script was transformed and bettered through its drafts. They did enough tweaking and care to rework the script. As for budget, the movie was 129 million USD, which sure was the cheapest of the HTTYD trilogy to create, but it’s about on par with what DreamWorks has spent on other movies like Home and Trolls - it’s not like there was skimping - and it’s all about making your money count, which I think this glorious, top notch animation quality film effectively did. So from what I’ve heard, I think production ran fine and we can’t question THW there.

I think most of THW’s problems can be solved simply by tweaking how scenes go down, taking a few small elements out, and adding a few small elements in. It doesn’t need time changes; it needs internal modifications to what’s already there. What I propose wouldn’t change much of the movie’s length - though maybe I we could add 5-8 minutes for things like a longer climax.

1. To Feel Less “Cluttered” or “Rushed”

The movie didn’t feel rushed to me or too cluttered, but it’s cluttered. You’re right. In addition to creating less clutter, my suggested tweaks will clear up time THW can spend elsewhere, streamline THW into fewer palatable essential ideas, and give a slight tone makeover that will add more sense of danger and conflict that THW needs.

Fewer humor side gags with minor characters (and less time spent on them). The gang’s antics are fun additions, yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re central to what the plot needs. Spending too much time with them adds clutter and takes away from plot-central, tone-central material. There’s a huge gaggle of gags in THW, more than any movie needs in a less-than-two-hour-long run time. Do we need all these to give THW its comic relief? Don’t get me wrong - I loved the humor - but time needs to be prioritized, and the movie will be improved once “less is more.”

Less time with Tuffnut’s pep talks. This goes with my first point. This comedic gag was lengthy in particular. It’s in part because it connects to the idea of Hiccstrid marrying, which THW does make more central in its themes. However, I also propose:

Spend less time (or delete) the will-they won’t-they marry Hiccstrid plot. THW intends to parallel Hiccup and Toothless maturing into adulthood, including their romantic connections. However, a will-they won’t-they marry subplot in Hiccstrid isn’t needed to create that parallel. Not to mention: it can be uncomfortable to have this undertone of romance as “required” adulthood maturation, and the fact that Hiccstrid are so close and intimate makes it feel “off” that they’re so uncomfortable talking about marriage. Spend less time here, simply make fans aware they’re going to marry in the future but not today, and return to the main relationships THW needs to pay attention to: that of Hicctooth and Nightlight.

2. To Make Grimmel a Greater Sense of Threat

One of the central points is that Grimmel is extremely dangerous and represents one of many humans that’ll continue to be a threat to dragons. While Grimmel can be overcome, Hiccup will need to interact with Grimmel in such a way he can understand that dragons and humans cannot coexist in today’s civilization without continuing to risk danger, and that it’s best for everyone to live happily in two separate civilizations. It’s not being defeated by the enemy’s oppression, but taking a brilliant countermeasure to give humans and dragons both a better existence.

Making Grimmel feel like a greater sense of threat, and helping audience members understand what Grimmel represents overarchingly of humanity’s current antagonistic state, will help us and Hiccup process why a separation is best. This can be done by:

Show Grimmel’s impact on human society. All we’d have to do is change what his base looks like: it could be located in an area taken over from another human civilization, showing his army’s power and place in this world over humans.

Greater weight placed on Berk’s exodus. The Hooligans lost their home, but it’s played too lightly. It’s not written optimally as an emotionally impacting or destabilizing moment, which decreases the sense of threat Grimmel has. Instead of having the Hooligans excited to find New Berk, show them grieving. They can butt against Hiccup’s ideas of finding the Hidden World, but instead in a way where they’re frustrated at his naive solution and hurt at what they left behind. This isn’t adding time to THW; this is tweaking phraseology and presenting an event differently.

Change how Berk is abandoned. To make the attack feel more dire, threatening, either: 1. Have the Hooligans more reluctant and grumpy to leave in the town meeting, and not play the leaving scene so lightly, or 2. Have Grimmel chase them out of Berk so they have to flee then and there. This might even reduce time!

Show Grimmel’s power over dragons. We could have a few-second-long flashback of him standing over a field of dead Night Fury bodies, or have his place cloaked in dragon skins or skulls.

Show Grimmel’s power as a warlord. Grimmel acts in almost a solo fashion, despite cooperating with warlords and having an army. It doesn’t give us a good sense of scale. Show his interactions better with the whole of his forces to make him feel more dangerous, and for humanity as a whole to feel more like a threat against dragons. For example, in the scenes where he’s trying to trap the dragon riders, show him commanding more people.

Show Grimmel’s impact on the dragon (and/or human worlds) through landscape. What if, as the Hairy Hooligans try to find a new place to stay, they fly over several islands that have been destroyed by Grimmel’s forces? Either human civilizations, or homes once havens to dragons, with characters making comment they “hope” people got away. And what if, when Grimmel takes their dragons near the end of THW, it’s again through more violence and a raid and fire and destruction?

Conversations more clearly talk about Grimmel’s dangers over dragons and humans, and how he’s one of many people that’ll arise. This idea is embedded in THW dialogue, but not clearly enough to fully grasp its weight, especially not in the sense we see characters grasp this. Have Hiccup and Astrid and Valka or something talk about how widely destructive Grimmel is, how even once he’s gone another man like him will take his place, and that while they may continue to fight and win for human and dragonkind, it’s ultimately not the right move to make for everyone to live safest and alive. A conversation laying this out makes a world of difference in our understanding of what dangers are going down and why we need to come to the solution THW concludes with. Again, this isn’t adding time; it’s changing phraseology.

Add a few minutes to the climax. Make the final fight with Grimmel obviously the final fight, the threat bigger, the action more intense.

Perhaps show that Berk’s done good work changing the world by their choices. Even though Berk ultimately decides to let the dragons go, they are meant to be the voice of peace that changes their world. The good guys can’t resign to letting themselves live under the thumb of bad guys’ choices. Show that they’ve made a difference - Grimmel and his armies are gone and the world is regrowing (no more torched landscape, if we add that element in) - but that it’s still going to help their world by letting dragons go, too… for this generation, at least.

3. To Make Hiccup and Toothless’ Parting Jive Better

Hiccup and Toothless separate out of need - they can’t live in the same place for the better of both their kinds. However, since the movie spends so much time on Toothless chasing after the Light Fury, we don’t get that full sense of need. I propose:

Open THW with a clear Hicctooth sappy bonding moment. We need things like “Forbidden Friendship” and “Where No One Goes” to feel the power of Hicctooth’s love. Give us that starting sense in THW of how close they are before adding in the complications. It can even be done by tweaking how the opening fight scene goes down.

Show dragons profiting by living with humans, but it also being Complicated with their wild side. We need to acknowledge that the relationship between humans and dragons has done the dragons good, too! Otherwise it might feel incongruous with the rest of the franchise.

Show dragons being unfit in the urban area through their own restlessness. The movie tries to show this with Moosie Boi being too big for Berk, and Berk being so crowded with dragons Gobber finds the soup unsanitary. But if we see Stormfly restless and want to leave for the Hidden World, too, wouldn’t this say something more about where dragons are pulled to and belong?

Less time spent on Toothless investigating the Night Fury. You can’t cut this down too much or we’ll feel like rushing, but since THW focuses so much on just Toothless and the Light Fury’s connection rather than an overarching problem for dragons, it’s hard to feel the full-scale issues of the problem. Making it just him and her feels more like a hook up love story than “dragons and humans are incompatible for their needs.”

Change Toothless’ body language. Show more emotional division in Toothless about his conflicting options. Show him hesitant to leave Hiccup and the two interact over that. Show him lonely away from his kind when with Hooligans. Show him feeling that loneliness met - that deep emotional need of being with his own species - when he’d thought was lost to him (rather than focusing on it being a romantic hookup interest). This doesn’t take more time; it tweaks what was already given on screen.

Change Toothless’ emotions with the Light Fury to feel more like loneliness being met than horny boi practicing kissing with a rock. This does a better job of showing that Toothless has a deep need that needs to be met as a wild animal and as a social draconic species.

