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feanorianethicsdepartment · 3 years ago

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Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

#ask #my terrible headcanons #elros #elrond #maglor #elwing #earendil #feanorians #niphredilien #yellow feathered faerie #putting your old url in the tags for archival purposes #post nyanyannya askbox clearout #ironically it turned out almost as long as the songfic that clogged up my askbox in the first place #and it is DONE #fuck this took forever to write #stayed up late just to get it out the door so i don't have to think about it any more #this is a long ramble and i'm pretty sure the end is just me repeating myself ad nausem sorry #i'll admit to a certain pro-feanorian bias in my interpretation #but i also don't want elros and elrond to just. live in a neverending horrorshow for decades #the silm's cruel enough we don't need that #narratively i feel like elrond being All Of The Elves is a good mirror for elros being All Of The Humans #but it didn't really fit the angle i was going for #bleck #let's see how many followers i lose for this

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minor-solemnity · 4 years ago

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What's your favorite character from the golden trio era?

Oooh idk possibly this is an unpopular opinion - at least it was when I was like, properly in the fandom rather than where I am now which is firmly on the sidelines with my hands over my ears and ignoring everything that I don't like - but Cho Chang. This is probably in part because she got so much undeserved hatred (thank u fandom and author racism) and I am predisposed to like characters that people don't like.

I find her character so heartbreakingly real in a way that I think is entirely accidental on JKR's part. I don't think JK can write women. (Plz don't hate me for that, but like, it's true.) Everything interesting about the characters we are meant to like gets sanded down and ignored in the later books - Hermione's whole thing is like, book smart but not emotionally intelligent, she wants to be right and have people know she's right more than she cares about their feelings. She thinks rules are important until they apply to her. She is ruthless and vindictive and petty. These are interesting character traits that just get completely dropped in the later books. By the time book 6 ends and book 7 starts Hermione is 'wife' and 'mother' and it's kinda sad.

I digress.

Cho's boyfriend is murdered. Cho is understandably upset and heartbroken and sad af. She tries to find comfort in Harry because Harry was there, Harry must understand. Harry can help her process. Their ways of dealing with trauma are completely opposite to each other. Cho seeks emotional vulnerability and closeness from the boy who, of all people, will understand. Harry's way of processing trauma is to ignore it. It happened, it sucks, I will never speak of it again (until all my unprocessed emotions come spilling out and I end up lashing out and getting angry). Those two ways of dealing with trauma are not going to work well together. Harry is honestly a dick towards her - she's his fantasy. She's not a real person to him. When that fantasy comes crashing down he behaves pretty awfully towards her. And if you're reading critically, you come away thinking yeah, Cho's a whiny crybaby who doesn't get Harry at all. What a bitch. When in reality, it's more like - Cho is seriously fucked up and is trying to come to terms with her grief and seek comfort in someone who she thought would get it.

Imagine being like, 16 and being isolated and sad and so fundamentally misunderstood. Imagine being 18 and your friends are dead and the boy you liked is still dead and the other boy you thought you might like is a hero and the only thing you're really known for is the mess that is your grief. Imagine that the popular consensus is that your grief is something to be ridiculed.

I tend to pick and chose which parts of the extended canon I believe in, but I believe in Cho moving to America and getting hitched to an American muggle dude. (Moving to America is probably my own headcanon actually). What would motivate her to move across the world? Grief? Wonderlust? Anger? I imagine it's all three. Idk if this is a relatable feeling to a lot of people, but I get it. I have a constant itch under my skin that tells me to move on whenever a place starts to feel too much like home. To leave. To escape. Nowhere feels like home because home is a collection of broken things. It's a hall of funhouse mirrors - the wires in your brain get mixed up. Comfort and safety become synonymous with 'i will fuck this up' and 'i don't deserve this' and 'everyone will leave'.

I want so many things for Cho. I want her name to make sense. I want her to be seen as something other than 'pretty' and 'sad'. I want her in Boston slamming Sam Adams by Sam Adams grave because she finds it funny. I want her in Boston, learning to drive a car (stick-shift because the driving instructor had made a comment about how automatics are easier to learn and she is tired of people seeing her as something weak and unable). I want her road-raging and I want her to drive across the country because why the fuck not. I want her in New York and the city is so frantic and no one looks at her and she feels so small and the lights are so bright and she thinks maybe she could disappear here and no one would ever know. I want her to find a group of women rollerskating and maybe they invite her to their roller derby group. It isn't flying, but it's fast and aggressive and she's never allowed herself to be aggressive like this before. She's not allowed herself to be angry like this before. No one else has allowed her to be angry like this before.

I want her to go to California and to go to Angel Island and I want her to understand that there have been people like her before. That she is not alone in this feeling. I want her to meet a dude who's studying for an MBA - he doesn't know who she is. Doesn't know what she is. She's just this cute girl who drinks Sam Adams even tho that's a Boston thing and they're in San Diego. He's probably a frat boy. I want him to be a frat boy who takes his degree too seriously and wakes up at like 5 because he's also a gym rat. He takes her to his boxing class. She probably cries during and hey that's okay - she has a lot of shit to work through, he can tell. He doesn't ask about it. Just says her accent is cute. Maybe she starts taking night classes, maybe she doesn't. She's weirdly technologically illiterate - she sends him postcards even though they live in the same city. She says its because her school didn't let them have phones. She's never seen a Tarintino film and that's just like... not cool. They watch True Romance on his shitty box TV in his room in his frat house and she laughs (she laughs like the violence is cathartic) when Alabama completely destroys Virgil. He looks at her and she shrugs and says 'I get it.'

She says that's she's leaving soon - doesn't know where. Probably isn't coming back and again that's... not cool. She's weird about some stuff. Won't talk about home - won't say where she's from. He should be fine with it because like, it's not as if this is anything serious and his life is pretty clearly planned out. Get an MBA, work in some start-up tech company - the internet is a thing now and god, there's money to be made. He thinks maybe that she should like, stay but she also seems like the kind of person who doesn't know how to stop running. And look, he's doing an MBA. He rushed his frat. He goes to boxing every morning without fail. He's determined. He's not good at letting the things he wants go. But he lets her go because she doesn't want to stay. One night afterwards, his frat bro says, philosophical because they're crossfaded, that maybe she can't stay. Maybe she won't let herself stay. And that... That sounds about right.

So he waits. He waits and he gets postcards with no return address - in Seattle, she tries ice hockey. In Miami, she tries surfing. He almost gets on a plane to Cincinnati because she got into a fight with some dude who made his girlfriend cry in public. Apparently, she knocked him out with a punch just the way he showed her to. It feels weirdly romantic.

I want her to write a postcard to him when she's sitting in a bar in Las Vegas and I want her to include a return address. I want him on the first flight out, because fuck his classes? She included a return address. He asks her if she's ever going to go home and she looks at him and says, 'What? To San Diego?'

#cho chang #meta #oh god i wrote meta #this isn't even meta tbh - this is basically a fic #this very much got away from me #can u tell i have feelings about women being angry?#grief and anger taste the same #harry potter #asks #anon #she speaks

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melmoths · 5 years ago

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james and thomas can build a happy life together post-canon.

i'll go out on a limb and say that it's the only plausible scenario for them - and not simply because i feel like they deserve it, but because i feel like their narrative arcs lead to that conclusion no matter what.

of course the road to recovery would be long and hard, considering how deeply traumatised they both are, but once you accept that james mcgraw and james flint are not two separate people, that both james and thomas knew this, and that thomas is not a static character, no other future makes sense for them - whether they choose to retire and live a cosy domestic life or to dedicate themselves to another cause bigger than them both.

first things first: when silver claims that the man who reached savannah was not james flint, but james mcgraw he's lying. it's a lie! and not in the sense that it's something that he knows "deep down" even if he wishes things were different: it's a plain, old-fashioned lie, and he doesn't believe in it, not even for a second! he stands in front of madi, after having destroyed everything she's ever worked for and condemned her people (and many others) to centuries of oppression, and he lies.

'cause if he truly thought james was out of control and blinded by his rage over losing thomas, if he truly thought that getting thomas back would "kill" flint and his desire for revenge, if he truly thought thomas' death was the only reason he was fighting england, why bring james to savannah in the first place? why sell him into slavery? silver could have simply freed thomas (a man that he knew was innocent, by the way!) and let the two of them start a new life together wherever they wished - but he didn't, because he knew that james was truly fighting for the cause at that point, that he would have finished what he'd started because it was the right thing to do (and that thomas would have probably joined his efforts). killing him would have turned him into a martyr for the cause, so he had to remove him from the action entirely and spread the rumour he'd retired, and the fact that he chose for james the prison thomas was already in doesn't make it any better (eat my whole entire arsehole if you think otherwise).

i also want to stress the fact that not even james thinks james mcgraw and james flint are two different people. sure, james talks a lot about creating a persona that he later wants to get rid of, but he never truly believes he can separate himself from his own actions; that's why carrying their burden becomes harder and harder as time goes on. and on top of that, an element of performance is always present in the way he thinks about himself: he's a closeted gay man in XVIII century england! he's forced to live in a state where he has to lie constantly if he doesn't want to experience systemic violence.

but he's always fully aware of who and what he is (despite being ashamed of it, at least before meeting thomas). he knows he's got a tender, gentle side and a much more violent, flawed one: he knows he possesses the potential for great violence - maybe he's not aware of how far he can go, but he knows he's capable of causing great harm, although it doesn't necessarily bring him joy (in fact he tends to opt for violent solutions only when he feels trapped, but changes his mind when shown another way that might lead to his desired outcome). james flint is his persona in the sense that he's a version of james mcgraw in which his "good" side isn't allowed to exist - a hyperviolent façade that doesn't fully match his true self, and a façade he has to keep up almost everyday until he's done what he needs to do (i know people like to call him "unhinged" a lot, but if you exclude his mental breakdown after miranda's death he's always in control of his actions).

and again, i think thomas and miranda were aware of james' violent side. miranda might have seen it first-hand, but i do think thomas knew about it as well. their connection is so deep ("my truest love," hello?) and they seem to know each other so fully that i don't think a relationship between them could have worked otherwise. maybe thomas heard of the fight that broke out between james and the officer that insulted him and miranda, and that got him thinking; maybe he worked it out otherwise (although i do believe they eventually talked about the fight, and about hennessey's weirdly protective attitude); but the fact that he's the one to come up with the pardons, unbeknownst to james, is pretty telling. it shows that despite his privilege thomas is instinctually more capable of understanding why disenfranchised people might turn to violence (i.e. piracy). and if he's ready to forgive all the pirates, all the violent men, why would he not extend the same courtesy to the one he loves?

when he wrote "know no shame" he wasn't simply telling james not to be ashamed of being gay; he was telling him not to be ashamed of any part of himself, including the one that's more prone to violence, because at that point i don't think james truly believed himself worthy of being loved in his entirety, and thomas felt he had to fix that. and he succeeded - not immediately, of course, but by the time he'd come back from nassau james had fully internalised his message, based on the way he talks about his relationship with thomas to miranda and his wish to get away from london with the both of them (and ten years later, when james and miranda fight, he tells her that he does not feel ashamed of having loved thomas, but only of his inaction once thomas had been locked up in bedlam).

for this reason i don't believe that thomas would be "disgusted" by james' actions when they eventually reunite in savannah. i'm not saying he would enthusiastically condone all of them - he wouldn't go "hey, darling, good job on snapping your quartermaster's neck!", for example - but he would understand the motive behind them. he would understand why james - james who believed him dead, james who'd been stripped off the career he'd worked so hard for, james who had truly lost everything - felt like he had no other choice and put himself through so much pain. when james arrives in savannah i don't think thomas believes in reconciliation with england anymore.

i've noticed a weird tendency in this fandom to idealise thomas, to deny his growth in order to present him as flawless, as exclusively kind and "good" and stuck in time (often in opposition to post-london james). i hate it!

first of all, i feel like this angelic persona does not fit his characterisation at all. he is a good man, but when his father says he's impertinent and self-righteous, or when miranda talks about how he'd basically make people wish they were dead during his salons, i don't get the impression that thomas is a tall giant who simply smiles at everyone and can do no harm. he's an extremely opinionated man that wants to do the right thing even if that makes him unbearable to the people in his proximity because, as james says, he truly believes in what he's saying and, just like james, he's shown to change his mind when presented with new facts; he's open to new ideas, and that's why he comes up with the pardons.

