#but I noticed on my rewatch there were literal wedding bells (

[braceletofteeth]

ukushiit

*hira voice* eternal (subs by DE4RKAZU)

[snarkwrites]

FFT: wedding bell blues; tim riggins

Notes:

this came into my main’s asks from @vonschweetz​ right in the heat of my millionth rewatch of the Friday Night Lights tv series. And a mighty need to write fanfiction for Tim Riggins. Which admittedly, is something I definitely wanna do in the future on here, so who knows.

Summary:

Amber Collette is back in Dillon and her life’s kind of falling apart. A reconnection with Tim Riggins might just be in the cards? Maybe now the timing is right?

Pairing:

Tim Riggins x Collette!OFC, Amber

Warning:

uhh.. alcohol tw. and fluff. bc it’s fluffy.

“I’m gonna die alone in a house full of cats with no job or no food and bills that I couldn’t pay… First Mindy and Billy got married, then Julie and Matt and now you and Landry are getting married… And I totally bombed that interview earlier. I couldn’t have sounded like a less capable candidate for the job if I tried.. Everything is totally fucking up.” Amber looked up at her sister Tyra and reached for the bottle of red wine in Tyra’s hand. Tyra backed away then seeing Amber’s pout, she poured some into the empty wine glass sitting in front of her sister.

“You’re not gonna die alone in a house full of cats. And you will find a job, okay? This stuff just takes time is all.”

“I am! Hello, I’ve been on four interviews this week alone.. And all the others I’ve been to since I moved back..”

“First of all, Amber, pretty sure you have to actually like cats. Secondly, you’ll find somebody. There’s somebody out there for everybody. Third.. I’m telling you, at least think about coming down to East Dillon High on Monday and filling out to be a substitute teacher or the secretary or something. Everything is gonna be okay, little sister. Just relax.”

“And literally every single time I think I have found somebody or my life is finally gonna settle down and go my way, something winds up going wrong.. Hello, I woke up to a break up text? Came home from work to find out that the locks were changed and all my shit was sitting outside? Then the very next day, I get laid off.” Amber shook her head and took a sip of wine. “I’m just saying.. I wanna be happy. Like you and Mindy. And lately, it feels like every single thing I touch turns to shit. Hence the reason I dragged my ass back to Dillon and am currently riding mom’s sofa.”

“You’ll figure everything out. I’ll help you.”

“You don’t… I need to do this on my own, Tyra.”

Mindy spoke up from the doorway, “Do what on your own?”

“Figure my life out.. It’s like… I look at you and Tyra and I don’t know… I realize just how much is missing, how much I messed up and how many chances I let slip through my fingers.”

“She’s still being a downer, huh?” Mindy glanced at Tyra who nodded. “Job interview didn’t go so well.. Then she got all mopey on me.”

“The club is hiring.. I mean someone’s gotta take my place. And you always loved to dance.”

“Dance. Not be groped by jackasses all night.” Amber corrected gently and Mindy shrugged. “The tips are good, though. And you’d save up to get your own place real quick.”

“ That is a good..” Amber started to say it but before she even got a word out, Tim Riggins spoke up from the door. “It ain’t a good idea. Doesn’t matter how good the tips are.” as he stepped into the room and grabbed a beer for himself from Landry and Tyra’s fridge, uncapping it and taking a sip, never once dropping his gaze from the youngest of the Collette sisters.

Amber bit her lip and took a sip of her wine as she retorted, “Spoken from the man with a job and his own place.”

“That I built with my own bare hands.” Tim added, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. He hadn’t seen Amber in years. The difference in age between them back then may have been what kept him from ever really paying her any attention.

But since she’d shown up at Mindy’s place earlier in the month, he had to at least admit that he found himself just a little curious.

“Right..” Amber finally found the will to tear her eyes away from his and say something. She took another sip and Tim flopped down at the table behind her, taking a long sip from his own can. “Just because shit’s gone to hell.. Don’t mean you have to resort to that.”

Tyra eyed Tim and Mindy caught her sister’s eyes and mouthed “C’mon.” as she nodded to the living room and spoke up, clearing her throat. “Amber? Me and Tyra are gonna go in the livin room and look at some more bridal magazines. Weddings don’t plan themselves.” as Tyra caught on to what Mindy might be up to and smirked at her younger sister. “Right behind you, Mindy.”

As soon as the kitchen door closed behind the other two women, Amber stood. The problem was, so did Tim. And in the small room, it put them chest to chest. Tim chuckled and stared down at her. “What’s your hurry?”

“Nothin, I mean..”