Change conversations Hiccup has with humans about Toothless’ struggle. Maybe have Hiccup processing less with people and more by himself or with Toothless. Don’t write the conversations with people be about “Toothless has a girlfriend” and “of course he left.” Discuss instead how Night Furies are social creatures and Toothless hasn’t been with his kind in six years - that’s a huge hole in his heart being filled. Validate the deep connection Hiccup and Toothless have, while simultaneously acknowledging the struggle of this moment now. The movie shows that the Light Fury can never be domesticated, so I think that’s fine, but maybe one line from Astrid saying, “I don’t think she’ll come to live with us,” would be enough to help other audience members pick that up too.

More time spent on all dragons being in danger, and Toothless as an alpha unable to protect them with Hairy Hooligans. The story doesn’t show Toothless being much of an alpha - intentional - until he reaches the Hidden World and it clicks. But I suggest it’d be more effective to pull this out more than having an issue with Moose Boi taking up too much space in Berk, and Berk being so crowded Gobber has a dragon in his soup.

Put more of a deal on Toothless being an alpha. You can say that Toothless didn’t understand or use his role as alpha when with humans, but I think showing more sense of conflict, and of an alpha needing to be wild to protect his own, would be useful. Make this an issue for all dragons. The alpha status being used as a blackmail device against Toothless to keep the Light Fury alive could be replaced with us seeing the full species of dragonkind being unable to be protected by an alpha apart from his own people. More needs to be done than dragons bowing to him in one scene to understand what the alpha does for his society.

Show Toothless with more Light Furies. The Light Fury being his singular focus is great. But what about, in the Hidden World, Hiccup and Astrid watch Toothless interacting with a whole group of Night Furies, and he’s clearly in a situation that was Made For Him?

THW already has great content in there - Toothless and the Light Fury interacting, Hiccup crying when he realizes Toothless is fit in the Hidden World, Hiccup freaking out and Astrid comforting him when he feels a low, and Hiccup and Toothless parting ways touchingly at the end.

With these proposed tweaks, we get Toothless and Hiccup’s relationship being addressed deeply from the angle of both friends. We understand what both Toothless and Hiccup emotionally feel, and palatably sense how both love the other. We get a sense that Toothless is attracted to the Light Fury and might want to mate, but that she’s also calling him into a wild life and reminding him that he’s been alone, separated from his kind. We get a sense that it’s not just Toothless, but all dragons who might be called back to the Hidden World. We get a sense that it’s not just Toothless, but his whole role as alpha affecting the entirety of dragonkind.

And once we add in a greater sense of Grimmel being dangerous, and that more humans like him will continue to rise up, we can understand why Berk would release all their dragons. It’s not that dragons hate living with humans - THW can make that clear - and it’s not that dragons haven’t been profited by living with humans. But in the current call, the current situation, it’s best to go to the Hidden World.

I’m mostly tweaking how scenes go down, changing lines and reactions rather than adding material. Feel free to propose a longer movie! For me, THW already has enough space to share its message. Maybe it needed to be a few minutes longer, but I suppose my own sense is that they had enough time to budget in this material, make a smooth-flowing movie with all the material they needed to present, and come away with an astounding storyline.

Like you, this isn’t meant to judge the movie as bad! It isn’t bad! It’s downright wonderful in many aspects. I’m so happy I’ve seen it and can scream over it! Simply, if I were in charge of tweaking the script, these are the first alterations I’d make, and I think it would make THW even better.

#long post #httyd 3 spoilers #httyd 3 criticism #httyd3 #httyd 3 #How to Train Your Dragon 3 #THW #The Hidden World #analysis #my analysis #Hiccup #Toothless #Hiccup and Toothless #Light Fury #Grimmel #ask #ask me #awesome anonymous friend #faq

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professortennant · 6 years ago

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Sam/Jack Rec List, Pt. 1

This is mostly for me in case my bookmarks are lost but yeah! I’ve gone through like 90% of AO3, a good chunk of ff.net, and I just dived into LJ. But since I have 103 fics already bookmarked, I’m just gonna put this list up first and then add to it later.

Plz read the tags of each fic to avoid stuff you don’t wanna read. If you read something and love it, GO TELL THE AUTHOR SO THEY WRITE MORE.

Absolute Fucking Favorites (aka I have read these more times than I feel comfortable admitting)

We Made It Series: A series of connected episode tags beginning with Forever in a Day. Sam shows up on Jack's doorstep with a six pack of beer, a bottle of cheap wine and a package of chicken breasts. Jack's confused. They cook dinner.

Taking Christmas Off: How Sam and Jack end up spending Christmas alone together every single year, accidentally at first, and then very much on purpose. A fluffy/shippy Christmas fic in eight parts, with spoilers through season 8.

The Dreams We Left Behind: The day Sam Carter marries Pete Shanahan is not the worst day of Jack’s life; he’s already lived that day. But that doesn't make it easy.

Like Kissing a Stranger: There is not one day he spends on this planet, or any other, that his mouth doesn't get him into trouble.(An episode tag for Point Of View.)

Retrospective: Sam doesn’t give it a name, this feeling. She doesn’t even think about it much, preferring to glimpse it obliquely from the corner of her eye. It’s a secret delight that she shares with no one, scarcely even herself.One story in eight parts charting Sam and Jack’s relationship from the start of S1 to the end of S8.

The Short Straw: She hadn't set out to cheat, certainly, but had thought that she'd at least be able to interpret her own work in a way that would lead to victory. (Tag for Shades of Grey)

Post-Eps/Episode Tags (except for Threads, which is its own category)

The Price of Edora: Sam suffers the consequences of pushing herself too hard in order to bring Jack back from Edora.

For Just One Taste of This: After that, though, things got tricky and dangerous because they pushed a little more and went a little (a lot) further off that deep end, and soon it was the two of them alone in the empty barracks and this wasn’t wrong, was it, just sitting side by side in the darkness? (Post Divide and Conquer)

Let Your Demons Run: (here can't be that many eyes in the building that haven't noticed her. Post-ep for Entity.

Midnight at the Oasis: What if Abydos wasn't destroyed, and Jack and Sam really did go to Skaara's wedding? A short AU based on the wonderful (!) exchange among the three at the beginning of Full Circle.

Thyself, Unknown: And then they were strangers again and their world was brand new with signs of aging. Beneath the Surface

Unlearn your Stars: Thera turned her eyes toward the ceiling, as if she could see through the miles of earth and snow to the sky beyond. Something about her seemed to yearn, and for reasons he could not fathom Jonah felt like Thera belonged there. Among the stars. (Beneath the Surface)

Transcendental: Alternate Sam and Jack who got stranded in the alternate timeline in Moebius.

The Fundamental Theorem of Samantha Carter: Samantha Carter knew precisely what she wanted. And then she didn’t. S.8 Full Alert through Threads with references to Gemini.

The Rainy Season: Tag for The Light. Their arguing was beginning to grate on her nerves.

Icarus Ascending: What if Jack and Sam didn't keep it in the room after all? A/U tag to Divide and Conquer.

The Space Between: There's a little space between them on the bed. Small enough to be close, but enough space to remind them where the line should be. (tag for Death Knell.)

Mimesis: Jack tries to help Carter deal with her time spent with Fifth and the Replicators.

A Rush of Blood to the Head: "You volunteering to come with me, Carter?" Sam and Jack deal (or don't) with the creation of mini!Jack.

The Breaking Point: Daniel’s ‘death’ in Meridian forces Sam Carter to reevaluate her life and what really matters to her.

Window on a Room: The first time around, Sam had found that face the Colonel was making to be endearing, in the increasingly problematic way she found pretty much everything he did to be endearing. The second time, she had found it alarming - not the Colonel specifically, of course, just the fact that she’d already experienced that exact moment not ten hours earlier. She went from being alarmed on the second loop to being frustrated, baffled and discouraged in subsequent loops as their attempts to stop the looping had all failed. And now that they had settled into this routine, with Sam and Teal’c, loop after loop, learning to translate the altar text themselves, well now she was just tired. Not even the Colonel’s problematically endearing face was helping.Another loop, she thought to herself. Here we go again.

black holes and revelations: It’s late and dark and as far as she’s concerned, the world has stopped for them (they’d done the Earth a few favors, it's time one was returned).

Lifelines: Everyone expects her to be so resilient--but beneath her calm exterior seethe emotions beyond her control and understanding. Months post "Beneath the Surface", Sam finally has to face it all, and find a way to accept the way things have to be.