second of all, we're talking about a man who's been betrayed by those closest to him, who's been imprisoned, tortured and dehumanised to the point that no one questioned his apparent suicide, who's been enslaved for ten years and subjected to yet more and more horrors. why would he not be a changed man, in the same way james is? why would his own ten years of hell not have stripped him of any trace of naivety he had left (the naivety inherent to his privilege and that had led him to believe that gradual change was the best solution), in the same way james was stripped of his after learning of peter's betrayal and seeing miranda killed in front of his eyes? just because this change happens offscreen for thomas it doesn't mean it doesn't happen at all.

if anything, i would say that the conceptual passage from gradualism to revolution might have happened sooner for thomas than for james. let's also remember that when silver asks james if he'd trade the war to have thomas back again, james says thomas wouldn't want him to. he believes him dead, but he knew him well enough to be certain that if he were alive he'd agree with him that no compromise can be made with a colonial empire.

i'm also convinced that thomas always knew (or at least very strongly suspected) james was captain flint. he was imprisoned and isolated from the rest of the world, sure, but plantations didn't exist in a bubble where no news about the outside world could reach them (and the show makes it clear so many times). thomas is an extremely intelligent man. i doubt he would have had a hard time connecting the murder of his father, the rise of captain flint, the events of charlestown, the existence of an army of people still willing to follow a pirate captain in battle despite the pardons and tom morgan coming to look for him in savannah (although i suppose he thought james had found out he was alive and was going to get him out). when james shows up looking very much like a pirate, thomas is clearly happy beyond belief - but he doesn't strike me as someone who had no idea james might come to him someday.

that's why i think that any scenario in which james and thomas drift apart is not only completely unjustified, but extremely cruel and partly motivated by a desire to justify silver despite all evidence of him being a massive piece of shit. and justifying silver is justifying the english empire and all the atrocities it has inflicted - and i can't stand for that. in truth, i can't stand for any scenario in which two people who loved each other so dearly and were so harshly punished for it and for wanting to better society, even if just a little bit, don't get some measure of peace and happiness in which to heal together.

on a side-note, all the people who claim thomas was exactly like woodes rogers and that james' war was not really revolutionary because he was only waging it for selfish reasons fail to understand that:

1) thomas was trying to challenge the status quo and to defend a group of disenfranchised people in an age where criminals were seen as less than human and death sentences were extremely common, while woodes rogers was trying to preserve the status quo and to get rich in the process without giving much of a shit about pirates at all;

2) every revolution or civil rights movement is at least partly motivated by selfish reasons: people don't want their loved ones and future generations to go through what they've gone through, and often seek some form of retribution in the process. and frankly, i don't care how "selfish" someone's motivations are as long as their actions lead to a more equal world and to better conditions for the people who inhabit it - and i'd rather fight alongside those who try to challenge hegemonic powers, whatever reasons they might have to do so, than be a passive observer of all the horrors that happen around me as long as they don't affect me directly.

anyway, love is real, james and thomas burn that plantation to the ground and silver sucks me good and hard through my jorts

#black sails #flinthamilton #i regret to inform you all that love wins in the end!! motherfuckers!!

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marysfoxmask · 4 years ago

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“the secret garden” (2020) review

(warning: spoilers!)

just watched the latest adaptation again! i wanted to see it a second time to really get my thoughts and feelings together. and, while i think it was a good effort, ultimately i was disappointed. my instincts when i first saw the trailer were more or less correct—really vibrant, flashy visuals ultimately subtract from the low-key nature of the book. when adapting a story about realizing the magic in mundanity, realizing the magic inherent to the turning of the seasons and the growing of plants that we usually take for granted, it’s monumentally better to prioritize realism over fantasy.

mary’s character was served the best by the new film, though sadly that isn’t saying too much. while i understood that this mary would be different from her book counterpart, i definitely felt the original’s absence more than i would have liked. the mary of this film is just too well-adjusted, to the point where her arc is less about a spiritually stunted, completely neglected child becoming healthy and whole through the power of nature and socialization (as it is in the novel) and more about a vaguely troubled child apologizing to the specter of her late mother for feeling badly about being neglected, which is essentially the opposite of what burnett was getting at.

was anyone pining for a mrs. lennox redemption story? the same woman who, as per the book, never wanted a child and only cared about going to parties? i’ll forever be baffled by people being more invested in the adults and their ponderous backstories rather than the emotional development of the child protagonists; this film seems a lot more interested in the impact of the deaths of mary and colin’s mothers, to a bizarre degree. “grace” craven (really? was “lilias” not good enough?) and her sister (this and the 1993 film both depart from the book, where mary’s father is related to lilias, in favor of making mrs. lennox and mrs. craven twins—a decision i’m confused by in terms of thematic relevance on both accounts) are never characterized more than being essentially the angels of misselthwaite. they float by, laughing gaily, dressed in white, at points during the film. they are bittersweet representations of the idealized past and, at one point, guardians of their loved ones left behind.

i’ve never enjoyed the romanticization of lilias craven in any adaptation. mary calls the fairytale trope of beautiful princesses falling asleep in a garden for a hundred years stupid in the novel; and what is lilias but a princess eternally sleeping in her beloved garden? she’s beautiful and innocent and good and thoroughly uninteresting. she’s the angel of the house, embarrassingly dated compared to her imperfect, misfit niece, who is coming awake and growing healthy while lilias is frozen in amber, a beautiful idealized figure even in death. the interest in her in this film, the broadway musical—and even the 1993 movie, to an extent—seems to completely contradict the point of the novel, fetishizing the past and resisting lending enough focus to the events of the present. mary is a spunky, interesting, flawed heroine who doesn’t need to share the spotlight with any angels of the manor; the story of the secret garden is one about healing from trauma, not wallowing in it.

that isn’t even touching on the decision to have mrs. lennox be an apparently good person brought low by depression following her beloved twin’s death. i find this adaptive choice to be positively loathsome. mrs. lennox, as a character, is a bad mother and a silly, foolish person, point blank, period. she hands baby mary off to an ayah the moment she’s born, keeps her isolated and locked up, and insists that the ayah keep mary quiet lest “the mem sahib” become angry. when given the chance of evacuating due to the cholera epidemic raging, she instead stays in order to go to a party. she’s a frivolous character whose superficial prioritization of amusement leads directly to her death. she doesn’t need a sympathetic reason to be neglectful to mary; she doesn’t need to be sympathetic at all. the decision to make that a priority in this latest adaptation hurts mary’s character. when she tells her uncle that it was too hot to play in india (a sentiment taken directly from the novel), it doesn’t ring true—in the multiple flashbacks to india, mary plays a lot with her loving father (her ayah, while mentioned, is rarely seen; what we see of india is populated entirely by privileged whites), and is shown to enjoy herself tremendously until she glimpses her mother wilting sadly on a cushion or something. it undermines what little development mary has in the film.

the prioritization of mary and colin's mothers in general make the film feel weirdly overstuffed while giving little weight/emphasis to the events present in the source material. how many lines did major secondary characters like dickon or martha have, for example, compared to all the waffling mary and colin do about whether or not their mothers loved them and whether mary really killed her mother or not they, at the end of the day, really knew their parents, et cetera, et cetera? it’s a frustratingly shallow addition to the original story, devoid of thematic relevance.

speaking of shallow additions…

hector, a stray dog, assumes the role of the book’s robin (bizarre, considering the robin is also present), being the friendly animal character that leads mary to the secret garden. i’m not sure why the decision to add hector was made; he’s also the catalyst for mary leading dickon to the garden, while she needed no such thing in the book. did marc munden feel kids wouldn’t sympathize so readily with mary befriending a bird, despite the success of all the other adaptations saying otherwise? hector gets a lot of attention in the film, which is frustrating, because so much of the movie is filled with strange original additions that say little.

despite the clear talent of the actors and the vividness of the visuals, the changes to the story are devoid of purpose. the time period, for instance—why 1947? why have mary’s orphaning take place during the partition of india when her parents die of cholera anyway? why make martha and dickon black when the script pussyfoots around it, refusing to interact with that aspect of their characters in the same way burnett directly (if somewhat tactlessly) interacts with their poverty? save for vague, implicatory dialogue, like the threat of having poor dickon whipped if he’s sighted in misselthwaite by mrs. medlock, the racism of the time period isn’t featured at all. martha is stripped of any characterization at all, her cheerfulness diluted to the point of being nonexistent once mary gets a bit snappy. perhaps the decision to mute martha’s characterization was made out of fear of the implications of a black maid being cheerfully nurturing to a white girl despite her cruelty (invoking the mammy stereotype)—but if so, why make the decision to change martha’s race at all?

the structure of the film is odd, too. mary meets colin early on (in the book, mary explicitly states that she’d hate the imperious and bratty colin if she hadn’t met kindly martha or dickon first) and doesn’t meet dickon until halfway through. why? it directly contradicts the novel for no particular reason; it doesn’t help that dickon is so underused that he’s virtually a non-entity, his three whole canonical character traits (poor! happy! in tune with nature!) watered down to nothing. In this film, dickon isn’t particularly happy (he’s just as solemn and damaged as the other two kids, though in a more subdued way, as his father has died in the war—it’s frustrating that his rich white peers get to air their mommy issues at length while poor dickon’s grief is only glanced at) and his skill with animals is only vaguely alluded to. his skill with plants, negated by the apparent flourishing of the secret garden even when no one’s looking after it, is only brought up when, in one scene taking place in the garden, colin asks dickon what certain plants are.

it’s also frustrating that dickon, the only poor and nonwhite character in the trio, is the only one doing only actual gardening work while his friends sit around and talk about their trauma. the whole time, i wanted to urge mary to stop indulging in her overactive imagination for once and pull some weeds or something. putting in the work to make her secret garden flourish is an important part of her growth in the book, but that’s entirely absent here in favor of the occasional frolic. dickon even eventually whittles colin a cane he uses to eventually stumble into his father’s arms. this gesture should be touching and evident of the strength of the boys’ (offscreen) bond but instead is only another example of dickon selflessly and thoughtlessly serving his betters, making the classist implications of burnett’s original story more obviously troubling by adding race into the mix. it’s also bizarre that mary can cartwheel but dickon can’t, given how physically adept he was in the book. poor dickon is sapped of all his accomplishments, it seems. his character is completely glossed over, though i do like his feistiness in his meeting with mary, with him coming out of the mist and sharply remarking that martha loves him much more than she likes her. even more sadly, unlike his ‘93 counterpart, he doesn’t even get to eat a worm.

mrs. medlock is one-notedly antagonistic, being hard-nosed and strict and disapproving of mary’s wild ways—which is also disappointing. she’s not outright villainous, but she’s denied the shades of sympathy allowed her by the original novel, where she was a straightforward, unsentimental woman working a thankless job trying to satisfy and care for a tyrannical little hypochondriac. she’s also probably the closest thing we have in the movie to a xenophobe/racist, frequently making coded comments about the primitive and savage nature of the english colonies in india where mary grew up, but that’s only ever hinted at without being called out by mary or anyone else. there’s also an odd moment at the beginning of the film where mrs. medlock states the book-accurate sentiment that nothing lives on the moor but wild ponies and sheep, yet mary sees in the mist multiple shadowy figures with what i think are wheelbarrows and gardening tools (it’s a bit hard to tell with all the mist). this probably is meant to clue mary in to medlock’s classism, foreshadowing that mary will be given insight to the outdoors and different people in a way medlock could never be, changing her views of the class hierarchy she’s been inundated by—i’m not sure what else can be gleaned by the contradiction of medlock’s words and what mary sees but that—but nothing is done with it. we never see anyone on the moor but dickon throughout the rest of the movie. it’s another missed opportunity. maybe it’s meant to set up that there are poachers on the moor who set traps, like the one hector is hurt by? after seeing the movie twice, i’m still not sure what the purpose of that imagery was.

there are parts of the film i enjoyed! all the children do wonderfully in their roles (amir wilson does well with what frustratingly little he has), and i enjoyed this film’s characterization of colin as somewhat stiff, with a practiced, affected way of speaking that subtly indicates that he’s spent more time with books than with people. it makes a nice contrast to mary’s plainspokenness as a (relatively classless) orphan and dickon’s “rough” (lower-class) yorkshire accent, showing off his education and status as an upper-class boy.

the scene just before mary shows colin the tree his mother died beneath, when colin asks dickon about the names of flowers, is very sweet and book-accurate; i especially appreciate the nod to the kids’ book mastery of yorkshire, with colin mimicking dickon’s speech and noting that the names of the flowers sound better in his accent.