“Sit down.” Tim nodded to the seat across from him and Amber sank down into it, reaching for her wine glass. Tim grabbed it and held it out.

After a few seconds of him staring intently at the Pabst logo on his can, he spoke up.

“I’m gonna feel like a third wheel on Saturday.”

“That makes two of us.” Amber lamented, taking another long sip from her wine glass, trying her best NOT to think about her stupid childish crush on Tim Riggins from back when she was a kid. Or, she thought to herself, trying not to re-imagine accidentally walking in on him when he was getting out of the shower at her sister Mindy’s house earlier in the week when she’d crashed there after a night out. It wasn’t working, she could see it in her mind as clear as she’d seen it with her own eyes.

“You’re blushin.”

“Am not.”

“You are.” Tim was eyeing her, smirking a little. He turned his attention back to his beer can and muttered mostly to himself, “Everybody’s getting married.”

“So I’ve noticed. I mean first it was Mindy and Billy, then it was Matt and Julie and now it’s Tyra and Landry.. But I’m happy for my sisters and Julie.. I mean.. They found great guys. I just seem to have a shit radar.” Amber dragged her finger around the top of the glass and bit her lip as she laughed and shook her head. “Then again, to be fair, Mindy’s always tellin me to stop pushin so hard.. Shit will happen on it’s own time, she says… Tyra, she’s just doin her usual bit, tryin to fix all my messes for me…”

“It’s an older sibling thing. Billy did it a lot. Still does it.” Tim remarked, looking up from his bottle to catch her sort of gazing at him. He leaned in a little and tucked a few strands of hair that had fallen into her face back behind her ears as he laughed and shook his head.

“What’s so funny?” Amber pouted.

“Nothin. Just thinkin.”

“About?”

Tim started to stand and make his way out of the kitchen, but he stopped and sat back down. Glancing into the living room, he shrugged. “I always thought I’d wind up workin here.. In a garage.. Married to either Tyra or Lyla.. Look, my point is, life is funny. And it’s not as bad as you think it is right now. I mean.. from what I heard you tellin Tyra and Mindy about the guy in Chicago, you dodged one hell of a bullet.. And it hasn’t been that bad, coming back here, right?”

“Not really.. I mean, I have gotten closer to Mindy and Tyra than we were.. and getting to see my nephew and the twins is great.. And finally making things right with mom… The two of us helping each other through everything..” Amber smiled and then she caught herself doing it again, sort of watching Tim when he wasn’t paying attention.

Before she could stop herself, she’d asked the question.

“Hey.. What if we went to my sister and Landry’s wedding together? I mean.. not like a date or anything, but..”

Tim looked up at her and smiled, finishing his beer and aiming it at the tall trash can designated for beer cans in the corner of the kitchen.

“So you’re askin me on a date, huh?”

“ No.. I mean not unless you wanna take it that way?”

“Maybe I do, Amber.”

“Okay then… it’s a date.”

[tespuco]

PotC Liveblog: Dead Man’s Chest

I’d been looking forward to rewatching DMC for some time. It was the movie that canonized my OTP and inspired so many amazing Sparrabeth fics. I fondly recalled seeing it in theaters with my family, my eyes and shipper heart growing bigger and wider with every subtext-laden appearance of Jack’s compass. I remembered feeling personally betrayed by Elizabeth’s death-kiss, like the writers had deliberately buoyed my hopes only to ruthlessly crush them. Unlike CotBP, I had only seen DMC once before, and I couldn’t wait to appreciate the complicated Jack/Elizabeth dynamic with more mature eyes.

Boy, was I disappointed. Not by the Sparrabeth, thank the gods, but by literally everything else.

Is it just me or was this movie composed of a bunch of standalone scenes and set pieces strung together? Did they bring in Tim Burton just to direct the visuals of the interrupted wedding scene? Why does the Turkish prison sequence look like the opening cutscene to a high fantasy RPG videogame with the brightness setting turned down to zero?

OK I laughed at Jack popping out of the coffin and using a femur as a paddle, but I’m confused about everything else

Oh look, the crew’s on the verge of mutiny again, and this time it is Jack’s fault

Listen, I have Ted Elliott’s compass meta tattooed on my heart, but in retrospect the “Why is all the rum gone?” scene was probably too subtle. The audience doesn’t even know at this point how the compass is supposed to work. Maybe if they had the balls to actually include the deleted Sparrabeth scenes in CotBP, Jack’s emotional turmoil wouldn’t have seemed so opaque!