Reflections on a Broken Surface: Episode tag to Beneath the Surface. How Sam and Jack became a couple in the ep.

Tilting at Windmills: Jack's struggling to deal with the events of Euronda and Alar's people. Angry, depressed, and alone, he needs Sam's help to find his way home, literally, and figuratively.

untitled: Sam/Jack, word prompt- 'never' Episode tag to Death Knell

the art of reincarnation: Detoxing in a Goa’uld palace, Jack struggles with something he can't let go, and Sam struggles with everything.

Cracks in the Glass: Doctor Carter has stepped through the mirror-seeking refuge from her ravaged world. Her presence forces Sam and Jack to question their own decisions. Sam and Jack focused episode enhancement to "Point of View".

Before the Invitation: A chance meeting in the commissary leads to some unintended revelations. (Set just prior to 'Nemesis')

Threads

Full Disclosure: She looks at him with that complex expression that’s punctuated their relationship ever since Pete barged onto the scene. The one that looks like a question, or a plea – the one he’s never really understood and has never dared pursue.

Down to the Bone: She knows now, what’s essential.

Sooner: Some bonus scenes for "Threads," because a lot went on in and around that episode that we just didn't get to see.

an angel came down: The first Christmas after her father dies is rough. The second Christmas after her father dies is better.

Breathe In: It wasn’t an immediate thing, despite what people thought. They didn’t jump each other the second SG1 was on vacation, with her emotionally vulnerable after her father’s death and no longer engaged, or him now free of SG Command and DC-bound.

Sam or Jack are Tortured/Abused (but it ends happily)

Primary Emotion: After seventeen weeks of torture in a Goa'uld prison, Samantha Carter is rescued by SG-1. In the time that follows she must relearn how to relate to her team, reassess her relationships with both herself and others, and decide whether or not she'll continue to step through the Stargate. Luckily she's got the benefit of a good psychologist and the love of a great man.

Character: SG1 is kidnapped by an alien king who needs Sam to perpetuate his bloodline & will do anything to possess her. The team must find a way to escape before she pays the ultimate price for her defiance.

Compos Mentis: After Colonel O'Neill is stranded on a seemingly friendly planet, it's up to his team to rescue him. Who they find, though, isn't the man they left behind.

Crawl from the Chasm: After Jack's experiences in Ba'al's Abyss, he struggles to find peace. Angsty Jack/Sam Ship.

After All: They’d been trapped for a month. He’d been tortured within an inch of her life. And then their roles had been reversed.

All We Need of Hell: Jack is captured and tortured and when he returns, he just doesn’t see the point in following the regs anymore--Sam is essential. And he convinces her to forget the regs, too. (Dark fic). (chap 2)

Aliens Made Them Do It

Auctions and Consequences: Slavery has been abolished for good reason, but apparently not everyone got the memo… landing Sam and Jack in hot water.

Auction and Reaction (sequel to the above): Jack manages to get himself captured and Sam is sent to negotiate for his freedom. Unfortunately, the matriarch in charge of the male slaves is unconvinced of her claim and threatens to keep Jack as her personal slave.

Relief: How they'd managed to gate to a planet right in the middle of their annual fertility festival was beyond him.

in doorways and dreams i run to you: They had stepped through the gate together. They were looking for something.Light.There had been a blinding light and then nothing. Nothing but the heat and the taste of his skin on her lips. And now he was on his knees and she wasn't stopping him from sliding a hand underneath her.

Beautiful Far Away: While on a routine exploratory mission, Colonel Jack O'Neill and Captain Samantha Carter get caught up in a children's game that turns out to be the beginning of Rorilian marriage rites. When seismic activity starts to rock the village, the local leaders demand the ritual be seen through to its natural conclusion to avoid further angering their gods. Sam's equipment suggests the tremors are caused by an unidentifiable metal, but her science seems to be a point of contention amongst the leaders. She's convinced she needs just a little more time to figure out what is happening on the planet. Unfortunately, that means she's jumping into a ritual marriage with her new commanding officer. What could possibly go wrong?

Xanadu: The team travels offworld to take care of some mining negotiations, only to meet with an unanticipated challenge on P3X-427.

5 Times Fic

Five Times Jack Sees Sam Out of Uniform

The Nature We Leave Behind Us: 5 Times Daniel (and Teal’c) find out or suspect about Sam and Jack

Five Times Jack Came Close to Breaking the Frat Regs with Sam

Desperation: 5 times Jack kisses Sam

Ambient: 3 morning-afters that they miss and 1 they don’t.

5 missing ship scenes from s9/s10

5 times jack asked sam out and 1 time he didn’t have to

Stranded/Retired/Moved Off-World

My Scars Healed (aka the Cottage AU): Abandoned off-world, living is about more than just survival.

In Media Res: When Sam and Jack are taken captive and put to work in a mining camp, that turns out to be the least of their troubles. Forced by circumstance to live in close proximity, their time as captives has consequences neither one foresees.

Compliance: The end comes fast. One moment it’s a normal day with paperwork and bad coffee and the next it’s a scramble for the event horizon as the Mountain comes down around them. The base empties out with surprising efficiency, and by the time Jack hangs up the red phone on the last conversation he’ll ever have with the President, only Carter and Daniel and a couple techs are still in the gate room, the last of the supplies being sent through to their fall back site.

I Love It When a Plan Comes Together: Dear Airline, I was marooned on an alien planet…

And then I dreamt of yes: The universe has really bad timing, but neither Sam or Jack is ready to give it the last word.

The Final Straw: Sam's injured and trapped off-world.

Twilight: General O'Neill gets ansty to do some Gate travel, but a natural phenomenon on another world causes problems and changes things

Bird Stealing Bread: Jack had actually imagined being stranded off-world quite a few times. But he really, really, really hadn't counted on being stranded off-world with Sam. And Pete.

Under the Sun: ABANDONED FIC BUT IT’S SO GOOD. When lightning strikes the DHD and strands Sam and Jack alone on a planet, they must rely on one another to get through until help can arrive. Soon, though, they discover they're not alone on the planet and things change. Suddenly they're thrust into local politics and Sam is drafted to help save the locals' lives. Perhaps, if they play their cards right, all of it can help them get home.

Total AU

String Theory: Dr. Samantha Carter joins the SGC and discovers a life she never expected.

Imprimatura: Even in a completely different reality, where a strictly enforced color-based caste system stands between them, some things remain the same.

How to Start a Fire: She denies it's physical attraction. He denies it's anything but. Sam/Jack. Changeling Universe.

Convergence Series: Jack O’Neill is a man waiting to die, and she’s the only one brave enough not to look away.

Right as rain: Jack never went on the Abydos mission. Charlie never died. But when Jack accidentally activates a device that Kawalsky brings by the Academy, he catches the interest of a certain Major Carter. Soon he finds himself in for one hell of a ride, and if aliens and space travel and weird DNA weren't crazy enough, he might actually be falling in love with a theoretical astrophysicist...

The Dating Game: Catherine Langford had been instrumental in getting AU Sam/Jack together in There But For The Grace of God

Defining Family: Set after "Ripple Effect". What happens to Janet and the rest of the alternate SG-1 team after the episode? How does it affect our reality?

Worlds Apart: An Ancient device sends Jack and Sam to a world where everything is just a little bit... wrong. Why? Can they cope with the differences? And, most importantly, can they find their way back?

I don’t know what to categorize these as but they’re amazing

Deep City Lights: He picks her up in a blue convertible. (Road trip fic where they say ‘fuck the regs’ and then remember the regs)

we build then we break (and build up again): Sam’s last mission on SG-1, and the life that follows.

the slow revelation of self: In the beginning there was sex. And it was good.

untitled: on a mission, sam and jack are painting their mark on a wall.

things not dreamed: Daniel doesn't understand their need to fly.

Cultural Drift: Six days before the shit hit the fan and nothing was ever the same again, Daniel fell over a tablet on P3X-324. That was two years ago.

Concentric Unto Thee: Her attempts at normality have never worked before, and Jack won't stand for any attempts to apply the logic of command to their relationship.

the lesson: Jack and Sam haven’t wasted the three years they’ve been cut off from Earth…and though the price is high, they manage to teach that lesson to another couple who badly needed to learn it.