i also loved him calling dickon handsome. it is socially awkward? yes. does it make sense for colin to be socially awkward? also yes. and it’s adorable and book-accurate, in my opinion; if dickon weren’t so homely in the book, i imagine colin would call him handsome there, too. and mary proudly stating that dickon can whistle, as well, is lovely.

similarly, mary and dickon teaching colin to swim is very sweet—while i found most of the garden’s cgi magic wholly dispensable, i did enjoy the plants shivering along with colin. that sort of playfulness felt very attuned to the innocence of the book.

edan hayhurst does a wonderful job playing colin haughty and upset and an equally lovely job playing colin giddy and happy—if only he’d been allowed to really show off his screaming in a proper adaptation of his hysterics, instead of the pale imitation we got in the film!

it’s funny to note how much these kids get enjoyment out of pretending to be dogs. mary barks at hector when she first makes friends with him, pretends to be a yorkshire terrier with dickon when hector gets well in the garden, all the kids start barking when playing together, mary recites in a letter that colin pretended to be a dog all day...these kids sure love to bark. it’s not a bad thing, necessarily, just funny. why the dog obsession, marc munden? though i like the idea of them pretending to be animals (the masks they wear at one point are lovely), dogs feel a very typical choice. still, i can’t help but get enjoyment out of the kids playing together, though these moments are sadly brief.

i also really enjoyed all of mary’s outfits. they were adorable. if only we could have gotten more interactions between the children! part of the beauty of the second half of the novel is just watching the kids be kids in the garden; we rarely get that in all of the adaptations, of course, but in this one i was particularly sorrowful, given all the new directions the story went and how none of them directly impacted the children’s friendship with each other. there wasn’t even the mild jealousy colin has over mary spending more time with dickon than she is with him, which is present in most of the films. it’s a real shame; colin doesn’t even know dickon exists until he meets him, in a hurried scene that doesn’t remotely convey the sweetness of their meeting in the novel. the movie flits over all the book’s little idyllic joys in favor of its own original drama (which is not nearly as compelling as the movie thinks it is).

i did also enjoy the ending scene, with the kids swimming together, and mary attempting to tell a story with colin and dickon interrupting. it’s nice to see an ending to this story that doesn’t follow the book, which forgets mary and dickon in favor of colin. i think ending with the kids playing happy and whole in the garden is much more representative of the book’s charms. and the scene where mary and dickon first enter misselthwaite and are giving all-clear signs to one another as they go is fun, too.

i also enjoyed the set design, including all the green present in misselthwaite’s decor. i loved the high ceilings and the bareness of mary’s bedroom. poor colin still didn’t have any proper pajamas, reduced to wearing a white tank top for some reason, though i liked his goofy little hat that he wears when going outdoors. i wish we got to spend more time in colin’s room, and i wish the color saturation had been toned down a little just so we could get a better look at everything. all the insistent gloomy blues felt a bit overbearing.

i love the opening credits, though, and “the secret garden” slowly appearing in the title screen. the music and the soft green of the trees against the words really conjure up the novel’s near-pagan melancholy and mystery.

the less said about the third act climax of misselthwaite burning down, the better. it’s unneeded and resolves a film-only subplot about mary’s mother that didn’t need to be there in the first place. i think it also unfairly paints misselthwaite as a cursed, doomed place that can only benefit its inhabitants by being destroyed, which is unfortunate. misselthwaite wasn’t the problem, its people was, and they only thought misselthwaite was gloomy because they’d made it so. if they’d followed the teachings of burnett’s book, the one they were adapting, and thought a little more positively about it, then maybe they’d find it wasn’t such a terrible place to be. but, then, i guess we wouldn’t have the third act climax to artificially ramp up the stakes. how sad.

i could say more, but i’ll stop for now. i appreciate the effort, like i said, but i can’t help but feel this missed the mark.

#the secret garden #the secret garden 2020 #frances hodgson burnett #movie review #children's classics #classic literature

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dillydedalus · 4 years ago

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january reading

why does january always feel like it’s 3 months long. anyway here’s what i read in january, feat. poison experts with ocd, ants in your brain, old bolsheviks getting purged, and mountweazels.

city of lies, sam hawke (poison wars #1) this is a perfectly nice fantasy novel about jovan, who serves as essentially a secret guard against poisoning for his city state’s heir and is forced to step up when his uncle (also a secret poison guard) and the ruler are both killed by an unknown poison AND also the city is suddenly under a very creepy siege (are these events related? who knows!) this is all very fine & entertaining & there are some fun ideas, but also... the main character has ocd and SAME HAT SAME HAT. also like the idea of having a very important, secret and potentially fatal job that requires you to painstakingly test everything the ruler/heir is consuming WHILE HAVING OCD is like... such a deliciously sadistic concept. amazing. 3/5

my heart hemmed in, marie ndiaye (translated from french by jordan stump) a strange horror-ish tale in which two married teachers, bastions of upper-middle-class respectability and taste, suddenly find themselves utterly despised by everyone around them, escalating until the husband is seriously injured. through several very unexpected twists, it becomes clear that the couple’s own contempt for anyone not fitting into their world and especially nadia’s hostility and shame about her (implied to be northern african) ancestry is the reason for their pariah status. disturbing, surprising, FUCKED UP IF TRUE (looking back, i no longer really know what i mean by that). 4/5

xenogenesis trilogy (dawn/adulthood rites/imago), octavia e. butler octavia butler is incapable of writing anything uninteresting and while i don’t always completely vibe with her stuff, it’s always fascinating & thought-provoking. this series combines some of her favourite topics (genetic manipulation, alien/human reproduction, what is humanity) into a tale of an alien species, the oankali, saving some human survivors from the apocalypse and beginning a gene-trading project with them, integrating them into their reproductive system and creating mixed/’construct’ generations with traits from both species. and like, to me, this was uncomfortably into the biology = destiny thing & didn’t really question the oankali assertion that humans were genetically doomed to hierarchical behaviour & aggression (& also weirdly straight for a book about an alien species with 3 genders that engages in 5-partner-reproduction with humans), so that angle fell flat for me for the most part, altho i suppose i do agree that embracing change, even change that comes at a cost, is better than clinging to an unsustainable (& potentially destructive) purity. where i think the series is most interesting is in its exploration of consent and in how far consent is possible in extremely one-sided power dynamics (curiously, while the oankali condemn and seem to lack the human drive for hierarchy, they find it very easy to abuse their position of power & violate boundaries & never question the morality of this. in this, the first book, focusing on a human survivor first encountering the oankali and learning of their project, is the most interesting, as lilith as a human most explicitly struggles with her position - would her consent be meaningful? can she even consent when there is a kind of biochemical dependence between humans and their alien mates? the other two books, told from the perspectives of lilith’s constructed/mixed children, continue discussing themes of consent, autonomy and power dynamics, but i found them less interesting the further they moved from human perspectives. on the whole: 2.5/5

love & other thought experiments, sophie ward man, we love a pierre menard reference. anyway. this is a novel in stories, each based (loosely) on a thought experiment, about (loosely) a lesbian couple and their son arthur, illness and grief, parenthood, love, consciousness and perception, alternative universes, and having an ant in your brain. it is thoroughly delightful & clever, but goes for warmth and humanity (or ant-ity) over intellectual games (surprising given that it is all about thought experiments - but while they are a nice structuring device i don’t think they add all that much). i haven’t entirely worked out my feelings about the ending and it’s hard to discuss anyway given the twists and turns this takes, but it's a whole lot of fun. 4/5

a general theory of oblivion, josé eduardo agualusa (tr. from portuguese by daniel hahn) interesting little novel(la) set in angola during and after the struggle for independence, in which a portuguese woman, ludo, with extreme agoraphobia walls herself into her apartment to avoid the violence and chaos (but also just... bc she has agoraphobia) with a involving a bunch of much more active characters and how they are connected to her to various degrees. i didn’t like the sideplot quite as much as ludo’s isolation in her walled-in flat with her dog, catching pigeons on the balcony and writing on the walls. 3/5

cassandra at the wedding, dorothy baker phd student cassandra returns home attend (sabotage) her twin sister judith’s wedding to a young doctor whose name she refuses to remember, believing that her sister secretly wants out. cass is a mess, and as a shift to judith’s perspective reveals, definitely wrong about what judith wants and maybe a little delusional, but also a ridiculously compelling narrator, the brilliant but troubled contrast to judith’s safer conventionality. on the whole, cassandra’s narrative voice is the strongest feature of a book i otherwise found a bit slow & a bit heavy on the quirky family. fav line is when cass, post-character-development, plans to “take a quick look at [her] dumb thesis and see if it might lead to something less smooth and more revolting, or at least satisfying more than the requirements of the University”. 3/5

the office of historical corrections, danielle evans a very solid collection of realist short stories (+ the titular novella), mainly dealing with racism, (black) womanhood, relationships between women, and anticolonial/antiracist historiography. while i thought all the stories were well-done and none stood out as weak or an unnecessary inclusion, there also weren’t any that really stood out to me. 3/5

sonnenfinsternis, arthur koestler (english title: darkness at noon) (audio) you know what’s cool about this book? when i added it to my goodreads tbr in 2012, i would have had to read it in translation as the german original was lost during koestler’s escape from the nazis, but since then, the original has been rediscovered and republished. yet another proof that leaving books on your tbr for ages is a good thing actually. anyway. this is a story about the stalinist purges, told thru old bolshevik rubashov, who, after serving the Party loyally for years & doing his fair share of selling people out for the Party, is arrested for ~oppositional activities. in jail and during his interrogations, rubashov reflects on the course the Party has taken and his own part (and guilt) in that, and the way totalitarianism has eaten up and poisoned even the most commendable ideals the Party once held (and still holds?), the course of history and at what point the end no longer justifies the means. it’s brilliant, rubashov is brilliant and despicable, i’m very happy it was rediscovered. 5/5

heads of the colored people, nafissa thompson-spires another really solid short story collection, also focused on the experiences of black people in america (particularly the black upper-middle class), black womanhood and black relationships, altho with a somewhat more satirical tone than danielle evans’s collection. standouts for me were the story in letters between the mothers of the only black girls at a private school, a story about a family of fruitarians, and a story about a girl who fetishises her disabled boyfriend(s). 3.5/5

pedro páramo, juan rulfo (gernan transl. by dagmar ploetz) mexican classic about a rich and abusive landowner (the titular pedro paramo) and the ghost town he leaves behind - quite literally, as, when his son tries to find his father, the town is full of people, quite ready to talk shit about pedro, but they are all dead. it’s an interesting setting with occasionally vivid writing, but the skips in time and character were kind of confusing and i lost my place a lot. i’d be interested in reading rulfo’s other major work, el llano en llamas. 2.5/5

verse für zeitgenossen, mascha kaléko short collection of the poems kaléko, a jewish german poet, wrote while in exile in the united states in the 30-40s, as well as some poems written after the end of ww2. kaléko’s voice is witty, but at turns also melancholy or satirical. as expected i preferred the pieces that directly addressed the experience of exile (”sozusagen ein mailied” is one of my favourite exillyrik pieces). 3/5

the harpy, megan hunter yeah this was boooooooring. the cover is really cool & the premise sounded intriguing (women gets cheated on, makes deal with husband that she is allowed to hurt him three times in revenge, women is also obsessed with harpies: female revenge & female monsters is my jam) but it’s literally so dull & trying so hard to be deep. 1.5/5

the liar’s dictionary, eley williams this is such a delightful book, from the design (those marbled endpapers? yes) to the preface (all about what a dictionary is/could be), to the chapter headings (A-Z words, mostly relating to lies, dishonesty, etc in some way or another, containing at least one fictitious entry), to the dual plots (intern at new edition of a dictionary in contemporary england checking the incomplete old dictionary for mountweazels vs 1899 london with the guy putting the mountweazels in), to williams’s clear joy about words and playing with them. there were so many lines that made me think about how to translate them, which is always a fun exercise. 3.5/5

catherine the great & the small, olja knežević (tr. from montenegrin by ellen elias-bursać, paula gordon) coming-of-age-ish novel about katarina from montenegro, who grows up in titograd/podgorica and belgrad in the 70s/80s, eventually moving to london as an adult. to be honest while there are some interesting aspects in how this portrays yugoslavia and conflicts between the different parts of yugoslavia, i mostly found this a pretty sloggy slog of misery without much to emotionally connect to, which is sad bc i was p excited for it :(. 2/5

the decameron project: 29 new stories from the pandemic, anthology a collection of short stories written during covid lockdown (and mostly about covid/lockdown in some way). they got a bunch of cool authors, including margaret atwood, edwidge danticat, rachel kushner ... it’s an interesting project and the stories are mostly pretty good, but there wasn’t one that really stood out to me as amazing. i also kinda wish more of the stories had diverged more from covid/lockdown thematically bc it got a lil repetitive tbh. 2/5

#the books i read #long post #sonnenfinsternis is so good the audiobook nearly made me cry in the supermarket

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gra-sonas · 5 years ago

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RNM Amber Midthunder on Rosa’s Return and the Character’s Demons

From show creator Carina MacKenzie, The CW series Roswell, New Mexico is back for Season 2, and Liz (Jeanine Mason) is torn between having her sister Rosa (Amber Midthunder) back and the sacrifice that Max (Nathan Parsons) made, in order for that to happen. At the same time, Rosa is struggling with her new life in Roswell, as she realizes that she’s been kept in the dark about what really happened the night that she died.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actress Amber Midthunder (Legion) talked about how different things feel now that her character is back from the dead, which cast member she accidentally spoiled about her Rosa’s return, where Rosa is at mentally, working on the present-day sister dynamic with co-star Jeanine Mason, having Max Evans haunt her character, getting to have some of the cast members from the original Roswell series involved with their version of the story, that Rosa is going to continue to struggle with her own demons, and the addition of a new character that will be fully on her side.