Still, a character being Vexed about their affections/feelings and doing a poor job of managing that vexation is my idea of high romance

(and both Jack and Elizabeth are quite vexed with each other indeed)

I CANNOT believe I had to sit through an uninterrupted half hour of racist filler that does absolutely fuck-all to advance the plot while ticking at least four boxes on my postcolonial bingo card what the fucking fuck

Let’s tally the cinematic sins: unfunny physical comedy in a style that would’ve been more suited to animation; indigenous cannibals speaking in unrealistic, buffoonish gibberish; said cannibals worshiping our hero (and later a dog) as a deity; and worst of all--

All the brown men that Gibbs hired as extras additional crew for the Black Pearl in DMC were put into a separate cage from the recurring white characters from CotBP (btw Anamaria is absent without even a throwaway line of explanation) because apparently even barbaric islanders know and practice segregation

And so segregated, the crew enters the stupidest, most contrived rat race up a cliffside with each other that ends with the brown people’s cage falling into the ravine THEREBY GETTING RID OF ALL THE CHARACTERS OF COLOR IN ONE FELL SWOOP

Also egregious racism aside, I’m put off by the film’s rather cavalier attitude towards gratuitous loss of life? Idk I feel like in the midst of all the action and adventure CotBP knew how to handle death and violence with the appropriate modicum of gravity and horror

Meanwhile on the island Gibbs is just like “oiya we’re standing in cages built from the bones of our former shipmates ha ha”

As for Jack - Jack has yet to save a cat or anything else besides his own skin, so he’s rapidly losing the goodwill he accumulated in the first film

holy shit yet another Elizabeth Swann-related realization about my sexual awakening: her look as a cross-dressing stowaway - pretty, delicate features in a boyish, flat-chested, slender form - is literally my sexuality 

She’s literally pulling the strings of all the men on that ship! What a puppet-master queen

Tia Dalma’s interest in Will and the “touch of destiny” line is an interesting bit of foreshadowing that doesn’t get any payoff in this film. DMC and AWE have been criticized for being impossible to watch as standalone films, but I think there’s something to be said for a universe that strives for internal continuity and demands more than a casual investment in its proceedings (a related but distinct model from the MCU)

If you gave me half a reason to I would ship Jack Sparrow with anybody and everybody. Look at the flirtatious lines and looks he exchanges with Tia Dalma!! Give me that story! (Actually, artaxastra did, twice: once in her standalone Creole!Jack origin story, And All of Them True, and once again in Gods and Heroes, a Jack/Calypso interlude in her Outlaws and Inlaws ‘verse)

Tia Dalma’s acceptance (and release) of Jack’s payment for her services tells me two things about her that I really like: (1) she’s like a magpie that collects interesting miscellany (witty tricksters, cunning pirate lords, undead monkeys). and (2) she’s not interested in caging creatures (the foreshadowing!!)

FINALLY WE GET SOME JACK/ELIZABETH INTERACTION

God bless Keira’s face and acting choices!! The chemistry!! All the little smiles and smirks they share!!

How doth she look at thee? Let me count all the ways: her amused, tentatively credulous smile at Jack’s storytelling and posturing over a magical compass and chest, while Norrington scoffs disbelievingly in the background; her having to bite her lips and walk away before Jack notices her giddiness because she literally cannot handle their flirting; her little laugh as he gently rebuffs the idea that he’s a good man

Also “I have faith in you. Both of you,” were her parting words to Will and here she gets a chance to tell Jack in person yay

Their little dance of “persuasion” is hot and all (Jack literally looks like he has to bite back a groan and whimper), but I’m really here for the banter (“Friendly?” / “Decidedly not.”); they get each other, and, under the right conditions, can communicate so effortlessly

“Why doesn’t your compass work?” - alright so ofc I love the legendary “curiosity” exchange, but I’m so confused by the abrupt transition in their conversation here? Like why didn’t she follow through and tug on that line of inquiry?? The “Because you and I are alike” line that follows makes no logical sense in context (ETA: I guess it could suggest that Elizabeth already knows why the compass doesn't work for him, because he's torn between doing the right thing and the selfish thing... But at this point she doesn't suspect him of lying to her, so...idek)

“You’d never put me in a position that would compromise my honor” - my god what a TEASE my queer heart

Oh, Norrington, what’s happened to you?? What happened to serving others, not just himself?? :(( It kinda confuses me that he goes on about the “dark side of ambition” and the “promise of redemption” when he’s the one who voluntarily resigned from his post...