Escape Pod: "I just need," shift, "to move," shift, "a little." (Accidental Stimulation fic) Tonight: It's been too many years of it, the death, the resurrection, the sheer and aching loneliness, the hurt that comes from walking away.

Rocket Fuel: Sam and Jack get together after Heroes but also AU + Christmas.

Home Economics: He would never have imagined that the biggest problem Sam Carter would have with his house would be his toaster.

Atlantis/Continuum

Gravity Always Wins in the End: After Sam is held hostage, Jack takes an impromptu trip to Atlantis.

Backlit: Carter turns 43 years old on day 6 of a 14-day run to P98-007 aboard the General Hammond. The only events that mark the occasion are the little note Daniel must have stuffed into her pack before she left, a cheerful "Happy Birthday, Ma'am" from her second over a morning cup of coffee, and a long stare at herself in the mirror after she washes her face before bed. It's not like she expected more.

Yesterday’s Life: She feels frayed and faded, like a scrap of fabric accidentally discarded and forced to weather the elements. S/J, spoilers for Stargate: Continuum.

Distance: Sam contemplates the difficulties of a long distance relationship with Jack on Valentine's Day...

Post-Series

Look Again Into Your Heart: It's not that cold, not by the standard of some of the places she's been in the last decade or so of her life, but then again, she's not used to braving the weather in heels and an evening dress.

Follow the Star of the North: When Jack talked about losing himself in Minnesota, Sam never really understood the appeal.

Radio Silence: “It’s Mitchell.”He grabbed the phone out of her hand, smiling at the horrified expression on her face when he flicked it open and held it to his ear.“This is General O’Neill. Is the world ending?”

Rainy Days: Sam and Jack spend a rainy day at the cabin

The Lies You Feed Yourself: They simply aren’t part of each other’s worlds anymore. They haven’t been for years. Jack and Sam three years after they leave the SGC.

Bygones: He's a man of few words. Sam, however, wants to hear a couple of specific ones - at least once. It takes another woman to help her understand just how her husband communicates.

Twelve Years Two Weeks: She had finally 'switched off'. It had taken her a few days to rid herself of the itch that she was neglecting a to-do list the size of her arm.

DC Series: SG-1 is moving on, but Sam is standing still.

Interlude: Jack turns up unexpectedly, and he and Sam make an important decision.

fly me to the moon: Jack is baffled. What do you do for a woman's 40th birthday when she routinely explores alien planets, has blown up a sun, and raced in the Loop of Kon Garat? Give her the moon of course.

Folding a Map: Distance makes Jack an unhappy camper.

Taur’i Whispers: "He likes her throaty laugh. He likes that her voice has dropped and softened in the years he's known her." - Sam/Jack, romance and a bit of angst and hurt/comfort

Blue Dark: The sun’s barely peeking above the horizon and already she’s up, perched on a stool at the breakfast bar in his kitchen, her index finger circling the rim of her coffee cup.“And we have to go to this?” she asks, taking a sip of the hot beverage.

Un-fish: “Caught any un-fish?” she asked softly.Their lives would never be normal because of little things like fish that were or were not there and sometimes he wondered who had done what exactly to his pond to drive the fish away. He knew better than to ask, unwilling to listen to her explain to him the various possibilities of… whatever.

Real Life: This was what she'd been waiting for, held out for all those years. Someone -- him -- to come home with every night, to sink into after saving the world or spending three days dug in on an alien planet with fifty-odd Jaffa between her team and the 'gate, someone who knew just how she liked to be touched... She rolled onto her back, offering sleepy kisses when his lips crossed hers, sighing when his wandering hands brushed across her belly...

#sam x jack #sg1 fic #stargate sg1 #stargate #fic rec #rec list #jack x sam

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head-and-heart · 7 years ago

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What do you think, when (episode) Bellamy fall in love with Clarke ?

This is such a complicated question, because I don’t think there’s an actual concrete moment or episode in the series that you can say Bellamy fell in love with Clarke. The feelings were gradual, slow to form, and constantly evolving over time.

The thing is, I don’t think it’s possible to pinpoint the exact moment a person falls in love with someone and sort their feelings into neat little boxes or pin it up on a chart. Emotions are not discrete data; they are continuous, constantly shifting and changing over time. There wasn’t a moment where Bellamy was not in love with Clarke and then - boom - suddenly, he was. It happened a lot slower than that, a lot more subtly.

I think that people fall in love with each other in pieces. It doesn’t happen all at once, but step by step.

A long time ago, I answered an ask that is kind of similar to this one where I basically outlined the evolution and stages of Bellamy’s feelings toward Clarke throughout the first three seasons. It was quite in-depth and you can read all about it here. I’m not going to restate everything in that post, but there are a few key moments that I think are worth revisiting. Especially considering how long its been since I wrote that post - over a year!

god i don’t know if what i’m feeling is nostalgia or distress over the fact that that much time has already passed; please never bring me back to the dark days ever again

I stated in that post I just linked that I don’t - personally - think Bellamy and Clarke fell in love with each other in Season 1, and I am still of that belief. I think that Season 1 was largely about the early stages in development of their relationship: the basis for the trust, respect, vulnerability, and companionship that will later form the most integral pieces of what Bellarke really is.

Was there potentially romantic cues and subtext planted there by the writers/directors? Absolutely, if Day Trip is any indication. But I think this had more to do with the writers trying to open up the possibility for a love story between Bellamy and Clarke in later seasons rather than pursuing it in the present.

However, that being said, I do think that Bellamy and Clarke fell in love with the idea of each other in Season 1. Since we’re talking about Bellamy’s feelings in particular, I think that Bellamy fell in love with everything that Clarke symbolized and - later - he fell in love with her, too.

But, every love story has to start from somewhere. And - for Bellamy - I think it started with a vision, one that Clarke gave him. So let’s take it back to Season 1.

A lot of the time, in order to address the “when” of these things, I think it’s important to address the “why”. Why did Bellamy fall in love with Clarke?

Well, like I said, it was because she symbolized something to him: hope.

I wrote a big, long meta about this a little while ago, explaining in extreme length all the ways in which Clarke Griffin gave Bellamy hope and change his point of view (if you’re interested in reading - as it may enlighten some of my points - the link is here) so I’m going to steal from that a bit.

Here is one key part:

“She showed him that there was good in the world, that someone empathetic and strong and intelligent and kind could still be born out of a corrupt society. Clarke Griffin showed Bellamy that good people still existed, that the council who floated his mother was not an accurate representation of the whole of society. There was more to life than what they left behind on the Ark. It was a chance to cross the border between the social classes and see people for who they are, not just what they represent. She gave him hope that they could do better, be better than the ones who preceded them.”

The first time I see Bellamy being exposed to this side of Clarke is in 1x03, when she takes the knife out of his hand and mercy-kills Atom. In my first post, I talk about how I believe this moment to be significant because it is the first time Bellamy truly acknowledges Clarke’s strength. This is when he starts to respect her, and this is also when Clarke first shows Bellamy that there might be an alternative to the close-minded version of the Ark he’s been playing in his mind on rewind for the past 23 years.

Bellamy is not in love with Clarke in 1x03, but he’s started to see her, and that sets in motion a chain of events that inevitably lead to him falling in love with her over time.

“She believed in him, believed in his worth. She saw through his mask, knocked over his walls and unveiled the person he truly is inside. Something Bellamy thought no one would ever do, something he thought no one would ever care enough about to try.”

The moment that I really want to focus is on is the moment in 1x05 after Raven tells Bellamy that Jaha isn’t dead, and this is what Clarke says to him, “Don’t you see what this means? You’re not a murderer. You always did what you had to do to protect your sister: that’s who you are.”

Why?

Because this is the moment that I think Bellamy’s perspective really starts to change. All his life, Bellamy has been mistreated, misunderstood - even by his own sister. But then this girl tells him with more conviction than he could ever muster on his own behalf that what the world has tried to tell him - that’s he’s a monster, that he’s a killer - is wrong. Clarke was the first person to truly see Bellamy for who he is and I think this moment, in 1x05, is when Bellamy starts to see it too.

She gives him hope, that he could be better. She tried to show him, in 1x04 (”I saw you in the woods with Atom; I know you’re not a killer!”) but I think this is the first time Bellamy starts to actually believe it.