Collider: Now that Rosa has been brought back from the dead and she’s living in the present day, do things feel very different for you, being immersed in the present-day storyline and not just exploring her backstory anymore or her past?

AMBER MIDTHUNDER: Yeah, totally. In my life and also for her, they’re both very different. Before, I felt like I was in my own cool little club, getting to just feel things out and re-explore the time period, with the 2000s, and what that was like. In a weird way, it’s a period piece. And now, what comes with being able to be there full time is that there’s a lot more elements, with everything else that’s going on for her, having returned from the dead and all.

After the events at the end of last season, that clearly affected your character in a major way, what was your reaction to learning about where things would be headed for her, especially at the start of Season 2?

MIDTHUNDER: I was just as curious as anybody else. It’s funny, I knew before that she was coming back to life. When a lot of people didn’t know that, I think I actually spoiled it for Michael Vlamis. He said something like, “Oh, maybe you’ll come back to life.” And I was like, “Yeah, when that happens, hopefully, I’ll be here.” And he was like, “What?! What did you say?” And I was like, “Huh? Nothing happened.” So, it’s been a lot of fun.

Rosa is clearly struggling with being back and figuring out what it means and who she is now, compared to everyone else who’s gone on living around her. What’s it like for her, mentally, at this point? What are the biggest issues for her, right now?

MIDTHUNDER: It’s tough. Her journey is like weirdly timely, with what’s going on and what we’re dealing with. (Showrunner) Carina [MacKenzie] and I had a lot of conversations about that. She feels like a ghost, and she said that, in her fight with Liz, where she said, “Before, nobody used to come near me, but now they don’t even know that I’m here.” That is isolating, on such a level that even she doesn’t know how to deal with. There are a lot of elements about it. It’s not just that she has to hide, it’s that she lost out on ten very important years, with all of her loved ones and her peers, and she can’t get that back. There’s this feeling of being left behind. Liz and Rosa have this relationship of, “No matter what, it’s you and me. No matter what, we’re sisters. No matter what, I’m always gonna have your back.” And they couldn’t keep that going. So, to now step back into that place, brings a lot of pain for her. Not only was she not there, Liz started to move on, and that’s a whole other can of worms. That’s super complicated and painful. She has to deal with this all by herself, also. She doesn’t have anybody that she can go to.

What do you think Rosa’s ideal life would look like, if she could live what she wanted?

MIDTHUNDER: Well, it’s funny that you ask that. I’m just gonna leave it there. I feel like you’re a little intuitive. She’s very hard on herself, and sometimes she’s the one who believes in herself the most. She and Liz both have this dynamic of wanting to be the hero, and I think she really sees herself as the protector, which is a huge part of what throws her for a loop and makes all this lonely stuff super complicated. Her one job, she’s now completely inadequate at because her sister is now older than her and super accomplished. She, in some ways, views herself as the hero, and she has this consistent idea of how she shouldn’t be and how she will be, in a perfect world. It’s like, “I’m gonna be the perfect big sister. I’m a great artist. I’m a great daughter. I’m a great thing and that thing. I’m a good friend.” And every time she tries, she just hasn’t been able to get there. What I love about her is that she doesn’t stop trying. She never stops chasing that, as many times as she fails.

What’s it like to also get to work with Jeanine Mason on this different kind of dynamic now? We’ve only seen the past dynamic between these sisters, and now they have to figure out how to deal with who they are now, so what’s it been like to work with her?

MIDTHUNDER: It’s a very complicated dynamic. I love Jeanine. She is my sister now. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It’s great. As a human being, I love her and am obsessed with her. She’s my friend and my sister. I feel like I couldn’t have had a better partner on this. I feel like that’s why the sister dynamic is so present between us. We’re very honest with each other. We’ll show up to work, or we’ll talk to each other like outside of work, and be like, “How do you think we should do this?” And we always have the common goal of being honest. No matter what fight they’re having, the feelings are real. You’re never gonna fight with your sibling about “Oh, my gosh, I died, and you took all the stuff off my walls.” But the feelings of, “I can’t believe you’d leave me behind like that,” is very real. So, she’s the best. She’s great. I love it.

Rosa has a real anger toward Max, which is justified, considering that his actions led everyone in town to feel a certain way about her. Clearly, that’s complicated by the fact that he’s haunting her now and begging for her help. How is that going to continue to escalate between them, when he is probably the last person she wants anything to do with?

MIDTHUNDER: I feel like, kudos to Rosa, for not just being like, “Forget you, dude!” At least, she’s considering it. She’s not just on board, but at least she’s thinking about it. It’s super complicated ‘cause there’s a whole history. She never liked him, from the beginning. In her eyes, he wronged them both. He made this big grand gesture to be the hero, much like Liz and Rosa try to do, but he didn’t ask. Rosa never said that she wanted to come back. Liz didn’t ask her that. She’s trying to process so much. The fact that this is happening and the fact that it’s him, if you were to ask her, “What do you think about Max Evans?,” she’s got a lot of stuff to say. But she’s more preoccupied with what’s going on then who’s doing it. I don’t even think she has time to think about how it’s this guy. She thinks about it, but it’s not number one on her list.

It’s fun to see Max Evans be the antagonist of her life, when he’s the hero to all these other people.

MIDTHUNDER: Yeah, that’s true, and that goes into her feeling like she’s in her own world. The one person that she has to talk to is grieving over him, and talking about how great he was and how much she loved him, while Rosa’s having her own experience of, “He wasn’t so great, if you ask me.” It’s very complicated.

It’s very cool that this re-imagining of this story has also been able to include some of the original cast members, with Shiri Appleby directing episodes and now Jason Behr guest starring in Season 2. What’s it meant to the cast, to see how the original cast is supporting the series, and what’s it been like to have them around, on set?

MIDTHUNDER: It’s legendary. It’s so cool. In this time period, when we’re attacking these stories that people loved so much, and they were so well-received and even we loved them, to have them around is everybody’s favorite day. When they’re around, I feel like everyone is geeking out. Roswell is geeking out over Roswell. It’s so great. It’s cool, having them around and seeing them still give 100% to this thing that they had in their lives, that also meant so much to them.

You got to spend the first season of this show, really exploring this character’s past and background, which is not something you get to do very often on a TV show. Now that you’re getting to explore her present, do you feel like you’re learning a lot about her that’s surprising you, as far as who she is?

MIDTHUNDER: It’s all exciting to me ‘cause it’s uncharted territory. It is undiscovered waters, and could be nothing that’s more exciting, especially having been able to spend so much time with her before. It’s cool. It’s exciting, every day, to show up to work and think that we have no established set of rules about how she acts and how she handles things, in this situation, because nobody’s been in this situation, ever. As all of the characters grow and evolve, hers is definitely very unique, and that’s super fun. I don’t think that this is necessarily who she would have been. If anything, it’s the total opposite. The thing is, she’s picking up where she left off. All this time has gone by to everybody else, but to her nothing has happened, except that she woke up and everything is different. She still, in a way, is dealing with the same things, but just now she’s got a lot more.

Rosa is also still fighting with whether to drink or not drink. That hasn’t just gone away because she’s back. Is that something we’re going to continue to see more of, when it comes to her own demons?

MIDTHUNDER: Yeah, absolutely. That was very important to me. When we started the season, Carina and I sat down and talked about how her addiction wasn’t just a passenger that came and went, and existed in TV world. It was important, to both of us, that it was represented honestly. This age group and this audience, and for anybody out there, there’s such a huge epidemic of addiction right now, in this country and in the whole world. I’m a strong believer that, the more that you are exposed to something, in the right way, and the more that you learn, the better you can make choices. I care about what we do, as storytellers. Whether we’re actors or writers or show creators, personally, I feel that we have a responsibility. I heard Jennifer Lawrence, in an interview, one time, say that, “Is someone is gonna listen to me talk, I better have something to say.” That always really resonated with me, and I feel like that’s true. And with this character, I saw a really big opportunity to say something really important, which is that, even in this fantastical world, she’s still dealing with very real things, like her mental health and her addiction. She’s going through all of this crazy stuff, not to mention that she’s bipolar. That’s a huge part of it. As we go through the season with her, it gets hopeful and it gets ugly, and the ups and downs and the inconsistencies are all very real. But the thing is, no matter how difficult it is, it’s known impossible, and that’s what I care about saying. As difficult as it may feel, if you’re in the hole, you can get out.

As the season goes on, will there be someone who Rosa can fully trust and who she feels like is fully on her side?

MIDTHUNDER: There is, yes. I don’t know what I’m allowed to say about that. There’s an episode that I’m really looking forward to people seeing, where we introduce a new character, who is right on Rosa’s level.

~ Collider

#amber midthunder #rosa ortecho #ortecho sisters #roswell new mexico #rnm spoilers #rnm cast interviews

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quarantingz · 5 years ago

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headaches & the beauty of hindsight

28 april, tuesday

10.50am

I’m feeling good.

With the absence of my recent headaches, I’m definitely much better. Hopeful. That kind of better where you smile to yourself and want to cry simultaneously (or maybe that’s just me). Or the kind of better like a hot cup of coffee at the start of the day - the promise of a good day.

I’m saying this because it’s been a while since my last post and it was pretty damn heavy sorry. I’m a little scared this post will suck because I’m out of practice and that something has changed. NO, something has changed. And that is a good thing.

So let me dive straight in and put my words to paper (or rather, Pages haha)…

Last week I was recovering from a cold which involved regular headaches and a weird tension at the back of my head and behind my eyes. Sore eardrums, five mouth ulcers and an irritated throat. Essentially, I was not well haha. But that wasn’t even the problem. Looking back, I was more so mentally exhausted and almost unstable. I constantly had doubt and a lack of motivation for the past few weeks. I wallowed in self-pity and tried to “start again” everyday so I could be the “productive” person I’m often perceived to be. I guess you could say I did the opposite of what everyone told me to do - which was to simply rest and recover.

But knowing me, I can’t do that. It’s just not good enough.

Instead, I tried to commit every waking moment I had to working, video meetings, working out, catchups, spending time with fam, replying to people, doing chores, helping out around the house etc. Without glorifying myself, I soldiered on and put up a front. I guess I lied a lot (sorry B!) that I was okay. That yes, “I can talk this afternoon”, yes “one more episode” or yes “I’ll have that development to you by tonight”. Also no “I don’t have a headache right now”, no “it’s fine, I’m not tired, I’ll wait” or no “I can suss that for you now”. As a lot of my friends and family know, I like to say yes to a lot of things. And that’s probably an understatement. I don’t particularly have a good sense of balance and workload I guess.

Weirdly, being in iso, I’ve never felt so pressured (purely by myself) to be as present as I can and as involved and intentional with people, work and life in general because I “have the time” and now more than ever, it’s important to reach out and stay connected. Which I think is completely true! However, during my cold and this weird season of self-discovery and isolation, I’ve been pretty bad at it. Again, time feels like the antagonist of everything I do. Days go by so fast I feel like I have hardly any time to do anything! Which doesn’t make sense at all since I’m at home, don’t need to commute anywhere and I’m not working at the Gateau House right now.