Norrington carrying both shovels while Jack just poses prettily though lol

JACK’S COMPASS FINALLY WORKS FOR HIM BECAUSE THE TWO THINGS HE WANTS MOST IN THE WORLD--THE CHEST AND ELIZABETH--ARE IN THE SAME PLACE AND HE KNOWS IT

idk I guess some people find the three-way swordfighting scene hilarious but I’m with Elizabeth on this one: men are stupid 

ugh this script makes no sense

I’m so fucking confused by the narrative logic here: if Jones is dead, there’s no one to call off the Kraken?? But isn’t Jones the one calling the Kraken in the first place, to settle Jack’s debt? So if they killed Jones, wouldn’t the debt be null and void? NO JONES, NO KRAKEN, DUUUH.

OK but Jack is really unlikable in this film, last-minute “heroic” acts notwithstanding. Give me fix-it fics please

I mean it’s rather telling that by the time Jack returns to the Pearl there are only enough survivors to fill a single longboat. Oh yes he “saved them all” - the few that were left!!

This script has more holes in it than the Pearl does right now: everyone unquestioningly follows Will’s orders like he’s the captain (what happened to the dork who shouted, “Aye! Avast!”?? And there’s no evidence that since his engagement post-CotBP he’s practiced any sailing)

I mean it’s like no one but Elizabeth even noticed Jack was gone; the moment he comes back Gibbs chirps, “Captain, orders?” as if he never left. This coward just abandoned you all!!!

“It’s only a ship, mate.” - This is actually just the saddest line, and I’m glad Elizabeth was there to witness it because if there’s one thing she took away from their fireside conversation in CotBP it’s that the Black Pearl is more than a ship to Jack; what it really is is freedom, and here Jack’s set to lose both

And that’s what Elizabeth--not the Kraken--definitively takes from Jack: his freedom. Not just his ability to run away from his fate, but also the chance to take a stand and face it. (I like to think that, more than the murderous act itself, is what he finds so hard to forgive post-DMC. The darker Jack in salr323′s oneshot, Perfidy, written post-AWE, articulates this eloquently: “You know nothing of my debt, love, nor of my payment. But had you allowed me a nobler death, my account might have been lighter.”) His last act of defiance entails reclaiming what choice he has left: slipping slickly out of his shackles, hat on, “hello beastie,” into the monster’s maw.

Ugh they could have given Jack’s whole arc with Davy Jones such PATHOS instead of waiting until the very end--he struck a deal with the devil in all his youth and despair and hubris; now the bell is tolling and he realizes 13 years is nothing, no time at all, and he’s not ready to die; not today, not ever--yes it’s selfish and dishonorable (Will’s willing to square the debt of a father he hardly ever knew; he wouldn’t have blinked at paying his own) but how human is that? to fight and run even as the flames lick your heels? 

omg Jack is the jackrabbit

The irony of that eulogy still gives me feelings tho: “Guess that honest streak finally won out.” Elizabeth wrested away Jack’s control over his own story, so now she has to write it for him. When she toasts, “He was a good man,” it’s in both unearned homage and recompense. 

“And the world is a little less bright.” - OK but that’s too much. Moving words from Gibbs, but here it’s like he’s speaking directly to/for the audience, and not in a good way. It’s too obviously meta, and especially out of place in a film where Jack did not shine very bright at all

In-universe, it’s not very believable that two pirates like Pintel and Ragetti--who mutinied against Jack before, without a hint of remorse!--would now risk their lives to save him

Honestly if Disney wanted to include familiar faces/fan favorites in the supporting cast for AWE, they could’ve easily written a more realistic line like, “what the hell do we have to lose?” or some more selfish motive, none of these panegyrics

btw who are the native people standing in the swampwater? holding candles with mournful tears in their eyes?? no seriously who are they??? (I dearly hope such a striking tableau was meant to hint at Jack’s history with Tia Dalma and the residents of this bayou, but the more cynical part of me thinks: “Now hiring: extras of color, to play the part of human candlesticks lit in exaltation of an ambiguously white man” The writers get no benefit of the doubt from me after forcing me to sit through that cannibal island act)

It sounds sadistic of me but seeing how anguished Elizabeth is after claiming she’s not sorry gives me life

She keeps crying, and can’t even bring herself to drink Tia Dalma’s concoction against cold and sorrow! She just fakes a sip, which is such a great little character beat, because it shows she doesn’t think she deserves the remedy! She’ll just have to live with it...

That is, until Will decides he can’t stand the sight of her grief, and opens up Pandora’s box for her despite just catching her passionately kissing another man: “If there was anything to be done to bring him back, Elizabeth...” He really is too good for this world

And Elizabeth MUST know there’s a price, that she’d be staking not just her own life and happiness but her betrothed’s, and yet selfishly, always selfish, she says, “Yes” 

BARBOSSA!!! Still the most epic character reveal ever. I still remember the theater bursting into gasps and applause, good times