He sees the image Clarke is showing him, of what he could be, and he wants to believe it.

This next part is focussing on what happens in Day Trip, under the tree, which is the next significant moment I want to talk about.

“For the first time, someone really saw the true Bellamy Blake. The first time. And she acted as though who he was, at his core, was a good thing.

No one but Octavia had ever been allowed to see who he truly was, he couldn’t afford to let anyone in. But Clarke forced herself into that place. She found her way in.

I genuinely believe that Bellamy has always wanted to be a better man - not just because Clarke made him want to - but I do think that Clarke gave him the hope that he actually could be.

Clarke Griffin offered him another choice, where he never had one before: she offered him the choice of a fresh start.”

This is more of the same that I already talked about - Clarke essentially showed Bellamy another way. When she offered him forgiveness, that was a key moment in Bellarke’s relationship because - suddenly - Bellamy saw another option for himself. And for the future.

“Bellamy fell in love with what Clarke showed him before he fell in love with her. He fell in love with the concept of hope, that this girl could offer him another way. He fell in love with her conviction that he was a good person, that he had worth. He fell in love with the world through her eyes - her relentless optimism and determination to build a functioning society, a better society than the one they left behind in space.”

The development of Bellarke’s relationship in episodes 1x03 through 1x08 established the groundwork for what their relationship now. Like I said, I think Bellamy fell in love with everything that Clarke symbolized and stood for before he fell in love with her. That moment is extremely difficult to pinpoint but all I know is that at some point between Day Trip and Human Trials, a huge shift in the way Bellamy viewed his relationship with Clarke (and what, up until then, had only been a partnership) occurred.

It’s edging onto three years since I’ve joined this fandom and in all of that time I have never - never - found someone with a reasonable interpretation of the scene where Bellamy looks from Octavia and then to Clarke while they’re sleeping in 2x05 that explains what was going on in Bellamy’s head in a non-romantic context.

I don’t know when Bellamy first fell in love with Clarke. We’ll probably never know.

But I think this is the very first time where Bellamy has started to clue into his own feelings. Maybe not accepted them yet, or even identified them for what they are, but he knows that what he feels for Clarke is not the same as the familial love he feels for his sister.

And by the time she walks away from him in 2x16, I have no doubt that Bellamy Blake is completely and undeniably gone for Clarke Griffin.

So, to answer your question ... I can’t, really. All I can do is attempt to narrow it down to some sort of timeline. To summarize, I believe that Bellamy was first attracted to the possibilities that Clarke represented and he gradually fell in love with those things in stages sometime between 1x03 and 1x08 (but it picked up after 1x05). I think the romantic feelings developed somewhere between Day Trip and Human Trials (2x05), and I think that the more intense love that we see in Season 3 and 4 grew its roots during some point in Season 2.

Beyond that, its so hard to say. Their love is constantly developing and changing, and its still not done.

#the 100 #bellarke #bellamy blake #clarke griffin #the 100 meta #kate's ask box #meta: what all great things are made of #otp: maybe together will be our always #bellamy blake: he's the key to everything

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multi-lefaiye · 2 years ago

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thank u for the encouragement nico, i am going to talk about markus and juno <3

so i have already talked a bit about these two, but to give a recap: juno is one of my void-walker ocs, essentially an immortal who died but they got better. markus, meanwhile, is a regular human that juno met in the 1980s (i’m thinking they met in like... june of 1983), a very very sad man who lost his wife in an accident and spiraled as a result.

they didn’t like each other at all at first, but they found a lot of common ground with each other and eventually became very close. i’m still not sure if their relationship was romantic or platonic or something else, but it was close. and tbh i think it might server the story better to leave the exact nature of it up to interpretation.

juno and markus helped each other become better people, though by the time of the main plot of a modern ghost story, they’re not in each other’s lives anymore. what happened? good question!

anyway i don’t have as many concrete thoughts as i had earlier b/c my brain has gone a bit soupy, but i do have some thoughts to offer

- one thing that would be interesting to come up is the fact that juno actually did have children before they became a void-walker, and markus and his wife had always wanted to have children but things never really worked out. i think there could be an interesting dichotomy there, in like... juno never really wanted kids but had them b/c It Was The 1800s and they didn’t have much of a choice, meanwhile markus and his wife (who needs a name. i think i’m gonna call her juliana, but we’ll see) wanted so so badly to have kids but couldn’t due to circumstances beyond their control.

- a big theme i think would be explored in this story would be the concepts of life and death and like. the big question of what truly happens after death. i think a lot of markus’s friendship with juno at first would be based around the fact that neither of them really knows, but they both WANT to know, just for very different reasons.

- something something.... juno being, by all technicalities, someone who is dead and teaching markus what it really means to be alive and to truly enjoy and embrace the life he has.

- flower symbolism out the fucking wazoo. you will not be safe from this. none of you will be safe from this.

- i had a tentative/working title occur to me earlier so uhhhh i think for now i’m going to call this We Smell of Dying Flowers.

i thought i had more but i am rotating this in my head so fast y’all

VIBRATES I wanna talk about Juno and Markus, I wanna talk about Juno and Markus, I wanna talk ab

#we smell of dying flowers #multi makes text posts #markus torres #juno london #queueing this up for tomorrow b/c it is late #romance mention cw #there's other thoughts but it is late and i am a sleeby man

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ianrichards · 4 years ago

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snickerl · 8 years ago

Text

Elixir Vitae

AU fanfic set around the time of IWTB.

A/N: Finally…..

Find previous chapters here: Chapter I / Chapter II / Chapter III / Chapter IV / Chapter V / Chapter VI / Chapter VII / Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Another movie night is in the making.

Two bowls of popcorn - a bigger one buttered and salted, a smaller one plain - sit on the coffee table, a copy of one of the Indiana Jones movies - I can’t remember which one - is popped into the DVD player, the logs are crackling in the fireplace, and I’m sitting on the sofa with a blanket on my lap waiting for Scully to join me.

I hear her hopping down the stairs and she greets me fondling my neck.

Oh yeah, keep doing that, Scully!

“Sorry for letting you wait,” she apologizes and makes herself comfortable on the other side of the sofa. Without asking or hesitating she puts her feet on my lap and I can’t keep myself from rejoicing over the fact that this has become the most natural thing for her. I pull the blanket over her feet and tuck them in.

“Ready to start?” I ask, handing her her bowl of popcorn.

“Sure,” she answers. “I love that movie.”

I’m startled by the remark. How does she know she loves it? Tonight is meant to be a relaxing fun evening for us, no therapy session, so I don’t inquire but grab the remote and start the movie.

It’s the third part, ‘Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade’, and she surprises me again when she says even before the opening credits appear on the screen, “you know, I love Sean Connery in this one.”

She remembers Connery in that movie, but not me in her life.

It hurts.

As we watch and nibble our popcorn, I forget our situation for a while and enjoy the leisure. She’s laughing every once in a while, and after about half of the movie she pulls her feet out of my lap and puts her head on instead. My hand instinctively goes to her waist, and when I realize it, I leave it there when she’s not protesting.

When the closing credits roll down the screen, an overwhelming desire to stroke her hair floods me. I do what I’ve already done a million times, I tuck a strand behind her ear. The feel of my fingertips on the velvety skin behind her ear, the fine, tiny hair there that reminds me of a ripe peach’s bloom, makes me want to touch her even more. I venture to stroke her cheek and her neck ever so gently in the strong belief that she’s fast asleep. She always falls asleep watching a movie, I can’t remember one single movie night she hasn’t, so I’m thunderstruck when I hear her moan into my lap, “mmm, that’s nice.”

I pull my hand away from her skin so quickly as if I’d touched a hot baking dish.

“Don’t stop doing that, Fox, I like it,” she encourages me.

She’s awake. Well, that’s definitely something new. And she wants me to caress her. How can I not fulfill her wish? So I stroke her hair all the way from her scalp to where it lays on her shoulder. I tickle the spot behind her ear, and she’s as sensitive there as she’s ever been, fidgeting under my paws. I let my fingertips travel down to where her neck meets her shoulder and draw little circles there.

She enjoys what I’m doing, I can tell. Her body relaxes more and more, she shifts slightly to give me a better angle to her neck. She’s totally at ease, maybe for the first time since she was found in that parking lot. It fills me with joy that I’m able to make her feel this way. A few days ago she made me relax with giving me a wonderful massage, I’m more than willing to return the favor.