And without sounding annoying and ungrateful, I think it just got too much and my body couldn’t handle it. So it broke out, in many different ways that I tried to address in the usual way I know how…by ignoring and doing more work.

In hindsight my humanity got the best of me, which in hindsight, isn’t necessarily good or bad.

More often than not, I let my feelings, my insecure thoughts, my current capabilities, the crumbs ahh and my temporal lens to dictate how I live life. I embrace everything and nothing at the same time, which doesn’t make sense. But that’s humanity. That’s normal. (Which I know is also a stupid statement/excuse). But to be honest, this current war of truth (specifically God’s truth) and self-fulfilling prophecy (my own humanity I guess) occupies my thoughts often. As Paulz touched on in her last post, I too question everything and/or I leap into life with unquestionable and fearless faith - a mixed bag of everything that I can’t control.

Which didn’t help my health and my recovery. It definitely affected by relationships, my interactions with people, my creativity, my art, my work and my mental and spiritual health especially (even now actually)! I was just tired all the time. And that’s where self-hate begins to thrive. It’s in this tiredness and vulnerability that it grows bigger and bigger. And that is dangerous.

So in HiNdSiGhT, this slowly consumed me for the past month. To the extent where I actually felt so lost and confused. Joy was absent. Motivation for “living” was absent. I was just doing things just coz >blank<. Even with the love and support from everyone in my life, I was barely living. But now, for reasons I can’t explain, something has clicked and I’m only getting back on my horse now. Trying to find my passion and identity right now. Or maybe I’m just rediscovering it. That joy and insatiable hunger I had before - but even better! That’s the funny thing about life and probably just humanity in general. Everything is so fickle! I used to hate that word dang it, because I can be very fickle. But it’s a goodie at describing how uncertain and unpredictable humans can be. But I guess it’s from this fickle nature and our hindsight that work so beautifully together. We can look back on and learn from our past decisions and actions - which I know is actually so hard to do.

So as Paulz wrote so beautifully:

“I feel things, a lot of them, too strongly. Most days I let them consume me. I let them spill, every now and then.”

And right now I’m feeling good. So I’m going to ride this wave as long as I can (which actually sounds really sad) and let it bleed into everything that I do today. Hopefully it’ll last. Hopefully this will be long term. And it’s okay if it isn’t. That’s life. And that’s an exhausting and broken-record statement, sorry.

But for now, that’s enough for me.

- a

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kcwcommentary · 6 years ago

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VLD8x04 – “Battle Scars”

8x04 – “Battle Scars”

This episode contributes to the season’s unbalanced storytelling. This is a whole episode spent on what really amounts to like five or ten minutes of story. That wouldn’t be a problem if the season didn’t also have so many episodes later on in which too much happens in a single episode, causing everything in those episodes to be really confusing with really difficult to follow logistics.

Given this episode’s focus on Pidge and her Olkarion/plant thing and the threat of a weblum, this episode feels like it was written after someone finished rewatching season two, though this episode revisits two of the least interesting stories from season two.

The big reveal of why the mecha was attacking Olkarion does not provide an answer to at least one of the mysteries the episode sets up: Why is Olkarion now a dead planet? Also, we’re shown several Olkarion ships evacuating Olkari, so why did they not immediately contact the Voltron Coalition once they got clear of Olkarion to tell them they had been attacked?

The episode starts with the mecha sent by Honerva at the end of last episode arriving at Olkarion. Cut to somewhere in space, the Lions travelling wherever they’re going. I like the first shot of this big shot of the nebula with the Lions so small since it helps make space feel appropriately large. They’ve checked, according to Pidge, 11 star systems in three days, and haven’t found any sign of the mecha. They talk about the “quadrant,” and if you’ve read some of my past commentaries, you know that I’m really not a fan of the use of that word since when it gets used, it almost always is not referring to one-fourth of an area like the word quadrant means. Here, Pidge says that this quadrant is “230,000 light-years in diameter,” Hunk says that he “can’t even process what that means.” Well then, let me help. The diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy is approximately 150,000 light-years. The Milky Way is not particularly a large galaxy. It is possible that the Paladins are in a really large galaxy, and that 230,000 light-years could amount to a quarter of that galaxy, so maybe, just maybe “quadrant” could be an applicable word, but I doubt it. It’s more likely that the show just yet again threw around that word without thinking. I imagine most of the writers on this show being just like Hunk in this moment, not able to process what astronomical distances mean. Of course, Hunk, having been a student at the Galaxy Garrison and having spent considerable time travelling throughout the universe, should be able to have an idea how big 230,000 light-years is.

Allura says, “Perhaps we should set our heading to the Altean Colony.” Keith counters, “We talked about this [….]” Anyone remember when Allura was a leader? When she was viewed by the Paladins as the Princess of Altea? When what she wanted to do had weight with the Paladins, and they didn’t condescend to her the way Keith just did? Moments like this is why Allura becoming the Blue Paladin was a demotion. The executive producers’ desire to have Keith as Black Paladin, and thus the leader, didn’t just take a leadership position away from Shiro, it took a leadership position away from Allura too.

Allura wants to go to the Colony to look for clues. Keith doesn’t want to go because of how difficult it was for him when he and Krolia went there in the past. What Keith doesn’t include is that his progression through the quantum abyss was through use of his jetpack and a space whale; if the Paladins went now they’d be using their Lions. I think their Lions can handle things far, far better. We’ve had Lions navigate a precise path between two black holes and a giant blue star before (2x08 “The Blade of Marmora”), so clearly the Lions can handle navigating through complex gravity.

Allura becomes very understandably annoyed, “I’m tired of hearing what we can’t do and what we don’t know.” She specifically locates her annoyance in the fact that what Honerva is doing is being done to Alteans, her people, so this feels personal for her. I think she’d be totally right to feel annoyed just because everyone else seems casual about what’s been happening. Allura says to the group, “You don’t understand.” Lance jumps in with, “I understand what it feels like to see someone I care about hurt so much.” Honestly, I’m kind of over people acting like this. If someone tells you that you don’t understand what they’re going through, then just countering by saying that you do understand is not demonstrating that understanding. (I get that Lance was technically saying that he feels sorry to see Allura so upset, but I’m focused on how he was written to use the specific words he did.) The person wouldn’t have said that you don’t understand if you were demonstrating that you do. The fact that they told you that you don’t understand indicates you need to reevaluate your behavior toward that person. Too often, it feels like when someone says that others don’t understand what they’re going through, people who counter by just saying that they do understand are just trying to avoid self-examination, they’re trying to take the cheap way out of the social situation. Applying that to this situation, I don’t think anyone has demonstrated that they recognize what effect this situation is having on Allura. It’s been well over a season of this show since anyone’s really paid attention to Allura, and Lance wanting to date and kiss her does not count as anyone paying attention to her thoughts and feelings about what’s going on in her life.

They then write Allura to apologize to Lance as if Allura was in the wrong here. Grr!

Hunk says, “Maybe we should head to Olkarion. They’re just a few galaxies away.” I know this show has been the loosest possible when it comes to depicting accurate scale/distance of space and travel through space, but it sounds ludicrous to say something like it’s “just a few galaxies away.” If the distance to Olkarion is so casual the way Hunk talks here, why haven’t they already called up someone on Olkarion and asked them if they’ve heard anything?

“And it’ll be awesome to see everyone again,” Pidge says. “I wonder what kind of technological advances they’ve made in the last few years.” Why didn’t she ask them when a bunch of Olkari came to Earth at the end of last season to help Earth after the occupation?

Allura remains mentally isolated from the group. Not that any of the others can currently see Allura’s face, but she clearly looks sad. This is more of what Allura goes through this season that made me feel during my first time watching this season that Allura was seriously depressed (and no one really cared). With Allura seeming depressed, as I said in my commentary for 8x01 “Launch Date,” having her story end with her death really feels like the show is saying that the only outcome available for someone who’s depressed is for them to die.

Lance asks, “Allura, what do you think?” Why is he asking this? She’s told everyone what she thinks their next action should be: look for clues at the Colony. They rejected that idea. Allura is essentially pressured into dismissing her own judgement and accedes to everyone else’s desire to go to Olkarion.

Pidge tries to contact Olkarion to tell them they’re coming, and no communication can be established. One, Olkarion is probably the Voltron Coalition’s biggest member, at least until now when Earth’s added the Atlas to the Coalition’s resources. Team Voltron spent nearly a whole season parked on Olkarion earlier in the show. Since the Coalition has learned that Honerva has these new mechas in play, why wouldn’t the Coalition/Paladins have contacted their biggest ally a long time ago to spread the alert to the Coalition members?

I’m also left wondering what the parameters were of the Olkari coming to Earth to help post-occupation. Are there still Olkari on Earth? Are there Olkari on the Atlas?

I genuinely laughed at Lance’s, “They’re probably too busy untangling calculations. Am I using that right?”

Pidge says, “I’m guessing there’s a delay due to our distance.” This show has never had distance cause a delay in communications be a thing before, so why would Pidge think it was a possibility? (I’m remembering Pidge expecting an instant communication with her father on Earth back at the beginning of season seven, for example. She was super far away from Earth at the time but didn’t think a distance-based delay was a thing.)

Keith orders Voltron formed, and the animation really feels like it’s just there to take up time. Keith has Voltron use its once-special but now-common wing engines to go faster. They very quickly jet from where they were to “Olkarion’s galactic neighborhood,” as Lance says. He also then asks, “Did we ever hear from them?” You mean within the literal just a few seconds that have passed since you previously tried contacting them? Lance’s line is written like a notable amount of time has passed, but the animation hasn’t had time pass, the animation has had them quickly form Voltron and we saw the literal few seconds they spent in transit, start to finish, from where they were to where they are now. Maybe this is just the director not building the shots of the episode in a way to convey more time passing, but as it is, it’s only been like a couple of minutes, max, for the Paladins since Pidge tried contacting Olkarion.

Pidge tries contacting Olkarion again, and she detects something coming toward them. It’s a weblum. For a bit, Voltron weirdly just floats in the weblum’s way before finally moving so that it doesn’t blast them.

Allura asks where the weblum is going, and Pidge calculates and says Olkarion. Voltron was headed toward Olkarion. The weblum is headed toward Olkarion. Voltron and the Weblum were headed in opposite directions initially. So, Voltron was headed away from Olkarion then. If the director couldn’t keep something this simple straight in setting up the shots and logistics of the episode, I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised that the show’s direction becomes maddeningly confusing when the season’s story gets more complicated.

Voltron had disassembled the wings to make its shield, but then cut to Voltron using its wings, as if it had been in wing-mode the entire time, to beat the weblum to Olkarion. Voltron separates into Lions when they get to Olkarion.

There, they see Olkarion’s city destroyed. I say city, singular, because this show only ever seems to depict populated planets, Olkarion included, as having a single location of habitation. Pidge is sad, saying, “They were our allies, our friends.” Yeah? Then why hadn’t you guys contacted them before now to let them know about Honerva’s mechas?

Keith acknowledges that they’re under a time pressure to act since the weblum is coming there. He orders the Paladins to engage in search and rescue if possible and to try to find out what happened to Olkarion. For not having much time, everyone seems to be acting slowly, taking time to look around. Only Hunk and Keith are using their Lions. There are some really powerful sensors on the Lions, so I would think using them would be the first thing they would do. Instead, Pidge takes time to look at single, crumbly leaf. Allura, being who she is would be the one most able to know, says that the land has been drained of quintessence. Hunk says he and Lance have found traces of the metal that the mecha is made of.

I imagine Pidge being sad over Olkarion’s destruction is meaningful to people who are fans of Pidge’s character. I don’t have any immediate objection to how her sadness is being portrayed, I think it’s logical that her character would be sad, but because this show’s past plots with Pidge have annoyed me so greatly, I can’t help but to just not care that she’s sad.

She falls to her knees, crying, and then there’s a white light and she can see Olkari kids playing before her vision returns to normal. Allura says that because the Olkari and Pidge both have a “profound connection to the land” – despite the show nominally having added this yay-nature dimension to Pidge’s character, I’ve never seen her act in any way that demonstrated she developed a connection “to the land,” but whatever – that maybe the planet is showing Pidge something. How? If the planet hadn’t been drained of its quintessence, I would think that could explain how, but as is, it’s just happening because that’s what’s been written, not because there is any explanation for why. And the show never explains why. Allura says, “Concentrate. See if you can tap into its energy.” It has no energy! Allura literally said the planet’s quintessence is gone just a short bit ago.