She rolls over on her back, her head still on my lap.

“You do know what I like, don’t you?” she asks, her eyes so full of trust I almost choke.

I nod.

She shows me a smile I cannot really interpret. Is it content? Discernment? Resolve?

My question is being answered when she reaches up, puts a hand behind my neck and pulls me down until our noses almost touch. Without another word, she lifts her head a little to let her lips meet mine. Does her statement, that I know what she likes, mean she wants me to kiss her the way I know she likes?

Go for it, Mulder!

I part her lips with the tip of my tongue, cautiously at first, more vigorously when she willingly lets me in. I let my tongue dance with hers, not in a passionate tango, in a slow waltz. I suck in her lower lip gently and scrape it with my teeth. She used to like it when we started low-key, kissing each other softly, allowing us to take our time until passion would take over eventually and turn the timid nibbling and grazing into a make-out session deserving the term.

The implication that she’d make me want her that much, that she’d fuel my desire in a way that left me all passionate, used to turn her on, so I’m taking it up a notch, kissing her more fiercely, asking the band in my head to play a quickstep instead of a slow waltz. We fall into the faster rhythm easily. I’m the one leading but she follows me willingly, lets me twirl her around and bend her down.

Oh my, this is wonderful! She tastes like popcorn and beer, and even though I usually detest unsalted popcorn I want more, more, more of it!

I hope I’m not overdoing it again like the last time we kissed, in her room at the clinic, when she pushed me away and hasn’t asked for another kiss ever since.

My misgivings are crumbled into dust when, in an acrobatic maneuver, she pushes herself up and into a kneeling position next to me, her lips never leaving mine. Next moment, I feel her straddle me. She cups my cheeks, then her tongue darts into my mouth and grazes the teeth of my upper jaw. I’m totally overcome with my emotions and act by pure instinct when I reciprocate the kiss hard, grabbing her hips and pulling her closer.

She groans into my mouth and all I can do is groan back. She might’ve forgotten the essentials of her life, but she hasn’t forgotten how to turn me on, that’s for sure. She rolls her hips on my lap and my groin responds adequately. This is getting far too fast for me. If I don’t stop it now, I might not be able to contain myself anymore shortly.

“Oumpf, Scully. Too…much…stimulus,” I manage to hiss through my teeth.

“I noticed,” she replies laconically, rolling her hips once again in a manner the response from my best friend down there isn’t long in coming. When she starts fumbling at the buttons of my shirt, my mushy brain is only able to form one coherent thought: she wants this.

She’s seducing you, Mulder! She’s turning you on, making you totally submissive with her eager ministrations!

I’m in hormonal mode now, completely controlled by my primal desires. I pull the hem of her shirt up and my hands slip under it, making contact with her silky skin. This time, I’m not pulling back.

She gasps, and it feels me with glee that I’m obviously not the only one losing control here.

“Touch me,” she whispers into my ear while nibbling at my earlobe.

“Where?”

“I hoped you were going to show me what I liked,” she murmurs now into my mouth again.

Your wish is my command, woman!

I cup her breasts and squeeze them gently through her bra. The way she whimpers sends a shiver through my spine all the way down to my groin.

Is this really happening? Is this leading to where I think it’s leading? The signals she’s sending out definitely point in that direction.

I stop for a moment, wanting to offer her a way out if she feels she’s taken us too far. “Are you sure you want this, Scully?”

She looks at me, and what I see in her eyes reminds me of our very first time, when she looked at me the exact same way. Her expression is full of calm serenity mixed with curiosity, determination, and…yes, want.

“Show me how we used to make love, Fox,” she breathes, her voice low and raspy.

I bet my grin is as goofy as it can be.

My prayers have been answered, I’m finally allowed to show her how much I adore her. But not here, not on the living room couch. I want to do this right, not rush through it like a horny teenager which had long been kept at arm’s length. I want to take my time, savor her. I want her to feel loved and desired, to fully understand the essence of our relationship, what we had before she was taken.

I make her slide off of me, take her hand and lead her upstairs. I know she doesn’t like to be carried.

When, after we’d gotten married, I was about to lift her up to carry her over the threshold of the motel room, she laughed at me. “Seriously, Mulder?” she said when I bent down, “you’re really considering to carry me over the threshold to a low-budget motel room right in this one-horse town in the middle of nowhere?” I have to concede it wasn’t a very romantic retreat, not in the least worthy of the occasion, but I had a freshly signed wedding certificate in the inside pocket of my suit jacket and I had just spoken my vows to the woman I had called my touchstone once, I was in a maudlin mood and I wanted to be a traditional groom and carry my beautiful bride over that goddamn threshold. No way she would let me. And she wouldn’t let me carry her over the threshold to our house when we first move in either.

Now we are facing a threshold again, and I don’t mean just the one to our bedroom. I hesitate, the question of whether to lift her up or not being the last of my problems.

Am I taking advantage of her in a currently weak moment? Have I started it all in the first place with stroking her hair at the end of the movie? What if it’s too early and she’ll regret it tomorrow morning? Will crossing the piece of timber under our bedroom door right now be a step too huge?

I’m still racking my brain when she squeezes herself past me, holding my hand and pulling me inside with her. She takes my other hand and leads me to the bed, taking slow steps backward. When her calves hit the wooden frame, she sits down and makes me step between her legs. I get down on my knees to be at eye level with her, I don’t want her to stare at the bulge in my pants.

My misgivings aren’t gone completely just because we’re past the door, but I’m beginning to believe she really wants this to happen and a wave of anticipation and arousal washes over me. “Do you have any idea how much I love you?” I ask her.

“From how you’ve been caring for me these past months, yes, I think I do.”

I bury my nose in the hair behind her ear and take in the mixture of her natural scent and that of her shampoo and perfume.

“God, Scully, I missed you so much.”

“Thank you for letting me set the pace, for letting me decide when I wanted to do this.”

“You are really sure?” I doublecheck, images of thresholds popping up in front of my mind’s eye again.

“Fox?”

“Hmm?”

“Stop talking and show me how much you missed me!”

Bang! All my misgivings are atomized!

If you ask this nicely.

I slip my hands under the hem of her shirt again and place them at her waist, squeezing it gently. She’s so tiny, I can almost span her midriff completely. She sucks in her breath, then licks her lower lip. Our eyes are locked and the intensity of her gaze would’ve forced me down on my knees hadn’t I already been on them. I let my hands travel higher, slowly, sweeping every single of her ribs like a piano player practicing scales until I reach the silky underside of her breasts.

“You used to like when I was doing this,” I say while my thumbs are caressing her there. “Still do?”

“Uh huh.”

Next, I cup both breasts and knead them tenderly, simultaneously trailing feathery kisses from her collarbone up to her jawline, first on the right side, then on the left.

“What about this?” I ask.

“Mmhmm,” is all I get as an answer.

When my lips reach the spot behind her left ear, I hear her voice again which sounds surprisingly calm and controlled now.

“This is nice, but tell me, Fox, did I really like being dressed when you were doing this to me?”

I’m startled for a moment by her straightforwardness, then I silently shake my head.

“That’s what I thought.” She comments my inability to speak with a self-satisfied grin. “So this,” she undoes the last buttons of my shirt, “needs to come off now.”

She pulls my shirt off of me. It dangles for a few seconds from her outstretched hand, then she lets it fall carelessly to the ground.

She scrutinizes my torso and I’m thrilled to see delight in her eyes. She puts her hands on my chest and slides her fingers up and down and through the sparse hair. The way she bites her bottom lip while she takes in my body makes me crazy. When she whispers “so beautiful” while her paws encircle my breast muscles, I almost come but manage to pull myself out of my precarious condition by pointing out something obvious.

“Now you’re a bit overdressed.”

“Any idea how to get even?”

Her voice has inherited a playful ring I haven’t heard for the longest time but isn’t a stranger to me.

“Definitely,” I moan and fumble at the hem of her shirt. I pull her out of it in a quick swoosh and the garment joins mine on the floor.

I sit back on my heels to be able to look at her as a whole, to remind me that this is really happening.