Pidge closes her eyes until she starts having visions again. She sees the mecha plunging through the atmosphere. She and Allura move to the city, where Pidge has a vision of the mecha hitting the ground. Ryner was here when it happened. Pidge sees the mecha attack the city. She jetpacks to a location closer to the initial attack. She sees Ryner order evacuations and counter attacks.

Hunk and Lance report that they only have ten minutes to get out before the weblum hits Olkarion due to the weblum tripping some “low orbit trackers.” I guess the weblum’s arrival is supposed to be unexpected? Like its there earlier than its distance and known possible speed would have it able to arrive? But also, they used “low orbit trackers?” A low Earth orbit has an approximate maximum altitude of 2000 km. Most of Earth’s satellites and the International Space Station have a low Earth orbit. Since they knew the weblum was coming, they should have been monitoring to know it was there long before it was knocking on the front door. So, this new time pressure is just the show having a contrived situation again.

Allura asks Keith, Hunk, and Lance to try to buy Pidge time to learn more about what happened to Olkarion. Pidge reenters her vision, sees the donut cannon try to blast the mecha, which reflects the blast and destroys the cannon. Ryner orders Olkari soldiers to hold the mecha off as much as possible while other Olkari “preserve the information from the communications tower.” So, Pidge, knows where to head to next.

Keith, Hunk, and Lance make their way to the weblum, which is visually not even remotely close enough to have tripped any low orbit sensors. Hunk tries to slam into the weblum to knock it off-course. They try various Lion weapons, but it doesn’t slow down.

Pidge reenters her vision on the communication tower. She observes two Olkari discuss why they were unable to detect the mecha until it hit their atmosphere. They look at a few records of some space-time anomalies and realize that the mehca arrived via wormhole. Ryner communicates orders to them to transfer all data from the tower to a safe off-planet location and then evacuate. They finish their data transmission just as the mecha blows up the tower. Pidge relays the information to Allura but asks for more time. Allura leaves to join the others against the weblum, which continues to be nowhere near a low orbit of Olkarion.

Hunk contacts Coran, who instantly returns communication (so no time delay to long-distance communication in this show), to ask how to stop a weblum from destroying a planet. Coran’s communication conveniently, but at least it’s purposefully done for humor, fades at the important parts of Coran’s instructions. It mirrors the video and audio errors in the instructional video that Keith and Hunk watched about weblums in 2x09 “The Belly of the Weblum.” Ultimately, the inclusion of Coran here is solely for this one joke, and nothing he says has any impact on the story. Allura arrives in time to use Blue’s “sonic” cannon, which causes the weblum to stop an imminent mouth-blast.

Back in Pidge’s vision, she sees Ryner ordering more evacuation, the mecha destroying more city, and (finally something important that the audience didn’t already know) the mecha taking several Olkari cubes. Pidge tries to ask vision-Ryner why the mecha wanted the cubes. The episode thinks it’s giving some big poignant, emotional moment by having Ryner talk to some crying kid who’s “scared [and doesn’t] want to leave.” Ryner spends an unrealistic moment, the city falling around them, telling the kid, “You mustn’t cling too tightly to the past. The Olkari have always been able to adapt and move forward. It is our greatest strength, and it will live on in you. The old must give way to the new, it is the way of the universe,” and she sends this random kid onto the evacuation ship. Pidge leaves the vision, the Green Lion picks up Pidge, and they leave Olkarion.

I just don’t feel what the episode is trying to make me feel with Ryner and the Olkari. It’s not that I dislike either Ryner or the Olkari (though I do dislike how the point-connection for them both to the story has been through Pidge because this supposed yay-nature aspect of Pidge has never felt true to me). But the sadness that should come with seeing Olkarion destroyed just doesn’t happen for me. I think part of it is that the destruction of Olkarion doesn’t get to be about the Olkari. It’s all about Pidge.

Hunk says, “If you think about it, this isn’t really the end of Olkarion. Weblums eating dead planets is just the first step in the process that leads to the growth of new stars, planets, and galaxies.” This is more of the non-poignancy from Ryner’s speech. I know the show has established that weblums eat dead planets, though I guess “dead planet” is specifically a planet that once had abundant life, but something has happened to kill off all the life on the planet? Because the vast majority of planets in the universe are going to not have life on them, thus most planets are dead planets unless “dead planets” is only defined as planets that once had life. Also, the creation of the weblum for this show to function as some kind of space recycling system is kind of obnoxious since we actually know a fair amount about the actual, real destruction and creation processes for stars and planets. It’s pretty much all about stars exploding. The weblum has always seemed like the show trying to apply the circle-of-life concept to inanimate astronomical objects. It’s like the show has misapplied one area of science to a different area of science.

Pidge apparently knows some way to now track Honerva’s mechas, I guess through the cubes the mecha took? The episode ends.

So, can anyone tell me how the entire planet’s quintessence was drained? The mecha attacked one city, destroyed some buildings, grabbed the cubes, and left the planet. The mecha is never shown to drain the entire planet of its quintessence. Maybe a small area within the city, but not the whole planet. So, when did the planet-draining happen? And who did it?

Technically, this episode isn’t totally pointless: it does advance the find-Honerva story by the reveal that the mecha took the cubes at the very end. But I can’t help but to still feel like this episode mostly just takes up time that the season could have better used to keep the second half of the season from being so confusing and so chaotically directed.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron #vld #voltron criticism #vld criticism #voltron critical #vld critical #vld season 8 #vld 8x04 #commentary

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thirium-fiction · 7 years ago

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Copycat Hostage (Connor x Reader)

Request: Connor x reader where Connor is held hostage, and it's up to reader, Hank, and others to save him plz?

Word Count: 2.8k+ (I got carried away towards the end oops)

A/N: I’m actually pretty proud of this one so I hope you guys enjoy it. It took me hOURS and it may have a couple typos but oh well

Warnings: Kidnapping, Swearing, (Blue) Blood

Something felt off about the DPD that day. It was oddly…normal. Which meant that it wasn’t normal. You moved your head around, searching to see if something was out of place. You landed on the empty desk besides Hank. He didn’t seem phased by it, continuing to work like nothing was wrong. You scooted your swivel chair across the floor, moving in the man’s direction. Eventually coming to a halt, you nudged Hank. He grunted in response, barely acknowledging you, but it was more than nothing.

“Hank,” You started, “…have you seen Connor at all today?”

The man looked at you, making sure to take the longest pause before replying, “Who?”

You rolled your eyes at his response, “Come on, Hank. You know who.”

He glanced over at the empty spot where the RK800 usually sat and asked all sorts of questions that he could think of. Mostly about dogs. Hank shrugged and turned back to you, “Hell if I know. Maybe he’s just running late.”

You don’t think Connor even knew the meaning of ‘late’. He made sure to walk through the doors of the DPD exactly at 6 o’clock sharp. No more. No less. People have even caught him standing outside the building, constantly checking the time to see when he could begin work. The cleaning androids usually had to let him in considering no one else even arrived yet.

So, no. He definitely wasn’t late.

You sighed, scooting away from Hank, looking for the next person to ask. You honestly wished you hadn’t as you saw the next person.

“You lost, (Y/N)? Your desk is that way.” Gavin smirked as he saw you scooting around the floor.

You warily pulled your seat up next to his desk, earning a raised eyebrow in response. He scoffed, folding his arms as he saw the look on your face. “What do you want now?”

You twiddled your thumbs, trying to figure out how to word your next sentence. You knew if you mentioned anything related to Connor, this guy was going to blow a gasket. You huffed, taking the risk.

“Have you seen any sign of Connor?”

Gavin busted out laughing, holding his sides as they started becoming sore. You didn’t really know what was funny about the question but again, you were talking to Gavin.

“That piece of shit? Why would I know where he is?”

You gave him a look, “Because you make fun of him wherever he goes. Naturally, I assumed you would know his whereabouts.”

He stopped laughing, a sly smile still on his features. “Nope. Sorry, darlin’.”

You ignored the nickname as you pushed off the desk, rolling away. When you were about to pass Connor’s absence off as an ‘android sick day’, Fowler came out from his office and called out to you.

“(Y/N)! I believe this is for you.”

Everyone’s eyes were on you as you awkwardly got out of your seat and walked up to him. It was weirdly quiet as you took the object from his hands.

A phone.

You gave Fowler a look as he nodded towards it, ushering you to respond to the person on the other line. With a hesitant feeling, you raised the device to your ear.

“Hello?” You said, perplexed as to why someone would reach out to you this way.

“(Y/N)! I’m glad this message got to you successfully.” An all too familiar voice of the RK800 came from the opposite end.

“What the hell? Where are you?”

A silence. You could faintly hear, hushed whispering on the other end.

“I am…somewhere.” He replied finally.

You wore a worried expression. Connor was never this vague.

“Are you alright?”

There was a pause again. A dreadful feeling filling your stomach. There was a deep breath before he added, “I like ice cream.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I tend to feel very abandoned and isolated.”

You shifted uncomfortably. Why was he saying all these things?

There was a loud crash, a pause, and then a voice spoke up, “We have the android. Bring $100,000 in cash and he’ll live. You have 2 hours. Don’t get the police involved.”

Click.

The line went dead as you stood there in awe. Connor was held captive for ransom and only you knew it. Fowler stared at you, waiting for an explanation. You shook your head, telling you it was an older neighbor of yours who must’ve used the wrong number. He shook his head in disapproval.

“Use your personal phone for personal reasons.”

Nodding, you turned around and quickly walked back to your desk. You looked at your watch.

1 hour and 55 minutes left.

Your eyes widened, seeing that you already lost 5 minutes. Every second counted now. You knew you couldn’t figure this out on your own. You had no idea where Connor was and the way he acted confused you even more. Walking over to Hank, you shook his shoulder.

“The fuck do you want now?” He asked, clearly irritated with constantly being bothered.

You gave him a forced smile, freaking the man out. ��Connor was kidnapped and is being held for ransom and we have less than two hours to find him.” You said through gritted teeth.

His eyes widened as he quickly shot up from his chair, “Shit...I knew I should’ve stayed home today.”

You and Hank quickly moved through the desks. Both of you almost left the building, but you stopped. Hank paused next to you, “What are you doing?”

You sighed, knowing what you had to do. You didn’t know how many guys were holding Connor and you plus a drunkard weren’t a very strong team. You looked over at Hank before glancing over to where Gavin sat, drumming his pens on his desk. The man next to you watched where you were staring, and he scoffed.

“Hell no.”

His words went through one ear and out the other as you walked towards Gavin, ignoring Hank’s hushed whispers for you to come back. You approached Gavin’s desk for the second time today. He stopped his drumming and stared up at you, a smirk returning to his face. “You miss m- Agh! Hey! What the fuck, (Y/N)?!”

You pulled Gavin by his ear, so he couldn’t help but follow you. Barely anyone paid much attention to the both of you, thinking Gavin did something stupid yet again. You let him go once you met up with a very disgruntled looking Hank.

Gavin rubbed his now red ear, glancing between the both of you. “The hell is this? Some kind of dumbass club?”

You crossed your arms, “Yes, and that’s why we invited you to join.”

He leered at you, Hank chuckling slightly in the background despite loathing being there. “But, really. Why am I here exactly?”

You glanced at your watch briefly.

1 hour and 26 minutes left.

Your stomach dropped as you looked back at a waiting Gavin. “Connor is being held ransom somewhere and we’re the only ones who know. They want $100,000 in cash and we have less than an hour and a half to find him.”

He stared at you in shock. Not from the news but from why he was wasting his time here.

“Not my damn problem. Figure it out yourselves. That piece of plastic means nothing to me.” He was about to walk away before you grabbed his arm, abruptly stopping him.

“If you leave now, I will tell the whole division about you-know-what during you-know-when with you-know-who.”

Gavin froze, staring at you in horror before shaking his head. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, really? Let me jog your memory. Hey, Hank!”

Hank turned to you with an evil grin on his face.

“This one time, Gavin got really drunk at a celebration and- “

“OKAY! OKAY!” Gavin cut in. “I’m suddenly in a helping mood. Let’s get outta here and find the tin can.”

He walked towards the exit first before you and Hank shared a look, following behind.