Scully’s sitting right in front of me, on our bed, really and truly sitting there. Her upper body is only covered in a simple white cotton bra, nothing one would call a sexy piece of lingerie, which makes me realize that this is totally unplanned. Her cheeks are rosy, her lips are swollen and slightly parted, and her eyes have this glint I’ve seen in them often at the onset of foreplay.

Pure temptation.

When she reaches behind her back to unclasp her bra, my heart threatens to stop beating. When she brushes one strap off her shoulder, then the second, letting the garment slide down her arms and onto the ground, I watch her every move as if she was a hypnotist dangling a locket in front of my face.

How is it possible that this woman, who’s been so unsure about herself for the past eight weeks in our mundane everyday routine together in this house, is now so straightforward in the bedroom? Not that I’m complaining.

My eyes must betray me because she asks, “you like them?”

“Oh, yessss,” I rejoice.

She looks down at her chest and shrugs apologetically.

“Aren’t they a bit small?”

“Absolutely not! They’re perfect!”

To prove my words, I scoot over and cup each breast with one hand, enclosing them completely with my long fingers, skin on skin this time. When I begin kneading them, she whimpers.

“Does this feel good, Scully?” I ask.

“Feels okay.”

I beg your pardon? Okay?

I don’t want her to feel 'okay’, although I’m not completely sure whether she’s teasing me or not. I want her to feel amazing, ecstatic, weightless, mind-blowingly good. So I open my book of One Hundred Ways to Seduce Scully.

Chapter One: Start Low-key Roll her nipples between your thumb and index finger. You’ll get a reaction right away.

And there it is! Her back straightens and I see her bite the inside of her cheek in an effort to control herself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she feels 'okay’…ha!

“Better?” I ask innocently.

“Slightly.”

Yes, this is how I love my Scully! Joining in the game, yet unwilling to yield too quickly. Alright, next move!

Chapter Two: Make Your Intentions Clear Leave your fingers where they are and continue your ministrations to her nipples. Place a soft kiss at her sternum. She’ll tilt her head back to give you a better access.

She’s not disappointing me.

You’re so easy, Scully!

Chapter Three: Add Another Sensation Kiss your way down to her cleavage. Give both breasts the full attention of your tongue. Leave wet trails around her nipples.

The sweet buds instantly harden in response. I can almost hear her curse her body for its natural reaction.

Every stimulus causes a response, Dr. Scully! Gotcha!

“What about now?” I venture.

“P-pretty good,” she admits, her breath a bit more ragged than before.

“Are you interested in finding out what else you liked?”

“Sure.”

“Alright, I’m gonna show you,” I say, gently pushing her back. “Lie down.”

She leans backward until her full body is stretched out on the mattress. Her eyes are two deep pools of blue I want to drown myself in. And I will. Later. For now, I want us out of the remaining clothes.

“Would you mind if we got rid of these terribly annoying and totally superfluous pieces of clothing, Scully?”

“I was afraid you’d never ask.”

I’m not willing to lose any time.

I undo the button of her pants, pull the zipper down, grab the waistband, and slide the pesky garment down. When I’m at her ankles, I take with it the thick woolen socks she wears every evening to keep her feet from freezing. When I fumble at her undies, her hand flies down to stop me.

“Nuh-uh, this is a step-by-step transaction, Mr. Mulder. Your turn!”

No prob!

I’m quick at stripping out of my pants and have no problems at all heading for an advance payment, so my boxers go right with them. I smirk when I hear her take a sharp intake of breath.

I keep myself from saying something, I just challenge her with my eyes. Sure enough, she purses her lips, hooks her fingers into the waistband of her underpants, a simple, unfussy piece matching her bra, and pulls them down. Slowly, inch by inch, just to counter my frenzy performance.

We’re both stark naked now and I can’t but admire her beauty.

Her body hasn’t changed a bit. I’m glad the killer hasn’t left his marks on her, it would’ve been difficult to deal with them. Her milky skin and her soft curves are the same alluring perfection like when I last saw her like this.

I position myself alongside her, propping me up on my elbow, drinking her in from head to toe and back. When my eyes find hers again, I see it has cost her a lot to let herself get ogled like that.

I place my index finger at her throat and let it travel down her chest, between her breasts, past her belly button, before I come to a rest on her belly. My hand is big and almost covers her entire abdomen. “I’ve seen you like this many times, Scully. There’s no need to be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed, just a bit…nervous.”

Not good. I don’t want her to be nervous, or maybe even anxious. We were always relaxed in bed, playful, open for fun and also for experiments. At times, we were even what others might call kinky, but we’d never been uneasy.

After a short moment of confusion, I realize where her nervousness comes from. She doesn’t know what to expect, she can’t remember our interplay, how we do foreplay or our favorite positions. Hell, she can’t even remember what she preferred, what she’d asked me a thousand times to do to pleasure her. I have got the drop on her, knowing the do’s and don’t’s of our lovemaking by heart, and I haven’t really given a thought to how intimidating this must be for her. For her, it’s like being with me for the first time, and I remember how nervous I was on our first night.

I bring my mouth to her ear, tickle the fine hair behind it with my breath before I whisper, “Tell me what you want, Scully. You know what you like, you don’t need me to tell you. We can stop here, if this what you want, or we can go on. Whatever you ask for will happen.”

She licks her lower lip, then chews it. Oh boy, she definitely is nervous.

“Scully, we were never shy to voice our fantasies in bed, we don’t have to start now. Just tell me how you want this to be done. I’ll be fine with whatever it is. I feared I’d never be able to make love to you again, so this is already so much more than I allowed myself to hope for. Don’t think I can be disappointed, I can’t.”

“I,” she starts, but her guts instantly abandon her.

“What?” I ask, hoping I sound calm and patient.

“I want…connection, Fox. I don’t need passion tonight, or ecstasy. I don’t need to come. All I want is to be as close to you as I can. I want to feel you…in me. I want to feel us. Us together. That’s all I want. Does that sound stupid?”

What else can I do but smile at her? This woman is so lovely and so sweet, so incredibly touching in her honest confession. I place a kiss on her forehead and assure her, “not at all. It makes a lot of sense.”

I see the tension flow out of her body like air out of a balloon, and I curse myself for having overseen it in the first place. This is going to be a night of endearment, of kissing and cuddling, of comfort and secureness, and of nothing else.

I don’t know how long we explored each others’ bodies, how long I drew circles around the little dimples at the tip of her spine, how long she stroked up and down my chest with her fingertips. I don’t know how often I kissed her or how much time I spent fondling her breasts. All I do know is that from a certain point onward, things got a little out of hand. Our kisses became fiercer, our touches more passionate. Scully entangled her legs with mine and pressed her body so close, I could feel every muscle of hers flex. With her hungry tongue in my mouth, I pulled her on top of me. The weight of her body on mine, her breasts poking into my chest, I reached for her sweet little tush and squeezed the firm flesh. It made her hips buck, which in turn made my best member respond. She noticed, of course, but she didn’t pull back. She intensified the kiss, devouring me, moving her body over mine to increase the friction between her skin and mine.

I’m at a point now where I can’t control my instincts anymore. In one quick maneuver, I flip us over putting me on top, completely overshadowing her small frame with my body. My face is hovering above hers. She looks at me with bright, unclouded eyes, rendering me motionless, and I’m losing myself in the infinite depth of her pupils. I don’t see any doubt in them, no hesitation or insecurity, and still, I ask, “Are you sure?”

We both know what I’m talking about. She whispers a soft yes accompanied by a short nod, I settle down between her legs, and then, not exactly planned when I started the preparations for this movie night with placing the popcorn in the microwave, but wonderfully so, we are one, the connection she said she wanted finally established. It doesn’t get any closer than this, she, taking me in, and I, filling her up. This is us, and it feels so good.

“Mmmulllderrr,” I hear her hum, every syllable of my name rolling off her tongue like honey off a spoon. The sensation in my lumbar region mixed with what my acoustic nerve passes on to the synapses in my brain leaves me in a state of absolute bliss.

What? What did she just call me?

Any effort of further cognitive evaluation of her words is thwarted by what she’s doing with her hips. I don’t have enough blood left in my brain to be able to put two and two together as it travels down South at lightspeed. They way she clutches me, inside and outside, won’t let me last very much longer.

Too. Much. Stimulus.