All three of you were packed into Gavin’s car with Hank in the passenger seat and you in the back. The younger male insisted you use his car because he wasn’t about to get into “some drunkard’s shithole of a ride”. The inside of Gavin’s car smelled heavily of cologne, causing you to have to roll down a window to get a breath of fresh air.

As you all drove off, Hank twisted his body around slightly to talk to you. “You have no idea where he was? Not a clue?”

You shook your head. “He just said he was somewhere.” You paused thinking about what he said after. “He then said he liked ice cream and felt very abandoned and isolated.”

“The hell? What a dumbass.” Gavin piped up from the driver’s seat.

You glared at him before bringing your attention back to Hank. The look on his face showed one of deep thought. “Maybe he was drugged?” He suggested.

You shook your head. “I’m not sure you can drug an android. But, he did seem to make sure to emphasize the words ‘ice cream’, ‘abandoned’, and ‘isolated’.”

“The abandoned warehouse by that old ice cream shop on 5th Avenue. It’s pretty isolated from the rest of the buildings. Hard to miss.” Gavin said, not taking his eyes off the road. Both you and Hank stared at him with open mouths. When he was met with the stunned silence, he did a double-take at your faces. “The fuck are you lookin’ at? I’m not as dumb as you think I am.”

You closed your mouth as you nodded, “I guess I doubted you. You’re still a dick though.” He huffed in reply while you looked up the directions to the warehouse.

1 hour away. Traffic: Heavy.

You cursed, grabbing the attention of Hank and Gavin. “What is it?” Hank asked.

You checked your watch. You wouldn’t have enough time.

“We won’t make it. The traffic is too heavy.”

Gavin just laughed dryly. “Not if we floor it.”

“Gavin!”

You all made it in surprisingly good time with half an hour to spare. Gavin really did know his shortcuts. The three of you exited the vehicle and walked towards the wide doors of the warehouse. It was cold and damp inside causing a shiver to go up your spine. Right in the middle of the room, you saw a figure sitting in a chair, a pillow case over their head to shield their vision. You nodded over to the person making Gavin and Hank immediately grab ahold of their guns. You signaled for them to split up and search the rest of the area. You cautiously approached the figure, seeing the suit Connor usually wore on its body.

“Connor?” You whispered, suspicious of everything at the moment.

“(Y/N)?” He replied his voice so quiet you almost couldn’t hear it.

You exhaled in relief as you reached over to grab the pillow case off his head. You yanked it off, revealing his current state. His head hung low, but you could see the thirium dripping from his noise. You could hear the soft sobs coming from his hunched over form.

“Oh my god, Connor. What did they do?” You knelt in front of him, trying to get a view of his face but he kept turning away. He must’ve been in such a daze that he couldn’t tell who was who anymore.

Gavin walked around with Hank around the warehouse, their guns ready in their hands. They checked for the person who held Connor hostage but there was no sign of them anywhere.

Groaning, Gavin complained. “This is dumb. We found the piece of shit so let’s book it before they notice.”

Hank hushed him as he heard something. He beckoned Gavin towards the muffled noise and they were led to a back room. The door was shut but the noise was clearly coming from behind it. They two stopped in front of it, turning to each other before nodding. Gavin stepped back and pointed the gun at the door while Hank positioned himself at the door knob. They looked at each other and counted,

1…

2…

Hank opened the door to reveal what was behind it. The sight caused them both to freeze.

Connor.

He twisted and turned in his seat when he saw the two of them. They stood there in shock before Hank rushed over to remove the cloth around his mouth. Words immediately followed when he was able to speak,

“Where’s (Y/N)?”

The more he cried, the more your heart broke. As time went on, his cries started to turn. You furrowed your eyebrows at the sounds he made.

Laughter.

You moved back a bit as he slowly turned to you, revealing his face.

And his bright blue eyes.

You gasped as the other Connor quickly got up, holding you closely while pointing a gun at your abdomen.

He turned his head, so it was level with your ear, “Where are they?”

Before you could reply, Gavin and Connor ran out in front of the both of you. At the sight of the other Connor, Gavin made a sound of disgust. “There’s two of you?”

RK900 tilted his head at his words. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been a long day.”

The android who had you in his grasp raised the gun his hands, pointing it at your head. Both Gavin and Connor raised their hands at the action. “Your weapon. On the ground. Now.” RK900 demanded, pushing the gun harder to your head causing you to whimper. Gavin reluctantly nodded, putting it to the floor, kicking it out of reach. The other Connor smirked, your breathing very light from fear.

“It was you on the phone the whole time, wasn’t it?” You squeaked out causing the hostile android to stare at you before grinning evilly.

“What a clever girl. You chose well, Connor.” You closed your eyes, sensing his finger on the trigger. “It was the only way I knew you would come. I wasn’t about to put Connor on the phone. He’d ruin everything.”

“You son of a bitch.” You hissed making him laugh.

“Watch your mouth, girl. I’m the one with the gun here.”

A click came from behind you all.

“You and me both, motherfucker.”

Bang!

The RK900 slowly looked down as he saw the pool of blue stain his torso. He withered to the ground, letting the gun in his hand go. You quickly moved to quick it away. Hank approached the android on the ground, lifting his foot to rest on the wound. The other Connor hissed in pain as he stared up at the old detective.

“You should be dead, you asshole.” Hank growled, staring him down.

The man underneath him laughed before coughing up blue blood. He had a wild look on his face as he grinned, teeth stained with blue. “I’ll keep coming back. You will never be able to kill me.”

Hank scoffed before raising his gun, “We’ll see about that.”

Bang!

One last shot went straight through the head of the other Connor successfully shutting him down. All four of you sat in silence before it was ruined.

“Oh my god! Gavin screeched, “Did I lock the car?!” He ran off towards the entrance of the warehouse in a sprint.

Hank chuckled and walked after him but not before Connor called out to him. “Thank you, Lieutenant. You have saved me yet again.”

You nodded in agreement, “Yeah, thanks, Hank. I probably would be dead if it weren’t for you.”

Hank briefly smiled, “Whatever. You guys both owe me a drink.” He stopped, “Each.” You and Connor laughed in reply. “Anyways, I’ll meet you two in the car. Hopefully, we can air out all that fucking cologne.”

You watched as he walked towards the entrance before you turned to Connor. He was already staring at you for a while.

“I am sorry I put you through all this, (Y/N).” He said, nervously adjusting his tie.

You shrugged, grinning. “I’d do it again for you in a heartbeat, Connor.”

Something inside him made his thirium pump faster, rushing to his face. How could you have such an impact on him? He shyly smiled and for the first time in his short android life, he couldn’t think of a reply. You cleared your throat abruptly to stop yourself from staring.

“A-Anyways, we should catch up with them. Knowing those two, the car is probably on fire by now.”

Connor tilted his head, “I don’t sense a fire within the area.”

You took his hand with a smile. You really needed to teach him figures of speech. The two of you walked towards the doors of the warehouse, hand-in-hand.

“How did you convince Gavin to come with you?” Connor asked suddenly.

You smirked, “Remember that story I told you about him, but I made you swear not to tell anybody?”

“Ah, the one where you then told me to tell the whole division?”

“Yeah, that one.”

[masterlist]

#detroit become human #connor x reader #dbh connor #detroit become human x reader #bryan dechart

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some-dark-side-writing · 7 years ago

Text

What Makes Robbie Turn Yandere:

(Tw: beloved’s death, gore)

•From the moment Robbie smelt you he knew he needed to have you.

•You passed the Septic manor without even really thinking about it at random. There was a nice shop you liked close to it which was cheap enough so if you were feeling peckish or needed some light shopping you’d go there probably every couple of days.

•Robbie didn’t like that it was at random. He wasn’t the best at the concept of time yet so he had a firm schedule which helped him keep track of things. One in his room and one in the hallway of his house, with pretty pictures Rob had taken, so a selfie of Schneep in a weirdly short doctors outfit he got from Schneep’s ‘private’ folder on his phone that he didn’t like being on the scheduled but made he others laugh in the morning after breakfast meant Chiropractice. The blurry duck pond picture of a swan attacking Anti on the seventh day repeating, Sunday, meant he could go to the park under supervision! And he had his own calendar in his room which had a picture of you so he could track every day and at what times you passed his house, but it was all jumbled up and it made him sad. He wanted to get ready for you!

•The egos were all very impressed that Robbie was having a bath every day of his own accord! Even Anti told him it was good he didn’t want to smell like a sewer anymore and that made Robbie’s heart swell! But not as much as it did whenever he got a scent and a quick peek at you.

•One day Marvin left the door unlocked by accident so when Robbie started to smell you coming by he licked his hand and pushed his hair back like Chase told him to do to look cool and walked outside, trying not to stumble and be cool like Chase. And he saw you, you were counting coins from your pocket and Robbie, who was pretending he was watering the flowers, made the mistake of having his head turn 180 to keep staring at you, but his body had stayed in the same position, making him lose balance and fall into Schneep’s petunias.

•Embarrassingly you heard this commotion, spinning around to see the poor man face down in his flowerbed after eating dirt, well you hoped not literally. “Are you alright?” You called out, your worrying, caring nature taking over as you rushed to help him up, the flowers were outside the gate and there were people the opposite side of the street so he didn’t seem threatening. He actually smiled at you and it was one of those smiles where you couldn’t help but smile back. His eyebrows were angling upwards, shoulders hunched as he giggled, smile relaxed. “Sorry... I fell in the p...pe-tu-ni-as.” You smiled back, helping him stand straight by linking arms and Robbie was so glad his didn’t fall off. “That’s okay, I probably would have fallen in them too if you hadn’t done it first.” Robbie’s eyes widened giddy, you were clumsy too?!

•He hated, confused by an emotion he’d do rarely felt on a full stomach before, when Anti opened the door and interrupted. “Robbie! Get your butt back in here. Leave the nice person alone!” Robbie growled, which you mistook for a grumble, as you told the green haired man. “Oh he’s not being a bother!” The green haired man yelled back. “Oh I don’t care if he’s being a bother or not I care that he does as I say and gets inside.” Then the green haired man went pale. What you couldn’t see was Robbie’s eyes tuning from purple to a misted over grey as he started to turn from Anti being so rude to you. Anti sprang forward, rushing Robbie inside and slamming the door, Chase peeking out the windows to check if you were gone.

•Robbie sighed when you left, especially looking weirded out, sulking into the living room and about 20 minutes later the doorbell rang. You’d gone past the house to the shop then come back, with plasters, cleaning materials and a packet of flower seeds in hand, after all the shop was pretty cheap. You’d explained how you felt bad just leaving and didn’t know if he needed anything like bandaids or antiseptic. Again Anti made a snide comment about “Oh he definitely needs Antiseptic”, yanking the bag and if Robbie already wasn’t mad at Anti he was when he winked at you “Thanks for the free stuff, and the seeds, it’ll keep us from getting beat.” And without another word slammed the door.

•Anti was almost scared of the grudge Robbie held against him the next few days, he’d always forgiven him after a good night’s sleep and he was the only one thinking something bad was going on. The rest of the household wanted to hear all about Robbie’s encounter with you and drank in all the details about how ‘nice’ you were when Robbie explained you.

•After a while you had become a regular at the household, friends with all of them especially Robbie who you were warned upon being able to see him again that he was very clingy. You knew all about their powers and the fact Robbie was a zombie but hey he gave out amazing cuddles. Marvin even updated you that even on low food Robbie had made amazing progress and stayed pacifist when snuggled into you.

•But Robbie despised when his brothers would touch you. At first they wrote it off as him already being near full on zombie mode and him liking you so much but then it started to concern the Septic’s to the point they wouldn’t hug you any more to avoid him freaking out.

•But almost a year after Robbie had started noticing you walking past something happened that shook the zombie up. You came into the manor, kissing the egos on the cheek in greeting since they’d all become really good friends to you and Robbie didn’t care at this point, running down the stairs to greet you when he came to a screeching halt on the landing. A person walked in behind you, holding your hand, you looked at them like you looked at Robbie in his dreams! They shook Henrik’s hand and said from their repulsive tongue. “Hi, I’m Y/N’s S/O.”