“Scully, take it down a notch, will ya?” I beg.

“HmmmmmulderMulderMulderMulderrrrr,” she purrs her response.

I try to control my arousal with a few deep breaths through my nose. In vain. She just pushes too fiercely to allow me to calm down, clutching my waist as if her thighs were a vice, obviously not willing to slow down, not even a tiny bit.

“What are you doing to me, G-Woman?”

“I’m feeling you,” she murmurs full of elation.

As by a miracle, I’m able to gather my thoughts for a split-second to reply, “nothing has changed, Scully. You mean the world to me. You are my world.”

And as we gaze at each other, our bodies go for what they long for, the final release. It doesn’t need much more than one or two hip rolls from Scully to send us both over the edge. I close my eyes and stars are bursting behind my eyelids, the sensation so strong and overwhelming, it lets my limbs shake uncontrollably in the wake of my orgasm. She said she didn’t need to come tonight, but she is indeed coming right now. I feel her fingernails sink into my back, her thigh muscles flex, and her inner walls contract. A deep moan escapes her throat and I hear her heave a satisfied sigh riding out her high.

It takes me several minutes to regain consciousness, so it seems. I inhale and exhale a few times to steady my heartbeat. Sex with Scully has always been terrific, but this experience tonight is unparalleled. It was so much more than just satisfying a physical lust, not that I ever complained when it was. Tonight has been a spiritual experience almost, and I’m still a bit dazed.

“That was…surprising,” she states, still a bit out of breath.

“I didn’t overpower you, did I?”

“No. I wanted it.”

“It was very intense, that’s all I can say.”

“Very.”

“You called me Mulder.”

“I know. Not on purpose, it just came out of my mouth. It felt right.”

“Right?”

“Uh huh.”

Silence, then she starts speaking again.

“Mulder,” she croons with her eyes closed, “this whole thing between us feels so right.”

She opens her eyes and hypnotizes me with her gaze. I’m still hovering above her, trying to keep my weight off her resting it on my elbows which are propped up beside her sweaty ribcage.

She’s about to say something big, I can see it. My heart is pounding in my chest and I think I’m holding my breath. I look at her face and try to read in her eyes what she’s going to say to me, asking myself simultaneously whether I’m prepared for what I’m going to hear.

“I think I’m falling in love with you.”

I’m not!

Breathe, Mulder! Breathe!

“I don’t know whether it’s the old feeling coming back or a new one developing, all I can say is that I’m falling in love with you.”

“That is…that’s…it’s just…God, Scully,” I stammer and kiss her, “you’re making me a very happy man!”

She smiles, but something is bothering her. Her eyes flutter nervously and she licks her lips.

“What’s the matter?” I ask her.

“What if my memories never come back? What if I never again become the person I used to be?”

The apprehension contorting her face cuts my heart in two.

“You still are the same person, Scully. You’re my Scully. You just have to give her time to set herself free.”

“What if I can’t? Ever?”

“Then I won’t love you any less.”

“Are you sure you want to live with a woman who forgot who you were?” Her tone is provocative and challenging as if she wants my answer to be no.

Her tone is provocative and challenging as if she wants my answer to be no.

“If I’m being honest, I have to say that it wouldn’t be easy for me to deal with your amnesia being permanent. Our past is so abundant with an almost infinite variety of events, wonderful as well as dreadful ones. We’ve been through so much together, and it’s made our relationship what it is: extraordinary and one of a kind. I’ve never had a friend I felt so close to, a partner I trusted that much, a soulmate I shared more secrets with, a lover I found more alluring, and a wife I…well, I was never married before. Jesus, Scully, you knew me better than my mother, better than I knew myself.”

“You realize you’re speaking in the past tense,” she points out flatly. “That’s how it’s used to be, Mulder. Not anymore. Nowadays, I don’t know your favorite dish or whether you like to be on top during sex.”

“Oh, come on, that’s not very helpful. There’s absolutely no use in being so hard on yourself.”

“You said it yourself. It wouldn’t be easy for you to deal with me being this person who doesn’t remember what our relationship was like.”

“There are many things in my life that are not easy for me. Ironing dress shirts, baking apple pie, staying away from the X-Files, just to name a few, and yet I manage to get along nicely.”

“But I don’t want to be something you get along nicely with.”

“Scully, listen, I love you. My life is worth nothing if you’re not in it. Just the idea of our paths being separated…I mean, it’s not a valid concept for me, not at all. I don’t want…I can’t…live without you. And I certainly won’t because you’re suffering from a bodily condition that has been inflicted on you against your will.”

“I don’t need your pity,” she shoots back.

I groan, a sudden anger flushing my body.

“You know what, Scully? Actually, you haven’t changed that much. You’re still the same stubborn, pigheaded pain in the neck, who’d rather plow ahead on her own for fear to appear weak or, which God may forbid, vulnerable than ask your best, most intimate friend for help.”

She looks at me with wide eyes, obviously taken aback by my unexpected outburst. But I’ve had it with her feeling of guilt. She’s got nothing to feel guilty about. She’s the victim here. She was abducted, held hostage, harmed, hit on the head, drugged, or whatever, abandoned…why on earth does she think it’s her fault we have to deal with the amnesia?

“Have I really been a stubborn, pigheaded pain in the neck?” she whispers.

“At times, yes, but adorable as such,” I say in a much softer tone than before. Of course, I regret what I said, but this goddamn severity she treats herself with simply drives me up the wall sometimes.

My eyes find hers and for a moment we stare at each other, neither of us daring to blink. It’s me who has to look away first.

“Anyway, who said I pitied you?”

She looks at her hands which she’s kneading so hard I’m afraid she might break a finger. “Nobody,” she eventually admits timidly.

I stifle a heavy sigh. “Right, nobody.”

“I’m sorry, Mulder,” she says eventually, “I guess I was being unfair. I just don’t want you to feel obliged to stick around.”

I simply look at her, an eyebrow raised.

“Uh, that’s not really better, is it?”

I shake my head. “Try again.”

She chews her lips, is carefully weighing the words before she lets the cat out of the bag. “It’s not easy for me to be so dependent on you.” She swallows hard, the lump in her throat must be gigantic. I want to take her in my arms and rock her, but I know she needs to finish her line. She inhales deeply before she continues. “But I trust you enough to let myself fall as long as you’re standing behind me.”

“I am and always will be.”

Silence.

We both need a bit to let the weight sink in of what has been said between us. To me, it feels like another marriage vow, and maybe it is. Yes, we’ve actually renewed our vows, promising to be always there for each other, to always sail the storms together.

“Scully, you are familiar with the principle of 'for better, for worse’, aren’t you? Our love for each other is no blue-sky concept, we’ve been together through thick and thin. Actually, times were bad more often than they were good for you since you started hanging out with me, and you’ve stuck around. Did you really believe I’d be wasting a single thought about leaving you? The idea is so odd and so absurd, it makes me want to scream.”

“Really?” she whispers.

“Really,” I answer in the most assertive tone I can manage.

The usual post-coital sleepiness has been swept away by our talk and I don’t feel like lying back down at all. This night is too special, the step we’ve just taken too huge to allow sleep to put an end to it.

“It’s a beautiful night, Scully, not a cloud in the sky. What do you think, shall we sit outside for a while? I make some tea, wrap us in a blanket, and we look at the stars,” I suggest, hoping the idea doesn’t sound too crazy to her.

Her furrowed brows tell me she’s indecisive.

Well, maybe it is a crazy idea. It’s way past midnight and Scully easily gets cold.

“Do I have some flannel pajamas?”

“You sure do. You put them on the top shelf of your closet for the warm season.”

“I put them there?”

“Okay, you made me put them there for you,” I smirk. “I’m always happy to be at service to my adorably tiny wife,” I sweet-talk.

“Wipe that grin off your face, ooze charmer!”

I throw my hand up in the air and remind her, “you started it.”

She smiles. “You’re right. Stupid me.”

As she doesn’t move, nor say something, I have no idea whether or not she’s up for some stargazing or not. “So? Care to join me on the porch swing?” I therefore ask.

She contemplates another moment, maybe only to punish me for having teased her, before self-contained Scully gets the better of her.

“You go downstairs and put the kettle onto the stove, and I get a stool!”

to be continued

#xf fanfiction #msr #it was about time

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