•No one missed the sound of the zombie running up the stairs and knocking things over. Or the sound of his cries. Almost immediately after he cried and smashed the nightlight YOU gave him to the ground he caught your scent fading. He ran downstairs panicked but Anti caught him from behind, arms under Robs armpits as he dragged him back. “Woah you’ll hurt yourself! Schneep sent Y/N away before you freaked out their S/O, now I won’t get to-“ Robbie chomped his teeth in the direction of Antis fists and Anti dropped him on the floor. “Are you fucking serious?!” He screamed, Robbie crawling on the floor to reach you as Schneep reached Anti. “I’m not becoming a zombie! I thought he was better trained than that!” Robbie then felt the familiar sting of a needle before he was out cold.

•Robbie cried for days. He was in his isolation room even though he wouldn’t attack the others now. He just lay curled up calling for you hoarsely, eyes distant and he didn’t eat unless it was shoved down his throat, usually by Anti who still badgered for an apology. But rob only spoke one word in those days. “Y/N.”

•”Robbie!” He heard hissed at him. He opened the window and you jumped in. Something you’d done on many occasions to sneak a cuddle session with Robbie or prank Anti and Chase.

•You hugged him as soon as you landed but Robbie’s hug back was faint. You didn’t love him... You of course noticed this since normally he’d squeeze every part of you he could till his limbs fell off. You asked him what was wrong and he told you.

•”Rrrrooobbbbiiiieeee lllooooovvvvvveeessss YYYYY/NNNNNN...” Your hand fell to your chest, shocked, tearing up as he continued “Aaaallllwwwaaaayyyyyssss llloooovvvvvveeeddddd. Wwwaaannnnnaaaa bbbbeeee tttoooogggeetttthhhheeeeerrrrrrr fffoooorreeeevvvvvveeeerrrrrr...” you were extremely worried at how slow he was talking now, backing up a little. You had trusted he’d never hurt you coherent but you’d never seen him full on zombie mode. “Bbbbuuuuutttt YYYYYY/NNNNN dddooooeeeessssnnnnn’tttttt llllooooovvvvvveeee Rrrrrrooooobbbiiiiiieeeee yyyyeeeetttttt.” You were about to tell him he was wrong till he snarled, pinning your throat against the wall and his dripping venomous mouth that was only venomous when he wanted it to be was inches from your face. “Nnnnoooottttttt lliiiikkkeeee ttthhhhhaaaattttttttt.” He was panting now and so were you, because you were scared and were trying to get as much air flow as possible. “Bbbuuuttttt wwwiiiilllllll...”

•Then as if by twisted fate your S/O landed badly through the window, hurting their back as they lay on the floor. “Y/N? Sorry baby I got worried, you were taking forev-“ Robbie lunged at your S/O, throwing you by your neck to the opposite side of the room and pinning them to the floor. “ROBBIE NO!!!” He clamped onto your S/O’s neck, ripping their throat out so they couldn’t scream, they were dead instantly, and still Robbie was chewing grotesquely, fingers tearing at their stomach, shredding their clothes and severing their organs with his teeth.

•You threw up in the corner, banging on the heavy metal door used to contain Robbie when he turned zombie and screaming for help but that only alerted the yandere zombie to you. He gargled the blood, chunks falling off lips as he spoke “Tttttttoooooggggeeettthhheerrrr fffoooorrreeevveerrrrrr...”

•He saw your sick and lunged towards you like a feral animal and you screamed, curled up right into the corner which angered Robbie. With a grunt his nails dug into your arms and lifted you to stand. He sniffed at your mouth, going down to your stomach where you felt him breathe against your top before standing back up over you. “Nnnnoooo mmmooorrrreeee sssiiiiccckkkk.” He explained and you looked up at him with half opened eyes, tears streaming down you faster than you’ve ever known. “Nnnnoooo mmmoooorrrreeee ddeeeaaatttthhhh. Nnnneeevvveeerrr hhhaaavvvveee ttttooo llleeeaaaavvvveeeee Rrrrrrroobbbiiiieeeeee...”

•A hiss left his mouth as he broke his jaw to extend it, holding you still as you tried to push away as you felt his violet hair shove against yours forcefully as he pressed his lips against yours, dry rough and bloody from your beloved, he finally bit down, pulling back once you started to bleed and you fell to the floor sobbing.

•When you woke you were freezing, there were shouts and banging from the door like you’d never heard and you were held in Robbie’s arms. Robbie’s voice was noticeably fine now after a meal. “Rigor mortis only hurts a little...” all the shouts hurt your head. Who wanted to get in here so bad? No... how many wanted to get in here so bad. Robbie held you so close to his chest, surprising you when you felt his lips press against your bottom one, both covered in dried blood.

•You were the only two like this in the world. He would help you through this, you wouldn’t need his brothers. And he knew you were kind, you wouldn’t want to go outside and risk hurting others now you were like this. Now you were like Robbie.

#fic #robbie fic #rob fic #rob x reader #robbie x reader #angst fic #yandere robbie #yandere rob #yandere tw?#yandere au #yandere fic

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ratreides · 7 years ago

Text

I move into a little house called the Center full of wanderers and hippiedips in March after a horrible breakup and I would have been homeless if a mutual friend of the ex (Geena) didn't save my ass. I spend the summer trying to rebuild after being cheated on and having a turbo breakdown and quitting my job. For the most part I'm sad and trying to relax and get into therapy and become financially stable. As the summer goes on, center people leave, a previous center-goer Jess moves in, Geena and her boyfriend Jaime coincidentally enough move in. We get told the lease is up in December and G&J want to renew. I'm like fuck yeah. I love this place, love my room. Eventually it comes out that G&J only want to renew for downstairs because up is admittedly old and falling apart. They didn't tell me this at time, or literally until today, but apparently the deal with the landlord was lease downstairs or no lease at all. I don't want downstairs, I'm pretty attached to my window looking at rooftops and trees and sunshine and an elevated patio where people can't see me in my underwear judging them, drawing or whatever I want. Jess isn't fond of downstairs either but we also don't want to move so we say we're in. We all agree that an unstable roomie has to leave, she doesn't take this well and causes us all hell, leaves dishes everywhere, lights on, and is incredibly loud whether it's singing, or borderline physically fighting her boyfriend until 4 am most nights.

Jess and I want the same room, so we have to sort that out. I sit on discussing it with her, as I know the reason she wants it is the studs in the wall for her hammock, and I don't want to be That Asshole and say I'd like it because it faces the sun and I'm a depressed little plant that needs that to grow. Geena comes to us on October 17th with a potential roomie for us but only if he gets a certain room. If I take the room Jess and I both want, she takes potential roomies room. I'm put in a position where I can say I'll take whatever to save us some chaos because we're already at wits end with our crazy roommate, or, I can take the room that's preferable to me and out us a renter 14 days before a new lease is to be signed. I can't even view the whatever I'm taking because the landlord with the keys is MIA until just before movein so everyone knows what they're getting into except me. I know the room faces another building and I'm not happy but in trying to avoid disruption and MORE people moving out on short notice (a trend during the summer months) I don't say anything. I try to take one for the team. I want one where I can get sunlight and see trees, being in the city depresses me and I value feeling isolated and seeing nature but I don't say shit because we're all already losing sleep.

This eats at me until three days ago I come out about the way I'm feeling about it. I get flack for having sat on it this long which ultimately is my fault and I understand that, but I try to explain from a personal standpoint I'm worried about the way the room might affect me. Two days ago the landlord appears and we finally get the keys. The room is worse than I thought; weirdly shaped with an inconvenient curve and outlets, is quite small, the single window gathers little to no natural light and faces a brick wall about seven feet away and the neighbours compost bin, overlooking a pen where a tiny dog is telling all the time. I reinforce that it isn't gonna be good for me and despite desperately not wanting to that I might have to move because this just isn't a healthy option for me and I'm pretty upset by it. Jaime reasons with me and I appreciate his effort but he essentially tells my hermit ass to just spend time in the living room and on a patio where every average joe can see me, next to a parking lot.

It's obvious enough and everyone tells me that I didn't say anything soon enough, that I'm leaving four or so days to find someone to sign the lease and get out. Which is another thing I wasn't aware of until today. I thought I could take the room until I found somewhere else, and there was a new renter lined up, but it turns out we all have to be on the lease until it's up next June. That's probably a no brainer to most but as someone who's been on a lease once out of the five or so places they've lived in the city I wasn't truly aware and I thought paying my rent and deposit for the month while I potentially found somewhere else was suitable.

I do my best to explain that I was trying to be a good guy and avoid headache by saying I would take the room but as I hadn't seen it or gotten a feel for it there was no way to really get ready for living in a dimly lit oblong box. Talking to everyone doesn't help and they all say I should have spoken up sooner and while I ultimately understand that and take the blame for it I'm trying to elaborate on why I felt like I had no other choice. No one else had to make that decision, not Jess, not some dude who isn't even here yet. Me. I tried to be good about it and it was a mistake that I've now realized and I'm trying to be on the same page as them or seek some compromise.

We have a house meeting about it and I'm told my options are suck and sign, or get out in four days and fuck everyone. In group chats Geena elaborated on the struggle everyone's had here or coming here... Except for mine. She says today that none of them wanted to move again in the first place but they were pushing for downstairs, long before I heard anything about the landlord saying it was a make it or break it deal.

I was also apparently ignorant to the group chat while we were seeking a roommate to sign with us, because unbeknownst to me there was someone who didn't care what room they had. I don't know if it was a first come first serve situation but I do know that Geena was aware Jess and I wanted the same room and that Jess wanted different if I took it, so I question why someone who had no preference wasn't an immediate shoe in. I could have said this but I truly didn't read the chat, I suppose, and therefore didn't know about it. That is my fault, but again, I don't see why someone who knew rooms may be an issue wouldn't have reached out to someone who didn't care.

I don't want to move a third time this year. I came to this place for somewhere to rest my head longer than a year. I JUST got my storage and now I'm being told that there's plenty of storage to put it in. I'm on direct route to my only friends and my new job. Rent is affordable. I explain all these things including my point of view and the reason I took the actions I did to the best of my ability but by this point I'm worn out, sad, and feeling defeated and overwhelmed about decisions between taking care of myself and upsetting others.

Eventually the bottom line of the conversation and my decision comes down to Jess saying there's no studs in the room, so she won't take it because she can't have her hammock. So at the end of the day, I look like an asshole, when I was desperately trying to do the opposite, and I feel the people around me preaching new beginnings and community cannot seem to understand where I'm coming from and... Ultimately value someone who hadn't lived here yet and someone having a hammock over my potential wellbeing and seniority within the home. This led to me storming out and saying yeah, I'll sign on for a room with people who feel that way about me, because I really don't have any other options.

I'm trying to regain my ability to comfortably live among others and socialize and feel that I can work and function as an adult and my anxiety about coming out of my room has absolutely skyrocketed. Jaime has been patient to me for this time and I appreciate that immensely because it has been nothing but drama since he moved in but it doesn't shake the stomach upset feeling I have.

My mind works like dominoes and when one section crashes the entirety of the unrest I feel goes with it. I could be upset about my shoddy room and I am but with that I'm thinking about how many times people have indirectly fucked me out of my comfortable living situation, my social anxiety, my process through this year old trying to do what's right, my fighting with depression for years and years.

Not only does it make me angry, but sad. These guys are trying to protect their own asses and I'm empathetic to that but it doesn't change the heartbreak I feel about the current situation. I was amped on getting to know Geena more and working alongside her. We have the same mandatory training dates on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th, and now I'm too scared to talk to her, let alone ask for a ride or be there with her. I understand that it's my fault for not saying something sooner but I felt like I couldn't. She approached me about me signing the lease and moving out and creating a sublet. I was wiping away tears at the time and apologized for shouting, and (I could have worded it much better but was a little frazzled) that I was a little fucked up right now. I mentioned that I feel unstable and unhappy about living with people that are pissed at me she said nothing to either of those statements, furthering my growing need to barrel roll out of the nearest window.

I wanted to be on the same page as everyone else and excited for some kind of new beginning in a community home but if I was antsy about it before I'm just devastated now. I just want to hide. I feel like every time something shakes me my inner dialogue rips me to shreds. I question if I truly can get forwards in this world or if every event is going to cascade me into suicidal ideation and feelings of hopelessness.

I'll suck it the fuck up, I'll live in my shoebox with people I don't trust for the low rent and convenience to my values. I'm not a sketch like our ex roomie and I'm not going to be disruptive and bitchy on purpose. But if it really came down to studs in the wall being prioritized over my protest about the way I feel in small, dimly lit rooms, and how it can affect my depression (especially when it's cold and gloomy), I don't have the patience for kindness and compromises that weren't extended to me. And that makes me really, really fucking sad.

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